There are stellar relocations and those that are the stuff of nightmares, and still others that that fall in-between. Of course, you want to give your relocating employees the first kind, so they can start their new assignments off on the right foot.
After all, the last thing your organization needs is for an important new hire—whether a physician, tech whiz or senior manager—to show up worried, distracted and/or resentful because their move went off the rails somewhere between Points A and B.
Fortunately, ensuring a positive relocation experience isn’t about how much you spend, but about how your program is structured and executed. Helping employees make successful moves comes down to embracing the right philosophy—and following a few tried-and-true rules.
Planning a relocation is complicated. And stressful. Expecting employees to do it alone, which is what happens with lump sum, compensation-only plans, increases the odds of a spectacular fail.
The more expertly you help employees plan their relocation—and the more flexibility you give them to do it their way—the more successful their relocations will be. That’s what most of our rules are about.
In other words, treat relocation as a benefit, not compensation, and everything else will follow. Including happy employees.
Under the old relocation model, relocation specialists did all the legwork manually for employees—which resulted in a very laborious, expensive, back-and-forth process. Lump sum plans were developed to get away from this approach, but it turns out that leaving employees high-and-dry doesn’t work, either.
The right approach is to give relocating employees the freedom to rely on relocation specialists as much or as little as they choose. Think Goldilocks: everyone has their own definition of what’s “just right”—so, let them do it their way.
Let’s face it: the professionals you relocate are tech-savvy. While some relocation programs are still manually-driven, tech-based relocation solutions put everything they need at their fingertips digitally, including:
In other words, technology take the mystery out of moving, so there’s no unpleasant surprises blowing up the process.