Relocation & HR Trends

When someone finds out they are moving to a new location, they’re typically filled with a sense of excitement and anticipation. New city, new job, new experiences, and a new chapter in someone’s life.

Yet, when it comes time to start diving into the logistics, those feelings of excitement and anticipation can quickly morph into feelings of anxiety and uncertainty. All the work that goes into moving starts to add up quickly and the relocation transforms from an exciting adventure to an overwhelming, tiring journey.

This can lead to your company’s relocating employees feeling overwhelmed with their relocation and underprepared for their first day—a situation that is detrimental to both the employee and the company.

The Complex Landscape of Employee Relocation

One of the reasons relocations can feel overwhelming is the sheer number of activities that need to get done, combined with the fact that the employee usually has to work with numerous people to accomplish those activities. Just a few tasks that have to happen for every move include: packing up your current home, finding a new home, moving all of your belongings, and travelling to the new location. This doesn’t include preparing for the new job or position.

Let’s take a look at one area of this: moving belongings. This alone requires the employee to obtain a estimates from a few suppliers. If they are exploring three different van lines, that means they need to collect and evaluate three different estimates from three different people.

Now, multiply this by all the other services that might need estimates, like auto shipment, pet shipment, storage, and so on. If the employee receives three estimates for each category, they’re managing a total of 12 different quotes from 12 different people.

This is just one example of how employees are required to juggle multiple communications throughout their move. Add in communication around other relocation activities, like selling a home, finding a home, receiving new hire paperwork and booking travel, and you can see how the moving process might seem overly complex (and overwhelming) to the individual moving.

How Relocation Management Technology Can Help

Fortunately, there are opportunities for you, as the employer, to simplify the relocation experience for your relocating employees. While it’s impossible to take all the stress out of the relocation process, there are opportunities along the way to reduce stress. One of the most impactful ways to simplify the process is to manage relocations in a centralized, online location.

This means bringing the relocation experience online not just for the individuals relocating, but for everyone involved, including suppliers, company administrators, and the third party company helping to manage the relocation. Bringing all of these parties into one online, centralized location streamlines communication, allows stakeholders to complete tasks more efficiently, and ultimately helps the relocating employee feel like they are in-control of their relocation.

Let’s take a look at the scenario above (moving household belongings) and consider what it might look like if managed on a centralized technology platform. Once the supplier receives a request for an estimate, they can upload the estimate into the online platform. Instead of the employee trying to manage the influx of supplier estimates via email, they are able to access all quotes from all suppliers in a single place. The employee can then evaluate all estimates side by side inside their online account. As a result, the employees are armed with information that helps them make an educated decision efficiently.

Similarly, an online platform can help reduce stress in other areas. For instance, the HR or Mobility team administering the relocation can share new hire paperwork via the platform. This not only results in a smoother process for the relocating employee, but it also frees up time from the HR or Mobility team to focus on activities that drive more value.

With an online platform at the center of your relocation program, you enable all parties involved to do their job more efficiently, resulting in a more seamless, simplified experience for the individuals relocating. Bringing all aspects of a move online cuts down the confusion and complexity of the relocation process and empowers your relocating employee to take control of their move.

We're back this week with some of the top news from HR Tech and relocation in the past week!

It was a busy week in the wonderful world of HR and relocation, so we did you a favor and gathered some of the most noteworthy news and compiled it for you in one
place.

Read on to find out what’s top of mind this week for HR and Global Mobility Professionals:

Technology in HR is helping people live Healthier, Happier and more Productive Lives 

Technology helps many different aspects of how businesses are run these days. For example, efficiency, reducing costs and increasing business productivity, however, what if I told you that technology is helping with the well-being of employees, engagement, rewards and recognition along with learning and development.

Well-being

“Well-being is the physical, emotional and even financial wellness of your employees. More employers are moving towards this “whole employee’s well-being” approach. Wellness programs that typically only cover physical health and nutrition are more widely available currently.”

Engagement

“Engage for Success defines engagement as: “a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to give of their best each day, committed to their organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being.” In a nutshell, it’s the level of commitment and performance put forth by each of your employees.”

Rewards and Recognition

“The incentives and motivators offered to employees to encourage consistent high performance are super important. These can be anything from employee of the month awards to bonuses to celebrating a big win with team karaoke (a favorite in our own office).”

Learning and Development

“L&D refers to the educational programs offered to employees to increase their proficiency within or outside their job description. This is the number one benefit millennials seek in job opportunities. Giving them the chance to grow and learn as much as possible is a powerful incentive to retaining your millennial workers.”

Learn more about the 4 areas where technology is helping HR make a difference

Google is Quietly Entering a new Market 

There are rumors that Google has been working on a new product called Google Hire.

“Google’s launching a whole HR and employment ecosystem. The product suite will include corporate career sites, an ATS, job feeds and ultimately an algorithm that actually helps paid job boards but will disrupt Indeed, big time.”

This however will not be Google’s first time around with working on creating a Job Board. In the mid-2000’s, Google released a product called Google Base. This service gave people the ability to upload their own content onto Google, which was then accessible through their search engine.

Get the full article on Google Hire here

UAE, Spain and Greece Take the Top Three Spots for Best Countries for First Time Buyers

Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, it has become significantly more difficult for first time buyers to pull the trigger and purchase their first home. This unfortunately has lead many families to spend large amounts of their income on renting.

“Using data from the Global Property Guide and the Hay’s Group Global Salary Forecast and cross-referencing the change in property prices with average salary in 33 countries in 2016, the relocation experts at MoveHub have determined the best countries for first time buyers.”

“UAE took the top spot where average real wages enjoyed a boost in 2016, while at the same time the nation’s property market experienced a slump in value of -7.96%. The recent sharp decline in home prices in some of the country’s hotspot cities suggests that the affordability gap is closing considerably quicker in comparison to other international regions.”

Find out where all 33 countries rank among one another

Wish you didn’t have to stop?! No worries — there’s more where that came from! Check out these great reads from the past week:

10 Reasons Why Recruitment Marketing Platforms Are Dead [ERE]

Calls for innovation to be at heart of industrial strategy [Relocate Magazine]

I Joined Airbnb at 52, and Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and the Tech Industry [Harvard Business Review]

How to Buy Property in Australia If You're From the U.S. [Zillow]

On Transform Recruitment Marketing Podcast: HR Technology Trends [HR Tech Central]

Tracking the success of your relocation program can take practice. For some, it starts with a spreadsheet and a few simple formulas to keep track of relocation spend. For others, it may mean pulling together key data from various sources over time to provide a complete view of the program’s health.

No matter where you are in the process, easy to access, real-time relocation data is critical. If you are spending half your time collecting and organizing your relocation data, then you may be sacrificing time you could be spending to analyze and act on the information at hand. 

UrbanBound’s new reporting suite empowers you to easily review and assess data as relocations occur to help you avoid relocation pitfalls, quickly adjust your program, and equip you with the information needed to measure overall success.

Here’s how:

Insight Into Individual Move Progress

Relocating is a major life event. When a relocation is tied to a new position or job, you’ll find that your employees are under more stress than usual. Stress related to relocating is something you can help mitigate, but cannot completely remove from your employee’s life. One of the best ways you can help reduce stress is to equip relocating employees with professional solutions to help them manage their move.

When you provide relocating employees with UrbanBound's Relocation Management Software, you can see real-time data about how their move is progressing, such as interactions with the Relocation Consultant, booked relocation services, major milestones achieved, and more. With the ability to easily check-in on the progress of any employee, you (or a hiring manager) can obtain a high-level understanding of how each individual is utilizing their relocation benefits and advancing in their relocation.

Access to Policy Performance Data

In addition to ensuring each employee is on track for a successful relocation, you also want access to metrics that help you understand how your various relocation policies are performing. In today’s world, you can’t afford to wait to review policy performance at the end of the quarter or end of the year. Understanding policy performance can help you identify trends and make adjustments accordingly to save money for your company, improve the employee relocation experience, or both.

When relocation policies are administered online, you gain access to data such as policy allowance vs. actual spend, average spend per employee, average spend per benefit, and more. Because the data is already collected and organized, you can spend time slicing and dicing the information as needed to understand what changes need to be made. With access to this information, you can see when employees are spending out of pocket, how much is being spent per relocation benefit, and how different locations impact the performance of the relocation policy.

Reports Delivered to Your Email Inbox

The first step to effectively utilizing your relocation data is collecting it in an online, easy to access location. By getting out of the business of collecting data, you’ll be able to dedicate more time to analyzing trends and implementing improvements. The second step is to make sure you are routinely reviewing that data to see how changes impact the program and how the data changes over time.

One of the best ways to ensure you’re routinely accessing your relocation data is to have your relocation technology do the work for you. When you’re able to view data online AND schedule the delivery of that data to your inbox (or a co-worker’s inbox), you can ensure that your team is spending time on less administrative tasks and more activities that add value to your relocation program.

Whether you are just beginning to build a relocation program or have a time-tested program in place, you need easy access to relocation data to ensure the sustainability and success of your relocation program. By investing in the data you need to track success, you are also investing in your company’s ability to deliver a quality, cost-effective experience to your relocating employees.