Press Release

Talent Crunch Puts Greater Emphasis on Relocation, Flexible Programs According to Weichert Survey

Amidst tougher competition for the best and brightest employees, 60 percent of companies say that relocation policy benefits are critical to recruiting talent. Yet an alarming majority of companies still pursue outdated workforce mobility practices that put them at risk of losing the very talent they’re investing in.

These were some of the key findings of the latest survey by Weichert Workforce Mobility Inc., a global leader in the deployment and management of mobile talent. Multidimensional Views on Workforce Mobility is Weichert’s ninth annual survey to identify the top relocation challenges and trends and offer best practice recommendations. This year’s results are based on the input of 170 corporate relocation managers at North American companies across all major industries.

Reflecting the title of this year’s study, results show corporate relocation managers waging the war for talent on several fronts, and balancing the need to provide the benefits necessary to attract and retain top talent with an unrelenting pressure to control costs. Forty percent of companies expect their relocation volume to increase over the next 12 months, underscoring its importance to business growth.

Reducing cost was the most commonly cited driver of the changes companies made to their relocation programs over the past year. In fact, “controlling relocation spend” was the number one reason cited for the wider adoption of flexible relocation programs, which include temporary, rotational and commuter assignments, lump sums and extended business travel.

These programs not only offer less costly alternatives to “traditional” assignments, but also make relocation appealing to a wider range of employees and keep talent more readily deployable as new opportunities arise. “When it comes to workforce mobility, the mantra is, ‘be flexible, but be cost-conscious, too,’” said Jennifer Connell, North American Practice Leader for Weichert’s Advisory Services group and architect of the survey. “When managed right, flexible programs allow companies to be both.

Unfortunately, some companies’ efforts to balance flexibility and cost control miss the mark. Seventy percent of respondents said they provide lump sums to entry-level employees, a practice Connell finds ill-advised.

“This places responsibility for the move on the demographic that is often least experienced with managing their own funds, which ends up costing you more in the long run while literally risking your future leaders,” said Connell. “It’s very telling that despite the widespread usage of lump sums, only 50 percent thought they actually met the needs of their employees and only 33 percent thought lump sums helped drive their talent management strategy.”

Drawing on the results of this year’s survey and her own experience consulting with HR leaders, Connell offered additional strategies for optimizing workforce mobility:

- Provide mobile employees with the best available tools and resources to expedite their moves instead of making them figure it out on their own, which inevitably burns time and money.

- Employ flexible programs to build a suite of solutions that accommodate every segment of your mobile workforce.

- Build a solid talent pipeline and reduce recruiting costs by using internships and engaging millennials in rotational assignments.

- Use data to optimize your program; 68 percent of companies don’t track their employees’ willingness to relocate and only 38 percent use retention rates to measure the value of workforce mobility to their organizations.

To arrange an interview with Jennifer Connell or obtain a copy of the full survey results, please contact Tim McCarney at (781) 982-5026 or solutions@weichertwm.com.

Weichert Workforce Mobility Inc. is one of the world’s leading providers of global workforce mobility solutions, making it faster, easier and more cost-effective for clients to deploy key talent and transfer critical skills. As an independently owned company, we offer flexibility and responsiveness to meet any workforce mobility need, anywhere in the world, whether your company moves 10 or 10,000 employees. We also provide our industry’s deepest global service scope, including global tax and compensation management. For more information, visit www.weichertworkforcemobility.com. 

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