Since we wanted to put the power of information in your hands, we created two online portals. One for you, our client, and a second portal for your transferees. Our client and transferee portals are designed with one thing in mind—to make the relocation process simple. Simple means stress-free, streamlined, transparent, informed, and functional. 

Your Client Portal

The client portal houses information regarding employee benefits, data integrity, record retention, and information security. Access everything you need in one place, on any device, and at any time including the following:

•  Customized dashboards that include snapshots of key metrics
• Full access to all file information
• Online authorizations
• Real-time reports and invoices
• Employee satisfaction surveys
• Third-party scorecards
• Contact information for your client service manager/counseling teams with secure, live chat
• Document repository and more!

When clicking on an individual employee, you will be shown an “at a glance” summary of activity. All file notes and status updates are available to review in real-time.

Documents and invoices are also digitally stored within each file and available for review 24/7. Our authorization process is designed to ensure every task is executed correctly, regardless of size or scale.

We will build your policy parameters into our system so that your portal is customized to your specific policy, data requirements, and reporting needs. Controls are built into our system preventing duplication of relocation authorizations and providing an audit trail that will identify input, corrections, amendments, and approvals within each transferee file.

Access and review transferee required documentation and expense submissions for a transparent and easy experience that offers all our customers support. We’ll move your top talent to where you need them in a way that is stress-free, compliant, streamlined, and successful.

Your Transferee Portal 

Our transferee portal offers each transferee and their family access to all available tools and resources for a smooth and easy relocation. Similar to the client portal, the transferee portal houses snapshots of important information directly on the landing page.

We believe that your transferees should have the ability to communicate and submit documents based on their individual preferences, which is why the transferee portal includes the following:

• Live instant messaging with the counseling team
• Expense management
• Assigned benefits summary
• Notifications for required tasks/documents
• Document repository
• Resource center for hellpful websites
• Downloadable guides and checklists

Because physical documents are often a hassle with the potential for delays, our eForms feature means no more hefty paperwork or missing information. Your employees can complete all paperwork securely online from their computer, phone, or tablet, and sign all eForms using DocuSign®.

By putting the power of information into your hands, our portals help to make the complex simple. We invite you to learn more about our client and transferee portals to discover how we can improve turn time and visibility in the relocation process.

It’s hard to believe that we just welcomed in a New Year! As we reflect on the great things that happened in 2019, we’re also excited about renewing our commitment to exceptional service, year-over-year savings, and continued growth as we work with our clients to implement exceptional relocation programs. 

As we look toward the future, we are more dedicated than ever in continually moving in the right direction. All of us at WHR Group feel privileged in the work we do. As part of this, we are proud to share a few of our favorite highlights and achievements from the past year.

Our History

In 2020, we will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of WHR Group. When Roger Thrun started WHR in the bedroom of his house, he never imagined we would become a global relocation management company servicing such a vast diversity of clients in countries across the globe. As we begin to kick off our 25th year, we’re also celebrating the consistent ownership and leadership we’ve had over this time as it has provided a bedrock of consistency in an industry of constant ownership changes.

Award-Winning Culture

WHR was named a Top Workplace for the sixth consecutive year by the Journal Sentinel! We’re also very excited that our CFO, Jami Long, was named CFO of the Year by the Milwaukee Business Journal! We are proud of our leadership team and the commitment and loyalty of our employees. With an employee retention rate of 96.5% and NPS score at +76.8, it’s no wonder our clients are so happy with the tenure, experience, and insight our exceptional professionals offer every single day. We continue to invest in every employee by providing ongoing employee development including GMS, CRP, IT Training, Title Training, Cultural Competency, Presentation Skills, and Emotional Intelligence education.

Year-Over-Year Savings

We’re at it again this year helping our clients save time, effort, energy…and money! Through our policy reviews, expert program recommendations, and partner network utilization, our clients are creating workflow efficiencies, deepening employee engagement, and leveraging their budgets to provide the greatest value.

We Work in Our Client’s Best Interest

Our clients’ relocation requirements reach beyond U.S. borders, and while we have been offering international relocation services on a global scale, it was imperative to look beyond. In order to provide the level of customer service our clients need, we laid the groundwork to open two international offices in 2020. Operations will launch this year in Zurich, Switzerland, and Singapore, to support our global clients.

Technology You Can Rely On

Since compliance is so important, our NIST 800-53 alone features 262 controls. Our information security program is in accordance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Additionally, our technology works to help the planet and your bottom line. Paper-based processes don’t just cost you time—they can have a significant environmental impact as well. We’re committed to helping both and by moving to DocuSign®, we’ve helped save the following:

• 3,716 lbs. of wood
• 9,939 gallons of water
• 8,360 lbs. of CO2
• 549 lbs. of waste

The Best Service You Will Ever Receive

This past year, we continued to enhance the user experience by enabling push notifications, SMS, and videos with upgrades to the transferee and client portals. This has allowed real-time information exchange to correct and improve service issues on the spot. We also enabled a household goods virtual surveying tool to help reduce the number of contacts a transferee needs to engage with throughout the relocation supply chain.

Throughout the coming year, we look forward to building on our strong foundation and achieving even greater heights of accomplishment. Whether you are an employee, client, or service partner, our goal is to advance lives forward. We want to provide an impact directly to you as we help people move to new places and experience new opportunities every day.

How are you managing your domestic and international employee relocations? If you’re using an outside relocation partner, are they providing you with a secure and customizable technology tool? 

We understand that every organization’s relocation program is unique. To address that need, we developed our own proprietary employee relocation technology.

Cue CARICS

WHR knew that to meet the requirements of a complex industry and provide solutions that supported our clients, we needed a tool that would be agile, flexible, customizable, and offer the strongest possible security features.

CARICS (Counseling, Appraisals, Referrals, International, and Closing System), our all-inclusive program is designed to address your daily tasks and relocation needs. Whether it’s service execution, workflow tracking, vendor management, or a document repository, CARICS plays a large role in the success of happy and positive relocation experiences.

Built in-house, CARICS manages every aspect of our client’s relocation needs. From file initiation through operational execution and customer billing, CARICS handles multiple core services and is supported by a sophisticated task management operational system.

All Data is Secure

Safeguarding the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your company and transferee data is essential. To ensure this, we maintain an information security program in accordance with the following:

• Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)
• Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Also, CARICS is regularly audited and continually backed-up, guaranteeing you always have secure and immediate access to your company and transferee information.

Customizable and Agile

With CARICS, you can access the reports you need when you need them—and in a format that works best for your organization. Since our technology is agile, you get customized, ad-hoc reporting at any time and at no additional cost. Whether you require filters based on cost centers or subsidiaries, or need a column reordered in an Excel export, our system is flexible enough to meet all your needs.

During implementation, we build your relocation program, policies, and individual benefits into our system. Every parameter, every expense limit, and every cap lives within the system. By customizing our technology to meet your unique requirements, we ensure 100% compliance.

Invoicing Designed for You

We know there is not a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to global mobility, so CARICS was designed with the capability to track and support all financial transactions including:

• Employee equity
• Mortgage payoff
• Resale closing
• Vendor payments
• Client invoicing
• Immigration processing and tracking
• Compensation tracking, and more

Whether you require individual billing, offset billing, or group billing, CARICS can format requests and provide you with the invoices you need for the efficient processing you deserve. CARICS can also support bi-weekly, monthly, or case-by-case basis billing.

The right relocation management tool will provide efficiency, agility, security, and customization. Most relocation management companies opt to use technology that’s designed for the average user, but we know you’re not just average.

To learn more about how CARICS can help your organization, contact us today!

At WHR Group, we know your relocation program is unique and deserves more than the typical cookie-cutter platform, which is why we went ahead and created our own proprietary technology. We own and maintain our relocation technologies using in-house developers so that all your needs can be met, not just most.

As an independent company founded on the industry need to offer cost-effective relocation benefits without compromising on empathy, ethics, or service, our high-tech, high-touch model is a blend of modern relocation technology and highly trained, dedicated individuals driven to provide the best service possible. 

Phase One: Our Foundation

The foundation of our technology starts with a safe and secure experience. Security is a top priority for our clients, which means it’s a top priority for us. Our information security program not only complies with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); but is also regularly audited and continually backed-up. Ensuring you always have secure and immediate access to your companies and transferee’s information.

Safeguarding the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your companies and transferee’s data is essential. But so is getting you the reports you need when you need them—and in a format that works best for your organization. During implementation, we build your relocation program, policies, and individual benefits into our system. Every parameter, every expense limit, and every cap lives within the system. By customizing our technology to meet your unique requirements, we ensure 100% compliance. Since our technology is agile, you get customized, ad-hoc reporting at any time at no additional cost. Whether you require filters based on cost centers or subsidiaries, or need a column reordered in an Excel export, our system is flexible to meet your needs.

The foundation of our technology is built on security and flexibility. Our clients rely on us every day to keep their information secure and provide sophisticated customization so their relocation program runs seamlessly.

Phase Two: Our Workflows

Our workflows create the framework of our technology that allows everyone at WHR Group to stay proactive and work on a minute-by-minute basis. Everything—from our vendor management system which creates metric driven scorecards, to our 100% accurate and compliant invoicing processes—is completely integrated so that our clients and their transferees receive a happy and positive relocation experience every time.

The technology behind our workflows is CARICs (Counseling, Appraisals, Referrals, International, and Closing System), an all-inclusive program used for service execution, workflow tracking, vendor management, client invoicing and as a document repository. This system was developed and built internally by our own talented and highly tenured experts.    

To get a feel for our technology, consider our “myWork One” workflow. This workflow monitors more than 300 mission-critical tasks, key events, and critical dates every 15-minutes and allows our staff to stay proactive across the complex and ever-evolving relocation deliverables. 

Our workflow is also constantly monitoring our survey responses. Transferee satisfaction surveys are the backbone of our vendor performance measurement and we use the responses to quickly address any service issues early in the relocation process. Our leadership and management teams receive an immediate alert if a survey is returned with any score lower than 4 out of 5. This workflow allows our teams to quickly address any issue same day or within one business day. 

Phase Three: Our Portals

Our portals were designed with one mission in mind: to make the relocation process simple for our clients and their transferees. Everything we do—from our mobile apps, customized reporting, and exception management—was developed to facilitate an easy and streamlined experience.

Our client portal offers everything you need to run your relocation program successfully in one place. With customized dashboards that include snapshots of key metrics and full access to files and documentation, your portal can be accessed on any device at any time. It also offers you the ability to complete online authorizations, access real-time reports and invoices, completed employee satisfaction surveys, and view third-party scorecards. Sounds super easy and convenient, right? It gets better! The client portal also includes all the contact information you need and instant messaging so you can communicate with your team in a secure live chat setting from anywhere in the world. 

Our transferee portal provides each transferee and their family access to all our available tools and resources for a smooth and easy relocation. Similar to the client portal, the transferee portal houses snapshots of important information directly on the main page. We believe that your transferees should have the ability to communicate and submit documents based on their individual preferences. They can easily view key dates, chat with a counselor, or enter expenses and other information pertinent to the relocation process—based on how they like to use technology best. Through the live chat feature, they can communicate 24/7 with their counseling team.

Technology plays a large role in a company’s success, and while ours is no exception, a key differentiator is our technology is created and fueled by our people. Our industry experts designed every facet of our processes and systems to be better and do more for our clients; and our three-phased approach helps us boost employee productivity and overall positive feelings throughout the relocation process.

Payroll and accounts payable might seem like a simple, straightforward process. You need to calculate hours and send out paychecks, right? In reality, there’s a lot more to it, especially with the addition of relocation policy expenses and all the vendor invoices that must be tracked and allocated for government payroll reporting and compliance.

Things can get complicated quickly, which is why we created our own proprietary technology to meet all of your payroll and accounts payable needs. Our technology and ability to collect compensation detail is designed with one thing in mind: to make your job simpler.

We want your payroll and accounts payable processes to be as streamlined as possible for future growth and compliance with federal, state and international laws. As such, we own and maintain our relocation technologies in-house and use best business practices for effectively streamlining your accounts payable process and providing effective solutions for your billing needs. When it comes to global mobility technology, processing payroll and accounts payable accurately and consistently is necessary for demonstrating your company’s financial stability while also safeguarding your employee’s trust in your business.

What Does This Mean for You?

Our system effectively manages these processes, so your company is always compliant with the appropriate country tax laws. All companies have a different way of operating their systems and processing payroll information, and our system is unique in that we offer complete configuration of our technology so that it works exactly as your relocation program requires.

Because relocation is one of the most stressful experiences someone can go through, we respond immediately when a client calls looking for a specific report or billing format.  Whether you need individual billing, offset billing, or group billing, we have the capability to meet format requests and provide you with the invoice you need with the simplicity you deserve at no extra charge.

With over 15 years of ongoing development and improvement, our technology is a mature and scalable platform with a predictive workflow system that tracks over 3,000 data points and 300 critical events. Because we’re all looking for the same result—happy, stress-free employees that are ready to get to work in the new location—we proactively search for ways we can create efficiencies for a high-touch and personalized approach.

Complete Compliance = Payroll Efficiency

Complex compliance issues can create daily challenges for those managing relocation programs, and the consequences of being non-compliant can hold large implications for the company and the transferring employee. For instance, flawed accounts payable processes can negatively impact business operations and result in increased expenses for your business. Similarly, an incorrect W2 can have personal tax implications for an employee. For this reason, every parameter, every expense limit, and every cap for your program lives within our system.

From the start of the relocation process to the end, our technology communicates events with our counseling teams to ensure all payroll and accounts payable elements are monitored and delivered accordingly and satisfactorily. In this way, our teams work in conjunction with our workflow tracking technology and our system can offer both the flexibility and confidence to meet your unique policy requirements for 100% compliance at all times.

Every WHR Group employee is committed to saving our clients time, lowering their costs, and providing efficient and streamlined payroll and accounts payable processes—and our technology plays a big part in accomplishing these goals. To take our technology for a spin, explore what your company’s relocation policy might look like through our free Domestic Relocation Policy Designer.

There’s something about moving that makes us all want to ignore it until we can’t anymore. From day-long Netflix binges to finding every other excuse for procrastinating the inevitable, we delay as long as we can because packing up those boxes, moving all the furniture, and checking every nook and cranny for forgotten items can feel like a frustrating and tedious process that has no end in sight.

The same could be said for dealing with issues that arise from the home inspection phase of the corporate home sale process. It’s been our experience that there can be a lot of frustration upon realizing the number of vendors each transferee needs to meet with, and all before they can even move! From real estate agents to appraisers and household goods vans, to third party services for the washer and dryer, to inspection services and more, the sheer number of services that need coordination is, in a word, overwhelming. And then the home inspection is done and suddenly there’s a list of minor repairs that need attention.

This leads to having to invite even more people into the process to get multiple estimates for prices that aren’t inflated, which of course adds even more stress and difficulty to the move. A lot of times by this point, the transferring employee may have already relocated, which means they’re in the new location working, and their spouse and kids might be waiting until a later date to move. Now they’re managing the issues arising from the home inspection AND complications from being separated from their family. Obviously, this is a less than ideal situation.

At the end of the day, there are parts of relocations that truly just…suck. As we see it, you have two options. You can accept the inspection process as a necessary evil, or you can find ways to make them less difficult.

WHR Group excels at making sure every single employee feels supported throughout their move. Our service model is designed to address every anxiety and more during a relocation process, effectively managing any concerns before they become problems. So how do we make the home inspection process less stressful? We implement a Major Component Inspection. 

What are the Benefits of a Major Component Inspection?

Often, the repairs found in a relocation home inspection can be argued as nitpicky and borderline cosmetic. A Major Component Inspection alleviates many of the fussy, rigid, and stress-inducing requirements that come with a general home inspection. Instead of focusing on small code items that often cause tension, the less rigid Major Component Inspection focuses on the important areas of the home like structural and safety issues. 

With fewer repairs identified that the employee would have to spend time remediating, a Major Component Inspection makes for happier transferees, as there is a consistent inspection process from person to person. Not only that, but there is significantly less stress and transferees can give their full attention to their new job.

How Has the Major Component Inspection Benefited Our Clients in the Past?

We wanted to challenge the status quo of the home inspection process, and have spent the last five years looking at how we can improve the process. Our exceptional home inspection experience is, at its core, a legit issue combined with a legit solution that works for both our clients and their transferees. And, really, isn’t that what creates most pivotal ideas?

With a Major Component Inspection, most “minor” repair items, such as a cracked light switch, that would have otherwise been identified and then disclosed to the future buyer are not, which reduces the time and cost that goes into the offer negotiation process. In the event that a buyer did choose to complete their own home inspection, we had the ability to negotiate any and all requested repairs.

Because the Major Component Inspection is designed to simplify the inspection process for the employee and eliminate any nitpicky repair items, the cost to the transferee did go down. From 2015-2016, we had four clients make the change to a Major Component Inspection and employee-paid repair costs decreased by 36%.  

Similarly, while at first there was a perceived risk that a Major Component Inspection might add additional costs for our clients, in reality their overall investment only went up $8 per transferee. Given the benefits of the Major Component Inspection, we would say that this only shows the dedication we share for advancing lives forward with the best service possible.

WHR Group was founded on the promise to provide relocation services at an unmatched level of quality. We invite you to learn more about our business philosophy and the commitment we hold to helping your relocating employees feel great about their move.