Here are six ways your company can save on relocation costs right now. Of course there are many other ways to make your relocation program more cost effective, but we hope this short list will help get you started.

1. Review Your Policy

When was the last time you reviewed your relocation program? Before you can start making decisions on how to cut costs, it’s important to understand your current program. What are you offering, what don’t you offer and most importantly, does your program reflect the real-life experiences and the needs of your relocating employees?

You’ll need to go through each step of the relocation process and analyze quantitative and qualitative data; look at the numbers from previous moves; survey employees who went through the relocation process and find out which benefits were most important to them; and which benefits did they use the most, and how? For example, if your program allowed for one house hunting trip, would a second trip have been helpful? Which benefits did they use the least? Were some benefits unused because transferees didn’t find them necessary or because they didn’t understand the benefit and its value? What changes to the program would they like to see and why?

Even if budget limitations prevent you from adjusting your policy to satisfy every requested change, having a thorough understanding of your relocation program will ensure you’re providing the right benefits, eliminating those that don’t provide value and ultimately cutting costs where needed.

If you are working with a Relocation Management Company (RMC), they can be a great asset in this process by helping you save costs in more ways than just what’s listed here.

2. Introduce Caps

If it’s policy to offer transferees benefits like a home sale bonus, a cost-of-living adjustment or a loss on sale allowance (for examples), consider placing caps on these. Caps will help reduce excess allowances that may not be needed.

3. Manage Exceptions

Hopefully, your current RMC is tracking all exceptions and analyzing both the requests and outcomes. This will help you determine where policy changes might be needed. If there is an exception consistently requested, you may want to consider adding this benefit to your policy. By designing a data-driven relocation program, you can minimize future exceptions. 

When the unexpected occurs during a relocation, it impacts the logistics throughout the rest of the process. For example, if a home closing gets delayed, you may be asked to help with additional costs such as temporary housing or household goods storage. These exceptions result in higher costs.

4. Ensure You are Receiving all Available Tax Benefits

While moving expenses are no longer tax exempt, there are areas where you can still receive certain tax benefits, especially if you are offering a home sale program. Offering a direct reimbursement on home sale expenses may sound like the easiest option, but with no tax benefit it may not be the best option for your employee – and it will most likely be more costly if you choose to provide tax assistance on the reimbursement. A better strategy would be to use the Guaranteed Buyout or Buyer Value Options. Make sure your programs adhere to IRS requirements to benefit from other possible tax savings.

5. Stay on Top of Trends & Benchmark Your Policy

To stay competitive, you need to know how your policy stacks up against others in your industry. If your talent management strategy does not offer competitive relocation benefits, you may lose existing employees or potential new hires to other companies. Make sure your policy provides a choice of offerings since relocation policies are wrapped into job offers. If you don’t benchmark against your competitors, you won’t know if your offerings are good or not.

Benchmarking your policy can also uncover places you’re spending unnecessary dollars or giving away too much when none of your competitors are. In other words, benchmarking your policy against others ensures you are in line with the industry. It’s also important to look at other industries you compete with for talent. WHR’s 2020 Benchmark Report will help you see how your relocation policy stacks up. The report also provides cost saving tips and it discusses trends to watch for.

6. Hire a Relocation Management Partner

The bottom line is that having a dedicated and knowledgeable RMC partner is an invaluable resource and should be part of your talent management and cost savings strategies.

2020 will be a year to remember for so many reasons. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the U.S. presidential election, and everything in between, 2020 will be a year that no one ever forgets. As our company reflects on this past year, we wanted to share how the changing world has affected us and how we have persevered in what has been one of the toughest of times for so many companies.

25th Anniversary

Solely owned and operated since its inception, WHR Group, Inc. (WHR) celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2020! Founded 25 years ago by Roger Thrun to service and support in-house relocation departments, WHR has grown significantly from its early beginnings. WHR now services some of the largest organizations in the world and has relocated hundreds of thousands of employees. Having the same owner for over 25 years provides our clients with a stable partner they can count on since clients don’t have to worry about their relocation management provider changing hands.

International Expansion

In addition to our 25th anniversary, we had another reason to celebrate in 2020. WHR opened offices in Basel, Switzerland, and Singapore. Our Basel office supports clients and their transferees in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while our Singapore office supports the Asia Pacific region. As an international leader in the employee relocation industry, we felt these expansions were crucial to support the needs of our global clients. Along with this international expansion, WHR joined EuRA (The European Relocation Association).

COVID-19 Pandemic

In March, when the Safer at Home order was issued by our Wisconsin Governor, WHR employees were sent home to work remotely. Just before everyone left the office that day, we had an all-staff meeting where our Owner, Roger Thrun, made promises to WHR employees. He promised that no one would lose their jobs or be furloughed in 2020 due to the pandemic, and he promised that all employees would continue receiving their full salaries regardless of the changing economic landscape. All promises were kept.

Once the Safer at Home order was lifted, WHR employees were given the option to work in the office on a weekly rotational basis (to minimize the number of employees in the office at the same time). In other words, alternating weeks half the staff was allowed in the office while the other half work remotely. To facilitate this back to work effort and keep employees safe, WHR installed a hospital-grade technology, also used by The Johns Hopkins Hospital, that provided a real-time social distancing alert; real-time hand hygiene alert and hand sanitizing stations; and real-time tracking/tracing if anyone became infected with the coronavirus.

Even during the coronavirus pandemic, WHR still experienced a 7% increase in employee growth during 2020.

Business Ratings

WHR is globally rated among the top 1% of professional service organizations, measured by our Net Promoter Score (NPS). In 2020, WHR received its highest ever transferee NPS Score of +80. Our client NPS score has maintained +100 for the last two years. NPS is adopted by two-thirds of Fortune 1000 companies and measures both transferee and client loyalty.

Additionally, WHR received its Better Business Bureau accreditation this year with an A+ rating.

Top Workplaces Award

For the seventh consecutive year, WHR was named a Top Workplace by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. WHR’s passion of Advancing Lives Forward™ dictates how we treat our clients and employees. We believe in challenging, engaging and empowering our employees to grow their careers and be successful. WHR is proud of this seven-time recognition and our talented team.

Community Support and Philanthropic Contributions

WHR provided charitable monetary contributions to the following organizations in 2020:

• St. Marcus School – Milwaukee, Wisconsin. WHR’s ongoing contributions help inner-city K3-8th grade students. St. Marcus is the largest urban Lutheran school in the U.S.
• Mayo Clinic – Rochester, Minnesota. WHR’s ongoing contributions are specifically targeted to help pancreatic cancer patients who have been told they are out of options. Mayo Clinic’s revolutionary pancreatic cancer research lab is saving lives with its personalized chemotherapy program.
• Karts 4 Kids benefiting Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital – St. Petersburg, Florida.
• Froedtert Hospital Foundation – Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• Basilica and National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians at Holy Hill – Hubertus, Wisconsin.
• Milwaukee Film – Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• Kidney Cancer Association – Chicago, Illinois.

2021 and Beyond

WHR looks forward to serving the needs of our global clients and their transferees in 2021. With the help of our dedicated employees and trusted service partners, WHR will continue Advancing Lives Forward™ and Making the Complex Simple.

For more information about WHR Group, Inc. please contact us as sales@whrg.com or 800-523-3318.

Moving is often considered a top life stressor, so what happens when you add in a few other big stressors like buying/selling a home and starting a different job in the new location? How stressful might that be for a transferring employee? More importantly, how is your relocating employee and their family emotionally impacted by this stress?

Managing the potential emotional toll is a key factor all employers should address, especially if your company considers your employees one of its most valuable assets. As an employer you must consider costs and logistics but don’t ignore the potential emotional tolls too!

What is the Emotional Toll of Relocating on the Employee?

According to WHR Group Human Resources Manager, Kimberley Uitz, SHRM-CP, “The stress of moving can directly impact an employee’s mental health and engagement with their employer. When employee’s start to become disengaged, their productivity will start to decline. This will become a trickle-down effect that can directly impact teams and eventually the company itself. Companies need to be proactive when it comes to relocation and their employee’s mental health; and take steps to prevent these declines in both engagement and productivity.”

Even in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers have continued transferring their employees to new domestic and international destinations. Transferees and their families face a host of potential emotional and mental tolls from a relocation:

• If one or more family members are unhappy with the move and having trouble settling-in, the stress could affect the employee too. The employee might be feeling distracted, disengaged, unhappy, and they might even consider leaving the new role and moving back to their original location. Uprooting an entire family’s life and acclimating to a new community can be quite difficult.
• Employee stress associated with moving to a new location might include concerns about a partner’s career, children’s education, learning new languages, cultural differences, selling their old home or even leaving old coworkers behind.
• There may be anxiety surrounding new cultural amenities or concerns about the new destination’s real estate market or crime rates.
• The transferring employee may be worried if the new job will work out.
• A tired, disengaged or distracted employee’s attitude may be felt by new team members and affect team dynamics.

Employers Should Focus on Employees’ Emotional and Mental Health

All of these stressors can lower employee engagement, decrease company loyalty, increase turnover and affect team interactions. Given the war for talent, it’s important to consider more than just the costs and logistics of an employee relocation. A transferee’s emotional needs should not be excluded. “The war for talent continues even with unemployment reaching new highs back in 2020. Recruiters are all competing to fill those critical positions, and companies cannot afford to lose talent as economies will start to bounce back. Those companies that are ready to compete will win in 2021,” says Uitz.

According to an article in Employee Benefit News, “When it comes to employee relocation, most organizations focus on the nuts and bolts, thinking strategically about the costs associated with the move and what will be the most affordable option to get their people from point A to point B. It makes sense from a business perspective, but it’s not how to make a relocation successful. Employers have to remember they are moving people, not just boxes. Any time you deal with people, you need to adopt a human-centered approach.

“While you’re helping them get their belongings from one place to the next, they’re dealing with switching insurances, licenses and addresses. If they have a family, they need to enroll their children in new schools, find doctors and a new job for their spouse or partner. On top of that, they might be dealing with some negative emotions from their family, unhappy with the move. All of this can influence how your employee feels about their new position and how they assimilate into their new role.”

The stakes can be even higher when the employee is relocating from their home country to a new country, and the emotional tolls might take on a new tone. According to WHR’s International Client Services Manager, Linden Houghtby, GMS®, who recently relocated from the U.S. to our Switzerland office, “When relocating to another country, there is additional stress involved in the regular activities that you take for granted at home, like buying groceries, for example. This additional stress can be emotionally wearing.”

According to an article from Talaera, a language training company, “As an HR manager, you want employee relocation to be as smooth as possible. But for many employees, leaving their home country behind is a big deal. The human element is critical to the well-being of your international hires.”

What Can Employers Do to Minimize the Emotional Toll of Relocation?

“Employee engagement can be directly linked to employee mental health. If employees are not engaged, turnover increases and employer costs rise. If a company wishes to remain competitive in the coming year, they need to ensure that all of their employees’ needs are met, including emotional health,” says Uitz.

Make sure you have a relocation policy that includes all potential support including the following:

• Lists of Community Resources
• Cost of Living Pay Adjustments for Higher Cost Areas
• Driver’s License and Registration Information
• Spousal/Partner Career Assistance

”If a relocation is not handled successfully, it threatens the employer’s ability to retain the employee—and it risks losing someone the employer has devoted time and money to develop and move,” according to a SHRM article.

If you want to attract and retain top talent and if you consider your employees one of your most important assets, remember to address more than just costs and logistics. Taking care of your employees’ emotional health will pay out for years to come. Lastly, partner with a good Relocation Management Company (RMC) that will help you provide these invaluable services to your most important assets. It’s important that your RMC understands and honors your company culture.

For more information about WHR’s Relocation Management Services, contact sales@whrg.com or 800-523-3318.

Think about online dating for a moment. Imagine you wanted to find a long-term romantic partner. You want a commitment, something that will last. You want someone you can count on and who will have your back in the good times and in bad. Most importantly, you want someone with whom you can plan your future –a future that includes happiness and success.

Would you start your search by immediately soliciting marriage proposals from say, 8-10 potential suiters? Would you entertain the potential of a serious commitment from total strangers with whom you have never spoken to, met or even dated?

What does casual dating versus seeking a serious commitment have to do with the RFP process? The current, and widely practiced Request for Proposal (RFP) process includes companies (the buyer) soliciting formal, written business commitments from several suiters (vendors/suppliers) before ever meeting or speaking. The problem with the RFP process is similar to problems some have encountered with online dating.

Anyone can write an amazing dating profile, but until you actually meet, speak and/or spend time get together, do you really know what you’re getting into? How can each person evaluate a good fit based on reading online profiles and exchanging written communication? Do the written words really provide the information needed to determine if the other person is a good potential match? Are the words alone a true and good reflection of the other person, or in the case of RFPs – does the written proposal provide a comprehensive and full representation of the potential vendor? Remember, if you are a buyer, you’re not just buying a service or product, you’re also buying a business partner that is an extension of your company and is representing you in the marketplace. You’re buying a culture, personalities and processes.

The Current Situation

The typical RFP process goes something like this:

• The soliciting company issues an RFP invitation containing on average, 50-150 questions.
• These questions are then distributed to 8-10 or more, potential vendors – many of whom they have never met or spoken to.
• Potential vendors respond to the RFP with a final proposal averaging anywhere from 50-150 pages, or longer.
• Soliciting company reviews all proposals, and depending on their business type/organizational structure, this review process might include several different personnel from a host of internal departments and from multiple country locations.
• Soliciting company narrows down their potential vendors to a short list who are invited for in-person presentations.
• After in-person meetings, soliciting company narrows down their list again to one or two potential vendors for a best and final.
• These vendors are invited for a second round of in-person presentations.
• Soliciting company may make a site visit to one or two finalists’ offices.
• Company finally awards the business.

The Problems

1. Time = Money

What’s wrong with the above RFP process? For starters, time = money. According to WHR Group, Inc. (WHR) President, Paul DeBoer, “We welcome RFP inquiries, but we also believe there is a more efficient and cost-effective way.” WHR is a global employee relocation company and responding to RFP requests is a normal part of doing business. DeBoer thinks the process is not the best given the amount of human resources, time and costs spent by client companies as they not only prepare their RFP questionnaires for bid, but also as companies’ personnel review completed 50-150 page RFP responses from an average of 8-10 bidders.

The current process is lengthy and costly; and many of the above steps are done even before the company has met or spoken to potential suppliers explains DeBoer. It’s common for a company to utilize their internal personnel from many different departments to prepare RFPs and review written responses. “If you think about the costs of an HR manager, a payroll manager, a procurement manager, a tax manager, an accounting manager and a logistics manager, all with their combined total hours spent planning and reviewing bid solicitations, this gets into the tens of thousands of dollars.”

Once all staff reviews responses and the company has shortened the list and invites several prospective vendors for in-person meetings, how many staff members are taking part in those meetings? What are their annual salaries and how many hours is each employee spending in pre-planning internal meetings, vendor presentation meetings and post presentation internal reviews?

Finally, after meetings at the client’s site, the list will be shortened to one or two vendors who are typically invited back for another round of best and final meetings. Based on each employee’s salary and the time spent, you can calculate the total cost per employee. “You would see it’s just not a cost-effective process,” says DeBoer.

2. Dancing with Strangers

So much of the time spent explained above is before a company even speaks with potential suppliers to learn about the supplier’s mission, values, goals, objectives, vision, hiring standards and key personnel.

The same holds true for the potential vendor, who only gets a glimpse of the buyer through the RFP solicitation paperwork, or by scouring a company’s website or social media. How can a vendor truly position themselves as a potential consultative partner before even having a good understanding and conversation about the company’s pain points, challenges, successes, needs, weaknesses or reasons for pursuing a new vendor?

Executive Vice President at Powell Relocation Group, Bridget Ritchie, CRP, GMS, says, “It is well known that moving is one of the top life stressors a person can encounter. As part of a corporate relocation process, it is also one of the most personal portions of the relocation. When a company is taking into consideration who will enter their employees’ homes and handle all of their personal items, they shouldn’t even be inviting potential partners to the dance floor until they know the basics about them.” Ritchie believes that a buyer should already know about a potential vendor partner’s culture and background up front. Powell Relocation Group is a 60-year-old moving company.

In Ritchie’s household goods (HHG) moving arena, it’s not uncommon for RFPs to be commoditized. “While not all, there are many companies who make the RFP process a machine when in reality, it’s a very personal end process for a customer’s employee experience. HHG providers are physically touching your employees’ personal items. Do you really want to make a decision about who is doing that before meeting them, understanding and asking about their culture?” Ritchie believes a better practice would be for companies to first sit down with their three favorite potential providers and discuss what’s most important to them. 

Typically, no one person is reading the RFP in its entirety, explains Ritchie. Rather, the RFP responses are split up by applicable company departments including human resources, IT, compliance, etc., with each reading their own sections. Ritchie believe the process is cost prohibitive and archaic for clients if you consider the number of questions/responses and multiply that by the number of bidders.

Ritchie compared the current RFP process to dating apps saying, “On dating apps, you already enter your necessary criteria you’re looking for in a partner; the necessary basics before you’ll even consider them as a partner. Then all the possible candidates pop up, and you start scrolling. You have to be god, judge and jury just based on someone’s profile picture and brief description, before you decide if you even want to read their full profile. While it may seem like a waste of time to meet someone in person early on to decide if you want to consider a future relationship with them, I would never want to start a relationship based simply on words they wrote about themselves. Meeting someone first can save a lot of time invested in the process. While on paper they met all my criteria, meeting them allows me to see the real them; to get a feel for if I want to start dating them, much less be in relationship with them.”

If it really just comes down to who has the lowest price, explains DeBoer, “then issuing an RFP without prior conversations or meeting might make sense.”

The current RFP process takes place before companies even determine suitability. Or as compared to dating, before the right suiters are even identified. When your company hires, do you conduct interviews with every candidate who submits a resume, or do you screen candidates first and determine a short list of viable candidates based on fit and who can solve the need identified by the employment opening? Once those viable employee candidates are identified, doesn’t your company usually begin dialogs with those candidates? Customarily, candidates are given the opportunity to speak with a perspective employer to discuss how they might be a good fit for one another based on goals, skills, personalities, values and experience. It’s a conversation that includes meeting, talking, asking and answering questions, all to help determine suitability.

Partner, Executive Vice President, Heather James, CRP, GMS, and Executive Vice President, Karl Thuge, both of Nomad Temporary Housing weighed in on the current RFP process. “Part of the success in the vendor selection process is asking the right questions and often many companies don’t,” said James.

Thuge believes the vetting process should be tighter, and that companies should issue a Request for Information (RFI) first before an RFP, with no more than 10 questions. “That way, if you need someone with offices in international locations, or if you a need high tech solution or if you want a provider with a no voicemail policy, you can weed out unqualified bidders right from the start,” said Thuge.

Thuge firmly believes an RFI should include references and companies should check those references before inviting providers to participate in the formal RFP bidding process. Both Thuge and James also believe that soliciting companies should talk to trusted industry colleagues and find out if the colleague’s current provider is a good fit or not, and why.

According to independent Mobility Consultant, John B. Sculley, SCRP, companies should do their internal research and due diligence before even thinking about going out to market for bids. Sculley helps companies with their employee relocation needs including internal policies, service administration, selection of providers and assisting the buyer team in provider selection.

“Companies need to do their internal homework,” said Sculley. “They need to take a hard look at their business users and business function specialties so that what the company ultimately buys will really anticipate the needs of their business environment. Some companies think they are doing a potential provider a favor by throwing them into the RFP process before the company even considers if the provider would actually be a good fit.” Sculley recommends that companies pre-screen before inviting bidders to ensure those bidding meet the company’s general qualifications.

Sculley explains that he has seen RFPs with over 600 questions and eight bidders. If you do the math that equates to almost 5,000 responses! Companies struggle to evaluate and score this volume of responses and can get overwhelmed. “Companies should only ask questions that directly support their own criteria and not cut/paste RFP questions from other sources. A better approach is to decide which criteria is most important to the company and only ask questions relating to that criteria. Only go as deep as needed. Determine if a potential vendor’s work style and culture are compatible with your company’s work style/culture.”

Lastly, Sculley recommends companies separate pricing from all other qualitative information and go through qualifying data separate, scoring/ranking it before even looking at pricing. “Knock out bidders before looking at price so your company is only looking at the best qualified providers,” said Sculley.

“The biggest problem I have with RFPs and particularly blind RFPs”, says DeBoer, “is that you are hiring a company to manage or provide services for the most important asset in your company, and that is your people. Don’t your employees deserve a true business partner that is going to act in your best interests?”

How do you want to conduct your organization’s RFP process? How much time and money do you want to spend on the process? How important is it to find the right fit for your company? If you truly want to find a collaborative long-term partner, you may want to consider treating the process like a courtship and not just casual dating.

Access this article as a PDF here.

Companies worldwide were forced to adapt when the threat of COVID-19 made working from home the new normal. While some company cultures and business models might not support permanent work from home, other companies including Twitter have told employees they can work from home forever.

In-Person Interactions

WHR Group, Inc. (WHR) is one company that believes in-person interaction among coworkers is essential to maintaining its culture. “Personally, I feel it’s really hard to develop a culture on Zoom,” says WHR Founder and CEO, Roger Thrun. “It’s like dating online versus dating in person. Think about catfishing, you don’t really know if someone is pretending to be someone they’re not. Think about authenticity. Nothing beats meeting someone face-to-face and nothing can replace looking that person directly in the eyes.” Thrun believes instilling values and culture is very hard to do digitally. “Our culture is developed by values, and those values are much harder to convey and enforce online.”

“The Implications of Working Without an Office,“ article in the Harvard Business Review addresses an all remote workforce, “One key reason to think twice before going down that path is the loss of unplanned interactions that lead to important outcomes. Physical offices cause people who don’t normally work with each other to connect accidentally — bumping into each other in the hallway or the cafeteria — and that interaction sparks new ideas. Steve Jobs thought such serendipity was so important that he specifically designed the building for Pixar Animation Studios, in Emeryville, California, to maximize such interactions.”

Culture & Values

WHR’s core values include hard work, empathy, proactiveness, trustworthiness, and being results driven. Thrun thinks in-person interaction is especially important for new hires. “How can a new employee learn about our company culture via Zoom? How do they form an attachment?” asks Thrun. WHR’s business philosophy embraces the entire team creating a culture of success. A key ingredient of its client engagement is people working together. “Human experience cannot be substituted online,” says Thrun.

According to The Wall Street Journal article, “Remote Work Forever? Not So Fast, Jobs Guru Says,” CEO of Addecco, Alain Dehaze states, “By being with colleagues, you align, you share a lot of things. You cultivate your values and you cultivate your purpose. If you are permanently alone, I don’t know how you can cultivate this.”

Teamwork & Camaraderie

WHR believes it is successful because of the camaraderie and teamwork that guides its client interactions, along with the ability of staff to support one another daily. “A football team cannot play or function effectively if everyone is playing from home. Like a sport, we want our people working hand in hand to deliver great results,” says WHR President Paul DeBoer.

Some believe that “proximity boosts productivity, especially in industries that rely on workers collaborating with one another,” according to the SHRM article Why Are Companies Ending Remote Work? Although some workers have said they get more work done when at home uninterrupted, collaboration may suffer according to the article.

DeBoer believes when all employees are not together you lose the water cooler experience and spontaneous collaboration, you miss the opportunity to ask a quick question; and you lose out on interactions that may produce the next big idea. He believes those brief interactions make life easier and more productive. “Sure, you can put your head down at home and get lots done on an individual level, but you can get even more done when you are surrounded by people and working collaboratively with spontaneous communication as opposed to setting up digital meetings,” says DeBoer.

How is your organization adapting and what will your new permanent normal look like?

In the coming days or weeks, the Trump Administration is expected to issue an executive order further tightening immigration requirements to enter the U.S. in response to the pandemic and resulting economic pressures. The order is anticipated to include a bar on entry into the U.S. by L-1, H-1B, H-2B, and J-1 non-immigrants for several months. As with other recent orders on immigration, there will likely be many exemptions, including workers in healthcare and food-related industries. Visa holders currently in the U.S. are not expected to be impacted by the new order.

In addition to the bar on entry for a period of time, there is speculation that the Administration is planning additional measures to tighten H-1B requirements and impose a potential fee increase to $20,000.

Recommendations from our immigration partners include immediately having all workers who may be impacted return to the U.S., as entry restrictions may have an immediate effect; and filing extension and all other applications as early as possible since pending or approved applications may not be impacted by the order. If you have any questions please reach out to us at contactus@whrg.com.