According to the Worldwide Employee Relocation Council (ERC), two-thirds of those employees who were moved and then left the company within 4 months attributed their leaving to a bad relocation experience. So how does the way you move your people have a bounce-back on your brand?

Every HR professional knows the main reason for using a relocation company when moving personnel between global assignments: employing someone to make the move run smoothly makes it more likely that the transferee will hit the ground running. But here at Saunders 1865 we would maintain that there is another, equally weighty, reason for using the services of a professional relocation firm – and it all came to us as the result of chance encounter...

Savings that come at a high cost

Not so long ago, one of our directors was at a networking meeting here in London. Over a drink he got talking to the chief executive of a large international company – for the sake of this article, we’ll call it Widgets Inc. Upon hearing that our colleague was in the relocation business, this gentleman snorted into his glass and declared that he would never waste his company’s money hiring relocation agents. It was his view that organizing a move abroad was the sole responsibility of his employees’ wives... (We had to wonder who was going to take care of things for his single or female employees, though).

Our director was reminded of a chance meeting he had had about a year earlier with an expat who worked for Widgets Inc. He asked the expat, a senior manager, about his relocation experience with the company. It hadn’t gone smoothly and the man had run into all sorts of problems, while his employer had offered him minimal assistance in sorting them out. And how did he feel about that? Undervalued and annoyed. It had changed the way he viewed Widgets Inc and had dented his loyalty to them; he had since left their employ. He made it clear that many of his former colleagues at Widgets Inc felt the same way about the company’s failure to provide good relocation support services.

So there it is in a nutshell. In an effort to save money, this particular company had done permanent damage to its relationship with one of its employees. The knock-on effect of this has implications across the business; his loyalty was reduced, his morale was lowered, his productivity affected, and his small part in bolstering the company’s good reputation was compromised. Money may have been saved but goodwill was squandered. Indeed, they had lost a valued employee.

Extrapolate this effect from one employee to a workforce on the move and what might be the result? Real damage to the perception of a company’s image among not only the employees but seeping out to potential employees and the community in general. Brand damaged, and for what? The saving of a few relocation expenses.

Doing the sums

If you’re still not convinced, now would be a good time to take a closer look at the financial arguments involved here. It might be fair to say that the perceived cost of using a relocation firm is high. Employ someone to manage every aspect of one of your executive’s moves abroad and you might expect to be slapped with a big bill at the end of the process. Sure – but you need to remember you’re seeing the total cost of the move in one go.

All things considered, how much money is really going to be saved by not using a relocation agent? We would suggest that it won’t be much. But now factor in the less tangible costs that this decision is going to incur. You’re certainly going to have an individual who is stressed: moving house is incredibly stressful for people, moving abroad even more so; starting in a new job scores highly on the stressometer; changing one’s children’s schools, likewise. High levels of stress will affect your employee’s concentration and productivity, his effectiveness in his new work role, his ability to relax at home, even the state of his marriage – and then he’ll feel even more stressed. His kids are unhappy, his wife wants to go home. Who is he going to blame for this state of affairs? If he decides to take his family home or leave the company altogether, you’re back to square one with more relocation and/or recruitment costs. It’s not a pretty picture, is it?

Now of course, we know that not all self-relocations are going to go this wrong but some will, and even those that run smoothly will involve some increase in stress. The cumulative damage of a general perception that a company doesn’t care very much for its employees is going to be far more costly to that company than the cumulative cost of using a professional relocation service.

The Value of Loyalty in a Fickle World

It may be something of a cliché to say that a firm is only as good as its people, but that doesn’t make it any less true. So it pays to look after them, particularly those in which your company has invested time and money, those who have years of valuable experience under their belts.

The impact of employee loyalty can either enhance or erode your brand and in an age when people feel no compunction about changing jobs to further their careers, companies have to work that much harder to keep their valued workers on the team.

Critical to building loyalty and retaining key workers is not, as some would have you believe, simply down to the size of the employee’s remuneration. You can’t buy loyalty with money. The factors that are important here are respect and trust, in both directions. In the situation of a relocation this means that, as an employer, you need to show your transferees that you truly value them and the contribution they will be making to your operations abroad.

“Showing employees support when they are facing a stressful situation on behalf of the company is a no brainer, really,” says TraceyKay Coe of BrandYoga, a specialist corporate branding company. “And supporting their family through the process of relocation speaks volumes in terms of respect, which is a huge factor in building employee loyalty.”

And according to Lauren Keller Johnson in a Harvard Business School report on company loyalty, a loyal workforce will affect the bottom line in a number of ways, including lower recruitment costs, fewer issues with clients and less downtime.

It would be hard to put a monetary value on the damage caused to Widgets Inc’s brand by disillusionment felt by their disgruntled employee but, in the long run, it will probably turn out to be more than it would have cost them to help him out with a relocation agent. Because he’s sure to have discussed it with colleagues, with his family, with his wider circle of friends and, as we know, with other business professionals. That could add up to quite a chunk of brand damage. Really, it’s all part of looking at the bigger picture, and one of the costs of not using a company like Saunders 1865 is the opportunity cost of foregoing the chance to add value to your transferees’ work experience. Don’t underestimate what that cost is, or you could, like Widgets Inc would if they knew, live to regret it.

Read a schedule of UK Corporate Relocation Services typically provided to our clients.

Alternatively CALL +44 20 7590 2706 or EMAIL ravini.jinadasa@saunders1865.com and we’ll be happy to help.