Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/124894
Mobility Amongst those who said they've experienced an increase in activity, but now anticipate a decline, certain reasons were most often cited: • Expansion or contraction now complete. "We have recently completed a major expansion which required a great deal recruitment and relocation. Now that the expansion is complete, we would expect to return to a more normal state." "We've been in a growth mode and expect that to level off a bit. Also, we are investing more in employee development and hope to have our own local employees ready for bigger jobs." • Site consolidation. "In the past two years, the growth of our operations in [one office location] caused us to offer relocation packages to a number of employees in [other office relocations], where our operations were slowing." • Merger/divestiture. "Our relocation volume in 2011 and 2012 was driven by our merger. . . . We set a goal of making the management side of our combined company as close to a 5050 mix of our two subsidiary[ies]. . . . Therefore, we provided a very generous relocation policy to co-workers who accepted moves in the merger and as a result moved over 1,000 co-workers." • Aging employee population. "Over the last few years, many of our seasoned employees have retired and we have had to replace them—thus providing promotions and the need to relocate. Now our employees are at a younger age base, and there is expectation of a leveling off of relocations. We also are trying to hire more within local areas, possibly reducing relocations." Amongst those who said they've experienced an increase in complexity in the past two years, but anticipate a decline in the coming years, again, certain reasons were common: • Expansion into new locations. "…the last couple of years have led to an expansion in the countries in which we do business as well as the quantity of assignees. We also had a decentralised method in handling third country nationals which led to more differentiation in applying [40] HRO TODAY GLOBAL | WINTER 2013 our relocation policy as well as less economies of scale with network vendors. Since then, we have stabilised in terms of the countries in which we place assignees and have centralised third country nationals to help us in managing the complexities and adhering to our policy with fewer exceptions." • Closer/better engagement with relocation provider. "We revised our policies with the help of [our provider] and have implemented a core/flex matrix approach, so we expect [better] alignment. The past few years we have had many one-off, exception-based, complicated arrangements since we had a rigid, outdated policy." • The troubled economy. "The drastic reduction in home values significantly impacted employees' ability to relocate. We had to come up with additional ways to counsel employees, screen external hires, management benefits, change assignment profiles—for example, instead of relocating, maybe we arranged for the employee to train for several months and then work remotely—in order to meet our talent needs and work objectives. Elizabeth Boudrie is the executive director of the HRO Today Institute and the vice president of research for SharedXpertise.