Preparing for relocations.

Planning for a flexible and cost-effective relocation policy has become more important with changes in employee lifestyles and the economy.

Today's workplace demographics are encouraging change in all areas of employment. Nowhere is this more evident than with employee relocations. Thanks

to our varied lifestyles, the typical person relocating today is strikingly different from the typical person relocating 10 years ago. As more women and minorities enter the workforce and the dual-income family becomes more prevalent, the likelihood of a more diverse group of relocation candidates sharply increases.

Unless organizations adjust their relocation benefits to meet the social and economic needs of a broader base of employees, they may be less able to motivate first-choice job candidates to relocate in the future. To overcome this challenge, companies can customize their relocation policy to provide cafeteria-style benefits and allow employees to choose the options that best suit their situations.

Social changes

Alternative lifestyles are so prevalent in the United States that we have labels--such as Young Urban Professionals (YUPPIES), Dual Income No Kids (DINKS), and Well-Off Older Folks (WOOFS)--for almost every category. Other prevalent trends include dual-career families (expected to represent 75 percent of all married couple families by 2000), single parents with custody of children, divorced couples with joint custody of children, and families with multi-generational responsibilities.

The more organizations recognize these demographic trends in the workplace, the more thought they should give to revising their traditional relocation benefits. For example, consider the effects of an inflexible relocation policy on a single employee with custody of his or her children.

Relocating children from city to city is no easy task, especially if a single-parent employee faces legal child-custody restrictions. The single head-of-household employee faces the increased emotional strain of having to relocate his or her family without the help of a married partner. Relocation tasks that are traditionally handled by two people are now left to only one. As a result, single employees relocating with children tend to need more time off from work and face extreme stress.

To lessen the severity of these problems, relocation programs of the future may include options such as accommodating the needs of single parents, for example, financial counseling, legal counseling (with regard to custody laws and interstate moves), family counseling (separating a child from the noncustodial parent), extended home-finding trips, increased time off from work, child-care referrals, educational counseling and settling-in services.

Also consider the effects of a standard program of relocation benefits on employees--married or single--who rent their homes. Of all relocating employees today, 35 percent are renters. Because the needs and moving circumstances of renters differ from those of transferring homeowners, companies should build specific benefits for the renting transferee into their relocation programs. Renter services can include:

* Assistance in terminating departure area leases.

* Furniture rental recommendations.

* Area rental profiles.

* Statements of local rental practices.

* Samples of rental agreements.

* Apartment-finding assistance.

* Management of household-goods move.

Companies also should consider the Americans with Disabilities Act as encouragement to take a fresh look at the scope of their relocation benefits. Companies are likely to find that more and more first-choice relocation candidates are physically challenged employees. By incorporating options for enhanced benefits into relocation programs, employers can better ensure that these employees are motivated to relocate. Enhanced benefits could include a pool of resources, such as specialized counselors, specialized transportation services, sign language interpreters, assistants for blind transferees on home-finding trips and so forth.

The increased number of women in the workforce also contributes to the changing profile of the typical transferee. As a result, relocation benefits need to include specific career-consulting options for husbands as the accompanying spouse.

Experience shows that men tend to be poor participants in spouse-counseling programs. They generally are much more skeptical about having a consultant work with them in career planning than women. As a result, companies should work with relocation management firms to design relocation-counseling and job-finding benefits that address the specialized needs--professional, emotional and psychological--of male accompanying spouses.

Economic changes

While many companies may attempt to revise their relocation benefits to meet specific requirements of changing households, they will continue to stress cost effectiveness. Unfortunately--and all too often--companies provide blanket relocation benefits that transferring employees do not use. Blanket relocation policies also can mean wasted corporate dollars in a sluggish economy or soft real estate market. To more efficiently prepare for future economic down-turns, organizations should consider broadening relocation coverage to include contingency provisions for loss on sale, increases or decreases in mortgage rates, tax implications of relocation payments and low-cost loans. With effective contingency planning and frequent policy reviews, companies can ensure that their relocation programs are always ready for economic and real estate market swings.

Global changes

Despite significant developments in the global marketplace, companies should realize that the benefits needed to ensure successful international relocations are quite different from those for successful domestic relocations. For example, moving a family's household goods from place to place in the United States is much less complex than moving those items from the United States to Mexico, where customs and insurance can cause unexpected delays.

Organizations today can no longer afford to ignore these differences and stay competitive. For example, a three-year European assignment can cost a company three times that employee's annual U.S. salary per year--assuming the salary is in the $100,000 range. And in Japan, costs can be six times the employee's salary per year. Companies face even higher expenses--in lost contracts, delayed projects, ruined reputations and wasted salaries--if international assignments fail.

To ensure the highest rate of global relocation success, organizations must not base an international relocation policy only on corporate requirements. Instead, companies should recognize and address the expatriate's needs and concerns. Developing a successful international relocation program requires close attention to detail and thorough knowledge of managing the complex international relocation process. Competitive international relocation programs today and in the future will include:

* Cross-cultural training programs.

* Intricate employee assessment and selection techniques.

* Financial counseling.

* Assistance with international home finding.

* Spouse career counseling.

* Assimilation and settling-in services.

* Repatriation training.

In gear for the future

Organizations should look for a full-service relocation partner whose flexible capabilities can meet the diverse needs of relocating employees and their families. Especially significant service features include:

* An emphasis on relocation counseling (with a service provider whose focus is advising and educating transferring employees and their families, not just purchasing homes).

* Marketing assistance capabilities (where the relocation service provider encourages and assists relocating employees to market their homes to obtain a marketplace sale).

* Innovative and industry-specific automation systems (that give relocation professionals desktop access to real-time information on the status of all employee properties and company relocation files).

* International relocation capabilities (with a specialty in preparing employees and families for international assignments, as well as moving them overseas).

The relocation partner must be able to conduct a thorough analysis and overview of the company's present relocation policies. To maintain the integrity of relocation policies in the future, companies should review their policies every one to two years and review the demographics and lifestyle trends of employees being relocated.

Guaranteeing successful future relocations also means working with relocation management firm that is committed to the precepts of total quality. Nowhere is quality more important than in a service environment. Because service is usually a subjective product, it's often hard to ensure that an organization is receiving the best return on investment. Establishing a partnership with a total quality company, therefore, is one way to help protect the service integrity of a relocation program.

Managing change is critical to corporate survival. One of the main objectives for managing change in corporate mobility--and, as a result, attracting first-choice job candidates to relocate at lower cost to a company--hinges on better applications of relocation policies. Accomplishing this does not necessarily mean cutting relocation budgets. Instead, companies should focus on designing better policies.

Jerry Lullo is a vice president of client services, midwest region, for Prudential Relocation Management in Chicago. He has more than 13 years of relocation experience and holds an MBA from Western Illinois University, Macomb.