When thinking about the success of your mobility programs, centralization could be the answer to improving your employee experience, ensuring a seamless relocation, and achieving overall program efficiencies. With an ever-changing business environment, the global mobility function must be able to balance costs while improving return on investment for its programs. With a de-centralized business function, it can be challenging to achieve this balance. What exactly is centralization and how do we achieve it? CapRelo’s very own vetted expert on centralization, Laurie Steinemer, is here to walk you through it.

Moving Towards Centralization

In layman’s terms, centralizing your global mobility programs essentially means inputting all the functions of your employee mobility programs into one singular resource. Now, this may seem like an overwhelming process, but it creates a more functional and cohesive structure to your mobility programs, especially at the global and corporate level. Some of the benefits include:

1. A single, accessible resource to develop and manage the multiple facets of your relocation program.
2. Ensuring uniformity and transparency of data.
3. Consistent guidance for regional and local units.
4. Thorough reporting capabilities that help the Corporate Mobility Leader report to the business and gauge the effectiveness of the mobility program.

The question should not be whether centralization is effective, rather, how to achieve it. To create a positive experience for all, the centralized program must effectively bring together the working parts of the previously decentralized program and transform the ineffective parts of it. For instance, consolidating multiple supplier contacts under the Relocation Management Company (RMC) to eliminate redundancy when ordering services. There are several considerations to keep in mind when transforming a de-centralized program to a centralized structure. To build the most effective, results-oriented (and centralized, of course), your focuses should be:

Aligning the Mobility Program

Your mobility program should align with the company’s overall business goals for attracting, securing, and retaining talent. Understanding your talent management goals will provide the framework for the employee mobility program. In today’s environment, the employee experience is at the forefront of many companies’ employee programs. Applying that alignment to your mobility program can be a challenge given the dynamic personal and individualistic circumstances of the modern relocating professional. Consider the major stressors of relocating employees, their needs, and their wants. Put yourself in the employees’ shoes. What would your concerns be? What would you want to achieve from this relocation or assignment? What do you need to be successful? Embracing the client perspective gives you the answers to questions that will most definitely be asked–and it allows you to find ways to better improve the likelihood of a successful relocation or assignment as you are able to make additional preparations and address more considerations.

To Centralize or Not

When building your program from a client perspective, it is imperative that the stakeholder relationship evolves with it. In a centralized program, stakeholder buy-in becomes critical. The policy, benefits, processes, suppliers, etc., must be acceptable to all stakeholders. However, when operating a centralized program, the messaging and service delivery becomes more consistent and can reinforce the stakeholder’s program objectives, and easily adapt over time.

Achieving the client perspective can involve working with a global mobility partner. A global mobility partner can help you identify areas from a client perspective that may have not been previously addressed or acknowledged. CapRelo and its vetted relocation supplier partners integrate scalability, stability, and technology into our everyday practices. A trusted global mobility partner will also ensure that human connection is at the forefront of its operations. At CapRelo, we ensure guidance and best practices are driven by your relocation counselor from their first interaction with your employees. Our technological resources drive innovation, enabling our people to drive our accessibility and care. For more information on how you can integrate growth, stability, and success in your relocation programs, contact one of our professionals today.

Identifying Best Practices with an RMC

An RMC is a useful resource to build comprehensive, centralized programs focused on your goals and objectives. Depending on the RMC, they can offer you guidance and multiple solutions on how to achieve a successful mobility program. At CapRelo, our goal is to develop a partnership where we learn your culture, work, and collaborate to become an extension of your HR and talent management departments. My best client engagements are those where we achieve this status and work together as a cohesive team.

The goal of any relocation or assignment should be efficient and effective in its purpose, retainment, and experience. Using an RMC will not only assist you in centralizing your global mobility functions to one source, but it will decrease the vast areas of management that are typically needed with a decentralized program. As a result, there is less administrative work going into your program which provides the essential time needed to develop and achieve more business-strategic mobility goals.

Additionally, using a singular RMC as your go-to for all your relocation ensures an easy and consistent alignment with your company’s goals and objectives. It is important that not only your policy, but your resources at hand can ensure that the goals of your company are consistently being achieved in the global mobility space. In a decentralized program, this is harder to achieve because as different employees are handling different processes, there is more likelihood that miscommunication and misalignment ensue. This causes workplace and policy disruptions which in turn negatively effects workplace culture and results. Additionally, an RMC can help you associate flexibility to help foster equity and inclusion. Your relationship with your RMC will allow them to understand the type of lifestyle for your relocating employees and what flexibility they can provide to accommodate them, all while remaining equitable in the process.

Fees from Outsourcing

A decentralized program will require outsourcing your fees and costs across multiple providers. For example, you may have six different suppliers which work to amplify a certain part of your program. However, this also means six different costs associated with each supplier. As a result, these different costs for different suppliers can create organizational obstacles and be difficult to manage. There is also a good chance that you are increasing costs by not leveraging your volume across a single provider. A centralized mobility program will also combine these costs into one consolidated report for total transparency. Compiled specifically for the RMC used, all costs will be streamlined —improving functionality and efficiency. In the event there is a report error, it is easily trackable and managed since you have a direct contact who can quickly resolve it. The cost of your global mobility program should be easily managed, transparent, and align with company goals. In a decentralized program, it is harder to capture billing errors and demands more oversight of program-specific fees as there are multiple people managing the budget. An RMC will work to give you a clearer overview of the costs and fees associated with your relocations or assignments, while enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of your financial reporting.

Soft savings is also one of the many benefits associated with a centralized program. With an RMC, you will not need to spend as much time combining or ensuring data elements are consistent throughout. Additionally, rather than having a staff member (who most likely has other urgent tasks to complete) compiling all the information, the RMC will do that for you, improving productivity within your workplace.

Removing Administrative Work

Reducing administrative burdens can better enable you to focus on strategy. When the process of a relocation is headed by your administrative team, it creates an additional workload that can impact their productivity and experience in doing other tasks. A relocation is not an easy tick on the checklist–it requires prolonged attention to detail, accessible and consistent customer service, and an adaptable, results-oriented program. Leveraging in-house experts and streamlining your program to be more centralized will help remove the administrative burden while achieving the desired results.

Removing administrative work can also be a catalyst for using mobility as a tool for advancement and recruiting. For a centralized program, relocation professionals can help you build policies that align your relocation benefits to be efficient, effective, and focused on employee retention. It is important that a relocation or assignment captures the need for development in current employees as it can help them move further in their career and open opportunities for talent growth.

A flexible global mobility partner can hit on every aspect. With expertise in relocation efficiency, policy development, and talent acquisition, your relocation professional team will help ensure that each process within your program is streamlined for the best results. Specifically, here at CapRelo, we work diligently together with our clients to enhance relocation policy and programs for any relocation or assignment need. Our services page offers a comprehensive list of how we can make centralization work for you. Check it out here.