WHR Global

WHR Group, Inc. Named a Top Workplace for the Ninth Consecutive Year

by WHR Global | May 17, 2022 | Press Release

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Top Workplace Award

MILWAUKEE, Wis., May 17, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — For the ninth consecutive year, WHR Group, Inc. (WHR) was named a Top Workplace by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Top Workplaces surveys employee engagement and satisfaction at companies throughout the US. Awards are given to companies in different regions including the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, Rocky Mountains and the Pacific. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, WHR was awarded a Top Workplace in the Milwaukee and Southeast Wisconsin region.

Top Workplace awards are based solely on the results of employee survey feedback administered by Energage, LLC, a leading research firm that specializes in organizational health and workplace improvement. What makes this award so special, and humbling, is that WHR’s employees provided the survey feedback.

WHR Employees and Culture

WHR believes it’s critical to focus on culture in the workplace. As a relocation management company, WHR helps other organizations attract and retain the best talent, which it couldn’t do without finding and retaining the best talent internally.

According to WHR Human Resources Manager, Kimberley Uitz, SHRM-CP, GPHR, “Top Workplaces is an important recognition to any employer, employee or potential employee. In the past few years, this has become more critical, and in some ways harder to obtain. WHR is honored to have earned Top Workplace in 2022 and for our ninth consecutive year. We hope to continue expanding and growing our fantastic employee base.”

WHR wants its employees to enjoy coming into the office, be engaged, be proud of the work they do and grow their careers for success. You can’t have great culture without great people. WHR Group takes the feedback it receives from its employees and acts on it. WHR’s passion has always been Advancing Lives Forward^® and WHR embodies this passion for its client’s transferees and its employees.

WHR is proud of this nine-time recognition and its very talented employees.

About WHR Group, Inc.

WHR is a private and global relocation management company distinguished by its white-glove service delivery structure and proprietary technology. WHR has offices in Wisconsin, Switzerland, and Singapore. With its 100% client retention rate for the past decade, WHR continues to be the trusted leader in global employee relocation. https://whrg.com, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Four Things You Didn’t Know About Relocation Management Companies

by WHR Global | May 14, 2022 | News

If you are new to learning about the employee relocation industry, you are not alone. In fact, employee relocation services recently made Inc. Magazine’s list of “The 6 Best Industries You’ve Never Heard of.”

In the simplest terms, relocation management companies like WHR Global provide professional services to employees who are being transferred by their employers. Many variables factor into the need to relocate an employee—a promotion to a different branch, opening a new office, or even the movement of an entire headquarters to a new location on the other side of the globe.

So, what are details of the professional relocation process? We’ve broken down the top 4 things a relocation management company does.

1. Out With the Old

Relocation management companies (RMCs) help relocating employees market and sell their current homes. Professional staff working with the “transferee” should be real estate licensed (they are at WHR Global) to help the assigned real estate agent price the home to sell quickly and for maximum value. These staff must follow client-specific policies, as the benefits one company offers its employees may differ from others, such as if an outside buyer must be found or if the company will buy out the home on the employee’s behalf. Relocation policies are designed to relieve transferees of guesswork and function as a roadmap, detailing the steps of relocation start to finish.

2. In With the New

RMCs connect employees with a home-finding agent in the destination location to purchase a home or find rental or temporary living accommodations. It’s the agent’s local knowledge that helps the employee become acclimated to the types of homes they can expect in his or her new location—whether it’s a three-bedroom house in Ohio or a high-rise unit in Singapore. An area tour is usually scheduled to help the employee find the best neighborhood and home to meet his or her needs, in addition to exploring local dining options, entertainment, shopping, transport, and schooling options for the family. An area tour is especially important for those relocating internationally to become familiar with the local “norms” and what to expect as an “expat.”

3. Places in Between

RMCs also help coordinate the physical move of an employee’s household goods from one location to the other. WHR Global works with a global network of household goods carriers as well as auto shippers to move family belongings from A to B—safely, timely, and all over the world.

4. Beyond the Move

Additional services offered by most RMCs include: storage for household goods shipments; expense management and reimbursement; immigration and visa assistance; language and cultural training; local school search assistance; destination spousal/partner career support; compensation management; and tax assistance on all these benefits.

Build a Better Relocation Program

by WHR Global | May 10, 2022 | News

“If a company is cheap about relocation, they are cheap about everything.” Forbes

In our 2018 benchmark relocation survey, we learned that 87% of respondents expect to maintain or increase the number of company relocations in the coming years. Most firms understand that putting the right talent in the right seat … in the right physical location is a necessity for recruiting and retaining top senior talent and growing their business. The challenge lies in building a benefit program that is mindful of both the relocating employee’s needs and the company’s bottom line – and that isn’t a headache to administer.

So, what would this look like? The specifics will vary from company to company, depending on factors like how many people you think you’ll need to relocate and if your relocation needs to go outside the United States. At a high level, though, most organizations will look for the following characteristics:

Flexibility.

Having a relocation program is a great start, but it also needs to be able to adapt to different relocating employees’ needs. Picking up your life and moving is one of the most stressful experiences an adult will go through, especially if they’re married and are moving a family. A package that fits their needs makes for a smoother transition, which means fewer problems for you to troubleshoot on the fly.

Current.

Different policies and benefits attract different kinds of people. A competitive relocation program encompasses everything and needs to stay in line with both what relocating employees require and what your competitors are offering, especially when it comes to technology. Whether it’s spousal employment support or an online portal, for your relocation program to be successful, its individual benefits need to meet your employees where they are.

Comprehensive.

There’s a lot more that goes into relocation than arranging for a moving van. How many house hunting trips are you allowing for? Will you provide temporary housing? Are you shipping multiple cars to the new location? What about miscellaneous costs, like lease cancellation or the closing costs for a new home? Are you offering a home sale program, and if so, what kind? A relocation package doesn’t have to be all things to all people, but one that doesn’t cover an employee’s most pressing needs will certainly be viewed as a red flag.

Predictable.

The ability to record and analyze real-life relocation data allows you to drill down into what services you require (or don’t need) and how much you should expect to pay for a given relocation. Having data reporting functionality can also make it easier for you to estimate relocation costs and allocate expenses across budget cycles, helping your business operations run more smoothly.

Compliant.

The tax and legal requirements of relocation can be daunting, especially when expenses are from multiple states or countries. Even staying up-to-date with U.S. tax laws can be challenging. To get the most bang for your relocation buck and avoid potential penalties, your relocation program needs to be adaptable to evolving regulations.

Above all else, an employee-centric relocation program should hit the sweet spot between personal and manageable. À la carte or core/flex plans offer a great deal of flexibility, but it can be challenging to keep track of which employees qualify for which relocation benefits. Lump sum plans are much more predictable and easier to administer, but they can provide inadequate support when problems arise. The last thing anyone wants is top talent not being able to hit the ground running day one or leaving mid-transition because of the added stress.

What should your company relocation program look like? Our proprietary Cost Estimator and Policy Builder can help you forecast your relocation costs and even build your own relocation policy based on the benefit options that best fit your organization. Check them out and explore what the right relocation benefits package looks like for you and your employees.

Relocation Policy Designed Call To Action

Is Your Company Managing the Emotional Toll of an Employee Relocation?

by WHR Global | Apr 27, 2022 | Resources

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 a new location? How stressful might that be for a transferring employee? More importantly, how are your relocating employees and their families 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 employees 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, or 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 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, or 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:

Medical Options
Education Options
Local Shopping Information
Transportation Information
Utility Connections
Education Assistance
Site Visits/Area Orientation
Help Buying & Selling Homes
Household Goods Move
Temporary Storage
Family Support

Ongoing Assignment Support
Language & Cultural Training
Immigration Services
Property Management
Temporary Housing
Lists of Community Resources
Cost of Living Pay Adjustments for Higher Cost Areas
Driver’s License and Registration Information
Spousal/Partner Career Assistance

”If 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 [email protected] or 800-523-3318.

Why should you bother reviewing your relocation policy?

by WHR Global | Apr 20, 2022 | Resources

Even though many companies now allow all-remote or hybrid work, they are still relocating employees to fill needed roles and help attract/retain top talent. To be successful, your organization needs a well-prepared and comprehensive relocation policy in place to help in the following areas:

Control business costs
Ensure you’re meeting employee needs
Attract and retain top talent
Benchmark your policy against the competition

As a Relocation Management Company (RMC), WHR Group, Inc. (WHR) conducts policy reviews. The following examples demonstrate just how important it is to review your relocation policy regularly. If you don’t already have a policy, you’ll want to create one. Here’s why it’s all so important:

A. Control Business Costs. Are You Paying for Unnecessary Benefits?

Make sure you’re allocating the right amount of dollars to both transferees and organizational needs. It’s also important you’re not paying for unneeded or outdated benefits.

Example #1
A company was giving each transferee a standard $5K-$10K relocation lump sum to assist with any extra expenses. They were also giving executives a lump sum equal to 6 weeks’ salary on top of the $5K-$10K lump sum. Since some executives had large salaries, this allowance sometimes equated to $50K per executive! After review, we recommended the company cut back on that practice for executives. The company saved hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Example #2
A client was paying a cost-of-living differential if the employee was relocating to a higher-cost area. They were paying this out for 3-4 years, plus they were also providing a big lump sum benefit. We recommended a minimum 5% cost of living threshold so that they were not paying transferees moving to only slightly higher cost of living areas. The client saved millions.

Example #3
Another client was giving out non-promotional bonuses to current employees willing to relocate for a lateral role. These bonuses equated to 5% of the employees’ salaries. Since this practice is not common, we recommended they eliminate this from their relocation policy. This saved them significant costs without lowering the value of their program.

Example #4
One of our clients was paying a loan origination fee. Some lenders don’t even charge this fee but if they know the client will pay, they will still charge the fee anyway. Once we alerted the client, they stopped paying the fee unless necessary.

B. Meet Your Employees’ Needs

Is your relocation policy meeting your employees’ needs? The right policy helps to reduce transferee stress so that employees can focus on working in their new location. Giving employees time off to assimilate in their new location, providing support to transferees’ families and gathering post-relocation feedback to make future policy decisions will all help to address your transferees’ needs.

Example #1
One of our clients was offering a lump sum benefit for all international relocations. By gathering post-relocation survey feedback, we found out transferees were trying to coordinate their international household goods (HHG) shipments and were not spending the full lump sum in the hopes of keeping some of the money. Survey feedback also showed that giving employees that level of choice was adding more stress on them, and it was making the relocation process take longer. Transferees were trying to do it all on their own, plus pinch pennies.

The client considered all key benefits and determined the lump sum was not working. They shifted from a lump sum to a core flex benefit. This meant the client would cover HHG shipments, destination service providers and temporary housing, but they still gave transferees a lump sum amount to be used at the employees’ discretion. Not only did this help reduce transferee stress but it also helped control business costs.

Example #2
One client was not offering destination services to spouses/partners and families of intra-European moves. They assumed that if a transferee/family was relocating from Romania to the UK, for example, destination services were not needed. Through post-relocation survey feedback, it was determined that spouses/partners needed career assistance, language training and help with school searches for their children. The employee had office workers to help them assimilate in the new locations, but the transferees’ partners were struggling with the new language, and even struggling to find necessities like grocery stores. Recognizing the needs of the entire family unit, and not just the transferee is crucial to ensuring a successful move and assimilation.

C. Attract & Retain Talent by Benchmarking Your Policy Against the Competition

Hopefully, your relocation policy is already part of your total rewards and talent management strategy. The right policy will help your company retain current employees and attract top prospective candidates. A weak relocation policy could have a negative impact on your recruiting and retention success rate.

By benchmarking your policy against other companies, you will stay competitive in the war for talent. 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. Are they subpar to what everyone else is offering? If you are hiring high-level executives, for example, and the talent is very specific and not easy to come by, you’ll want to make sure you’re competitive with salary, benefits and your relocation policy.

At the same time, benchmarking will ensure you’re not giving away too much when none of your competitors are doing that. Benchmarking your policy against others shows you are in line with the industry. It’s also important to look at your industry and other industries you compete with for talent.

Example #1

Imagine losing a potential candidate because your relocation policy is missing benefits your competitors are including. For example, if your candidate is an executive expecting a full house buyout, but your policy only includes an HHG move and lump sum payout, then you must go back and forth negotiating with your superiors and the candidate. This can waste a lot of time. In the interim, the candidate might receive a better job offer, including more relocation benefits. A relocation policy can be a factor for candidates deciding whether to take one job over another. If you’ve benchmarked your policy against your competition, you’ll already know what their policies include.

Example #2
A client was getting feedback from its talent acquisition team that it was difficult filling certain positions. After reviewing their policy and benchmarking it against their competitors, we discovered that their competition was offering far richer relocation benefits. As a result, the company decided to expand its range of jobs eligible for full relocation benefits.

How often should you review your policy?

WHR recommends you review your employee relocation policy annually, or every couple of years at the very longest. It does not have to be a huge overhaul, but it’s a chance for you to pause and look at employee feedback, plus confirm any changes in your company culture, driving principles, core values, talent strategy, the industry and your competition. This is a time for you to make sure your policy is aligned with all those pieces and your key stakeholders (talent acquisition teams, recruiting teams and HR business partners).

Let Us Help You!

WHR is available to review and/or write your relocation policy (domestic and/or international).