Sometimes, no matter how detailed and inclusive your employee relocation management policies are, you run into exceptions or special requests from your employees. This might include wanting to bring children on house-hunting trips, needing an additional month of temporary housing, moving a pet, or asking for an extension on household goods storage. Relocation packages and other moving benefits can vary greatly.
Unique circumstances arise before and during the relocation process. It’s inevitable that relocation support will be needed. That’s why most companies allow for exceptions to their policies.
Our 2018 Mobility + Culture Benchmark Study discovered that only 28% of companies consider themselves as having flexible, easily adapting relocation packages. The remaining 72% tend to stick closely to their outlined programs. Even though most companies are consistent with their relocation programs, 64% said they were more likely to make exceptions to their policies for relocating employees.
Exception management is a crucial component of any company’s relocation program. Policies are created to consider the majority of relocating employees’ needs; however, no two relocations are ever the same.
1. Managing expectations minimizes exceptions
Before hiring a new employee or transferring an existing one, it’s important to thoroughly review and understand expectations between you, your relocation management company (RMC), and your employee. Taking a proactive approach to your employees’ unique needs and concerns is the most effective way you can manage exceptions. Your RMC should also take ample time to review the applicable policy with the transferring employee so that their expectations align with your program’s parameters. Time spent managing expectations is time well spent as it will result in fewer policy exceptions. Important considerations would be relocation support, moving benefits, and potential relocation reimbursement.
2. Be realistic, knowledgeable, and flexible
Knowledge is everything in the relocation process. In the Mobility + Culture survey, we asked respondents to provide the most common exceptions they were making. Here’s what we found:
%
Temporary Housing
%
Benefit/Time Frame Extension
%
Additional Household Goods Services
%
Household Goods Storage
%
Additional Allowances
Simply knowing the most common relocation exceptions can help prepare you for future relocations. You’ll be more realistic when it comes to what you approve, and more flexible in what you offer.
3. Preparing for unforeseen relocation events
No one can predict all possible outcomes of a transfer. What if the old homeowners are not able to close on their new house as quickly as anticipated? What if household goods are delayed for months by customs? Most employee transfer policies do not cover such instances because they occur so rarely.
However, on the off chance that something unforeseen does happen, your RMC must be able to quickly adapt and manage the situation. A closing delay could mean additional temporary housing and additional temporary housing could mean additional household goods storage. The goal of relocation exception management is to stay proactive and anticipate the employee’s needs before they even know what they are themselves. Be sure to communicate with your RMC about some of these possible relocation contingencies and how they are managed.
4. Tracking and reporting
Only 64% of companies that make exceptions to their policies utilize technology for tracking. The ability to track and report exceptions, including ones approved prior to the transfer, provides your company with a baseline of realistic expense expectations. This also allows you to estimate the cost of future relocation exception requests and make policy changes as a result.
5. Make relocation exception policy improvements
We believe (and have seen through our own work) that keeping a close eye on relocation package exception trends within your program may allow opportunities for policy revisions, thus saving you the time-consuming task of processing the same exception multiple times. However, we found that only 62% of companies make changes to their moving package policies based on exceptions. Policy recommendations and improvements should be ongoing and provided by your relocation company. This will ultimately help you control costs and attract and retain your best employees.
