As Covid restrictions have eased in most parts of the world, many businesses are functioning normally. We all know too well the huge strain the pandemic put on businesses worldwide, as some companies did not survive. Like most organizations, WHR Group, Inc. (WHR), a relocation management company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sent its employees home to work remotely until restrictions were lifted and it was safe to work in the office again. Although it may have felt like the world came to a startling halt, WHR’s clients’ needs did not. That’s why WHR expanded internationally during the height of COVID-19. In 2020, WHR opened offices in Basel, Switzerland, and Singapore to meet the growing demands of its global clients. Opening new offices – and in foreign countries – during a pandemic created its own set of challenges.

Meeting Global Client Demands

Managing WHR’s growing international caseload from the US was no longer practical. Opening regional offices allowed WHR to provide the same level of service to all clients, transferees, and assignees. “While Covid-19 dramatically slowed the ability of individuals to cross borders, we persisted in opening these offices to fulfill our client obligations and be prepared to meet future demand,” says WHR President Paul De Boer. “These offices allow WHR to provide resources where needed and build supplier partnerships critical to maintaining industry-best service levels.” The Switzerland office supports clients and their transferees in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; the Singapore office supports the Asia Pacific region. WHR’s Singapore and Switzerland offices provide various services, including pre-assignment, transition, assignment, and repatriation services to multi-language expatriate transferees.

Solely and independently owned since its inception 26 years ago, WHR specializes in providing each expatriate with a dedicated relocation team, white-glove service, and 24/7/365 availability for the entire relocation process – long or short-term assignments. Along with its U.S. headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, WHR helps some of the largest organizations in the world and has relocated hundreds of thousands of employees to over 120 countries worldwide.

Hiring, Training Global Mobility Staff & Opening Offices

WHR’s Linden Houghtby, GMS®, was the transitional lead for opening the Switzerland and Singapore offices. She hired and trained local staff, who then assumed leadership and operational roles for each office. Houghtby was instrumental in WHR’s international expansion and instilled WHR’s culture and best practices into its international operations. Houghtby says, “Remote onboarding across time zones brought its own challenges. As most of our Switzerland team was hired after I moved to Singapore, I was doing a lot of training with team members in different time zones, and one of the ways I made this work was to schedule regular touch base calls each day with the teams in both Switzerland and Singapore to ensure consistency and continuity across the two teams. This also helped to embed our culture and develop comradery.”

The COVID-19 pandemic slightly delayed plans to open the international offices, but WHR could proceed. Having these international offices was extremely beneficial as WHR assisted its clients and their employees in managing the immigration and logistic challenges of 2021. “Being in the same time zones as client contacts, transferees, and supplier partners allowed us to have regular calls with stakeholders and navigate the shifting border and movement restrictions,” said Houghtby.

WHR also faced visa delays while trying to open the offices and hire staff due to government offices closing, tightening immigration requirements, and Brexit. In Singapore, there were challenges regarding when Houghtby could look at office spaces since in-person meetings were not always allowed. Once an office was secured, all work had to be done remotely.

Looking Ahead

“Creating a footprint in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia has allowed us to engage clients in new and dynamic ways and has deepened our commitment to meet the demands of our global clients,” said De Boer.

Can WHR Help You?

Whether your company is relocating employees domestically or sending them to another country for a short or long-term international assignment, WHR can assist. We will help you design your relocation policy and then manage the program.

Contact WHR to discuss your domestic and international employee relocation strategies.

Are the hybrid and remote working models here to stay? Countless studies have shown that employees want the ability to work remotely, at least part of the time. One study showed 83% of workers prefer a hybrid model. Another survey, by the Pulse of the American Worker, stated that 87% of people want to work remotely at least 1 day each week. According to a Harvard Business Review article, over 90% of employers will have a hybrid working model for knowledge workers in 2022. There has been much debate as to whether hybrid and remote work is good for business and whether they have a positive or negative effect on company culture. Putting all debates aside though, if you ask an HR professional, they might just say that offering hybrid or remote work schedules has become part of their employee retention and attraction strategies. In fact, 78% of HR professionals surveyed by Crain’s Future of Work survey said, “flexible schedules and remote working are effective ways to retain workers without spending money.” If these stats are true, what does this mean for the future of employee relocation and global mobility?

Employee Relocation as a Recruitment and Attraction Strategy

The truth is, relocating your employees to an area they want to live will help with your organization’s employee retention and attraction rates. There was a time pre-pandemic when organizations traditionally only relocated employees for a specific business need. Perhaps organizations could not find the talent they needed in an area so had to relocate existing or new employees. Also, as companies become more global, the necessity for global coverage with actual staff in specific locations became commonplace. These traditional reasons for domestic relocations and international relocations are still taking place even though many companies have a hybrid or remote working model. WHR Group, Inc. (WHR) alone continues to relocate thousands of its clients’ employees each year to over 120 countries worldwide for a variety of organizations from the US government to Fortune 200 corporations, including companies that allow hybrid or remote work.

With the hybrid and remote working model in place at so many organizations, mobility and HR professionals have a new reason to include employee relocation assistance in employee benefits. WHR has seen a trend with its clients who are using employee relocation as part of an employee attraction and retention strategy. Employees are interested in so much more than just compensation. Given the new working models, employees want to choose where they will work, while others would jump at the opportunity to relocate internationally to work at their organization’s other locations.

In a Prudential’s Road to Resiliency survey, three-quarters of the workers surveyed factored benefits into a decision about staying or leaving a company. In addition to compensation, employees who were planning a job search ranked more flexible work schedules and mobility opportunities very high on their list of priorities, with some remote work options as the most important reasons for them to stay with their current employer. 

The Great Resignation

The “Great Resignation” has created a whole new set of employee retention challenges for organizations. According to Fox Business, a recent survey by The Muse reported that the majority of workers who quit their jobs during the Great Resignation regret doing so. Approximately 72% of the 2,500 millennial and Gen Z job hunters polled said they were surprised by what their new roles entailed or that companies were different from what they were told during the interview process. This trend is just one more reason why having successful strategies in place for employee retention is so critical.

Internal Mobility Programs

In the current war for talent and candidate-driven market, the tables have turned on employers. Now the hiring process is often focused on what the employer can offer the candidate. One such way an employer can win in this war is through internal mobility programs which include, among other things, allowing an employee to advance in their careers, or even change careers, internally as opposed to leaving for another employer. This internal mobility might include relocating the employee to another office if they can grow their career more successfully at another location. The result of this includes decreased employee turnover. This is where global mobility and internal mobility intersect. It makes sense to reassign an employee based on their career interests as opposed to losing the employee to another company, especially if that other company is a competitor.

A recent Forbes article explained it well, “Companies will need to consider a concentrated effort on building a “culture of mobility.” What exactly is a culture of mobility? “A culture of mobility exists when organizational leaders encourage internal career moves that allow for equal opportunities and growth for everyone in the workforce across the organization. Whether recruiting new talent or developing your existing workforce, by enabling employees to build internal career paths, you allow your employees to feel more like a part of your organization’s overall mission and vision.”

Employee Wellness Initiatives to Attract and Retain Talent

The idea of keeping employees happy to retain them is not really a new one but as the talent shortage has increased, employers have been forced to think of new ways to retain and attract employees. According to a Harvard Business Review article, “In 2022, organizations will adopt new employee well-being measures that capture the financial health, mental health, and physical health of their employees to more accurately predict employee performance and retention. Wellness will become the newest metric that companies use to understand their employees. For years, executives have experimented with different metrics, such as employee satisfaction or engagement, to understand their employees. In 2022, organizations will add in new measures that assess their mental, physical, and financial health.” It makes sense that if an employee’s mental or physical health will be improved by allowing them to work from a different location, then employers will need to be sure they have also incorporated employee relocation/global mobility benefits into their strategies.

Moving Forward

What’s the solution to retaining good talent and attracting the best employees to your organization? How do employers overcome the Great Resignation? Will internal mobility programs help keep employees and attract new ones? Does revamping an organization’s wellness strategy help? Since the hybrid and remote working model may be here to stay, consider incorporating employee relocation and global mobility into your company’s attraction and retention strategies.

WHR can help. Please contact us to discuss your employee relocation strategies and policies.

WHR Group, Inc., (WHR) announces its 2022 Partner in Quality Award winners. Recipients are WHR Global Network Partners who exceeded customer satisfaction and service excellence throughout 2021. To be considered for a Partner in Quality Award, a partner must complete at least 20 transactions in the previous year and receive performance rankings within the top one percentile of the relocation partner’s service category. The award winners listed below exceeded WHR’s expectations in cost management, customer satisfaction, quality and supply chain management.

 We are extremely thankful to our entire supplier network, but specifically to these 22 companies that have gone above and beyond from a service and partnership aspect. Their dedication and commitment to excellence has helped WHR Advance Lives Forward® of countless relocating employees.

 2022 Partner in Quality Award Winners (in no particular order)

 Relo Network Asia – Singapore

 Pro Relocation – Bratislava, Slovakia

 Merchants – A Budd Van Lines Division – Racine, WI

 BHHS Georgia Properties – Roswell, GA

 Tiffany Broecker – Stevens Point, WI

 IOR Global Services – Northbrook, IL

 AltoVita – London, England

 Paramount Transportation Systems – Reno, NV

 Suite Home Chicago – Chicago, IL

 Amanda Howard Sotheby’s International Realty – Huntsville, AL

 Apartments in Town – London, UK

 Aaversal Global Relocation – Sumner, WA

 Packimpex – Bern, Switzerland

 Transportation Worldwide, Inc. – Katy, TX

 Isaac’s Moving and Storage – Stoughton, MA

 Boone’s Moving & Storage (Lytle’s Transfer) – Tipton, PA

 Arpin International – West Warwick, RI

 Avery-Hess Realtors, Inc. – Woodbridge, VA

 Ward North American – San Antonio, TX

 LARM USA, Inc. – Coral Springs, FL

 @ Properties – Chicago, IL

 RE/MAX Partners Relocation – Andover, MA

On March 1st, 2022, WHR Global (WHR) announced its first-ever global training program for its employees. Staff in WHR’s US, Switzerland, and Singapore offices now have the opportunity to visit another global office for up to four weeks as part of a multi-year investment in its employees.

WHR President Paul De Boer said, “It’s critical to provide these global experiences, so our employees can understand the impact their work has on transferring employees and families. It also allows our employees to build personal and business relationships so that everyone can understand their unique role and how it impacts the entire organization.”

Top Workplace

As an eight-time recipient of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Top Workplaces award, WHR recognizes the need to increase communications and meaningful interactions between employees in its global offices. Since WHR has three international offices, WHR’s employees require greater experience and collaboration with their American, European, and Asian counterparts. While emails, instant messages, and calls on Microsoft Teams can be impactful, WHR believes positive work cultures and relationships are best cultivated in person. Through this program, WHR hopes to increase its employee retention/engagement and allow employees to take initiatives on a global scale. This new, bi-annual program is part of WHR’s continuous employee satisfaction process.

Global Presence

Four WHR employees were chosen in March to participate in the first round of the program. From the US office, one employee will train in Switzerland and one in Singapore, while one employee from Switzerland and Singapore each will train in the US office. WHR will support the employees with fundamental travel, housing, and other essential costs so that the employees can focus on training activities/interactions with their colleagues. Each employee will also be assigned an in-office teammate at the location they’re visiting. WHR will select teammates who strongly exhibit WHR’s core values (empathy, trustworthy, proactive, hardworking and results-driven), and who can share extensive local knowledge with the traveling employee.

Interested in joining the global mobility and relocation management leader? View WHR’s open positions at https://whrg.com/careers/.  

 See how WHR can transform your employee relocation program. Contact our sales department at [email protected], or call +1-262-523-2800.