By Mickey Williams

Several days ago I worked with a well-known company (who shall remain unnamed) after they conducted a two-year study of their relocation program and discovered that 50% of the people they had moved during the study period had actually left the company.  This represented a huge cost, not only in terms of the money they spent to move those departed employees, but even more in terms of the talent they lost and had to replace.

From where they were sitting (inside the company), the leadership team could not see that the problem was directly connected to how they conceived and implemented their relocation policy. This company's policy place a significant amount of the relocation responsibility on the transferee and their families.  At the same time, they expected the transferee to be on the job and productive from the first day, even though they were dealing with the two of the three most stressful conditions in a person's life - moving and changing jobs.  Satisfaction ratings were embarrassing.

When the company asked us for our advice, we asked them to rethink their relocation policy. Before they could do that, however, they had to change their cultural message to reflect a genuine concern for what relocation represents to an employee. They understood what goals they wanted to achieve, because most of the senior management had not moved in years, and were focused on short term cost savings, was an adjustment they were not prepared to make; so they are continuing to struggle to attract and retain talented people.  This is a scenario we've seen played out in far too many otherwise successful companies, large and small, all across the world. 

We have written a white paper on this topic that may provide some food-for- thought if your organization is concerned about retaining top talent who are required or want to relocate. 

It's available at http://www.caprelo.com/current_feature.html

After you read it, let me know your thoughts.  There's a contact button on the web page you can use to share any comments you may have.  I look forward to hearing from you.