We recently posted this white paper to our site which focused on “soft” costs: those costs that are huge, but that many companies can’t or won’t measure, i.e. productivity, lost opportunity, turnover, training, morale, etc. These costs seem to be the focus of savvy senior management teams.

The real value of a relocation program and policy is in the underlying cultural message (long term benefits) and in supporting corporate strategy which could change yearly with many companies.

I really have a hard time understanding why so many decisions are made after only scratching the surface on hidden costs – both soft and hard. But many fall into this trap – I even wrote an article as long ago as 1990 about this in National Relocation and Real Estate Magazine titled A Look at Relocation Management Revenue.

And why do organizations (including our industry group) spend so much time on “purchasing process” without building in measurements to track hidden costs over the long term? Is it impossible to measure the productivity effect of a relocation program? I don’t think so.

There are “hidden” costs that are easier to get at – revenue items for the relocation industry such as referral fees, network membership and training fees, marketing fees and mark-ups, among others – that merit a mention. These costs seem to be the focus of purchasing departments and “cost cutters.”

This is low hanging fruit. We all know the real prize is harder to get to. But no good harvester allows any fruit to be left on the tree, no matter how hard it is to get to. Like an owner of an orchard, corporations should design special equipment (tracking processes and reporting) to get at the “not so easy” to pick fruit.