The Hidden Costs Behind Mobility Spend

SIRVA
Relocation Services
Global Services
The Hidden Costs Behind Mobility Spend

Whether your employees are heading across the country or crossing continents, Sirva has the on-the-ground international relocation services you need. From Canada to Australia and everywhere in between, we understand the nuances across each region .

We provide offerings to satisfy your unique needs, whether selling a home in the U.S., managing a cross-country household goods move, or helping employees to get settled into their new homes in Europe. Our global experience means that you can count on seamless international relocation, no matter what’s next.

Departure Services

From the initial policy consulting call through the move itself, there are a lot of moving pieces associated with employee relocation. Whether planning a domestic or international relocation, SIRVA is expertly positioned to offer the best departure services available during a relocation in every region around the world.

Destination Services

Setting your employees up for success upon arrival at their new locations will be key to successfully meeting your company’s goals. SIRVA’s global network and expansive resources allow us to you achieve your goals. Our destination services and international movers help employees and their families settle in and prosper in their new homes.

Visa and Immigration

SIRVA’s team of experienced international relocation specialists are expertly equipped to manage inbound and outbound global immigration services. With SIRVA’s Immigration team, the focus is on providing a smooth customer experience that enhances the relocation process, not just achieving a successful application.

Employee Counselling

For your employees, a single relocation professional assists with end-to-end coordination of services: a relocation consultant for domestic/intra-country moves or global assignment consultant for international relocation. These consultants are your employees’ resource for all communication and services relating to their move, and coordinate the delivery of all authorised services. Regardless of the service being delivered (temporary housing, moving services, etc.), the employee can rely on the consultant as their go-to resource to address any concerns.

VIP Services

If you are searching for an enhanced service for your employees, SIRVA offers VIP services such as personal relocation assistants, in-home cleaning services, personalised family assistance, and many other tailored and luxury enhancements.

Related Services

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The structure of a mobility programme can play a role in mobility complexity, from a lack of alignment between policies and organisational goals to unintentional task duplicity.

Ask a room full of mobility stakeholders to create a list of their top priorities, and they’ll all place cost management somewhere near the top. While this probably isn’t surprising, a statistic pulled from our latest annual mobility survey might be: According to Talent Mobility for Business Growth – Aligning Practices to Drive Organisational Impact, mobility stakeholders indicated that they also can’t quantify true mobility spend for their company (48% – 72%, depending on move type).

Certainly, the structure of a mobility programme can play a role in mobility complexity, from a lack of alignment between policies and organisational goals to unintentional task duplicity. Inconsistent programme application, exceptions, and out-of-scope management decisions can also add to cost control challenges. But the disconnect between wanting to control these costs and an inability to measure them is usually tied to factors that are less tangible.

Forgotten Contributors to Mobility Spend

Administrative Costs: Even when a company has a grasp on measurable mobility expenses (tax gross ups, household goods shipments, temporary housing, etc.) stakeholders often forget the internal administrative costs associated with relocation. This can be problematic, particularly if policies being utilised encounter frequent exceptions or have been administrated by those who don’t recognise the financial impact of mobility decisions. In short, an internal mobility professional may need hours of research or troubleshooting to correct a mistake or address an issue that a subject matter expert could tackle in minutes, thanks to his/her wealth of knowledge, contacts and experience. In short, when problems occur with internally-handled relocations, unless administrative problem-solving time is factored into the full cost of a relocation, the true cost of mobility will remain elusive.

Out of Purview Expenses: When quantifying spend per employee, company stakeholders often miss factors that might take place outside of their field of vision, including activities performed by a relocation services provider, interest charges on funds that were advanced on the company’s behalf, compensation that local payroll processed but did not flag or report as a component of the relocation, or any service fees that may be paid as part of their supply chain. To quantify the true cost of mobility, stakeholders must identify all resource expenditure that has been dedicated to the process, including the less tangible ones.

Identifying Costs – and Containing Them

There are a variety of things companies can do to identify the hard and soft costs associated with mobility – and then manage them. Our white paper, Controlling the Costs of Mobility,addresses many of these suggested action steps, in addition to providing guidance on tracking mobility spend to improve a company’s return on investment (ROI), and how to appropriately weigh cost control against value and a positive employee experience. To learn more, download the paper or contact us at concierge@sirva.com.