Purposeful Development: Relocation Industry Trends

If you are a regular follower of the EER social media channels (and why wouldn’t you be?), you might have caught the recent series of snapshots that featured our co-owner and Managing Director Marie O’Neill making her way across the USA.  Her travels were part of her attendance at, and participation in, a series of international relocation and global mobility industry events.  As well as the opportunity to connect with experts and share insights, this trip also offered the chance to calibrate the intentions and collective direction of key players that will undoubtably shape the progression of global mobility in the next months and years.  The USA trip included the Graebel Partner Alliance Conference 2022 in Denver, the NEI Global Partner Alliance Summit and the Weichert – Global Supply Chain Summit in Las Vegas at which Marie was a panellist on the topic of automation in the post-covid marketplace.

Adaptability Leads

Like many other sectors, the relocation and global mobility industry is learning how to adapt to new circumstances and evolving demands.  At the events, the assignee and client experience was one of the most talked about topics and how companies and their partners could work to ensure they were able to better manage expectations, service requirements and provide stress-free support.  Plenty of emphasis was put on how hard work and partnership could be the game-changers when it came to servicing clients more effectively.  Typically, the relocation field is one of complex nuances, so the concept of foresight has always been a championed principle amongst key players, but a return to in-person events has certainly facilitated more success in determining what the future might hold and how best the industry can rise to the occasion.

Growth for the Benefit of All

In such an insightful environment, spanning multiple events, companies, themes and experts, it would be hard to assign a specific overarching takeaway.   But what did become clear with each event was a collective desire to seek ways to improve for the benefit of clients, stakeholders and partners.  Whilst this is hardly a new idea, the motivation behind it has a genuine authenticity of purpose; that by developing ways to be better we can better serve our customers, our employees and our communities.  The Graebel Partner Alliance Conference perhaps summed this drive up best in their theme of ‘Be Remarkable’ where the intention becomes to ‘always leave things better than you found them’.

Falling under this umbrella of purposeful development were three main themes that were not only discussed at length at each of the events, but that are already clear markers for how the relocation industry will centre its objectives for growth and improved performance.  Those themes were sustainability, DE&I and automation.

Sustainability

Having weathered the upheaval of the global pandemic, it is hardly surprising that business sustainability is a topic of interest at most industry events and conferences.  This is a time for companies to look to the future and consider best how they can create a stable environment and strategy that will meet the challenges to come and ensure a more positive output in terms of community and society.  The events in the USA were all prepared to put this topic though its paces with group discussions and panels that looked at a variety of angles and initiatives in order to evaluate their effectiveness and potential impact.

DE&I

DE&I, or diversity, equity and inclusion, is a topic that more and more companies are talking about, but that many are yet to fully understand or embrace.  What those who fail to comprehend its importance miss though, is that it is a legacy-building initiative.  Effective DE&I agendas can be transformational for business success, particularly as the marketplace continues to diversify itself with cross-border saturation and international demand.  Each company needs to look at how it can best integrate a suitable DE&I strategy in order to perform better and reap the rewards.  The starting off point is centred on ensuring that leadership is ready to ‘lead’ on the issue, that tangible metrics can be earmarked and that accurate measurements can be reported on the effectiveness of new programmes to accommodate any necessary flexibility that might be required.

Automation

It is hard to see how any business could ignore the necessity for increased automation and digitization, especially when it comes to overall client experience.  Streamlining services and improving efficiency is beneficial for everyone, from employees to stakeholders, managers to partners.  As well as the traditional office administrative elements and HR requirements, the relocation industry is ripe for development in the automation space, especially when it comes to assignee experience and client relationship management.  Each of the events had dedicated discussions on the digitization space and many experts were able to share the pros and cons of particular technological advancements or software options that could be effective in terms of a smoother global mobility process.  At EER, our co-owner and Operations Manager Aideen Hopkins has long been an advocate for the potential of improved automation and it was interesting to see so many more industry players vocalising the same message.

If you would like to find out more about EER’s relocation and global mobility services, please get in touch today on +971 (0)4 421 1819 or info@eerme.com.