Relocation services

Relocation services, employee relocation or workforce mobility include a range of internal business processes to transfer employees, their families, and/or entire departments of a business to a new location. Like other types of employee benefits, these processes are usually administered by human resources specialists within a corporation.

Such business processes can include domestic residential services where an employee moves within a country or state as well as international relocation services which include planning for diplomats, managers etc. working abroad. An agency providing relocation services directs and manages the process of relocation including arranging necessary documents (visa, long-term stay permissions), finding a new house (accommodation), finding a school for children (education), finding a job for the partner or "trailing spouse", arranging a teacher for the family (language training) and introduce expatriates to the local culture.

Dating back to the Dutch East India Company, sending an employee to work in another country (sometimes called a "global assignment" in current HR jargon) has carried considerable costs while theoretically opening the potential for financial returns for the employer.

With tax equalization, housing allowance, cost-of-living adjustment and other benefits, the typical expatriate compensation package is two to three times the home-country base salary. For example, an expatriate with a €100,000 annual salary will cost the employer €200,000-300,000 per year incl. the relocation costs. Shorter term assignments have lower costs, especially when they avoid taxation thresholds.

Reasons why a company might give an employee a global assignment include filling functional needs, developing the employee for upper management, and developing the company itself. Anne-Wil Harzing of the University of Melbourne further categorises these employees as "bears, bumblebees and spiders". Those playing the role of bears are the long arm of headquarters control. The bumblebees transfer (cross-pollinate) their corporate culture. Harzing's spiders weave the informal communication networks so important in connecting far-flung branches, subsidiaries and all strategic partners.

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