Management and Staff Issues and Relocation

Staff costs in a relocation can be up to half of all costs for a relocation, to a company. The average relocation cost per person as quoted in a Strutt & Partner report on business parks is around £21,750.

The greatest difficulties in a relocation also often relate to staff matters. A relocation has great potential to affect the company's employees.

Integration of staff must be a prime objective of any relocation. The consideration of what is necessary to get employees to integrate properly in a relocation is indeed a very important one. The staff of a relocating company tend to use their existing lifestyles as a starting and try and replicate it in a new area. They then try and improve on it if they can.

There are a number of elements which can be considered key to the successful integration of the staff of a relocating company. They include a good external environment generally, a pleasant office environment, a good working environment, easy access to work and home, and easy access to amenities.

Education facilities in a new town are also very important and do feature strongly in the concerns of most employees as most people do have children. Towns should have nurseries and schools in place.

Housing issues are a major factor in any relocation. Houses are not easy to dispose of and staff who have to sell their houses usually need help in some form with this.

Another key issue for staff is that of changing work practices and in particular the loss of individual offices.

Information on areas to which the company is moving is also very important. Insufficient or poorly researched information about the area is the most common cause of concern for employees.

The table below details the influences on employees looking for new jobs. The information is also relevant for existing employees moving to new areas. The information source is Strutt & Partner.

INFLUENCES ON EMPLOYEES LOOKING FOR NEW JOBS.

				Salary			95%
				Car Parking		89%
				Pleasant Environment	85%
				Bank			72%
				Onsite Security		68%
				Sandwich Bar		67%
				Appearance of Building	64%
				Pub/Wine Bar		62%
				Proximity of Shops	54%
				Local Transport		52%
				Sports Club		33%
				Creche			23%

Relocating firms need to be aware of specific employment issues in their new area such as regional norms in terms of salary/wage rates, history of unionisations, local unemployment, sources of training and development, and local colleges with reputations in staff education and training.

Recruitment agencies already have a supply of potential job candidates on their books and good contacts with job centres. Specialist recruitment agencies determine their sector of operations by job/functions and usually have a useful market knowledge on salary setting, advertising and the likelihood of the specifications being readily filled.

Training and Human Resource Consultants can also offer useful support in preparing Staff Policies, Handbooks (spanning employment terms and conditions), Induction materials into the area and the relocated company, as well as signposting individuals to organisational and external sources of help. These organisations can often assist in some of the change management issues spanning organisational strategy and restructuring, including workforce planning, issues as well as the personal and family-wide implications of change (including stress) through employee assistance and counselling programmes.

Training consultancy assistance can also be useful in identifying individual training needs against a corporate training plan, the provision of development activities through a variety of methods - workshops, project-based learning, open/distance learning. Specialist technical trainers are particularly useful in planning the induction of staff to new technology and operational equipment including IT training agencies.

A recent survey of major companies who have relocated revealed that the companies involved felt that the relocation process in its entirety was lengthy, complex and involved a myriad of issues. There are key decisions resolved on which the success or otherwise of the move depends particularly relating to issues of staff and staff management.

All of the companies in the survey had employed the services of human resource consultants some of whom provided counselling services. Many of the companies felt that they had brought in consultants on board too late and only when serious staff problems had emerged, by which time damage had been done. Failure to identify problems early on in a relocation can result in employees refusing to move, higher stress levels if they do relocate, and a significant increase in the time it takes them to integrate.

The lesson from all this for relocating companies could be to involve human resource consultants at an early stage, not only in the recruitment of new staff which is of course vital, but also in all aspects of preparation and training before, during and after the relocation.

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Information Source: Insight Information Services Database
Programmers: First Computing Solutions