Have you ever stopped to consider, that by supporting your employees to relocate to an area where they want to live and work, you will, in turn, be helping your company’s attraction and retention rates?

It feels like we have been talking about the ‘war for talent’ for years and it feels that right now these words have never felt more apt. As we emerge, blinking, out of the long shadows of the pandemic, many companies throughout the growing Humber region are struggling to attract and retain the right quantity and calibre of employees. An age old problem you might say. Well yes, but for some, particularly those in growth mode, it is more acute than ever.

Competition for the best talent is fierce and it’s up to organisations across Hull and the Humber to use every tool they can to make themselves an employer of choice, in a candidate driven jobs market. Whatever employers can offer potential employees, to attract them to come and work in our region is more important than ever.

To stand out in a crowded jobs market, one thing that companies should ensure that they have, is a robust and attractive, internal mobility strategy, which allows employees to progress in their careers without having to leave, to work for another organisation. Such mobility programmes should allow an employee to relocate seamlessly to another work location in order to take advantage of the opportunities in that location. Developing and implementing such a ‘’mobility culture” will need organisational leaders to embrace a policy of encouraging more pro-active internal movement of staff.

Retention of Gen Z & millennial workers can be particularly problematic. Many, simply move on to a new role, without so much as a backward glance, citing a lack of career development and opportunities to move internally within their organisation. The pressures of replacing staff on a regular basis is causing many companies to re-evaluate their career mobility options, in a bid to help retain this element of the working population and attract new ones at the same time.

HR teams have always had their own methods of identifying talent, already present within a company, but developing a culture, whereby employees are actively encouraged to seek new opportunities within, supported by a clear mobility policy, will go some way to reducing turnover and ongoing recruitment costs. Internal mobility can be a great tool for retaining talent and also for enhancing your company brand to job seekers that are keen to work for a company with a supportive and progressive attitude.

With the new patterns of remote and hybrid working likely to remain for many companies and their employees, there is a real justification for HR and mobility professionals to ensure that employee relocation support is included as a basic employee benefit. In today’s world, employees are attracted not only by salaries but more and more by flexible working models, being able to have some say over the location of their work and some relishing the opportunity to relocate to new locations and work at their companies other sites, whilst embracing a new culture and lifestyle. For companies with the right employee mobility policies as an integral part of an overall attraction and retention strategy, we are seeing that this is definitely helping them to attract new staff and reduce staff turnover. For those companies that don’t, their challenge remains very real and is unlikely to abate.

Yorkshire & Humber Relocation can help. Please contact us to discuss your employee mobility policies and strategy.