Something interesting happened to me recently.

As someone who has worked in employee mobility for many years, I was asked to contribute to an article about the ‘decline’ of relocation assignments. It had come off the back of a recent report, which found that the number of employees willing to move overseas for work dropped by 15% between 2018 and 2023.

In my job, I work closely with employee mobility teams every day who are frank and honest with me about the challenges of relocating employees in 2023. At Crown World Mobility, we even ran our own research last year which explored some of these barriers in more detail.

So, I accepted the request and lent some insights about what might have sparked this trend, and went about my day.

However, not so long after, we were mentioned in another article, this time about the “resurgence” of employee relocation. It flagged a separate study from US removals firm Atlas Van Lines, which found, after surveying 375 employers at the end of 2023, that there had been a 70% year-on-year increase in relocations.

This contrast (or conflict) in message really got me thinking. Why has a rise in employee hesitancy not translated into a decline in relocations? And more importantly, what can employers do to restore enthusiasm in overseas assignment?

Reluctance to relocate

For some employees, relocating to a different country – something you would think is seen as the opportunity of a lifetime – can feel like a burden. There are several factors to blame here. One of the big issues at the moment is that a lot of the relocation packages being offered just aren’t what they used to be.

Budget constraints have impacted most business functions today – and mobility is no exception. Businesses tend to hyper-fixate on every little cost involved in relocating an employee, scrutinising them to the smallest degree on a spreadsheet. The result? Smaller packages and allowances that may offer the assignee more short-term flexibility, but ultimately require them to do more for themselves once they arrive in their new destination.

Let’s take accommodation as an example. Some employers may offer assignees a small cash allowance towards temporary accommodation as opposed to booking it for them. The assignee then ends up booking somewhere cheap, with little guidance, which later turns out to be inadequate. The obsession with crunching numbers from the get-go is not only counter-productive from a cost point of view, as mobility teams inevitably have to step in to support assignees with alternative living arrangements. It also paints relocation in a negative light compared to what it used to be in the ‘golden age’ – with plush accommodation, luxurious flights, and even compensation for the likes of club memberships and school fees.

If the balance sheet is your only concern when designing your relocation package, and not the comfort and experience of the assignee, it’s no wonder employees are struggling to see ‘what’s in it for them’.

So why are employers insisting on it?

Negative perceptions of relocation don’t only exist amongst assignees.

For managers, the proliferation of remote work has also made relocation, and the costs that come with it, more challenging to justify to their higher ups. If employees can log on to do their job from anywhere in world, why would a company pay to have them relocated to the other side of it? Especially when they might end up remote working half the time while on assignment.

Well, the recent research suggests that, despite the nay-sayers, employers still see a real benefit to relocation. To start, for companies setting up operations overseas in a new territory, having senior assignees ‘on the ground’ to role model the corporate values (and conduct business during open hours in that time zone) is usually non-negotiable.

And despite employee hesitancy pre-assignment, there’s evidence to suggest that relocation is a powerful tool for employee performance and retention. Our ‘Mobility Matters’ research from last year found that over half (53%) of employers said relocation improved staff retention. And the majority (80%) agreed that employees became more productive while on assignment, too.

What can employers do differently

It’s clear that when mobility programmes are ‘done well’, employee relocation offers benefits for both parties, and assignees do end up enjoying them once they’ve been convinced. But the question still lies. How can we help assignees get over those initial mental blocks?

It’s crucial to adopt a human-centric approach, rather than a finance-obsessed outlook, when presenting the idea of relocation to employees and designing packages.

Relocating can be a scary experience for some: adapting to a new culture, making new friends, convincing family members to move, and maybe even learning a new language.

These factors contribute massively to assignee hesitancy and cannot be overlooked. Ensuring packages prioritise the comfort and experience of employees from start to finish – whether that be access to cultural training pre-assignment or regular check-ins once they arrive to ensure they are acclimating smoothly – is likely to restore some enthusiasm in the relocation opportunity.

And employee experience aside, take a look at where mobility fits into your organisation structure. Often, mobility and talent departments are not well aligned, with global mobility seen as a detached service. If both departments worked together, it may help to shift mobility’s perception as a ‘must do’ to a ‘must have in terms of development and progression.