5 Signs it’s Time to Find a (New) Talent Relocation Partner

How many people do you hire from abroad every month? And how much time are you spending on moving them? Whether you’re managing employee relocations in-house or already working with a talent relocation partner, you could be missing out on the most efficient way to get your international hires from A to B.

Here’s how you’ll know it’s time for you to shop around for options.

Your current talent relocation partner is slow or unresponsive

There’s a lot of trust from all sides that goes into relocating an employee. Your new hires are trusting you to get them relocated unharmed and happy. You're trusting them to arrive contented and motivated. Which, in turn, depends heavily on their relocation experience.

If you’re working with a talent relocation partner, there’s one more player in your circle of trust. But if your service provider isn’t getting back to you on time, gives you evasive answers, or seems to be moving too slowly in general, the trust chain breaks. And now you have zero transparency into what’s happening with your employees.

More to the point, talent relocation isn’t a 9-to-5 deal. Flights can get rescheduled, delayed, or rerouted at all hours. Working across time zones, inconveniences can occur at moments that are, well… inconvenient. If your relocation partner isn’t equipped to deal with off-the-clock emergencies swiftly and decisively, you’re not just spending time and money on unexpected problems. You’re losing the trust your foreign employee has for you.

A lot hinges on that trust. Studies confirm that well-supported relocating employees report higher engagement rates at work.

So if you’re losing sleep over whether your talent relocation partner has everything under control, it’s time to reconsider your options.

You’re spending a disproportionate amount of time on mobility-related tasks

There's a median of about 1.5 HR people for every 100 employees at a company. HR teams are notoriously busy as it is, and talent mobility accounts for a good chunk of that. Nearly a quarter of US and 27% of UK execs report spending 40+ hours a month on administrative mobility tasks. That’s at least one week out of every month you’re spending on repetitive, tedious work that could be better handled by someone else.

As Liis-Rebecca Ojamaa, Operations Team Lead at online identity verification startup Veriff, put it: “Relocating foreigners took a lot of time and bureaucracy. It was not only bone-breaking for us but also for the employees who were relocating.” Handing 40+ relocation cases over to their relocation partner Jobbatical saved Veriff's operations team 200+ work hours right off the bat.

Been dreaming of spending more time on important strategic initiatives and less on putting out administrative fires? Outsourcing talent relocation will free up plenty of resources for you.

You’re struggling to keep track of all your relocation cases

Even today, relocation managers still tend to use the stone-age technology of spreadsheets to track cases. When you have multiple cases in different stages of the process, things can easily slip through the cracks. “There are so many moving parts it’s almost impossible to manage as a non-specialist while trying to do your own daily work as well,” startup COO Alice Tärk says.

With all these moving parts, keeping an eye on the bigger picture becomes dizzying. Things get delayed—or forgotten about entirely—and your productivity suffers. Not to mention, again, your employees’ relocation experience.

Are you spending more time digging through and updating spreadsheets than doing anything else? Always worried you're forgetting something? A tech-enabled relocation partner will lift that concern right off your plate.

Your applications are getting delayed or rejected

Even in the most digitally advanced countries, immigration processes are rarely super speedy or user-friendly. Visa forms, residence permits, visits to government agencies—one mistake can land your application in the rejected pile. And who has time for lengthy appeal processes? It's complicated enough the first time around.

This is why getting it right from the start is key. If you don't feel 100% confident navigating the paperwork, don't be the Don Quixote of talent relocation. You can't fight the slow-moving windmills of government. But you can find people with the local knowledge and the right tools to give the windmills a little nudge.

Having the right partner could determine, for example, whether it takes nine or four months to relocate a hire from a country with a tricky visa situation.

You’re not hiring as fast as you want to be

When you’re growing a team internationally, you’re probably not interested in taking your sweet time. You want to move fast. Get new hands on deck as quickly as humanly possible. But what’s this mysterious force holding you back?

It could be the red tape of immigration.

Tackling all your immigration and relocation paperwork in-house can slow down your hiring noticeably. Veriff’s Liis-Rebecca Ojamaa noticed that once her team started to work with Jobbatical, they were able to hire much faster, ultimately growing from 18 to 300 employees in under a year.

And it’s not just because of the time you’ll save. Having smooth relocation processes in place will draw good talent to you. And that'll make it easier for you to get the hire in the first place. “Many foreigners have mentioned that dealing with the immigration process on their own has stopped them from applying abroad,” says Liis-Rebecca. “Since we started using Jobbatical’s services, more employees have joined us, because of the simplicity of the relocation process.”

So don't miss out on that sweet-sweet growth—find yourself a solid talent relocation partner. Your bottom line will thank you for it.

Ready to rethink the way you're relocating your international hires? Jobbatical will help you scale by taking immigration and settle-in off your plate.

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