Arlington, VA — The workforce mobility industry reacted Tuesday to an October 25 Wall Street Journal article by Joann Lublin, “Shareholders Hit the Roof Over Relocation Subsidies,” which noted that new federal laws have made relocation costs for senior executives public information, and robust home-loss provisions for senior corporate executives are drawing concerned investor criticism.
Peggy Smith, CEO for Worldwide ERC®, the workforce mobility association said, "Worldwide ERC® members understand that these cost figures become relevant only when measured against common business metrics such as return on investment, productivity, and company focus, which are legitimate shareholder concerns. Our industry absolutely supports the effective and consistent governance of resources and accountability to all stakeholders as companies make an investment in top talent. We also firmly believe that global and economic growth is rooted in the continued worldwide mobility of talent, and would be troubled to see newly re-emerging mobility activity fettered by this news.”
Smith said, “We need to look at all of the issues in the mobility industry to get a clear picture of what’s happening. First, organizations continue to report growing U.S. employee reluctance to relocate, with difficult housing markets directly implicated as the reason. Second, we can see that companies have made shifts in their policies to address additional assistance to respond to the housing market. Seventy percent of companies reported having made at least one change to their relocation policies in the past two years, and they continue to revolve around solutions to address homesale challenges. Some of those policy changes cited ‘other’ types of changes, such as the addition of a repayment agreement. At this juncture, 90% of our members have a new-hire payback agreement in place.”
Shareholder concerns over executive compensation are only one part of the picture, as high-level executive talent represents a very small amount of all the transfers that are occurring in the workforce mobility space. “It is crucial not to paint all relocations with the same brush, because a company’s talent management strategy is ever more closely linked with its mobility program,” said Smith. “Applying terms like ‘ill-gotten gains’ with regard to housing loss policies, and using executive compensation to represent the many middle-management transfers that are in process can bring some unfavorable, unintended and longer-term implications. Worldwide ERC® members are committed to efficient, cost-effective workforce mobility, and to the concept that dynamic talent management is essential to economic recovery. Companies are working toward this imperative: to strike the right balance of transparency, governance, and strategy to meet their talent mobility and business goals.”
Posted via email from hrstrategist@Net-Speed
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