Category: Archive

Two years ago, Los Angeles-based First Interstate Bancorp. outsourced its entire benefits function to Towers Perrin, a management-consulting firm. It wasn’t the first time the bank had used outside vendors to perform traditional human resources functions. It previously had outsourced its relocation functions to Paragon Decision Resources, Inc. in Illinois and temporary employment services to Talent Tree Personnel Services in California. In all cases, the lesson was clear: Outsourcing is not just a matter of farming out services for expediency. On the contrary, it is the meticulous pursuit of long-term “strategic partners.”

Learning to establish the right relationship is increasingly important because continued outsourcing looms on the horizon. If current trends continue, typical large corporations of the future may consist of a relatively small core of permanent employees, with the remainder of the work force composed of individuals who are hired for specific, temporary assignments, and a network of vendors. Indeed, a recent 927-company survey conducted by Washington, D.C.-based The Wyatt Company, shows that 32% of employers already outsource some or all of the administration of their human resources and benefit programs. In this environment, the vendor becomes an extension of the company, and the relationship rises above the traditionally narrow buy-sell level. “We’re dealing with a very professional, desired relationship,” says June Jones, senior vice president of corporate employee relations at First Interstate. “We have looked for people who could really add value to the corporate mission and strategies.”

Once a company decides to outsource, however, the contract is the primary mechanism to ensure that both its expectations and the vendor’s are realized. Negotiating a successful contract for both parties often can be an arduous process. Unlike one-time vendor contracts, outsourcing contracts require a different mindset because outsourcing vendors actually are integrated into the company over a long-term period during which they become privy to inside information. That’s why it takes months to select the proper vendor. And the key, according to those who have benefited from such relationships, is for a company to know its needs and goals before starting the selection process. In addition to specifying the scope of desired services and nitty-gritty working arrangements, outsourcing contracts can also include protection clauses for arbitration, confidentiality, risk sharing and penalties.

Whether the function being outsourced is part of personnel or from another area of the company, such a relationship involves a multitude of HR issues. Human resources specialists, therefore, need to be involved early on in the process, starting when the company begins to conduct its needs assessment, establish its short-and long-term goals, determine its decision-making structure and project the estimated costs.

In fact, HR departments already play a role in some 65% of all company outsourcing cases, up from about 35% in the past. So while the search and selection team ideally involves a top executive, the respective department manager and a legal expert, human resources often plays a critical role as facilitators and coordinators of the entire process.

It’s a natural role for human resources professionals to play because of their communication and administration expertise. They are qualified to assist in the proper selection and management of outside vendors. They can maintain focus on the company’s growth strategy, its corporate environment, workforce culture and overall objectives. “HR knows best the company’s personnel requirements and is skilled in asking the right questions in order to obtain quality staffing,” says Kathleen Correia, president of Accounting Solutions, a national consulting firm supplying organizations with professionals in accounting, human resources, management information, financial analysis and computer systems.

As a trend sweeping U.S. companies of all sizes, outsourcing is the purchase of a good or service that previously was provided in-house. Information-systems outsourcing options, for example, have existed since the beginning of data processing. As early as 1963, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) handled data-processing services for Frito-Lay and Blue Cross & Blue Shield. Today, other outsourcing options include such functions as mail room, data processing, COBRA administration, payroll, temporary employment services and relocation.

But not all experts agree that outsourcing is a friendly partnership. In a study of 14 Fortune 500 companies that faced outsourcing decisions, the companies most dissatisfied with outsourcing all had signed contracts that dramatically favored the vendor. The contracts merely stipulated that the vendor would provide the same level of service that the company received prior to outsourcing.

The study was conducted by Mary C. Lacity, assistant professor of management information systems, College of Business Administration, University of Missouri, and Rudy Hirschheim, professor and director of the Information Systems Research Center, College of Business Administration, University of Houston. (Their detailed case studies appear in their book, “Information Systems Outsourcing: Myths, Metaphors, and Realities.”) Although these researchers focused on information-systems outsourcing, many of the lessons included can be applied to how human resources departments work with any vendor that is providing an ongoing service or function.

Lacity and Hirschheim warn that viewing outsourcing vendors as “strategic partners” can be a mistake because the profit motive is not shared. Account managers at outsourcing providers, they say, are rewarded for maximizing profits, primarily by charging customers additional fees for services that extend beyond the contract. When a customer’s costs increase, so do the vendor’s profits.

The danger in viewing the vendor as a strategic partner, they emphasize, is that the customer may sign a loose contract. Once it goes into effect, the vendor may not provide the expected service. One petroleum company that outsourced its entire information systems function in the late 1980s, for example, was charged $500,000 in excess fees the first month into the contract. That was 50% more than what it had expected, because the company managers assumed the services already were covered in the contract. But the vendor rightfully claimed that services not documented in the contract are above baseline and so are subject to additional fees, according to the study. This doesn’t mean that vendors are inherently opportunistic. What’s more likely is that both parties failed to communicate clearly from the beginning.

Despite the risks, however, more and more companies view their outsourcing vendors as strategic partners. The most important tips for negotiating an outsourcing contract—once your needs have been assessed—focus on ensuring that the relationship will work given the customer’s real needs, while allowing for future changes:

• Institute a detailed Request for Proposal (RFP) process
• Solicit possible vendor references
• Discard the outsourcing vendor’s standard contract
• Don’t sign incomplete contracts
• Select your account manager
• Measure everything during the baseline period
• Determine growth rates
• Take care of your people.

Activate an aggressive bidding process.
When First Interstate initiated its outsourcing search, the company began with a mission statement of values and strategies. After promoting it within the organization, the statement was communicated during the RFP stage. As potential vendors were interviewed, they were introduced to First Interstate’s background: who they are, how they’re configured and some of their communication challenges and needs.

For example, when First Interstate outsourced its employee relocation services, one aspect was contracting van-line businesses.

What they found was that many van lines operate very independently. So the company asked the van lines to give one proposal through their franchise holder—the company whose name they bore even though they were separate and very independent legal entities. “It caused a bit of a stir, but that was logistically important for us in order to coordinate our communications and to make certain that we were working with an organization that could really give us one answer for their company and muster all of their resources to the needs in our territory,” says Jones. It was a condition, she adds, for responding to First Interstate’s RFP.

The RFP stage is important because it helps the company identify the most compatible candidates. Although reference checks are conducted, the RFP process prepares the vendor for one of several personal interviews. Many vendors say they appreciate the well-organized approach as well.

“A lot of those [vendors] have said how impressed they are with the level of knowledge we already have about their subject area and how professional the approach is.” Jones says that the outsourcing vendors understand early on that they aren’t dealing with a fly-by-night relationship.

Finding the right vendor for your company, even though it often can take a long time, pays off in the end. That was the case with Harvest Foods, Inc., says Robert Rough, executive vice president and CFO for the Little Rock, Arkansas-based retail grocery chain. With 54 stores, it employs about 3,100 workers.

Harvest Foods contracted with IBM’s Integrated Systems Solution Corporation (ISSC) to allow the company to focus on its core business, have access to enhanced technology and skilled personnel and to reduce operational expenses, Rough explains. He warns that outsourcing shouldn’t be used to address an organization’s lack of basic understanding of technology or as a “quick fix.”

Rough also advises that an organization’s decision-making group include the chief financial officer, chief information officer, board members, the human resources officer and a general counsel. That body’s commitment is essential, he says.

Although the search took six months, it resulted in a 10-year contract—long-term by most standards. The reason Harvest Foods opted for such a long contract, Rough explains, was to outsource the information systems, which included the installation of equipment such as scanners, cash registers, instore processors and other hardware that Harvest Foods could pay for over as long a period as possible.

Also during the solicitation stage, those who are experienced with outsourcing say that it’s important to supplement the personal interviews with reference checks. Art Young, benefits manager for Hewlett-Packard, says that his organization did so when it outsourced some of its benefits and service awards functions. Checking references, he says, should not be underestimated. “You want to know how much [business the vendor] has—who their big companies were and how much volume they had,” Young says.

Discard the vendor’s standard contract.
Many vendors push to use their standard contracts. But Lacity, Hirschheim and others say that the key to successful outsourcing arrangements is building a company-or even site-specific contract. Often the vendor’s contract is one-sided and only obligates the vendor to perform the same level of service that the company’s designated department already provides.

Site-specific contracts are useful because the impact of outsourcing is manifold. It affects each company in many areas: economics, service, organization, procedures, technical services and corporate culture. Standard contracts may not take into consideration a company’s individual profile.

Failing to make sure that the final contract fits your needs can turn outsourcing into a mixed blessing. In one case study of a bank that outsourced its information systems (IS) function, Lacity and Hirschheim illustrate the point. While senior management was happy because the outsourcing vendor had increased the percentage of online availability and response time, the lower-level users were dissatisfied with the arrangement because they no longer were able to contact an analyst to make changes to the system, but instead had to submit requests to a user-systems liaison group. Obviously, had the procedures been more clearly specified in the outsourcing contract, these problems may have been averted.

Nevertheless, the benefits of a successful outsourcing relationship are a powerful inducement for human resources departments and corporate management. The question, then, is how to avoid the pitfalls of bad outsourcing arrangements while reaping the benefits of the best.

Do not sign incomplete outsourcing contracts.
As a company and vendor become more anxious for the business relationship to begin, both can be tempted to close the negotiation prematurely. The outsourcing vendor, in particular, may pressure the company to sign the contract before all the details are specified. But since the vendor isn’t legally bound to alter the contract later, it may never agree to change the original contract. Even if revisions are worked out, the process may cause more damage to the ongoing relationship than all the rush was worth. So in addition to specifying the services requested, outsourcing contracts should also include:

• Designation of who does what
• Performance benchmarks
• A reporting system
• Procedures for any unanticipated problems
• Working arrangement (where and how)
• Penalties
• Duration of contract
• Payment schedule
• Cancellation provisions
• Special clauses that cover arbitration, risk sharing, confidentiality and renegotiation.

Designating who does what is the best way to ensure that a company retains control, says Kathryn Devos, manager of employee services for Madison, New Jersey-based Schering-Plough Corp. Her company outsourced relocation, awards and incentives to obtain better-quality service for employees.

In negotiating with a relocation vendor, Devos warns that without a clear plan for marketing employees’ homes, a corporation could end up taking a financial loss on a house. For example, the vendor may decide that the only way it can sell a home is by lowering the price. Meanwhile, the corporation is in the dark about how the home is being marketed. “You really have to force them into allowing you, the corporate person who’s paying the bills, to have some say in what’s happening to the home [in question],” says Devos.

She also advises that organizations conduct the accounting on site. Typically, a lot of work occurs in the background during a relocation process: giving equity advances to an employee, paying off a mortgage, paying the appraisal, paying for inspection and maintenance. All of those procedures require bills. If, for example, she gets a $150 bill for lawn care and Devos knows it’s a small home, she can walk over to one of the accountants and immediately clarify the item.

Also, by having relocation vendors on site, Schering-Plough’s employees now have one point of contact, instead of the 17 different people they were referred to previously. Because corporations always are subject to audits, Devos also insisted that all files be kept on site. “I wanted them here,” she says. “You can either be hands-on or hands-off. But you can’t be in the middle.”

Because the company spends at least $20 million to $30 million annually in relocation costs, somebody in the organization has to follow the money. An account manager should be clearly designated, Devos says. When reports are submitted, someone in the company has to know what the numbers mean and understand each service charge.

Also, whether the vendor provides one or more professionals, the names of the vendor’s outsourcing team should be reported to ensure strict dedication to the company. In situations where a vendor may want to subcontract out, these conditions also should be clarified in the contract. Jones, of First Interstate, says that organizations should include provisions that allow the company to approve or disapprove a subcontract relationship with any vendor other than the original outsource partner. In some cases, it might be approved only on a temporary basis until the original vendor can resume its services.

In terms of establishing performance benchmarks, the contract must be specific since either the company or vendor may wish to add, combine, improve or delete certain performance measures. But both parties might also want to allow some flexibility by inserting appendices, which is a legal term applied to all standard contracts.

Measures, according to Lacity and Hirschheim, typically require vendors to deliver a certain amount of work in a certain period of time. This applies to IS vendors and others. For example, 90% of all service requests may be promised within three days. But what about the remaining 10%? It may be serviced later or not at all. Despite the fact that 10% may never be measured, the outsourcing vendor has technically met its service-level measurement.

To avoid that problem, companies should specify 100% service accountability in the contract. If 90% is processed in three days, the remaining 10% should be completed, for example, in five days. Any exceptions should be fully documented and reported.

A reporting system also should be included in the outsourcing contract. Otherwise, a company can’t be guaranteed that the services it expects have been provided. Organizations may choose to require weekly, monthly or even quarterly reports. Those decisions should be based not so much on convenience, but at what intervals those services are best evaluated.

In one case study covered by Lacity and Hirschheim, a security vendor’s report indicated that “One hundred security requests were implemented this month.” The report did not, however, specify how many were submitted or the average turn-around time for the requests. According to the contract, the vendor had met its service levels. But the users complained that security requests took more than two weeks to process. Reports, therefore, should quantify the agreed-upon service levels. Organizations might also want to design the reports so there is little room for fudging by the vendor.

Because unforseen problems always arise, companies might also specify what procedures will prevail if services are unmet. Lacity and Hirschheim recommend that services be divided into critical and noncritical categories. For example, you might want to allow a vendor to miss noncritical measures (such as analyst training hours) once or twice a year. But for critical services (such as online availability), the company may require immediate reporting and a cash penalty if necessary. Those penalties for undelivered services also should be specified in the contract negotiations.

Some of those penalties may prove costly for the outsourcing vendor. For example, a commercial bank may invoke penalties between $25,000 and $50,000 if its data-processing vendor fails to meet end-user response time, system availability and batch-delivery deadlines for critical systems.

Although cash penalties never fully compensate the company, they certainly ensure that the vendor’s senior management will attend to service-level problems. “Who’s responsible if something goes wrong?” asks Young. “That’s a sticky issue.”

Protect yourself when negotiating the contract.
After most major items have been specified in a given contract, organizations also should consider including protection clauses for items such as special compensation, arbitration, cancellation, confidentiality and termination.

Correia, of Accounting Solutions, says that companies should set up parameters for special compensation. For example, companies sometimes want to hire key personnel away from an outsourcing vendor. Some contracts prohibit recruiting the vendor’s employees; others allow the practice but set terms of compensation for the vendor. In either case, the point is to be honest and up-front in the working relationship. After all, people are what the vendors are selling, says Correia. And again, the role of HR managers is important because they are the ones to help cultivate a positive working relationship with the vendor.

Many companies also are reluctant to outsource because they don’t trust vendors to protect their confidentiality or competitive information. Most outsourcing vendors work hard to defuse this issue. Accounting Solutions, for example, requests its temporary CPAs to undergo a professional ethics exam. But for highly sensitive or competitive information, companies should take more stringent measures. If, for example, the company is engaged in research and development, and the vendor is allowed access to privileged information, the company may want to request that all computer disks are returned. Both sides, Correia says, need to have an agreement about public disclosures. “You always think people have discretion, but it’s better to put it in writing.”

Because relationships don’t last forever, or even as long as the original contract, most lawyers will insist that termination clauses be inserted to protect both parties. Either the company or vendor may need to terminate a contract because of bankruptcy, sale of a company or some other unforseen disaster. The main feature in such clauses is to specify the time period in which adequate notice is given. Failure to provide it also may result in a severe penalty charge.

Since negotiation with another vendor could take another six months and rebuilding an internal department could take up to a year, continued vendor assistance should be a requirement during the transition, regardless of who initiated the changing circumstance.

Assuming that there have been no problems with a vendor, organizations also will face the issue of outsourcing-contract renewals. Some critics of outsourcing say that companies have no other choice but to renew the vendor contract because the decision is long-term. In some cases, ceasing or changing vendors can be costly because you end up paying for some of the services twice. But if an organization has drawn up a detailed contract and established a successful working relationship with its vendor, renewals—even short-term—are most likely.

Another strategy for negotiating outsourcing contracts is to measure everything during a baseline period. That means documenting the company’s current service level and using that as the yardstick to determine the vendor’s obligations.

This procedure is different from the RFP in that the RFPs are merely high-level descriptions of service requirements. Baseline measures are much more exact measurements that, if not noted, can cause service problems and excess charges if items are unclear.

Moreover, an organization might want to anticipate its growth rate so it can share the benefits of price performance improvements.

In such areas as information systems, for example, the cost of a unit of processing decreases every year. If a company doesn’t make its own projections, some information systems vendors could underestimate growth, which could lead to excessively high fees in the future. Says Rough, of Harvest Foods: “It’s kind of tough when you’re sitting there trying to figure out what your costs will be for the next 10 years. But you have to make the effort.”

Although there are naysayers who claim that such projections are impossible to make, Rough argues that a company can’t enter a long-term, 10-year contract without them. The company’s negotiating team has to make some assumptions as to where it’s going. “That way,” Rough says, “you’re comparing apples to apples.”

HR sets the tone for outsourcing.
In many cases of outsourcing, companies have to displace employees. HR can help ensure that the company assumes social responsibility to treat those affected fairly. That means informing them of any final decision as soon as possible and helping them secure positions elsewhere, if necessary.

According to one labor mediator, the challenge for human resources is to create a temporary benefit package and provide job referrals or job retraining. For those remaining employees, the HR department must continue to raise the morale and resolidify the corporate culture around the changes. But in the best scenario, a vendor will consider retaining most of the employees in question on a trial basis.

As more and more companies continue to downsize and restructure for leaner times, human resources specialists will find that they are also asked to assist in companywide outsource planning. Whether or not HR’s role is confined to its own department or it’s participating companywide, the best approach to contract negotiations and any subsequent changes can be greatly facilitated by HR’s communication skills throughout the process.

Besides the nuts and bolts of pinning down the contract’s specifics, there is also an underlying attitude issue that must frame the process. Lillian R. Gorman, vice president of human resources at First Interstate, believes that flexibility and open communication is the key. Every professional relationship evolves and requires some give and take on both sides. A solid working relationship can yield a contract later on if a vendor wasn’t chosen as today’s provider of choice. “That’s the spirit we want going into relationships. [Vendors] aren’t just the hired guns asked to go out and fix something,” says Gorman.

What goes up, must come down. The theory applies to gravity and also aptly describes U.S. real estate values. Declining real estate prices over the past few years in certain areas, such as California and the Northeast, have caused a chain reaction in corporate relocation problems within the U.S. Employers that move operations to less costly areas often experience resistance from homeowning employees who stand to lose lots of money on the sale of their properties.

Many corporate moves in 1993, prompted by downsizings and reorganizations, were group moves rather than individual ones-creating greater challenges than ever before for HR professionals.

Uncle Sam didn’t help matters much either last year. New 1994 tax laws now prevent employees from itemizing deductions for certain moving expenses, forcing employers to decide whether to gross workers up by making up the difference.

Employers have to deal with the relocation turmoil and figure out how to get the right people, to the right places, at the right time-for the right price. Corporations are countering transferee resistance with improved ways to smooth out the relocation road. These new strategies, developed over the past few years, are holding new promise for the relocation challenges of 1994 and beyond.

Some of the strategies have been around for a while, but are being reintroduced with renewed vigor. Others are being discovered by many relocation professionals for the first time. The strategies include such real-estate sales incentives as self-marketing and bonus programs, and loss-on-sale assistance. They also include relocation reimbursement strategies like lump-sum payments. The effect of these programs has been to slow or eliminate employees’ resistance to relocate in the wake of depressed housing markets while also helping save on the high administrative costs of running a relocation program.

Depressed housing markets cause resistance to relocate.
According to the Washington, D.C.-based Employee Relocation Council’s (E-R-C) 1993 relocation trends survey, nearly 60% of the respondees had problems relocating employees during 1992. E-R-C cites the biggest reasons why employees were reluctant to relocate (in order of significance): as slowed real-estate appreciation and depressed housing markets at the old location, high housing costs and high costs-of-living at proposed destinations. The E-R-C also reports that in 1992, more than three-quarters of companies have either “some” or “a great deal” of transfer activity in high-cost areas.

The areas that employees most resisted moving to in 1993 were the Northeast states such as New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, and California, which has experienced the biggest housing downturn in recent memory. The National Association of Realtors (NAR), headquartered in Washington, D.C., confirms that home sale prices were lower in the West and the Northeast in 1993 than they were in 1992, while home prices in the Midwest and South have steadily risen for the past three years.

The NAR reports that homes sales were up in every region except the West at the end of 1993. “What has happened there is overinflated home values,” explains Alvin Wagner of A.L. Wagner & Co., a real-estate appraisal company based in Flossmoor, Illinois. “California has had the highest housing losses and continues to be in a rapidly declining market from 1% to 1-1/2% per month.”

In addition, depressed housing markets causing relocation resistance, corporate reorganizations and downsizings forced many employees to make moves that they otherwise wouldn’t have had to make. According to a survey conducted by Evansville, Indiana-based Atlas Van Lines, Inc., more than 42% of the organizations surveyed named corporate reorganizations rather than promotions or resignations as the internal condition that prompted the most relocations in 1992.

According to relocation experts, that trend also continued in 1993 and caused a huge upswing in group moves. Most group moves were from high-cost regions on the West and East coasts where the stubborn recession persists, and to areas such as the South and Midwest where it’s generally less expensive to operate.

The group-move scenario caused an outcry among many employees caught in the reorganization cycle last year. For example, Beverly Berberich, corporate relocation manager of Racine, Wisconsin-based SC Johnson Wax, handled her company’s first-ever group move in 1993. Because Johnson Wax purchased the Drakett Co. from Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co., it had to move 55 of Drackett’s 1,200 employees from Cincinnati to Racine.

“Whenever you have a group move situation, there’s a lot of dynamics going on,” says Berberich. “People are going to an unknown. It’s normal for a group move to cause some apprehension, and in some cases, resistance.” The biggest resistance comes from younger employees who tend to look at how a relocation will affect their quality of life rather than how it will enhance their professional career.

For other organizations, such as Armonk, New York-based IBM Corp., however, moving groups of employees didn’t create much resistance for the company last year. Although most of its 8,700 domestic moves in 1993 were of a group nature, anywhere from 20 to 1,000 employees at a time, transferees didn’t complain much. The reason? While workers may lose money on the sale of their homes as they move out of depressed housing markets, they still have a job-at least for the time being.

“The changes occurring in the relocation industry parallel the changes that are going on in corporate America,” says Cris Collie, executive vice president of the E-R-C. For example, the continued surge in corporate restructurings have led many of the E-R-C’s members to conduct more relocations in 1993 than they anticipated at the beginning of the year, says Collie. Many employers thought that overall transfer volume would decrease. In fact, it either remained steady or increased slightly in 1993 and is expected to continue on the same path this year.

And how will real-estate values affect relocation? Is the end of the housing slump in the West in sight? Not likely for a few years, say the experts. Continued good interest rates (around 7%) in the Northeast, however, may spell some relief for home-selling transferees in that region who may find it easier to locate buyers now than they have for the past few years. According to a November 1993 report in Resources, a newsletter published by the Gillette, New Jersey-based Tri-State Relocation Services Group, Inc. (a not-for-profit corporation serving New York, New Jersey and Connecticut), the buyer’s bull market in the Northeast may last for at least another year, if not two or three.

Where does that leave employers? Looking for strategies that will get employees to go where they need them to go, while also holding down ever-increasing prices. “Every company is looking to control costs,” says Collie. “In order to accomplish that, companies are requiring their employees to participate more in the relocation process.”

Self-marketing programs and bonus programs help keep costs down and morale up.
mployers are taking a renewed interest in home-sales incentives such as self-marketing and bonus programs. Self-marketing programs topped Rochester, Wisconsin-based Runzheimer International’s list of relocation trends for 1993. More and more companies are asking employees to get involved in selling their homes through premarketing or self-marketing programs—so that employers don’t have to step in and handle home sales themselves, or worse, take homes into inventory.

With self-marketing programs, a third-party counselor helps a worker through the home-sale process. For instance, counselors help transferees identify real-estate agents and know what to look for, such as:

• What types of activities the real-estate agent should be performing throughout the listing period
• How often to hold open houses
• How to develop counteroffer plans.

“It’s someone in the employee’s corner to talk with about the sale of the house,” says Laura Hamilton, manager of relocation services for Midland, Michigan-based Dow Corning Corp. Dow Corning, which relocated 43 employees domestically last year, has offered this service as an option to employees for the past two years. “It’s been very successful in helping avoid purchasing employee homes and taking them into inventory, which is extremely expensive,” says Hamilton.

Almost 90% of Dow’s relocating employees participate in the company’s home-marketing assistance program. Of those employees, more than 80% are successful in selling their homes themselves. Dow ends up taking approximately 20% of transferees’ homes into inventory.

While the idea isn’t new, self-marketing continues to increase in popularity. The E-R-C reported that between 1988 and 1991, the use of home-marketing assistance programs in general nearly doubled, from 15% to 29%.

Relocation experts say that employee-generated home sales are an increasingly attractive alternative to taking homes into corporate inventory. Although employee sales costs increased slightly in 1992, the average cost of employee home sales is still less than half the cost of selling inventoried homes, according to Runzheimer. In dollars, that translates into a $120 savings per $1,000 of a home’s appraised value.

“Once homes go into inventory, you’re talking 20% to 24% of the value of the property,” says Tom Peiffer, executive vice president of Runzheimer’s living-cost division. “If you can get the employee to market the home for 45 to 90 days, that saves the company a lot of money.”

Will the home-marketing idea continue to be important in 1994? “I think it will,” says Peiffer. “If companies want people to move from soft or depressed housing market areas, I don’t know how they can do otherwise.” Home-marketing isn’t as crucial for employees who’ve been in their homes for eight to 10 years. They’ll probably make money on the sale of their home regardless of specific marketing strategies that help ensure a higher price. However, transferees who’ve been in their homes only a few years may need home-marketing programs to get as much equity out of their home as possible. They even may help transferees break even.

According to E-R-C trends surveys, bonus programs that are tied to home-marketing programs are another increasingly popular relocation provision and help get employees more involved in the home-sale process. The E-R-C reported that in 1991, almost 40% of companies with third-party home-marketing assistance programs gave workers a bonus or cash incentive if they found a buyer for their home during the self-marketing period. Although methods of determining the dollar amount vary, the most common method is to base it on a percent of the home’s sale price with no dollar maximum.

In addition to offering transferees home-marketing assistance, Dow Corning also offers a bonus program. An employee need not use home-marketing assistance, however, to qualify for a bonus. “It’s positioned as an extra benefit,” says Dow’s Hamilton.

Dow bases its bonus program on a sliding scale that takes into account the appraised value of the home and the actual sales price. If an employee finds a buyer for his or her home at the appraised value, Dow pays the employee a 3% bonus. If the employee sells the home at 99% of the appraised value, he or she earns a 2.5% bonus. The scale goes down to 96% and yields a bonus of 1%.

Employees at Dow are guaranteed to earn 100% of their homes’ appraised value through the company’s policy to take homes into inventory if employees can’t sell them outright. “The idea is to bring more offers to the table,” says Hamilton. “So the way to get them to do that is to give them a monetary incentive.”

By contrast, IBM doesn’t take transferees homes into inventory if employees can’t sell them. But it does offer transferees a bonus program in association with a self-marketing program. Nearly two years ago, IBM implemented a bonus program that allows employees to receive 1% of a home’s appraised value if they sell their home within 90 days.

According to Suzane Parker, manager of international assignments and relocation services for IBM’s WFS Workforce Solutions, a bonus program gets employees more involved in selling their homes from the outset. “It’s an issue of getting them up and running faster,” says Parker. “If you really get employees charged up about premarketing, hopefully you can get the home sold in 45 days. That’s less cost to the corporation, but it’s also an emotional boost for employees as well.” The sooner their homes are sold, the sooner they can get to their new assignments.

While bonus programs may be popular, one relocation expert warns that companies first should see how well a self-marketing program works in getting homes sold before tacking a bonus program onto their relocation policies. Ellie Monty, president and publisher of the Relocation Compass, a newsletter published in Hinsdale, Illinois, says that when self-marketing programs first came into vogue a few years ago, many employers automatically threw in a bonus incentive with them.

“Bonuses are being reexamined by companies because, while they’re an incentive for the employee, they might not be necessary to implement a successful home marketing program,” says Monty. She advises that employers first check to see how a well-managed home-marketing program works before attaching bonus incentive, because once it’s written into policy, it’s often difficult to remove later.

Loss-on-sale programs spread.
Where home-marketing and bonus programs end, loss-on-sale programs begin. While loss-on-sale programs are another increasingly popular option in the relocation professional’s bag of tricks, like self-marketing or bonus programs, they aren’t an entirely new idea.

For several years, companies have been reimbursing workers with part or all of the difference between what they sell their homes for and what their homes are worth. For example, in 1989, 40% of companies provided loss-on-sale assistance via a formal policy to transferees, according to E-R-C. And another 27% provided such assistance on a case-by-case basis. By 1992, 75% of companies provided loss-on-sale assistance and the other 25% provided it on a case-by-case basis.

Despite continued increases in loss-on-sale amounts because of transferees who are forced to sell their homes in depressed housing markets, fewer companies are willing to shoulder the entire burden when a loss on sale occurs. Only 25% of companies with formal loss-on-sale policies cover 100% of the loss, according to the E-R-C.

Dow Corning is one of them. It upgraded its loss-on-sale program from 80% to 100% reimbursement in 1993. “We recently reviewed our loss-on-sale policy to help us avoid employees’ hesitation in accepting jobs from one location to another,” says Hamilton. While loss-on-sale programs may be a good option for companies that transfer small numbers of employees each year, it might be an impossibility for the firm with large numbers of transferees.

IBM is one company that doesn’t cover employees’ real estate losses-on-sale. “It’s really an affordability issue,” says Parker of IBM. “If we tried to offer that type of program, we’d have an awfully huge financial impact on the corporation,” she says.

Loss-on-sale programs, however, aren’t the only way that employers can ease transferees’ burdens during the move process. Companies increasingly are handling the discretionary relocation items such as temporary living expenses and house-hunting trip expenses through lump-sum payment programs. Employers dole out a chunk of money to transferees before the move and let them keep whatever they don’t use.

Are lump-sum payment programs the best thing since sliced bread?
Although lump-sum payment programs aren’t new-they’ve been around for more than eight years-their popularity increased dramatically in 1993. Some companies swear by them. Employers ask employees to manage their moving expenses, and in return, the employee can keep any excess money.

And why not? Companies can save enormous amounts of time and administrative expense. By not having to collect and process a receipt for every relocation item such as meals, lodging, airfare and rental car expenses, relocation professionals can spend more time counseling transferees on other important issues pertaining to the move.

“Lump sums are a hot topic,” says Runzheimer’s Peiffer. Proof: the E-R-C reports that in 1993, 3% of companies gave current employees a lump-sum payment (with no requirements to itemize expenses). The same study indicated that 2% reimburse the household goods shipment but provide a lump sum for all other moving expenses. And 3% of companies even cover real-estate sales expenses, such as closing costs, with lump sums.

The benefit of lump sums for employees is that they get to manage the cash and spend it as they see fit. In the end, managing the lump-sum relocation benefit may be one of the only aspects of the relocation that transferees have control over. For instance, if an employer is dictating which moving companies a transferee must use, such as the real-estate company, the premarketing company and the homefinding company, the lump-sum allowance at least gives the transferee the ability to pick which hotel to stay in during the move or whether to fly first class or coach.

Says Peiffer, “It helps people settle in a lot faster.” Given the enormous emotional and psychological stress that’s associated with any move, allowing the transferee to make some decisions on his or her own is no small consideration in getting the transferee up and running in the new location as quickly as possible.

A new twist in the tax laws, however, have thrown companies using lump-sum programs a curve ball. The federal government’s new moving expense deduction rules (Section 217 under the Revenue Reconciliation Act of 1993, Public Law 103-66), which took effect January 1, 1994, restrict transferees who itemize from deducting lump-sum payments that cover house-hunting trips, temporary living expenses, or residence-sale or residence-purchase expenses. However, for the first time in many years, renters who don’t itemize deductions are able to claim such expenses as van line or date-of-move expenses.

Under the old law, employers had difficulty determining what was tax deductible and what wasn’t. “Now it’s clear that it’s all going to be taxable,” says E-R-C’s Collie, “so it’s easier to handle in terms of grossing up of that tax liability.”

Many corporations are having to decide exactly what they want to do about the grossing-up issue. “It’s going to take more money on their part to make the employee whole,” explains Monty. For example, if an organization in the past had given an employee a lump sum of $10,000, that employee, in essence, may have received only $7,000 under the new tax law because he or she has to pay taxes on that money. So that organization will have to determine if it wants to give the employee $3,000 or more to make up the difference. “A corporation can still say, ‘I’m sorry that that person has to eat that money, but we can’t continue to just gross this up either,” says Monty. “That’s the decision that corporations are making.”

IBM has offered a lump-sum payment to domestic transferees since 1989, and to international transferees since 1990. “The one challenge that we face is the handling of the enroute expenses,” says Parker. Many corporations that have lump sums have chosen to take out the enroute portion and handle that with expense accounts. “It isn’t a difficult thing to handle, but it’s more administration for us,” she adds.

Companies that have large transferee populations such as IBM usually benefit the most from a lump-sum program. Fewer receipts to process means less administrative paperwork.

Those employers that provide lump sums generally are satisfied with the way these programs work. But some employers are cautious. Johnson Wax’s Berberich says that while she’s thought about implementing a lump-sum program, she’s carefully considering whether it fits in with her company’s culture. “We’re a very paternalistic company,” says Berberich. “I wouldn’t want our employees to think that we’re pushing them away by giving them a lump sum and by saying, ‘Here, go take care of your own relocation.'” While she has seen that most employees at other organizations who get lump sums don’t see lump sums that way, she’s still considering the pros and cons.

Hamilton of Dow Corning agrees. “One of the reasons we’ve opted not to provide lump sums is that [not offering them] it keeps us in closer contact with our transferees, which we feel is important for customer service,” she says. When Hamilton’s relocation staff sees expense reports coming through, they know at which stage the transferee is in the relocation process and can offer assistance wherever necessary.

Lump sums tend to eliminate employees asking for additional funds. Because lump sums usually are based on a set policy that takes into consideration how much it costs for certain expenses such as a house-hunting trip for an employee and his or her partner to a certain area, including airfare, meals, rental car and so forth, advance lump-sum payments usually meet the need. But not always.

Therein lies the potential problem with lump-sum payments. “The downside with a lump sum is that you hand an employee money thinking that that employee shares your objective of covering the intended relocation costs,” says Monty. The money may be spent on peripheral expenses not related to the relocation such as credit card bills or college tuition. If an employee mishandles the money, says Monty, you’ve got a big problem—the employee still hasn’t moved, but may ask for more money. “That’s the story with lump sums,” says Monty, “they need direction.”

So do most relocation policies. Relocation professionals increasingly report that they have to revise their relocations policies nearly every year, rather than every five to 10 as they used to.

As relocation policies struggle to fit all the people all the time in the midst of reorganizations, group moves and ping-ponging real-estate values, relocation professionals are left wondering what will go up and what will go down next. No one can be certain. However, relocation strategies that capture the spirit of a company’s culture and are weighted carefully with financial priorities will get the most people where they need to go, when they need to get there.