Is mobility equitable at your company?

Have you looked at your mobility program through the lens of equity? In the past, and for many companies even today, their mobility policies are structured to provide the "same" benefits to each person or group of people as opposed to an equitable offering. Providing everyone with the same set of benefits is based on the idea of creating an equal playing field but have you considered whether the program is equitable or fair? Or have you considered exactly why two different employees with the same family size, relocation distance and set of benefits have vastly different survey scores reflecting a different experience? With no service issues, the answer is likely that each employee and family have vastly different needs that are not being met for one of them.

According to Mental Floss, "Equality has to do with giving everyone the exact same resources, whereas equity involves distributing resources based on the needs of the recipients." 

How has policy been changed over the years to meet employee needs?

Well, many tiered policies — and even "core-flex" policies more recently — have adjusted for the level of the employee, family size, sometimes distance, and maybe whether someone is a renter or homeowner. These adjustments have allowed benefits within the policy to flex slightly to meet the needs of the employee and their family. An easy example of a policy adjustment would be that a larger family is offered a larger shipment. Or if they are moving further (say, more than 400 miles) they might be offered the shipment of one or two cars.

This helped to provide slight customization, but what is the next step in creating more equitable mobility policies and programs?

Personalization. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has been talking about personalization of benefits for a few years. In this article, they discuss how employees want benefits tailored to their needs. Chris Bruce, managing director at Thomsons Online Benefits, sums things up really succinctly: "Delivering a personalized benefits scheme, which is able to accommodate an individual's interests and life goals, is instrumental in achieving this, helping to ensure [employees] remain at the organization and have the support they need to work at their best."

In that same SHRM article, there was mention of non-traditional benefits. They mentioned how employees want flexibility, choice and control in deciding their benefit package. They also mentioned that MetLife's 16th Annual U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study revealed that:

• 73% of employees said that having benefits customized to meet their needs would increase their loyalty to their employer.
• 60% were interested in having their employer provide a wider array of nonmedical benefits that they could choose to purchase and pay for on their own.
• Most employees would be willing to take a small pay cut (on average, 3.6%) in order to have a better choice of benefits from their employer.

As companies have looked across their benefit schemes to consider how to better allow employees to choose their benefits, has your mobility program been able to take personalization to the next level yet? Tell us more about what you have done over the last few years or what you plan to do in 2021. If you're not sure how to increase the level of personalization, ask us for some ideas! We have some great suggestions! Also, check out our recent report on diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) within mobility to take a closer look at building an inclusive (and equitable) program.