Winner of the 2019 Relocate Award for Relocation Management Company/Consultant Innovation of the Year

Above: Ildiko Burian, NEI Global Relocation

Award Winner: NEI Global Relocation  

Trust is the hallmark of a healthy relationship; one that demonstrates respect, consideration, communication, commitment and honesty. It is also the defining characteristic of NEI Global Relocation’s award- winning entry.

The entry showcased how the International Services team of the relocation management company (RMC) worked with a client’s internal mobility team to develop a centralised, global approach to relocation and international assignments from a fragmented service model.

As anyone who has been involved in a similar project will know, managing expectations, relationships and what can be highly nuanced regional approaches can be extremely demanding.

Yet, through its positive, determinedly collaborative approach, NEI succeeded in bringing together stakeholders and service partners from 40 different countries – all with varying processes, unique needs, and policies – to standardise communication and processes, ensuring a seamless experience for expats that now better supports the client’s business objectives.

Impressing the judges for how they demonstrated a clear commitment to building excellent trusting relationships across a broad spectrum of destinations, the 72 NEI members of the International Services team have made a lasting positive impact on the lives of more than 3,000 employees and their families relocating internationally in 2018.

Commending NEI, the judges said, “This firm sets out to build and maintain trusting relationships with its clients and demonstrates exceptionally effective outcomes from this focus on relationship building with multiple stakeholders. NEI also emphasises cost savings, addressing one of the most imperative needs in the current climate.”

Building Firm Foundations for Change Through Collaboration

Over an eight-month time frame, NEI worked with the client to review its current approach, develop a future vision, train key personnel and implement a client’s new global model, while making the most efficient use of resources in all 40 countries.

Critically, this required sensitive consideration of all viewpoints and an unwavering dedication to collaboration to ensure everyone had a say in the new global process. Demonstrating this single-mindedness, the

team developed Host Country Questionnaires as
a starting point, so each stakeholder across the 40 countries had a voice in migrating to the new approach.

Further demonstrating the agility, integrity and respect with which NEI achieved its goals, the company met in person with client HR teams in several countries to discuss country-specific processes and develop relationships critical to making the transition a success for the teams involved and relocating employees. This approach enabled the team to gain greater insight and understanding around where it might be appropriate to coordinate company approvals in certain situations.

Trusted Guides on Paper and In Practice 

To ensure transparency, consistency and consolidate trust in the relationship, NEI documented the outcomes of these relationship-building and fact-finding conversations in standardised, easy-to-update Host Country Guides. These country-specific, branded resources set out critical information for each stakeholder in an accessible format that increases understanding of policy administration and corporate goals.

Ultimately, these guides – alongside other country-specific resources such as “country roadmaps” detailing available resources for HR and benefits snapshots for each country – are now helping to deliver seamless service delivery for all relocating employees and are supporting a more equitable approach that has reduced the number of exceptions for the client company.

Impressively, NEI’s significant scope of work also included developing pioneering and cost-effective methods of sharing information between the client company and NEI. Building on its subject expertise and ability to build relationships, the team added further value by helping to develop global solutions for the client’s travel provider to support NEI’s total oversight.

Accepting the Relocate Award on behalf of everyone involved, a clearly thrilled Ildiko Burian, Geneva-based EMEA regional manager at NEI, said, “It’s so amazing, we won a Relocate Award two years ago and to hear our name again as a winning company was awesome!

“Our hard work and passion resulted in this award. We have a display wall where we put all our awards and this is another one we are really proud of. It definitely describes our efforts and the hard work that we all put into our services.”

www.neirelo.com