The Pain of Relocating For A Job - Ask HR Wench

I try to avoid hiring people that will have to move across the country to work for my company.

Why? Because it is almost always a nightmare. A nightmare for the candidate, their family and for me.

Also: it requires too much paperwork. I hate paperwork.

At one company I worked for, they had relocation down to a science. They had a full time relocation expert who also handled immigration (H1-B visas and that kind of thing). As a high tech company with a need for all kinds of engineers, this made sense. Other companies I've worked for? Meh. We mostly only relocated bigwigs, and only when it was REALLY necessary.

I suppose it is no surprise to you, dear readers, that *I* have never relocated for a job. Nor do I plan to anytime soon.

With that, I give you a reader's question on the pain that is relocation. Warning: this is a long one (even with editing).

How do I get a novice HR team to honor/follow their own contracts?

I moved across the country, leaving a large company to join the management ranks at a small/mid-sized company in Massachusetts. As part of the negotiations (some via email) the company was to provide:

• Financial and advisory assistance to sell my original home,

• Familiarizing me with the new area,

• Providing extended temporary housing and

• Locating an affordable new home.

These services went beyond the company's original relocation policy.

I got the customary, "We (HR) are here to help." When the offer came, I had to write in some of the specifics, signed it and sent it back. The HR follow-up was that they needed to retype the write-ins into the contract. Foolish me didn't realize that the revised version didn't capture every write-in (even though these were already agreed upon).

There was a looming acceptance deadline. I was assured by the, "We are here to help." I didn't raise more of an issue, until I requested that the first line item (extra months of temporary housing) be honored as originally agreed upon. This was rejected by an unseen HR rep. The reason given was the contract didn't cover it and it was outside policy.

Things began to snowball when home selling assistance didn't manifest itself and any direct request for help to avoid personal financial ruin was meet with, "Certainly you can sell your old home yourself," and, "No hire in our history has ever had the problems you are saying you have."

The most difficult part was trying to get HR to see that that vendor they required me to use to locate a new home was altering my financial applications (to Fannie Mae) to try to get me into a home that cost much more than I could afford. These concerns were typically met with,"Let's have a meeting in the future to discuss these issues." Yet such meetings were usually me talking to 2-3 HR reps (never upper management) staring into space with no actionable recourse, just more "Let's meet again at a later time."

After months of this, the final proposal was to offer me a one time payment of a few dollars and sign a new contract saying that:

• I won't look for any more assistance (note they still haven't met their first half of the original contract specifically to aid me in home sales) and

• To agree that if I leave the company to pursue other jobs I need to pay back everything (quoted "both realized and unrealized").

So now I am looking for some options. The ones I can think of are:

(1) Send it way up the flagpole, thereby either possibly agitating everyone and limit my career or maybe-just maybe getting the right decision makers to move;

(2) Take what miserly "shut-up" bribes are offered and sit quietly;

(3) Leave the company for another; or

(4) Go for external arbitration- which will costs me a lot of money and may label me as a company litigator. If the day-to-day work environment wasn't such a truly rewarding experience, my choice would have already been made.

Can you offer any other options that I may have missed or use your knowledge to let me in on some of the secret inner thought processes of the HR species and ways to get to a common ground? How do I get a novice HR team to follow their own contracts?

-Lost in Mass

I know you're looking for answers on what you should do now, but allow me a few words on what you should have done first. I offer these not to berate you, Lost in Mass, but to provide a warning flag for other readers that may be considering relocating for a job:

• If you receive an offer letter that does not contain all of the items negotiated DO NOT SIGN IT. Do not write anything in and then sign it. Call the hiring manager, not HR. Let the hiring manager know what's up and let them go to HR to fix it.

• Repeat #1 as necessary until every line item (outside of normal policy and benefits for your level of position) negotiated is included in the offer letter. If you sign without all of the negotiations listed, be prepared to wave goodbye to those items.
  

• If, for some reason, HR and/or the hiring manager refuses to put something in the offer letter ask them why. They may have a very good reason for it. For example, I never put "we will provide you with a safe place to work" in an offer letter. Why? Because it's the law that I provide that, ya silly goose. It's not negotiable.

• Locating a new home is something I have never seen a company promise. I have seen promises to provide a vendor for a limited amount of time/flat dollar amount to assist in locating an appropriate home, but otherwise that's a pretty lofty promise.

• Don't wait months for anything. Let your boss and HR know about screw ups immediately, if not sooner. Some hiring managers will not want to deal with these things and push you to "just talk to HR about it". I hate to say it, but that is not the best manager. A manager wants their new hires to succeed and helps remove obstacles so employees can do their jobs.

Ok, now that that is over with...you're HR department sounds like they are a little bit passive aggressive, not suited for talent management what-so-ever, annoying and not interested in keeping you with the company. It sounds like they decided, long ago, that you are more trouble than you're worth (to them) and they are DONE with you.

Great!

Assuming ditching this job and moving back to your old one is out of the question, I would do the following:

Do some serious research on costs (those already incurred by you and the company and those expected) and plunk it into Excel. Talk to your boss (who, I'm assuming is an executive). Lay it all out for him or her in a tactful way. Don't whine. Admit your mistakes. Offer the executive your win-win solution (which, in my book, is the highest one-time payout possible....use your research to prove your business case for this). As far as pay-back goes, offer a "graded" solution: you repay 75% if you leave in less than a year, 50% if you leave after 18 months, etc.

Readers - what do you think?


Cross posted at BlogHer