Four Tips for Supporting Employees Through Corporate Transfer or Relocation
In today’s market, selling a home isn’t a quick checklist item: It’s a multi-month, emotionally taxing project. For HR and mobility leaders, this phase often determines how an employee truly feels about their relocation experience.
In today’s market, selling a home isn’t a quick checklist item. It’s a multi-month, emotionally taxing project that’s layered on top of a full-time job, school schedules and the pressure of an impending relocation. For HR and mobility leaders, this phase often determines how an employee truly feels about their relocation experience. At Hilldrup, we believe successful moves start with seeing the whole person, not just the shipment.
To help ensure your relocation is a success (and not a failed move statistic), keep reading for four tips to help support transferees throughout the entire relocation process.
Tip #1: Reframe the process as a marathon, not a sprint.
You wouldn’t just start a marathon with no training, support or preparation — right? Just like a marathon, you shouldn’t expect your transferees to go in this alone. Even the best laid corporate relocation polices can fall short without the proper guidance.
On paper, a home sale program may look simple: broker support, appraisals, marketing assistance and closing services. But in real life, it looks very different. In today’s landscape, homes are on the market longer. That means, there are more showings, ongoing last-minute requests, not to mention staging, repairs, inspections all wrapped up in the emotion weight of selling a place they called home.
For your transferee, every showing becomes a mini-move. And they’re expected to do all of this while performing at a high level in their role.
HR Takeaway: This is where thoughtful support makes all the difference. After the initial conversations about relocation happen, schedule regularly (weekly or bi-weekly) Move Meetings to get status updates and to work through any challenges your employee may be experiencing. This sets the stage for why HR support matters before the move even begins.
Tip #2: Lead with empathy and strengthen communications.
Relocation policies aren’t just another benefit to administer. Instead, the most successful corporations will treat its relocation work as an experience to design.
Put yourself in the shoes of your employees. You may be working with a parent who is navigating the emotions of the full family, on top of all the logistics that come with navigating a move. Your young, single professionals may also be navigating their own challenges of finding pet care and stepping away from the office to handle things at home.
When employees feel genuinely supported, they move forward — in motion — with confidence.
HR Takeaway: Adjust your message to use people-centered language. For example, don’t simply say, “We offer a home sale benefit.” Lead with your employee’s experience by saying, “We support our people through the home sale journey.” When this phase feels overwhelming, even the best relocation policy can feel impersonal. But when it feels supported, employees move forward with confidence.
Tip #3: Create lifestyle value-adds to generate goodwill.
Small gestures, huge impact. Take a page out of the realtor’s handbook by creating a gift basket approach to supporting your employee through this transitional phase. By taking the extra step to help remove the friction for your employee, they’ll feel supported in a new way and it can take one thing off their personal list.
What does that look like?
- For families with young kids: Showings don’t pause for nap time — and keeping a home “show ready” with kids in it can feel like a full-time job on its own. Consider gift cards for supportive services like storage rentals, home cleaning and restaurants. Include car-friendly items like a travel kids entertainment box or a car vacuum for the many times they’ll need to quickly pack up and head out for a showing. You might also consider a short-term membership to a local YMCA or community center — giving families a place to land during showings, with access to childcare, activities for kids, and even showers to reset before heading back home.
- For pet owners: Pets feel the disruption too — and keeping a home show-ready with animals in it can add an extra layer of unpredictability. Last-minute showings often mean quick clean-ups, coordinating walks, or finding somewhere to go with little notice, all while trying to keep pets calm and routines intact. Consider gift cards to local grooming and boarding businesses, or to a pet walking or sitter service that can step in during the day for impromptu showings. You could also provide a guide to nearby pet-friendly places or even consider pet-friendly workplace flexibility during this phase.
- For single professionals or dual-career couples: Balancing a home sale alongside demanding work schedules — often without a built-in support system — introduces a different kind of pressure. Last-minute showings can interrupt meetings and compress already limited personal time. In these moments, time becomes the most valuable resource. Consider gift cards to restaurants, meal delivery services, home cleaning, or local experiences like movie theatres, casual breweries, sports bars, or interactive venues like Topgolf — places where they can step away, reset, and comfortably spend time while their home is being shown. A short-term gym membership can also provide added flexibility — offering a place to recharge, take a call, or simply access a shower and reset while on the go.
Being able to take something off of your employee’s mental load is the goal here.
HR Takeaway: If you don’t have the capacity to come up with customized care packages, consider giving transfers a bank of Moving PTO Hours and/or encouraging managers to reassign workloads to less time-sensitive tasks. That way, if they need to leave to handle something move-related, they’re not working overtime or afterhours to catch up for something that was out of their control in the first place.
Tip #4: Get senior buy-in by making the ROI business case.
To do this work right, it takes time and energy –- something we know may be in short supply since relocation is likely “other duties as assigned” for many HR specialists. To help protect the time and energy that gets invested into a relocation effort, make the case to senior leadership to protect and invest in this process.
When corporations are thoughtful in their approach, home sale support policies can drive measurable impact:
- Faster relocation acceptance
- Higher employee satisfaction
- Reduced stress and burnout
- Stronger retention
- A differentiated employer brand
HR Takeaway: If your organization hasn’t originally invested time and energy in making home sale support an experience, run the numbers. Give your policies a closer read. What were the average days on the market when you first wrote the policy, compared to the realties of today? Dig up any post-move survey data, any retention numbers or anything that can help quantify your previous successes (or losses). Make the case for more support for today’s market by building out a narrative with data that points.
Hilldrup: Your Partner Beyond the Truck
Remember, the move doesn’t start on move day: it starts the moment an employee gets told they’re being relocated – even before the “For Sale” sign hits the yard.
At Hilldrup, we see relocation as a journey, not a single event. We help HR and mobility leaders design experiences that remove friction at every stage — from home sale through move-in — because moving isn’t just about logistics. It’s about people. And when people feel supported, they perform better, stay longer and become your strongest advocates.
Let us be the move partner that can help move items into storage or help stage your employee’s home prior to showings. Contact our team to get started today.
