Lize-Mari Ras
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Areas That Mobility Programs Can Support Sustainability Initiatives – Looking at the Greener / Environmental Aspects

The subject of sustainability continues to be significant and is a primary concern for numerous organisations that prioritise both sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). And although this topic is broad we need to tackle it “one bite at a time” so let’s look at the greener aspects.

When examining their internal environmental objectives, companies are also exploring strategies to assess and monitor the sustainability criteria for their vendors, such as relocation management companies who are looking at destination service businesses as part of their supply chain, such as ours Relocation Africa.

Various factors are considered when establishing and attaining sustainability goals, from a greener perspective, including decreasing carbon footprints, and making contributions towards the company objectives in the following areas – here are some ideas for businesses in global mobility on what you can start implementing in your business:

 

Processes

Reduce paper consumption. Look at reducing the amount of paper used and leverage digital documents and resources as much as possible.

E-signatures. Use e-signatures instead of paper documents or arrangements that require someone to travel to a location to sign documents in person.

Virtual support. Use virtual processes and support where available for:

 

  • Engagement processes
  • Immigration support – electronic documents, e-applications, virtual applications, etc.
  • Destination services: home search, education, settling-in, registrations, etc.
  • Language training
  • Cultural training
  • Spouse and family support

Household Goods Shipment

Focus on sustainability and CO2 footprint. Partner with moving companies that use sustainable packing and moving materials and reduce CO2 emissions with fuel-efficient vehicles, smarter routes, and tracking programs like Big Mile – a tech company that offers solutions for organizations to optimize and report on transport-related carbon emissions.

Partner with organizations to reduce waste. Leverage organizations like Move for Hunger that support local needs and help reduce waste.

Limit air shipments. Restrict air shipments and shipment sizes to help reduce the materials used for packing and carbon emissions from transportation.

Virtual surveys. Use virtual surveys to eliminate the need for surveyor travel.

Travel and Transport

Reduce travel. Reduce the amount of travel within extended business travel (EBT) and commuter programs.

Use direct travel routes. Take direct routes versus multiple connections.

Limit return trips. Adjust the frequency of return trips.

Non-fly options. Incentivise or require employees to take non-flying options: train, ferry, or public transportation versus driving.

Efficient car requirements. Incentivise or require employees to utilise hybrid or electric cars for rental cars, on-assignment cars, and fleet (pool) cars.

Encourage carpooling. Incentivise or require employees on assignment to carpool or utilise vanpools.

Housing

Limit laundry services. Reduce laundry services for towels and linens to encourage green habits.

Offer incentives to reduce utilities. Provide incentives to reduce utility costs or provide a reasonable decrease in cost to encourage more efficient habits.

Host housing requirements/incentives. Provide incentives or implement requirements for host housing that is more efficient and offer allowances for more efficient appliances.

Permanent housing incentives. Provide incentives for purchasing homes with sustainable energy footprints or provide allowances for energy-efficient appliances, insulation, etc.

Provide Awareness and Training

Company initiatives. Reinforce company sustainability initiatives and the role that employees can play during their relocation or assignment.

Location awareness. Offer insights into local sustainability practices, views, initiatives, and geography impacts from industry or climate changes.

 

 

Contact us to find out how your business can develop strategies and policies to reduce your global carbon footprint.  Click on the link below to contact our team:

Contact Us

We are aware as a global mobility business that sustainability is going to take us all to work together to find and develop solutions for a better world.

Lize-Mari Ras
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EuRA Celebrates Sustainability at their 25th Anniversary Conference. 

EuRA, the European Relocations Association, is a professional non-profit organisation that promotes relocation and other affiliated services. Their aim is to promote their members who offer immigration, relocation,  and relocation services across the world, they provide industry related training, support, networking and advice to all its members.  

EuRA has made it their mission to set the standard for innovation and education by empowering their members to unlock their full potential and become leaders in the Global Mobility Industry. Their members are passionate professionals who actively work towards the betterment of the Global Mobility Industry. The Association and its members adhere to their integral ideals of compassion, integrity, teamwork, sustainability, and diversity. Members of EuRA have praised the organisation, and highly value the connections that they have simply by belonging to the association.  

EuRA is not only esteemed in and of itself for being a well-established association but is also well known for the lively conferences they host annually to promote and assist in building healthy relationships in the Global Mobility Industry. EuRA members take pleasure in attending these conferences as it offers great opportunities and benefits to the members, as is apparent from the comment made by a member in which they stated, ‘’We can see the creation of friendships and strong personal and business relationships simply because we are part of EuRA.’’ These interactions and connections occur on a global scale, with members arriving from every corner of the continent to represent their company, country, and clients. One could not even begin to imagine the degree to which cultures are mixing and substantial information is being shared.  

The purpose of the conference is primarily to outline the highlights of the year that has passed, talk about new trends, benchmark with others in the industry and networking and socialising is a big part of the conference, and everyone who attends certainly has an enjoyable time and leaves the conference with a significantly enhanced knowledge in the field and many business opportunities and new business friends and colleagues.  The most recent conference was held in April of this year in Dublin, Ireland. This year was a special occasion as EuRA proudly celebrated their 25th anniversary at the conference by giving tribute to the membership and throwing a formal gala evening. 

This year, at the annual EuRA conference, one of the symposiums delivered prior to the official conference start was the Sustainability Symposium, it delved into various aspects of sustainable development, and included a corporate representative to give the members a view from a corporate client’s perspective. Many of the 70 registered members who attended the sustainable development symposium on the Tuesday commented on how insightful it was and how important it is for the information that was conveyed at the symposium, to be not only implemented but also to be passed on and shared. The symposium dived into an in-depth meaning of sustainability, the input from a corporate perspective, and what it means to the global mobility sector. Speakers at the symposium maintained the attention of the audience engaging them in various practical workshops so they could take their learnings back to their businesses. The discussion was open-ended and informative and included a workshop structure which allowed the members to fully immerse into practical applications of the sustainable development concepts shared.   

The discussion was centred around meeting the needs of the Global Mobility Industry at present in such a manner that resources are not depleted for future generations, thereby ensuring the longevity of the industry. The notion of sustainability covers three pillars, known as ‘’ESG.’’ These key pillars are Environmental, Social and Governance, and they impact every aspect of life. 

Understanding the impact of sustainability is two-fold. It is constituted by the effect that a business has on the ESG issues, as well as the effect that these ESG issues have on the business. In one of the sessions during the sustainability symposium day they looked at “materiality assessments” as a way for the global mobility silo’s specifically, immigration, destination services, temporary accommodation, etc, can review their impact on the sustainable metrics (ESG) and the impact of these same metrics on their business.  The group got to experience a specific case study by Graebel to help them understand a practical application of a materiality assessment and then each table attempted to review the process in a workshop environment to give some practical exposure.  

It was decided that promoting discussions on this topic is important, as the industry has been facing tremendous pressure as of late, from both clients and governmental regulations, to practice sustainability more efficiently. However, oftentimes, not much thought is given to the fact that doing so has proven to be a lot more costly, and sometimes does not fit the budget of the company. Part of the initiative was also to raise awareness of the fact that corporates sometimes may find it difficult to find the funding to practise sustainability in the ways they would like to, thereby making it extremely hard to achieve and adhere to the requests and regulations.  This highlighted the importance of collaboration between each other and more than that “radical collaboration” finding ways to solve some of these problems may require us stepping out of our comfort zone and thinking differently.  Working with competitors, government departments, NGO’s to uncover how we can potentially find solutions to this rather large complex problem. 

The sustainability symposium equipped members with a template on how to go about achieving sustainability in the workplace by educating them on how to identify and prioritise sustainability issues based on their economic, environmental, and social impacts.  

Overall, the Sustainability Symposium was so successful that attendees not only left feeling excited to get started on their new sustainability journey but even requested mini-virtual symposiums throughout the year so that they may continue to learn and help others to be more mindful of their duty to practice sustainability. It starts with everyone. We cannot change the world, but we can change our habits for the sake of a brighter and healthier future for the next generations.  

The group who put this together for the members are passionate about the topic Magali Horbert, René Stegmann, and Johan de Kam who also facilitated the day and if you want to reach out to them and also follow EuRA’s journey with the Green Coalition.  This is an evolutionary process, and we need you all to help get onto a sustainable journey together.  

If you would like to find out more about the Sustainability Symposiums Conference, or how you can practise sustainability by yourself, in your home, or in your workplace, reach out to us or if you want to read more on how to reduce your carbon foot print while traveling click HERE.  

Donna Christie
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Bursting Bubbles & Building Bridges

Why Radical Collaboration is needed in the Global Mobility industry.  

In a world confronted by multiple global challenges, organisations are being pressured to demonstrate how they will generate value beyond profit and reduce their externalities. For meaningful change we need to step outside our bubble and get radical.
But how?   

Rene’ Stegmann from Relocation Africa travelled to Rwanda in December 2021 and she felt it was best to share the story of the Gorillas in Rwanda as one of high tensions and conflict between the community and the animals to demonstrate the concept of Radical Collaboration. The human – animal relationships were adversarial in nature, and no-one really understood the problem, so finding solutions was limited and unproductive. There was no mutual understanding between the stakeholders, conflicts flared when crops were destroyed and managing differences was difficult. It was a problem that required radical collaboration to make a positive change. 

The concept of Radical Collaboration for us as an industry to be able to think very broadly to build high-trust relationships to improve efficiency, productivity, innovation, and agility for resolution. We are part of an “eco-system” and are each dependent on the health of the wider global mobility system: The healthier we are, the more we can rise together, in the same way if we are not healthy this will have a direct negative impact on the whole the eco-system.  It’s obvious but hard to orchestrate.  

Through radical collaboration, we can accept the risks that come with dependence on other entities with different agendas, while also recognising that diverse resources lead to innovation. You can make the most impact acting as the matchmaker at both the strategic and operational levels. It’s crucial to work with the partners to identify all the numerous parts of the possible solutions — assigning the management and ownership activities, the technical activities and the activities led jointly. 

In Global Mobility, we need to explore the effect of purely focusing on narrow discussions such as “low pricing” and how this could negatively impact important topics such as sustainable development. Can we start moving towards a value creation mindset instead of a cost reduction one? It is more expensive to visit the Gorillas in Rwanda than other nations such as Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, in Rwanda, the community is lifted through the collaboration of shared resources. In Uganda and the D.R.C, the Gorillas are still being poached and the communities still suffer the impact.  

Ultimately, we all want to be resilient, profitable businesses into the future and if we hold “Value for All” as a guiding star, our businesses can serve the well-being of both people and planet. Value is the key to the conversation. Value means not entering a price war and a race to the bottom, but rather asserting what our businesses offer to corporates and assignees that lift and
link up. 

If we make the time and offer to engage with each other with a willingness to listen to all parties, however different our positions, we create opportunities for diverse conversations which could inspire creative solutions.

When referring to all parties and diverse conversations we need to think broader as when we talk about diversity it is often from perspectives such as a race, abled vs. Less-abled persons, age, or gender. Other areas of diversity could be Life experiences, the continent we live and work on, the size of the business we operate or work for, the ownership vs employment status can all be diverse opinions and considerations when listening to solve problems – the key is the willingness to engage and listen. 

 To embrace radical collaboration is going to take input from diverse people, business, and other sectors who are willing to create a structure which is open and transparent, to understand what value we can collectively offer the world and more specifically the Global Mobility industry. 

  Take the Gorilla story as a case study: It was multi stakeholders that effected change through radical collaboration.  Where there are tough societal problems, citizens, social enterprises and even business, are relying less and less on government-only solutions.  It is more likely, that crowdfunding, ride-sharing, app-developing, or impact-investing are going to be lightweight solutions for seemingly intractable problems. No problem or challenge is too daunting, from Malaria in Africa to traffic congestion in California.   

If we consider the different roles of stakeholders such as large corporates with big resources, skilled and motivated teams with global reach, government with convening power, funding, and ability to shift policy and regulations. Then the collective force of these new problem solvers is creating dynamic and rapidly evolving markets for social good.  They trade solutions instead of dollars to fill the gap between what government can provide and what citizens need.   By erasing public-private sector boundaries, they are unlocking trillions of dollars in social benefit and commercial value.  

The best collaborative partnerships work to tackle entrenched social and environmental challenges by assessing each of the parties’ key strengths and contributions and actively taking the best approach to address the challenge as a collective. 

Let us move beyond the exploitative mindset that late capitalism encouraged, towards an economy based on healthy relationships that link up and lift up. 

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.” Jane Goodall. 

 

It’s time for radical collaboration. 

See our YouTube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Tnwk4Xyvg