At K2, our mission is to provide our clients’ assignees with an exemplary and unmatchable relocation experience.
This mission is always on, guiding the actions that each and every one of us takes, regardless of whether our roles are customer-facing or not. Whilst many of us never speak directly to assignees, we are all powerfully aware that everything we do has the potential to impact them somewhere down the line. It is up to us to make sure that that impact is a resoundingly positive one.
We believe that relocation isn’t just about moving someone from A to B. It is about building a relationship with that person, developing an understanding of what motivates, worries and frustrates them, so that their move can be expertly tailored to fit their requirements. When this is then combined with K2’s expertise across the full spectrum of global mobility services, the result is a personal, tightly organised relocation experience that sets an assignee up to hit the ground running in their new location.
But that isn’t the end of the story. The next step is to maintain, and when necessary, enhance assignee experience. So how do we go about doing that?
Keeping our finger on the assignee experience pulse
As the single point of contact and accountability for their assignees, K2 Relocation Managers ensure that they are as contactable as reasonably possible. The strong, trusting relationship that they develop with their assignees gives those assignees the confidence to ask questions and share concerns. And when they ask those questions, assignees can trust that they will receive a prompt response – typically within the same working day, or at most, within one business working day. This prompt – and in many cases real-time – exchange of information, combined with regular update/progress meetings, enables Relocation Managers to keep their finger firmly fixed on the assignee experience pulse, plus gives assignees confidence that they are in a safe pair of hands.
In this way, developing issues can be nipped in the bud and Relocation Managers can monitor the undulations in assignee experience, responding to dips by making changes and analysing the peaks to see if they can be extended.
Senior Relocation Manager Keely Manser offers a strong example of when her swift action prevented an issue from escalating:
“recently, I took a call from a very distraught assignee who had woken up to the news that his flight, due to leave at 13:30 that afternoon, had been cancelled. The airline had moved him, his pregnant wife and his child to a flight departing the next day, but for personal reasons, it was imperative that they leave as originally planned. I called the travel company’s out-of-hours help desk and managed to get the assignee and his family on another flight departing at 13:15 that afternoon. So within an hour, an issue that could very quickly have escalated into a disastrous situation for the assignee, ruining their relocation experience, was resolved.”
Investing in our people
Key to maintaining and enhancing assignee experience is our people – a family of talented and committed individuals. They are our greatest asset, both the soul and the sinews of K2. As such, we commit to investing in them.
When a new hire joins the K2 Family, they are immediately signed up to our onboarding programme. They attend live onboarding events with members of the Senior Leadership Team and are introduced to each department via onboarding videos, helping them to develop a strong understanding of how the business operates right from the get-go. Not only does this guard against the risk of service dips caused by new hires not quite being up to speed with our unique, ‘because it’s personal’ approach to service delivery, it also shows new hires that the term ‘K2 Family’ is more than just a marketing buzz word. Nobody is too busy or too important to lead a live onboarding event and help new hires integrate into the business.
Investment in professional development forms a big part of our investing in our people programme. Via our online training platform, Eloomi, employees are educated on our One Voice approach to operations, providing them with the knowledge that they need to deliver services in line with our ‘because it’s personal’ ethos.
As Amanda Lillie, Head of Client Services Operations Europe comments
“One Voice encompasses our best practice operations guide, global templates and training modules. Together, these ensure that our global service delivery is Best-in-Class, enabling us to provide assignees with an exemplary relocation experience”
In addition to online training, whenever possible, employees are offered shadowing, mentorship and secondment opportunities, plus they are invited to take part in management/leadership workshops, both in-office and offsite. These opportunities help them to hone their skillsets, enabling them to finesse the way in which they interact with assignees and so elevate the relocation experience that they deliver.
Wellbeing is another focus of our investing in our people programme, as people who are healthy and happy in their work will always be able to give more to assignees than those who are overworked, insecure and anxious. We strive to support wellbeing by providing our people with engaging, inspiring workplaces; by celebrating their diversity and differences through True Q, our DE&I programme; and by keeping them connected with their colleagues around the world via Milo, our intranet. Closely linked to wellbeing is job satisfaction. In order to feel valued and so maintain the high level of effort that they put in to support assignees, people need to be recognised for their commitment and their performance. At K2, there are multiple ways in which we strive to provide this recognition, with one of the most popular being the Q Awards. A biannual reward and recognition programme, the Q Awards strengthen the connections between our people by encouraging them to publicly recognise each other’s contributions.
The final key focus of our investing in our people programme is a commitment to keeping the business’ Great Place To Work® certification current. The process involves all employees across the globe completing an annual, independent and anonymous survey. The survey results help us to identify any areas within the business that need improvement. Armed with this information, we are able to target our spending, ensuring that our people – and so ultimately our clients’ assignees – are the main beneficiaries of our investment decisions.
Our Global Marketing Manager, Shelley Jarlett-Hill, is a strong advocate for strategic expenditure:
“while many may prioritise saving money, at K2, we believe in allocating our resources wisely. By investing in targeted, evidence-based strategies, we meet the needs of our team, resulting in increased job satisfaction and improved talent retention. This approach not only benefits our employees, but also leads to substantial cost savings by reducing expenses related to recruitment and training.”
Pursuing an evidence-based approach to growth
In an article published on the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) website, the authors state that “to make good decisions, we need a clear understanding of what makes the organisation effective and successful, and that means investing in effective systems of collecting information, including data quality and analytical capability.” At K2, we use survey systems which generate metrics such as NPS® (Ipsos Survey) and employee satisfaction scores (Great Place To Work® Survey) to guide our growth. This ensures that we develop in a way that meets client, assignee and employee needs, improving the experience of all three of these groups.
Too often, in the heat of chasing profit, businesses can lose sight of their core aim, which within our sector, is to provide a set of global mobility services. For K2, the source of the evidence in evidence-based growth is clients and assignees, therefore this method of growth requires us to maintain a relentless focus on these two groups. In this way, it ensures that our growth is managed and that it never comes at the cost of CX.
CEO Nick Plummer provides the perfect summary:
“the faith that I have in our approach and the people who drive it makes me quietly confident that we will evolve the right way, the K2 way – staying on target and never deviating from what we believe in”.
We believe that we are fulfilling our mission of providing our clients’ assignees with an exemplary and unmatchable relocation experience.
Feedback from our recent Client Pulse Survey supports this statement, with clients commenting that we have “nothing to improve – simply continue providing world-class customer service”, and that we “have experienced nothing but fantastic service, turnaround times and amazing professional services from all involved at K2. Absolutely no enhancing is required!” So, as we move through Q3, expect more of the same from K2: “partnership and great support” from a “very professional, responsive and knowledgeable team”.
