Beyond the move: providing a kinder, gentler move for transferred employees.

• Author: Murphy, Scott
• Position: Corporate Relocation

God was calling last March on Sharon Kalling, relocation director for Cressy & Everett in Mishawaka. Father Jim Shafer of St. Bavo was on the phone.

"He was a Catholic priest at one of the local parochial schools," Kalling says. "He said that their district needed two new elementary school principals."

Kalling was in the process of helping move 200 National Steel employees from Pittsburgh to new homes in Northern Indiana. She jotted down the message. "I called my sources at National Steel," Kalling says. "Out of 200 people there's got to be someone interested in a job like that." She laughs. "That's how the network works."

The network Kalling is talking about is corporate relocation, an international web of moving companies, relocation organizations and real-estate agents called on by businesses to provide kindler, gentler moves for transferred employees.

Beverly Hahn is president of FutureCorp, a relocation company that helps corporations adopt long-term policies for moving employees. Hahn says companies are getting much more involved in transferring employees. "Corporations want to make it as easy as they can. They're realizing that you're not just transferring an employee; you're transferring a family unit."

Corporate relocation has grown into an international communications machine, fueled both by corporations who move employees from city to city in tune with shifting regional economies, and by real-estate agents eager to sell homes to transferred workers. Corporate-relocation companies step in to connect the two.

"Corporate relocation is only new in the last 20 years," says Tom Hutchens, corporate-relocation director for J.B. Cohen Realty Corp. in Indianapolis. "I can show you neighborhoods we call corporate gypsy communities, where there are people moving in and out every two years."

Indiana is headquarters for five national moving companies: American Red Ball Transit, Mayflower Transit and Wheaton Van Lines, all in Indianapolis; north American Van Lines in Fort Wayne; and Atlas Van Lines in Evansville. They're drawing increasing business from corporate relocation. Corporate moves constitute 80 percent of Atlas' $200-million operation.

Employer affinity for moving employees was helped by deregulation in the early 1980s, which allowed more price competition among the nation's major movers, says Alan Toy, division facilitator for relocation services at north American. To help compete, north American recently rearranged its service departments to create "do-it-all" quality service teams. An employer or employee with a complaint about a move has one supervisor to call, and won't be passed from department to department. "It's a buyer's market, but you're going to want service, too," Toy says.

As corporations ask employees for increased geographic...