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Amidst tougher competition for the best and brightest employees, 60 percent of companies say that relocation policy benefits are critical to recruiting talent. This was one of the key findings of Weichert Workforce Mobility’s ninth annual survey to identify the top relocation challenges and trends and offer best practice recommendations.

This year’s results are based on the input of approximately 170 corporate relocation managers in the US and Canada.

Reducing cost was the most commonly cited driver of the changes companies made to their relocation programs over the past year. In fact, “controlling relocation spend” was the number one reason cited for the wider adoption of flexible relocation programs, which include temporary, rotational and commuter assignments, lump sums and extended business travel. These programs not only offer less costly alternatives to “traditional” assignments, but also make relocation appealing to a wider range of employees and keep talent more readily deployable as new opportunities arise.

When it comes to workforce mobility, the mantra is, “be flexible, but be cost-conscious, too.” When managed right, flexible programs allow companies to be both.

Drawing on the results of this year’s survey and my own experience consulting with HR leaders, I offer the following additional strategies for optimizing workforce mobility:

• Provide mobile employees with the best available tools and resources to expedite their moves instead of making them figure it out on their own, which inevitably burns time and money.
• Employ flexible programs to build a suite of solutions that accommodate every segment of your mobile workforce.
• Build a solid talent pipeline and reduce recruiting costs by using internships and engaging millennials in rotational assignments.
• Use data to optimize your program; 68 percent of companies don’t track their employees’ willingness to relocate and only 38% use retention rates to measure the value of workforce mobility to their organizations.

Be sure to check out the infographic above for a look at our survey’s key findings. If you’d like a copy of the complete survey results, you can request a copy here.