Employee Job Mobility and Relocation

Abstract

There is an ever increasing demand for highly flexible and geographically mobile professional and managerial staff in many UK companies. This means that the effective management of career development, succession planning, job mobility and relocation will be among the major challenges facing industrial and commercial organisations in the 1990s. The article describes the way that two large UK companies currently manage (and mismanage) job mobility and relocation. In 1987 the IMS described the general management of mobility and relocation as “ad hoc and kneejerk”. The findings of this study lend some support to this contention. It discusses the implications of these early findings for these companies and other organisations. It concludes by briefly discussing the implications for UK companies and personnel managers, and briefly outlines the future goals of the research project.