2018 CERC Conference

Reeling from disruption - CERC members address the challenges of a rapidly changing industry head-on at their 2018 annual conference

It’s the end of the world as we know it. One could say those prophetic REM lyrics were reverberating through the halls of the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal last September when CERC members gathered there for their 2018 annual conference.

The conference theme revolved around disruption – Mastering Mobility in a World of Disruption – and the message was loud and clear: in relocation, as in many industries, it truly is the end of the world as we know it.

Whether it’s technology, the new shared economy, or another trend still in the making, things are changing at a dizzying pace, and the general consensus is that one can either jump along for the ride – or ignore it and end up on the sidelines.

Hitting home this very important message was Jim Harris, a disruption expert and regular speaker on the topic. Delivering the keynote address at the Sept. 16-18 CERC gathering, Harris provided a jaw-dropping case study of how just one innovation – the introduction of an autonomous vehicle – can shrink thousands of businesses and industries further downstream across multiple industries.

“The cascading implications are profound,” said Harris, pointing out that insurance companies, personal injury lawyers (fewer accidents) and even radio stations could find their markets drying up. Radio stations, in case you’re wondering, because people will soon be able to work in their cars and won’t be listening to the ubiquitous morning talk shows to fill their time as they drive.

“Change goes slowly for a long time, and then rises exponentially, [and many] don’t understand how profound exponential change is,” stressed Harris. “The biggest obstacle to innovation in large companies is the inability to catch critical signals or developments and to act on them. What we need to do is see disruption before it happens.”

Future focus

This topic was further developed during the conference’s roundtable discussion. As Carolyn Hammer, senior manager, Human Capital, Deloitte, noted, “We need to work on our business versus working in our business – it’s so easy to just do the ‘day to day’ rather than thinking about something bigger, about our future.”

Peggy Smith, president and CEO, Worldwide ERC, concurred, adding “I worry that we will miss the next ‘thing’, not because we will have tried and failed, but because we’re so busy in our own swim lines that we’ve forgotten that we’ve gotten out of the pool and into the ocean.”

One of the best trendsetters who rose to this challenge, Smith continued, was Steve Jobs, who readily churned out dynamic, innovative products like the iPhone that threatened to make Apple technology already on the shelves obsolete. Why? “Because he would just as soon it be an Apple product that was the disruptor, rather than something produced by the competition,” Smith said, noting the relocation industry needs to take the same tough stand. “We need to ask ourselves, ‘Can we put ourselves out of business?’ Because it’s when you challenge yourself with that tough question that you see innovation.”

This includes the much-maligned shared economy that is impacting the relocation industry’s temporary housing market, as well as the influence that a new generation of Millennials is having on traditional systems usually followed when relocating professionals. They thrive in a shared economy, and relocation professionals need to take note of that. Many already have, said the panelists. “There is more thinking outside the box,” said Hammer. “There’s a lot out there around collaboration and… connecting different skills.”

Working more closely with other departments is a key part of this strategy, and everyone agreed relocation professionals can no longer be tasked solely with the nuts and bolts of moving people from A to B. Their influence at different levels of the decision-making process needs to be expanded. “On the theme of collaboration, HR needs to work on being a partner with other administrations and departments, including finance,” stressed Mike Olsson, VP of human resources at PCL. Olsson added that flexibility in all areas is equally critical. “We regularly put out words like agility and nimbleness; we can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Conference sessions that followed continued touching on disruptive change, which appears to be threading its way through all corners of the industry. In a session on Protecting Assignee Data Throughout the Supply Chain, attendees were given a frank picture of the increasingly sophisticated threat posed by cyber criminals to their clients’ sensitive information. Similarly, they were told of the evolving role of relocation professionals in protecting it, in part by introducing a more rigorous process to their selection criteria for suppliers.

The outcome of this is that many long-time HR professionals have suddenly found themselves wearing an entirely new hat. One of the session speakers, Mirela Marin, director global mobility at Manulife Financial, is one of them. “Quite honestly, I never thought I’d be up here talking about data security – it was never in the job description,” she laughed.

For those wondering just how real data threats can be: fellow session speaker Michael Deane of All Points Relocation said his company – a small operation with just 20 employees – gets 15,000 attacks a day. “It takes 70% of my IT expert’s time to keep the company secure and ahead of the hackers,” he noted. Small companies are especially attractive targets, he added, because hackers assume their data will be easier to breach.

Yet another session examined the transmuting nature of a key part of mobility: in this case, the modern family. It’s not a new topic – same-sex relationships and double-income families are not new in relocation – but there are new twists being added to this picture. Some assignees today want to bring a parent along on assignment – either so they can care for their parent or have their parent care for their own children; others are single parents who want to bring their children’s nanny or caregiver along. Yet others are in a mixed-culture relationship where each carries a different passport (posing new immigration challenges), and overall there is a more diverse mix of ethnicities relocating today as immigrants to countries like Canada climb up the corporate ladder.

In short, there is no traditional family anymore, and relocation professionals have to adapt and rise to the challenge – and it won’t be easy. As Lisa Mendelsohn, regional director, North America, Crown World Mobility, observed, “There is no magic wand.” But what relocation providers can do, she said, is “stop making assumptions, look at things differently and get a lot of feedback. We need to play an active part in pushing that boundary and understanding the employee experience.”

For those conference attendees who found themselves slightly daunted by the onslaught of information-laden sessions touting the many changes disrupting the industry, there were plenty of opportunities throughout the conference to unwind, chill out and enjoy a mellow evening with colleagues and friends.

In particular, there was Monday evening’s ‘60s-themed networking night. Not only did it help everyone get in the groove and munch on some tasty Montreal poutine, it also gave them a once-in-lifetime chance to experience a piece of a legendary Beatles lore: guests could visit the hotel room where John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their famous two-week-long ‘Bed In’ to protest the Vietnam War. They could even lie down on the bed.

If there’s a magical elixir for rising to the challenge of disruptive change – or just taking a much-needed break from it – this was it.

For information on all the sessions at the 2018 CERC Conference, please visit www.cerc.ca.

This article is featured in The EuRApean - Edition December 2018