Executive Network
Click Here, Learn More
Ellen Jansma
Global Mobility Manager, Booking.com
Supernova Award Category:
Future of Work – Human Capital Management
The Company:
Booking.com is the world leader in booking accommodation online. Each day, over 1,200,000 room nights are reserved on Booking.com. The Booking.com website and apps attract visitors from both the leisure and business sectors worldwide. Booking.com is informative, and its user-friendly website guarantees the best available prices with the goal to provide business and leisure travelers with the most accessible and cost-effective way of discovering and booking the broadest selection of accommodation, in every corner of the world.
The Problem:
Over half of Booking.com’s mobile employees are relocated to Amsterdam, while the remaining mobile employees can be relocated to any country or city–over 180 potential relocation destinations–at any given time. For relocations to Amsterdam, a sophisticated partner network with well-versed and highly trained internal HR professionals is in place to manage the significant volume. However, for the less frequented relocation destinations outside of Amsterdam, logistical and resource barriers make it challenging to create a partner network with good relationships to build internal knowledge on how to support employees relocating to these locations.
Moreover, Booking.com’s office locations are outside of traditional business hubs, with many of the assignments in non-traditional relocation destinations like Florence, Benidorm and Phuket. For employees relocating to these locations, there was a lack of local knowledge and support.
With manual and inefficient global mobility processes, HR specialists wasted hours of work authorizing relocations and status updates. In addition, reporting was done manually in excel with very limited data.
The Solution:
Rooted in technology, Booking.com lacked the same innovation in their global mobility strategies and processes which were manual, inefficient and prone to errors.
To infuse automation into the company’s global mobility processes, Booking.com identified MOVE Guides’ Talent Mobility Cloud (TMC). The solution enabled Booking.com to add additional employee support capabilities, automate processes and offer robust data for accurate reporting.
main priority for Booking.com has always been employee experience. With MOVE Guides Advocate Team and centralized case management system, Booking.com employees now have a true, single point of contact. Employees experience the support, tools and information needed to make their relocations seamless.
The Results:
During an eight-week implementation, MOVE Guides supported Booking.com with a comprehensive review of its policy frameworks, documentation and task lists, uncovering multiple, and sometimes conflicting, policy documentation which were significantly reduced and digitized into the MOVE Guides platform. Employee task lists were consolidated into an easy to use, actionable and interactive task list f and the policy framework was put into a digital policy matrix that can be tailored to the individual, always reflecting the employee’s personal relocation package.
In addition to partnering with Booking.com’s HR and Global Mobility teams, MOVE Guides also connected with the Finance team to fully understand the requirements, both on the billing side and, more importantly, the reporting requirements. Prior to the MOVE Guides implementation, the Global Mobility and Finance teams spent a significant amount of time consolidating invoices and spreadsheets and calculating the right allowances. The MOVE Guides platform absorbs that work stream, giving Booking.com access to real-time reporting as well as make direct allowance payments to the relocating employees, faster than the internal Payroll team.
MOVE Guides and Booking.com gathered Booking.com’s 60+ global HR Specialists for an in-person, joint presentation of the solution. This informative and interactive presentation engaged and empowered the HR Specialists to be involved in the success of the transition.
Metrics:
With the successful implementation of MOVE Guides by Booking.com in early 2017, notable results include:
Over 65 Booking.com HR users able to initiate moves directly in the Talent Mobility Cloud; saving approximately two hours per initiation and ten hours of support time per move.
Reduced the initiation process, from sending an individual email to 4+ different internal teams, and multiple external vendors, to 1 single initiation form. Reducing workload and manual data entry risks.
MOVE Guides’ Talent Mobility Cloud has been configured to support Booking.com’s 205 global offices, providing the support required from the Booking.com Global Mobility team.
The solution enables access to live reporting giving access to Operational reporting, Employee reporting and Finance reporting (20+ standard reports). All reports can be run and configured by Global Mobility.
As of July 20, 2017, Booking.com has successfully leveraged MOVE Guides for all global relocations outside the Netherlands–a total of 146 employees with 35 country and 63 city combinations.
The Booking.com HR team now has a single view of all globally mobile employees with real-time access to employee data, and necessary relocation metrics. In addition, HR team efficiency has increased due to streamlined authorization of moves, and offloading of employee support to the MOVE Advocate team.
The Technology:
MOVE Guides' TMC provides HR users a “single mobility view” with all data and processes centralized on a single global mobility management platform. Employees have their own interactive hub to plan and manage their move while being connected to concierge level support. Each instance of TMC is uniquely configured for each customer’s global mobility policies and preferences for employee experience.
Disruptive Factor:
Booking.com strives to be the “world’s best company for expats.” Lacking the ability to ensure a great and consistent experience to every relocating employee, regardless of location, was a serious obstacle in achieving this goal. As such, the widely dispersed and large number of relocation destinations as well as the number of individuals who must be able to authorize a move presented a unique challenge. The solution must be able to scale to an ever-expanding number of destination cities while providing the same level of service and support not matter where an employee is relocated. The solution must also be able to be accessed by over 60 HR specialists spread around the globe.
What makes this solution unique is the two-way approach taken to global mobility and providing a consistent front-end experience to employees. Moves into the Netherlands are still handled internally by the Booking.com while “rest of world” moves are handled by MOVE Guides. Implementing this solution meant that the MOVE Guides platform and team must be configured exactly in line with how the Global Mobility Team operates internally at Booking.com. Achieving this required an exhaustive review of policies and procedures, digitizing those into the MOVE Guides platform while also streamlining how the team operates internally. During launch the 60+ HR Specialists were gathered in Amsterdam for a successful single day training and feedback session.
Shining Moment:
The Booking.com and MOVE Guides relationship is one of true partnership as Booking.com is actively contributing to MOVE Guides’ Talent Mobility Cloud product roadmap. As a part of the relationship, Booking.com is a member of MOVE Guides’ Customer Committee. As Booking.com’s global mobility management program evolves, the company will continue to look for opportunities to partner with MOVE Guides.