The Sustainability Roadmap

For many years EuRA has tried to work with other associations and to some degree we have been successful. EuRA has always had strong relationships with the European Associations and good relations with the more global organisations. I personally have attended every WERC International Symposium since 1996, with the exception of last year’s event in 2021.

Our first really powerful collaboration was with the Canadian Employee Relocation Council (CERC) back in 2016 when we partnered on a research project “The Future of Mobility”. The report, based on extensive global research, paved the way to further research collaborations. Steve Cryne, the President and CEO of CERC, has been a regular attendee and contributor at The EuRA International Relocation Congress since Stockholm in 2013.

More recently we partnered with WERC and CERC for the WECAN (WERC EuRA CERC Association Network) Event in April 2021 at the end of which the three Associations issued a declaration on “The Imperative to Modernize Workforce Mobility in the Post-Pandemic World”. This was a really successful start to what will become a lasting relationship.

In recent years we have also developed good working relationship with both the International Associations of Movers (IAM) and the FIDI Global Alliance. For some time we have licensed IAM to use modules from the EuRA Academy and a number of movers have achieved their MIM designations. really galvanised all 6 associations into a very meaningful collaboration. In March I travelled to Cannes for FIDI’s annual conference and participated in a round table on sustainability in global mobility. It was clear from this that we needed to act and this was followed by a meeting in Seville during the EuRA Conference where WERC, CERC, FIDI and EuRA agreed to form a Coalition of Associations to work on sustainability. We also agreed to invite IAM and the Corporate Housing Providers Association (CHPA) to join the group.

Within matter of weeks we had all signed up to an ‘Agreement on Environmental Sustainability’, and appointed Deloitte in the USA to carry out a research project to create a road map for “Sustainability in Global Mobility”. This was carried out in stages:

1. A questionnaire was sent to every member of each association (apologies to those who are members of multiple associations who may have received this several times – there was one organisation who received it from 5 out of the 6 of us!). 2. 24 individuals from member organisations were interviewed. EuRA provided the names of 6 DSPs. One from each of the following regions North America, South America, Europe, India, Asia and the Middle East. 3. The responses to the questionnaires and the interviews formed the basis of topics to be discussed in a Lab (workshop) during the WERC Conference in Las Vegas. EuRA also nominate two people to participate. They came from Australia and Africa thus between the interviews and the Lab we covered the world. 4. The day after the Lab there was a meeting to go over the situation so far (see picture), where the leaders of the 6 associations talked about the purpose of the project and their commitment to it. Deloitte also presented some preliminary findings.

Last week the draft report and road map was shared with the associations. When we are all agreed on the next steps this will be available to all members.

As part of the Dublin Conference we will be running a one-off Sustainability Symposium Day to make sure we are on the right course as far as members are concerned and to learn more about specific topics. Following the day we will run a review plenary session to ensure our goals are both realistic and measurable. This is an incredibly important topic and we’re looking forward to as much input from members as possible so we can start to make a real difference across our brilliant industry.