The Global Mobility Industry’s Diversity Initiative

Year one of the Upward Mobility program was successful both in terms of impact and learning opportunity. Planning for year two is in the works.

We’re excited to share an update on our year-one pilot of the industry’s diversity internship program.

Seventeen companies enthusiastically offered Upward Mobility (UM) internship opportunities around the country. Mirroring overall labor shortages, we faced a competitive landscape for summer talent, and fewer applicants stepped forward than we expected. Ultimately, we filled eight positions with the following organizations:

• Dwellworks
• Go Destination Services
• Graebel
• Netflix (mobility department)
• SIRVA (2)
• Synergy Global Housing
• WR Immigration

Additionally, UM received financial support from MSI.

Over and above the work experience provided by their employers, UM offered students several opportunities to learn more about working in the mobility industry and meet each other. At the beginning of the summer, we conducted a Job Readiness class to prepare them for what could be their first professional work experience. Once on board, interns received an introduction to the mobility industry, developed and delivered by Plus Relocation, and another on global trends impacting the industry, by Cartus. Additionally, two networking events were planned, one with the WERC Inclusion, Diversity, Equity in Action (IDEA) group, occurring in July, and a second with WERC’s Young Professionals (YP) Resource Group, in the calendar for next week.

Although this first cohort was small, our success both in terms of impact and learning opportunity was great. Our interns have had positive experiences with their hosts while learning a great deal about our industry, and several have expressed an interest to work within mobility for the ongoing summers and after graduation. We also learned a lot about how we can more effectively grow UM in the future.

You’ll soon see us celebrating the program in a few different ways. Worldwide ERC is planning an article featuring some of the interns to appear online in the coming weeks. At the Global Workforce Symposium in October, we will see UM featured in a short video during the general session. It also will be the focus of a breakout session during the conference.

After each intern has completed their summer jobs, we will be surveying them for feedback on their experience and the program with results to be shared in the future.

Planning for Next Year

We will be getting an earlier start organizing for the summer of 2023, specifically addressing several areas that required more time and thought than we could afford before this summer. This includes:

• Formalizing two potential tracks for identifying intern candidates:
  • Establishing and strengthening relationships with urban schools and historically black colleges and universities that we intend to develop as feeders for our industry, beginning this summer for next year.
  • Hosts recruiting diverse talent from local schools in markets where their internships are to be based.
• More support preparing job descriptions. Recruiting for an internship is different than recruiting a recent college graduate, and the job descriptions should reflect this. We’ll offer more guidance to help host companies understand how to make an internship description stand out for the skills and experiences it will create versus those the position requires.
• Opening the application process earlier. We’d like to submit job descriptions to our partner schools by January, allowing students to begin applying earlier in 2023.
• Further development of our training and networking curriculum. Scaled back for the smaller class size this summer, the curriculum committee intends to add additional courses. We also expect to add a group project for the interns to work on together.
• Training for the interns’ mentors. In addition to providing clearer guidance of mentoring best practices, we’ll clarify all the UM program offerings available to their interns to encourage greater participation out of the gate.

Budgets

One of the additional challenges we encountered this year was the lack of budget among potential hosting companies to support an intern, either the student’s wages or, even more often, the cost to support the student’s relocation to the host’s work location for the summer. As you may now be at the front of the budget planning for next summer’s costs, you’re encouraged to earmark funds to support an UM intern in next year’s operating costs.

Thank You

We are grateful for your enthusiastic support of Upward Mobility and look forward to working with you in 2023. Please contact UM co-chairs Bob Rosing and Andrew Walker if you’d like to confirm your company’s participation in 2023 or to ask any questions about the program.

Kind regards,

The Upward Mobility Steering Committee

• Bob Rosing, Dwellworks
• Andrew Walker, EY
• Lynn Shotwell, Worldwide ERC
• Lisa Johnson, Cartus
• Suzie Chapman, SIRVA BGRS Worldwide
• Anthony Gonzalez, Synergy Housing