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Why Employee Relocation Packages Should Include Pet Transport Benefits

Relocation benefits can be expensive. You've hired the perfect candidate to fill the role, and it's time to negotiate a relocation package with your new employee. Not only can moving be costly, but it can be stressful for your new hire as well. Depending on where s/he currently lives, some considerations included in your package may assist with selling their home, finding a new residence to purchase or rent, help with furniture removal and relocation.
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Relocation benefits can be expensive. You've hired the perfect candidate to fill the role, and it's time to negotiate a relocation package with your new employee. Not only can moving be costly, but it can be stressful for your new hire as well. Depending on where s/he currently lives, some considerations included in your package may assist with selling their home, finding a new residence to purchase or rent, help with furniture removal and relocation. A pet relocation package, in some cases, isn't included in your benefits.  Perhaps it is too costly for your organization or not considered necessary.  Other times, your organization may not want to assume the liability of transporting an animal.  Either way, any or all of the above may apply, in addition to reasons I may not have touched on here.

According to Forbes, around two-thirds of households in the United States own a pet, with dogs and cats the most popular choices. Millennials and families with an income of over $100,000 are most likely to own a pet.

Pet transport can, in some cases, be expensive depending on where your employee is relocating from and to.  In other cases, it is only a small percentage of the overall cost of their move. So, why are offering these benefits essential?

For starters, “90% of pet owners consider their pet part of the family.” (A survey published in Scientific American Mind).  Even more, pets are one of the most important aspects of someone's entire relocation! Several years ago, one of my customers was moving her dog from the United States to Australia and told me that, should her new company not cover all or part of her entire international pet relocation cost, she would not even consider accepting her new assignment. She could not bear the thought of needing to leave her pet behind due to financial and time constraints.

Pets are, after all, a great source of stress relief in a time when most employees are already overwhelmed with uprooting themselves from one place to another. Still yet, most do not have the time or knowledge to navigate through import regulations for international moves, which may include obtaining import permits, booking quarantine, working with the USDA, obtaining official health certificates, and arranging a pet-friendly airline to transport their pet from point A to point B. 

When you provide pet relocation assistance, your employee can rely on the expertise of someone else to handle all of the moving pieces to get their pet safely to its new home from start to finish.  It’s one less thing the pet owner needs to worry about, meaning they’re less pre-occupied with relocation stresses and ready to start work in their destination country. Get in touch with us if you’d like to find out how we can help you offer this fantastic benefit to your employees.