Chairmans Letter 0907

THE CHAIRMAN'S LETTER
Barry Potter

First and foremost, I feel extremely honoured to have been asked to assume the position of chairman for the Association of Relocation Professionals (ARP) for the next year or two.  I have personally been involved in the business of corporate relocation for eighteen years both as a service provider and as an HR manager, and of course, the ARP has always been there for me throughout my career as the source of many useful snippets of information and relocation provider contacts when I have needed them. 

But the ARP is also more than just a useful database of contacts as I have learned through serving as a council member for almost two years now.  The majority of our current members are direct service providers – many of them lifelong members who believe in the value of belonging to a national organization for professional respectability, education about the industry, guidance on best practice and networking opportunities but many of whom who also like to know more about the wider aspects of the relocation business outside their immediate operational sphere; immigration, education, removals, developments in relocation policy development, trends in the movement of expatriates etc. 

During my tenure as chairman, I hope that we can demonstrate the benefits of membership to many more sectors of our industry – to anyone that touches the process of relocation in fact – and through increasing awareness and active participation in ARP I hope that we will be able to deliver more training and educational seminars across the entire breadth of our industry in order to make those involved in relocation better aware of the industry as a whole, more credible and even more professional.  By making the ARP more rounded with a broader appeal, I sincerely hope that we will also be able to build affiliations with other professional bodies that are associated with some areas of our business which will provide us with even more scope for our future.

Following the demise of the CBI’s own relocation/international HR advisory unit several years ago, there is presently no other organization within the UK that acts as a single resource for HR Managers and relocation service providers alike to be able to share best practice information about the relocation industry.  In order to gear up for this challenge, the ARP is in the process of reshaping our council to be more streamlined but still to reflect a variety of areas of interest within relocation.  Together we will meet more regularly that we have in the past and we will be working together to produce a programme of events for existing members as well as for those potential new members.  I would like to encourage all our members to get more actively involved and to also wave the flag of the ARP to their own corporate clients to also get involved.