Following the Fonterra Co-operative Group’s nomination of Crown World Mobility (New Zealand) for the prestigious EMMA vendor partnership of the year award, we invited Stephen Park, the Head of Fonterra’s Global Mobility Division to share his thoughts on the Fonterra / Crown partnership.
Stephen has over 17 years of experience in global relocations, immigration law & expatriate tax management in companies such as Cisco Systems and EY in Singapore, London and Sydney. In his current role Stephen is constantly balancing the need for return on investment, a proactive governance regime and most importantly Fonterra’s duty of care to their mobile workforce.
Here’s what Stephen had to say:
How long has Fonterra been in partnership with Crown?
I understand this relationship was in place with several of our founding co-operatives even before Fonterra was established in 2001. Our primary relationship is based in Auckland, New Zealand which is an exciting place to have its global Headquarters and a top location for its quality of living. Annually we are jointly looking after approximately 90 to 100 international assignments with the Global Mobility Division and in future we will be expanding our scope to include 400 — 500 domestic and international transfers, worldwide.
What services do Crown World Mobility provide for Fonterra globally?
– Shipment and storage of household goods
– Destination services (orientation, settling-in, home search, school search, departures)
– Tenancy negotiation services, lease breaks etc
– Relocation expense management
– Partner support, language lessons, etc
– Long term accommodation, rental furniture and serviced apartments
– Assignment services for domestic relocations
– Policy management and support
What do you feel makes Fonterra’s partnership with Crown World Mobility special?
Fonterra’s Global Mobility programme provides support in over 20 countries, often in challenging hardship locations, and considerable distances from the expatriate family’s home location. The level of support for our expatriate employee population needs to be flexible yet robust enough to provide local support to withstand external stresses and exercises the highest level of duty of care towards critical factors such as personal safety, health and governance.
Crown as a trusted partner, understands the global nature of our operations and the need to efficiently relocate a family from A to B and settle them in at destination. Crown NZ manage these local relationships and provide support on our behalf. We rely on their expertise to ensure a globally consistent level of service is performed for our expatriate families within Fonterra’s framework of policies and standards.
This partnership enables Fonterra’s Global Mobility to have a single point of contact providing real time status updates, visibility on overall costs and the intuitive escalation of critical matters at the most opportune times. With recent projects between Fonterra’s Global Mobility team and Crown’s Auckland team, we have identified key areas to improve our Global Mobility program and streamline processes.
However, the special part of the Fonterra and Crown relationship is that our cultural values align and there is a true sense of partnership to do the best we can for our expatriate families as they experience considerable change.
What is important to Fonterra in a partnership and what were the key drivers behind the ‘Best Vendor Partnership’ nomination?
Crown are not just a service partner but rather an extension of Fonterra’s Global Mobility and regional HR teams. After 20 years, the Crown/Fonterra relationship is now well embedded across the Asia-Pacific region and throughout Fonterra’s global footprint. Although the core relationship is expertly managed out of New Zealand, the quality of interactions between Crown and Fonterra is mirrored in all operating locations with Crown bringing a consistent understanding of Fonterra’s overall strategy, and aligning practices to continuously exceed the expectation of their client.
The business expectations for the Global Mobility function within Fonterra has evolved as global market conditions and talent landscape changed. What is important is that Crown have kept pace with Fonterra’s changes and provided global insight as to how Fonterra could structure the Global Mobility function more effectively and share ‘best practice’ to improve the employee experience with their relocation.
Thank you for your insights Stephen, our fingers are crossed for the EMMA finals night!
