Travelling to a foreign land, be it for a short business trip, study, or a complete relocation, can be extremely easy or outright grueling depending on the country’s culture, bureaucracy, and language, among several factors. Even with these considerations aside, the moving process becomes far more complicated when the whole family is involved. From difficulties in picking the right place to settle in, finding schools and colleges for children to choosing medical and other insurances and carrying out registration processes of land or vehicles and various other agreements, the multitude of things could drain down an expat’s enthusiasm. These experiences can translate into a drop in academic performance for students and a potential lag in productivity levels of working individuals, detrimentally impacting their organization’s overall performance.

Especially when immigrating to a country like Austria with constantly changing immigration rules that are among the most stringent in Europe and a quirky German language quite unlike the typical German, the relocation process could be fraught with a high level of stress and fatigue. While there are a number of consultancies in Austria that help overcome such relocation burdens, Vienna-based Recom Relocation Company stands out from all the players with its complete gamut of relocation and immigration services. The company makes the whole relocation process a breeze for its clients by offering them what they actually need to smoothen their relocation process.

Founded in 1998 by the dynamic duo Angelika Brenner-Cecerle and Martine Pey, both of whom had experienced what it is to live and work abroad, Recom Relocation Company offers a full range of tailor-made relocation and immigration services for corporate and private clients. After identifying the specific needs of expats, the duo came up with stellar solutions that would make the process a stress-free one and go on to help thousands of clients attain peace of mind in the following years. Most of all, by cushioning all the potential complications in the relocation process, the company has been able to make the expats experience the real beauty and serenity of Austria.

In this interview with Manage HR, the founders, Angelika Brenner-Cecerle and Martine Pey, share their insights on the company’s innovative gamut of services and how it adds value and makes the lives of its customers better.

Could you elaborate on the services you offer your clients?

Recom Relocation has been dedicated to immigration and relocation services for the past 22 years. With an experienced legal team, we cover all types of immigration law services, including work or residence permits for students or highly qualified executives, or inter-company transfer permits or applications for the Austrian passport. Our experienced lawyers, who work exclusively in the fields of the “foreign employment act” and “Aliens Residence Act”, know all the ins and outs of the law, thereby ensuring a hassle-free immigration process. Our relocation team, on the other hand, offers top-notch services that include orientation tours, cultural workshops, home search, settling in, getting a driving license, car import, and assistance for school admissions. To put it in simple terms, we offer our clients a holistic bouquet of services that allow them to relocate or immigrate without any hassles.

What do you think differentiates Recom Relocation from other players in the market?

Among the numerous things that make us stand out, the one that speaks for itself is our ability to go the extra mile for our clients by flying over to the home country of the assignees in order to make the best preparation for their move to Austria or the preparation of their work permit applications. And because of the huge welcome this method received from many expats, even other players in our industry started adopting it as well.

What do you think are some of the challenges that people usually face in relocating or immigrating to Austria?

The first and the foremost challenge would be with the extremely bureaucratic Austrian Embassy. Moreover, the laws may get even more stringent for people coming from a non-EU country. Not just the embassy rules, but the procedures to buy land or a home, register vehicles and even the rental law–almost everything has its own complexity.

Please tell us about the uniqueness of your company and how that adds value to the customers?

Recom Relocation Company has a diverse workforce with employees coming from different backgrounds, speaking different languages and who have experienced all the challenges of living abroad. We have people from Russia, France, Egypt and many other countries, and that serves as a huge advantage in helping our clients. For example, our French-speaking employees can get in touch with our clients from France and talk to their agencies. Furthermore, these executives even fly to France to meet the clients or their agencies and help them set up the relocation process. Next up is our in-house teams. Right from the IT teams to the executives flying to meet the clients to our lawyers, we don’t rely on any outside agencies for any process. We leverage our in-house competencies because we don’t want to risk the data of our clients, while ensuring consistent high quality in services.

What are the strategies employed by Recom Relocation Company to thwart the market competition and that give it a competitive edge?

We see our role as an extension of the HR department, constantly guiding and offering consultancy to our valuable HR partners with flexible, innovative and reliable services. What makes us truly different is that we are listening to our clients and continuously developing new services such as virtual home search, training for HR departments, online consulting and presentations, among others. Recom Relocation Company makes it easier for international companies and their employees to deal with all aspects of the relocation process with a one-to-one contact partner.

in the immigration law space and how has Recom Relocation Company translated those trends into its services and offerings?

We have observed over the past few years many trends that have been accelerated by the COVID crisis. For instance, shorter international assignments and the need for more flexibility in sending assignees for urgent projects and repetitive assignments have become widely popular post the pandemic. Alongside, we have also been working closely with HR departments to find new solutions and different types of permits and relocation packages in order to fulfil the new requirements.

Finally, what would you say is a shining feature in your offerings that your clients find unique, which can draw prospective clients to partner with Recom Relocation Company?

After stepping out of the shadow of the pandemic, we will be re-installing our regular HR roundtable meetings, enabling our HR contacts to connect with their peers and share problems/questions, and benefit from each other’s experience. That said, our new Club “Meet new friends” will enable family members of assignees to get familiar with the culture, places and people through regular meetings and activities related to cultural, culinary or sports activities in Vienna. Additionally, we are also currently developing podcast interviews of both expats and experts—who have a complete understanding of the country—to help newcomers obtain information about Austria in advance.