When you think about integrity, what comes to mind? Is it The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?”

Or is it more along the lines of the Merriam-Webster definition of integrity, “the firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: incorruptibility.”?

As an IAM and U.S. DAB member, you may also know that it’s one of IAM’s Values, “We stand for what is right and hold ourselves and our members to high ethical standards.”

Whatever way you think about it, it’s what separates professional movers and DAB Allies from bad actors and organizations that don’t adhere to a strict code of ethics. It makes the DAB Group and Allies some of the very best in the moving and storage industry.

This month, we’re featuring three perspectives – from a mover, a DAB Ally, and Dan Bradley, who discusses the core values he learned in the Air Force with the ones our industry shares. In addition, there’s a call for integrity from Chuck Bailey, IAM Ethics Council Chair.

Integrity isn't just a concept; it's the foundation that ensures the trust and excellence that define IAM, its members, and the professional moving and storage industry.

As professionals and even just decent human beings, we might think that integrity is a given; something that doesn’t require effort or attention if we simply mean well. At its core, the moving industry relies on the foundation of trust and reliability to ensure the safe transition of people's most precious possessions. From the smallest box to the largest (heaviest, oldest) furniture piece, movers are entrusted with the responsibility of safeguarding these belongings, making integrity an indispensable aspect of our profession.

Despite meticulous planning and execution, unforeseen circumstances can sometimes arise during the moving process. In such instances, integrity shines through in how moving companies handle these challenges. Whether it's a delay in delivery, accidental damage to an item, or any other issue, movers MUST take accountability for their actions and work to rectify the situation promptly. This may involve offering compensation, providing alternative solutions, or simply offering a sincere apology after letting a customer vent.

Integrity starts within a moving company’s walls with how we treat our coworkers and extends beyond just handling problems or having it listed as your company’s core value on a website; it encompasses the entire business practice. This means providing accurate estimates, sticking to agreed timelines, and avoiding hidden fees. Clear, open, and easy communication from the initial consultation to the final delivery and beyond ensures that EVERYONE knows what to expect and can plan accordingly.

Employee integrity is equally - if not MORE - crucial. Training and encouraging staff to act with truth, honesty, integrity and diligence can greatly enhance the overall customer experience. Movers who treat customers' belongings with the same care they would their own demonstrate the true spirit of integrity. This attitude should be reflected not only in how items are handled but also in how movers interact with clients—being courteous, punctual, and professional always.

In conclusion, integrity in the moving industry isn't just about avoiding unethical behavior; it's about actively choosing to do the right thing, even when it's difficult or less profitable. By prioritizing truth, honesty, integrity, diligence and training, moving companies can foster lasting relationships with their clients, ultimately leading to a stronger, more reputable business. Integrity is not just a value but a crucial cornerstone that upholds the entire structure of the moving industry.

The theme for this month’s DAB Digest (Integrity) is taken from one of IAM’s six values. Those values come from the IAM strategic plan, and under Integrity it says: “We stand for what is right and hold ourselves and our members to high ethical standards.”

In addition to gathering broad industry expertise for anything we do, EVERY person on our internal team, regardless of role or tenure, has a voice in features, user experience, applications, etc. We include team members in our regular product review and development conversations, to invite observations and suggestions. We’ve found that innovating by including insights from not only developers and designers, but also bookkeepers, marketers, administrative assistants, salespeople, etc. provides outside-of-the-box ideas and observations that make everything we do better.

As a former Air Force member, integrity as one of our Association’s values speaks to me. When I was in the service, Air Force leaders established the core values that all Airmen had to know and strive for: Integrity First, Service Before Self, and Excellence In All We Do. The shortened version being Integrity, Service and Excellence.

When the U.S. DAB Management Board Chair, Brittany Brooks of Conser, decided to feature one of the IAM Values as a newsletter theme for each of the first six months of 2024, it was a great reminder for me to review those values again. And with Integrity being this month’s value, it immediately connected my present job to my Air Force career.

Why the U.S. Air Force and an Association grounded in moving personal property might share some of the same values (Excellence is also an IAM value) isn’t obvious on the face of it. But just a little contemplation on the topic leads to some obvious connections.

The public demands, and should expect, that its military should operate with integrity. And when our military falls short on that value, it’s a big story. We can’t have the men and women sworn to protect our freedoms, by lethal force, if need be, not operate at high levels of integrity. If the military were to be self-serving, the dangers to our freedoms are obvious, and our confidence in the military would be severely diminished.

While moving isn’t a life and death scenario, a business who engages customers with integrity...from the initial contact with the customer, through delivery, and if needed, the claims process, is a mover that will have the trust of their customers and will gain business through word of mouth. Even the expanded wording in the Air Force value,” integrity first,” makes sense in this context. The statement implies that you start with integrity across the board, even as you build excellence in your operation and amongst all your employees. In the Air Force, you start with integrity, while building the excellence needed in your job and developing the mentality that you put service to your fellow citizens ahead of yourself. A moving company that starts with integrity and displays it in each interaction with its customers, can use it as a bedrock of their organization. As your company and its workers gain or improve excellence in their jobs, it becomes a rallying principle and makes outstanding service to the customer your company’s calling card.

Integrity, Excellence, and Service...what we strive for in the Air Force are values you can use in your own company to take it to the next level.

On June 4th, defense.gov published a misleading article disparaging the service our members provide. Below is the text of the letter IAM sent to the publication in response:

The International Association of Movers (IAM) appreciates and supports U.S. Transportation Command's (TRANSCOM) aim to make the movement of household goods a better experience for service members and their families. We and our members share the goal of making moving the easy part of any relocation, including permanent change of station (PCS) moves.

That is why we were disappointed to read the article published on defense.gov on June 4th titled DoD Kicks Off Improved Household Goods Shipment Program. As an association representing the dedicated moving companies that have proudly served the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for many years, we feel compelled to address the statements made in the article concerning the service levels our members provide when serving U.S. military customers and their families.

This article’s premise – that subpar customer service scores justify the need for an improved system to ensure higher quality and reliability for PCSs – uses misleading statistics to question the service IAM Members and other movers provide to the DoD Personal Property Program. The first example of this is when a TRANSCOM Official in the article states that, “in recent years, DoD recognized the current program is no longer serving customers the way it should.” He states that last year, about 77% of service members reported satisfaction with their household goods move. Let’s explore how that is a deceptive statement.

The current program’s customer satisfaction survey, as referenced in the article, is made up of points that a mover can score based on the service member’s response to 6 questions. The 77% being referenced is the percentage of points that the average mover gets based on the scoring for each question. When asked to clarify on a recent TRANSCOM/Moving Industry call, TRANSCOM analysts confirmed that the reported customer satisfaction is based on this points model, and NOT a reference to how many customers reported their move as satisfied or greater. Per TRANSCOM’s own data (https://www.ustranscom.mil/dp3/tspinformation.cfm), customer satisfaction in calendar year 2024 so far is 92.75%. While slightly lower, customer satisfaction from April of 2023 to April of 2024 is 88.89%.

That is a far cry from the 77% that TRANSCOM touts in the article. It seems purposefully damaging to report a significantly lower customer satisfaction rate in the current program, as TRANSCOM begins moving shipments under their new contract model.

TRANSCOM’s own data further calls into question other strident statements from the article like the assertion that GHC could result in the end of “...stressful station-to-station moves due to poor quality service...” This idea—that movers in the current program provide poor quality service—when TRANSCOM’s own satisfaction statistics tell a completely different story, unfairly disparages the service these movers are providing.

Looking more broadly to the success of the GHC and the quality moving capacity it attracts to the program, a very large number of current movers who service DoD customers today will need to sign on to the GHC as subcontractors. It seems counter-intuitive that TRANSCOM would dismiss and disparage the current movers working in the program, especially when their own numbers show that these providers are receiving scores better than 90% customer satisfaction rating.

The dedicated movers who have serviced DoD families for many years; some for many decades, deserve a more thoughtful approach from TRANSCOM than what was relayed in this online article.

Sincerely,

Brian Limperopulos, CAE

President, IAM

With the advent of so many new recruiters entering and professing to serve the interests of the household goods (HHG) industry, it is more important than ever for moving industry hiring authorities to thoroughly research and investigate the business practices of recruitment firms and the services that they provide.

What is the recruiter's reputation? ETHICAL? Do they practice the INTEGRITY that they preach?

Buyer Beware: If you are the hiring manager for a particular moving company/van line agent and have been asked to sign a search agreement with a recruiter with whom you have never done business, you should do the following:

• Ask for references. You want to be able to speak to others in your industry who have utilized the services of a particular search firm. Call your state moving and storage association. Do they know the reputation of the firm? Ask your fellow van line agents or other movers what their experience has been, if any, with the recruiter.
• What is the search firm's candidate guarantee? Is it for a long-enough period for you to ascertain whether a particular hire is going to work out? What if the hire doesn't work out? Do you get your money back? ETHICAL firms with INTEGRITY should offer an unconditional money-back guarantee for a failed placement.
• Don’t accept replacement candidates. Often, those replacements are simply candidates shoved in your face that the search firm can't get anyone else to hire!
• Does the recruiter warrant or guarantee in writing that once you hire their candidate that they will not recruit any of your employees? Any firm not willing to give you at least 3-5 years of a commitment not to touch your people is a recruiter you may want to avoid. INTEGRITY and ETHICAL practices dictate that a headhunter should NOT drink out of both sides of the trough!

A thorough effort of research and due diligence should place you in a better position than most to gauge the INTEGRITY of a particular recruitment firm (as well as any other industry service provider for that matter).

Recruiters should SERVE the HHG Industry, NOT abuse it!

Each year, IAM stages the industry’s largest business development and networking event. Instead of visiting all your partners face to face at their offices or trying to expand your business through in-person visits, IAM brings the world together in one place to make connecting with your partners and growing your network as efficient as possible. Roughly 2,000 of our industry colleagues pay for this privilege annually.

I want to challenge my fellow members to recognize the importance of the IAM Annual Meeting to their business and register to support this valuable event. Most importantly, I want to highlight the ethics of benefiting from investments others have made. If you are a fully paid registrant for the IAM Annual Meeting, please ask those who are “registering without attending,” or “badge-swapping,” why they are taking advantage of the investment you have made and how they can justify this behavior.

Read the full letter from Chuck Bailey here.

Registration is now open to all members for this year's Annual Meeting & Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, from October 14–17, 2024. Register now, before the Early Bird discount rate ends on July 5th!

See the Annual Meeting website for registration and event details.

Exhibit, branding, and sponsorship sales are open for all members.

Download the Exhibit, Branding and Sponsorship Prospectus today to see the new and expanded sponsorship opportunities while they last!

We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas!

If you have questions or would like to learn more about the IAM Annual Meeting & Expo, please contact us at membership@iamovers.org.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently announced the launch of Operation Protect Your Move, the agency’s nationwide crackdown on scam interstate household goods (HHG) movers and brokers. This enforcement initiative will address complaints about HHG moving company and broker compliance with federal safety and consumer protection regulations and statutes.

“Americans deserve a fair deal when they move into a new home—and we’re cracking down on moving companies that hold people’s possessions hostage,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “This initiative will build on last year’s progress holding scammers accountable and is another example of the measures the Biden administration is taking to better protect consumers.” Read more.

Do you work with agents who are not part of the IAM network?

Have you considered the potential risks if they were to cease operations? Encourage your existing non-IAM business partners to join IAM to give you more financial protections through the Receivable Protection Program (RPP). This member benefit has successfully recovered over 3.7 million in debts owed to our members.

Here’s how the Member Referral program works:

1. Companies that have been members with IAM for more than six months are eligible to earn rewards for new member company referrals.
2. The new member company must complete the member referral online application.
3. Upon the new company completing the 30-day prospective member period, your company is eligible for a $250 credit to use towards the membership renewal, annual meeting registration, or an IAM Learning Training program for each new company you refer to IAM.

Click here to read the full details of the program. NOTE: The application must be received through the Member Referral application form which is separate from the regular join application.

In case you missed it, the U.S. and DAB / DAB Ally-specific webcast All In On IAM: Your Annual Meeting Guide, highlighted what’s new and different for IAM’s 2024 Annual Meeting. Brian Limperopulos and Dan Bradley were “All In,” answering questions and providing detailed information about making the most of your time this October in Las Vegas, Nevada. Watch Now

Between free webcasts and specialized courses, IAM Learning is here to help provide you with the knowledge and information to drive the growth of your company. Check out what webcasts and courses are available for you below (most are free):

Recent Webcasts

US Government & Military Affairs Update - June 18, 2024

All In On IAM: Your Annual Meeting Guide (US & DAB/DAB Ally)

Globally Connected, Mindfully Stable: Achieving Work-Life Harmony in the World of Moving

Expert Panel on US Clearance & Import Issues

Exploring ONE Record: A Hands-On Workshop in Data Exchange

Training Courses Available

Lithium Batteries Transportation Course

Financial Disciplines for Movers

Move Coordination (five courses)

Residential Sales (five courses)