Location Matters. So How Do You Choose?
Whether you are a business leader looking for the best place to open a new office or a tech worker looking to relocate to advance your career, location matters. But how do you choose the right one that meets your current and future needs? Here are some things to consider.
For Businesses:
- Cost: Growing businesses and startups need to know whether they can find the resources and capital they need to be successful.
- Access to Talent: Look for locations that can meet your talent needs with higher education institutions and talent attraction/retention efforts.
- Quality of Life: Happy employees are productive employees. Are you considering locations that are able to make life after work meaningful?
- Connectivity: From appropriate levels of internet connection and bandwidth to easy access to nearby cities or markets, connectivity can make or break it for some companies.
For Workers:
Based on data collected by One America Works through a survey of tech workers, we learned that the top considerations for tech talent in deciding where to live include:
- Climate: Whether you’re someone who wants to experience all the seasons, or you simply want summer all year long, climate can play a huge role in your happiness and well-being.
- Space: 41% of survey respondents indicated that they wanted more living space. If this is important to you, you might select a city with lower population density and abundant housing options.
- Affordability: There are a lot of aspects playing into total costs of living. Consider housing and transportation expenses along with things like grocery, medical, and utility costs.
Want decision-making support for location selection? Check out our customizable data tool and read more in this edition of the Mid-Point!
Inside this issue
- Balancing Quality of Life and Market Opportunity in Company Expansion
- What Hard Data Reveals About Job Relocation
- Boomtown or bust? The big companies getting big incentives to move to Austin
- Choosing Where and How to Expand Your Business
- Interview with TechPoint CEO, Mike Langellier
Many businesses feel like they have to choose between cities with market opportunity and communities with high quality of life. However, the reality is that you can find a city that balances a healthy market with high-quality living. To explore cities that meet your unique business needs, try the One America Works City Selector Tool that creates customizable lists of cities ranking highly in selected criteria.
Below, we continue to explore the factors that often accompany successful company expansion – market opportunities that make doing business easy alongside quality of life factors that make cities liveable for employees.
According to our survey of 1,000 people, the most common reasons people relocate are to seek a higher paying job or career advancement (49.3%), find a job closer to family (20.5%), or transfer within an existing company (11.1%). Others moved because they relocated their business, or their job moved to a new facility (7.7%).
Moving by yourself can be stressful and pricey, especially when you are moving long-distance to a new city. Our survey reveals that some respondents ease the cost and stress of job relocation with some assistance from their employers, and of course, these contributions go a long way to ease the mind and the wallet.
Despite the pandemic, Texas is the leading destination for companies relocating from other states – adding a thousand new residents per day as people relocate to the Lone Star State. In many cases, those transplants are moving to Texas because their companies decided to move here first, and in some cases, those companies get big incentives from the local government in the Austin area.
BAE Systems has been in Austin 65 years. The international defense, aerospace and security company is one of the first big tech companies to choose Austin. Scott Hatch is the Austin site’s managing director.
Choosing Where and How to Expand Your Business
Choosing where and how to expand your business is a strategic decision. This comes with its own set of opportunities and challenges to work through. At One America Works, we focus on connecting fast-growing companies with cities that match their unique needs for free.
You want to make an informed decision about company expansion, and we can help you evaluate which future-focused cities can get you the talent, resources, and support you need.
Sign up here to learn more about our 13 partnered cities and how to find the right city for you!
Mike Langellier is the CEO of Techpoint, a tech ecosystem growth accelerator delivering talent, venture capital, and promotion to Indiana companies and fostering a connected, dynamic community.
Techpoint programs connect talent with jobs, internships, and educational programs in tech to accelerate their growth and fill the increasing number of tech jobs in Indiana.
Mike joins us today to talk about his journey in entrepreneurship, how Techpoint partners with companies like Tango, Salesforce, Kronos and Genesys, and why Indianapolis Indiana stands out in today’s world.
One America Works is
a non-profit building a vision of the future where high-growth technology companies find the talent they need to grow and succeed in cities across America. Want to know more? Reach out to us at hello@oneamericaworks.org.
