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Global Mobility of Corporate Employees: Expatriation and Business Travel INDUSTRY REPORT Natalia Tretyakevich, PhD Candidate and Mireia Las Heras, Professor, IESE Business School.
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Table of Contents
ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................................. 3
FLEX-PATRIATION ............................................................................................................................. 4 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................... 4 Data description .................................................................................................................................................. 4 Data analysis ........................................................................................................................................................ 8
1. Job domain: Professional challenges and positive impacts of expatriation ...................................... 8 2. Family impacts: difficulties and positive outcomes ................................................................................. 13 3. Expatriation and personal well-being: adjustment difficulties and positive outcomes ........... 19 Summary: Strongest positive/negative experiences ................................................................................... 25 Specific issues connected with expatriation .................................................................................................... 27 General satisfaction with expatriation ............................................................................................................... 33 Company support and practical implications ................................................................................................. 35
Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................................ 39
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ABSTRACT
The main goal of the current research is to unfold positive and negative effects of different types
of global assignments on the work of the travelling individuals, their family life and personal
well-being. Due to the structure of the collected data the two principal mobility forms analyzed
in this regards are expatriation and business travel. Two following chapters provides insights into
the impacts of the above mentioned forms of mobility on various life domains of the travelers
underlining their similarities and focusing on the differences.
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FLEX-PATRIATION
Introduction
In the global interconnected world of today expatriation represents an indispensable form of
mobility, which is widely made use of by multiple companies. Especially this is valid for
multinational corporations (MNCs), which use international assignments for various purposes.
The most frequently mentioned goals of expatriation are providing skills at developing markets
which are difficult to be found there; contributing to the organizational development through
exercising control and coordination at the markets of expatriation and creating learning
opportunities among the company’s employees providing them with the global perspective that
will benefit the firm in the future (Hocking, Brown, & Harzing, 2004). In general, expatriation is
defined in the literature as international relocation for work purposes for the period of time
typically around 3 years during which the employee is usually accompanied by the family
(Collings, Scullion & Morley, 2007).
Present research uncovers the topic of expatriation investigating its positive and negative impacts
with regard to different life domains. In particular, its major objective is to explore employees’
satisfaction with expatriation considering the adjustment difficulties and the added value of the
expatriate experience connected not just with the job outcomes and professional development but
providing a thorough analysis of the expatriation influence on the family life and personal well-
being. The phenomenon is to be specifically investigated for different demographic groups,
which might assign different weight to various work and family-related factors. Practical
implications examining the role of the organization in accommodating the needs of its
expatriates are to be provided at the end of the paper.
Thus, the current chapter presents the detailed analysis of the data received from expatriates
participating in the study. According to the research framework, the results are presented in
relation to the impacts produced by expatriation on different life domains. Thus, we start with the
introduction of the data collection method and general data description where socio-demographic
characteristics and expatriation details are being explored. Later on, adjustment issues and
positive outcomes of assignments for professional development, family and personal life are
analyzed in depth and specific focus is made on curiosities identified during the data analysis.
Thus, we pay attention to the gender issues connected with expatriation, as well as connections
between satisfaction with the assignment abroad and further inclinations to participate in various
forms of mobility. Finally, general satisfaction of the global employees is discussed and as a
result recommendations are provided for the companies and HR departments dealing with mobile
personnel.
Data description
The data for the current research was collected via interviews with the employees of large
multinational companies who have gone through expatriation experience. Thus, male and female
expats who either have already returned to their home country after international assignment or
are currently close to the end of their expatriate experience are represented among the study
sample.
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The in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted face-to-face or via phone/skype,
according to the preferences expressed by the interviewees. The duration of the interview was
between 45 min and 1 hr 30 min, typically 1 hour long. The language of communication was
English. The participants were informed that their personalities remain anonymous, companies
data was not going to be revealed and the information was to be used for research purposes.
Purposeful sampling was used for the study. The participants for the research were recruited in
two waves – the first ones through HR managers of two multinational companies and the second,
through the participants of the MBA course at IESE Business School. To reach a representative
number of female interviewees with international career trajectory the snowball sampling
technique was applied, since initially due to a limited number of female participants with suitable
profiles gender balance was not exactly kept. This situation, however, was corrected in the
course of the second wave of the interviews.
The interviews were structured in the following way: first, introductory questions were asked
with the purpose of better familiarizing with the assignment of the expatriates and getting general
information about its length, destination and purpose. All the main questions were later on split
into three parts, each one referring to professional life, family domain (where applicable) and
personal well-being. Table 1 provides clear structure of the interviews.
Table 1. The structure of interviews
Introduction Assignment description: destination, length, purpose
Work
Positive impacts of assignment on the job
Negative impacts of assignment on the job
Skills acquired thanks to assignment (personal and professional)
Consequences of assignment for career
Company support: positive sides
Company support: missing side
WLB policy of company for personnel on assignment
Female expats: female-male ratio and reasons
Family Positive impacts on the family
Negative impacts
Spouse support
Impact on communication with extended family
Family adjustment
Personal well-
being Positive impacts
Negative impacts
Social life during assignment
Leisure life while on assignment
Personal adjustment
Prior international experience (personal and professional) and its role in
adjustment
Conclusion Overall satisfaction with the assignment
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Most pleasant/stressful in the assignment
Future considerations: readiness to repeat similar assignment or substitute it
with other forms of mobility
Within each domain the focus was made on the major difficulties of adjustment or negative
impacts of assignment and the strongest added value received from expatriation or positive sides
of the relocation. In addition, every domain had specific curiosities explored. Thus, for instance,
within the group of questions about the job outcomes particular attention was paid to the issues
connected with the female expatriation, company support, repatriation process, etc., while social
adjustment and leisure life related questions have been examined when talking about personal
well-being of expatriates. Finally, the interview was completed with the general evaluation of the
satisfaction with expatriation and assessment of future plans and further inclinations to
participate in international assignments of long duration later in time.
As a result, 34 interviews with expatriates have been conducted, 16 out of which with female
employees. Thus, the sample was balanced in terms of gender representation. The expatriates
who participated in the study belonged to various age groups, the youngest being 26 years old at
the time of pursuing international assignment and the upper age border being set at 56 years old.
The mean of the age was 38 years old, which in line with the literature findings stating that
expatriation assignments are typical for the employees on the upswing of their career
development typically between 30 and 45 years old. Rarely the individuals at the entry level as
well as those who have got to the peak of their career are inclined to move abroad for
expatriation.
Only 18% or 6 interviewees did not have families at the time of their assignment, 5 of which
were female employees. Out of 28 individuals who were married 22 had between one and three
children. Interestingly more than a quarter of them had kid(s) born during expatriation.
Most of the expatriates were Spanish by nationality with some exceptions of the participants of
French, British, Polish, Peruvian, Argentinian and Brazilian nationalities. Consequently, the
returned expats majorly resided in Spain, while those who were still on international assignment
had a very wide spread of the countries of living. The explored relocations of expatriates have
been conducted to such countries as Switzerland, Germany, France, USA, UK, Belgium, Spain,
Italy, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Sweden, Peru, Chile, Brazil and Nigeria. Female expatriates
rather chose developed countries for their global assignments, while the geographic distribution
of the destinations of male expatriation was wider, among the rest including the countries of
Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Predominantly employees were expatriated to the capitals or large cities where their companies’
headquarters or big offices were located. However, there were some exceptions to the rule: some
individuals were moved to small towns with the goal of business development. The country and
type of the destination clearly played its role in the adjustment processes and satisfaction with
the assignment and will be discussed later. The majority of expatriates worked in such fields as
sales, marketing, finance, HR of large multinational companies. The main socio-demographic
characteristics of the sample are presented in the Table 2.
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Table 2. Socio-demographic profile of the study participants.
Nr. %
Gender male 18 53%
female 16 47%
Age 26-35 15 44%
36-45 14 41%
46-56 5 15%
Married Y 28 82%
N 6 18%
With kids Y 22 65%
N 12 35%
Nationality Spanish 26 76%
Other European 5 15%
Other worldwide 3 9%
Country of
residence Spain 16 47%
Other European 12 35%
Other worldwide 6 18%
Functional area finance 10 29%
marketing 10 29%
sales 5 15%
HR 2 6%
other 7 21%
Total 34 100%
Speaking about the expatriate assignments, it is important to mention that numerous interviews
have been conducted with the individuals who had multiple expatriations in the course of their
careers. Thus, one third have been on 2 expatriate assignments with one person being currently
in the process of his third relocation. 8 out of 33 were expatriated for the first time and have not
yet returned to their home base. Typically the time of expatriate assignment was around 3 years
(with the mean of 3,1 for the first assignment and 3,25 for the second one), which is in line with
the policies of many MNCs that often foresee standardized time periods for relocations around 3
years long; however, among the sample the length of the assignment ranged between 1 and 6
years. On average, women expatriates undertook their assignments for longer time periods – 3,4
years against 2,9 years for men. The expatriation missions considered in the current report were
conducted after 2008 being quite recent.
Talking about the main purpose of expatriation for the employees, here a clear majority of
expatriates indicated an international assignment as a possibility for professional growth and
career development. Sometimes the position offered for the period of expatriation foresaw
immediate promotion; otherwise, expatriates were hoping to obtain better chances of career
growth upon repatriation, as assignments helped them widen their functional and geographic
scope and develop professionally on a higher level. When an offer of an appealing position in
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appealing destination was added on top of favorable family situation, then there were basically
no doubts whether to accept the assignment.
From the side of organizations expatriation was frequently used as an instrument of widening
business at new locations or bringing best practices to the new markets; therefore, the normal
practice was to send promising employees to other countries to run new projects, open factories,
build up teams, spread the companies policies, etc. Sometimes there was a need to have Spanish
representation in other locations, too.
Apart from this, the second important reason to expatriate employees was to develop the
company’s workforce. Often, international assignments represent a compulsory part of
international career at multiple MNCs and employees are expected to get global exposure at
some point of their career being notified about this during recruitment. Thus, expatriation was a
condition for hiring for certain jobs, and various rotations were foresees between branches and
headquarters and different markets.
Last, in few cases expatriation evolved from a short-term assignment when a project got
prolonged and the employee was offered to continue the work being relocated with his family for
a few years instead of continuing commuting.
Data analysis
1. Job domain: Professional challenges and positive impacts of expatriation
1.1. Positive sides of expatriation First, let’s analyze the effects, both positive and negative, of expatriation on the professional life
of the company’s employees. In this regards expatriation, which started gaining its popularity
just a couple decades ago, proved to be successful in multiple situations due to the positive
effects on work represented in the majority of cases by the added value for the global employees
from the upward learning curve and new experiences gained and expertise developed in the
course of international assignment. Overall male and female expats were indicating similar
positive outcomes of expatriation; there were no major gender differences in this regard.
The interviewees often mentioned expatriation as a very positive experience job-wise, which was
proved by the overall satisfaction score provided in the general assessment. All the expatriates
participating in the study managed to acquire deep knowledge of the industry and the place and
new skills obtained often at the right market in the favorable time, represented not simply by
technical skills but also soft ones. Managing big teams, growing as a leader, mastering
management skills – all these contributed to development of new responsibilities and helped
expatriates become better specialists in their field or develop new functions, providing them with
the new instruments and global business approach.
“I have had an extensive experience performing different roles and it is unbelievable how
much I have learnt in those 3 years comparing to the previous 3 years of work at the
home market. The most important for me was to learn and to develop and this was
successfully achieved. Now that I am back in Spain I can clearly see that there are so
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many things that I collected from France, best practices let's say, that are highly
appreciated here.”
Different professional and personal skills were reported by the interviewees to be acquired in the
course of expatriation. Sometimes, it was difficult to distinguish between them as they all served
in job and private life, too. Apart from huge business acumen and professional development in
the functional area and outside of it, the most frequently mentioned skills developed during
expatriation were flexibility, adaptability, open-mindedness, accepting diversity, adjusting to
new ways of working and living instead of speaking to the old values and being ready for a
change any moment. These were mastered when working away from home while dealing with
new, often volatile situations.
The data revealed critical importance of long-term assignments abroad for adopting new ways of
thinking and becoming more open-minded and auto sufficient, understanding work and life
patterns in other markets, learning how to deal with the colleagues, partners and customers of
other nationalities and specific cultural groups and how to deal with the new problems and
challenges or with the old ones but in the different environment, basically how to do the things
differently and sometimes more efficiently. Work in another market expanded their knowledge,
expats adopted another know how, even if working at the same company, as there were so many
differences, which was realized when getting out of normal environment. Professional
experience in the HQ often gave perspectives and relationships that were difficult to develop in
the brunch office.
“Expatriation had great impact on some many levels… The first obvious level would be
to say that I learnt a lot more about a very important part of the business and the way it is
carried out. It's completely different than the way we see from the markets, speed-wise
and orientation-wise. It was very enriching for me. And on another level you get to see it
all first hand - working at HQ you get to know the company at its core, know how the
steering committee works, how hierarchy works, it's so different from the affiliates that
are so small, usually from 10 to 130 people perhaps, while at HQ there are more than
1000 people. It's much more complex. Really interesting.”
Often new markets were well-suited for specific role development, with healthy competition and
business focused people; however, not seldom new job responsibilities provided unexpected
challenges requiring flexible approach and introduction of innovations. Possibility to impact the
scene and see how the things are implemented in a short period of time was considered as a
strong motivational factor by expatriates. Around half of the research participants reported
improved understanding of business as such thanks to getting to know a clear picture of the
dualism of the HQ and local markets’ functions and responsibilities. Moreover, their area of
influence expanded considerably.
“Coming from the local office where I dealt only with Spain and Portugal, now I have
102 countries under my responsibilities, with all the implications. The job itself is a lot
more interesting than the one I had. Job-wise it's a really good move.”
As mentioned, in the main offices they got to live the values of the company in a much more
intense way than they did in the affiliates. Interestingly, though acknowledging all the positive
outcomes of work in headquarters, some opinions were expressed regarding positive influence of
expatriation on appreciation of advantages of the home market.
Undoubtedly living abroad for a prolonged time period had its influence on the communication
skills of the global employees that were enriched and certainly put at full speed at the
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requirement of the new assignments resulting in development of new relations with people,
engagement with the new colleagues with different cultural background. Ability to listen to
others, people management, coaching and leading new teams in the novel setting and different
country were often required by the new positions too and resulted in developing tolerance,
patience and ability to deal with emotions.
In addition, learning or mastering foreign language was certainly very positive. Thus, a third of
the interviewees mentioned improvement of their command of English thanks to “working and
living and thinking in English” and learning other foreign languages, such as German or French,
during their stay at a new market to be an important added value.
Certainly, the expats’ visibility within the company considerably improved thanks to global
assignments: their network was widened; there was a unique possibility to get in touch with the
colleagues in the same role but at different markets. Expatriation helped a lot to get to know a lot
of people from the organization. At the end it was very positive also because later on these
connections were very valuable for efficient work.
In addition, getting exposed to stakeholders of higher level than at the home market and to the
top management from headquarters and specific markets’ offices provided a great experience of
dealing with hierarchy and sometimes fostered career development. Along with new knowledge
and experiences it often provided benefits for the future opening the doors to important career
opportunities. Therefore, the network acquired in the process of expatriation was frequently
regarded as one of the most valuable outcomes of the assignment, as the relationship built in HQ
and other offices were considered to be key to further career development.
“You start becoming someone, job rotations are usually for people who are in career.
They don't even normally know you exist until somebody is sent abroad - at that moment
you start having a lot of visibility, you are very exposed. Professionally speaking it
helped me a lot to start opening discussions about my career”.
Sometimes the relationship between expatriation and further career growth was not direct,
meaning that expats did not immediately get promotion, however, despite that, participation in
the international assignment was often mentioned as an added value for the CV, which at some
point of career helped them get promotion.
In terms of networking, the relationships with new officemates were clearly considered as a
benefit. Often expatriates mentioned good ambience among the colleagues, especially when a
group of people was relocated together for project work. However, essential to mention that not
just professional engagement but friendly relationships with people from different backgrounds
appeared and became stronger in the new environments thanks to presence of expat community
in many cases, unless going to a very small place or to a developing country.
Financial benefits represented another important motivation factor for expatriates as no matter in
which country they work their remuneration is normally at quite a high level compensating for
inconvenience caused by moving away from home.
Expatriation contributed to growing independence of employees and boosted their confidence
and trust in themselves as during international assignments they managed to do things that they
were never hoping to achieve. One interviewee mentioned that she acquired a new admiration for
herself after seeing what she was able to achieve on her own in the limited time. In general,
females mentioned this type of soft skills gained thanks to expatriation more often than their
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male colleagues. Thus, maturity, personal and professional growth, getting to know oneself
better were amongst the positive effects of expatriation on the personalities of the employees.
Soft skills acquired when living abroad were of no lesser importance for the expatriates than
technical knowledge and functional expertise.
1.2. Work adjustment and professional challenges of expatriation
In spite of the long list of expatriation benefits and positive experiences connected with it, the
interviewees referred to several professional challenges requiring adjustment from their side.
Frequently repatriation was mentioned by expats as the most serious difficulty of global
assignments. Quarter of respondents encountered certain problems when getting back to the
home market after expatriation was over. In some situations the assignment abroad or non-
availability of positions at home office in the right time provoked deviation from the planned
career path and prolonged climbing up the career ladder. In others, it took longer than expected
to get further promotion, which might have extended the timing of the stay abroad. Thus, the
research confirmed that not always the chances to get the job at the right level upon return were
close to 100% and gained benefits might be too theoretical without finding their application in
practice. Male expatriates were preoccupied about the repatriation issue more often than females
represented in the sample. Nevertheless, almost all the interviewees mentioned higher potential
of professional growth in the future and better career prospects arising due to undertaking global
assignment, though the benefits might be delayed.
High risk, big uncertainty, difficulty to secure bottom line were among the top challenges named
by expatriates which became more pronounced in the markets with tough geopolitical situation,
economic crisis, low business mood and other local difficulties. Even currency deviations might
have caused additional risks for expats, depending on the conditions of their contracts. For
instance, Russia was mentioned as a complicated place for work and its economic crisis
impacted the expatriates there too. Again, the difficulty to reach objectives was more frequently
reported by men, which might have been connected with their specific job responsibilities as
they were regularly required to lead big teams or launch specific projects.
It’s true that global employees thanks to networking opportunities increase their visibility
abroad. At the same time, however, upon leaving home markets expatriates’ visibility there
diminished considerably; they might be at a high risk of being forgotten due to losing direct
contact with former bosses, colleagues and sponsors from the home base.
“In case of expatriation you can easily lose contact with your sponsor or mentor in the
company who should watch you and help you to develop. When you move, there is not so
much contact with the mentor, and then when that person also moves, whoever succeeds
him or her, doesn't have that connection with you. So, loosing track of your development
may be a challenge.”
Therefore, taking into account unfavorable local country conditions hampering reaching the
professional goals of the assignments and loosing contact with the home base, the objectives of
expatriation might not be fulfilled immediately. In its turn, this might lead to disappointment
with expatriation as such and even expatriation failure.
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Another problem encountered was tough adjustment to the new job and place, new position, new
boss. Expats are basically pushed out of their comfort zone and familiar working atmosphere
being forced to start everything from scratch. Often they changed everything but the company
name – they work at a new location, in another language, in a new functional area and with
different work responsibilities, having new boss, colleagues and new work routine. Moreover,
new country often requires adaptation to its specificities connected with running business in a
slightly different manner. You need to understand local rules, adjust to new way of work, which
might be completely different from the one at a former office. This problem was more often
mentioned by female expatriates; therefore, their professional adjustment took longer.
“It's a different working culture, even though it's the same company but there are
obviously differences. In the case of Americans, I think there is a little bit of a difference
in the way…for instance, Europeans tend to be more open. There is a little bit of
navigation you need to learn in terms of culture. From work perspective - getting used to
different styles of work is needed. Just a silly example - one thing that was hard for me
was cultural way of working of Americans - having 15 meetings a week that don't let you
work. You have a feeling that you're not working as much as needed, I really had hard
time in understanding that thing and finding the value out of it.”
If the new position of expat required them to deal not just with the colleagues at the new office
but included responsibilities of wider functional and geographic scope, then culture played even
more crucial role.
“In my current job the cultural difference is critical. Sometimes it's a challenge. Different
cultures, different currencies, different everything. These things I didn't really pay much
attention to when I was in the local office. Now - it's my day to day. On Saturdays some
countries work, Muslims, this kind of things. And also the way you conduct business
with other parts of the world. It's a challenge; I don't think it's negative. But at the
beginning it was like - ok what is this...”
Due to all these issues, professional stress constantly accompanied the expatriates at the initial
stages of their assignment and is increased even more by a lot of working hours, elevated
workload, high pressure and sometimes excessive expectations caused by necessity to prove
locals that you can be better despite being in unfamiliar environment and speaking different
language. Besides, local politics in the new office, especially in HQ was frequently mentioned as
a watch out – it was important to learn the hierarchy at the new location in order to deal with
seniority. Work in the centre had another disadvantages - easiness of being lost among large
groups of employees, therefore, decreased visibility, as a result.
Cultural differences with the local team did not contribute to smooth and easy socializing either,
adaptation to the new way of work and working culture made people management even more
challenging. Some expats described the situations when the local office was not very willing to
accept the newcomers and it made adaptation process much more painful in professional and
personal terms.
Another point mentioned by the interviewees was abundant business travel, which is often an
accompanying feature of expat assignment. It was viewed from two different perspectives by the
company’s employees. One group of expatriates regarded it as an added value of the new job that
provided the possibility of seeing new places and adopting a broader view of the business.
However, a number of individuals mentioned business travel as a negative feature of the new
employment, which occupied too much time and decreased their WLB requiring their frequent
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absence from the family that sometimes had not yet got adjusted to the new place and needed an
additional support.
Similarly, new languages were mentioned in a contradictory way: working and living in a new
language was a strong positive point for improving the command and mastering fluency, but it
was also named as an obstacle to efficient fulfillment of the job responsibilities during the
adaptation period. Moreover, despite representing a common preoccupation for all expats, low
command of foreign language was more frequently mentioned with the negative connotation by
women. Especially strong negative opinions were expressed by those expats living in the
countries with completely unknown local language, the command of which was not required for
the job – it produced difficulties with socializing aside of work and adaptation to the new
environment. However, at the end, the necessity to learn a new language was considered rather
positive.
Table 3. Professional adjustment difficulties of expatriates.
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tough adaptation in the beginning due to being thrown out of the comfort area, starting
everything from scratch
2 short notice of expatriation and no time given for adaptation
3 adjusting to different working culture and local differences, understanding local rules
4 developing completely new role and change the way of work
5 challenging relationship with new colleagues and bosses, gaining their respect
6 high workload and long working hours
7 language as a barrier
8 high uncertainty, multiple risks local country geopolitical and economic difficulties
9 high expectations generate pressure
10 not always results are achieved fast, sometimes the goal is not fulfilled at all
11 uncertainty about further career
12 risk of being forgotten at home market, lower visibility there
13 professional stress and anxiety
14 dealing with politics in the centre
15 sometimes being switched to HQ might reduce your visibility
16 high amount of business trips negatively influence WLB
17 not much of friendliness of the ambience for dual-career
So, not every facet of expatriation in terms of work always went smooth – there were some
downsides underlined by some expats more frequently than the others. This certainly depended a
lot on individual work arrangements and personal qualities too. But overall, some things global
employees clearly liked more than the others but for work at the end it was rather positive.
2. Family impacts: difficulties and positive outcomes
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2.1. Positive impacts of expatriation on the family life While short-term assignments abroad and regular business travel usually do not foresee that the
traveler is accompanied by the family, the situation with expatriation is different. The vastest
majority of the interviewed expatriates were relocated for a long-term assignment abroad with
their spouses and children. Family relocation was fully supported by the company, which helped
with the logistics and provides an additional allowance. However, both positive and negative
consequences of expatriation could be mentioned with regard to the family domain.
On the one hand, long-term assignments abroad were judged as extremely beneficial for the kids,
without exceptions. Thanks to them the employees’ children got a chance to study in
international schools, learn foreign language(s) and grow up in the international surrounding.
This undoubtedly provided the younger generation with a good starting platform for life granting
them multiple benefits. They learnt how to embrace diversity, they made friends from all over
the world, explored multiple countries; it contributed to faster maturity and increased their
emotional intelligence. Sometimes better prospects for children were named as the main
motivation for parents when deciding whether to undertake the assignment. Moreover, some
couples found expatriation period to be very suitable for giving birth to kids; this was happening
due to availability of free time for the wife who often stayed at home, additional financial
support by the company and developed medical services at a new place.
“Language barrier in our case is moving from weakness to strength. My kid is 3 years old
and speaks 4 languages fluently. From kids prospective - it is just a huge opportunity - to
learn about different cultures, to understand that not everyone is exactly the same, that
people r different, that there are different languages, people live in different places
around the world, there r time differences. It sets them up for being much more flexible
and emotionally intelligent in the future, if parents are managing it well.”
“Now I look back and it's been great for them. I think when we were in Spain they lived
in a small controlled environment going to the same school from 2 year old. Now my
little one was the only white person in the class. We didn't have a place and we were in
the Indian neighborhood. So, he was the only white child, he couldn't speak English. For
him it was shocking but I think it was very positive in the long run. Kids are exposed to
completely different cultures, languages; it is opening their minds a lot. Now you look at
their friends and it's like a bag of m&m's - all the colors... And also educational system -
the English education works well for them.”
Apart from the positive influences on kids, expatriation demonstrated benefits for the family as a
unit and the relationship between the partners, which tend to become closer than ever when
moving to a completely new environment. There exist multiple evidences to the fact that family
unit was strengthening, spouses got to know each other better and from different perspectives
becoming attached to each other more than ever, the core of family got stronger. Expatriation
was sometimes regarded like living together an adventure; it was an extraordinary experience,
which made the family bond.
“In terms of couple it was a bit stressful in the beginning - since there is so much logistics
to figure out - that creates some tension but on the other hand what we found - and we
talked about this is we really have to lean on and rely on each other a lot and it kind of
builds this circle which is very strong and it kind of bonds you together very much.”
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The level of living of the whole family unit was often higher at the expatriation destination due
to economic benefits and special conditions provided to the global employees; thanks to the
international assignment the families got access to wider range of services, they got an
opportunity to travel, children went to good schools. These might not always have been possible
if staying at the home base all along the career.
Family development as a unit happened also due to contacts with other people, making friends
with other countries’ nationals, building new relations and better understanding how the world
works. Often these connections with people from other countries were preserved all life long. All
together families got to know different culture, adopted new ways of thinking living in a
completely new landscape, and learnt how to manage efficiently their daily life in the new
setting. Not only it created special connections between the family members but also contributed
to their development on a whole different level. They acquired new skills in the course of living
abroad: for instance, one interviewee mentioned that her husband who followed her on the
international assignment learnt to cook.
“Main positive impact...I think it's creating an amazing experience that we live together.
It's an adventure, a real adventure, and I'd say adventures r not so common these days.
Actually I wouldn't say many people would shy away from them. Like all experiences,
adventures excitement makes family bond I think, while going through this, and it does
so as well cause you have tough times. Everyone faces challenges, and the kids as well.
Going through them together probably strengthens the bonds.”
Sometimes positive aspects for the wife development were named too. In spite of the wife
leaving her job at home in the majority of cases, in certain situations she managed to get
employment at the new place, in addition to learning new languages and developing other
interests. Mostly life was comfortable for spouses, as the interviewees from the sample were
moved either to countries with high standard of living or to developing countries where financial
benefits compensated small inconveniences.
Analyzing the positive effects reported by expatriates of different genders, we saw that overall
female employees were largely focused on their kids and for them benefits of expatriation
received by their children were of major importance. Men were mentioning this point as well,
however, more frequently building up good relationship with a wife, bonding and strengthening
family unit was considered by them at first place, followed by cultural development and growth
of international awareness of all the members of the family.
2.2. Family adjustment and challenges to overcome
On the other hand, not just positive effects have been reported by expatriates in relation to their
family life. An interesting opinion was expressed stating that in such situations everything –
positive and negative – goes to extreme. Thus, in spite of expatriation opening new doors for
children, kids logistics was mentioned among the biggest challenges. Schools, nannies,
pediatricians, etc. – everything required more effort and was hard to manage, especially in the
situations of dual-career couples. It was not always easy to facilitate adaptation process of the
children, make them accept the change painlessly, in particular during the first year of life in the
new surrounding. These moments were more frequently testified by females expatriates,
especially, if we talk about daily issues connected with daycare and health routine for children.
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“From parents perspective expatriation with kids get much more complicated, starting
from logistics. It gets very very complex. Like from getting pediatrician, vaccinations,
daycare solutions, food solution in the US kids don’t get foods in schools, having
someone take care of kids during their vacations around the year. And obviously the
language barrier… It is a challenge at the beginning. But that's from the parents'
prospective.”
Absence of unconditional support of extended family, which stayed at home, did not help either.
Moreover, expatriates were forced to leave their parents and relatives at home not being able to
support them as much as needed and due to that feeling themselves guilty and far from their
routes. Nowadays new technologies made it easy to keep in touch, therefore, communication
often simply changed from physical to digital; however, moving to a completely different time
zone might prevent families from regular contacts. Close communication with the family was
disrupted also due to bad flight connections. For daily life it was unpleasant but not a tragedy,
however, the problems arose when physical contact was required. Sometimes health issues of
parents or other family problems required personal presence at home and caused an additional
amount of travel, though in some cases, when expatriation destination was too far from home
base, it was hardly possible. Also it was noted that the expat lifestyle provoked additional
selfishness in relation to family and friends who were left at home as participation in their lives
was much lower and, therefore, it was much easier to stay away from their problems. So, it was
valid for both sides – lack of family support and lack of assistance to the family provided by
expatriates too – and was mentioned among the most difficult moments connected with
relocation abroad.
“Personally it was much more challenging to live in the environment in which you don’t
have any social support in a sense. Whatever happens to my family and myself is all on
the shoulders of me and my husband. We've always been completely independent and
autonomous which is probably a challenge.”
To some expats – they were the minority though - the decrease in communication with family
and friends did not cause any inconvenience. This was typical for the situations when individuals
were always living far from families or were used to constant moves being raised in an
international atmosphere. If expats did not have the custom to regularly speak with their family
members, moving away was not an issue at all and even positively influenced communication
sometimes improving relations between family members. Yet, these cases were very rare.
The feeling of loneliness and isolation has been frequently reported by the interviewees. In some
countries it was very hard to build the new circle of communication due to cultural differences,
closeness of local people or absence of expatriate community. Language could be a barrier too
contributing to isolation, especially when moving to a small place where expatriates were not
very common and the infrastructure for them is not particularly developed. Therefore, social life
might have been problematic.
“I think we felt completely alone, isolated. You live in London with 10 million people
and many are in the same situation, but you have to deal with all the problems on your
own and that could be a little logistic challenge of the everyday life, it was a killer - from
finding the school to finding the house. So, all the little things that nobody told us about
and we had to figure out on our own.”
Due to these challenges expatriates’ families sometimes found themselves in the situations that
were difficult to manage facing multiple challenges. In the toughest moments the atmosphere
17
might have become tense, especially in the beginning of the new life, as all the members of the
family were out of their comfort zone. Everyone had to learn how to deal with unexpected and to
find balance in the new life, and the expat too – finding WLB was extremely important, at the
very beginning of the new assignment in particular.
Spouses of expatriates did not always manage to find their comfort zone at the new place. It was
rather difficult to find a new job due to language, local issues, burocracy and problems with the
documents, in spite of some support measures practiced by the companies of expatriates. Though
presently the situation is changing little by little, still in the most cases expatriates are male
employees and their spouses are the ones who follow. Men recognized that expatriation had a big
influence on their spouses who lost their job and the source of income and independence and
experienced stress due to professional isolation and loss of career, having to fully dedicate
themselves to their families. Moreover, they were thrown out of their circle of communication
and were missing the support of family and friends.
“The key element is a wife as expatriation influences her a lot. For the expatriate - for me
- at the end the day-to-day activity has not changed - you get up, go to work, get back and
stay at home - most time is spent at your job as before. For wife everything changes, no
friends, nothing to do, she probably quit job, she has basically to remake her wife - which
I think is a huge impact. She is the one who suffers, she has to remake her life completely
being without friends and job; it's difficult for her to have social life, she is missing a lot
of things.”
Interestingly, female expats were mentioning the situations when their trailing husbands did not
have jobs at the new destination as the most serious problem – this negatively influenced their
balanced family lives. However, for male expats the situation was different: with few exceptions,
they reported social isolation, non-familiarity with the local language, absence of family and
friends as the biggest challenges for their wives.
Important to mention that all but one male expats represented in our sample had families, while
one third of female expats were single. So, the decision to follow was mainly taken by wives
who often gave up their previous job very rarely having kept position guaranteed back at home
upon return. Sometimes spouses managed to find job at the new destination, temporary or part-
time employment, especially important it was for following males: if this mission was not
successful that usually served as a reason to earlier termination of the wife’s assignment and
early return home.
Table 4. Examples of family adjustment difficulties of expatriates.
1 Complicated logistics with children, kids adjustment difficulties
2
Lack of support of extended family, diminishing communication with them; no social
support; and inability to help the elderly parents, too
3
Spouse adaptation to new life, not having job, focusing just on the family; undertaking a
big effort without appropriate reward sometimes
4 Challenging relocation logistics, settling down at the new place
5 Isolation, difficulty with social circle, no friends around
6 Language as a barrier at the initial stage of expatriation
7 In tough moments family atmosphere might become tense
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8
Difficult to manage some periods of time without families (at the beginning/end of the
assignment for example)
9 No appropriate infrastructure for expatriates
10 WLB of the working expat is not always good which negatively influences family
11 uncertainty around repatriation influences family
The spouses of expats indeed faced some challenges, yet almost always they fully supported the
decision to relocate seeing the benefits of this move for the career and family, too. It could have
required certain negotiations, but the vastest majority of the interviewees managed to convince
their spouses. Nevertheless, generally expats who had families would not even consider
accepting such long-term international assignments if their spouses did not agree to follow; just 2
expatriates accepted long-term international assignments commuting home almost every
weekend. When at the beginning of the assignment and during its last months they were forced
to stay alone preparing the ground for the family relocation or closing the last working duties,
they found themselves particularly miserable and directed all their efforts to be reunited with
their families as soon as possible. Uncertainty around repatriation make the situation even more
complicated.
Obviously, work outcomes might suffer from these situations, which should be taken into
account by the companies when managing expatriation. In extreme situations expatriation might
be conducted on the basis of weekly commuting but these examples are more rare.
Overall, the role of family was found to be of extremely high importance for the expatriates,
which was additionally proved by the content analysis (word count or cloud analysis) – the
Figure 1 demonstrates the central position of this domain for the relocated employees being
mentioned with highest frequency.
Figure 1. Role of family for expatriates - Nvivo word map.
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Thus, work-family balance was one of the key success factor for expatriation assignment and
satisfaction of the relocated employees. Family occupied the central position in the consideration
of effects of expatriation, not only influencing satisfaction with expatriate assignment but also
playing role in the plans for future mobility. Family presence had double-faceted effect on the
satisfaction with expatriation and inclination to undertake such assignments in future: if the
spouse had positive experiences during expatriation (was working, did not suffer from the
absence of communication, enjoyed the new lifestyle, etc.) then expat tended to be more satisfied
and more inclined to pursue expatriation in the future. Another success factor was connected
with the stage of life of the kids: most often parents with younger children (below 10-12 years
old) and those with older and independent kids, for instance, studying at university, undertook
expatriation assignments. Undoubtedly, in the vastest majority of cases the decision to accept
such assignment was the family decision and family presence was found to have stabilizing
effect on the expatriates overall.
3. Expatriation and personal well-being: adjustment difficulties and positive outcomes
Expatriation affected not just work and family life domains; it produced inevitable – positive and
negative – impacts on personal well-being of the relocated employees. Especially these
influences were noticeable when expats do not have families, while for those individuals moving
with spouses and kids the effects on domains might have been mixed. The current chapter
represents an attempt to decompose these impacts.
3.1. Positive consequences Among the strongest positive individual effects expatriates mentioned a range of personal
qualities developed thanks to the assignments abroad, which were partially introduced in the first
chapter on professional development. Personally, it was very enriching for the global employees
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to see different cultures and to develop new skills; many of them reported they learnt to be more
flexible, open-minded, to take perspective from what their life was in the home country and to
get better prepared for the whole new world. Especially frequently remarked were personal
growth, higher maturity, boosted self-confidence, becoming in general a more complete and
interesting person. Moreover, learning new languages and getting all new cultural insights was
considered as a big added value by expats. It was already mentioned in the chapter on
professional and family outcomes, as many skills are interconnected – it is sometimes
complicated to distinguish those ones developed thanks to work and the other arising due to new
lifestyle. Individual and family experiences of expats were frequently interconnected, as they
were lived together in out of work time.
“I think maturity, I found it very rewarding, I was very very happy, yes. On a personal
level it was very enriching. I feel it has changed me very much in the way to approach
people, to be more open, willing to be more flexible and more assertive with people. To
understand that there is so much more in the way people say that has to be understood
and separated from what the people are saying.”
“I think the positive impact is that it opens your mind; you get out of comfort circle that
you had before, it gives you broader view of people. It allows you to learn the new
language. It makes you much more international which I believe is quiet positive. First
moments for us were rather very happy and exciting than sad or missing home.”
“You get to know yourself better at the whole another level - what are you able to do,
how far you are willing to go. You think you know it but you actually don't know that
until you are facing the challenge, facing the experience. And then for me it was a lot of
fun.”
Psychologically expats reported becoming stronger and physically sometimes too, for example
when having a chance to practice more sports than before or live more in an outdoor lifestyle. It
depended a lot on the destination of expatriation. Thus, people relocated to Switzerland, for
instance, broadly mentioned that the lifestyle there was very much outdoor driven; this was
judged very positive by the expatriates who adapted their lives accordingly and made great use
of the natural landscape and opportunities to practice some kinds of sports, like hiking, skiing,
etc. Expatriates who moved to California, US, or to the coast of Australia frequently mentioned
existing cult of body and overall culture of the place contributing to frequent exercising and
healthy lifestyle; in places like this global employees quickly caught up with healthy routine and
got involved into multiple physical activities – gym, jogging, pilates, yoga, etc. But certainly, as
frequently mentioned, the exercising routine and desire to live healthily depended on the person
and not on the place.
“In Switzerland basically there's a much more outdoors driven culture. I became much
more active in terms of sport or hiking, skiing. You live right in the Alps. In Barcelona I
used to go to the beach. Yes, I miss probably the sea but I got kind of adapted to be more
active outdoors. Food-wise it was not a big difference. Basically in Switzerland you can
get anything you want.
In California, our life is also very outdoors driven - we are even more outdoors here than
we used to be. Days are huge. Body culture - everyone is fit here. It's a bit of an impact.
You feel like having a healthy lifestyle here if you didn’t have one before, that's a good
influence.”
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New atmosphere taught expats how to live in a different place, how to do the things more
efficiently, how to enjoy ‘slower’ life devoting more time to family and to themselves. People
learn to appreciate both – what they used to have at home and what they got at the new place;
often the best part of the foreign experience was taken home and replicated in the future.
Another important side of live was connected to getting to know the destination and its
surroundings. Multiple travel opportunities arose in front of expatriates and this was not failed to
be mentioned by many interviewees. It was one of the biggest parts of the whole experience for
the relocated employees, some of whom said that travel was very important for them
representing a serious point in favour of agreeing to undertake an assignment abroad.
“Travel was very important for us - that part I love. Really knowing new country - I think
it's very different when you live there versus when you are visiting as a tourist. We tried
hard to visit all the country and understand it. Such things like local holidays, some
authentic stuff. We think that’s right, so we were trying to make good use of our stay
abroad.”
They usually travelled not just all over the new region, new country, getting out of home every
single weekend, but also explored neighboring countries, too. Especially easy it was in Europe:
when being expatriated in Switzerland, for example, due to its good geographic location, they
had a great chance of getting to visit Hungary, Germany, France, Italy – all were very close and
easily accessible.
In general, expats tended to travel more during their assignments compared to their normal life at
home. They were considering themselves as permanent tourists in their new country of living.
Each weekend the family was discovering new places, making use good opportunity to embrace
the new culture. Sometimes they got to know the new place better than locals becoming real
experts and were able to provide others with good advice on the best places to visit. Obviously
these travel opportunities were also facilitated by good financial conditions provided for
international employees.
“It was a great opportunity to travel around, see new country. These things you don’t do
when you stay at the same place. When you are not moving you become a routine player.
We had great opportunity for travelling having an economic package that allowed us
doing this. It is a mix of both. You take advantage of being in a different country and
being closer even to the other countries around and having conditions allowing you to do
it.”
Another personality related point brought up in connection with travel was not just the chance to
see all the variety of new places but also to get deeply into the culture of visited destinations. It
provided a unique opportunity to understand the differences between unfamiliar places, which
were similar at first sight, to get to know different people and personalities, to understand what
they think and to take the most of these experiences.
“It's important for both of us, we've always wanted to get to know the place and its
culture rather than just sightseeing. Have you been to the Eiffel tower? - Yes, I’ve been.
Do you know why the Eiffel Tower was built, do you know what surrounds the Eiffel
tower, you know, why is it the way it is...getting to know also the cuisine of specific
country. Then the differences between cuisine from Bern, Vaud and Valais, for example,
which are very subtle, but if you life in Switzerland for less time than a month or a year,
you say – oh, that's all cheese...even if it's not the same thing. I think getting to the
substance makes the places interesting.”
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There were interviewees, nevertheless, for whom travel was just a normal consequence of
expatriation, not particularly exciting, as it was not really important for them to travel around.
However, since there were plentiful opportunities, they were made use of. Those expats’ families
who had kids when living abroad did less trips than families with older children; they were rather
receiving guests at the new place of living. However, they were planning to catch up with
travelling as soon as their family situation allowed. Only once an interviewee named high
workload and tiredness due to extensive business trips as a reason for not having much interest in
private travel around the new country.
3.2. Personal adjustment difficulties and negative impacts of expatriation Along with positive outcomes, certain negative points or difficulties were normal for expatriates.
Among the downsides of global assignment there were reported initial challenges with the social
life that were negatively influenced by the language barrier, closeness of local population or
small circle of acquaintances. Normally, recently relocated expatriates were getting in touch with
other expatriates employees of their own company and other MNCs becoming members of expat
community. This was relatively easy as all the expats dealt with the same problems, it was not
complicated to find people who spoke the same language; they could help each other, spouses
got in contact with each other, too.
Another way of finding new acquaintances was through kids’ schools, wives and sport activities.
Expanding social circle was influenced by individual preferences as well – some individuals
were happy staying together with expatriate community, while for others integrating with locals
was crucial and they put a lot of pressure on finding friends at the new destination.
However, not always employees were sent to headquarters or central offices; sometimes those
were small towns where the infrastructure for expats was not well-developed; then absence of
people to communicate with was particularly hard. Different nationalities had their own
peculiarities too depending on which it was easier or harder to find contact with them. Moreover,
locals anyway had their own established lives and did not let foreigners into their communication
circles that easily. At the end, all these factors influenced social life of the global employees who
anyway had to adopt new strategies when it came to communication.
“And also your circle of friends... One thing that Brazilians and American and Russians -
those whom I met - I can say they are closer to us in their behaviors, they will exchange a
lot more, they are coming into your private life much more than Swiss. One thing that
happens when you live abroad is that you become much more selective. So it's very easy
to cut the ties with friends who you know are not adding anything to you.”
Missing home, family and friends was difficult to compensate but with time expats learnt how to
manage it. In addition to human factor, country conditions also should not be forgotten as they
could be less favorable than the ones at home: security issues, transportation system, cultural
factors provoked some inconvenience influencing the comfort of expatriates’ life in addition to
cold weather, different cuisine, absence of the sea, which were also mentioned with a negative
connotation. Especially in some destinations winters could have been particularly rough and if
the relocation was happening when there were just a few hours of daylight and all the life
outdoors was basically non-existent, that obviously produced negative effect on expats
prolonging their adaptation period.
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Psychologically, relocated employees frequently suffered from loneliness, especially if their
family was not with them, homesickness often accompanies expatriates who at a certain stage, if
the assignments last too long, did not feel themselves fully at home but at the same time no
longer belonged to their native home country. Since the outcomes of expatriation were not
always clear, expats tended to reflect on what they were doing - whether what the decision they
took was right thing to do for themselves and for the whole family.
Stress was caused by adaptation and repatriation, uncertainty and high risk and was often
revealed through physical symptoms such as exhaustion, health deterioration. Several diseases
and health problems, like hypertension or even hair loss were reported by some of participants.
One interviewee even had to take the decision to come home earlier as the pressure of new work
was too high and caused severe health problems. Extensive amount of business travel reported
by some expats made the situation harder and elevated exhaustion and fatigue. Moreover,
individual balance depended not only on the personal and job adjustment but also on the
settlement of other family members – it was impossible for expats to start enjoying their new life
until the spouse and kids were happy.
“For me it was a big big change – it was something that I didn’t ask for. Even if I decided
to go ahead, I needed to accept that. It was not easy and generated some frustration,
maybe because of all these changes in terms of work and absence of emotional stability.
In the beginning it was hard cause I didn’t see my children settled, it didn’t permit me to
feel better. But it's also because of my personality - I am a perfectionist and being out of
my comfort in uncertain area generated frustration.”
Eating healthily might have been a challenge too, especially in the conditions of excess of work
it was more difficult to be in shape. Not always typical food products could have been found at
new destinations, however, that was a minor issue. Indeed, healthy lifestyle habits largely
depended on individual, however, high work pressure, non-familiarity with the new place and
lack of time could have influenced health negatively causing deficit of exercise and lower control
of diet. That was acknowledged by several interviewees, men mostly. Especially noticeable
changes were happening at the initial stage of expatriation, in the first year, when adjustment
process was at its full upswing.
“It's a bit more challenging now to get in shape. In Spain I was doing something every
day, you want to do this sport you call this guy, another activity - you call another guy. I
was all evenings doing some activities. Here not having this circle of people I had to
change. I had to switch the type of activity, more indoors; instead of mountain biking in
Spain here I am doing triathlon. It's a bit more difficult cause many times you are alone.”
“You abandon normal healthy routine due to excess of work. The first year I did no
jogging at all. Physically I was always exhausted, wife was saying that I was at home
always 'like a matrass' just lying. It was demanding, psychologically and physically. After
6 months it got easier, you manage to find balance.”
“It has a huge negative impact in this case. I think put on 25 kilos since I moved to the
UK, because, of course, I don't walk any more. I am sitting at my desk 60 hours a week. I
don't have help at home, while in Spain I had it, all the meals were taken care of and now
I have to do it myself. I work more, I move less, I spend less time with my family.
Sounds very negative but it's not that bad.”
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Cultural adjustment largely depended on the country of the assignment. Spaniards did not find
major difficulties in Latin American countries or European ones, such as France or Switzerland,
but Scandinavia seemed to be trickier. On the one hand, it was important to be in the place with
high standard of life, good security, good accessibility and multiple flight connections. But on
the other, in addition to new language, cultural moments made a difference too. However, while
pre-trip training provided by the companies could improve the situation with the cultural
adjustment, it had considerably less influence on psychological adjustment. That could be one of
the reasons why in the current study psychological adjustment difficulties caused by life changes
were mentioned more frequently.
Some factors were mentioned by different genders with various frequency and emphasize. Thus,
female expats suffered much more than their male counterparts from psychological
consequences of international relocations: their level of anxiety, stress, loneliness were much
higher, emotional instability was a frequent accompanying factor and adaptation period lasted
longer. Male expats, in their turn, reported bigger health problems and physical impacts: they
had some diseases, suffered from inability to maintain healthy diet and exercising routine and as
a consequence their physical shape changed for the worse. In terms of psychological impacts,
men felt more pressure from inability to support their elderly parents left at home.
Besides these effects, expatriates agreed on the different phases of the foreign assignment –
“first, you feel very excited, you start discovering the new country, then administration
challenges hit you and you cool down; at some point you feel so submerged to all the
complexities of the new life and new job but then the situation evens and the curve is going
upwards with the increasing adaptation to the new job and family adjustment to their new life.”
That is confirmed by the expatriation literature, where the first stage is called ‘honeymoon’ and
is inevitably followed by the cultural shock and adjustment stage (Black & Mendenhall, 1991).
Table 5. Personal adaptation difficulties of expatriates.
1 complications with building up social life, finding communication circle
2 bad weather at the new place, absence of beach
3 missing friends, homesickness
4 feeling of loneliness and isolation, belonging neither to new place nor home
5 stress of the initial adaptation, stressful work, tiredness and fatigues
6 deterioration of health, diseases
7 bad eating habit, not keeping diet
8 no possibility to exercise enough
9 the feeling of insecurity - questioning whether what you do is right
10 too much of business travel
11 cultural adaptation and language difference
Thus, the list of positive and negative effects of expatriation on each life domain is long and
depends on individual circumstances, though multiple communalities exist between different
types of assignment in various destinations. Clearly, every expat weighed pros and cons before
taking the decision and at the end almost all of them were to a certain extent satisfied with the
experiences.
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Summary: Strongest positive/negative experiences
When in conclusion the respondents were asked to choose out of all range of positive sides and
complicated moments of expatriation the following picture emerged. When talking about the
biggest added value of international assignments, the most frequently mentioned was incredible
experience of living in a new country, which gave the possibility to encounter completely new
culture not on superficial level but immerse into it deeply getting to be a part of it and adopt new
lifestyle. At the beginning, everything seemed new and wonderful. Seeing new beautiful places,
traveling around new regions, seeing incredible landscapes, meeting people, discovering new
languages – all these was personally enriching and opened up the mind of expats. Cultural
interaction was important and it facilitated better understanding of the processes happening in the
new country, being on a scene instead of just watching the news on TV. Especially valid it was
for farther countries located out of Europe or the developing ones.
Second, apart from getting a broader view of the world and personal development, professional
achievements were of no lesser importance. Expats were able to prove themselves and their
colleagues and bosses their professional capabilities coping with complicated tasks when being
outside their comfort zone, away from home. “I’ve discovered the whole another part of me” –
said one of the participants. This self-recognition and rewarding recognition of the team brought
a lot of professional satisfaction and boosted their belief in themselves, apart from forming a
good base for further professional growth and career development.
“The best - you prove yourself that you can move out of your comfort zone and you are
successful enough to win, to be happy and to adapt to the local conditions. Finally you
see you made it, you passed the challenge with good grades.”
Personal development here played important role too – considerable improvement of
communication skills, learning what is important and what not, growth as a person.
“The most pleasant was the personal side of the experience, because you are never the
same, it opens your mind completely, you see the things differently. You put value to the
things that you would have never valued before. It's like when you see your own garden
from your neighbours' apartment.
On a personal level it is very enriching. I feel it has changed me very much in the way to
approach people, it made me more open, willing to be more flexible and more assertive
with people. I understood that there is so much more in the way people say that has to be
understood and separated from what the people are saying.”
Finally, the third of study participants broadly expressed opinion regarding strongest positive
outcomes of expatriation was connected to family domain. Relocation with the family for a few
years in a completely different country where there was no social support, no friends or extended
family represented a challenge, but nevertheless it was a great family experience for many
expatriates. Spouses often became closer to each other bonding on a whole new level, family
atmosphere was very good. It brought immense pleasure to parents to see how their kids were
enjoying their new life and all the family was getting a broader view of the world. New
languages, new international social circle, new lifestyle – all this created unique family
experience which was lived very intensely together. Looking back many expats see expatriation
as a huge opportunity for their families, which was very well made use of.
26
“The best - I can't pick one moment, but I think it was the whole experience from a
family standpoint, because I think we have created a really good environment in the
family linked to expatriation and for me that’s the most valuable thing that I will
remember.
Pleasant was to see that your wife and kids get broader view of the world, in terms of
languages, in terms of accepting the diversity, this part of soft skills. Now they read
newspapers today and connect happenings with people they’ve got to know from
Venezuela, Ecuador, Dominican Republic. This creates cultural awareness of what you
wouldn't have realized otherwise. My wife for birthday received congrats from all over
the world. Amount of friends you made during this period, you think about them, feeling
happy or sad.”
On the other hand, the most negative sides of expatriation were related to the same life domains.
For some expats professional adaptation - adjustment to the new work conditions, finding their
place in the office, understanding how the things work there - was the toughest part. Often work
intensity was extremely high, with multiple deadlines, requiring spending many hours at work;
local regulations, rules and cultural differences did not make the adaptation process easier either.
This is something that has to be better watched out by the companies, by the new supervisors of
expats and controlled by HR departments.
“Stressful - at the very beginning, people assume you know but even if you move within
the same company, but changing countries, things can drastically change - processes,
reports, the ways of working. People assume that you know it and in fact you don’t
because you are in a different country where the resources, way to work, even the
acronyms are different. You somehow learn.
Each time you take an expat experience, you change not only country and language, but
also most probably business and company. What you know from the previous job in the
same company accounts for 20% of what you will need. And the rest is catch up. So you
need to really stretch yourself out in order to understand in the first 6 months who are the
key stakeholders, where do I get reports from, how this market assesses this or evaluates
that, and this is challenging.”
Another frustration of expatriation was connected to psychological moments - loneliness,
moments spent alone at the new destinations, waiting for their families to arrive for example, or
moving completely alone. Missing close and extended family members and friends and not being
able to see them on the regular basis created some tough moments – expats had to learn how to
be on their own, in the country where they are complete strangers.
When the spouses and children were joining, another issue was reported – family adjustment did
not always go smooth. Interviewees mentioned their inability to fully adapt to the new place and
lifestyle and start enjoying it to the full extent until their family members, spouses and children
found their new balance. Mothers were not happy when their kids were suffering from
adjustment to new schools, fathers spending days in the office were constantly thinking about
their families left at home alone. But, when every family member finalized cultural and personal
adaptation, the best part of expatriation started.
Finally, logistics required lots of efforts, catching up with the languages needed time too, getting
to know how the things work, such as medical system or banking – all these prolonged the
adaptation phase. In some countries security was a serious concern, which considerably
deteriorated overall impression from expatriation. Dual-career couples expressed more concerns,
27
as for them it was even more complicated to settle down and make sure their kids are fine, given
limited time at the disposal of both parents.
“Stressful was settling of the family, things like getting everyone in the right school. You
are in the office and you are always thinking about them - that takes a lot of your hard
drive space I'd say.”
The following table (Table 6) summarizes the most frequently reported groups of positive and
negative expatriation facets reported by the study participants.
Table 6. Overall most pleasant and most stressful expatriation experiences
Most pleasant Most stressful
1 getting acquainted with the new country, culture,
people, different way of life, seeing amazing
places, getting to know the place as an insider,
getting broader view of the world
adaptation to the new job, office, duties;
familiarization with the new work
procedures and rules; high work intensity
and long hours in the office
2
proving oneselves’ capabilities, self-recognition,
achieving success and being recognized for it,
finding balance outside comfort zone, personal
growth, boosting self-confidence
loneliness, being away from the family
and friends, no social support, being a
complete stranger in the new country
3
incredible family experiences, growing all
together, creating a great family atmosphere,
getting to be closer to each other, new level of
relationship
tricky family logistics, relocation, kids
adjustment; insufficient support of dual-
career couples
Thus, this evaluation serves as another prove to the fact the expatriation comprises not just
professional experiences, but also family and individual ones. Until the moment when the
relocated employee finds balance between these three domains the positive effects of
expatriation cannot be fully leveraged and maximized.
Specific issues connected with expatriation
Expatriation influence on career
In the context of “boundaryless career” (Parker & Inkon, 1999), the vastest majority of the
expats participating in the current study agreed that the overall impact of expatriation in
professional terms was positive; however, there were differences the cases with immediate and
tangible benefits being brought by participation in the foreign assignment and those connected
rather with the acquired experience and, thus, enriching CV. We should admit that the last
outcome was encountered more frequently.
28
Both male and female expatriates acknowledged positive influence of expatriation on career
development as new international experience largely contributed to amplifying the scope of the
positions that employees could qualify for in the future, both geographically and responsibilities-
wise. The careers were facilitated especially for those with higher degree of flexibility – who did
not have barriers to be further relocated globally, for example. Even if in some cases employees
got back to the same positions at home, expatriation was crucial for opening the doors to much
better positions in the future, as well as with regard to long-term benefits and higher flexibility in
terms of further job opportunities. From that perspective, international assignment obviously
increased flexibility of further movements thanks to big exposure in different areas of the
company while staying abroad. These benefits were not always immediate but were,
nevertheless, seen as a great professional asset and benefit for family life, too. Expats were
hoping that “someday someone would recognize their achievements”. And indeed, those who
have completed expatriation a while ago, now when connecting the dots looking back, see clear
positive career consequences related to participation in international assignment. Yet, it might be
difficult to dissociate the job per se from expatriation, as professional growth is connected not
just to the variety of experiences but to successful performance while being abroad.
“Tangible benefits - the truth is - I don't know if it's related to crisis or restructuring phase
that we are in right now - but there are no tangible benefits at all that I've really gotten
after my experience. It's much more on potential and a lot of expectations that are just on
the table, because I was open to travel, because I was exposed, because there are many
people who have got to know me.”
“International experience is speeding up your opportunities, your career path. It's a
statistical opportunity - if you are not mobile you might have 3 opportunities, if you are -
10 times more. It depends on you. This is the question of opening doors, I think now I
have a chance not to choose but I have a better position to apply for much better positions
than staying at the local market I would have never had such a chance.”
A group of expatriates reported immediate promotion which was obtained either on expatriate
assignment and kept later on after its finalization or being offered better positions at home or at
other locations upon repatriation. Senior job, global scope, higher visibility, better salary – these
were named among the direct consequences of undertaking expatriate assignment. Some
employees were extremely satisfied with changing the functional area of their work, which
happened to be more fulfilling. In exceptional situations, expats were even localized at the place
of the international assignment and stayed there for extended time periods.
“I have got the job which is much more senior, I would have never got it without leaving
Spain. I gave up on some things to be able to get here - it's not that it was only offered to
me, I was willing to pack my suitcases and move far away, without being asked. But it
clearly accelerated my career and I am leveraging this and probably given the Spanish
context it did also accelerate my salary.”
As a negative impact of international assignments for further professional life there was
mentioned that not always bosses or colleagues at the home base treated returned expats in the
adequate way, as they were seen as spies from headquarters. Professional jealousy was a
negative side effect, however, it might have been not connected with expatriation directly but
rather with the received promotion.
As widely known from the literature on expatriation, one of the largest concerns of international
assignments is associated with return to the home base after the temporary expatriation is over.
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Repatriation was named by our interviewees among the negative sides too, however, the
individual situations were different, being surrounded by various degree of uncertainty and
ending up with various outcomes.
Past mobility experiences and further inclination to undertake international assignments
As shown before, multiple work and personal factors influence the success of expatriate
assignment. Another one not yet touched upon in the current report is connected to the previous
mobility experiences, as their availability and the types of the prior international assignments
undertaken are likely to produce an impact on the adjustment of the employees to the new
environment. Logically, greater experience is associated with faster adaptability and higher
added value of expatriation, being it extensive business travel or short-term assignments
undertaken in the course of professional life or private international exposure. These experiences
might be also considered by the employers during the selection process of the candidate for a
long-term international assignment.
Indeed, almost all expatriates interviewed have had diverse prior mobility experiences. Most of
them were involved into business travel, some undertook short-term assignments abroad, not to
mention previous studies and abroad. It was not unusual to encounter people who grew up in
international families or those who moved a lot in the childhood due to the work of their parents.
Only 5 persons did not have any international experience before the current expatriation, which
was rather exception out of the rules. Thus, seems there exists connection between previous
mobility experiences and further internalization of the career, which was also confirmed my
those expatriates who were not on their first assignment and were familiar with all positive and
negative sides of expatriation. People agreed that previous travel or participation in international
assignments prepared them better for the expatriation providing them with necessary adaptation
mechanisms, which helped to minimize the time of adjustment to the new working and living
environment; therefore, every consecutive assignment was normally easier than the previous one.
“Yeah, no question, it helps you first to learn what it is, living in a new country where
you don’t know anyone, it can be your survival kit, as this real understanding of cultural
differences, just having a different frame for looking at things - that's a shocker
sometimes.”
If to analyze further plans of expatriates, the clear majority of them were open for repetition of
this experience in the future. Some of them were very excited about this possibility and were
ready to go again literally any time, being still “up for a ride”. Several expats admitted that they
were already working on this looking for further possibilities to be relocated. However, most of
the study participants, despite having positive overall impression after international assignment
and being ready for another one, admitted that next time they’d be much more picky in terms of
conditions.
Moreover, the frequently mentioned factor was family: for undertaking another expatriation the
wife should support this move and relocate with the husband; it should be the right moments for
children as it was commonly acknowledged – once there are kids in the picture, everything
becomes much more complicated. Therefore, family convenience was often at the first place
among evaluation criteria.
30
“Yes. I am already working on the possibility of new expatriation. I am not planning to
go home, rather on the other side of the pond. But I've done it a lot, so I will not move my
finger until my family is all settled, I would not go through the same thing again, it has to
be more ordered and with more time. Now I also know the right questions to ask. It's
something nobody tells you, now I learnt what to ask.”
It has to be generally right time and right place, so the destination of assignment played a big
role in terms of ability to provide decent level of life and also providing novelty for some expats
interested in cultural diversity.
“This is the thing. Now for me the world has become my playground. I don’t have that
place where I feel this is my base and this is where I will fall back. Maybe yet we would
lean towards going back home at some point. But it's really a matter of making
everything work - dual-career and personal lifestyle. The real thing is that we will not go
anywhere in the world. We will be picky, we wouldn’t go to some countries. Safety is
number 1, with the family if there is a war, a terrorist activity, it's just a no-go, And
second, quality of life - for example, China was off the table for me. I had an offer but I
said no. Pollution is tremendous, the city never ends, the weather is awful, it's just nasty.
So, we wouldn’t want to go there. There should be balance between our type of lifestyle -
being outdoor and enjoy simple activities, or like here a lot of things for kids. I think in
our case we are not very interested in developing countries because we need good
infrastructure, reliability, I know some people like it, in our case we don't.”
Last but still important – offered work conditions should go in line with career plans overall.
Some individuals who haven’t obtained tangible benefits after previous expatriation being not
immediately promoted, clearly stated they would not undertake another assignment without
seeing evident professional growth as an outcome.
At the same time, some individuals did not possess an inclination to continue global career.
Thus, one fourth of expatriates preferred to make a break in international relocations, though not
excluding getting back on the scene in the future. This was mostly connected with changing
family situation, having priority to live at home or simply being at the stage of career, which no
longer required international movements. Few interviewees expressed desire to substitute long-
term expatriation with rather short assignment of under 1 year duration. Only 2 individuals
connected their absence of desire to pursue another expatriation with negative former
experiences.
The majority of female respondents, in spite of being satisfied with expatriation, showed weaker
predisposition to undertake another long-term assignment abroad in the nearest future, though
not excluding it later in time. Frequently after such assignments females tended to substitute
further expatriation with the shorter assignments or frequent business trips that represented a
better solution for the family life. Those who had families mentioned bad timing for children or
complications of the previous assignment, which did not encourage them to repeat the
experience. In any case, the opinion shared by everyone is that this is the family decision and no
women are ready to continue expatriation path without support of her husband. Single female
expatriates expressed serious concerns about negative influence of globe-trotting on the
possibility to start family life as such.
“So far, today I would have said no to another expatriation. Women usually never chose
to do it in the first year of children's life, very few... You are for so many hours in the
office. After yes but I would put more conditions on the table. After so many difficulties
that I have overcome. In the end that's what I felt - I had a terrible loss of quality of life.”
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Thus, we could witness that expats were usually those who have had previous mobility
experiences of different kinds. They were vastly satisfied with their assignments overall, and the
majority are ready to repeat expatriation at some point in the future, even if not immediately after
- that speaks in favor of positive impacts of expatriation compensating for the downsides.
Gender differences in expatriation
The sample of interviewed expatriates is balanced in terms of gender representation, which
allows exploring differences in terms of evaluation of international assignments by men and
women. Here we provide analysis of this issue from two different perspectives, first, by means of
exploration of the opinions expressed by the study participants with regard to evaluation of the
difficulties of long-term international assignments for women in comparison to men, as well as
numeric evaluation of the female expatriation in the companies. Second, we analyze separately
the opinions expressed by men and women separately in terms of overall positive and negative
moments of expatriation, which is underlined in every subchapter.
In terms of assessment of female expatriation and its comparison, the most frequently expressed
view specified lower involvement of women into this type of global mobility. The overall
opinion about this was in line with the previous literature findings and reflected the real situation
in many companies. Thus, due to expatriation causing notoriously more difficulties to women –
the argument shared by both genders – the representation of women on international assignments
was evaluated at the level of 70-30%% on average or 2 male expats for 1 female. Sometimes the
numbers named corresponded to even bigger gap (85-15%% or 90-10%% in some cases).
Which reasons provoked such situation, following the opinion of expatriates? Various motives
have been discussed. First, classic roles division in the society where man has been always
working and women’s primary role consisted in taking care of the family which was normal until
recently certainly played its role. Nowadays, the situation has considerably changed – many
women entered the workforce. However, in the setting where woman takes the decision to pursue
her career as an expatriate, her spouse normally continues working, too, as less men are willing
to give up their work completely. This causes a variety of problems connected with dual-career
couples already mentioned in the report previously. Thus, when the company-employer could
accommodate both employees relocating abroad or both spouses were able to find work at a new
place, even if it was a part-time job for the trailing spouse, the issue of his or her professional
development was not so sharp. However, these cases were rare and as commonly acknowledged,
companies normally did not anticipate that both would work, therefore, dual-career couples were
not supported well enough.
In the majority of cases when a man was relocated as an expatriate, his wife simply followed
without having a job, which was not often the case for the situation when woman was an expat.
Trailing husbands were less eager to stop working while trailing wives were found to more
eagerly delegate the career to their spouses. In some cases, when accompanying husbands were
not able to get employment at the new destination, the interviewed female expats had to
terminate their assignment abroad earlier not having reached the expected results anticipating
their return home.
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“I think we - women - are perfectly up to a challenge and can do it as well as any man but
it's kind of harder if you are married and have a family to move family if you are a
woman. It sounds really conservative for me but from my experience I've seen it like this.
It's harder to make your husband go with you. I wouldn’t know the ratio in my current
company, there are not so many expats but if to think of other companies I'd say around 2
to 1 perhaps.”
Alternative reason for lower representation of women among expats was connected with the
specificities of some industries or departments. For instance, petrol industry is male dominated
as well as IT departments of companies. Moreover, expatriation figures reflected the gender
composition of the upper management teams. So, since managerial positions are on average
more frequently occupied by men, they were the ones to be relocated for international
assignments more often. The fact that fewer women had intermediate or high positions made
harder for them to move as companies normally would not invest into expatriation of somebody
at the entry-level position. Such situation was reported to be encountered in numerous cases,
though there were exceptions to the rule, too.
On the other hand, another encountered opinion regarding male vs. female expatriates figures,
though not as frequently as the first one, stated that difficulties of expatriation were not really
connected to gender; instead it was rather a matter of having family and children. Now that
participation of men and women in the workforce and raising kids has become more equal, the
consequences of expatriation are also similar and the pressure is equally shared by both,
especially in the situation of dual-career couples. Some study participants did not see any
noticeable differences in the volume of expatriates of different genders; even if the situation was
not even some decades ago it is getting to be more balanced and now there are hardly any
disparities in this regard. It is important to note that this opinion was expressed by expatriates
who were moved to developed countries, such as Sweden, Switzerland, France, the US, where
the quality of life is at a high level and security issues almost do not exist. Sometimes, cultural
moments might have prevented spread of female expatriation, especially in such countries as
Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, some Latin American countries. Moreover, even if the gender balance
was kept, female expats were mostly single young girls while male expats normally had family.
In fact, descriptive statistics of our sample confirms this statement – only 1 expatriated man was
single while among women 5 out of 16 did not have families.
“The ration should be 50-50%% or close to it - this is my perception, I wouldn't say that
more men or women are having this type of assignment. Whether it's more apropriate for
male or female, I would say this is not a matter of genders, it's more a matter of the
family I'd say. If you are a couple without children I think, then this is manageable for a
while, whether you are male or female I think. If you have children then this is more
difficult because you have to be at home more. I mean in this case it's easier probably for
men when there are children. I would say that women are less inclined to take this type of
assignments.”
Important to mention, there were no big differences in opinions regarding the main gender
scenarios in expatriation and the difficulties provoking them among the interviewees of both
genders. Thus, opinions of male and female expats on this issue largely coincided. In both groups
of judgments – whether supporting gender balance among expats or stating that more males are
encountered among the global employees – study participants of various genders and profiles
were present.
33
In conclusion, given the growing number of female in the workforce in general and among
expats in particular, a strong necessity to cater for their interests by employers was revealed in
the course of the data collection. In fact, nowadays some companies are paying attention to
gender balance and try to keep the numbers of male and female expatriates equal. More efforts
started to be directed towards resolving this problem recently and presently companies are trying
to better cater for the needs of female employees and dual-career couples, but still no special
policies exist to additionally support such cases. In spite of women increasing in numbers among
those who pursue global careers, the gender situation is still far from equality.
General satisfaction with expatriation
The final evaluation of the expatriate experience taking into account professional and private life
with all the pros and cons was very positive. Larger part of the respondents were extremely
happy with the expatriation experience rich in multiple ways, which brought into their lives
satisfying challenges from personal and professional perspectives and taught them a lot.
‘Brilliant experience’, ‘100% satisfied’, ‘wouldn’t change anything’, ‘absolutely happy with my
expat life’, ‘ready to repeat it tomorrow’ – these flattering evaluations were given to international
assignments, especially by those employees for whom it happened in the right time, at the
appealing place and with good conditions.
However, we shouldn’t forget that people tend to forget negative moments and focus on the
strongest positive sides, given that some of the interviewees finished their expatriation a while
ago; nonetheless, not a single expat would give up participation in the assignment abroad.
“I am extremely satisfied, I think it brought to my life super satisfying challenges, not
only on a professional level but also on a personal level. I think it helped myself to be
conscious of how good I can be at my job, even if they take me from my own country and
put me in a new place where I am not an expert in the language, I am not an expert in the
culture at all, I just know marketing and commonsense and I am able to do a better job
than the people in their own country.”
Smaller group of participants, overall providing good evaluation, did not fail to underline certain
challenges. There were better and worse impacts faced by global employees when living far from
home in an unknown environment. Expats were facing a number of difficulties related to their
jobs and family adjustment, it was not always easy to build a new circle of communication and
extended family support was missing, language adaptation and physical and psychological issues
caused tough moments, too. All these provoked mixed feelings in some global employees though
they agreed on the point that expatriation definitely made them stronger. Yet, some of the
interviewees have not yet finalized their assignments and that could have influenced their general
evaluation.
“I am very satisfied with both. When I moved to Switzerland I was not sure it was the
right decision but after having done this it was totally worth. Of course, there are many
downsides here. Many downsides we knew before moving because we knew people who
had done the same. We knew it would have a financial impact and we knew we would
have started from scratch. But the people I have already met, and the job, and the chance
to live here - it pays off. It's very positive.”
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Sometimes it was difficult to evaluate simultaneously all sides of life influenced by expatriation
– especially valid it was when experiences have been very different. Professionally it could have
been extremely enriching, while family adjustment or other reasons could be taking a long while
preventing from full enjoyment of the new experience.
“I mean, the truth is, I have one professional and one personal assessment and they are so
different. Professionally speaking it was very interesting - very challenging but I think it
enriched me very much. But on a personal level it was hard... in the end it's no matter
what happened I am just stronger, I am wiser - I hope I am. It's just another experience.
From bad experiences you probably learn more than from good ones. I am just happy that
it just happened. I think I am a different person now.”
In addition to the overall assessment, general satisfaction with the assignment was quantitatively
evaluated for each life domain separately (Table 7). Expatriates marked their satisfaction with
professional life, family life and personal well-being, while being on an expatriate assignment,
on a scale from 1 to 5. Overall evaluations look as follows: professional satisfaction was the
highest with the score 4,3; it was followed by satisfaction with personal well-being and family
life which got similar score of 3,6. So, clearly there was a large gap between evaluations of
various domains, which demonstrates one of the paths for possible improvements of expat
experience.
Table 7. Evaluation of professional, family and personal life of expatriates.
Evaluation on a 5 point scale 1st expatriation 2nd expatriation Overall score
Satisfaction with professional life 4.3 4.3 4.3
Satisfaction with family life 3.6 3.5 3.6
Satisfaction with personal life 3.8 3.3 3.6
If to look at the rankings separately for the first and second assignment, the picture slightly
changed. Job was still ranked nr. 1 with its 4,3 for each assignment; family life did not alters
much – the scores are 3,6 and 3,5 points for the 1st and 2nd expatriations correspondingly; but
personal life domain showed different results – the satisfaction with the first assignment was
considerably higher than with the consecutive one, namely 3,8 fell down to 3,3. It might be
connected with the higher appreciation of the novelty of the new experiences during the first
relocation and diminished further on due to focusing rather on routine of consecutive
expatriations and not appreciating the experience so high any more. However, this needs to be
deeper examined in the future.
Interestingly, gender was found to slightly influence overall evaluation of expatriation
experience, too. Table 8 demonstrates the results of the assessment split according to male and
female responses. Thus, satisfaction with professional life was slightly higher for men, while the
score for family life assessment was at a higher level for female expatriates. Private life
influences were approximately on the same level. Such evaluation might reflect the importance
that different genders assign to various spheres of life – male expatriated focused their attention
on their more career advancement, while for females family was equally, if not more important;
therefore, women directed their efforts to reach high satisfaction with the family life.
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Table 8. Evaluation of expatriation impact on live domains according to genders.
Evaluation on a 5 point scale
Female Expatriates Male Expatriates Overall evaluation
1st expatriation
2nd expatriation
Overall score
1st expatriation
2nd expatriation
Overall score
1st expatriation
2nd expatriation
Overall score
Satisfaction with professional life 4.2 4.3 4.2 4.4 4.4 4.4 4.3 4.3 4.3
Satisfaction with family life 3.7 3.8 3.8 3.5 3.3 3.4 3.6 3.5 3.6
Satisfaction with personal life 3.8 3 3.6 3.8 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.3 3.6
Company support and practical implications
Given the multi-faceted nature of international assignments and the crucial role of the employer
who normally initiates relocations, company expatriation policies and procedures have been
analyzed in the current chapter. In order to examine the degree of the company support provided
to the expatriates the interviewees were asked about the points to be improved in the course of
their assignment in relation to the logistics of the relocation and the support of the employer in
general.
The majority of the global employees were supported by their employers in terms of
administrative processes connected with the movement to the new country and to the new job
position. They received sufficient information about the new position and were prepared for the
change. Having extensive experience of expatriating the company managed their expectations
correctly. The interviewees agreed that the standard arrangements which were typical for expats
went smooth, in many cases thanks to the help of relocation agency hired by the employer:
proper accommodation was found, personal belongings relocated, loan for the car provided along
with health insurance, visa and work documentation arranged. In the beginning of expatriation
temporary apartments were often provided for the time period of looking for a fixed place of
living. Family was helped too – the employer provided organizational and financial support with
schools for kids, offered language courses and job trainings for spouses. In some cases spouses
were accommodated by the company too being given temporary or part-time contracts. Travel
home was paid for all the family several times a year. Usually these procedures were clearly
indicated in the corporate policy for expats and were strictly followed; therefore, physical
mobility rarely caused serious issues. In general, behaving according to standardized procedure
step-by-step provided answers to most of the questions as normally “the system was well-
greased”.
“Logistics was pretty good, I think it is pretty standardized in the organizations used to
job rotations. The company and agency were well-prepared for that. This was very very
good. I had everything when I arrived and the agency would have done all the
arrangements for my visa, bank account, even getting a phone number. Accommodation
of course…”
36
“In this sense I was pleasantly surprised, everything was really well-organized. It was
nothing new, everything was planned, like a standard routine. Checklist tells you what to
do when you leave, when you come back, if you follow the checklist you shouldn’t have
any big issues. I did it and up to now I didn’t have any impacts. Critical is to ensure that
you have a relocation company with the local knowledge to make you aware of the
critical things you have to perform.”
In terms of logistics, only seldom employers – or agencies - did not do great job wasting a lot of
time for finding accommodation. Information about doctors had to be found by expats on their
own, mostly being spread by their colleagues. Medical insurance arrangements were not always
clear.
Expats’ contracts provided good conditions financially; economically the relocated employees
were frequently better off at the new place of work, as special adjustment conditions were
applied in addition to the risk evaluation of the countries when necessary. However, financial
conditions though being normally quite good represented the matter of concern too, especially in
cases of relocation with family and kids. At the initial phase expatriation requires quite extensive
resources investment. It might generate concerns for employees, so if possible such measures as
additional loans to expats are perceived positively.
Culturally it largely depended on the organization and the destinations of expatriation, however,
in some cases expats were given short trainings, while language classes were normal practice
though not always made use of by the employees due to scarcity of time. Sometimes expats had a
chance to travel to the destination of relocation before, especially if they were moved to the
headquarters. Besides, word of mouth was helpful too – employees communicated among each
other getting advice from the side of the former expats or frequent business travelers to the
region.
Thus, companies seemed to be doing their best providing expats with good conditions and trying
to foresee possible complications, which could not be fully anticipated. However, despite all the
measures foreseen to make the life of expats easier, there were a number of complaints expressed
by the interviewees.
The most frequently mentioned problem was the absence of extensive experience with
expatriation in some companies or at certain markets. The employers were reported to have lack
of expertise, lack of information, lack of speed of reaction to challenging situations. In some
offices no established rules or processes existed for expats. Mostly this situation is typical for
small markets at the destinations where expatriation was not typical, where HR departments were
not really familiar with this routine. Moreover, there could have been noticeable differences in
the quality of HR help at the home-base upon leaving and the support of the receiving HR teams;
depending on the maturity of the market and human factor too there could be insufficient help at
one of the destinations.
Even in mature markets, there was often a lot of uncertainty around all the arrangements, in
particular when international assignments were decided with a short advance notice; therefore, in
addition to more detailed approach to general expat arrangements, timeline extension was
expressed as a frequent request for improvement of experience as such.
“I don't know if it's politically correct to say, but you would think that the company I
work for would be experts, they are moving people around every day but... For the job it
was ok - you are there, this is your desk and this is your computer and this is your office.
37
On the personal front it was nightmare. Now I look back and I don't know how I did this.
I think I can start my own consultancy now. They (the company) just told me yes, you are
accepted, you can start, and I had 9 days to move. I had to sell my car, rent the apartment
at home, find new accommodation and school for kids – all these in 9 days, over
Christmas. Now I look back and I think it was someone else. It was really difficult and I
didn't feel supported, at least not the support that I needed.”
In few severe cases there was practically no support provided to the new employees – neither
physical help, nor information. Everything had to be done by the expats from scratch and it made
them really unhappy at the beginning.
To be fair, even when expats were mentioning absence of the needed knowledge to handle
relocation smoothly, they still acknowledged that offices mostly tried their best. However, very
rarely HR controlled the situation from the beginning to the end of the assignment. Absence of
contacts by the HR manager later in time to find out about their experience could have been
frustrating for the employees – after the initial relocation procedures they were often left on their
own and their further problems have not been traced by the company. It was found to be
important to have someone checking on expats both from HR as well as bosses from home
market, to have some fixed timing for getting feedback of relocated employees, so that they do
not feel lonely and keep the contact with the home base.
In addition, ‘being forgotten’ by the bosses from the home office and not being associated with
any new manager added to the frustration. Luckily these cases were very few representing rather
an exception from the rules. Nevertheless, they still exist, even in large MNCs and should be
paid precise attention to as this, along with loosing contact with the home market and worries
about eventual repatriation, caused some sad moments for expats.
Clearly settling down at a new place requires a lot of effort and time; therefore, some extra
flexibility in the beginning of expatriation period abroad would provide a great added value for
the relocated employees reducing their adjustment shock. It was decided mostly on the personal
level – bosses let newcomers take some hours off work to solve administration. However, having
official regulation about it could have been useful.
Normally company provided all the documentation and helped with visa arrangements for their
expats, but in certain situation, which were not very typical some problems were reported. Thus,
for instance, a lot of confusion was caused by the cases when expat lived and worked in different
countries choosing the option to be a cross-border commuter due to family reasons. Another
example was maternity leave, which had to be split between two countries – the destination of
expatriation and home base. In addition, there was no clear information provided about cross-
country taxation and retirement funds. These were obviously specific situations that were
difficult to handle; therefore, in these doubtful cases companies could be recommended to use
services of specialized in expatriation agencies or consultants.
Another challenge of expatriation mentioned by interviewees was connected to the dual-career
couples and absence of specific support for females. Despite some attempts of companies to
accommodate spouses, this was possible only in very rare cases. The support provided in terms
of finding the job was not sufficient and decreased satisfaction with the assignment’s influence
on the family life. Not all women were happy to stay at home and bring up kids; some tried hard
to find job at the new place. Issues with visas and local documents sometimes brought extra
complications in this regards, especially when going outside Europe. In those rare cases when
38
female spouses were able to find jobs at the new destination, it was normally thanks to their own
proactive attempts.
Particularly often disappointed opinions were expressed by female expats, as it was already
difficult to convince male spouses to leave their job at the home country and follow their wives.
Moreover, when the job search at the new place did not end up successfully, in some cases it
made employees finalize their international assignments earlier than planned and to return home
following their husbands.
When both spouses were able to find employment at the destination of relocation, this caused
problems of different nature. Employers did not always have understanding of the situation
where both parents worked in a new country where they had to raise their small kids without
social and family support available at home. Expats felt that companies could have more specific
regulations for dual-career international families.
“Of course, they are moving people every day but my profile maybe is a little bit
different - I have family, I have children and a husband. And the kind of profile they are
more used to is younger people single, without kids. For me it was critical, my family
was a critical thing for me and it was not taken care of at all.”
“I felt that I didn’t have the support in understanding well the consequences, as a family
unit, not just individual. The thing they really need to work on is a dual-career
expatriation. And they know it, in my company they know it, and they are working on it
but they are still a little bit behind matching the expectations and what they can do.”
“It's probably like in military service. You have one vision but it's a bit blurred. You do
everything according to the guidelines, but it could be more personal. Personalization of
the process could be improved, but the final result was good.”
In this regards, some opinions were expressed about the necessity to have someone like a
relocation project manager to handle all the sides of expatriation, instead of outsourcing all to
different agents who often work without coordination.
Additionally, in the course of interviews it was found that despite additional difficulties caused
by international relocation and new work and family life conditions the organizational context of
the companies-employers normally did not foresee any WLB support measures that would
contribute to better life quality of expats. Among those rarely mentioned procedures there were
specific rules related to flexibility of office entering or leaving hours and the possibility to
remote work on certain days (Mondays or Fridays normally). Sometimes it required consent of
the direct supervisor and these moments might be rather informal. Normally though working for
an MNC, there was the global framework but the implementation of rules was local, related to
country specific policies and market location. For example, in Nordic countries time flexibility
was popular when conducting business, which was not the case in Russia.
“We have a WLB program which applies to all the employees, it has global framework -
time of leave and entering, work from home. In HQ it is based on objectives – it doesn’t
matter when you arrive, there is no badging in/out, you just need to deliver what is
expected. This is something different from site to site. All companies are looking for
balance, which also can be constrained by local and legal regulations. Number of
working hours, for example. So, there is local approach but global framework.”
Important to mention, some countries were substantially behind the others in terms of paying
attention to the problem of WLB as such; moreover, recognizing that expatriation is associated
39
with manifold difficulties, there were no specific conditions provided for expats. The only
example revealed in the process of interviews is an extra days of vacations granted to the
international employees.
Therefore, many expats were not aware of any policies, acknowledging that their employers talk
about it more than they actually do; so there is big room for improvement in these regards by the
MNCs. However, WLB was found to depend also on the employees themselves and their
organization of the workday, in addition to the company regulations and managers.
Taking into account the challenges of expatriation for on a professional and personal level, the
following table (Table 9) summarizes some examples of support measures, which might
compensate certain adjustment difficulties.
Table 9. Examples of corporate support measures directed toward improvement of expatriation
experience
1 specific support for trailing spouses both male and female
2 family support measures directed towards female expatriates and dual-career couples
3
follow-up after relocation/completed expatriation by HR and former/present boss;
expatriation as a continuous process to control
4 avoid short notices of expatriation and uncertainty around conditions
5 anticipate arrangements connected with moving and settling down, when possible
6
provide full information about conditions, including cross-country taxation issues and
retirement fund
7
provide expats with extra flexibility at the initial stages of their relocation and elaborate
special WLB measures for the time of their assignments
8
provide help in specific situations (maternity leaves, health problems, untypical
documents, etc.)
9
control that expat has a reference person/doesn't loose contact with bosses/is not forgotten
at the home market
10
provide training to HR departments in subsidiaries not used to expats, hire professional
agencies, dedicate personnel
11 put expats in touch with other company employees who passed through similar situations
Thus, there is a lot to be done by the companies in order to improve the expatriation experience
of the employees contributing not only to their satisfaction but also improving the general work
outcome. Nowadays, Failing to recognize that expatriation is a broad experience, which touches
upon all life domains, companies are at a great risk of drastically decreasing expats’ efficiency.
The principle of pleasure as a key issue in the expatriate’s adjustment process should not be
neglected by the employers; consequently, international assignments should be managed as a
holistic experience.
Conclusions
40
Expatriation continues to represent an important form of international mobility. Nowadays,
global employees involved into expatriation are more likely to express strong desire to have a
balance between various life domains, not simply paying attention to the added value of
expatriation for their professional development and career growth but possessing inclinations
towards harmonious development of all life domains. Unlike domestic jobs, an international
assignment is more of a family affair (Osland, 1995), therefore, expatriates are looking for the
ways to avoid work-family conflict by all means, even declining the assignment or terminating it
earlier if negative effects of expatriation influence family life and personal well-being too strong.
In this case, not just individual satisfaction with the assignment suffers and work commitment
decreases, but the company-employer bears substantial material and human costs. Therefore, it is
important to assess expatriation assignment in a holistic way taking into account different
spheres of the employees’ lives. In this regard, special HR policies are to be developed and
implemented in order to increase efficiency of expatriation and moderate its negative impacts.