When employees and their families go overseas, many assume that adjusting to a foreign culture will be the hardest part of their assignment. But the challenges of returning home are often greater, especially now when companies are bringing some back early to save money.
Margery Marshall, president of Vandover, a global transition support company, said that big financial services companies, in particular, have accelerated repatriation in recent months.
“It’s scary,” she said. “That guarantee of a job? You may see that plummet. And what’s doubly scary is the spouse or partner gave up a career to go overseas and now has to start over and go back to work.”
The economic worries have added another layer to the difficulties of returning home after a stint overseas. Craig Storti, author of The Art of Coming Home, said, “The main assumption people make is they’re coming home — that can’t be hard.” But, he said, they are caught off-guard when it is not as smooth as they expect.
“You had the seminal experience of your life,” he said. “Even family members and close friends just can’t relate.” Both the expatriates and people at home have changed and moved on. What they do not realize, Storti said, is that the host country becomes home and “home” is not the place it was.
That was the case for Larry and Sally DiLoreto, who returned to the Boston area last summer with their three children after spending more than four years in Sydney. They had lived a block from the beach, enjoyed the mild weather and the outside-oriented lifestyle. They miss their friends and the ease of traveling to nearby countries.
“We were just plucked from life,” said DiLoreto, who was sent to Australia by Progress Software, based in Bedford, Massachusetts. For William, 7, their oldest child, who attended an all-boys school, adjusting to school is taking time.
In fact, experts say, children who are returning home frequently have difficulty with school. Children educated abroad often attend private or international schools, many of which are more challenging than US public schools. The children may be more sophisticated than their America peers. Teenagers are the hardest hit, Storti said. “They suffer a lot, more than any other group, by far.”
Some companies offer repatriation training in which the employees and their families discuss their feelings and experiences and learn strategies and skills to cope with re-entry.
But Dottie Byers, managing director of International Professional Relations, said, “repatriation training is not routinely offered,” despite its relatively modest cost. Repatriation sessions for a family typically last one day and cost US$3,000 to US$3,500, she said. And companies that do offer it, like AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company that is one of Byers’s clients, say employees are frequently not interested because they do not recognize the value.
Ashley Daly, senior manager of international assignments at AstraZeneca, said more employees are open to assistance before heading abroad — for help with moving, to locate schools or to learn a language — but not when returning.
What has been effective, Daly said, is the company’s recent emphasis on a “more thoughtful planning and selection process” of candidates before they go overseas.
Achim Mossmann, managing director of global mobility advisory services for KPMG, an accounting firm, said “companies lose employees because they don’t plan well.” If the company has not created a challenging position that uses the employees’ new overseas experience and skills, they often go to a competing company. And losing talented staff is expensive.
“It is difficult to sell to top management that re-entry is a problem,” said Geoffrey Latta, executive vice president of ORC Worldwide, a human resources consulting firm. “Companies don’t think big picture.”
A KPMG survey, Global Assignment Policies and Practices, released in December, found that just 4 percent of the 430 human resources executives surveyed said that they effectively manage the repatriation process.
Required home base visits and mentoring programs also help assignees stay connected to the home office.
DiLoreto, who returned from Australia as vice president for Asia Pacific field operations for Progress Software, said he had kept in close contact with company headquarters with weekly calls and visits six times a year. He also said the company recognized his professional development while overseas and the autonomy he enjoyed “being thrown in different cultures — surviving and growing.” He continues to oversee Asia, but he has been given the additional territories of North and Latin America, a position he believes will continue to challenge him.
Latta said most companies are careful not to promise advancement on return but many employees “assume they will be promoted and are clearly unhappy if they are not.” A guarantee of a job and even a promotion was almost standard 30 years ago for overseas assignments, but in recent years, most companies have been unwilling to commit.
Marshall of Vandover said the problems of relocation and downsizing were starting to merge. “It’s a whole lot more challenging than a year ago,” she said.
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