Working in the Netherlands on an expat assignment can sometimes feel like being a pawn on an international chessboard. Wouldn't you like to look into the future? We ask human resources experts about the greatest challenges in 2006.

Nigel Goodson
Compensation and Benefits Director, UPS Europe:

"… the management nomad is growing as a feature within our business."

Developing policies to support international careers is essential

We will still continue with the pattern of short-term assignments and long-term assignments from one country to another, but, over time, certainly in an organisation with the size and geographical complexity of UPS, we will see the concept of the globally mobile manager, the management nomad growing as a feature within our business.

We will have to look at developing policies which will support people who are pursuing international careers. Most of our managers expect to develop their careers within UPS and realise that relocation goes hand-in-hand with career development.

We have already generated a pension policy to ensure that these global nomads will have the security of knowing the company will support their retirement planning by providing a pension promise that will overcome a lot of the concerns that someone moving throughout their career from country to country might have.

Robin Pascoe
Expat expert and author, currently working on her latest book
'Raising global nomads: Parenting abroad in an on-demand World'

"I believe the biggest challenge for managers is going to be 'fallout' in many forms from the work-life balance being skewed."

 
'Fallout' for the company

This will be the inability to pay the rising costs of stress/disability leaves which are going to come about because everyone is carrying on working 24/7, with Blackberries in tow, generally waiting for a health crisis to stop them from working too much.

Insurance coverage for expats will need to rise accordingly and not just because of risks from avian flu or terrorist attacks, which are the obvious ones, but risk management will have to include stress which will be the direct result of work-life balance being skewed.
 

'Fallout' for the expat family

Unless the working partner starts addressing this issue and taking personal responsibility, he — and as you know it's mostly a 'he' — has the ability to derail the family.

This is turning that other popular adage upside down — namely that the wife has the ability to derail the assignment.

If the husband ignores this issue and continues to ignore his family because of work, he will lose them.

I just did a new seminar in Seoul called 'Restoring work-expat life harmony' for execs and their wives and basically concluded with this: 'Get over yourself! You are not indispensable. The company will replace you in five minutes, but you can never replace your family'. It sobered them up …

Nathalie Nowak
Director of ImFusio, which helps organisations manage assignees
and formulate international assignment programmes

"Repeated mobility is tiring and companies should develop programmes that take into account what is at stake in their employees' lives ..."

Feedback I have received from people on short-term assignment shows that assignees feel that not enough attention is given to their families and personal lives. One of the biggest challenges for short-term assignees is to be able to be efficient anywhere

Based on my research, it is clear that women who start to lose job motivation while on short-term assignment are emotionally more vulnerable than men.

One woman told me that despite being initially very enthusiastic about her nomadic lifestyle — her job required her travelling to either Spain or England every week— she progressively started to dislike her job when she decided she would like to start a family.

As she was not married and did not talk much about her private life, no one in the company ever wondered why she resigned two years later.
 
Repeated mobility is tiring and companies should develop programmes which take into account what is at stake in their employees' lives, and which allows them  to 'have a break' to avoid burnout.

Job Voorhoeve
Director of recruitment and deployment
EMEA at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu

"Companies need to create more international career opportunities." 

I believe the greatest challenges companies will face in the future are:

• A shortage of talent due to demographic developments.
• To deliver international career opportunities on promise, which will lead to more international assignments. In short, companies are saying that they have international career opportunities, but, in reality they do not have many and need to create them.
• To change local thinking into a global mindset (languages, HR models etc).

Michael Dickmann
Director of Cranfield School of Management's Centre for
Research into the Management of Expatriation (CreME)

"… companies need to develop approaches to integrate expatriates more into the mainstream of their talent management and to manage their home networks and expectations."

One of the greatest challenges refers to managers often pursuing 'protean' or boundary-less careers. For instance, they are focusing on their own interests and are prone to evaluate external opportunities constantly.

This means that while expats are working abroad and especially during and shortly after their return, or move to the next location, they are more likely to leave the organisation, mostly with a large loss of investment and huge opportunity costs associated.

Thus, companies need to develop approaches to integrate expatriates more into the mainstream of their talent management and to manage their home networks and expectations. Overall, this means a shift from short and medium-term orientation to a long-term, more strategic focus. 

Anne P Copeland
Executive director of the
Interchange Institute, Brookline, MA

"One of the challenges companies face is to actually believe that repatriation is a problem!"

You arrive home ... tired