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You are here: Home Employment Employment Information Bosses who make relocating easier

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29/07/2003Bosses who make relocating easier

Employers know that if they send you overseas and it doesn't work out it can cost them dear. So now many companies are bending over backwards to make your move easy. Susan Fenton of www.careerjournaleurope.com, reports.

When Jardine International Motors was planning a joint venture in India in the late 1990s, the company quickly decided on a person to oversee the collaboration. But getting him in place proved more arduous.

Over four months, Jardine would spend thousands of dollars ferrying the manager, Steven Foster, and his wife between Hong Kong and India; putting them up in luxury hotels; paying deposits on an apartment in Bombay and a house in Delhi, and to a school in the Indian capital — none of which the couple ever used. 

Why, in this era of severe cost-cutting, would a company spend that kind of money to court a manager?

Research shows that more than 30 percent of overseas postings fail, with the executive either returning home prematurely or staying on but under-performing. A lack of family and organisational support or the inability to adapt to the local culture were cited as the main reasons in the survey of 16 multinational companies by human-resources company SHL Hong Kong.

The survey covered both Asian and Western expatriates, with one company calculating that the early return of an expatriate manager cost it USD 2 million in lost productivity, moving costs and the repeat expenses of finding and relocating a new manager.

Companies that work to keep their expats happy Jardine does more than most firms to prevent aborted assignments. Many companies have simply cut spending on the sorts of expenses that paved the way for Mr Foster's smooth entry. Also, Jardine's concessions to the manager and his family were surely influenced by the fact that it was trying to fill a top post in a developing country.

Clearly, a mid-level marketing executive bound for Hong Kong would not be given such leeway.

Still, Jardine is not alone in taking the posting process more seriously. Food and drinks conglomerate Cadbury-Schweppes started short-listing candidates for overseas posts through Kaizen, a series of psychological tests and interviews designed to determine suitability to different cultural environments. For some posts, it interviews the spouse or partner of expatriate candidates.

"The price of stability is far less than the price of instability," says Ritchie Bent, group head of human resources at Jardine Matheson, the parent company of Jardine International Motors.

The Hong Kong-based Jardine group, which has 120 staff posted around the region, says it has never had anyone come back early, mainly, it says, because of up-front investment.

How it worked for Steven Foster
As head of business development for JIM, Foster had pioneered the company's move into India. He spent the latter half of 1996 travelling the country extensively, developing both contacts and a sensitivity to Indian culture.

"In India it takes a certain type of person to do well there. It's an assertive culture and you need the ability to socialise," says Bent. It helped that Foster was a talented cricketer, an invaluable networking tool.

Foster, a 30-year-old high-flier from Britain, was keen on the move. But there was a problem. His wife had never set foot in India and the couple had two small children.

Foster asked for time to consider the offer, and requested that his wife be allowed to visit the country, at company expense. His bosses agreed. "They really wanted us to spend time there," Foster says.

As the Fosters started preparing for a three-day visit to Bombay, Jardine swung into action. The country chairman of the Jardine Matheson group in Delhi instructed staff to draw up lists of schools in Bombay for the Fosters to visit; Jardine expatriates in the city were lined up to meet the couple and show them around; and the group's property arm in Bombay was told to find some apartments to see.

Paula Foster, who grew up in Portugal, was initially excited about the idea of living in India. She saw it as an adventure. Those dreams quickly soured, however, during three days of house-hunting in the humidity and human density of Bombay.

"I was horrified," she says. "I thought it would be beautiful but the beggars and the chaos — it was awful."

A new solution
But Mr Foster wasn't about to turn down the job of a lifetime. He promised his wife a luxury apartment in one of the best areas of the city and set up a second trip to Bombay. But other than the meetings with the landlord, Mrs Foster refused to leave the hotel.

By the end of the trip, just as the couple was close to signing a lease, Mr Foster himself was having second thoughts about the city. On top of his wife's fears, the cost of living was exorbitant. He switched his attention to Delhi.

Again, his bosses didn't balk. Mrs Foster visited that city for the first time a few weeks later. She liked that the expatriate community was much bigger than Bombay's and was happy that there was an international school able to cater to her eldest child Michael's dyslexia.

On a second trip, things looked even rosier. The couple found a new farmhouse with a swimming pool and three acres of land well outside the city center.

But back in Hong Kong, Mr Foster was doing the math — and he quickly realised Delhi wasn't feasible for the company: The cost of housing, staffing and running a business from the capital was too high. "I was devastated," says Mrs Foster. "I could have moved to Delhi tomorrow but anywhere else filled me with dread. I couldn't face going somewhere like Bombay."

Mr Foster was now considering the southern city of Bangalore, where JIM's Indian partners, the Tata Group, had a lot of infrastructure. He was sure his family would grow to like the city. Known as the garden city of India, with its greenery and year-round blossoms, it was quieter and more temperate than Bombay or Delhi.

And while it may not have had all the facilities of those cities it had a rapidly expanding expatriate population and a few good international schools. "Obviously if he'd suggested a location that didn't make commercial sense and the costs were very high we wouldn't have agreed," says Bent.

"But we were prepared to spend the extra time and money to get the family settled first." The Fosters arrived in Bangalore for their fifth house-hunting trip to India in less than three months. Mrs Foster was flagging.

But over dinner in the hotel restaurant, she began chatting with an Irish couple at the next table. She was surprised by how much the wife seemed to be enjoying life there and was relieved to hear about the Overseas Women's Club, which helped foreign women with everything from having a baby to buying curtains.

Over the next few days she met other foreigners who were similarly enthusiastic. The couple found a house with a garden on their next trip there. A major concern remained, though: the availability of Western food and clothing, even shampoo, for her children was limited in Bangalore and those items that were for sale cost three times as much as in Hong Kong.

So Mr Foster asked Jardine to pay for his wife to make regular trips back to Hong Kong to stock up. The company consented, and drew up a travel budget for Mrs Foster, allowing her and the children to make six return trips to Hong Kong a year, and to stay in a hotel for up to a week.

Steven Foster finds the answer
In April, four months after the job was first offered to Mr Foster, he signed on. There was a final request: The Fosters did not want to take their son out of school in Hong Kong before the end of the school year. Would the company allow Mr Foster to commute between Hong Kong and Bangalore for the first five months of his posting?

Jardine said yes; Mr Foster returned every other week for a long weekend. In August 1997, Mrs Foster and her children moved to Bangalore, spending the first two months in a hotel, an arrangement that eased her into Indian life gradually.

"The first two months were the easiest I've spent in India because everything was laid on so I didn't have to walk through the beggars on the way to do the grocery shopping," she says.

For Jardine, the investment in Mr Foster — the company declines to reveal the total spent — seems to have paid off. He has established a business that operates out of 23 locations across India, employing 800 staff and selling 2,000 cars a month.

"If the posting hadn't worked out, the cost of the impact on the business would have been huge and it would have made a very bad impression on our Indian business partners," says Bent.

Lessons that were learned
Mr Foster says he learned more in his two years in Bangalore than he would have in 10 anywhere else. Mrs Foster had her ups and downs. In their first year, the plumbing in their home was so bad the house nearly went up in smoke.

The family was back in a hotel for four months and house-hunting again just as she was having her third baby. The family shopping would take up to four hours because there are no supermarkets, the power cut out four or five times a day and the hot water ceased a couple of times a week.

But she made good friends. Western goods became more widely available so she didn't have to use the travel budget very much; she even opted to stay in Bangalore for the birth of her child rather than take up the company's offer to return to Hong Kong.

The only real problem was her son's dyslexia. The Fosters advertised for a tutor from Britain to move to Bangalore to coach Michael in the mornings. Jardine offered to foot the bill for the tutor's salary and expenses.

Susan Fenton is a Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.


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