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You are here: Home Employment Employment Information Will your career survive repatriation?

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28/07/2003Will your career survive repatriation?

Will your career survive repatriation? Caught up in the exciting net of foreign travel, benefits, and a new social life, many expats fail to consider their future beyond repatriation.

Expatriate life has its advantages.

There is the elevated lifestyle of course, for many expatriates pay neither for housing, utilities nor school fees.

There is the constant underlying 'exotic feeling' that is derived from living in a foreign country, working with a multinational workforce and enjoying social life together with a wanderlust that can be assuaged by generous travel allowances.

These advantages make some employees keen to stay abroad long-term, but employers and employees should remember that they will likely have to come home one day, and if their career on repatriation is not discussed adequately and early enough, coming home can herald the end of a working relationship.

Avoiding a stagnating career

Abroad, some careers may progress nicely, while for others careers may stagnate or even regress. Statistics say that a large proportion of returned expatriates leave their company within two years and that a significantly small number never see promotion again.

Anne Isaacs is a director for Executive Action, a company that specialises in giving individual advice on career development to senior management.

She is adamant that time abroad should be considered carefully and worked into the career development strategy.

"Employees should go away for no more than two years, or they risk losing touch with new developments and that vitally important network of contacts," she advises.

"Unless they maintain contact in the home country they will find it increasingly difficult to readjust and reintegrate on return." Remarkably, a vast number of employees fail to look beyond the moment when the aeroplane lands back on home turf.

Paul Richardson remembers only too acutely his own devastation on repatriation. After a glittering, responsible career in a general management role in the Middle East, back in London he found himself pushed into a corner and ignored.

What followed was a difficult two-year period riddled with self-doubt and depression. He felt his experience overseas went unvalued and unrecognised.

Eventually, his company decided to utilise his experience and made him responsible for mentoring other foreign staff and setting up new business overseas. After four years back home he has now gone abroad again with his family. This time to Asia.

"Before I went abroad I knew that the company had no definite career path programme for overseas staff, but chose to ignore it," he remembers.

Richardson blamed himself. His success abroad had made him arrogant, and he ignored the need to network and research the new job back in England before he came.

"I wish I had been less gullible and more cynical," he says.

Like Richardson, with his Middle East experience it is true to say that people who gain too much experience in one area can find it extremely difficult to move into a different part of the world.

Sales and marketing executives will always thrive in the place where they have the greatest number of contacts, for example.

Does your company have a repatriation scheme?
While two thirds of the companies surveyed for the recent Cendant International Assignment Survey claim they have repatriation schemes in place, startlingly few include career orientation in the program.

At a recent seminar at the UK's Farnham Castle, Nick Lloyd spoke of his experience on repatriation with a large retail chain.

"All my expatriate contemporaries left when they came home," he said. "People develop autonomy and entrepreneurship when they are abroad. They step outside the box. When they come home they are expected to get back into a box again and it just doesn't work."

Financial services company Morgan Stanley Dean Witter feel they have got it right. Speaking at the recent Corporate Relocation News conference in London, vice president of MSDW Andy Williams talked of his company's low attrition rate.

"An employee should discuss repatriation before leaving on assignment in the first place," he says. "He should be clear about the skills he is expected to bring back with him."

MSDW believes in the value of mentoring, or buddy systems and makes sure that all overseas staff keep in touch with events back home at all times, and even come into the office during home leave.

Employees are encouraged to consider the age and stage of all family members both before the move and on coming home for their needs may differ greatly.

They should all be involved in the decisions made. In addition, a host country manager is required to debrief the employee prior to his return home and the repatriation process discussed at least six month beforehand.

Career orientation
Schlumberger, a company with an expatriate workforce in excess of 6000, is proud of the Career Orientation Review programme it uses to help keep in touch with employee expectations.

They have also developed an extensive Intranet system to help keep staff and their families in touch.

"Every member of staff is entitled to a three-yearly Career Orientation Review, which provides a forum to discuss career prospects and opportunities as well as any issues which may constrain mobility," says Miles Warner, director of personnel for Schlumberger's WesternGeco division

"It is important for employees to be involved in the planning of their own careers," he adds. UK retail chain Tesco is another company with a very low assignment failure rate even upon repatriation.

Johanna Glennie is their international assignments manager. She believes that initial selection processes hold the key. "If you don't send the right person away in the first place, repatriation becomes even more of an issue," she says.

The company ensures that all repatriates have a meeting six months prior to their return. Here they can discuss career management, sponsorship and family issues, and Glennie is also being 'upskilled' as a career counsellor in order to be more effective.

"When an employee returns home his expectations will have changed and he may have new non-negotiable values," she adds.

A sentiment shared by Lucy Marcus, an American expatriate in Britain.

"It is vital that we are all allowed to be true to ourselves wherever we are living," advises Marcus.

"When we go abroad we grow professionally and personally from the experience and become a different person. If people are to be happy when they repatriate, it is the 'new' person that should be taken into account, not the old one."

Joanna Parfitt / Expatica


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