Making the dream move to Spain could be fraught with problems unless you are properly prepared. Our new relocation expert explains.

Unpacking a new life: Language and cultural skills are essential

Relocation is the process of moving a company's leading employees and their families from their home into a completely different work, social and cultural environment.

Yet, behind this generic word 'relocation' are a vast range of human resources-related services outsourced by world organisations to help their employees prior to their departure on a foreign assignment and once they get there.

Investing in expatriates even beyond budget criteria delivers better results for all parties involved since assignments involving high costs and failures are not uncommon.

In fact, it is said that one of four actually fail.

Preparing properly

This is a good reason for investing in finding the perfect expatriate candidate for the organisation, selecting and subsequently training them.

Recent surveys have indicated that what expatriates find work best for them are not always top priorities for the human resources departments responsible for them.

So what did expatriates and their spouses or partners rate as the most factors when preparing to work abroad?

Number one: They ranked language training and intercultural training for them and also for their children as the most important factor to make the assignment abroad succeed.

Great value was placed on the ability to speak the local language and understand the local cultural habits, regardless of how different, or actually similar, the culture is from their own.

In second place, they said more focussed and practical information about the local situation and local culture was very important.

This is linked to languages and how the local people live, but expats also said briefings should include business-related issues.

Thirdly, mentoring programmes were said to be important.

Organisations are, of course, aware that knowledge of the language and the culture of the host country are considered important abilities.

Shock of the new: Workplaces may multi-cultural

The need for practical culture training, even for interregional transfers where assignees move within fairly similar cultural environments, is evident.

But the fact that expatriates ranked both language training and intercultural coaching for their children as high on their priority list was a novel and valuable insight.

Expats are finding more and more that the pre-departure intercultural training seminars they attend are very useful but the issues for working in an international environment are hardly addressed.

Often the team they find themselves responsible for on arrival do not represent solely the local culture, but are often made up of a motley group from a multicultural background.

Reacting deftly to varying cultural cues in this new business environment turns out to be their greatest challenge.

Though it seems exciting, a good reason to decline an international assignment is the lack of proposed support from the company to manage dual careers and the reality of longer-term career management.

Problems for partners

An overwhelming majority of expatriate executives are accompanied by a spouse or partner, but the relocation reality is that most of these partners who were employed at home are unable to find work to match their profile in the destination country.

Other expat career anxieties are guarantees about when they returned and active mentoring systems.

Many companies are now more willing to spend money on making the assignment a better experience for the partner rather than jeopardize the success of the whole assignment.

The emphasis on greater indirect spending on areas such as family support on arrival in the host location and the career or education of the partner, is clearly considered by many companies to be a better investment of funds than simply heaping more generous allowances on the expatriate.

Employers are being encouraged to think about the career interests of partners during the recruitment process, and possibly provide training and development ahead of international assignments so that the partners can acquire e-business expertise and work over the Internet.

Edith Finkbeiner Mulligan directs Crossing Cultures S.L. a Barcelona based company offering relocation services and intercultural training throughout Spain. She speaks six languages and has lived in Germany, Malta, Argentina and Belgium. Visit: www.crossing-cultures.com

[Copyright Expatica]

[March 2006]

Subject: Spain, relocation