We look at how one multinational company is helping their expats to hit the ground running.

The spouse and children should be involved from the start.

When Philips' Transfer Services Department conducted their annual expatriate and customer survey in December 2005, they discovered that although a lot of information concerning the expatriation process was available, employees found that it was often difficult to take in.

"We had a terms and conditions booklet of over 150 A4 pages in which you could find all the reward conditions. However, it was not easy to read due to a lot of technical detail. All other practical information was not standardly available," says Marin Cocu, Vice President of Transfer Services . 

Philips manages expatriation via their Transfer Services Department which is divided into four major hubs, Latin America, Europe, North America, and Asia and supported by 45 HR country coordinators. 

For instance, Cocu explains, "If your home country is Germany and you are expatriated to Hong Kong, your assignment is managed from the European hub for the outbound activities, such as your employment conditions, you'll have while on assignment.  When you move to Hong Kong the settling in, things such as finding a house and organising the school, is done in by the HR country coordinator in Hong Kong."
 
However, with much of the information being passed on by word of mouth via the Transfer Services Officers in the regional hubs and by the HR country coordinators you run the risk that much of it was passed on twice and sometimes lacked consistency, says Cocu.

Plus, first-time international assignees often had little idea of what moving to another country entails in practice and the initial conversation with Transfer Services would generally only prime people to start thinking about the issues they would need to discuss later in more detail.

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