For a number of reasons, many first-time expatriates choose to expatriate again at the end of their first assignment abroad. Here's how HR can ensure the continued success of the 'serial' assignee and keep the company investment intact.

When in Rome...

An expatriate may have completed their first-time round assignment in Barcelona for instance, but the information one needs to have about life and work in this city is simply different from the information one needs to succeed day-to-day in Shanghai.

Cross-cultural training needs to be different for the second assignment

Knowing the questions one needs answered when on international assignment — whether attained through formal pre-departure training or through the more difficult and risky on-the-ground school-of-hard-knocks —  still does not provide the country-specific, and most-importantly, city-specific, answers that will insure success for the assignee and family.

This information is best presented in an efficient and structured manner, through a cross-cultural programme that both presents the essential questions and provides the critical answers for successful life and work in the new country, prior to the move there, eliminating the costly and dangerous on-the-ground learning curve, and maximizing return-on-investment almost immediately.

Knowing how to do business with Romans in Rome, all the issues, all the intricate topics, as well as where to get the kids' clothes and how to find the kind of food they like in the neighbourhood in Rome where one happens to live, can only be provided objectively and accurately (no collared war stories from jaded expatriates already on assignment, please!) in a cross-cultural programme specific to, of course, Italy and Rome.  And if that's where the onward assignment happens to be, no previous cross-cultural programme, say, on Sao Paulo, will do. 

How onward training differs

 If we recognise the need for cross-cultural training prior to each onward assignment, we also need to recognise how the training itself must be modified from the traditional cross-cultural training usually administered prior to a first-time international assignment.

For one thing, we need to assess whether or not the onward assignees have ever received any formal cross-cultural training in advance of their first assignment.  If they did not, providing the information about adjusting to the international assignment, using their first assignment as grist for the discussion, will be important, as it will be their first opportunity, albeit looking back, to formally explore the issues and experiences they went through.

This will give them the necessary framework for considering what lies ahead in preparation for their next assignment.  For those assignees and families who had received formal training prior to their first assignment, the programme in anticipation of their onward move should help them to organise their reflections on their first expatriate experience, and in a guided fashion, help them to build the framework necessary for thinking about what they will need to do in preparation for their onward move.

Once this groundwork has been established, for both kinds of expatriates, a thorough exploration of the culture to which they will be onward relocating is critical.  As may or may not have been done the first time, reviewing essentials such as values, history, background, people, language, politics, economics, demographics, school systems, daily life, work habits, negotiation, managing, the worlds of men and women, children and adults, socialising, making friends, dealing with conflict and differences, all need to be explored, this time, specific to the culture to which they will be moving.

The difference in the 'onward' programme on these issues is, of course, to reflect on these topics, not as they need to be understood by individuals from their first culture, but now as they need to be understood by individuals who are already bi-cultural — changed, culturally, by their first experience.

This is precisely what makes these culture-topic discussions different in an onward programme from similar discussions in a first-time cross-cultural programme. 

Who benefits?

As is the case with first-time cross-cultural training programmes, every stakeholder in the international relocation process needs to be involved in some way in the programme: this means that all family members who are relocating need to attend a component of the "onward" programme that is specific to their issues, including the "trailing" partner and the children, as well as the assignee themselves.

But it also means that the organisation itself, with its need for rapid and measurable return-on-investment, and a dependable insurance against a failed international assignment, needs to have an onward cross-cultural training programme that it can rely on. 

This means a programme that is not merely a repeat, in design and intent, of a first-time cross-cultural programme, but a programme unique to the onward experience, that leverages the first-time experience to the benefit of the next-time experience, and which provides the essential and critical information for onward success, with consideration for whether or not the assignee and family had received similar training their first time out.

Cross-cultural programmes that do not make these specific accommodations to the onward experience do the assignees, their families, and their sponsoring organisations a disservice, and not providing onward cross-cultural training to "perpetual" expatriates, undermines them in their efforts to do the best possible job for the organisations that sponsor them.  For their success, and the global success of the organisation, providing onward-specific support is nothing less than fundamental. 

October 2004

Dean Foster is the president of Dean Foster Associates. He can be contacted through its European Head Office at: info@dfa-europe.com, +32 (0) 87 77 68 66, www.learnaboutcultures.com

Mr Foster has written the four-part Global Etiquette Guide book series (which include "The Global Etiquette Guide to: Europe – Asia – Latin America – Africa & the Middle East"), and the book "Bargaining Across Borders".