GLOBAL MOBILITY OF

CORPORATE EMPLOYEES:

EXPATRIATION

Natalia Tretyakevich, PhD

Mireia Las Heras, PhD

Goal of the study

The major goal of the present research is to explore

employees’ satisfaction with expatriation investigating its

positive and negative impacts on different life domains,

namely work, family life and personal well-being.

What is expatriation?

• Expatriation is defined as international relocation for workpurposes for the period of time typically around 3 years, duringwhich the employee is usually accompanied by the family (Collings,

Scullion & Morley, 2007).

• Goals of expatriation:

- providing skills at developing markets which are difficult to befound there;

- contributing to the organizational development throughexercising control and coordination at the markets ofexpatriation;

- creating learning opportunities among the company’semployees providing them with the global perspective (Hocking,

Brown & Harzing, 2004).

Data collection

• The data for the current research was collected via interviewswith the employees of MNCs who have experiencedexpatriation.

• In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted face-to-face or via phone/skype in English.

• The duration of the interview was between 45 min and 1 hr 30min.

• Purposeful sampling was used for the study. The intervieweeswere recruited in two waves – first, through HR managers oftwo multinational companies and, second, through theparticipants of the MBA course at IESE Business School(+snowball sampling technique to reach a representativenumber of female interviewees).

The structure of interviews

Socio-demographic characteristics

Sample characteristics

• 8 out of 34 were expatriated for the first time, the rest had2 assignments and more;

• Average length – 3,1 years (between 1 and 6 years);

• Purpose of expatriation:From the side of employees – professional growth and careerdevelopment along with good chances for their families to see theworld.

From the side of companies - widening business at new locations orbringing best practices to the new markets (1); developing thecompany’s workforce (2), or as a prolongation of short-termassignments (3).

Data analysis: Work domain

Work domain: Positive impacts• Deep knowledge of the industry and the place and new skills – technical and soft

ones - obtained at the right market in favorable time, improved understanding ofbusiness;

• Experience of managing big teams, mastering leadership and management skills;

• Development of new responsibilities, new instruments inside of their functionalarea or in a completely new one;

• Global business approach (especially in HQs), strategic thinking, understandingpeculiarities of new markets, learning from the best;

• Improved visibility within the company, widened network, experience of dealingwith hierarchy;

• Main personal skills developed: flexibility, adaptability, open-mindedness,accepting diversity, adjusting to new ways of working and living, being ready forchange, self-confidence and independence, maturity;

• Strong communication skills;

• Mastering foreign languages.

!! All these beneficial for future career growth!!

Work domain: Difficulties

Data analysis: Family Life

Family Life: Positive impacts• Very beneficial for the kids who got a chance to study in international schools,

learn foreign language(s) and grow up in the international surrounding.

• Expatriation period was found to be suitable for giving birth to kids due toavailability of free time for the wife, additional financial support and developedmedical services.

• Benefits for the relationship between the partners, which tend to becomecloser when moving to the new place. Family unit was strengthening, spousesgot to know each other better, extraordinary experience made the family bond.

• The level of life of the whole family got higher due to economic benefits andspecial conditions provided to the global employees;

• Families got to know different culture, travelled, adopted new ways of thinkingliving in a completely new landscape, and learnt how to manage efficientlytheir daily life in the new setting;

• Positive aspects for spouse: sometimes they managed to get goodemployment at the new place or opened business, in addition to learning newlanguages and developing other interests.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES AND EXPERIENCES FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY ARE FREQUENTLY THE MAIN REASON FOR UNDERTAKING EXPATRIATION,

ALONG WITH PROFESSIONAL GROWTH.

Family Life: Negative impacts

NEVERTHELESS! FOR 95% OF INTERVIEWEES WITH FAMILIES

RELOCATION ALONE IS NOT AN OPTION!

Data analysis: Personal well-being

Personal well-being: Positive impacts

• Individual development and enrichment, new qualities acquired,learning new languages – beneficial for both professional andpersonal life;

• Psychologically expats reported becoming stronger and physicallysometimes too, for example, when having a chance to practice moresports than before or live an outdoor lifestyle, which was influencedby the new culture;

• Adopting new lifestyle taking the best out of it and, at the same time,appreciating even more what they had at home;

• Getting to know new culture not superficially, as a tourist, but deeplyunderstanding processes of the new society;

• Travelling a lot in a new geographical region, expanding culturalborders;

• Finding new acquaintances, expanding communication circle,obtaining multinational friends for the expats and their families.

Personal well-being: negative impacts

PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACTS WERE FOUND TO BE STRONGER THAN

PHYSICAL AND WERE DEPENDANT ON THE COUNTRY OF ASSIGNMENT

Satisfaction with expatriation

Evaluation of professional, family and personal life of expatriates.

- Higher satisfaction with professional life to compare with family and personal

life domains the latter to be paid attention by the employers;

- Females evaluated family life above average (males below), while men assess

professional life higher than women; personal life evaluation did not differ

across genders;

- 2 groups of respondents revealed according to overall satisfaction: “fully

satisfied” expats (22 individuals) who underlined positive experiences and

are ready to repeat expatriation again and “partially satisfied” interviewees

who had mixed opinions and would be more careful when considering to

undertake international assignment in the future or not.

Satisfaction with expatriation

“I am extremely satisfied, I think it brought to my life super satisfyingchallenges, not only on a professional level but also on a personal level. Ithink it helped myself to be conscious of how good I can be at my job, evenif they take me from my own country and put me in a new place where I amnot an expert in the language, I am not an expert in the culture at all, I justknow marketing and commonsense and I am able to do a better job thanthe people in their own country.” (“fully satisfied” expat)

“I mean, the truth is, I have one professional and one personal assessmentand they are so different. Professionally speaking it was very interesting -very challenging but I think it enriched me very much. But on a personallevel it was hard... in the end it's no matter what happened I am juststronger, I am wiser - I hope I am. It's just another experience. From badexperiences you probably learn more than from good ones. I am justhappy that it just happened. I think I am a different person now.” (“partiallysatisfied” expat)

Company support for expatriates

“Logistics was pretty good, I think it is pretty standardized in the organizationsused to job rotations. The company and agency were well-prepared for that.This was very very good. I had everything when I arrived and the agency wouldhave done all the arrangements for my visa, bank account, even getting aphone number. Accommodation of course…”

“In this sense I was pleasantly surprised, everything was really well-organized.It was nothing new, everything was planned, like a standard routine. Checklisttells you what to do when you leave, when you come back, if you follow thechecklist you shouldn’t have any big issues. I did it and up to now I didn’t haveany impacts. Critical is to ensure that you have a relocation company with thelocal knowledge to make you aware of the critical things you have to perform.”

Companies do their best providing expats with goodconditions and trying to foresee possible complications.However, despite all the measures foreseen to make thelife of expats easier, a number of complaints werementioned.

Examples of corporate HR measures for

improvement of expatriation experience

Conclusions

• Expatriation continues to represent an important form of internationalmobility.

• Nowadays, global employees tend to express strong desire to have abalance between various life domains, not simply paying attention to theadded value of expatriation for their professional development and careergrowth but possessing inclinations towards harmonious development offamily and personal life.

• Unlike domestic jobs, an international assignment is more of a family affair(Osland, 1995), therefore, expatriates are looking for the ways to avoidwork-family conflict by all means, even declining the assignment orterminating it earlier if negative effects of expatriation influence family lifeand personal well-being. Not just individual satisfaction with theassignment suffers and work commitment decreases, but the company-employer bears substantial material and human costs.

• Therefore, it is important to assess expatriation assignment in a holisticway taking into account different spheres of the employees’ lives.

• In this regard, special HR policies are to be developed and implemented inorder to increase efficiency of expatriation and moderate its negativeimpacts.

Thank you!