It goes without saying that global mobility is an extremely complex and challenging field of human resource management. It requires a thorough knowledge of immigration, tax, Social Security regulations, vendor management skills, and, most importantly, the assignee-focused duty of care—visa, shipment, flight tickets, school for kids, pet moving, flat search, settling in. It’s a lot. Now, imagine that apart from assisting your mobility population with their relocation needs, you need to figure out one more transfer: yours.
Having managed expatriates as an expat myself for multiple years now—from Shanghai through Budapest, Hungary, to Hong Kong—I started to reflect on how international exposure influenced my attitude toward running a global mobility program, facing the relocation hardships, and managing people’s expectations from the role. I am not an isolated case in the mobility profession, so I have engaged in conversations with colleagues who also moved abroad to manage expatriate populations.
How did the expat life experience help us, as mobility professionals, approach the job differently? Did we alter policies, programs, benefits, and internal services because of our personal experience? Were there any aspects of the move we had never imagined could be so tough?
‘Why Try to Treat Everyone the Same When No One Is?’
When designing a mobility policy, we tend to focus on serving the company’s business needs, assuring compliance and meeting transferees’ expectations with the proposed benefit package. However, how can one policy meet the real needs and wants of hundreds of employees of different backgrounds and personal circumstances? That’s the thing: alone, it can’t.
“Two families with kids the same age, spouses holding the same jobs, and going from the same home country to the same host country will have 1,001 different things to deal with and expectations to manage,” says Mark Derksen, head of global mobility at getir. He confirms that the international experience, which for him started in Durban, South Africa, and went through London, Amsterdam, and Barcelona, strongly influenced his approach toward global mobility and resulted in altering the company’s policies as well as his ways of working. Derksen puts focus on the importance of working not only based on guidelines and budget, but, more importantly, listening to people and finding out what they really need. “Why try to treat everyone the same when no one is?” he asks.
Bianka Konczos-Budai, Global Mobility Region Head at Nokia, agrees that concentrating solely on compliance, cost, or process quality causes global mobility professionals to lose the sense of how decisions directly impact employees, “leaving them out of the equation.” Konczos-Budai’s personal experience during assignments in California and New Jersey gave her a more tangible and practical understanding of what employees are going through. It helped her to realize which actions, services, and supported areas add actual value for transferees and family members in different stages of the process.
The necessity for flexibility in global mobility policies is also accented by David Enser, managing partner at RES Forum, who, over the years, has relocated several times, e.g., to Japan, Germany, and Hong Kong. “What suits one may not suit another,” says Enser. He claims that, as mobility professionals, we should treat every case individually, “with unique wants, needs, and motivations.”
A policy serves as a basis for each mobility program; however, without the right approach from the mobility professionals, it cannot serve its purposes. Olivier Meier, principal at Mercer, who moved within Europe multiple times, says, “A policy is just a piece of paper—what counts is the logic behind it and how it reconciles the experience of people moving, of the people receiving the mobile employees and the business realities.”
Misled by Distance and Expectations
We often expect inter-regional moves, which fall between countries situated thousands of miles apart, to be the most complex, challenging, and nerve-wrecking. Shipment costs, long flights, time zone differences, and visa delays are just a few of many factors that could contribute to that. But is this true?
Almost two years ago, Dora Nagy, relocation partner, moved from Budapest, Hungary, to Malaga, Spain, with her husband. She was more than surprised to realize how little official information was available in English even though Spain is seen as a popular destination among expats. “I was expecting to be able to gather information upon arrival on the website of official sources and authorities in English; however, they are all in Spanish only.” Nagy explains how important it is not to blindly follow our expectations and instead look at it from a more technical angle of mobility. “I believe it would make the overall experience of our relocating colleagues significantly smoother and more pleasant,” she says.
“This is no one’s fault other than my own for assuming in the first place,” says Avrom Goldberg, a senior vice president for global client services at Weichert Workforce Mobility, who moved and traveled cross-regionally throughout his whole life. His mobility journey took him through Amsterdam, Brussels, London, and Hong Kong in late 2001, where he has been since. Still, even with such a rich experience of moving and managing moves of others, he got “caught up” by an innocent looking 210 km (~130 miles) relocation between Amsterdam and Brussels.
“The experience mirrored the cliché about the U.K. and the U.S. being two countries separated only by the same language,” Goldberg says. “When you move a short distance, or even a longer distance to what you believe to be a proximate or similar culture, the actual experience of how large the differences between these two cultures can come with genuine shock.”
Goldberg explains that, despite the language similarities (Dutch is the only official language of the Netherlands and is one of three official languages of Belgium, spoken by 60% of the Belgian population) and the proximity of the two countries, the business etiquette and other aspects of the culture could hardly be more different. For example, there are differences in directness of communication. Speed is an attribute of efficiency and execution for one nation and quite the opposite for the other, he says.
“It is utterly confounding when you assume you know what to expect and none of your expectations are met,” Goldberg says. He admits that he was much more prepared for the move from Europe to Asia when it comes to cultural differences. The false impression of distance between Belgium and the Netherlands misled his expectations.
Not Necessarily Home Sweet Home
Cultural shock is a widely known phenomenon among expatriates. If you move between extremely distinct locations (e.g., differing in aspects of culture, clothing, etc.), you might feel a bit out of place. It is very common and usually passes after the initial period in the new country. But how about the reverse situation? Imagine that you have been living abroad for years and the time to go home comes. You have great memories associated with this place—your favourite spots, friends, and family waiting for you. You can’t wait to be back! Only when the day of your craved repatriation comes, you realize nothing is as you left it. This is reverse cultural shock. It’s much less spoken about, but it happens equally frequent and does not spare anyone, including mobility professionals.
When I moved from Lodz, Poland, to Shanghai, I could not understand how the most down-to-earth actions were not possible without a mobile phone, access to the internet, and the right app installed. I could not pay for my lunch, as nobody wanted cash, and I was barely able to use the taxi service or metro. I also remember the multiple face scans and fingerprint reads at the airport. Everyone was always in a rush in this fascinating city that never sleeps. I thought I would never get used to that, and I was so wrong. Before I realized, I adjusted to the local customs, cuisine, and having my cell always on me. Then it was time to come back home, and I quickly knew that one year in China spoiled me enough to complain about lack of the same convenient tech solutions in my home country.
Derksen experienced something similar upon coming back to the Netherlands after six years away. He admits that a lot of things changed in his “old” home country during this time. He recalls the funny story when he got fined while using public transportation in his first week because he did not have the right ticket. Being away from the country forces us to re-adjust and discover what has changed. Many expats will easily realize how “silly things,” as Derksen calls them, “will throw them off guard.”
One Move, Two Careers
Global mobility closely intertwines with talent management and has a strong influence on career progression. But what’s interesting, Meier says, is that the impact can be both positive and negative. For this reason, it is very important for an expatriate to have “an ongoing reflection about career and lifestyle,” he says. In addition, he emphasizes the complexity around multiple moves, which might not constitute such “a well-structured, step-by-step career progression,” as it does for one-time moves with a more straightforward repatriation and reintegration into the previous role. “The reality is much more complex,” he says. “The moves will have an impact on your career progression and force you to consider different roles and make difficult trade-offs between lifestyle and family issues on one side and career objectives on the other side.”
If we think about it more broadly, as mobility professionals, we quickly realize that the same level of complexity can pertain to the careers of expat couples. Regardless of who follows whom, the impact will be tremendous. This thought brings us to Shefali Modi, chief operating officer at Benivo, who moved from London to Amsterdam accompanied by her husband and daughter. “The most common reason for a move failing is the partner not settling in,” she says. Modi points out that we all should be doing more when it comes to career talks and progression. “Over 90% of partners had given up on their careers, and most were not happy about it,” she says.
Dual career planning is also seen as a challenge to Konczos-Budai, especially when it comes to the aspects of finance and “making decisions by balancing two careers.” She mentions that even with the company providing support for the spouse, aligning the career of the spouse to the new environment remains “a big challenge.” “Traditional mobility programs assume non-working or trailing spouses, but this is typically not the case anymore, which highlights the need for more spouse support than before,” she says.
Another angle of complexity around “plus-one” moves has been flagged by Michael Piker, global DE&I and reward director at Flutter. He notices that many mobility policies tend not to support same-sex couples. Having lived in nine countries, Piker points out that some countries do not recognize dependency of the same-sex-oriented spouses and, even if they do, the visa processing times can be extremely lengthy.
Walking the Talk
Despite the uniqueness of each testimonial presented, there is one thing all the people I interviewed have in common: a positive view on having international living exposure while managing global mobility. Ruth Lockwood, head of strategic sales for Southeast Asia at Santa Fe Relocation, who moved through 11 countries, says there was nothing more rewarding than sharing her “heartfelt” rather than just “a professional” viewpoint with assignees being transferred from South Africa to Singapore, just like her. The opinion is echoed by Julia Hasillo, global mobility manager at Cognizant, who, after her assignment to London, “could relate to employees in a different way and look for solutions from their angle.” Enser adds, “I like to think that I’ve walked what I talk, so to speak. I understand the fears and barriers that can exist.”
Based on my own experience and that of those quoted here, I can confirm that global mobility is one of those professions in which mastering the theory might not be enough. We can alter the policies, look for the best relocation vendors, and provide the most competitive benefits in the market, but what we really should remember is that people see things differently, and have individual needs, assumptions, expectations, and backgrounds. As a result, there are certain aspects of relocation that can be easily planned as per the policy and applicable laws, but there is always another part that cannot be simply written into the process. It’s a human touch—the most important benefit that mobility professionals should all give.