We thought we should pull together the main reasons, according to our experience that hinder Expat Spouse employment in the host country. This is a non-scientific analysis based on opinions and experience. There are a number of studies (Permits Foundation, 2012; Silberbauer, 2015) dedicated to the topic though.
Global Mobility providers and academics often research how family impacts “expatriate failure”. In my view, this is not enough. We should investigate how we can bring down the barriers to Expat Spouse employment. Why is it so difficult for Expat Spouses to find work in the host country? Here is a short analysis of the issues.
1- Work Permit Restrictions
Finding a job is not as straightforward for many of my clients as it is in their home countries. Even if most top host locations allow Expat Spouses to work on the partner’s dependent work permit, other countries present significant restrictions to Expat Spouse employment. In fact, while some of them do not issue work permits to any Expat Spouses at all, others may present subtleties linked to marital status or they might not recognize same sex-marriages.
2- Host Language Skills
Even though the expat might work for a global company, most jobs in the host country will require host language skills. Unless you move from the UK to the USA, you often will not have the language skills required to work in the host country. It’s important that you don’t underestimate this aspect and that you start learning the local language as soon as possible, ideally before relocating. The good news is that almost two-thirds of employers already provide this as the main form of assistance (Permits Foundation, 2012). If there is a business need, companies generally pay for a 60-hour course also for the Expat spouse. However, 60 hours is not a lot and for working in another language a basic course will not be sufficient. There are specific job search engines that filter for English-speaking roles. If you are looking to find employment in the Swiss job market, you can look up www.englishforum.ch.
3- Recognition of University Degrees in Regulated Fields and Non-Regulated Fields
While within the EU we can assume that university degrees will be recognized due to the common job market, a Brazilian doctor cannot work in a hospital in Switzerland. We call this a “regulated profession”. In the best-case scenario, you will need to go through a considerable amount of bureaucracy to get your degree converted, and this may cost you a good amount of money. In the worst-case scenario, however, if you want to keep practicing your profession, you will have to get complementary certificates in the host country. Even in non-regulated fields and jobs it seems very hard to translate degrees and determine equivalency. Very often you need to explain what your degree and experience mean in “lay terms.”
4 – Professional Networks
Another issue is the lack of a professional network, which gives access to the untapped and informal labor market in the host country. Often you can only join professional associations when you are in a corporate role or when you have graduated in the country. Building your professional network in your host country will require time and trust. You will have to start from scratch and dedicate a considerable amount of time to this activity if you want to see good results. You will also need to understand that matters of trust and relationships are culturally different, so it’s important that you act in a culturally appropriate manner when attempting to expand your professional network.
5 – Global Mobility Policy
Only very forward-thinking global mobility and global recruiting policies address the need for support for “trailing” dual career partners. While ten years ago dual-career issues on international assignments were solved by sticking to classical Western nuclear “family” models, we now want to adhere to the needs of dual careers, patchwork families, Eastern “family” models, same-sex partners, and unmarried de-facto relationships. Visionary Global Mobility policies address various support models ranging from providing a lump sum to spousal career coaching. As an intercultural career advisor, I also work with clients who decide to start a global, transferable business so that they can follow their life partner to other locations and become location-independent. Thanks to technology I can support clients in NYC as well as in Mumbai. We also support candidates to improve their personal branding in the host market, learn to network effectively and improve their interview skills and online presentations. But it’s crucial that Global Mobility Leaders update their policies and promote spouse support services rather than pay lump sums.
6 – Intercultural Bias of Our Recruiters
Our recruiters often do not understand intercultural differences. Recruiters often don’t understand resumes from other countries and outsourcing talent specialists to HR-shared service centers has not improved the chances of “foreign” candidates in the recruitment process. Most selection methods and assessments are culturally biased. For example, in Switzerland, psychometric testing and other assessments of candidates are used to assess candidates next to interviews. Riedel (2015) shows examples where highly skilled candidates from China fell through the assessment roster in a German company because of their indirect communication style. Companies should provide training on Inclusion and Diversity in an attempt to eliminate unconscious biases and ensure all worthy candidates are being considered for global mobility. This practice is not yet spread. According to KPMG, 39% of employees surveyed aren’t aware of inclusive leadership training within their organizations.
7 – Unconscious Bias of Sending Home Sponsors
PwC issued a study in 2016 on female expatriation where it appears very obvious that a lot more women would be interested in an international assignment than the ones that are actually sent. As a matter of fact, some types of assignments (like short-term, very short-term, and fly-in and out commuter assignments) are notably more popular among women than among men. If women make up 20% only (PwC, 2016) of the internationally mobile population across all sectors, it’s probably due to the unconscious bias of the sending-home sponsors who assume a female manager is not mobile even though she might have mentioned it several times. I speak from experience. If you want to guarantee that the selection of women and other underrepresented groups is fair and objective, you need to measure the relative inclusiveness of mobility assignments and ensure policies on equal access are working. If you find out they are not working, intervene as soon as possible.
8 – Research to Measure the Impact of Dual-Career Programs
In 2012, ETH Zurich conducted extensive research with several European universities on barriers to dual careers within the EU and EFTA countries. For most companies (NetExpat & EY, 2018; Atlas World Group, 2019) the presence of dual-career couples negatively affects the decision to relocate. There’s more: the spouse’s unwillingness to move because of his or her career is the first reason for turning down relocation. After all, it’s 2020, and the increasing number of households relying on two salaries should not surprise us. While in the past, small firms were relatively less affected by spouse/partner’s employment than medium and big firms, in more recent times, the impact has been similar across company sizes. There is evidently still a lot to do in order to integrate the needs of dual-career couples in the expatriation process. If you want to keep pace with reality and stand out with a far-reaching Global Mobility policy, please keep this issue a top priority.
On the receiving end, I can report that more and more expat spouses are male. There is hope. If you want to see how all these work in practice and would like to receive a proposal from us, please drop a line to Angie Weinberger (angela@globalpeopletransitions.com). I am happy to support you!
Further Readings:
The Modern Professional’s Guide to Avoiding Career Stagnation
My favourite Productivity Hacks – Seven Tips to claim back your Diary
Global Recruiting – Helping Global Talents succeed in Switzerland
Offline and Online Presence is the Way Forward for Modern Professionals
References:
Atlas World Group. (2019). 52nd Annual Atlas Corporate Relocation Survey. https://www.atlasvanlines.com/AtlasVanLines/media/Corporate-Relo-Survey/PDFs/2019survey.pdf
KPMG. (2018). Inclusion and Diversity: How Global Mobility can help move the Needle. KPMG International. https://assets.kpmg//content/dam/kpmg/xx/pdf/2018/06/global-mobility-inclusion-and-diversity-how-gms-can-help-move-the-needle-FINAL.pd
NetExpat & EY. (2018). Relocating Partner Survey Report. https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-2018-relocating-partner-survey-final-report/$File/ey-2018-relocating-partner-survey-final-report.pdf
Permits Foundation. (2012). International Mobility and Dual-Career Survey of International Employers. https://www.permitsfoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Permits+Global+Survey+2012nw.pdf
PwC. (2016). Women of the world: Aligning gender diversity and international mobility in financial services. PwC. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/financial-services/assets/women-of-the-world.pdf
Riedel, Tim (2015): “Internationale Personalauswahl”, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen.
Silberbauer, K. (2015). Benefits of dual-career support for expat spouses, International Journal of Business and Management, vol 3, no. 2. DOI: 10.20472/BM.2015.3.2.005.
Weinberger, A. (2019). “The Global Mobility Workbook”, Global People Transitions, Zurich.
Weinberger, A. (2016). “The Global Career Workbook”, Global People Transitions, Zurich.
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Dr. Jens Schmidt, A German Executive in Shanghai
Dr. Jens Schmidt is an expat. The company’s corporate headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, assigned him to improve efficiency at the company’s manufacturing plant in Shangai, China. During his first 90 days he came up with a list of quality issues and he shared this list with three of his direct reports (Mr. Zhu, Mr. Cao and Mrs. Ping).
He asked them for input on how to mitigate the issues within the next 90 days and what the “low hanging fruit” were. He emailed them on Friday evening and asked them to respond by Monday morning, enough time to review over the weekend. While Dr. Jens Schmidt was sorting out his moving goods that finally arrived from Stuttgart and settled into his apartment, Mr. Zhu, Mr. Cao and Mrs. Ping went for lunch. They did not appreciate that they had to leave their families on the weekend but they knew this was important. On Sunday night Mr. Cao, the most senior, eldest and most experienced manager responded to the email.
“Dear Dr. Schmidt, thank you for the trust you are giving to your senior managers by sharing this report with us before sending it to the headquarters. We are fully on board with you and we think you and the quality assurance team in the headquarters will give good guidance on how to mitigate the issues presented in the report. We kindly ask that you inform us of any changes once you have discussed this report with the headquarters. With kind regards, Mr. Cao”.
On Monday, when Dr. Schmidt came back to the office, Mr. Zhu handed in his resignation. Two weeks later Mr. Cao and Mrs. Ping also resigned.
Now, Dr. Schmidt had to lead 50 engineers directly. He was using everything he knew that worked in Germany — especially in terms of performance appraisal, and yet the Chinese employees seemed to be losing efficiency and effectiveness by the week. After 90 days, many engineers had moved to other companies and Dr. Schmidt had a hard time to explain to HR why he needed to hire new engineers and managers in the middle of a global crisis. His 180 days report looked bleak. The quality issues had become worse and Dr. Schmidt had nothing to show for but failure.
It took quite some time and effort on Dr. Schmidt’s part to recognize that what worked in Germany in terms of critical and to-the-point feedback was actually demotivating to the Chinese employees, who were used to more positive reinforcement than pure critique. These positive comments motivated them to increase productivity and put forth that extra, discretionary effort. Once Dr. Schmidt changed his feedback and his communication style in general he noticed that productivity improved again. He was also able to win the managers and some of the employees back once he understood the importance of relationships and the concept of “face” in the Chinese culture.
Three years later he managed to leave the country with a good feeling.
Feedback is Completely Misconstrued
According to the original mechanistic definition feedback occurs when an environment reacts to an action or behavior. For example, ‘customer feedback’ is the buyer’s reaction to a firm’s products and policies, and ‘operational feedback’ is the internally generated information on a firm’s performance.
Originally, the idea was that feedback changes behavior. Criticism or praise is considered feedback only if it brings about a lasting change in the recipient’s behavior. While I am generally critical of this assumption, I would like to explain here three major feedback styles that I have seen over my career. Often they work in a monocultural setting or when they are framed well. For example, critiques work well for writers and bloggers, the sandwich works well in an Anglo-Saxon environment and Hindi-style generally works well in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
One major issue is that feedback often is NOT delivered well. Another issue is that often it is full of projections and that it has to be abused to justify why a good performer was not promoted. That is one of the key issues with feedback. For the next three styles we will assume that the feedback is well delivered, the feedback receiver asked for feedback and the feedback is not used as a justification for non-promotion or a performance rating.
German-Style: Pure Direct Critique
Clearly, people in Germany do not generally provide and receive feedback in the same way that people in China are used to doing. In fact, appraisal feedback can be very different across different cultures. Although not many like to do it, we know that critiquing – in a constructive and empowering way – others’ work is a crucial part of a manager’s job. However, critiquing someone often brings unwanted results and ends up hurting others even when this wasn’t the initial goal. This generally happens because criticism embodies two of the things that human beings hate the most, i.e. it calls for submission and it devalues.
With a focus on what needs to be improved, this method works extremely well for writers, bloggers and co-creators. In many instances, authors actually request it. It’s also often used in educational circumstances, training contexts and examinations. Here it is important to focus on the work, instead of the person. For example, “In this report, capitalization is not applied consistently.” or “This paragraph is hard to understand because it contains a lot of passive constructions.” Germans love “Sachlichkeit” so the focus here is on the object, the piece of art, the work output, rather than the person delivering the work. The intention here is to improve the overall quality of the work output.
US-Style: The Sandwich Feedback
The original sandwich feedback technique entails something positive to warm up the discussion, followed by some criticism which is the real feedback one wants to give, and it wraps up with more praise, i.e. again something positive to soften the actual feedback. In other words, the sandwich feedback method involves discussing corrective feedback that is “sandwiched” between two layers of praise.
There are two ways to put the sandwich feedback technique in practice:
- You start off with a positive comment, add constructive feedback with an explanation of how to improve, and end with another positive comment.
- You begin with a contextual statement (I liked…because…Now/Next time…) and conclude with an interactive statement, e.g. a question based on the work done.
This method is particularly helpful to managers when they want to discuss problems with the employee’s behavior. It is especially useful for those managers who find it difficult to deliver corrective feedback. It is important to note that you need to ask for permission to give feedback and also find examples of where you observe what you find worth changing. Here you should focus on behavior, rather than the person and soften it with “tend to” and “I observed” and “what this does with me…”. Speak about how it affects you. This approach takes the name of Non-Violent Communication (NVC) and it was developed by the American psychologist M. Rosenberg.
Hindi-Style: Focus on the Positive
In Bangalore, I learned another feedback style which I call “Hindi-Style Feedback”. Basically, here you focus on the positive and remain silent on the negative. In order to save face you don’t confront the person you are addressing directly. If you have negative feedback you would tell this to an intermediary who then decides about how to approach the topic with the person.
This method works well in the Asian context or when you generally already have a high-performing team and nothing major goes wrong. Focussing and reinforcing the strengths and the positive behavior will lift employees up and encourage them to do more of this behavior. Also, I think it is important to build a personal relationship before delivering feedback and better to deliver it 1:1. If you are only correcting errors and you have agreed a more direct style to do that it is acceptable if you have a good relationship with your team members.
In the SIETAR conference in Dublin in a pre-congress workshop my colleague Adrienne Rubatos and I co-created a feedback map with the participants.
We also suggested that feedback usually creates more harm than support and as humanistic coaches we therefore would propose to stop using performance management systems, Management by Objectives and certainly feedback. Where we feel feedback is helpful ONLY would be in learning situations, transitions and when it is explicitly demanded by the feedback-receiver.
I’m aware that this is a complete paradigm shift and that it will change our approaches to promotions, compensation, benefits, hierarchy and basically completely turn around how we work in organizations.
We are demanding a new approach to feedback. We promote an approach that is mindful, supportive and transcultural.
Delivering Feedback like a Global Virtual Leader
Even if in a new cultural setting it’s useful to learn the cultural rules, perhaps through a cultural mentor, don’t assume that “going native” is always and necessarily successful. Most of the time, you will have to adjust your feedback style and create a blend with which you feel comfortable enough in the given setting and with the person you have in front of you.
More and more often teams are global virtual teams (GVT) and there are no rules other than the rules the teams co-create. We have vast experience working within global, virtual teams and you find further blog posts via https://globalpeopletransitions.com/?s=global+virtual+teams.
Alternatively, you can join our RockMe! program or the RockMeRetreat where we discuss these matters based on your leadership challenges.
A Happy New Year 2019 to you. May it bring you health, happiness and lots of success in your projects.
The holidays are over and you are probably already getting back-to-work blues. That’s alright, most of us experience a form of adjustment and maybe even feel a little overwhelmed at the change of pace
I thought I could ease myself in slowly by starting on Thursday already and then it hit me like a snowball. Friday, I was working away in a frenzy and did about four loads of washing at the same time. (I know, multitasking is not good for the brain, but every machine run is a bit like a smoking break – not that I smoke…but you get the gist.)
Since a long time I haven’t written a to-do-list other than the ones, I write to structure my housework. However, on Friday I wrote one and still many items are open because the client work, lecture and workshop preparations were more urgent than many of those small tasks.
I thought I should share with you my plan for starting this week in a mindful way even though it is packed.
Here’s a quick rundown of what I will do to get myself prepared. Hopefully, I have the energy to return to that to-do list every day of the next week.
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- Put away the holiday decorations – I know that’s the hardest part but it’s time to say goodbye to the holidays and throw out that Christmas tree (if you had one). I keep all cards but they go into a box and the decorations box is stowed away in the attic.
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- Start a new diary – Literally, it’s a new year and worth to get a new diary.
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- Fix your sleep cycle – I feel that far too many of us enjoy sleeping late during the holidays as group conversations go late into the night or you just can’t stop binging that new show on Netflix. From Monday I’m setting the alarm at 5.15 AM every day. Then I’m automatically tired at 10 PM and can go to sleep easily. On Saturday and Sunday, I will try to get up around 7 AM. Then it is easier to readjust. Ensure you do the same for the kids and encourage your spouse/partner as well.
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- Reconnect with yourself – The holidays can be a fun yet hectic time of the year and when the endorphins wear off, you may find yourself drained. Schedule some ‘me’ time and recharge yourself! Try to establish your weekly practices* again. If you have no time at all to yourself write down at least 10 wishes for the year.
- Cut down on snacks and reduce your alcohol intake back to normal – However delicious those holiday leftovers may seem, perhaps it’s best if we get back to giving our bodies healthier nutrition and rejuvenate our bodies! And while we now have all these New Year receptions coming up it is also better to bring down your alcohol level to normality. Maybe have herbal tea one or two nights a week.
With an ever-increasing number of professionals moving to another country for work, the holidays are the ideal time for a visit home and catching up with family and friends. It’s a magical time, with expats getting to re-experience their favorite memories – perhaps visiting that ice-cream store with a childhood best friend, reconnecting with an extended family member. These visits are why a lot of expats end up forming stronger bonds with their loved ones back home. Sometimes, we also want to be back in our own homes, our own lives and with our current friends. You might experience a bit of emotional turmoil, jet lag and other typical signs of travel.
That said, I know that for a lot of people, these vacations are a bittersweet affair. Returning might reinforce the feeling of loss at what was sacrificed for the sake of your career: the familiarity and comfort of ‘home’, relationships and even support networks. For those returning after a very long time, they might even find themselves feeling alienated in their own home and country, as they’ve gotten acclimatized to their new environment. Maybe you are happy to be back in the host country and suddenly realize that you are happy but that your spouse still hasn’t found that job he was looking for. And that you would feel better if your spouse had an identity again.
If your spouse has been looking for a job in Switzerland for more than six months and is desperate please send him my way.
We will offer the next #HireMeGroup starting 26 January 2019 and I have two spots left. Meetings will be held on three Saturday mornings from 9 AM to 12 PM in a new location in 8032 Zurich.
We will arrange one meeting per month on 26 January 2019, 16 February 2019, 9 March 2019. If you want to sign up or have a friend who needs to join us please reply to this email and let me know how I can reach you by phone.
Have a great start in 2019!
Angie
