According to Brookfield (2016) 95% of companies do not measure their Global Mobility Return on Investment. “Given the inordinate amount of cost pressure on mobility today, it is somewhat surprising that more companies do not seem to have basic cost management practices in place. Only 62% of respondents indicated that they track costs during an assignment, and even fewer noted that a cost-benefit analysis is required at the outset of an assignment. With barely two-thirds of companies actually tracking the basic and most transparent part of their investment in assignments – their cost, it is not surprising that 95% of companies do not measure international assignment ROI.”  This research is from 2016 and I bet if we had an updated version we […]

Expat Selection in Global Mobility – Moving from Ad-hoc Hiring to a Global Sourcing Approach Expat Selection is a myth and if you would like to select expats in a structured manner you better start with a few basic adjustments in your global sourcing process. Succession Planning as a Basis for Expat Selection Succession Planning should guide the individual development plan, the international assignment business case, and the transition plan. I advise thinking about the international assignment from the end. Start to think about the next role before you discuss the international assignment business case with the assignment targets and cost projection. In other words, find a position the assignee could fill after the assignment in your succession plan. Most […]

Supporting the Global Mobility Manager We are supporting Global Mobility Managers to become a rockstar with a few tricks of the trade. I am nowadays more involved in operational global mobility topics than I ever was and while the constant filling of payroll instructions, hypo tax calculations, and balance sheet updates reminds me of the Sysiphus tasks I mentioned in the talk, I have learned a great deal over the last few years and I don’t mind the operational work so much anymore as long as I can still coach expats and their families. I am contemplating that even expatriate payroll is so much more interesting than normal payroll and that we need professionals with intercultural competence to ensure that […]

Do you know Darth Vader, the dark force in many of the Star Wars movies? Did you know that we all have a bit of Darth Vader in us? We are driven by our fears. The Star Wars movies are full of allusions to deep psychology and how our attachments and fears form our behaviors and life. With this post, I would like to give you an understanding of how we are influenced by our fears and how you can change to become a Jedi.        Fritz Riemann, a deep psychologist established a theory based on four basic forms of fear (“Grundformen der Angst”). The four basic forms of angst are formed in our early childhood and determine to […]

I recently held a talk where I was discussing the Expat Experience in Zurich and how to enhance it. Zurich is a typical inbound hub, so many ideas in this article will also fit to places like Dubai, London, Hong Kong, or Singapore. As the most populated canton in Switzerland, Zurich is becoming home to an ever-growing population of expats.  Today’s typical expats look like this expat couple: Heidi and Govind. Heidi is a Director who works in banking and is a credit guru. She met Govind, her husband, at the London School of Economics. From there they moved to New York and later Abu Dhabi. Govind now works for a pharmaceutical company that has had them stationed in Abu […]