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

1. GLOBAL MOBILITY OF
CORPORATE EMPLOYEES:
EXPATRIATION
Natalia Tretyakevich, PhD
Mireia Las Heras, PhD

2. 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.

3. What is expatriation?
• Expatriation is defined as international relocation for work
purposes for the period of time typically around 3 years, during
which the employee is usually accompanied by the family (Collings,
Scullion & Morley, 2007).
• Goals of expatriation:
- providing skills at developing markets which are difficult to be
found there;
- contributing to the organizational development through
exercising control and coordination at the markets of
expatriation;
- creating learning opportunities among the company’s
employees providing them with the global perspective (Hocking,
Brown & Harzing, 2004).

4. Data collection
• The data for the current research was collected via interviews
with the employees of MNCs who have experienced
expatriation.
• 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 30
min.
• Purposeful sampling was used for the study. The interviewees
were recruited in two waves – first, through HR managers of
two multinational companies and, second, through the
participants of the MBA course at IESE Business School
(+snowball sampling technique to reach a representative
number of female interviewees).

5. The structure of interviews

6. Socio-demographic characteristics

7. Sample characteristics
• 8 out of 34 were expatriated for the first time, the rest had
2 assignments and more;
• Average length – 3,1 years (between 1 and 6 years);
• Purpose of expatriation:
From the side of employees – professional growth and career
development along with good chances for their families to see the
world.
From the side of companies - widening business at new locations or
bringing best practices to the new markets (1); developing the
company’s workforce (2), or as a prolongation of short-term
assignments (3).

8. Data analysis: Work domain

9. 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 of
business;
• Experience of managing big teams, mastering leadership and management skills;
• Development of new responsibilities, new instruments inside of their functional
area or in a completely new one;
• Global business approach (especially in HQs), strategic thinking, understanding
peculiarities of new markets, learning from the best;
• Improved visibility within the company, widened network, experience of dealing
with hierarchy;
• Main personal skills developed: flexibility, adaptability, open-mindedness,
accepting diversity, adjusting to new ways of working and living, being ready for
change, self-confidence and independence, maturity;
• Strong communication skills;
• Mastering foreign languages.
!! All these beneficial for future career growth!!

10. Work domain: Difficulties

11. Data analysis: Family Life

12. 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 to
availability of free time for the wife, additional financial support and developed
medical services.
• Benefits for the relationship between the partners, which tend to become
closer when moving to the new place. Family unit was strengthening, spouses
got 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 and
special conditions provided to the global employees;
• Families got to know different culture, travelled, adopted new ways of thinking
living in a completely new landscape, and learnt how to manage efficiently
their daily life in the new setting;
• Positive aspects for spouse: sometimes they managed to get good
employment at the new place or opened business, in addition to learning new
languages and developing other interests.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES AND EXPERIENCES FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY ARE
FREQUENTLY THE MAIN REASON FOR UNDERTAKING EXPATRIATION,
ALONG WITH PROFESSIONAL GROWTH.

13. Family Life: Negative impacts
NEVERTHELESS! FOR 95% OF INTERVIEWEES WITH FAMILIES
RELOCATION ALONE IS NOT AN OPTION!

14. Data analysis: Personal well-being

15. Personal well-being: Positive impacts
• Individual development and enrichment, new qualities acquired,
learning new languages – beneficial for both professional and
personal life;
• Psychologically expats reported becoming stronger and physically
sometimes too, for example, when having a chance to practice more
sports than before or live an outdoor lifestyle, which was influenced
by 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 deeply
understanding processes of the new society;
• Travelling a lot in a new geographical region, expanding cultural
borders;
• Finding new acquaintances, expanding communication circle,
obtaining multinational friends for the expats and their families.

16. Personal well-being: negative impacts
PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACTS WERE FOUND TO BE STRONGER THAN
PHYSICAL AND WERE DEPENDANT ON THE COUNTRY OF ASSIGNMENT

17. 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.

18. Satisfaction with expatriation
“I am extremely satisfied, I think it brought to my life super satisfying
challenges, not only on a professional level but also on a personal level. I
think it helped myself to be conscious of how good I can be at my job, even
if they take me from my own country and put me in a new place where I am
not an expert in the language, I am not an expert in the culture at all, I just
know marketing and commonsense and I am able to do a better job than
the people in their own country.” (“fully satisfied” expat)
“I mean, the truth is, I have one professional and one personal assessment
and they are so different. Professionally speaking it was very interesting -
very challenging but I think it enriched me very much. But on a personal
level it was hard... in the end it's no matter what happened I am just
stronger, I am wiser - I hope I am. It's just another experience. From bad
experiences you probably learn more than from good ones. I am just
happy that it just happened. I think I am a different person now.” (“partially
satisfied” expat)

19. Company support for expatriates
“Logistics was pretty good, I think it is pretty standardized in the organizations
used 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 would
have done all the arrangements for my visa, bank account, even getting a
phone 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. Checklist
tells you what to do when you leave, when you come back, if you follow the
checklist you shouldn’t have any big issues. I did it and up to now I didn’t have
any impacts. Critical is to ensure that you have a relocation company with the
local knowledge to make you aware of the critical things you have to perform.”
Companies do their best providing expats with good
conditions and trying to foresee possible complications.
However, despite all the measures foreseen to make the
life of expats easier, a number of complaints were
mentioned.

20. Examples of corporate HR measures for
improvement of expatriation experience

21. Conclusions
• Expatriation continues to represent an important form of international
mobility.
• Nowadays, global employees tend to express strong desire to have a
balance between various life domains, not simply paying attention to the
added value of expatriation for their professional development and career
growth but possessing inclinations towards harmonious development of
family 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 avoid
work-family conflict by all means, even declining the assignment or
terminating it earlier if negative effects of expatriation influence family life
and personal well-being.  Not just individual satisfaction with the
assignment 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 holistic
way taking into account different spheres of the employees’ lives.
• In this regard, special HR policies are to be developed and implemented in
order to increase efficiency of expatriation and moderate its negative
impacts.

22. Thank you!