The Global Phoenix - Issue 2 April - June 2017 | Page 22

PROFESSIONAL REPATRIATION
CHALLENGES
These professional challenges, perhaps, have the
greatest impact on the success of the repatriation. The
partner, who initially may have had to forsake their own
career in order to accompany their assignee partner
on their assignment abroad, now is more eager than
ever, to return to their career, and re-enter the workforce.
However, having been out of it for several years, the
partner often struggles to find a way to pick up the thread
of their career, and the frustration, after expecting to
be able to do so, can be difficult. Most importantly, the
assignee returns with the expectation to find a position in
the company that values the new skills they have gained
while on assignment abroad. Working abroad, most
expatriates must wear lots of different hats, and they are
often big fish in small ponds, wielding much authority;
back home, often at headquarters, they find themselves
as small fish in a big pond, often with their authority far
more circumscribed and dependent on the decisions of
others.
While abroad, the assignee may lose touch with what
is really happening at the home office, and the home
office may not be able to assess the degree to which,
and the areas in which, the assignee has developed new
and important skills that can be applied when brought
back to work at the home office. In short, there is often a
severe disconnect between the kind of position and work
that the repatriate expects to do, and the position
and responsibilities that the company actually has for
them to do. This is probably even more the case in an
economically challenging time, where organizations
are rapidly downsizing, and where repatriation may
itself be occurring because there is now significantly
less work to do, or certain projects are put on hold or
eliminated, or the organization that the repatriate is
returning to is simply smaller, leaner and meaner than
the one they left.
Nevertheless, the repatriate has the global
knowledge essential to the global success of the
organization, and if we risk losing them on their return
home at the end of their assignment, not only are we
putting the ROI of the expatriate investment at risk,
but we are providing the competition with the critical
global talent for their success. If an organization does
not retain its global talent, it will have a very hard time
succeeding in the global market, especially when it is
its competition that is benefitting from the investment
that was made in their global managers. In short,
successful repatriation is the insurance policy that the
“million dollar investment” that is being made with
each and every assignee and family is maximized.
“Bring ‘em back alive” is no longer a viable measure
of the success of an international assignment, and
the failure to retain global talent after they return
home significantly impacts the overall success of the
assignment.
PREVENTATIVE MEASURES
Statistics also show that when REPATRIATION TRAINING programs are administered,
repatriation attrition, one measure of a failed repatriation, dramatically drops from 48%
to less than 10%. This translates into retained global talent, maximizing the return on
the investment in the global assignment. The cost of repatriation training, therefore,
is not an expense: it represents, rather, a savings: saving the organization (and its
people) the dire and very real expense of a failed assignment back home, and the risks
associated with an organization losing its most valuable global talent.
Author: Dean Foster; Executive Strategic Consultant, Dwellworks Intercultural
& former Founder and President of DFA Intercultural Global Solutions, LLC,
New York.
Dean Foster, for over 25 years, has played a major founding role in the field of intercultural consulting
and training. His work with most Fortune 500 companies has taken him to over 95 countries. Dean is a
frequent guest on major TV and radio shows, keynotes at international professional conferences. Dean
has written several books: The Global Etiquette Guide -to Europe, -to Asia, -to Latin America, -to Africa,
and Bargaining Across Borders, voted one of the Top Ten Business Books of the Year.
Dean is on the faculty of American University, Intercultural Management Institute, Washington, DC, and
adjunct to the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, New York, where he received
his M.A. in Sociology. The Employee Relocation Council (ERC) inducted him into the Hall of Leaders in
2011, and Dean was inducted into the Forum for Expatriate Management Hall of Fame in 2013.
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