Roger and Martine are a pair of expatriates. Expatriates generally go in pairs. Solos are rarer since the experience of emigrating goes better with two. The profile of an expatriate is generally an executive with high potential or a senior leader of the organization. It’s the type of career that requires so much personal investment that it‘s difficult to get there on your own. It takes a spouse, man or woman, to infuse some balance and to support you when you’re 8000 km from home. Statistics also show that 40% of expatriations end in failure despite all the precautions and preparations for leaving. The risk and costs are very high.
Let’s go back to Roger and Martine. They travelled the world as required for opening divisions and conquering new markets for the company where Roger worked for 15 years. (This fictitious example could also have reversed roles since there are many expatriate women accompanied by spouses who have sacrificed their career for the benefit of their better half). After many years between North America, Europe and Asia, this couple began to be more severely affected by "expatriate's syndrome" whose symptoms appear as a form of nostalgia or unease between the desire to return to one’s native country or stay at the other end of the world. The unreal world of expatriates is ruthlessly pernicious. The conditions are usually so generous (though much less so than 20 years ago) that they put the expatriates in a cage. A golden cage. Very golden. They end up getting used to a driver, maids, a luxury residence, services and a high-end school for the children, then one day they wake up to the fact that they’re living in a postcard and that this Disney decor is nothing but a fairytale. That fateful day arrives one fine morning when the children have become teenagers and their values no longer resemble those that the parents thought they were instilling in them. I still hear Roger and Martine confessing that they planned to return to their country so their children could learn “real life”, in other words making their own lunch, carrying their own school bag, cleaning their own room. But sometimes this awakening comes in more dramatic circumstances, illness of a parent or close friend or…. loss of their job. An order to return to head office in more serious conditions, without fanfare and a job that is more or less sure. This is finally what happened to Roger and Martine. From Brazil to Toronto in economy class. It should be noted that the proportion of expatriates in management positions within multinationals in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and in the Eastern countries fell from 56% to 12% between the end of the 1990s and the 2000s. For Martine and Roger and their children, the return of the lunch box didn't happen smoothly and it took them several months (and probably even a few years) to recover. Rebuilding a circle of friends, resuming more routine activities. Daily life lacks the exotic when you have lived with an extreme change of scenery.
There has been a change in management of expatriates for several years but most importantly, more profoundly, a change in strategy for penetrating new geographic markets. Reverse expatriation is also being talked about for local executives sent to the head office to absorb the group’s culture. Studies also show that expatriates who identify with both their native values and those of their host country have significantly higher performance compared to those who don’t identify with one or the other or even neither. The latter are mercenaries rather… Developing bicultural talent is the key.
Globalization and the rise of technology count for something in these changes but even more are the failures expatriates have faced in the Chinese and Asian markets in recent years. Culturally, it was extremely difficult to duplicate the same approach as with Western countries. The largest companies had to change their approach and recruit locally. Expatriates no longer arrive as kings and masters but must build teams and learn from their local colleagues. It’s a sea change and open breach for expatriation budgets. It’s no longer necessary to spend fortunes on sending the best talent to the other end of the world. In 2013 there is talent available 10000 km from home. It’s a nice lesson in humility and a rude awakening for career expatriates that have started to be gently returned to the fold. The return is particularly painful. Returning as an ordinary citizen is not easy when you’ve spent your life with the greats of the world. These returns are often accompanied by major depression. But this is not much talked about. Our society is not kind to these corporate nomads who have consciously or unconsciously sacrificed so much of their life to benefit a corporate illusion. The most savvy have been able to invest their money and provide themselves with a very comfortable future, but since the 2008 crisis some have lost everything or close to it.
Then what? What to do? It seems more and more clear that talent can’t be bought any more. The only way out is to develop it in a co-management or co-leadership approach. It means balancing the ratio of expatriates and local talent to better understand new markets and develop new talent pools. The approach is similar to sustainable development, a new model to follow for human resources management in the 2020s?
To read : Winning the talent war in local markets by staying global. McKinsey 2012
Nathalie Francisci, CHRP, ICD. D
Partner
ODGERS BERNDTSON
Global Leaders in Executive Search