SNA and Expatriates

The Question:  

               How to identify employees are currently or formerly been expatriates?

Background:

               Expatriates are employees willing to take assignments away for their home office for an extended period of time.    

               Having spent over 10 years as an expatriate I have seen the good and bad of being on assignment.  Before my first assignment I meet two different employees, who had previously been on assignment.  One was a returning expatriate, who just joined my team and was willing to give me, the ins and outs of being expatriate.  The other a mentor, who provided encouragement as I went through the application process.  Both were crucial in helping me make it through the application process and prepare for leaving my home office.

While on assignment the company supports me 100%.  I was given an induction into your assignment culture, help to find a place to live, language lessons for countries where I did not speak the language, and a support team to help me adjust to my new life.   The best thing is that normally, I was not on assignment alone, but many others in my position.   This allows us to create own community or clique if you like, as everyone knows and talks to everyone.  

               Much like being at Hult, we work and play together.   There are outing on the weekends, dinners out, and many nights spent working together to complete projects.  We are in each lives 24/7 and become family.    The one downside to assignment was that I lost complete contact with my home office.  This lead to me feeling completely disconnect to what was happening in my home office and what opportunities might be available there when I returned.

               This disconnection made it difficult to comeback from assignment.  My home office was now foreign to me.  It was like starting a new assignment again, but lacking the support I had received before. I had to find my own job before I came back, if not I was given 30 days to find one, once assignment ended.  I was left on my own to readjust to life in an office, I had long been dissociated with.  For me this was difficult as I felt alone and not quite sure how to communicate with other employees as I had spent so much time away, adjusting to a new culture, while forgetting my own.

The Desired Outcome:  

To create an expatriate community that support each other to integrate back into home country after assignment has been completed, keep expatriates on assignment connected with home office, and educate potential expatriates on what to expect while on assignment.

I would like to use social network analysis to answer the following:

Q1:  Who are the employees that would like to go on assignment?

Q2:  Who are the employees that have been on assignment and now back home?

Q3:  Who are the employees that are currently on assignment?

Q4:  Who are potential former expatriate that want to go on future assignments?

Survey participants:

All current and former expatriates within the organization.  List to be gotten from human resources.

Questions for survey:

1)      Have you been on assignment?

a.      If yes, how long

2)      Have you repatriated?

a.      If yes, how long

3)      Do you keep in contact with other expatriates?

a.      Whom do you keep in contact with

4)      Where are/were you on assignment to?

5)      Number of assignments?

6)      Where is home office?

7)      Would you like to go on assignment again?

Once the survey is complete we can analyze the data to evaluate to see the following:

1)      Where are the expatriates on assignment to?

2)      Where expatriates home countries are?  Who has repatriated.

3)      Where potential expatriates for new assignments located?

4)      Who are the expatriates that continue to be communicate?

Action Post Survey:

This will allow the home offices to do the following:

1)      Set up bi-weekly meeting with all newly repatriated employees to find out how everything is going and put them in contact with another employee, who has been repatriated more than year to act as a mentor in the repatriation process.

2)      Set up monthly meeting expatriate meeting with human resources in home office for all employees on assignment.  This will allow expatriates to still feel connected with home office and understanding what is happening in office as well as potential opportunities for an expatriate when they are repatriating.

3)      A pool of potential former expatriates available for assignment that are in the pipeline.  By knowing there connections and experience we could understand if they are a good fit for the positions that are available.

4)      Allows human resources to reach out to former expatriates to discuss assignment life in and out of office with new expatriate candidates.

Conclusion:

I believe by setting up an expatriate network an organization will equip employees to be able to handle life away and more easily integrate when returning home.  The one thing I always wished I had when I returned was someone who I could talked that understood, what life had been like and what I was facing now.   Change is never easy, organizations should help expatriates adjust to that change.  By creating a network for them, organizations take away some of the stress that comes with that change, either coming or going.