Measuring Expat ROI - New Report From Yvonne McNulty

Hi Everyone, Our friend Yvonne McNulty in Singapore released last week her new industry report: Measuring Expatriate Return On Investment In Global Firms, which is a great read for anyone working or interested in the field of expatriate management, talent recruitment and/or human resources.

To gather data for the report, Yvonne surveyed 51 expatriates from five global firms. The combined total employee population represented by those firms was 653,000.

Two key findings in the report:

• 36% of expatriates seek external job opportunities during their assignments - which infers that HR needs to focus not just on retention at the end of international assignments, but throughout employee assignments abroad; and

• Expat ROI is not formally measured. Companies rely instead on the employee performance appraisal process - however, how effective is this process of measurement, when the expats surveyed believed the performance appraisal process measured the wrong things?

Yvonne, perhaps best known for her Trailing Spouse Survey four years ago, is a PhD candidate in the Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University, Australia. She is a sought-after speaker on the topic of expat return on investment (ROI) and can be contacted here.

Well done, Yvonne, and happy reading everyone!