Hi Everyone, Rachel Yates of Defining Moves: The Art of Successful Relocation wrote this great post for us, that we would like to share...
Relocation Policies: Are We Being Set Up To Fail?
We have lived in San Francisco for over a year, and I have yet to sign on with a doctor. I simply haven't had the time to find one whose opinion I trust, and I have had other priorities. I have been investing my time and energy in establishing a support network, ensuring that my children's educational needs are met, and recently spent 4.5 hours getting them admitted to a dental practice. Which is why I am convinced that the latest policies for improving spousal 'happiness' by investing in employment counseling are inherently flawed. We are being set up to fail, and here's why.
1. Time. The considerable time commitment that relocating and establishing a functioning household takes. The 'employed' partner is typically given between three and seven days to facilitate a move, but 63 percent of relocating households have one or more children, and move every three to five years. Thus the tasks that needed to be completed in any relocation (such as finding and furnishing housing, applying for documentation, establishing financial services, locating and enrolling with health care providers, finding appropriate education services) as well as time spent traveling, getting vaccinations and medical assessments, completing health, education, residency and legal checks, and of course the actual time spent moving house, fall to the accompanying partner.
The process is long term, and can up to six months to fully complete, leaving those on shorter term assignments destined for an endless cycle of tedious but essential research, driving and form-filling. Where destination support is offered, the limited time allocated means that housing and schooling are priorities, while services deemed less essential (such as waiting at home for utility engineers, establishing financial services, or finding medical care) are left to the accompanying partner to establish.
2. Invalid certification. Revalidating professional credentials takes a significant amount of time and effort and there are often delays in accessing the necessary courses. The shorter the assignment duration, the less benefit there is to be gained from the revalidation process, and where there is an additional cost implication, the overall 'return on investment' of recertification for career purposes is poor.
3. Inability to commit to new employment. Your resume may be stellar and your references glowing, but most employers are looking to recruit stable long-term team members. As an accompanying partner, you are unable to offer guarantees - you have already taken the decision to relocate to further your partner's career, and any future career decisions will almost certainly continue this trend. So if your partner's corporation decides to transfer, repatriate or terminate the contract, your dependent visa status means that you will be leaving too, regardless of how vital or fulfilling your new role is.
What Should Relocation Policies Be Focusing On?
1. Establishing realistic expectations. Far too many of us have embarked on life as an accompanying partner without fully understanding what we are signing up for. Including both partners in assignment planning meetings makes expectations clearer and more realistic. Is the move really a one off, or if it is successful, will the corporation be expecting further overseas postings? Is the time frame set, or is it likely to change according to the needs of the transferring employer? Answering these questions at the outset means that any plans made by the accompanying partner will be realistic over the entire expatriate time frame, rather on a single short term transfer.
2. The idea/option to work on a virtual basis. A great deal of work is outsourced or carried out remotely, so there may well be a way of maintaining your professional role from the new location. I know a CFO (Chief Financial Officer) who lives five hours from their former office, a real estate agent who uses Skype to give them a London office number but is actually taking the call in rural Wales, and a PR (Public Relations) agent who 'works' in the Heathrow area from a farm in Herefordshire. If career packages included identification of more flexible working opportunities and training in how to use remote networking tools, we could potentially make a smoother transition between locations, without having to change careers.
3. Encouragement and education around the idea of creating a new flexible career (as the accompanying partner). It may well be time to reinvent yourself. You have taken the decision to relocate for a reason, and it usually involves improving your family's quality of life and/or experiencing the wider world. Take it seriously, and invest time and energy in achieving those goals, and less time worrying about what you have left behind. If you are not simply taking a career break, but are intending to become a serial expat, reframing how you generate income and job satisfaction can open doors to opportunities that can move with you. Experts like Jo Parfitt and Robin Pascoe provide guidance on both a personal and professional transition to a new career and identity, and there are many online resources available, both for continuing education, career counseling and life coaching.
The good news is that we have far more flexible working opportunities than ever, and employers are increasingly outsourcing a huge range of tasks and roles to freelance workers and independent contractors. Web based job sites such as Elance, Monster and Craigslist feature thousands of opportunities that do not require residence in any particular location, and Ebay and Etsy provide a flexible way of running a retail business.
Final Words
Not every relocation policy lacks these ideas, but from anecdotal discussions with other expats, I suspect most do. What I suggest to the makers of relocation policy is that, as expat families, we could really benefit from a greater understanding of what options are open to us, and the tools to reframe our professional identity in a way that is congruent with the expatriate life, rather than in conflict with it. Do this to help us, and it's highly likely we'll stay longer on posting, and help you in return.
Rachel Yates, an expat trailing spouse from Wales, who has spent the last ten years turning relocation disasters into a worldwide traveling circus. Currently living in San Francisco, she has spent the last ten years routing through London, Nairobi, and Los Angeles, complete with two kids, two dogs and three cats. She has only once been upgraded on a flight. Current goals include making it into Virgin First Class, learning HTML and locating a perfect Lemon Drop Martini.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Relocation Policies: Are We Being Set Up To Fail? by Expat Rachel Yates
Monday, January 16, 2012
Happy Birthday Expat Women!
Hi Everyone, Just a quick but sincere post to thank you for your support, feedback and testimonials over the past five years that ExpatWomen.com has been online.
I was just about to log out for the night (it's nearly midnight here) when I realized that today is the birthday of our site's launch five years ago, on 16 January 2007!
Thank you for 'being there' and for 'spreading the word' for us. Incredible to think that we now have more than 2,000 self-submitted Expat Women blogs on our directory, more than 1,000 quality content pages (country and expat club information, motivational articles and more), 300+ readers' stories, 5 years' worth of high quality newsletters, and much more.
I hope ExpatWomen.com has helped you and I appreciate in advance that you please keep spreading news of it to your friends and networks. Thanks so much, and enjoy January 16! Andrea x
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Missed Some Great Expat Links on Twitter? (November 15-16 edition)
Hi Everyone, I hope you are enjoying a fabulous week! Here are some expat links I have tweeted recently, that might interest you...
Is Your Accent Ruining Your Career?
bit.ly/rq3nav
10 Tips for Landing a PR Job Abroad
bit.ly/sVGxOk
3 Traps Facing New Global Leaders (Harvard Biz)
bit.ly/tkWzso
UK Expats and Wills: Why, Where, How and Other FAQs
bit.ly/tqKkKh
Life's a Beach: Living as an Expat on Sydney's Northern Beaches & Sharing My Life Less Ordinary, (Russell Ward)
http://bit.ly/v1dDXm
3 Ways To Raise Bilingual Children
tinyurl.com/cfwmvzu
17 Adventure Trips To Take Right Now
bit.ly/rKDGe9
20 of the World's Weirdest Natural Sights
bit.ly/ta1wh5
13 Insanely Cool Resumes That Landed Interviews At Google and Other Top Jobs
read.bi/tPg8Ci
Feature: 3 Inventive Businesses Set Up To Make Expat Life Easier (Telegraph Expat)
fb.me/1iLOAUlUh
The True Cost of Commuting: You Could Buy a House $15k More for Each Mile You Move Closer to Work
lifehac.kr/uoP7mj
And finally... a big congrats to the Gold Coast (QLD, Australia) for securing the 2018 Commonwealth Games!
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To follow me in 'real time' and keep up with even more great expat links on Twitter, please click here.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Expats: Do You Struggle With Your Global Identity?
Hi Everyone, If you ever struggle with your global and/or creative identity, today's post about Anastasia Ashman and Tara Agacayak's new website, Global Niche, might interest you. Anastasia's name might already be familiar to some/many of you, as we interviewed Anastasia back in 2007 about her book Expat Harem, and many of you might also see her regularly tweeting expat links as @AnastasiaAshman. Anastasia tells us more...
Get Creative About Your Place in the World:
How To Operate On A Micro-Yet-Global Level With A Global Niche
"Do you ever feel suspended between multiple worlds – challenged in your pursuits and interests by culture, geography, language or time zone?
Welcome to the club. The Global Niche club, that is. Here we take advantage of our situation mismatches.
In fact, after fourteen years of expatriatism and through my cultural identity work as a writer/producer I’ve come to see this psychic limbo state about who we are and where we belong – familiar to people with trans global lives and culturally hybrid lifestyles – as our secret weapon.
To start at the beginning, we’re all born global citizens even if that knowledge gets trained out of us. As we mature, a global identity seems nebulous, and ungrounded. Better to bond with the more concrete: family, culture, nation. Our schoolmates, colleagues, neighbors.
There’s a problem with concrete, though. It cracks over time and in quickly changing conditions, and sometimes even under its own weight.
I’d even venture to say that ‘our people’ today are not who they used to be. We’re unbounded by the communities in our physical midst. Now we can find inspiring new kinship in interest and outlook.
Expats and international types have more reasons than most to find a way to operate independently of where we happen to be physically. But with today's economic uncertainties no matter who or where we are, we all have to embrace an enterprising view of ourselves – a way to operate unlimited by the options around us. With recent advances in virtual technologies like mobile devices and the social web, we have tools at our disposal to help us live a globally unbounded life.
Now we don’t have to be a tech expert or social media guru to build a micro-yet-global base of operations with a professional web platform and virtual network for continuing education, professional development, and a close-knit but world-flung set of friends. We can be digital world citizens and achieve a cutting-edge state of being – that is, what I call ‘psychic location independence’.
I coined the concept of a global niche – defined as a ‘psychic solution to your global identity crisis’-- at expat+HAREM, the online community of global citizens, identity adventurers and intentional travelers I founded in 2009. The group blog was inspired by the global community that gathered around Tales from the Expat Harem, an anthology by foreign women about their lives in modern Turkey that I co-edited in 2005 with fellow Istanbul resident Jennifer Gokmen.
Expatharem.com was also informed by the idea of an ‘expat harem’ itself, where all the writers in the book and the readers drawn to them are cultural peers in a virtual realm.
Along with my partner Tara Agacayak, a creative enterprise consultant from Silicon Valley in America who’s spent the past 10 years in Turkey, this fall I launched a new work-life initiative at GlobalNiche.net.
In this hands-on venture we'll be practicing creative self enterprise for the global soul, based on the philosophies evolved from 175 incisive neoculture discussions and 2,800 comments at the expat+HAREM site.
Besides the expat+HAREM revelations, we’re also applying life-work innovations Tara and I have been exploring in the past few years in our professional communities of creative entrepreneurs and social media proponents. Combining our expat and entrepreneurship experiences has led us to the conclusion that networked reality is the most important independent survival skill of international people.
If you are interested to receive email about the life-work journeys of mobile progressives and cultural creatives in situation mismatches, please sign up at GlobalNiche.net. Thank you!"
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Missed Some More Great Expat Links on Twitter? (4-5 August)
Hello Everyone, Here are some great expat-related links I have tweeted recently, that might interest you. Enjoy! Andrea
TripAdvisor Releases List of Most/Least Expensive Cities to Travel to.
http://bit.ly/rePMqH
Expat Friendships: Do they survive the return home?
http://bit.ly/qWCJ8L
Top 10 Expat Destinations According to Google (UK)
http://bit.ly/o519XN
Great to See! Berkeley Program Aids Expat Spouses Lost in Translation
http://bit.ly/p0xlnf
Expats: When You Know You are Relocating, Do You Tell or Not Tell?
http://tgr.ph/ncoUVP
Feeling Sad about Your Relocation
http://bit.ly/nxzcPp
Campaign by Telegraph Expat for Expats who have Fallen Victim to Corruption and Confused State of Property Law in Spain
ow.ly/5H6IS
Staying Put, For Now: Expat Postings, Indecision, Settling-In
http://bit.ly/n9LQQk
Stretching the Expat Dollar
http://buswk.co/qtqFCy
Clements Honors U.S. Foreign Service Youth Making a World of Difference Abroad
http://bit.ly/qx3YTd
Telegraph Expat's Chelsea girl in China on the 90 years of communism celebrations
http://ow.ly/5DiYo
The Little Travelers now has 5 (!) lovely kids travel DVD
http://bit.ly/roGgVK
Great Way To Shop Online for What You Miss - and Have it Sent to You Abroad by US Global Mail
http://bit.ly/l8QVrc
Reverse Culture Shock: A Holiday in the UK sent one Hong Kong expat's World Upside Down
http://tgr.ph/rqaYUj
10 Ways to Feel at Home as an Expat
http://bit.ly/mScFZx
The Winners: Expatica’s Best Blogs 2010/2011
http://bit.ly/pQ4UWZ
$500m Floating Resort the Amphibious 1000 to Take Luxury to New Level on Coast of Qatar.
http://bit.ly/qvQKyQ
To follow me in 'real time' and keep up with even more great expat links on Twitter, please click here.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Missed Some Great Expat Links on Twitter? (2-3 August)
Hello Everyone, Here are some more great expat-related links I have tweeted recently, that might interest you. Enjoy! Andrea
Mercer: Worldwide Cost of Living Survey 2011 – City Ranking
http://bit.ly/oOGO6i
Women Say Working Abroad Improves Their Career Prospects.
ow.ly/5MjSK
When It’s Over: Regret and the Post-Expat Life
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To follow me in 'real time' and keep up with even more great expat links on Twitter, please click here.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Can You Help? Please Nominate ExpatWomen.com for ForbesWoman's Top 100 Websites for Women?
Hi Everyone, It would be truly fantastic to be included in the ForbesWoman list this year for their Top 100 Websites for Women.
Could you please take 1-2 minutes to nominate us here in their comments section?
Thanks so very, very much if you can! Andrea :)
Monday, June 6, 2011
New Expat Women Book - First Book Club Meeting
Hi Everyone, I want to give a big thank you to the book club of teachers at MKIS (Mont' Kiara International School) here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for being the first book club to invite me along with our new book, Expat Women: Confessions - 50 Answers to Your Real-Life Questions about Living Abroad. They were all wonderfully enthusiastic listeners, who were also keen to ask questions and provide their own valuable insights. It was fabulous.
The added bonus was having six-time author David T.K.Wong present as well, to talk about his latest book, The Embrace of Harlots. David was extremely humble at the meeting, but afterwards, I looked up his website and find that he has lots of expat experience, and that he also gives away a GBP26,000 scholarship every year to a fiction writer who writes about the Far East. What a man!
Thanks Everyone at the book club meeting. And thanks Everyone who has supported us and bought one of our new books! Andrea
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| Back Row (L to R): Kathleen Walker-Cook, Ann Andrew, Jennifer Heal and Julie Monroe. Front Row (L to R): Lori Duralia, Kelly Kurth, Marie McDowall, Andrea Martins (me), Rebecca Simpson and Malia McLaughlin. Also at the meeting: Melanie Brodie, Laura Forgie, Judy Morrison; Amy Scholdt; and David T.K.Wong. |
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| Our book's very first cash sale - two books - thanks Laura from the MKIS library! |
Monday, May 30, 2011
Missed Some More Great Expat Links on Twitter? (30 May 2011)
PS. If you missed the Expat Links blog post a few days ago (for 26-27 May), just click here. Thanks.
