NEWSFLASHES

You don’t become an expat on your own

Emigrating? Sorry, but my partner has a job too.
Partner policy, or in even more graceful terms, dual-career policy is now the magical term for international companies that want to second employees. And the newest trend: working internationally without emigrating.

Former Chairman in the Netherlands of the Lower House Frans Weisglas (61) will become ‘the man in Bern’, as was announced in October. Until last week, when he suddenly announced that he had decided, following further consideration, to let the diplomatic position in Switzerland pass. The reason? It turned out that it was ‘impossible to combine the job of ambassador with his wife’s work’, who is a doctor.

In days gone by, the husband got sent abroad and his wife followed him and spent empty days living there. However, the traditional expat era, when the man was the bread-winner and the wife did the housekeeping or spent her time lounging around, is a thing of the past.

Role Reversal
The roles seem to have reversed during the last few years: the entire emigration process is occasionally abandoned because the partner does not want to sacrifice his or her job for the career of the other. As was the case with the former Chairman of the Lower House

For about ten years now, employers have had to take the phenomenon of the dual career – well educated twenty, thirty, and forty something’s, who both want to have and hold onto their careers - into account when they want to second an employee. Partners of expats are less and less willing to sacrifice their own careers for the career of their husband or wife.

Refusing secondment
Results from a survey under HR expat managers in more than 400 companies worldwide show that 53 percent of the employees refused a secondment last year, on account of the lack of opportunities for their partner.

‘This is something we encounter more frequently these days’, says Annerie Vreugdenhil, Head of Corporate Clients Nederland at ING Wholesale Banking, the ING corporate bank, with numerous internationally operating clients. ‘The greatest majority of this group has young children, and a move abroad at this stage of life is a very radical change.’
The employers have created two solutions for this modern expat dilemma: the dual career policy, whereby active efforts are made to create sound career perspectives for the partner in the same location. Or the option of working internationally without emigrating: the Netherlands remains the operational base and the employee either does a lot of commuting or works abroad for a few days a week.

Krista Radstake (35) has been doing the latter for years now. She works at ING, where she facilitates major takeovers for international companies. She travels abroad somewhere between twice a week and twice a month from her operational base in Amsterdam. ‘It works really well. I mainly work in Europe, so you are out and back within a day.’ Her partner also works for ING in Amsterdam. ‘If one of us went to work in London, then that would be fine, but him in Singapore and me here, or the other way round? That is not an option. A stay at home expat wife is not an option for me and not an option for my husband either.’

Own career
‘Times have changed', says Radstake. ‘The traditional expat pattern is men who work and women who stay at home. But these days, companies have to search for a good solution more frequently when seconding people. Partners have their own careers.'
This is why internationally operating companies now call on the services of companies that specialise in lobbying to orchestrate suitable positions in the same location for expat partners. However, there is no guarantee that the partner can be offered a career perspective on foreign soil.

Labour psychologist Louise van Alenburg, partner of a Shell employee who works in Russia, carried out a study into the willingness to be seconded and the career path of the partners of Shell employees in 2005. Out of the partners in the study, 81 percent already had a job before they left, however this dropped to 25 percent after secondment.

Successful mission
The most successful mission is evidently that of a stable family, in which all members of the family are happy (partner with own career and any children). This is evident from a study by Harvard University. Three quarters of the top managers included in the survey named the worries about the family and the limited prospect of suitable work for the partner (often female/wife) as the biggest bottlenecks. Many people experience life in the compound and the expat community as a stifling experience. An estimated 20 to 30 percent of the secondments fail, because the partner of the expat cannot settle in the country in question.

There is no other alternative: companies will have to do their utmost to make sure the partners of expats can settle. If an unhappy partner means an unsuccessful secondment, then that costs lots of money.

Sabien Vreeman-Butzelaar (32)

‘My skills won’t disappear after two years’
‘I relocated to California with my husband, who is doing an MBA at Stanford. The only visa I am eligible for is pretty shoddy, I can’t work or study, I can only take courses and do volunteer work. And that is what I do, at a zoo – cleaning out cages, feeding the animals - and for a website. It is like a forced semi-sabbatical and I can think of worse places to be in the world with so much free time on your hands. And it’s ‘only’ for two years.’

‘I was an editor-in-chief at Glamour in the Netherlands, a great job. I found it really difficult to leave it all behind. I want to freelance as a journalist when we go back to the Netherlands – I did this once before and really enjoyed it. And there is no way I’ll suddenly lose all my skills after two years. I occasionally do freelance work for Dutch clients, so I'm not leading a totally non-active life, but the time difference does make contact with clients rather difficult.’

‘We had already decided that I would go with him before my boyfriend – we weren’t married then – started the enrolment procedure for the MBA. We really loved the idea of going away for a while, just the two of us, and it’s only for two years, which was easy to deal with. The location was more important to me, he would be studying all the time anyway and I would be the one who had to amuse myself. So I vetoed lots of options. We thought about him doing a course in Europe because I would be allowed to work, but the American schools have a much better reputation. This was an opportunity simply he had to grasp.’

Mark de Graaf (40)

‘The operational base is actually irrelevant.
‘I studied Economics at Rotterdam and Harvard and always wanted to work as an investment banker. I thought it would be exciting. This profession was just starting to appear in the Netherlands after I graduated, so I went to London. I worked there for eight years, for a number of banks. It was a wonderful experience, with an exceptionally steep learning curve.

‘My wife, still my girlfriend at the time, came to London a year after me. She had to complete her course in the Netherlands first. She always wanted to go abroad. Not to London in particular, but she came there because I was there. We did speak about it, but there were no intensive discussions. She said: if this is your vocation, then you just have to do it.’

‘She visited me at weekends in the begin, but I occasionally had to work the entire weekend anyway. I worked 100 hours a week, so it certainly wasn’t an ideal situation. It became much more fun when she started working in London too.’

‘We came back to the Netherlands together too. I wanted to change jobs because of the downturn in the economy, which caused companies to return to their national markets. This made working in the Netherlands much more interesting. I started working for ING in the corporate finance department at the end of 2002. I work in Amsterdam now, but I am abroad at least 2 or 3 days a week. The operational base is irrelevant; it doesn’t make much difference, flying from London to Madrid or from Amsterdam to Madrid.’

‘I have no regrets whatsoever about coming back. But we are not anchored in the Netherlands. If one of us is given an opportunity, then it’s a possibility. And yes, I would go with her if it was possible. Our careers are equally important.’

Mark Milders (36)

‘Living abroad is in our blood
‘I have been working for ING since June 2005, in the department that focuses on private equity financing, in Amsterdam. I was changing jobs at the time and had a number of options to choose from, including two positions in London. My partner and I had just moved house and had our first child. It simply wasn’t the best time to go abroad. We did have many discussions about it ‘around the kitchen table’. The content of the job in Amsterdam was ultimately the decisive factor. That was the most interesting of them all. I think that lots of people romanticise about working abroad. I certainly wouldn’t mind living and working elsewhere, but not at any cost. The content of the job must be just as interesting as my current job.’

‘Both my partner and I lived abroad when we were children, because of the work of our parents. So it’s in our blood.

‘My current job is highly international, I am in London at least once a fortnight, the working language is 80 percent English, and I don’t have many Dutch colleagues. However, the option of working elsewhere is still open, in London or New York for example. But only if my partner and child can settle there too. The flexibility is already taken care of; my partner has a transferable job. She had her own practice for dyslexic children until recently, she could do that or something else abroad. I don’t want to go abroad simply for the sake of it, there must be an added value aspect.’

Arjen Berghouwer (31)

 ‘You have to have more patience’
‘I moved to Mexico City with my wife and our two year old son in November 2007. My wife is Mexican. I worked as process manager at ABN AMRO and she was studying at the Academy of Arts in The Hague.’

We emigrated because her father suddenly took ill. I didn’t hesitate for a second, even though I really enjoyed my work. If your wife tells you that she really wants to be with her ill father, then the choice is simple.’

‘I didn't manage to get a position with ABN AMRO Mexico directly from the Netherlands. The department in Mexico is very small, and they are cautious about hiring foreign staff- who are often more expensive. I have contacted them now that I live here.’

’My wife is studying at the Academy of Arts, which she did before she moved to the Netherlands. I still haven’t managed to find a job, but I am very hopeful that I will be successful in the near future. You obviously have to have a little more patience with the human resources departments in Latin America.’ ‘I primarily focus on the banks, as I have experience in that sector, but I am also open to working in other sectors – from consultancy, import/export through to the lecturing profession. So who knows, maybe I will be teaching political science at one of the numerous universities in Mexico City in the near future. In the meantime I spend most of my improving my Spanish.’

Source: www.vkbanen.nl
Publication date: 20th February 2009

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