Re:locate magazine, summer 2004

Trail Blazers

If companies are to retain relocated employees, they must ensure that partners are equally satisfied with their new environments and the career opportunities available to them. Elizabeth Stafford looks at how ‘trailers’ can get the most from a posting abroad.

In the Czech capital of Prague, a group of people chatted over an after-dinner cup of coffee. While they helped themselves to milk and sugar, their partners – officially employed in the Czech Republic by a variety of companies or British government departments – talked ‘shop’ across the other side of the room.

Many members of the group that I’d found myself in – the proverbial ‘trailing spouses’ – had earned more than their partners before leaving the UK, yet they had taken the decision to opt for career breaks, or even to throw up their careers altogether, to follow their husbands or wives abroad.

It’s no use pretending that there wasn’t the occasional complaint. Companies should be aware that the worst times tend to come when spouses feel that they’ve lost the identity that employment provides, and have become nothing more than an appendage. My Prague group, however, was fuelled by a sense of optimism: no one felt that a move abroad had killed off their employment hopes. Everyone realised that they needed to be flexible, to plan ahead and to grasp every opportunity that came their way. Consequently, some of us were employed, some were studying and some were working full time bringing up young families.

So what’s the secret of keeping highly educated career spouses happy? How can they be helped to get new jobs abroad or to keep their existing careers flourishing? The answer tends to be three-fold: by seeking professional career counselling, by forming or joining informal support groups and by learning to speak the language of their new homeland as fluently as possible. These are services that responsible companies should either facilitate or, preferably, provide for relocators and their partners.

Trailing partners who’re looking for work abroad should be made aware that it’s not always possible to find local jobs – in fact, insurance and local taxes can often make it impossible to do so. However, the expatriate community can often serve as a source of work in itself, providing that would-be employees have a good grasp of either the local or one of the major languages. Companies offering any form of language training to partners are doing both themselves and their staff a favour: ‘trailers’ will feel their fear of isolation has been acknowledged and their needs recognised. And of course, happy ‘trailers’ equal happy staff equals greater productivity and employee-retention rates. Once ‘trailers’ have mastered a basic grasp of the language, a complete employment vista may open up to them.

Companies that are offering career advice to their staff’s partners should encourage them to think laterally: one male spouse in our group was a cook. Once he had relocated, he began work in a dual capacity, both as a caterer for business functions and by running his own cookery courses.

Language issues aside, some careers are fairly easily transported from one country to another: physiotherapy and aromatherapy tend to be very portable with the correct equipment, for instance. As a journalist, although I’m lousy at languages, I was lucky: English writing and editing skills are very highly prized overseas and I was able to work in the Czech Republic, Belgium and Stockholm. In Prague, though, I had to teach for a while before making sufficient contacts to move on.

Many spouses try to time their overseas moves with rearing a young family, so a career break seems natural. Others use it as an opportunity to gain additional qualifications that will be useful when they return home. One spouse in Stockholm, for instance, was a nurse who took a course via distance learning and picked up a job immediately on her return to the UK. A Prague software designer in my group was so sought after professionally that she did all her work via the internet and was flown home occasionally to attend meetings. When I returned from Brussels, where I had worked for the European Commission, to the UK

I continued to project work for my department via the Internet. This type of teleworking is now becoming more and more common. Companies don’t care whether you are based in Epsom, Aberdeen or Armenia, provided there is an efficient internet connection and you do the job. ‘Trailers’ should be reassured that, often, overseas experience will actually increase their career selling power back home.

Many people thrive when pushed to show the sort of work-related ingenuity that a foreign posting can demand. A friend of mine who was married to a Reuters executive, for instance, became an expert in modern art while posted in Vienna and wrote reviews for English language publications throughout Europe.

She learnt Russian and took her daughter to learn the piano at the internationally renowned conservatoire while based in Moscow, and wrote a book in Sweden. She has just moved from Bankok to Singapore and I haven’t heard the latest.

At the end of the day, ‘trailing’ partners need to be reassured – via both practical support and encouragement – that flexible careers can provide chances for individuals to try out the sort of things that might never have occurred to them before. And for those partners who don’t want to immerse themselves in a foreign workplace it’s possible to stay firmly linked to your country of origin, thanks to the opportunities provided by teleworking. The world is now a very small place indeed.

Elizabeth Stafford has been relocating with her diplomat husband for the past 20 years.

© 2007. Article taken from pages 20-21 of the summer 2004 edition of Re:locate magazine, published by Profile Locations, Spray Hill, Hastings Road, Lamberhurst, Kent TN3 8JB. All rights reserved. This publication (or any part thereof) may not be reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of Profile Locations. Profile Locations accepts no liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein.