International assignments

Personal development / 24 June 2011

Swapping home comforts for a stint overseas can be a daunting prospect but working abroad can diversify your skills, benefit your employer – and put you in line for senior positions. Karen Higginbottom reports

We live in an increasingly globalised economy with companies spanning many countries and cultures. In some organisations, experience of working overseas is a prerequisite for a senior leadership post. According to the latest global annual CEO survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Growth Reimagined, 20% of CEOs lead organisations based in a nation other than the one where they were born.

On top of this, executives surveyed for the Global Professionals on the Move report 2011 cited improved career opportunities and greater earning potential among their top reasons for relocating to another country.

International assignments can definitely advance your career as a manager, says Tim Smeaton, CEO of specialist recruitment firm Hydrogen, which commissioned the report. “It differentiates you from your peers. There are two core reasons for this: people who work in emerging markets are often faced with more opportunities and a great deal of responsibility. They have to deal with a different culture and set of regulations, and must get to grips with a different customer base. Our clients are progressively seeing their business on a global level.”

Overseas postings can have a beneficial impact on both the individual employee and the organisation, says Michael Dickmann, professor of international human resource management at Cranfield School of Management. “Almost all the expatriates I’ve interviewed have said they developed as a person. In terms of benefits to the business, it’s slightly more ephemeral. Organisations find that the expatriate’s communication skills have improved and the individual has become more tolerant.”

Managers can develop many other skills from international assignments, says Ben Wilkins, director of international assignment services practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “They are managing cross-cultural situations and developing their abilities in that area. They also have a better understanding of how their organisation works through seeing it from a different perspective.”

Paris posting

An international assignment helped 41-year-old Ross James secure his partnership at auditing firm Deloitte. He undertook two international placements for the company in France: the first in 1995 when he was a newly qualified accountant, and another in 2003. “My first secondment was my choice,” he says. “I wanted to use my language skills, and the decision to go to France did change the course of my whole career.”

James started off as a manager in the audit division in Paris but found that he was increasingly working on special projects as a consequence of being an expatriate in Paris.As a result of his first placement, James ended up specialising in working with clients investing in business in France. “Personally it suited me and professionally there was plenty of activity. You make yourself unusual if you start moving around and then more naturally interesting projects land in your lap.”

It’s challenging and tiring to work in another language and, on top of that, there are lots of cultural issues. The French have a different way of doing business. But I believe that I’ve become more adaptable and sensitive to the fact that other countries do business differently.

Ross James, Deloitte

He believes that those work opportunities wouldn’t have materialised if he had remained in London. “My first placement opened up new opportunities working in the corporate finance division and performing transaction services.” After his first stint in Paris, when he had become fluent in French, James returned to Deloitte’s head office in London and worked there for another six years in corporate finance.

“I was working in this area as part of Deloitte’s strategy to develop the business globally, and they were looking to grow the team in Paris,” recalls James. “Given my language skills and previous secondment, I was the right person to go. It was a career progression point and, during my second secondment, I was made a partner at the firm.”

During this secondment from 2003-2007, James was responsible for helping the French office to grow. “I was exposed to high-profile transactions in terms of business bought and sold in France. I was also building the team in Paris, which was great for developing leadership qualities.” James’s wife accompanied him on his second secondment. “Both of our children were born in Paris and they are bi-lingual,” he says proudly. 

Culture shock

But James admits that an overseas placement can present challenges. “It’s not an easy option to go to France. It’s challenging and tiring to work in another language and, on top of that, there are lots of cultural issues. The French have a different way of doing business. But I believe that I’ve become more adaptable and sensitive to the fact that other countries do business differently.”

James believes that international assignments are a great way to gain experience quickly in an organisation. “Having international experience has continued to be beneficial for me. I do a lot of international work and have credibility in that area with clients.”

The Hydrogen survey of 2,637 professionals from 85 different countries highlights the importance of international experience to organisations in terms of the overall skill set they are seeking in their mid to senior leaders – nearly two-thirds of professionals said international experience was very important to their employer.

Organisations are increasingly looking for employees who have worked overseas, argues Claudia Jonczyk, associate professor of organisation studies at business school ESCP Europe. “International experience is one
of the boxes you need to tick when you’re promoting people to senior positions. This tells you about an individual’s flexibility, their ability to get to know the unknown and succeed in a context they are unfamiliar with. Some recent studies looked at the link between international experience and creativity, and found that people who lived abroad tended to be more creative when it came to problem-solving,” she says.

Smeaton believes there is a growing trend for organisations to offer overseas work to their employees. “Ultimately, companies value the skill set of working in different cultures and experiencing faster growth, which enables managers to develop at a faster pace and think for themselves.”

English-speaking countries continue to be the most popular destinations for professionals relocating for work, according to the Hydrogen report. Top of the list is the US, followed by the UK and Australia. “That does correlate to where demand exists at a high level,” says Smeaton. “Where you also see high demand is in emerging markets where the local talent pools don’t necessarily have the skills, so they use a high proportion of individuals who they have effectively brought into the company,” he says.

He points to a growing interest among professionals and employers in relocating to countries with emerging economies like China and Brazil. “There are more opportunities on the ground for executives in these areas, and they tend to have accelerated responsibility.”

A recent survey by employment consultancy Manpower found that organisations in India, China and Taiwan expect to hire the most staff from other countries during the first half of 2011. Western firms in all
sorts of industries are continuing to push into Asia’s high-growth economies. Tesco, for example, recently announced that it was expanding into China.

“There has definitely been a path beaten to Hong Kong and Singapore for my clients,” says Wilkins, who acts as a consultant on the expatriate process. “Global organisations are focusing on Asia and fewer people are coming from those locations to the UK due to high personal tax rates.”

The degree to which an organisation either chooses to place expatriates in its overseas subsidiaries or goes down a route of employing local staff depends on the strategy and corporate culture of the organisation, explains Jonczyk. “There is a recognition that local people do know a lot about their local environment, customers and consumer preferences. There is growing recognition that just having someone flown in from HQ to manage the subsidiary is not the right way to do it. Part of expatriate assignments is about knowledge transfer from HQ to subsidiaries, including the training of local people about procedures, software and so on.”

Some big multinational organisations such as HSBC and Mars send staff overseas with the intention that they will develop a local successor, explains Dickmann. “The [economic] crisis in the last few years means organisations are paying more attention to local successors.”

But there can be drawbacks to international assignments, both for the individual and the organisation. Some studies show that overseas placements don’t necessarily guarantee career development. A survey entitled ‘How well are we grooming our future business leaders?’, published in the journal Business Horizons in the 1990s, found that only 29% of expats said their international assignment was helpful to their career and promotion prospects at work.

Back to reality

“What often frustrates people who have been abroad is that they feel that none of their valuable international experience is leveraged within the organisation,” says Jonczyk. “One of the key things organisations should consider is the transfer of knowledge. What adds to the frustration of some home-comers is that the opportunities don’t play out the way they thought they would.”

But it appears that employees with international experience will continue to be highly valued by organisations. The PwC survey of CEOs found that over half were planning to send more staff on international assignments this year. The number of overseas postings among multinationals has increased by 25% over the past decade and PwC predicts there will be further 50% growth over the next ten years. The skills developed by immersing yourself in a different culture and learning how other countries do business continue to be appreciated by organisations with global scope and ambitions.