Vowing to Go Abroad - spousal programs for expatriate assignments

When you promise to love, honor and cherish in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, the officiant never says anything about in your home country or abroad. Yet many companies assume expatriate spouses will happily pack those bags or wait at home alone without question.

So, it may come as a surprise that "sacrifice by spouse" is the primary reason why candidates turn down expat assignments. "This presents a significant business problem for companies with the need to transfer specific skills or that require specific management talent that resides only in a few employees," says Rita Bennett, president of The Bennett Group/Cendant Intercultural in Chicago.

But some companies are catching on. To keep their expats happy and in the international loop, they are starting to acknowledge in tangible ways that many spouses have valued careers of their own. In response, these employers are establishing spousal programs that include money for lost income, education allowances, networking, help job-searching abroad and on return and more. Reflecting a society that is both more open to and more protective of the rights of people with untraditional lifestyles, some of today's spousal programs also cover married and same-sex partners.

The benefits of these innovative programs often balance the costs, because responsive programs help ensure that valued expats accept new assignments and keep the company's overseas activities constant.

"In the decision to accept or decline an overseas assignment, the expatriate's top priority is clearly the family unit," according to the most recent (1998) edition of the annual "North American Survey of International Assignment Policies and Practices" of Organization Resources Counselors Inc. (ORC) in New York. "Spousal/dual career issues are the most common reason cited for declining an expatriate assignment, followed by concerns about children, then by expatriate career issues. With the number of dual-career couples on the rise, companies continue to struggle with decisions about what types of assistance and/or compensation to provide to expatriate spouses."

Today's expat families react to assignment offers in a number of new ways, says Bennett. "For some couples, the answer is 'don't accept the assignment because there is too much at risk.' For others, depending on their life stage and the ages of any children, a commuter relationship is the best option. For some, the spouse can use the assignment to take time off for development through language study, course work, degree programs, research, consulting; others determine they can find a position overseas by good networking and research," she says. "Some couples decide that time abroad offers a good break for having children or just a sabbatical for a spouse who likes the idea of a few years out of the work world."

"All expat spouses have to make lemonade out of lemons," says Kate Goggin, who launched the Expat Club Newsletter after leaving a public relations job and degree program in the Washington, D.C., area to accompany her husband on his three-year assignment for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in The Hague, Netherlands.

One ongoing issue Goggin sees is HR's perception of the spouse as "a 'problem.' Although, we are starting to chip away at this and HR professionals have become more aware of the layers of the problem," she says. "They've only started looking at underlying reasons [for spousal concerns] in the last couple of years."

Societal changes mean that "the questions people are asking have changed," Goggin says. "Five years ago, an employee asked, 'How much money will you pay me to go overseas?' Today, the employee asks, 'Can my spouse work, and will I be able to educate my children while on assignment?' The challenge is how [the spouse] can take [his or her] current career, identify bits and pieces of it that are portable, and retain that career throughout a spouse's expat assignment."

Franchette Richards, manager at Herman Capital Services International in Houston, stayed home for her job for 10 months while her husband began an assignment in China and then joined him for the remainder of his assignment. "We're seeing companies starting to realize that the spouse's career is more than a casual concern," she says.

Richards predicts that an ethical area may crop up as the progressive approach advances. "I can see it coming--a problem of balance between spouses who don't work and those who do comparing packages. The nuances can be disruptive." The fear is that nonworking spouses will feel slighted and demoralized if they find out that couples where both spouses work are getting more money or services, especially if the nonworking spouse has a career but is leaving it behind voluntarily for the duration of the assignment.

Says Goggin, "Expat issues are so hot right now that the American Council on International Personnel has formed an organization called MEWS--Multinational Employers for Working Spouses." MEWS "expects new legislation will be introduced to revise the current U.S. immigration code in respect to allowing spouses to work, which would open the door for new reciprocity agreements with U.S. trading partners and the eventual prospect of letting more American accompanying spouses work abroad."

Progress is being made, but there is still a ways to go--more than half of companies responding to the ORC survey still do not offer any innovative spousal programs, and "[t]he prevalence of various forms of spousal assistance has either held steady since 1997 or ... has even declined slightly."

Formal Findings

ORC's 1998 survey found that 12 percent of its 330 responding companies "take into consideration the loss of a spouse's income as a result of an expatriate assignment, 3 percent intend to develop a spousal policy and 85 percent do not consider this aspect." While 70 percent did not provide assistance or compensation to expat spouses, up from 52 percent in 1997, 25 percent offered job-search assistance; 23 percent, work-permit assistance; 25 percent, resume/curriculum vitae preparation; 21 percent, career counseling; 17 percent, retraining/tuition reimbursement for continuing education; 7 percent, partial financial compensation for lost salary; and 4 percent, company employment (since some companies offer more than one of these services, the total is more than 100 percent; none offered full financial compensation for a spouse's lost salary).

In the 1998 survey, 11 percent included "long-term live-in partner of the same sex" in their definition of "spouse" and 42 percent included "spouse or domestic partner and dependent children at school or attending a recognized college or university at the undergraduate level."

These issues are not only the province of male expats with working wives; they also affect women who are offered expat assignments, according to Linda K. Stroh of the Institute of HR & Industrial Relations at Loyola University Chicago in "Why Companies Aren't Sending Women Abroad: Separating Myths from Reality," a 1997 paper sponsored by the International Personnel Association. "Research groups such as Windham International and the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) have projected that, by the year 2000, women will represent one-fifth of the total expatriate population [although] this percentage may be seriously inflated," reports Stroh.

The "Global Relocation Trends 1996 Survey Report," sponsored by Windham and the NFTC, found that "family challenges that are critical to their companies [are] family adjustment (65 percent) and spouse resistance (53 percent) ... the latter being reinforced by the importance of spouse careers in two-income families."

In fact, the Employee Relocation Council now has a question in its recertification exam for its members that specifically asks the No. 1 reason for the failure of expat assignments. The correct answer is "spousal inability to adjust," Goggin notes, which includes a spouse's desire to retain a career.

In a chapter of New Approaches to Employee Management (JAI Press, 1997), coauthored with Mary T. Pellico, Stroh wrote that "[s]ending managers and technicians on international assignments ... may create conflicts for those dual-career couples who have to face the loss of a large source of income if the spouse accompanies the employee abroad, as well as other personal and professional challenges."

The U.S. Department of Labor expects that almost 80 percent of all marriages will be defined as dual-career marriages, Stroh found. "For multinational organizations that consider international assignments as an integral part of their human resources development strategy, the implications are severe," she and Pellico wrote. Windham International and the NFTC's surveys have found that the percentage of all overseas assignments that involve a spouse employed before relocation has been rising steadily, from 41 percent in 1992 to more than half in 1998.

Who's Doing What

People in the expat arena are seeing several contemporary approaches to the needs of expat spouses, Bennett says. These include "preassignmenr counseling for the career spouse and employee to determine the best choices for them as individuals and as a couple, given their individual and mutual personal and professional goals, allowances for career-enhancing opportunities, and full-time career counselors for the spouse/partner."

Good predeparture counseling is something more than the local customs and language is a key to the success of any expat assignment today and the family decisions that go into it, according to Bennett. "If the individual and couple as a unit do not make a well-informed decision before departure, including getting information on career options and career-enhancing opportunities in the new location, their decision can come back to haunt them [and the company]," she says.

New services for expat spouses include networking opportunities, newsletters and monthly "coffees" with speakers that are organized by spouses working for the same company as expats part-time while the expat is on assignment, Richards says.

"Some companies pay a set amount to the spouse for education or resources, such as buying a laptop computer. Some provide payments once or annually, which is more progressive. Some pay for or replace lost income." Providing funds so the spouse may enhance the family's adjustment to the new location is "not the norm," she notes, and "probably is decided on a case-by-case basis."

Richards also is seeing "high-tech companies trying to establish reciprocity for experienced spouses while they're in the U.S.; global companies seem to be more advanced in their policies than U.S. ones." Employers and HR professionals should remember that "it's as tough for an expat to come to the U.S. as it is for U.S. people to go overseas," she says.

These are among the companies providing innovative spousal programs:

* Motorola, Monsanto, Hewlett-Packard, Royal Dutch Shell and General Electric provide allowances for the accompanying spouse's career-enhancing activities, such as education, attending professional seminars, purchasing computers, subscribing to trade publications and paying attorney's fees for work-permit assistance. Amounts vary widely by company, as does the formula to determine the amount.

"The objective of these programs is not income replacement but recognition of the spouse/partner's career disruption," notes Bennett. "The strength of this type of program is it is equitable, consistent and easy to administer, and puts the control in the hands of the spouse/partner.

* Royal Dutch Shell has full-time career counselors at headquarters and includes unmarried partners in its spousal services.

* Shell Oil Company created what Goggin calls "the most notable" response: Outpost, a network of 44 information network centers around the world for, and run by, expat spouses. "That creates employment opportunities for spouses abroad, as well as a resource for others," Goggin says. "The spouses running the service know the most about what local employers and other spouses need. It empowers them and is proactive, which is what spouses really want."

* Deloitte & Touche has developed a high-tech tool to help its expat spouses find work and adjust to assignment venues--a web-based intelligence network on Lotus Notes, so all employees have access to it. "It's a huge database with information from people who have been at a given location," says Goggin.

* Eastman Chemical Co. provides spouses who were employed before the move overseas with "dislocation payments" while unemployed, for a maximum of three years, Srroh reports.

* The Sara Lee Corp. and Quaker Oats have "Work and Lifestyle Assistance" and "Work and Lifestyle Supplemental Assistance" policies and have provided services for single-parent families on expat assignments, expats with elderly or disabled dependents and single employees. Both companies reimburse the spouse for expenses incurred while looking for work. Also, they help with obtaining visas or work permits for spouses; producing a resume and submitting it to appropriate agencies; career guidance and consultation; and continuing education. At Sara Lee, HR helps spouses locate employment through links with local employers and opportunities within the company.

* Colgate-Palmolive has a similar policy. The company reimburses expat spouses for the duration of an assignment and provides help with finding employment, career counseling, trips home to meet with business contacts and seed money for setting up businesses, as well as tuition reimbursements for both career- and non-career-related courses.

* Monsanto provides "dislocation" allowances, reimbursement for career-enhancing expenses and financial assistance (limited to spouses unable to find work in the host country) for job-search-related expenses.

* Motorola introduced its dual-career policy in 1994 because of its growing international presence and recognition that "[m]any of our potential international assignees have spouses who are bright, talented and want to continue to grow and develop while they are relocated with their spouse on an international assignment."

"The Motorola policy had a positive influence on both the Motorola spouse and expatriate," Stroh and Pellico write.

Motorola reimburses spouses of employees up to $5,000 over 12 months (rather than per assignment) for expenses related to maintaining or improving career skills or improving marketability at the location. "The intent of the policy is not to replace lost income but to recognize the contribution that the spouse makes to the success of the international relocation and to provide funds so they may enhance their adjustment to the new location," Stroh and Pellico explain.

* Ingersoll Rand has a mentoring/matching program between former expat couples and new arrivals.

* 3M Corp. has a policy to eliminate as many barriers as possible for dual-career couples because, says Bruce Hoeffel, director of international HR, it attracts high-potential employees to international assignments. Spouses who are not 3M employees receive one-time dislocation allowances when relocating to a foreign assignment. Spouses may be reimbursed for language training and to develop skills and abilities through various means. Spouses are eligible for reimbursement for placement service expenses when the family returns to the home country. For couples who are both employed by 3M, the spouse may terminate that employment, take personal leave or remain in the United States and at 3M.

Administering the Programs

Most of today's innovative spouse programs have been developed by HR departments because industry and internal surveys are "telling companies that spouse's career is one of the primary reasons that employees turn down international assignments," says Bennett.

The 1998 ORC study found that, of those providing spousal career assistance, 10 percent handled such programs in-house and 19 percent administered this function through outsourcing.

"These programs are coming out of HR as part of company policy," Richards says. "The expat may submit spouse expenses on an expense report or as part of various allowances. Each company is different in how they develop and manage funds."

How companies handle reimbursement or payments can have an effect on morale, she notes: "If you pay a lump sum, vs. bouncing back individual requests for services the HR office may not understand, you'll have a happy spouse. A lump sum is easier to manage administratively, too."

Why Bother?

The main benefit of recognizing and taking a new approach to the needs of today's expat spouses is a healthier expat family situation, which translates into a more productive investment for the employer. "Spouses are happy when something's being done for them," says Richards. "If you have a happy spouse, the employee can be up and running in an assignment sooner and the assignment is more likely to go well."

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter is a freelance writer/editor based in Baltimore. She has edited two newsletters for the Society for Human Resource Management on international HR and on diversity issues.

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