FIGT UK Plus One – Accompanying Partner Support

Families In Global Transition UK asked Thriving Abroad to participate in a panel discussion called Plus One – Accompanying Partner Support and I was lucky enough to travel to the beautiful TASIS campus in Surrey to join presenters from FIGT UK, The Permits Foundation and the International Dual Career Network.

If you’ve never been to a FIGT UK meeting, I’d highly recommend it. Wendy Wilson and Claire Snowdon, with the support of Mary Mitchell and the team at TASIS, put together a highly informative and engaging event. If I relayed every pertinent point, this post would be a long read, so I’ll stick with some of the key takeaways from each of the presentations. The event was captured on video, so perhaps we’ll be able to post some of the presentations at a later date. In the meantime, here’s a quick summary of my main insights from the day.

•  FIGT are doing a huge amount of work to understand the experience of, and support globally mobile families. Current issues they are working on include, Talent Management, Gen-Y Global Mobility, changing expat family profiles. In fact, if it affects your globally mobile family, FIGT is probably working on it.

• Dual career issues pose an increasingly significant barrier to acceptance of international assignments. The stats Wendy quoted showed that 66% of companies say that dual career issues impact their ability to attract employees to international assignments whilst 51% have had employees turn down assignments because of dual career issues.

• You may not have seen this statistic from the 2013 Brookfield Relocation Trends report but as an accompanying partner, you’re probably well aware – Dual career issues have moved up the agenda but partner support has actually decreased. Hmmm! I think we can help there…

• The Permits Foundation and our Career Choice and the Accompanying Partner Survey both show that the vast majority of expat partners want to work whilst on assignment.

• The Permits Foundation’s work has helped to make great strides in allowing expat partners to get work visas with 30 countries now allowing partners to work freely for any employer. Almost all of them extend those rights to non-married partners and about half to same-sex partnerships.

• But (you won’t be surprised to hear this) there’s a long way to go and Permits Foundation are working hard to effect changes in other countries with all of the countries that companies see as key locations in the coming 10 years in their top 10 targets.

• Permits Foundation also recognise that getting a work permit isn’t a complete solution with other factors such as language and equivalence being issues too (again consistent with our Career Choice and the Accompanying Partner Survey).

• IDCN started in 2012 and already has 45 corporate members and 1000 partners registered. About 10% of those partners have found jobs through the network so it’s clearly establishing itself as a viable way of helping companies to tap the huge pool of underutilised talent that expat partners represent and provide another much-needed route for partners to work.

• They are currently active in Geneva, Zurich, Paris and Mexico City but will open it’s doors in 3 US cities, Basel, Shanghai and Dubai this year.

• I talked about supporting “non-working” partners (when I say non-working, I really mean those not in paid employment, because as one gentleman pointed out, regardless of what we do, we’re all working!) One of the concepts that really resonated with audience members (particularly those who were or had been accompanying partners) was that of engagement; acknowledging  partners, their needs and the contribution they make to the success of the assignment.

• The other concept that seemed to inspire some thinking within the group was the thought that working or “non-working” was an arbitrary distinction and that all partners should be supported to find fulfilment whether that is by finding traditional paid employment or other means of fulfilment.

The panel was united in the view that properly supporting expat partners can make a crucial difference to the success of globally mobile assignees and their families whilst overseas. We also agreed that, although progress has been made in some areas, there’s a long way to go before most partners are properly supported.

If you’re not familiar with FIGT UK, TASIS, FIGT, The Permits Foundation and IDCN click on these links to learn more. If your partner works for one of the IDCN’s member organisations, you may also be eligible to use their services.

Links

FIGT (http://www.figt.org)

FIGT UK (http://www.figt.org/uk_affiliates)

TASIS The American School in England (http://england.tasis.com)

The Permits Foundation (http://www.permitsfoundation.com)

International Dual Career Network (http://idcn.ch/web/idcn)

Our Thriving Abroad support programmes empower you to take ownership of you own experiences abroad and create fulfilled and purposeful lives for yourself.  Click HERE to learn more.