Five Lessons from the US Department of State for Supporting Globally Mobile Families

This weekend we had the pleasure of attending the Families in Global Transition Conference.  And what a weekend it was.  FIGT14 was unlike any conference I’ve ever attended before!  Louise and I agreed that being there was finding our tribe – but more about that in another post.

One of the many highlights of the weekend was the opening keynote address by Ray Leki, Director of the Transition Centre at the US Department of State and author of Travel Wise: How to Be Safe Savvy and Secure Abroad.

The State Department has some different perspectives on assisting families than we see in the corporate world.  Here’s some food for thought from his address:

1. They understand that in order for a family to be successful overseas, the experience cannot be one of growth for the assignee and stagnation for other family members. The Transition Center recognises the importance of families when they are relocating their employees around the world. They understand that many families no longer conform to the traditional model of working husband, stay at home wife and 2.4 kids and that partners are often highly educated professionals in their own right so they know that they must support the partner so that the experience is a positive for them too.  They also know that families will be reluctant to move if it means compromising their children’s education.

 

1. They encourage a long-term perspective. If you pursue a career in the Foreign Service, you are going to be assigned overseas on multiple occasions.  The Transition Center encourages families and particularly partners to plan for being overseas for the long-term.  This includes supporting partners to create careers that can accommodate multiple assignments.  Whilst company assignments are often offered as a one-off, in reality many families end up accepting consecutive assignments.  Having that possibility in mind at the beginning can help partners to plan differently.

 

1. Short-term assignments are not the holy grail of controlling mobility costs Out of necessity; the Department of State has used short-term assignments for a number of years (few people are willing to relocate their families to Afghanistan for example!) They know that these assignments often come at a significant personal cost to the assignees and families in question who potentially have to deal with infidelity, divorce and resentment as a result.  As well as being compassionate for the human costs of these issues, we shouldn’t forget that they affect retention and mobility in the future too.

 

1. “If you want loyalty from your employees; deserve it!” In the complicated, transaction and cost intensive environment of international assignments, it’s easy to forget that there are individuals and families with opinions and feelings who are the recipients of the services.  If the goal is retention and retention is becoming more difficult because of the “War for Talent” then we have to take those individual needs into account and support them properly.  Most globally mobile families recognise that international assignments are not the as financially lucrative as they perhaps once were but they still want to be supported in a way that is meaningful and relevant to them.

 

1. Empowerment is key We’ve seen it ourselves. There can be an element of entitlement among some assignees and their families; an expectation that the company should fix everything for them.  The Transition Center focuses on supporting families so that they are empowered to help themselves.  They move families away from being out on a LIMB (Lonely, Isolated Miserable and Bored) using a resilience intervention know as EPIC (Empower, Protect, Integrate and Connect) It’s the old story, give a man a fish and he’ll eat for the day; teach a man how to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.  What he was really saying is that support for expat families should teach them skills that they’ll take to the next assignment and the next.

So, some food for thought about things that make assignments better for families and in a recruiting environment where development and retention are becoming the highest of priorities, helping families to support those objectives MUST be part of the conversation.