Employers

Welcome to the Employers section which we hope will be a useful resource for companies interested in the growing issue of partner employment.

“Improvements for expat families are now visible in many countries where barriers for international mobility have been removed or reduced. We support and value the achievements of Permits Foundation!”

Andreas Baeuerle, International Assignments Manager, Robert Bosch, Germany

Read our Employers survey:

Permits Foundation recently surveyed over 177 leading global organisations (employing almost 7.5 million between them) to look at the challenge of dual careers and its potential impact on business success, with some very compelling findings. Click here to read our survey.

Dual careers are becoming more common:

With more couples depending on dual incomes today, more than 50% of women now work in their home countries (70 – 80% in under 35 year olds). These women want to continue working and developing their skills when they accompany their partners abroad. Women are also seeking international experience themselves, leading to a growth in male expatriate partners. There is also increasing diversity in family patterns, including unmarried partners and same sex couples. Younger employees have different expectations to previous generations and to be attractive, employers need to reflect this in their policies.

Partners face a number of challenges:

Whereas employees usually transfer within their company as part of a career plan, partners have to uproot themselves from their current job at a time they may not have chosen. They may have no professional network in their new country and the market for their skills may be completely different. They may face language and cultural barriers and their qualifications may not be recognized. Salary levels and other benefits may also be less than they are accustomed to. And as the accompanying partner, they often become responsible for setting the family up in their new location.

The cost of assignment refusals and early returns:

If the careers of both partners cannot be accommodated, this can have a negative impact on both the retention and deployment of talent, with cost implications for assignment refusals or early returns (including repatriation, and recruiting and training a replacement).

Supporting dual careers can aid success:

So what can employers do to aid success? 70% of the companies we surveyed offer some form of dual careers assistance for expatriate partners, whether formally or informally (see our survey for more details on the types of policies offered). The reasons they introduced a dual career policy were: