Returning home poses problems for many managers after overseas posting

Taking an overseas assignment can vault your career on to the next level but coming home can be the hardest part.

The return home from time spent working abroad is often not as smooth as many might expect. Photo: Jenny Evans.

Taking an overseas assignment can vault your management ­career on to the next level and test your skills in unfamiliar territory. But coming home can be the hardest part.

Companies typically provide expatriates with local housing subsidies, cross-cultural training and other perks. Few employers, though, address what happens when that expat is ready to ­return — a fact that partly explains why one-quarter of returning ­executives jump ship within two years, recruiters and researchers estimate.

People who successfully have made the return trip credit planning, disciplined networking and sponsors back home. To better manage the transition, some companies work to plan managers’ ­return role even before they leave. But some experts warn it is still largely up to the individual.

“So much depends on the executive in question taking ownership for their repatriation,” says Daniel Smith, a managing ­director of recruiter Raines ­International.

Cosmetics giant L’Oreal invites repatriated US staff members to go through orientation and integration programs as if they were new hires. The idea is “to feel reintegrated into the company”, says Jacob Bonk, a human resources executive for its US unit in New York. On returning from four years in China, Bonk went through the first-day orientation last year alongside about 25 new staff members. Joining the new hires felt “a bit funny”, he says, but after living outside the US for so long, “you’re basically a new employee again”.

Bonk’s new boss also urged him to spend time rebuilding his US network; in his first month back, he met face-to-face with 50 colleagues.

Companies and individuals are advised to give extra thought to their return roles ­before they fly overseas.

“Begin with the end in mind,” says Stewart Black, a professor of management practice at Insead, the graduate business school with campuses in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and veteran ­expatriate researcher.

Black suggests finding out which leadership skills your ­employer wants you to develop during a foreign stint.

“If your company does not know how they will utilise you or your hard-won international ­experience before you leave, the odds they will miraculously discover the answer just before your return are not good,” he says.

To ensure Monsanto will benefit from skills developed abroad, the seed and pesticide-maker identifies potential return positions before people move overseas, according to Bridget Walsh, a global talent mobility manager.

Monsanto says its approach has lowered attrition; about 7 per cent of repatriates leave within two years, down from about 13.5 per cent a decade ago, according to the company.

Ernst & Young LLP gives ­departing expats a 10-page survival guide and a mobility adviser to help keep their careers on track while abroad. Despite such assistance, the company does not guarantee spe­cific jobs following international ­assignments, says Andrew Walker, Ernst & Young’s global ­mobility leader.

When British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline hired Marc Speichert in January as global chief digital officer, working in Warren, New Jersey, interviewers told him to expect a three-year foreign assignment and described possible opportunities after his subsequent return to the US. He will relocate to Britain next year.

Sanket Akerkar, a Microsoft Corp vice-president and one-time expatriate, says he worked hard to keep his US network strong while running its India unit for nearly three years. During his business trips to the US, Akerkar stayed an extra day to meet important colleagues and discuss what he was learning abroad. He returned to the US in 2013.

Other US executives dispatched abroad get assigned a high-level colleague to champion their careers back at headquarters. Otherwise, “assimilating into the assignment country is easier than repatriating to the home country”, says Peter Clarke, a global managing partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers who has sponsored some of its expats.

Clarke advocated for Felix Mwamba when the US expatriate wanted to leave Paris for PwC’s Boston office in 2013. “He made sure there was support from the leadership to take another partner in this market,” recalls Mwamba.

A pair of home-country sponsors boosted prospects for Amit Sood, now head of product and technology for a unit of Asurion, a provider of insurance and support for 300 million phones, electronics and appliances.

Sood says he worried about ­repatriation when Asurion asked the California middle manager to relocate to Hong Kong in 2013. Before his ­departure, a prior boss and a senior vice-president promised to try to find him a suitable Asurion role on his return.

The sponsors arranged video chats with executives, kept an eye out for relevant openings before official announcements and “gave personal recommendations on my behalf”, Sood recollects. “They really wanted to make expatriate assignments work.”

Asurion brought Sood back to the US in 2015 — and promoted him into his first executive role.