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Reprinted by Permission of the Asian Wall Street Journal
By Kevin Voigt, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
When Beverly Mayhew first came to Singapore in 1981 on a two-year overseas assignment, she quickly got involved with the local community. After work, she busied herself with professional women's groups, charities and a school board.
Fast-forward 20 years: Ms. Mayhew is back in Singapore, but the evenings of community work have been replaced by late nights at the office. The difference?
Her latest foreign assignment, which began in July, was for just nine months. So instead of putting down roots, she decided to focus on the work at hand, consolidating the six businesses her company recently purchased in Southeast Asia.
"When I first came, even though it was only a two-year assignment, when I arrived I was here. I was very involved, I had a completely different mindset," she says. "Now, I truly don't have the time in the day."
Ms. Mayhew's experience mirrors the evolution in corporate expatriate assignments. Businesses throughout the world are sending more people overseas, but they are staying for shorter times. The number of expatriates grew nearly 62% over three years, according to one recent survey; but more than half the 150 companies that replied to another survey said they were cutting assignments to less than a year. A decade ago, the standard length of stay overseas was three to five years.
Why? Shorter assignments cost companies less and let them react more quickly to market changes. There are big benefits for employees, too -- particularly in avoiding often-difficult family-relocation issues. But as tenures abroad shrink, so too, has the prestige and the depth of the experience. Whereas an overseas assignment was once considered glamorous, now it's becoming just plain hard work.
"At one time, this was the plum assignment," says Eric Stern, senior vice president of GMAC Relocation Services, a division of General Motors that handles expatriate transfers. "You were doing a favor for the company, and your status within the company would rise," he says. "Now all of the sudden, people aren't making more money [when they are posted overseas]. They don't necessarily see the need to sacrifice their family for three to five years. They'd sooner switch jobs."
The search for cost effective ways to go global has guided this sea change in overseas assignments, relocation experts say. The 1990s saw a rapid expansion of international business. But to rein in the cost of expatriate assignments, companies started paying closer attention to whom they were sending abroad and why. Once primarily used as a way to groom future executives, now more lower-level employees are being sent on short, task-oriented assignments, according to a recent survey by the Employee Relocation Council, a U.S.-based international association.
Shorter assignments can be offered "without all the bells and whistles that go with a full-up program, when you're relocating whole families," says Therese Delorenzo, head of relocations for Bank of America.
No family means less fuss for the employee's company: a nine-month tour of duty abroad, even with monthly trips home, costs less than a multi-year assignment and relocation. Projects of less than six months can be treated as extended business trips. Shorter time abroad also means less "assignment failure," when an executive abandons a post -- often for family reasons. Ms. Delorenzo recalls many transfers being sunk by reluctant spouses not liking "the color of the kitchen floor of the home we found for them, or the position of the bathroom."
Another factor pushing the trend is the employees themselves. "People are following their careers now, not their company," says Mr. Stern of GMAC. Companies report more people turning down assignments in recent years, says Brenda Fender, director of the ERC Center of International Management. This is due in part to the booming U.S. job market during that time, she says. With the economic downturn, "it will be interesting to see if that will continue."
Ms. Mayhew, now seven months into her Singapore assignment, knows well the changing face of international relocation. It's her business as well as her life. She is a partner with Orientations Inc., which helps companies and families with overseas moves. "The individuals we work with are usually out for a three-to-six month period," she says. "One may even question whether this type of assignment should be called expatriate."
She thinks the trend toward short-term assignments, while cost effective, is "to the detriment of long-term relationship building, which is so critical for success in Asia."
"If you're living a project existence, you don't have for the most part the time to take advantage of the local culture or really learn about the place," she says. "The foreigner who comes to work on short-term projects is viewed [by their colleagues] as just that -- a foreigner. They take away only a superficial understanding of the culture and draw some inappropriate conclusions."
"You hear people saying things like: 'Why do people crowd into an elevator in Asia, that's stupid' Or: 'Why should I bother to eat with chopsticks?' If you don't take time the time to explore the culture -- and just the experience of being able to understand and accept all these differences -- then it becomes a shallow experience," she says.
Ms. Mayhew's own "short-term" assignment recently has been extended to 18 months. Had she known from the beginning, she says, her husband and her two daughters in Pittsburgh may have decided to join her in Singapore. But she admits she's probably working harder because they're not around.
"Nobody's going to be screaming at me if I stay at the office working until 10 p.m.," she says.