REPATRIATION-HOW COMPANIES CAN PROTECT THEIR ROI
By Galen Tinder
Introduction
For want of simple, cost effective programs, many international companies that
regularly send employees on global assignments are squandering millions of dollars a
year. For the largest companies that figure could be in the hundreds of millions.
The villain is workforce attrition caused by the mismanagement, or non-management,
of repatriates returning to their home country after several years on a global
assignment.
This represents an odd misappropriation of attention. We have been hearing for two
decades about the corporate imperative to support its expatriates and their families.
We have heard far less about what befalls these expatriates when they return home to
pick up where they left off. Not only do we hear less about repatriation but find, upon
investigation, that the companies are doing less to help those caught in its grip.
Every person who studies the phenomenon of repatriation believes this inattention to
be a costly oversight. They are supported by the numbers. According to the 2005
Global Relocation Trends Survey, issued by GMAC Global Relocation Services and
the National Foreign Trade Council, 23% of repatriating employees leave their
company in the first year. After three years the total is at least 40%, though some
people place it closer to 50%.
These figures represent not only widespread disruption in the lives of employees and
their families but a staggering loss of corporate investment. A company that sends a
manager abroad for a three-year assignment spends in excess of 1 million dollars, not
including, as Russell Salton points out “the added cost of potentially losing a valuable
resource and all of the knowledge base and years of investment in training, learning
and development.” (gmacglobalrelocation.com) In an era when companies pay close
attention to controlling costs and retaining talent this post-repatriation hemorrhaging of
mobile personnel is a surprising instance of corporate self-