What Challenges Often Confront the Spouses of Expatriates, and What

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The Answer is Answers may vary but may include the following factors: While 82 percent of expats are accompanied by a spouse or partner, the number of two-career families is growing. That is a major factor affecting expatriate adjustment and performance, and it can complicate matters when one spouse is offered a juicy job abroad. In many countries, the employee's spouse does not have the legal right to work, as work permits for foreigners may be difficult or nearly impossible to acquire. Even though 60 percent of the partners were employed before their spouse's international assignment began, as few as 8 percent were employed during the course of the assignment, which can increase financial pressures and strain relationships before, during, and after the expatriate assignment. The trailing spouse must often make major adjustments in lifestyle, family balance of power, and self-image. They often experience stages of grief from derailment of their careers that is similar to the loss of a loved one-going through shock, denial, and anger-and sometimes fail to reach the reconciliation stage of adjustment. Indeed, concern about the implications of an international assignment for the employee's partner and the partner's career prospects represented the second-highest reason for refusing an expatriate assignment, behind family concerns (such as children's education, family adjustment, resistance by the partner, difficult location for assignment, cultural adjustments, length of the assignment, and language). In efforts to ease the problem, some companies are starting programs that give trailing spouses more help in adjusting. Such help may take the form of assisting with job hunting in the host country, writing résumés, providing language and cultural training, identifying career opportunities, or giving tips on local interview techniques. A reported 30 percent of companies provide education or training assistance to spouses, 36 percent sponsor work permits, and 69 percent provide language training to spouses. Many companies have made greater use of shorter international assignments, under the belief that this can be less disruptive to the expatriate family's lives while still permitting benefits from the international assignment of personnel. Another option many companies apparently are pursuing is to hire people for expat assignments who are single and often younger as well, with over 40 percent of such positions being filled by unmarried personnel. It should be noted that hiring of single people for expatriate positions is not without its own set of potential concerns.

What Challenges Often Confront the Spouses of Expatriates, and What

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