The fading allure of the foreign posting

Not long after I turned 30, I was sent to Washington DC to be the bureau chief for an Australian newspaper in conditions that today seem unbelievable.

The move was less impressive than it sounds. The bureau consisted of one staff member – me – and I was not the youngest foreign correspondent at the time.

But what was extraordinary by today’s standards was the magnificence of my expat benefits. My rent was generously subsidised. I had top-shelf health insurance and allowances for a car, a phone, newspapers and a slew of other expenses. Had I had children, their school fees would have been paid too.

Other expats I knew had similar perks, plus annual flights home for the whole family and money for things such as accountants to deal with the Internal Revenue Service. Some got extra dosh to make sure any taxes extracted abroad did not leave them worse off than they would have been had they stayed home.

These lavish deals have not died out completely, but corporate relocation experts tell me they are dwindling in many companies and not just in the media industry.

I suspect this is one reason I keep hearing about a curious workplace development: less interest in the idea of working overseas.

Moving to a new country for work can still be a marvellous thing, for one’s life as much as one’s career, as anyone lucky enough to be able to do it will almost certainly find

This was happening before the pandemic, as traditional packages designed for men and their non-working wives clashed with the rise of professional women who sometimes out-earned their partners.

Expecting a dual-income couple to halve their earnings and puncture a career in exchange for a diminished expat package always seemed problematic, especially if they were also being asked to endure the choking air of Delhi or the crime rate of Tijuana.

But indifference to international postings appears to have intensified since the pandemic, to the surprise of some specialists.

“It’s a bit of a shock,” says Caitlin Pyett, a consultant at the Crown World Mobility group who has worked in the relocation business for nearly 30 years.

She told me she first noticed the trend late last year, when clients in sectors ranging from renewable energy to medical technology said they were finding it harder to persuade staff to take foreign assignments.

This was unexpected at a time when the pandemic had triggered an explosion of globetrotting digital nomads, often in their 20s, who seemed to represent the future direction of work.

Pyett’s firm has started doing research to understand what is going on. In the meantime, she has theories, starting with the allure of working from home that workers aged 40 and older discovered during lockdown.

“They’ve developed this feeling that they can work perfectly well from their kitchen table, so why go back to an office, much less get on a plane and go to the other side of the world?”

A recent global study of more than 150,000 workers by the Boston Consulting Group showed the share willing to move overseas for work fell from 78 per cent in 2018 to 63 per cent in 2023

That feeling may help to explain why international assignments have changed at companies such as Ingka, the biggest owner of Ikea stores. The group still posts staff abroad with their families for some business-critical roles. But a spokeswoman told me the rise of remote work, plus “dual career challenges”, has seen “a significant increase” in more flexible arrangements where staff commute or work on one-off projects in other countries.

There are other signs of a broader decline in the urge to work afar.

A recent global study of more than 150,000 workers by the Boston Consulting Group showed the share willing to move overseas for work fell from 78 per cent in 2018 to 63 per cent in 2023.

That might be because the world is getting less open while work is becoming more global, says co-author, Orsolya Kovács-Ondrejkovic.

By this, she means that events such as Brexit and geopolitical conflicts have made it harder for people to physically shift abroad, while the growth of flexible working has made it easier to stay put. “You can now work remotely in a better job without even having to move,” she says.

In other words, before the pandemic it was hard to imagine one would get much experience or benefit from working in China while being based in Europe, but now that thinking has changed.

All these explanations make sense and I can understand why the well-padded expat assignment might be fading. But moving to a new country for work can still be a marvellous thing, for one’s life as much as one’s career, as anyone lucky enough to be able to do it will almost certainly find. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024