Expatriate Relocation: Knowledge Is A Power Tool

2nd Oct 2003

From over 5,000 miles away, Mrs. Chang was groping in the dark. Where would her children attend school in London? Where would her family live? What were their options?

Mrs.Chang was relocating from California to London with her husband's multinational company. The burden of finding appropriate schooling and housing in a neighborhood within reach of the office fell to her. But she didn't have access to comprehensive information on educational options or the baffling British educational terms and acronyms.

"I searched the Internet and asked friends of friends of friends," she said at a subsequent focus group. "I spent a lot of time finding bits of information but never got the full picture. After finally enrolling in one school, I later heard about a different school that would have better met our needs."

Other focus group participants echoed Mrs. Chang's frustrations. Among other things, they had difficulty figuring out the British telecom system, establishing broadband Internet and understanding the medical system. On average, it took about one year before the Changs and their expatriate colleagues felt somewhat settled.

Even without a language barrier, the Changs were at high risk for ending the assignment prematurely. Expatriate frustration and discontent account for the second biggest cause of failed assignments, behind poor workplace relationships. The cost to the company can be staggering. But the Changs' risk factor was circumstance, not disposition. In other words, it was fixable - or, rather, preventable - with the right support and planning tools.

Those right tools are a combination of information and personal support. From start to finish, relocating families need to be equipped with information that empowers right decision-making, facilitates resourcefulness and sets expectations. They also need face-to-face guidance and hand-holding from consultants who intuitively understand expatriate needs and know the destination city from the expatriate perspective.

Like hammers and wrenches, information and personal assistance come in all makes and models. That's fine for home improvement, but building a figurative new house requires power tools. Going-there is a global destination services provider that has designed the right power tools. By marrying web-based city intelligence with on-the-ground personal consulting, Going-there provides highly customized, long-term (12 months) support to relocating assignees and their families.

In a foreign environment, knowledge is a lifeline that leads groping assignees out of the dark. Yet in this information age, there is very little content tailored to expatriate needs. Travel guides abound, but where to find an English-speaking, western-trained dentist in Moscow? How does one obtain a driver's license in Sao Paulo? Where are the clean-air neighborhoods in Mexico City? Can fresh 20 lb turkeys be found in Milan for the holidays? Is Astunga yoga offered in Hong Kong? The pile of questions seems like a mountain, touching on every human need that was previously taken for granted. The effort to find answers becomes a strain.

Going-there has stepped in to fill this knowledge gap. It has created an unrivaled and unbiased information resource for 22 of the world's most popular destination cities, and growing. * For each city, Going-there addresses over 3000 questions expatriates have in every stage of the assignment. The information is delivered 24/7 via the Internet to the assignee and family and is accessible for 12 months with a password. It takes the mystery out of an unknown city and enables the family to re-root quickly.

At the focus group, Mrs. Chang and other expatriate spouses witnessed Going-there's London resource. In a section for children's education, they saw listed seven International Baccalaureate schools, six American schools and 13 other international schools (French, German, Japanese, etc.), not including special needs schools and preschools. The listings included the full contact information for each school, curricula, tuition, student population, maps and nearby residential areas.

There was the full picture. "This is what I needed," said Mrs. Chang. The others concurred.

With the right information, expatriates can plan, budget and make right decisions. They can decide on a school for their children, find out where to take horse riding lessons and source a nanny. But even the most dynamic and personalized information resource cannot take the place of a person. That's why Going-there developed the YourGuide(TM) service component.

YourGuides(TM) are Going-there's relocation consultants resident in each city. Knowledgeable and savvy, YourGuides(TM) are themselves seasoned expatriates who can empathize with newcomers from personal experience. They act as objective advocates to the assignee and family, counseling with them before arrival, coordinating a home search, negotiating lease terms, introducing them to their new neighborhood and the expatriate community and addressing human needs. After the move-in date, YourGuides(TM) continue to offer support by email and phone calls for three months.

This is the power tool for the price of a wrench - face-to-face guidance from the expatriate perspective underpinned by self-empowering, online information accessible for a full year, long after traditional service providers have closed the case. It is a high-tech, high-touch service combination designed to address the housing and human needs of assignees and families as effectively as possible, so as to lay a strong foundation for a successful assignment.

Felice Wilson is an American who works as International Development Manager with Going-there. Before joining the team she was a journalist for the Prague Post, and she speaks both Russian and Czech.