Expatriate Accompanying Partner Survey – please help

Posted on November 28, 2011. Filed under: Uncategorized |

One of the delights of editing “Turning Points; 25 inspiring stories from women entrepreneurs who have turned their careers and their lives around” is that I got to know an amazing group of 24 women around the world who were my fellow authors. One of these is Louise Wiles who, like me, is an expat but unlike me has not only established a successful coaching business but has done this whilst nurturing husband and small children and moving the family around!

Louise needs your help to complete her survey into Career Options and the Expatriate Accompanying Partner.

Career Options and the Expatriate Accompanying Partner

When I left university and started to build a career I never imagined that there would be a time when I would not be working in my chosen career.

I envisaged marriage and children but not that I would be a full-time Mum. I always expected to combine the two; after all I was twenty in the 1980’s, living in the UK, working in the City, we believed we could have it all!

But then life is full of surprises and ten years on there I was; home, a full-time Mum to my two daughters. What was even more surprising though was the fact that it wasn’t the arrival of our children that led me to stop working the first time. It was my choice to leave my career pre-children to support my husband as he pursued his career abroad.

During that time I did work and study but I never quite achieved that independent career status of my twenties. I had never envisaged the extra complication that regular relocation can bring to the career options of the accompanying partner.

Today I am building my business whilst living abroad with a husband who travels and two young children. Now, ironically I am trying to ‘have it all’ by developing my business around a flexible business model so enabling me to be around for my children and compensate for my husband’ frequent work initiated absence. Some days I feel as though I am getting there, other days when the washing is piling up, my computer has crashed, a client is calling and a child is sick and there’s a flood in the kitchen, I wonder – is it possible to have it all?

I have waited many years to re-start my career. For my personal sense of identity and self-esteem I know I need to work, so although I sometimes think how much easier life would be without my business, I know that I cannot allow myself to throw away what I have now started.

Relocation and career for the accompanying partner can be tricky and emotive issues. According to the Permits Foundation Report in 2008, 89% of expatriate male partners and 73% of expatriate female partners do want to work whilst abroad. However, only 35% in total reported that they were working in their host location whilst 90% had been working prior to relocating abroad.

This scenario fascinates me (Louise, Success Abroad Coaching) and my colleague, Evelyn (The Smart Expat). Whilst we understand that the availability of work permits and the recognition of qualifications can be obstacles to working abroad for some accompanying partners, we would like to understand the other factors that they take into account when making career decisions abroad.

In order to understand these career related issues of the accompanying partner better, we have designed a survey, Career Choices and the Accompanying Partner. The survey explores the choices that accompanying partners make regarding whether or not they work as well as delving deeper into the reasoning behind the choices that each individual makes. Finally it will consider whether or not there is a connection between career choices and overall satisfaction with life.

We believe that understanding about these choices will help accompanying partners with their decision making in relation to international assignments. It will also help organisations to more effectively direct the resources that they assign to supporting accompanying partners.

If you are a working or non-working accompanying partner currently living abroad then we would greatly appreciate your help in completing the survey.

You can access it by going to this link. It is anonymous and takes only 15 minutes to complete. We will happily send the summary results of the survey to you. All you need to do is click done on the last page of the survey and leave your name and email address. As a sign of our appreciation we will enter your details into a free prize draw with some great coaching packages and books as prizes.

If you are able to forward this article and link on to other accompanying partners we would be very grateful. The greater the number of participants the more reliable, representative and therefore useful the results will be.

Thank you, your help is much appreciated.

If you would like to contact either Louise or Evelyn, they can be reached by email:

Louise@SuccessAbroadCoaching.com

Evelyn@TheSmartExpat.com

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