CHANGING WORK PATTERNS

As the third millennium unfolds, our work patterns are changing. No longer do we expect to stay in the same job or with the same organisation all through our lives. Another change is that more of us are no longer constrained by national boundaries. We are beginning to think globally.

At one time very few people ventured abroad unless they had to – to fight wars on foreign soil or to escape poverty and injustice at home, for instance. Today we think nothing of jetting to the furthest corners of the planet for a holiday, and more of us are opting to live abroad these days out of choice rather than necessity.

Nowadays, just as people from every country under the sun come to find jobs in Britain, similarly UK nationals can be found working in every corner of the globe. We are becoming less insular, and more cosmopolitan. A new opinion poll reveals that, given the chance, 54 per cent of the population of the UK would like to live and work abroad. And around a quarter of a million are reckoned to leave every year for this reason for either short-term or long-term assignments.

While some of these are Walter Mittys who feel the grass is always greener over the hill, most have genuine motives for wanting to move. They include:

• a lack of opportunities at home
• a desire to travel or live abroad
• the chance to extend their professional experience
• a better salary
• promotion
• the wish for a more vibrant lifestyle
• family reasons (e.g. marriage to a national of another country)
• a sense of vocation (e.g. to help the Third World or spread the Gospel).

Others have to. It is a requirement of the job.

A quarter of a million may seem an enormous number, but it must be remembered that relatively few of these will be taking up permanent appointments abroad. Many of the posts in foreign countries tend to be on contract terms – so a similar number of expatriates will be returning at the same time.

This contrasts with the situation in the past when a posting to another country usually represented a lifelong commitment. You joined the Colonial Service, the Indian Army or a firm with extensive overseas involvement, and stayed overseas – apart from intermittent leave – until retirement. Nowadays it is virtually impossible for people to spend the whole of their careers in one location, Moreover, the need is for people with particular skills – IT specialists, engineers and teachers – rather than generalists who learn the job as they go along.

Another difference is that the age range of people taking up posts abroad has widened. The jobs market is more fluid than it used to be, and people are more prepared to change direction these days, either by choice or from necessity.

REASONS FOR WORKING ABROAD

What kind of people want to work abroad?

• At one end of the scale there are young people who are keen to see the world before they settle down to a fixed career. They may decide to take a year or two off between school and college or between college and the world of work, and want a job – or a succession of jobs – that will help them support themselves in this venture.
• Further up the scale there are people who decide from the outset on a career that will enable them to spend much of their life in foreign countries, in the Diplomatic Service or in a multinational company, for instance. A fair proportion of these will already have had experience of living abroad and know more or less what to expect.
• There are also professionals who are not interested in long-term careers abroad, but see a spell overseas as an important part of their career development. As organisations adopt flatter structures, employees are moving laterally rather than upwards in a bid to broaden their experience and learn new skills. If it is a way to improve their finances as well, so much the better.
• Older people are less likely to regard working abroad as a means to an end. They will already have progressed in their careers, but may feel the urge to try something different – even if only for a short spell. Age no longer seems to be a barrier to overseas employment, provided that a person is adaptable and resilient.
• A final category consists of people who have never thought of working abroad but find themselves sent off to a foreign posting. This is very much a sign of the times. Companies – particularly large ones – are no longer confined within national boundaries, and are keen to create an international cadre of key staff.

Dream and reality

People in Britain who have never worked abroad are often envious of those who have. They are persuaded by glossy holiday brochures into believing that every foreign location is highly desirable. They think of the sunshine and the sights but not of the mosquitoes or the business hassles.

But working in a foreign country is very different from a brief holiday visit where your sole aim is enjoyment. On vacation you are so entranced by the novelty of a particular place that you do not stop to consider that the heat, the traffic jams or the quaintness of the locals could begin to get you down after a while.

An overseas posting is not a holiday from your normal humdrum life. Indeed, anyone who is merely looking for escape from the challenges and traumas of life at home would do well to forget the idea of a posting abroad altogether. A job in Java is no haven for escapists, but requires realists who are able to meet challenges on all sides, not just one.

Even moving to another job in your own country can be something of an upheaval. You have to learn new methods and become acquainted with a new set of people. But moving from Guildford to Guinea involves a good deal more readjustment than a relocation to Grimsby. You will need to come to terms with a different living environment:

• different food
• different customs
• a different language
• a different climate
• different value systems.

‘Variety,’ notes Cowper, ‘is the very spice of life that gives it all its flavour.’ A successful expatriate is someone who is able to appreciate life’s infinite variety – the good and the bad. This involves accepting unfamiliar vistas, values and traditions, and also giving something in return. You cannot stand aloof from what is happening around you. Instead, you will need to modify your behaviour and attitudes to blend in with your new surroundings.

COPING WITH A STRANGE ENVIRONMENT

Environment is a factor that should not be overlooked. Your skill and that of your nearest and dearest in adapting to it could be just as crucial to your success as your ability to do the job.

This is particularly true if your family is with you. So long as they are content, you will have a stable home base where you can retire and relax after the traumas of the day. If they find the place a drag, their feelings will in turn begin to sap your morale.

In some jobs you are protected to some extent from your environment, particularly if you live within an expatriate community. A British military base in Germany or Belize bears many similarities to its counterparts in Britain. If you are posted to a major capital, the chances are you will find a substantial community of fellow expats there who can help you acclimatise.

On the other hand, you might find yourself out on a limb both at work and away from the workplace. You could be the only non-local employee in a particular organisation, and opportunities to socialise with your fellow countrymen and women might prove few and far between. In such cases your qualities of resourcefulness and adaptability will be tested to the full.

How would you cope in such a situation? This is the kind of question that you need to ask yourself before you make any binding commitment. Don’t assume that conditions in Tuvalu are the same as they are in Tunbridge Wells. If you do, you could be in for an enormous shock when you get there. The stories you hear of people arriving at their post and taking the next flight home because they can’t cope are, unhappily, very often true.

Such disasters benefit no one. And so one of the aims of this book is to persuade people to look before they leap. There are plenty of work opportunities in foreign countries for the right person. Finding them is in many respects the easy part of the business; convincing an employer that you can make a success of the job and your period abroad is harder; coming to terms with your new environment can be hardest of all.

What makes working abroad so different?

The days have gone when you could go out to some distant clime and recreate your own little England around you and expect the local populace to adjust to your whims and fancies. Nowadays, the adjustment needs to come from your side. Here are a few of the major differences you will need to contend with:

• Minority status. For the first time in your life, perhaps, you will find yourself in a minority. Even if you do not manifest different racial features from the bulk of the populace your behaviour, attitudes and accent may make you stand out.
• Climate. At home you are used to a climate which avoids extremes. Other climates can be much harsher. Would you be able to cope with temperatures in excess of 90°F or below -25°F, flash floods or hurricanes?
• Communication. There is always plenty of scope for misunderstanding, particularly if you have an imperfect grasp of the language of the locals, whether it is the spoken language or body language.
• Working practices. Working hours and vacation entitlements may be different, and the whole company culture may seem strange. Your responsibilities could turn out to be more all-embracing than you expect.
• Social customs. What is acceptable in one culture (e.g. consumption of alcohol, backslapping or kissing in public) may not be so in another. You will need to learn the traditions of the country in order to avoid causing offence.
• Different values. You might find yourself in a country where the values are different from your own. For instance, loyalty to one’s company may take second place to family loyalties, and nepotism could play an important role in the selection process.

DO YOU FIT THE PART?

You may be quite certain you would like to work abroad. The question is: will any employer be prepared to send you abroad on an assignment or offer you an overseas contract? This section is designed to help you decide.

First, forget the idea that the only qualities needed for an overseas posting are youth and a willingness to learn. While this may be sufficient for a holiday job or work experience, today’s employers are more discriminating. They want candidates with relevant qualifications and experience, some of it gained abroad. Your nationality is not an advantage these days. American or British companies, for instance, no longer feel obliged to put their own nationals in charge of their foreign operations if there are local staff who can do the work just as competently – and possibly more cheaply. Where vacancies occur for expatriates they are often to cover a temporary skills’ shortage.

To put it in a nutshell, recruiters are looking for competence and value for money. If they can find someone who can do the job as well as you for half or a quarter of the salary, they will do so. The main reason, for example, that the demand for British craftsmen in the Middle East has declined is that ‘local’ labour costs less to employ.

However, the law of the jungle can also work to your advantage in the international labour market. In recent years, for instance, British managers have been more popular with multinational employers than people from other countries – partly because British salaries are often lower compared with those in North America and on the European Continent.

For any job abroad – apart from work experience schemes for young people and casual work – employers require:

• good qualifications
• professional experience
• the right personal qualities
• language and communication skills.

The right qualifications

The days when a school leaving certificate was sufficient to find you a job in an overseas location are now past. It may be fine for a Gap Year assignment abroad, but most countries have plenty of people educated to this standard now, and so they no longer require the services of a semi-skilled expat.

This applies not only to the well-paid jobs. Voluntary service organisations that would take people straight from school 30 years ago are now much more demanding. A degree or equivalent qualification is generally the minimum requirement for this kind of work these days.

In my survey of agencies recruiting for abroad, the importance of a degree-level qualification was frequently stressed. While some recruited for vacancies at the supervisory level – for which a City & Guilds qualification was sufficient – generally speaking, this particular qualification was regarded as the absolute minimum.

Foreign employers tend to place more importance on degrees and certificates than on experience, and often recruit the person with the best qualifications – even if there are others who can acquit themselves more ably.

There is usually a particular reason for this – namely, government restrictions on expatriate labour. In order to be able to employ an expatriate, firms may well have to prove to their Ministry of Labour that they cannot recruit a sufficiently qualified local national. This applies as much to Australia and Canada as it does to the Third World countries.

So if you are keen to work abroad, have a look at your qualifications first of all. Are they really likely to impress? If not, see if you can improve them by attendance at night courses, doing correspondence courses or taking a year or so off for full-time study.

The right experience

Experience is important. A glance at the recruitment literature of several large multinationals will confirm that they are unwilling to send any of their permanent staff abroad until they have spent a few years gaining experience at home.

The importance of experience also applies to contract work. Employers are not interested in raw recruits. They want people who:

• have proved themselves in their chosen vocation
• are familiar with the world of work and its responsibilities
• are able to discharge their duties without the need for supervision.

Experience of working abroad is regarded as a plus.

Most recruitment firms will tell you that three years’ work experience is generally regarded as an absolute minimum, and many more years are demanded for senior posts.

Similarly, voluntary service organisations require people who are not only qualified, but have plenty of practical experience under their belt. That is obviously why the average age of today’s volunteers is around 30. Some may be over 50.

The right personal qualities

Sending a person abroad is an expensive business, but nothing is more expensive than an assignment that has to be aborted, because an individual has problems in settling down to a posting in an unfamiliar environment.

It is not just leaving the job early that can be a problem. Some employees manage to stick it out till the end, yet operate at a much lower level of efficiency because they or their families have not adjusted to the environment properly. And once more their company or organisation is losing out. Non-technical considerations are just as essential to the success of an overseas posting as any amount of professional skill.

Organisations that have had their fingers burned in this way now take greater care in choosing personnel. The wise ones no longer choose expatriate employees on the strength of their technical expertise alone, but realise that professional competence and suitability for an overseas assignment are by no means the same thing.

Handling cultural differences

The crux of the matter is whether you can perform as effectively in a foreign environment as you can on your home ground. It is all very well to arrive in a country with the best of intentions and a clear idea of what needs to be done, but things may start to go wrong when it comes to implementing your plans.

In his book Riding the Waves of Culture, Fons Trompenaars cites the case of an American multinational company that decides to introduce a performance-related pay scheme for its salespeople all round the world: the more a person sells the greater his bonus. But while managers from Northern European branches of the firm like the scheme, the Italians object strongly.

For Italians, working for a company is akin to being a member of a family. If a salesperson receives a bonus and his colleagues do not, he feels guilty about it and next time round tries not to earn a bonus – thus defeating the purpose of the bonus scheme. In any case in Italy it is unthinkable that a good salesman should earn more than his boss; over there pay is normally related to the position a person holds, not to how he performs.

It is only too easy to blame the foreigner if things do not work out as expected. Western businessmen who have to deal with the Japanese often get frustrated at the time it takes for them to secure an order or for their Japanese clients to reach a decision.

It just so happens that Japanese procedures differ from those of the West. The Japanese like to become thoroughly acquainted with a firm before they do business with it and decisions are made collectively – not just by one person. In their eyes they are not just signing an agreement but entering into what they hope will be a long-term relationship.

You also need to be able to function effectively on a personal level, and this may mean a modification to your customary behaviour patterns. In Turkey it is quite customary to kiss your colleagues, both male and female; but this should not be attempted in Hong Kong. In Africa raising your voice can engender respect; in China you should lower your voice: shouting causes ‘loss of face’.

I have come across expatriates who are paranoid about the way the people of the host country go about their affairs, but the fault normally lies at their door. When you arrive to work in a foreign country – even one which you regard as similar to your own – you have to learn a new set of rules, and you will find learning easier if you understand the reasons behind a particular form of behaviour.

To seek to impose your way of doing things upon people may not lead to the desired results, as the American firm discovered with its payment by results policy. ‘Rather than there being “one best way of organising” there are several ways, some very much more culturally appropriate than others,’ comments Dr Trompenaars.

Assessing your own suitability

‘The most underrated, though the most effective, method of selection is self-selection. Really thorough briefing will give unsuitable candidates a chance to see their unsuitability for themselves, thus saving all concerned much pain and grief.’ Clare Hogg.

Ask yourself the following questions and invite other members of your family to do the same.

• Do you have very firm convictions/prejudices?
• Is your health indifferent?
• Do people sometimes find you brusque and tactless?
• Do you distrust ‘foreigners’?
• Do you tend to be very set in your ways?
• Are you easily upset – by delays, the inadequacies of others, and so on?
• Do you have difficulty in seeing the funny side of situations?
• Are you intolerant of methods that conflict with your own?
• Are you reluctant to abandon home comforts?
• Are you ever moody?

If you find you have answered ‘yes’ to the majority of these questions, you need to resign yourself to the fact that you are probably not cut out for a foreign lifestyle. You will feel much happier staying in your own country and the rest of the world will heave a sigh of relief if you do!

To be a success in a foreign location, this is the sort of person you need to be:

• open-minded – prepared to accept alternative points of view
• adaptable – able to fit in to your new surroundings
• balanced – possessing a stable outlook on life
• resourceful – able to respond appropriately to new situations
• healthy – able to cope physically and mentally with stress and strain
• diplomatic – careful not to offend cultural sensibilities
• patient – a particular virtue in many Third World countries
• tolerant – of others’ methods, religions, lifestyles, and so on
• communicative – able to put your ideas across clearly and effectively
• empathetic – able to understand and respect foreign cultures.

Of course, how important these qualities are will depend very much on your prospective environment. You could form part of an extensive expatriate community and have little contact with local people, as might be the case in the armed services, a large metropolis or a construction camp. But in more out-of-the-way locations you could be very much on your own, and your qualities could be tested to the utmost.

To help you decide whether working abroad is right for you, you might enlist the help of Christians Abroad World Service Enquiry who offer careers advice on an individual basis for people planning to work abroad. ECA International publishes a self-assessment guide, Planning to Work Abroad. For addresses see Chapter 20.