The repatriates among my clients often make experiences such as these:
- On the job, you are getting hardly any recognition and appreciation for the experiences and the know-how gained during your stay abroad.
- Upon your return from an intragroup assignment you are under the impression that your employer cannot offer you a suitable position.
- You had been looking forward to seeing your family and friends again, and now you have the feeling that you have to ‘earn’ your position again.
- In everyday life, you often perceive Germans as very sober and matter-of-fact, if not unfriendly. You miss the friendliness of the people you had got used to in your host country.
Maybe after these or similar disappointments you feel frustrated and wish you were back in your host country?
These may be symptoms of a very typical phenomenon – the reverse culture shock.
The experiences made abroad have shaped you and changed your way of looking at your native surroundings. At the same time, your organization has developed further, just like your family and friends.
In this context, Expat Coaching will help you prepare proactively, with the aid of concrete measures, for your return, in order to guarantee a positive restart in Germany. Ideally, you will commence Expat Coaching before the end of your stay abroad in order to set a new professional and private course for Germany in good time.
How do you as an organization benefit from coaching that supports your repatriates?
Studies have shown that 14% of repatriates leave their organization within the first year after their return – three times more often than the average of all employees. In such cases, the high investments in international assignments will not pay off for the organizations.
In this context, my coaching can contribute significantly to retaining repatriates in the organization in the long term and to benefiting from their expertise and their experiences. The benefit for you and your employee will be particularly high if the coaching already commences abroad, long before the moment of repatriation.
This way, your employees on assignment will be able to prepare themselves for this step in good time, with regard to both their further career and their personal challenges.
At times of global skills shortage, you will thus retain valuable, qualified, and experienced employees in your organization. At the same time, these employees will be your best in-house ambassadors for international assignments: They will communicate the attractiveness of working abroad for your organization to their colleagues. In addition, they can mentor future repatriates.
