Partner Article

How Globally Mobile is Your Workforce?

Workforce mobility is more and more important in a business environment in which the market is increasingly international, and growth in areas such as Asia-Pacific and Latin America is expanding exponentially. So how globally mobile is your workforce? If you need to send staff abroad to work, to expand the business, or create new relationships, how well equipped are they to make it a success?

In collaboration with the Forum for Expatriate Management, Rosetta Stone Enterprise & Education conducted a survey with over 100 senior and mid-management business professionals in the global workforce mobility industry at international organisations. The survey set out to assess key trends in three main areas of workforce mobility: geographical areas of expansion; challenges of expat assignments; and the role of language training. The key findings from that report are below.

Unsurprisingly, trends in hiring, staffing, and expat assignments largely reflect growth projections for developed and emerging economies. Survey respondents expect to see the most significant growth in rapidly developing regions like, Asia-Pacific and South America, whilst staffing levels in continental Europe and North America will remain largely static.

As global mobility professionals know, overseas projects and assignments are often the result of an urgent, critical business need. This is reflected in the minimal time most expats are given to prepare for assignments, with 86% of respondents stating that future expats usually have fewer than six months notice before moving abroad. Conversely, only 6.7% of companies are able to offer employees more than 12 months to prepare for their assignment in a foreign country.

According to research from InterCultural Group, each year approximately 75% of international assignments end in failure. The two biggest obstacles that expats face are knowledge of the local language (61.3%) and family relocation challenges (61.3%), and these could be contributing the high percentage of assignment failure that is being seen. Several other key issues that impact the success of expat assignments are also related to language and cultural fit – like children’s education, inclusion in the local community, and religious issues.

With this in mind, we asked how important language learning is to the success of expat assignments. According to more than half of respondents, learning a language is an important business tool in addressing a core challenge to expat effectiveness, 21% reported that language learning was vital.

Despite this, only 37% of respondents offer language training as part of their standard expat package. The two main reasons cited for not doing so were a reported limited need for multilingual staff and the actual costs of providing language training.

Unfortunately this is having a negative effect on businesses. When we asked what these effects were, 40% cited lower productivity while 36% have observed a decrease in employee morale. These results are not surprising given how common multicultural and international work environments have become.

An important point to remember is that one of the main reasons international assignments were cited to have failed were issues related to relocating the family – with this in mind we asked, is the same language training offered to the family of the expat? Encouragingly, more than 90% of survey respondents (of those offering language training to their future expats) indicated that they currently provide language training to the expat’s family or plan to do so in the near future.

Given the explosive growth and tremendous long-term potential of many different developing economies throughout Asia and Latin America, it is unsurprising to see strong demand for languages like Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, and Portuguese. Other languages viewed as important tools for business include French (28%), German (25%) and English (23%). English remains a widely requested language due to the continuous importance of incoming assignments in countries like the USA and UK. Also, in many international organisations English is still considered the main language in which to conduct business.

So, this survey shows that language is a key ingredient in the success or otherwise of international projects but that businesses on the whole aren’t providing staff, or their families with the tools they need to succeed. Still think your workforce is globally mobile?

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rosetta Stone Enterprise & Education .