Employees with international experience are promoted more quickly say 39 per cent participants in Mercer’s Worldwide International Assignments Policies and Practices report.

This is despite the fact that few companies have expatriate programme management tools to evaluate their international assignments, the report reveals.

It also reveals that the average percentage of women bagging international assignment has increased by 13 per cent, just three per cent higher than two years ago.

The report is based on responses from over 700 companies worldwide across sectors such as financial services, mining, energy, telecommunications, retail trade, engineering, goods manufacturing.

Mercer, a global consultancy firm, says that Latin American and Asia-Pacific companies show female average percentages lower than those of North American and European companies.

Issues

The report reveals that global employee mobility in the short and long-term is expected to increase in 2013. But, family-related issues, such as concerns over children’s education in a new location, remain a major obstacle to employee mobility.

Partners and spouses of employees asked to work abroad may also have successful careers in their own right that they may not want to compromise, it points out.

“Career management” ranks as the next most important issue, except for European and Asia Pacific companies, which rate lack of “package attractiveness” as the second-biggest obstacle to mobility.

Outlook

Over 70 per cent of companies expect to increase short-term assignments in 2013. The report showed that 55 per cent of companies expect to increase long-term assignments and highlighted that, for the last two years there has been an increase in the overall number of international assignments.

China, United States, Brazil, United Kingdom and Australia are the priority destinations in their respective regions for expatriates.

Findings show that more than half of companies reported an increase of long-term (52 per cent) and short-term assignments (53 per cent) in 2011 and 2010.

Why companies go for international assignments

Phil Stanley, APAC Global Mobility COE Leader, said, “Relatively low pay increases in some regions and pressure to attract and retain talent has spurred many companies to embrace a wider range of global mobility strategies to incentivise their high performers.”

Five reasons cited for international assignment programmes are: to provide specific technical skills not available locally, provide career management/leadership development, ensure knowledge transfer, fulfil specific project needs, and to provide specific managerial skills not available locally.

However, the duration of long-term assignments is trending down. The average duration of a long-term assignment is now slightly less than three years. The average age of long-term assignees is between 35 and 55 years.

For short-term assignments, the minimum and maximum average durations worldwide, stand at respectively 4, 8 and 13 months. The average age of short-term assignees tends to be younger, with a similar proportion of companies in the below 35-years-old bracket and in the 35-to-55-years-old bracket.

Multinational companies continue to source most (57 per cent) of their international assignees from the country in which they are headquartered and assign them to foreign subsidiaries. However, there has been an increase in the percentage of subsidiary company transfers (51 per cent) indicating that subsidiary-to-subsidiary transfers, as opposed to headquarter-to-subsidiary transfers, have increased since 2010.

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