Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Balance

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Compounding this issue are situations when key talent joins a competitor, providing additional incentives to maintain employee engagement or positive feelings about the employment relationship through a healthy psychological contract. Last, families and personal lives are important. There is life outside of the office; work is not everything, and unhappy families and a lack of personal satisfaction can create stress for employees and affect their engagement with their employers.

International assignees are known to face even greater pressures in all of these aspects by the nature of their work. Yet, the typical assignee costs four times more to employ than a domestic employee, spurring employers to seek solutions to work-life imbalance for this group.

What Employers Can Do

But there are no easy solutions to reducing stress, fostering engagement, and guaranteeing that work and family life are kept in balance. However, employers can, and should, take steps to help. Stress is relieved by encouraging employees to take time away from the job as well as to routinely engage in exercise. Employers can provide benefits and enact policies that make such things easier: Generous vacation allowances, policies that penalize workers for not taking their allotted time off, and subsidies for health club memberships are among such actions. Another widely accepted practice is providing "cafeteria benefits" that enable employees to select perks that meet their needs (such as trading pay for holiday entitlement) and allow for flexible working hours. Employee assistance programs are also valuable in providing confidential counseling.

Scheduling business meetings and conference calls to minimize late-night work intrusion into family time and carefully considering the need for international business travel can also help reduce stress on employees and their families. Providing club membership can help both the employees and family members assimilate when on an overseas assignment. Family support may also include career assistance for spouses who are unable to work in the foreign environment as well as aid in finding schools for children and with the enrollment process.

In an international environment, an understanding of language and culture is important for both employees and families. The study's results indicate that working long hours while on international assignments and the subsequent work-life imbalance are due to several factors not commonly encountered in the U.S., such as language barriers and ability to participate in conference calls to accommodate the time differential between assignment location and host country.

Retaining Employees

Offering language and cultural training can help reduce these problems significantly, creating more effective and productive working relationships between expatriates and locals. International assignees are frequently offered cultural training but often turn it down, claiming they do not need it or have no time. Yet such training can improve local understanding and reduce the need to work long hours if locals can be relied upon instead.

All the above initiatives can have a major impact on improving work-life balance. However, having a policy that includes these suggested interventions is of little use if it is not adequately communicated to employees, nor is it of any value if the culture of the organization does not support these initiatives. Employees may have to be convinced that the benefits offered will make a difference to them personally. Many international assignees, aware of the high cost of their assignment, feel pressured to demonstrate the added value they bring to the foreign location.

Communication is the key to ensuring that employees understand the value that policy initiatives can have on both personal and organizational levels, and allows for a better work-life balance. A harmonized and well-practiced work-life policy can be the most effective tool in maintaining employee satisfaction.

Siobhan Cummins is an executive vice-president and managing director of Europe at ORC Worldwide, an international management consulting firm offering professional assistance in the areas of human resources, compensation, and organization management.