Leaving Home - Planning for Repatriation
Leaving home? Surely this is a mistake; repatriation is about going home, or even coming home. Or is it?
If you expatriated with a major multinational, it is likely that the company sent you and your family for relocation orientation. Only recently have firms begun to arrange for h repatriation orientation. After all, why should they? Youre going home. Youve probably been home at least once a year during your assignment. This should be easy.
Study after study indicate that more than 60% of repatriates find reverse culture shock, the shock associated with returning home, equal to or greater than the culture shock at assignment. Linked with this is the staggering proportion, typically quoted in the range of 50% to 75%, of assignees who move to another company within 18 months of their return.
Planning for your repatriation, reflecting on your experiences and clarifying your expectations will help you reduce reverse culture shock. You can leave home and come home with new perspectives and energy.
You settled into your host country. Generally, this occurs after the first home leave. While you may have continued to be intrigued or baffled by the cultural and business differences, you were no longer doing battle against them on a daily basis. You may even have reached the stage where the flip answer to Where is home? was here. Your host country became your home.
Moving back to your home country represents another disruption. In a family, responses often range from how soon? to great sadness. More often, each family member will have a range of feelings as they consider what they are looking forward to and what they may seem to be losing.
Consider the following steps to ease your repatriation.
1. Take time to acknowledge what you have learned or done.\r Post a timeline covering the announcement of your assignment to your return date. Place markers nearby. Ask family members to write or draw on the timeline key events that had meaning to them. Examples might be going-away parties, visits home, visitors, vacations, school/work/sport milestones, language blunders, new skills, and friends moving away. Try to involve everyone. Set aside a time to look at, talk about, laugh about, and even feel sad about what has passed.
2. Recognize what will change.\r Create a chart with two columns - I Will Miss ... and I Look Forward To .... Invite each member of the family to add comments, pictures and graphics. Set aside a time to talk about what is on the chart. Brainstorm ways to address the things that will be missed. Develop a specific plan to ensure that losses are handled in some way within the first 90 days of your re-entry.
3. Identify elements of your expat life you want to hold onto back home.\r The expatriate lifestyle may have allowed more leisure time, more interesting travel, more varied food, or less home responsibilities. Hold a family meeting to consider what you want to hold onto back home. When appropriate, solutions should be offered for consideration. When everyone has contributed, work together to find a solution. Make sure that everyone is prepared to listen respectfully and keep an open mind.
4. Plan your Good-byes.\r Time passes quickly with preparations for the move in both countries. Spend a few minutes individually and as a family to consider who you want to see to say good-bye, who needs to be involved, and when it can happen. Otherwise, you will find yourself on a plane feeling like there were areas left undone. Take time within your first month to re-establish contact with your friends and colleagues. You are the one that moved, you must be the one to reach out.
To recap, repatriation is not as simple as getting on the plane and going home. Reflection, planning, noting the changes in you and your family will go a long way in helping you avoid reverse culture shock.
Sherry Read has lived through reverse culture shock, exceeding the norm and lasting nearly 3 years with her employer. She is a coach helping people make positive changes in their lives, whether in repatriation, expatriation or professional careers. If you are facing repatriation or are in the midst of reverse culture shock, rather than file this away to do the exercises later, contact Sherry@ReadSolutionsGroup.com to schedule a complimentary coaching session now, or visit our website at http://www.ReadSolutionsGroup.com to find more resources on repatriation. Make repatriation a positive change in your life.
To Plan or Not to Plan - That is a Question
It has been my observation that the vast majority of small to mid sized business owners and professionals, consider planning ...
Planning for Moving House
If you have just bought or are considering buying a new home, then you will also need to plan the process of moving home. Whi...
A Dream Vacation
What is the meaning of a dream vacation? What is so magic about the word vacation? The word itself is so exciting and is look...
All Inclusive Vacations
Most of the time, when an individual is planning a vacation, they have to consider all aspects of the time they will spend aw...
Business Financial Planning
Finance in relation to business is concerned with the task of providing funds needed by the enterprise in terms that are most...
Home Equity Loans: Cash Out Alternative to 1st Mortgage Refinancing
If you bought your home in the last couple of years in a hot market at a great interest rate, you may be wondering about the ...
Non-Profit Strategic Planning
It is important to mention that it is the size of the organization matters more than for-profit or non-profit status in deter...
Introduction to Succession Business Planning
If you own a business, you worked hard to get it up, running and successful. Succession planning makes sure your business sur...
Strategic Planning Workshops
Participative Strategic Planning Workshops have come up as a welcome endeavor. They help in maximizing organizational resourc...
Strategic Media Planning
Strategic Media Planning concerns strategically outlining the extent to which an organization and/or an individual can get th...
Why You Need A Solid Financial Statement?
There are many important documents in the world of business and business ownership, but perhaps no one document is as vital t...
How to Plan a Cheap Vacation in the Bahamas
A trip to the Bahamas does not have to also mean a trip to a loan officer. The beautiful islands offer vacations for every bu...
Finding The Right Neighborhood When Buying Homes In Phoenix, Arizona
When it comes time to buy a home in Phoenix, Arizona, you need to evaluate more than just whether the house meets your curren...
6 Succession Planning Myths-Debunked
Of late, the topic of succession planning has sparked much concern. However, it seems few organizations have heeded the warni...
Strategic Planning Process
The Strategic Planning Process starts off with an evaluation of the organizations performance of business. The specific issue...
Moving Issues with Fixer Uppers
One of the age old ways to make money is to buy the worst home on the block and fix it up. If you are following this plan, yo...
Enterprise Architecture Planning
Enterprise architecture serves as a blueprint for a modern-day companys business process, such as the application and data, h...
Rent to Own Tips
Even though this arrangement is often tailored for a buyer-seller type, the lease with option to buy or renting to own all wo...
Moving Home - A Stressful Time
Moving home involves a lot of work. There are also a lot of financial considerations that people generally are not used to. E...
Take A Flier And Move to India!
Sometimes you just need an entirely new start. If you are looking for a new start in an exotic, but inexpensive, location, wh...