The Expat Employee Study

The expat lifestyle offers a lot of opportunities for career growth. However, not every foreign assignment goes smoothly as expected. Sometimes there are some issues that need to be addressed by the employer in order to provide their employees with the best possible experience in their respective assignments.

To help minimize these issues and to assist companies and employees to assess work related concerns, Cigna Global Health Benefits (CGHB), in partnership with the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), sponsored an independent research study in the summer of 2013 to review how expats experience, perceive and value various elements of their assignment terms and programs. Their study is focused on expat employees and the data was taken from 1,511 expats on assignment in 140 countries. They explore issues of expat employees before, during and even after their expat assignments.

According to the study, employers seem to have a “one size fits all” approach in terms of selecting benefits for their expat employees regardless of the needs specific to the country they will be assigned to. There is a gap of communication between the employers and their expats especially in terms of employee awareness of company provided services. There’s also an analysis about closing the gender gap in the expat employee community, rooms for improvement in terms of repatriation services, more understanding from the company Human Resources team and how age can be a factor in terms of accessing medical care.

These are only some examples of the interesting findings on the study, if you want to explore and learn more, click here to view the complete study and find more information that you might find useful.