Family-friendly Assignment Briefings
Most, if not all, global workforce employers host an “Assignment Briefing” conversation with their employee. With Family Concerns being a major risk to assignment success, identifying and addressing Family Concerns early on is a great way to set-up for success ánd improve your organization’s Employee Experience. Or, as we like to call it: Family Relocation Experience.
This article contains five tips to host Family-friendly Assignment Briefings.
1 – Set-up for Success
Invite all relevant family members. This is the best way to host a Family-friendly Assignment Briefing. Inquire with your employee whether they will be accompanied by a partner and/or children on their international relocation. And if so, advise that they* are most welcome to join the Assignment Briefing so they receive all explanations first-hand, and can also direct any questions they may have directly to you.
* There is no exact age limit to how old a child should be to benefit from attending an Assignment Briefing. We suggest inviting children ages 10 and older, if you are open to inviting all family members.
2 – Proper Introductions
Get to know the people in front of you. You want to know their names, the children’s ages, their moving experience, and whether they all plan to move at the same time or if the family is on a different schedule (and if so, why). Check out our article on Family-friendly Assignment Planning. You may also want to find out how your employee and their partner are planning to split the mental load of the upcoming relocation, it may well be that the partner is the one doing the work.
At the same time, you want to make sure that they get to know you. Sharing a bit more about yourself than your name and your role helps them to get comfortable with you as a person. Explain your organization’s efforts to make them feel supported throughout their upcoming international relocation. And what they should do when they lack that sense of support.
3 – Key Answers
Understand what keeps your employee and their family members up at night. Often this information naturally comes out of introductions, but if needed there are two key questions to ask:
Make sure you ask these questions with the intention of carefully listening to the answers, rather than trying to provide immediate solutions. And, give plenty of time to all family members to ask you any questions they may have.
4 – Manage Expectations
Determine who does what. Your organization probably offers a comprehensive set of provisions to enable your employee’s upcoming move. Make sure to explain these carefully, ideally with an understanding of which provisions are most relevant to your employee and their accompanying family members. We often speak to families that underutilize what is being offered to them, simply because they don’t fully understand their company’s Global Mobility Policy and its Provisions.
We encourage having an open conversation comparing your employee and their family’s needs towards what is provided for. When you identify a gap, determine whether this forms a risk to the successful outcome of your employee’s relocation. If so, you might want to consider putting more provisions in place. Either way, any existing gaps take expectation management: you want to make sure that your employee and their family members know what they should organize for themselves, and what will be done by you and any service providers that support your Global Mobility Program.
Please note that this article is written from the assumption that you have already conducted your due diligence towards assessing the suitability of the host location for your employee and their accompanying family members. It should be noted that not every location is equally suitable (and safe) for people representing minority groups, and that family-critical factors such as availability and costs of education, work permit regulation, overall safety, etc. can greatly vary.
5 – Ask for Assistance
You don’t have to be a Family Relocation Expert to offer a Successful Family Relocation Experience. Let us be your Family Relocation Experts. We are happy to support you, your employees, and their family members, with successful relocation. You can set-up a free consultation with one of our team members to ask any Family Relocation Experience related questions you may have.
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