A recent report by PwC has highlighted the issues that companies are having with their overseas placement of staff.
Whilst companies expect the number of workers on assignments to increase by over 50% over the next decade they are struggling to find employees who want to move to emerging economies.
Over two-thirds of recent graduates would be happy with an overseas assignment but are mainly interested in moving to the US (58%), UK (48%) and Australia (39%) rather than India (11%) or mainland China (2%).
Companies are having to be more flexible to their employees needs with employees wanting to be close to their family or not be away for too long. This has lead to an increasing number of mobile employees commuting between different countries for a week or 2 at a time. However employees are more fickle than ever with most expecting to have multiple employers over their working life and are chasing interest and opportunity rather than just on monetary awards.
Gone are the days it seems of expats on multi-year contracts with only 1% of employees now spending 3 or more years on an assignment. An increasing number of contracts are for less than one year with the number increasing from 10 to 20% since 2002.
You can read the full report here: Talent mobility: 2020 and beyond.
