Secondments latest must-have company perk preventing staff burn-out

For many young people, even a week-long holiday to New York would be nothing but a fantasy. But Laura O’Flynn, 26, has been living there for 18 months, thanks to a relocation scheme offered by her employer.

“It’s been an experience of a lifetime and still a bit of a ‘pinch me’ moment every now and again reminding myself that I live in New York City,” she says.

“My plan was only to stay for 18 months as that is what my initial visa could offer, but soon after arriving here I knew that wouldn’t be long enough and I wanted to stay for longer. I’m now on my second visa which covers me for six years or so.”

Her employer, recruitment firm Robert Walters, has offices both in Ms O’Flynn’s native Dublin and in New York, a fact that was presented to her at the very first interview for the job.

“I was always hugely keen to travel and all I wanted to do after college was take my degree and make the move,” Ms O’Flynn says.

“It seemed like the sensible thing to do to get some experience in my field under my belt with the goal of qualifying for an international transfer within the company down the line. That Robert Walters offered it was one of the main reasons I wanted to work for the company.”

Now 18 months into her initial visa, and fresh from extending it, Ms O’Flynn is embedded in New York, where she has a large group of friends and has joined a Gaelic football team.

A great deal of Ms O’Flynn’s colleagues are on similar secondments, meaning “everyone is on the same page looking to make friends, navigate a new city, and explore new places,” she says.

Robbed of formative opportunities to travel throughout the pandemic, and increasingly burnt out by working life in the UK, young people are increasingly latching on to relocation schemes offered by their employers.

“Ireland will always be my home, and I can definitely see myself returning and settling there, but not anytime soon,” says Ms O’Flynn. “Most of the people my age in my town have emigrated at this point – mostly to the likes of Dubai, Australia and Canada.”

She adds: “The cost of living has gone through the roof and it’s next to impossible for young people to afford their own homes in the current housing crisis.”

Employers know all too well that offering workers the chance to relocate abroad might stop a burnt-out staffer from quitting.

A survey of more than 250 global HR decision-makers found that the majority of employers used global mobility as a means of retaining talent and preventing staff churn – particularly millennial employees, the age group for which relocation is most popular.

The tactic is proving successful: eight in 10 employers surveyed by relocation company Crown World Mobility had offered relocation to employees threatening to leave the business, and 73pc had approved relocation requests to retain star performers.

More than half of firms surveyed said employee retention rates had improved following the introduction of a relocation programme, “marking global mobility as an effective means of engaging employees and helping to combat burnout”.

For Ela Bayraktar, 29, who moved from Wrexham to Atlanta in the US on secondment last year, the desire to work abroad came not from burnout per se, but a desire for a “new challenge”.

“I wanted to travel and didn’t want to pause my career in the process, so when the opportunity came up with a company I trusted and that trusted me it was a no-brainer.”

Ms Bayraktar, who works for communications firm Moneypenny, has used her relocation to travel the US more cheaply, spending weekends in Chicago and Nashville.

She says: “Being away from friends and family is hard, but I speak to them regularly on video and they have visited.”

Marion Devine, of The Conference Board Europe, the think tank, says opportunities to work abroad – either through short-term assignments or longer stints of between one and two years – are typically offered to millennials. But why?

“International experience is an indispensable way to broaden young leaders and to give them a better understanding of different markets, cultural contexts, and increasingly diverse workforces,” says Ms Devine.

But Ms Devine warns that foreign secondments have their pitfalls, namely that workers cannot necessarily expect to come back to the same career they left.

“Will they have a job to return to; will their new experience bring tangible benefits like a promotion or a pay rise? Quite often, the answer is no, because a lot of companies don’t have a good end-to-end process for handling a foreign assignment,” she says.

Visas also present an obstacle. Ms O’Flynn says the tail end of her initial 18-month allowance was a stressful time.

Only with the help of a company lawyer, and after a visit to the US embassy in Dublin, was it extended. 

“The uncertainty of it and not being able to plan ahead definitely wasn’t easy during that time,” Ms O’Flynn says.

While relocation programmes do remain popular, they are undeniably less widespread than they were in a pre-Covid world.

As Asma Bashir, of company expansion platform Centuro Global, says: “In recent times, the frequency of these secondments and transfers has somewhat decreased. This shift can be attributed to the increasing ease of hiring talent globally.

“Moreover, the prevailing trend is a surge in requests for remote work, posing challenges for companies to mandate and oversee.”

Nonetheless, with Covid travel restrictions now a distant memory, an international talent war will see countries resume “competing for human capital, for brains,” says Armand Arton, of global citizenship advisory firm Arton Capital.

“They will offer all kinds of incentives to have people choose their countries, from low taxation to easier relocation,” Mr Arton says. “Milan, for example, has seen a surge in people relocating from London, while France is trying to attract City bankers with low taxation – the game is on.”

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