The expat world today looks very different from 30 years ago. Rising geopolitical risks and a tougher investment climate have led to a decreased demand for expat assignments. Companies are working with tighter budgets, remote work is here to stay, and many former expat hubs now prefer local hires, or simply don’t need large numbers of foreign engineers and specialists anymore.
Yet international assignments still create value when they are designed around specific outcomes. The case is less about hard skill gaps than it once was, but it remains real. We’re going to examine why
How has the expat world changed?
If you work in mobility, then you’re probably familiar with all the factors driving a tendency away from expat programs, but to articulate three of the key ones for the less informed:
- Remote work grew rapidly during the pandemic and has settled into a durable baseline in many parts of the world. Many employers, understandably, ask what the point in sending an employee thousands of miles from their local office is, given that.
- Geopolitical risk and a cooler foreign investment climate also dampened mobility demand. Global FDI fell again in 2024, with project finance especially weak, making firms more cautious about both international expansion and international assignments.
- As mentioned, destinations have changed too. China, which once pulled in large numbers of foreign specialists in the years after Reform and Opening Up, has seen a drop in Western expats for several years, with STEM fields nearly entirely composed of natives outside of a few specialized areas. In fact, the West-East flow has in some cases reversed, think of Taiwanese TSMC technicians training their American counterparts in Arizona.
So why even send people overseas?
This raises the question: Why send people then, what’s the point?
Contrary to what you may be thinking, the case for an internationally flexible workforce is stronger because of the growth of these factors. Remote work, for example, should provide opportunities for overseas experience. If someone isn’t tied 9 to 5 to their local office, then this means they have more capacity to do a short-term assignment in another office.
But fundamentally the argument is this: presence still matters, and the evidence supports that claim. Let’s break it down into five basic points:
1. Leadership readiness and retention.
Decades of management research tie international exposure to higher leadership agility, broader networks, and better performance in global roles. In other words, future leaders need to be sent overseas if you want them to become competent leaders. Management research doesn’t agree very often, but it agrees on this
Our own Mobility Trends work also found that well targeted moves support engagement and retention in a hybrid era, especially when policies are built around employee needs.
2. Knowledge transfer and capability build.
Academic reviews highlight knowledge acquisition, knowledge transfer, and capability development as core reasons to deploy assignees. Remote channels move information. In other words, while remote tools are great at information management, they can’t easily capture the hands‑on know‑how, subtle ways of working or supplier habits that you only pick up by being there in person.
3. Market entry and risk control
As you’re no doubt familiar, firms are diversifying supply chains. UNCTAD notes supply chain diversification is reshaping investment patterns, which, from our own experience, increases the value of in-market oversight. Think of it like this, if global supply chains are shifting faster than ever before, can you afford not to have on-the-ground people overseeing from a QC perspective?
4. Client intimacy and growth.
This is a simple one: We know that remote selling works for existing relationships. Winning complex, high-value work in unfamiliar markets is borderline impossible without skilled, in-person sales teams, those training those sales teams and a good, in person management system making sure they’re winning the business.
5. Portfolio flexibility.
Companies are finding that shorter assignments, commuter models, and project-based deployments can deliver impact at lower cost. At the same time, while remoteness is here to stay, overseas assignments are becoming slightly more formalized.
Where does the new business case hold up best?
- Scaling a new operation: When a plant, lab, or service hub must hit quality targets fast, embedding experienced people accelerates standards and safety. Tacit practices spread faster in person.
- Integrating your acquisitions: Aligning early on controls, culture and disparate systems means you lower risk. Remote governance can help here, but there’s no substitute for on-site leaders resolving friction in the first year or two after an acquisition.
- Managing critical accounts: Retaining or expanding a strategic customer often needs months of in-market work. Churn costs have always dwarfed assignment costs in this case anyway.
- When there’s big regulatory and policy changes: In sectors affected by shifting trade, data, and investment rules, on-the-ground specialists help navigate approvals and audits. The current environment increases the payoff to local fluency.
- Exporting your distinct capability: When a firm has a distinctive method, sending a builder who can coach local teams means you’re making sure that method remains integral. Of course, it also upskills the local staff and most importantly, protects your brand’s reputation in an overseas market.
Design your overseas assignment policy for a specific result you want
What we sometimes see when engaging with clients, is that they start out with an unclear idea of what objective they want. This is the single-most critical aspect, outside of family support. Decide what you need these people to deliver before even deciding on whether to send them. Here’s a few really basic takeaways of what we find works best in the post-COVID era:
- Start with a one-line thesis. Think along the lines of “Launch the customer support hub in Kuala Lumpur to a 95 percent customer satisfaction in 90 days.” Tie everything about your mobility policy into this target.
- Choose the lightest effective format. Consider short term or rotational models. Use virtual tools for routine work and reserve in-market time for stakeholder “moments that matter”. Now remote work is more common, treat in-person time as a premium for those times where getting everyone in a room together is what’s needed to get something done.
- Select for those who want to learn. Someone who actually wants to relocate, i.e. has curiosity about a foreign culture, will often outperforms technical depth when the task involves building a durable local team.
- Support their family. This can’t be overemphasized. Family stress is the top cause of early return. Provide practical spousal support and schooling guidance if kids are involved. This is consistent with long-standing research on assignment, including our own.
- Measure the benefit. A simple one, but worth repeating. Make sure you define financial and non-financial KPIs before departure. This helps the assignees more than anyone else.
Answering the objections
“But senior management have already pushed back on overseas assignments full stop.” We understand. And these pushbacks aren’t necessarily wrong, they’re just too binary. Just because there’s less of a need for large volume packages for hundreds of employees, it doesn’t mean there is no need at all. Let’s cover some of the most common ones:
- “Remote work covers it.” Remote covers more than it used to, but not everything. OECD analysis shows remote roles spread unevenly by task and region. Work heavy in tacit coordination and external stakeholder influence remains less remote-friendly.
- “Destinations like [such-and-such] don’t need expats.” They need less than they did in the 1990s and 2000s. That does not remove the need for targeted assignments to navigate regulation, engage with partners, or manage technology transfer, especially in an age of, as we’ve discussed, increasingly diversified supply chains.
- “The risk is too high.” Risk means there’s a need for better governance, not no presence at all. Many firms are indeed reducing long-term packages, but instead they’re making use of better governed assignments with, and this aspect is all important: clear exit criteria.
How we can help
Get in touch with us today for specific consultation on how to build a mobility program to deliver the results you need, regardless of budget. From household goods moving to settling in, we can lend a hand.
