Repatriation Logistics

Twenty-two participants responded to requests to comment on the ease of logistically preparing to move and then moving to New Zealand, as shown in Table 5.2. This included any family visa requirements as well as the packing up and transporting of household and personal effects, and clearing these at the New Zealand end of the journey.

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Table 5.2.

Repatriation Logistics

Repatriation logistics Participants N

Easy 10 Difficult 7 Mixed 5

Those who found logistics easiest tended to have used moving companies:

Really simple. I got a plane ticket and I came home, and then boxes arrived about six to eight weeks later. I used a moving company. It’s not cheap, but it’s a pretty smooth operation. (30, male, Hong Kong 9 months and UK 3 years)

Piece of cake. Easy. The removals company that I used in the UK were brilliant. Everything ran really smoothly. (33, female, UK 14 years)

Logistical difficulties participants experienced tended to relate to family members’ visas, and stress caused by unfavourable exchange rates:

Moving back with family has been a lot harder than I anticipated, especially with getting visas for my wife, and the logistics and budgeting for it all. Whereas if you are being shipped out by a company then it’s definitely a very, very different kettle of fish. You have to be very determined. (36, male, UK 13 years)

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You can’t keep money forever in Euros, and who knows what’s going to happen to the Euro. So you leave it for a while in case something good happens and then shut your eyes, transfer the money over and just go oh well I’ve taken a big loss on that but yeah it is only money. (11, female, UK 2 years)

5.3 Work and Career

This section is structured differently than the corresponding section of the expectations phase, due to the themes that emerged during analysis of the experiences-phase data. In relation to ease of finding work, only one participant (the oldest, at age 65) was still looking for work at the time of the second interview. However, whether the jobs found by the remaining participants are career-stage appropriate is addressed across the next two sections, dealing with recognition of skills and experience, and job search and recruitment agents. Following this, and mirroring the corresponding sections in the expectations phase, are sections on remuneration and work culture readjustment.

5.3.1 Recognition of Skills and Experience

There were generally pessimistic messages about the ease of finding work in the expectations phase. The fact that only one participant was still looking for work at the time of the second interview suggests that work was easy to find - at least work of some kind that participants were willing to accept. This section addresses participants’ perceptions of the recognition of skills and experience they gained abroad primarily in relation to the on-the-job context. Experiences relating to the pre-employment job search are addressed in the proceeding section.

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Key findings are summarised in Table 5.3. Of note is that positive perceptions significantly outnumber negative perceptions. Also interesting is that only two participants perceived their role in New Zealand as being a step down from their last roles abroad. For these participants, the notion of compromise came through quite strongly, as expressed by 17:

Salary-wise I’m doing better than I was in Britain, but the compromise is that is it’s not anything really like the job I wanted. I’ve had to compromise [in terms of job selection] in order to come home. (17, female, UK 14 years)

Table 5.3.

Recognition of Skills and Experience

Perceived recognition Participants N Positive 17 It is valued 12 It is recognised 5 Negative 6 It is ignored 5

I have had downward progression

2 It is viewed negatively 0

Unsure 4

Participant 16 had expressed concern about the recognition of skills and experience due to the country-specific nature of her specialist knowledge gained abroad. Therefore, she was asked how she managed to find a career-appropriate role so quickly:

I guess it wasn’t an issue… Maybe it’s that the exposure to areas other than employment law were more important to them than being able to recite the

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employment legislation in New Zealand. So I guess I over-thought how much emphasis they would place on the employment law aspect. (16, female, UK 18 months)

In general, perceived recognition of skills and experience on the job appeared context specific. A key influence was seen as whether others in the employing organisation had also worked abroad:

[The level of recognition is] quite high actually, relatively high. So it’s not a negative thing by any means. I walk into my organisation and there are probably 10 people who have got big international experience and done similar kind of things to me. So my overseas experience is seen as an added value layer. (36, male, UK 13 years)

Several participants commented on the large number of managers and colleagues in New Zealand workplaces who had lived and worked abroad during their careers. This is further explored in Section 5.4.5. Conversely, where colleagues had not worked abroad, this encouraged perceptions of a lack of recognition of the skills and experience participants had gained abroad, as well as broader feelings of a lack of recognition:

People don’t understand if they haven’t experienced it for themselves. And they’re quite dismissive. And in work, the fact you’ve been over there and done it can be respected, and you can use it in conversation to put things in perspective, but I guess in a small work environment, it’s kind of hard to bring

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up really. I haven’t been recognised or used to their advantage really. (32, male, UK 1 year)

Like Participant 32, Participant 20 believed that while there was an absence of explicit recognition of her overseas skills and experience, it enabled her to perform better in her role:

There’s not much interest in it. There’s not much curiosity. They ask you about it when you start your role. But they’re not conscious of it, and I don’t think there’s the recognition of, I’ve worked for one of the biggest companies in the world. It feels like it’s invisible; it didn’t happen. (20, female, UK 5 years)

A few participants spoke of having been coached by personal contacts into hiding their time abroad:

I got warned with a number of people not to keep referring to my time in the UK, which I thought was crazy. That’s where I’ve come from, that’s what I’ve been doing, so it’s what I’m going to be talking about. But so many people just constantly said, don’t keep referring to it. (33, female, UK 14 years)

This could be more of an issue where participants did not have colleagues with international experience:

That’s really funny. Not at all. No one cares less. I’d talk to <Partner>, I’d come home in the evenings and say, in a way it almost counts against you,

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because it’s almost that New Zealand small-town thing. Oh yeah you’ve been in London, oh yeah, ok, ok. (22, male, UK 6 years)