The first 100 days: How to thrive in an overseas placement

Considering that Taufiq Qurrahman CPA was the first Coca-Cola employee to transfer from Indonesia to Australia, the move went surprisingly smoothly.

“It was supposed to be a 12-month transfer, but I have been here almost 10 years, now,” says Qurrahman, responsible for Australia, the Pacific and South-East Asia as associate director FP&A at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners.

“I moved to Sydney from Jakarta with my wife and our three-year-old son. We have had another son along the way.”

The organisation offered assistance with the transfer, but the one thing it did best, Qurrahman says, was assigning him a “buddy” in the Australian business.

“My buddy was my age, and she is now a close friend,” he says. “She helped me adapt to life in Australia. She went to the gym, so I enrolled too and for the first time began looking after my health and wellbeing.

“She took me to my first Woolworths [supermarket] and shared simple tips that I have always remembered, such as ‘never buy rice at full price because it will always be on sale on certain days’. When I needed to buy a car, she showed me through a local website. She was there every time I had a question.”

Qurrahman’s experience exemplifies that the success of global assignments does not come from the boardroom but starts with countless small acts of adjustment.

How to prepare to have the best chance of global mobility success

The EY 2024 Mobility Reimagined Survey reveals 64 per cent of employees are more likely to stay with their employer after a long-term international assignment, with the quality of their experience being the most relevant factor in that decision. Over 90 per cent of those who have been transferred internationally say the experience can be life changing.

Dr Sebastian Reiche, a professor in people management at IESE Business School in Spain, has spent much of his career researching international transfers of staff. He wrote a book on the topic — Proximity: How to Balance Belonging and Difference in Today’s Workplace.

The first 100 days of an international assignment, Reiche says, are where the seeds for success are sown. Thorough cultural preparation is key.

“You lack the local knowledge, you lack the local network, and you lack the local influence,” Reiche says. “You will need to adjust your style and understand the new context to make better decisions.

“You may have technical competence,” he continues, “but when you move to another country, relational skills count as well.”

Dr Sachiko Yamao, a professor in international management at Keio Business School in Japan, agrees that preparation such as cultural immersion and relationship guidance is vital.

“One of the most damaging mistakes corporations make is selecting candidates based too narrowly on linguistic ability, technical expertise or prior assignment experience,” Yamao says. 

“While these qualities are clearly relevant, they do not on their own predict success in a foreign environment. Overlooking other dimensions such as cultural adaptability, interpersonal sensitivity and openness to learning, can set an otherwise capable individual up to struggle.”

Stakeholder mapping for executives on overseas assignments

Companies that focus on technical and role-related briefings while neglecting cultural and interpersonal readiness, Yamao says, leave individuals poorly equipped to build relationships critical to performance.

“Competence and credentials travel reasonably well across borders,” she says. “Trust and social capital do not.”

Successful organisations practice stakeholder mapping, which essentially identifies local colleagues, mentors, sponsors, industry networks and community contacts who can support an employee in their move. 

Importantly, to manage family relocation stress in global postings, this mapping must bring all family members into consideration.

 

"My buddy was my age, and she is now a close friend. She helped me adapt to life in Australia. She went to the gym, so I enrolled too and for the first time began looking after my health and wellbeing."

 

Yamao says meaningful family support is “perhaps most consequential of all”.

When Pramana Zahari FCPA moved from Jakarta to Auckland in 2024, he and his wife were both aware of the importance of social networks. A previous employer even funded a special club for spouses of staff members to socialise.

In Auckland, he regularly attended various professional and social gatherings such as CPA Australia sessions. 

“A lot of these were small gatherings, where we would eat Indonesian food together,” says Zahari, who is now the finance and operational audit specialist at Crimson Education. 

“We would do something like that every week, which was very helpful.”

Cultural immersion and observation are key to success

Adjustment is not about surviving in a culture, Reiche says. It is about learning.

“Learning agility, in the case of those transferring overseas, is a meta-competency,” he says.

A powerful way to build local trust, Yamao believes, is to make a genuine effort to learn the local language. 

“Fluency is not the goal, at least not initially,” she says. “Even a willingness to attempt the language signals respect and openness, and local counterparts tend to respond to that effort with considerably more warmth and confidence than they would to someone who defaults entirely to English.”

 

"One of the most damaging mistakes corporations make is selecting candidates based too narrowly on linguistic ability, technical expertise or prior assignment experience. While these qualities are clearly relevant, they do not on their own predict success in a foreign environment."

 

But language is not everything.

“Business customs and social norms are often tacit, embedded in everyday behaviour rather than explicitly stated, and no amount of language study will make them immediately legible,” Yamao says. 

“In this regard, observation is an undervalued skill. Watching how local colleagues interact, make decisions and navigate hierarchy can reveal far more than any briefing document.”

When managed well, an international assignment can be transformational. Zahari is thrilled by the avenues that have opened up in his son’s college education in New Zealand. Qurrahman says the quality time he spends with his wife and sons in Sydney far exceeds the time they had together in Jakarta.

Both agree that the professional experiences in their foreign workplaces will accelerate their careers.

Global assignments test not only technical expertise but also adaptability, curiosity, relationships and resilience. This level of global mobility success can only be achieved with thorough planning.

5 top tips for your first 100 days abroad

1. Bring the family into the transition: “If your family unit or your spouse is doing well, that positively affects you at work as well.” – Sebastian Reiche
2. Find a local guide: “The company assigned a buddy for me, someone of a similar age and from my own department, and that made an enormous difference.” – Taufiq Qurrahman CPA
3. Join a community ASAP: “The first thing we did was find a community of people just like us, who had similar experiences and were from a similar culture.” – Pramana Zahari FCPA
4. Watch before you act: “Observation is an undervalued skill.” – Sachiko Yamao
5. Stay connected to home: “Make sure you have a home country sponsor in the office, so you do not become invisible.” – Sebastian Reiche

 

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