Dual Career Solutions

One Spouses Solution
By Alison Clements-Hunt

Alison Clements-Hunt describes the wayin which Norsk Hydro proved just how seriously they consider the dual career issue.

One dynamic spouse was all it took to prompt a large Scandinavian company to offer improved dual career support. Following an extensive internal survey on relocation needs, Norsk Hydro, a diversified energy and chemicals group with around 65,000 employees worldwide, has taken action to try and ensure that overseas assignments can still provide career opportunities for accompanying partners.
Sissel Grethe Lie had already lived in Iran, Qatar and Canada when the company asked her husband to move to India. Reluctant to interrupt her career again, the couple accepted the assignment on the condition that Lie found a secured job situation before her husband signed his new contract.

The couple did move to India but, in addition, Lie approached Norsk Hydro and proposed a survey of wives and partners to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the company's relocation process. The results of the survey, which was fully supported and financed by the company's personnel department, made illuminating reading, especially on the issue of dual careers.

82 per cent of spouses and partners reported working before they moved abroad, 64 per cent of them full-time. But while around 60 per cent said they had hoped to work in their new host countries, only 15 percent had managed to find a job. Clearly something needed to be done. Norsk Hydro decided to hold a seminar in Oslo where expatriate employees, partners, and representatives from the company's personnel department discussed the results of the survey and brainstormed on possible remedies.
As a result Norsk Hydro is now, amongst other initiatives, providing career counselling support as part of its international assignment policy. In addition, the company says it will be offering financial support and recruitment consultancy services following repatriation. Spouses with Norsk Hydro are already eligible for financial support to pursue their education while on assignment, and the company also contributes to a private pension scheme for those unable to work while abroad.

'I would probably have had problems moving abroad if I had not had the chance to work. For me, it would not have been enough to do voluntary or social work,' said Lie. 'I have been lucky. I have achieved a lot, and had a great many positive experiences.'

Alison Clements-Hunt
Odyssey International Assignment Solutions
Tel: +33 4 50 42 46 93
Mobile: +33 6 15 30 38 46
Email: alisonclements@wanadoo.fr