With more and more people being sent abroad for work, you will be surprised to hear that less than half of employers are helping their employees with what was rated the toughest challenge of moving abroad – not knowing the local language.
A recent survey of senior managers within the global mobility industry found that 61 per cent believe that language barriers are the biggest obstacle to successful expat assignments and unsurprisingly, over half believe that speaking the local tongue is crucial to conducting business abroad.
The survey revealed that only 37 per cent of those who responded received the necessary language training with employers stating that the cost and the limited need to have multilingual staff was what put them off providing the training.
Mandarin was ranked the most popular language requested for training followed by French, Spanish, German and Portuguese. Other key challenges faced by expat workers include relocating family, organising tax affairs and finding appropriate housing.
For details of overseas property for sale visit the listings on Rightmove Overseas. One way to save money when buying abroad is to use a currency specialist when transferring your pounds into euros to complete the purchase of your property. For more information on this, visit the Currency Zone.
The views and comments herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Rightmove Overseas, Rightmove Group Ltd or Rightmove Plc