Dual Career Couples

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Hello friends.

Now, let’s talk about “dual-career couples”.

Now, basically, “dual-career couples are with or without children where both partners pursue a professional career.” Both the partners are involved in jobs or professional engagements.

Now, “they are the subset of dual-earner couples”. Generally, dual-earner couples are where both the people are earning either through entrepreneurial assignments or through a job.

So, when both the individuals are doing a job, that is said to be dual-career couples.

Generally, they tend to be well educated and the commitment they have towards their own job is the same amount of commitment they have towards their partner's job. So, it won’t be as if my job is going perfectly but I am not concerned about my partner's job. It is never like that. Okay.

This synergy has been seen quite a lot in dual-career couples.

Now, these dual-career couples face a major challenge if either of them is offered an international assignment, from an expatriation point of view. So, at that time, some challenges arise that are very important to resolve.

The first one is “spouse support”. Whether the spouse is supportive enough or not.

Either way, we can look at it in a different way if a spouse is at a particular level from where if he moves at this moment, then that becomes a challenge in his overall career.

So somewhere, the mechanism needs to be worked out from where both individuals can move efficiently to a new country and I will also add the third point here which is "career movement".

Well, the organization should ensure that not only the employee but his or her spouse is also given an opportunity in the new country.

What will happen is that the whole complete transition will be very streamlined.

The next challenge is “flexibility”.

Now, you need to give people some leave because, as they are in a new country, they will need some time to adjust. Therefore, you need to be flexible.

For example, you can offer them work from home some days, you can also offer them some flexible holidays, you can keep the working hours flexible, so on and so forth.

And the last challenge is “family or career growth”.

So, say, for example, a newly married couple might be more inclined towards moving to a new country than someone who is being married for a longer time. They have established themselves in a country or a region. Hence, it becomes very difficult for them to move out. Okay.

In the early career stages, generally, people tend to experiment and it is easier for them to move out than at a very senior level because there are different challenges and elements that start acting which do not support the individual at the end of the day. (Understood?)

So, as the human resource team within the organization where expatriation and international assignments come very often, you need to be very cognizant of the fact that every individual is different and they would have different requirements.

So, if you have identified talent, respect that talent and flex around their needs, and ensure that the person has a great time while on expatriation or an international assignment. Okay.

With this, we come to the closure of this particular module and I hope you got a lot of insights from this.

You can click on the discussion button below and get on to a conversation with your fellow learners. You can share your queries and insights with them.

Thank you.

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