This article has been created in collaboration with Expat Management Group.
Ask someone who has relocated internationally for work what they found hardest, and the answer is rarely the job itself. It’s the first few months: finding a home in an unfamiliar housing market, watching a partner struggle to find their footing, or adapting to a workplace culture they hadn’t anticipated.
Those early months look different depending on the destination. In the Netherlands, the challenge can often be cultural: Dutch directness and flat hierarchies catch people off guard if they’re arriving from environments where feedback is softened and seniority is visible. In Belgium, language complexity adds a layer most employees don’t anticipate: navigating Dutch, French, German, and international professional norms in the same working week can be genuinely demanding. In Germany, the adjustment is largely associated with pace and formality. Each context has its own texture, and early support that doesn’t account for it tends to miss the mark. That initial period — often the first 3–12 months — is when the right support makes the most difference.
A 2025 Ipsos Global Study of 10,574 workers across 19 countries found that almost half (49%) are open to relocating internationally, but that openness is conditional. What employees emphasise, consistently, is the need for reassurances and strong support systems. The organisations best placed to provide that support are those treating employee experience as a strategic priority — not an operational afterthought. Here are the four factors that most consistently determine whether that experience works.
Pre-move preparation
How an employee arrives shapes everything that follows. Preparation before departure — not just logistics, but cultural and practical orientation — directly influences how someone adapts once on the ground. An employee who lands knowing what the first 90 days will look like is in a fundamentally different position to one who doesn’t.
Most organisations invest far more in the logistics of a move than in preparing the person making it. Surprisingly, over half of the companies surveyed on global talent mobility by Cartus do not have a formal strategy for selecting and assessing candidates before an international assignment. Cultural orientation, a realistic preview of daily life in the destination, and clarity on what the first 90 days will involve don’t just reduce anxiety — they shorten the time it takes for an employee to become fully functional in the new role.
The practical elements matter too: housing timelines, administrative processes, permit status, health cover. Employees who arrive knowing these are in hand settle faster and perform better sooner.
Housing and daily life stability
Comfort with daily living — a stable home, functional understanding of local systems, basic administrative continuity — is the most immediate layer of settling in. An employee still navigating temporary accommodation and permit paperwork six weeks after arrival would find it difficult to be fully present in their new role.
Housing pressure is acute across many international cities in Europe. In the Netherlands, for example, the Randstad — Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht — has seen rental supply fall sharply while demand from international talent continues to grow. Housing affordability is ranked among the most common reasons for employees to abandon a relocation.
Active home-search support, a clear housing timeline set before the employee lands, and administrative coordination — such as municipality registration, health insurance, social security or local ID, and tax arrangements — make the difference between an employee who settles in and one who spends the first quarter distracted.
Partner and family integration
Moving internationally is rarely a solo decision. For most employees, it involves a partner, children, or both — and how the family settles is often the single most important factor in whether the relocation holds.
According to the NetExpat and EY Relocation Survey, 69% of mobility professionals cited partner resistance as the top reason employees decline a relocation in the first place — and 62% identified partner unhappiness as the leading cause of failed assignments. Family support remains one of the underfunded elements of many talent mobility programmes. Yet, it carries the most weight in determining whether the assignment is completed.
The practical levers are specific: partner work permit pathways, career counselling, school and childcare guidance, and access to peer and professional networks in the destination city. These aren’t extras — for a partner who has given up a role and a professional network to relocate, they’re the difference between adapting and leaving.
Professional belonging and long-term retention
Relocation success is often measured at arrival. The more revealing metrics — employee satisfaction and retained talent — only become visible months later. Research by the International Mobility Panel of Migrants (IMPa) shows that highly skilled professionals are among the first to consider moving on: not because they’ve failed to adapt, but because their options remain open and their expectations are high.
What makes the difference at this stage is less about logistics and more about connection: language support that enables genuine participation in workplace and community life, access to professional and social networks in the destination city, and a sense that the employer is still actively invested in the employee’s experience — not just at arrival, but at month six and beyond.
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These four factors don’t operate independently. Housing instability amplifies family stress. A partner who can’t build a life in the new city affects the employee’s focus at work. Professional disconnection at six months compounds difficulties that may have been building since arrival. Organisations that get this right treat relocation as an ongoing process — not a one-time event.
If you’re planning international relocations in the coming months, the Expat Management Group team can help with every stage of that process: finding the right home in the right location, supporting partners and families as they settle in, and providing the practical settling-in services that make the difference in those critical first months.
