In 2021 I hosted a panel exploring the expat experience. One of the female panelists shared something that has stayed with me ever since.
Her family was on assignment in Nigeria when her husband received a transfer order to Portugal. She was pregnant. They had young children. The company approved the move.
What nobody had planned for was what it takes to get a pregnant woman with young children out of Nigeria.
The roads were blocked. COVID-19 had closed borders. And beyond the pandemic, Nigeria remains one of the most complex destinations in the world. It is a hardship location that, despite travel advisories, this family was there.
The only way out was a medical evacuation to Germany, and from there they finally reached Portugal.
She felt the company hadn’t done enough. Not because anything went medically wrong. But because a pregnant woman with young children should never be in a situation where a medevac is the only way out.
Every logistical detail had been managed perfectly. The problem was that the wrong things were being managed.
In the many years of working in global mobility I have watched duty of care evolve enormously. Companies take it seriously. And yet the gap between what they believe they have covered and what families experience remains one of the most underexamined risks in our industry.
Here is what we see most often: duty of care is applied to the assignee. The family is an afterthought.
For example:
A pregnant woman in Nigeria needed someone to think through her departure before the transfer order arrived, not after barriers were discovered.
An LGBtQ spouse relocating to a restrictive country needed verified guidance before they packed, not after they landed and felt unsafe..
A family with children moving somewhere unfamiliar needed real preparation, not a travel guide and good wishes.
These are not unusual situations. They are the people inside every assignment your program manages right now.
That family made it to Portugal. But they carried something no family should — the feeling that the company hadn’t thought hard enough about what could go wrong.
That feeling is preventable. And it starts before they board the plane.
Living Abroad’s International Relocation Center gives assignees and their families verified destination intelligence across 240+ locations — mental health resources in 104 countries, LGBTQ guidance in 133 countries, safety, healthcare, cultural context and Guided Relocation Pathways that take families through what they need at each stage of their move.
For your program that means families who arrive genuinely prepared, and leadership that can say yes, we thought about the families. Yes, we had a plan.
That is what duty of care looks like when it encompasses the entire family.
If you’d like to see what that looks like in practice for your assignees and their families, click here.
