The reality of sending gay employees and their partners abroad is less than ideal — often for political reasons, but company attitudes as well.

Talented, top-level executives don't always come with traditional spouses and nuclear families.

An employee with an unmarried partner — opposite-sex or same-sex — may be the best choice for an international assignment. A foreign job candidate with an unmarried partner who is willing to move and become a 'local' employee may also be the best person for the job.

 That means HR departments must determine how their expatriate and localisation policies address employees with opposite-sex or same-sex partners. What will you cover? Who will you cover?

"Most companies are looking for some long-term commitment before they will accept a partner," says Angela Hume, a senior consultant with ECA International in London.

"What companies are trying to avoid is people taking a fairly casual relationship with them overseas," Hume explains. "'This is my current boy/girlfriend, I'd like him/her to come with me', and two months down the line it's no longer a relationship.”

But that means the company has to define commitment. Among the criteria most companies consider: owning a house together, having a legal contract, raising children and the length of time together.

"Those sort of things are a bit subjective at the end of the day," she says.

In addition, employees with same-sex partners are likely to face legal barriers in bringing their partners, mainly because few countries allow and/or recognise legal contracts between same-sex couples.

Therefore, a company may not even be able to arrange a residence permit for a partner, depending on the destination country’s laws.

From the moment a gay employee with a partner is offered an assignment, he or she must share details about their commitment. HR can then make a decision based on this information, the permit situation and, of course, policy.

The outcome can be reasonable and liveable — or in extreme instances, ugly and discriminatory.

One expatriate's story

A few years ago, Gillian and her partner Ylonka decided they were ready to leave England.

Although they did not have a partnership contract — the UK does not have provisions for such agreements between same-sex partners — Gillian and Ylonka owned a house and together they were raising Ylonka’s daughter, Isabelle, from a previous relationship. Ylonka had lived in England for 10 years, but wanted then six-year-old Isabelle to grow up in her home country, the Netherlands, and attend Dutch schools.

Waiting another year could jeopardise Isabelle’s ability to quickly integrate, Ylonka believed.

So Gillian, with her larger earning potential, eagerly began her job search. She knew that her expertise as a purchasing executive with multinational experience would help make the family’s move successful.

Given Gillian's British citizenship, work and residence permits would not be a problem for her, Ylonka or Isabelle, since they all had EU passports.

But Gillian didn't expect corporations to treat her family's international relocation differently simply because of her sexual orientation.

First, her direct manager in England made it clear that she would not be considered for a move to the firm’s Dutch office. When Gillian brought up her plans to move to the Netherlands with Ylonka and Isabelle, "He stopped the conversation," she recalls.

Before leaving the company, Gillian learned from another executive that they had wanted to keep her.

"My manager had disregarded their request to relocate me. He told them I didn't want to work there anymore. Had they offered me a transfer, I would have stayed."

By that time, though, Gillian had accepted a job with a Netherlands-based multinational.

She says she was "very open" about her family situation at the time of her job offer.

"We were then told that relocation would consist only of transportation. That was it," she says. "I thought that was all [they] offered."

Gillian learned later that around the same time she was hired, the company provided the full relocation benefit range — temporary accommodations, flights home, etc — to a woman in her business unit who came to the Netherlands from another EU country with her boyfriend.

While her foreign colleague was given time off to complete government-related paperwork, Gillian says she had to take leave to do so.

The foreign colleague received expensive, intensive Dutch language training with the famous 'nuns' of the Regina Coeli Language Institute in Vught.

Gillian says when she asked to attend the same programme, "I was not allowed." Instead, she took a handful of lessons from an Italian woman with a "very bad accent", quitting after the teacher incorrectly insisted that it was “het” and not “de” computer.

And when Isabelle was sick, Gillian says she had trouble getting a day off to care for her. “They said I shouldn’t have the responsibility,” she recalls, because Isabelle was not biologically her daughter, but Ylonka’s.

For Gillian, the only person who seemed willing to help was outside HR, in the financial department. This person helped them fill out their tax forms. “He was so surprised I hadn’t gotten anything” in terms of benefits, she says.

The company's perspective

An HR manager at Gillian's former employer, who was not involved in Gillian's case, says the company "does not discriminate in its expatriation policy between married, unmarried or same-sex partners, provided unmarried couples can prove a durable relationship and a joint household, for instance, a legal partnership agreement."

Given background on Gillian's situation, this HR manager believes Gillian did not receive more benefits because she was considered a local, not an expatriate, hire.

"If she would have been an expatriate, she would have been treated the same way, whether she was gay or not," explains the HR manager. "There is a difference between someone who is expatriated with the intention to return to the home country and someone who is localised. That is, in my opinion, an explanation for the differences in terms and conditions."

Localisation packages in this company vary depending on the department that has hired the employee, according to the HR manager.

"[Localised employees] are eligible for a relocation allowance and that is all. They are lucky to be entitled to a language course and so forth."

Yet Gillian insists she was not hired as a local employee, nor was the colleague who received more benefits than she did (this colleague left the company after learning about the discrepancy between her package and Gillian's).

"At the time of the offering the job, I was still living in England and they felt that they needed to look outside of Holland for the right expertise," she says.

"They assured me that I would receive the 35 percent (at the time) tax ruling as they could justify the need to employ from another country. Therefore I can see that I would have had to have been employed as an expat."

Now working for another Dutch company, Gillian says she didn't take legal action at the time because she wanted to move on with her life.

Ylonka, Gillian's partner, says Gillian's former company has a "conservative approach to women in high positions" and called it "archaic" at a time when most companies have accepted gay relationships.

Luckily, Gillian's current employer knows her family situation and understands if she needs to work from home or take time off if Isabelle is sick, for instance.

If this employer asks her to relocate to another country, Gillian says she is willing to go — as long as her family is accepted and Isabelle can attend an international school. She and Ylonka now have a legal partnership in the Netherlands.

"I would only accept it if the family is getting the same benefits as a married couple," she says.

Defining partner

While more and more companies are allowing committed partners — same or opposite sex — to receive many of the expatriate benefits previously reserved for married employees, Gillian’s experience demonstrates that traditional ideas and even homophobia still hold strong in some companies.

For now, heterosexual partners have been and continue to be more accepted. A survey by ECA International in 1998 revealed that 100 percent of companies questioned gave expatriate benefits to married couples; 80.9 percent of companies included non-married partners in their definition of partner. That number went up slightly to 85 percent in 2001.

In contrast, only 29.4 percent of companies had a definition of 'partner' that included same-sex partners in 1998. That number leapt to 53 percent in 2001.

HR consultancy ORC released a survey in June 2002 whose results show slightly less acceptance of same-sex partners than ECA's findings.

Seventy-seven percent of 289 multinationals said their expatriate policy does not distinguish between a spouse and a partner.

But in response to the question "How does your company define spouse?" only 29 percent said their definition included different and same-sex partners, with 26 percent saying spouse was a husband or wife only; 16 percent said their definition included partners of the opposite sex and 29 percent said they do not define spouse.

One of the companies surveyed described its policy: "We have only recently started to recognise non-married partners as 'spouses'; we are currently developing clear definitions, but will not accept a partner where it is not possible for them to be 'legal' in the host country or where it is not culturally acceptable."

Siobhan Cummins, managing director of ORC in London, believes it all comes down to the host country's laws regarding partnerships.

"Often what they [the company] will say is that they will accept a partnership, but if the laws of the [host] country mean they can't send that person, they can't take any person as it were," explains Cummins. "To clear themselves of any case of discrimination, if the host country says they can't go, then obviously they can't go."

The policy differences could also be cultural when looking at the number of European countries that have legalised gay partnerships. "I think Americans are less inclined to recognise non-traditional relationships. Europeans are a bit more accepting," Cummins says, adding that attitudes in the US are "probably changing".

BP's same-sex partner policy

One company that has clearly stated its position regarding same-sex partnerships is London-based petrochemical giant British Petroleum.

In a speech in June, BP CEO Lord Browne talked about the company's decision to diversify its workforce. During that speech, he said, "If we want to be an employer of the most able people who happen to be gay or lesbian, we won't succeed unless we offer equal benefits for partners in same sex relationships."

A spokesperson for BP confirmed that the company's equal benefits for same-sex partners policy also applies to gay expats.

"If there is a benefit available to a spouse in the UK and the US, then the same-sex partner would also qualify," she said, noting that the partners have to have been in a relationship for a certain period of time.

Creative solutions

One relocation company based in the US has experience helping gay expatriates work within legal restrictions.

"With the immigration department, you run out of options very quickly," says Ed Marshall, chief operating officer of St. Louis-based The Impact Group. "When you are faced with a not-legally married couple, you have to become creative in how to do different things."

One of the Impact Group's career counsellors told a European partner that he could try to get an American company to sponsor him. As Marshall's colleague, project manager Peggy Greenwood, explains, "He could not find a company that could do this. He took the option of setting himself up as an entrepreneur, traveling between France and the US."

Greenwood says in another case, the partner was young enough to come to the US as a student so he arranged a student visa. In a different situation, the partner came from a family with ties to a European hotel chain; he was able to live in the US on a non-immigrant, treaty trader visa.

"No country makes this easy, and some make it impossible," says Greenwood. "Those where it is possible, they work around the visa situation."

Marshall says companies have changed their policies as they experienced more and more exceptions to their rules. Many companies provide medical benefits to same-sex partners, and 45 percent of the Impact Group's global clients now have policies that cover opposite-sex and same-sex partners. Relocating partners, though, is usually more difficult.

"On international moves [companies] have a tendency to make exceptions provided they can deal with immigration. It's not whether we're asked to provide assistance, it's whether or not that particular couple will be successful," Marshall explains.

How EU diplomats cope

Although many EU countries have laws legalising gay partnerships — with the Netherlands and Germany allowing gay marriage — and the EU is in favor of protecting gays from discrimination, those who work for the various EU bodies don't get much in terms of non-married partner coverage.

Johan (not his real name), who has represented the EU on a number of diplomatic missions outside Europe, learned quickly that their external services office would not provide relocation assistance to his partner. In fact, the EU institutions only provide support and coverage to married partners.

"We used the Vienna Convention, which specifies that household members of diplomats are entitled to enter the country with some conditions. It worked pretty well," he says.

Of course, Johan's partner had to pay his way to these countries and also had to pay for his own health insurance. At no point in the process, though, did the EU acknowledge that the partner was living there — essentially the "if we don't see it, it does not exist" approach.

But Johan and others within the EU institutions are working to change staff regulations so that Brussels-based employees with legal partners — meaning they have a legal contract in their home country — can get benefits for those partners. Right now, only the Commission (not the other institutions) recognises Dutch gay marriages for the purpose of providing partner benefits.

Johan says the staff regulation should incorporate legal partners (opposite and same-sex) by next year, which would give them the same benefits as married couples. So far, the Commission has adopted the proposal; it is still in discussion in the European Council and the European Parliament. Consensus across all three is necessary to change the staff regulation.

However, only gay employees who come from member states that allow same-sex partnerships will be covered under the proposal.

"In Spain, Italy or Portugal, there are no [gay] rights in their state of origin. They have nothing," he says.

Also, the new staff regulation still won't cover employees sent on diplomatic missions

"We have to think about it, the issue has to be raised at one stage or another," says Johan, adding, "I have no idea how the institutions will consider it."

Beyond politics

Being able to get residence permits for gay employees and their partners is a political problem more than an HR problem, as many in the field will quickly acknowledge. Yet the question of where they should or should not be sent — some cultures are much less accepting of homosexuality than others — can be much harder to answer.

Most companies, in fact, would never say or write in their policies, "We don't send gay people to the Middle East" for discrimination reasons.

Peggy Greenwood of the Impact Group believes that companies should be realistic about the cultural climate when gay expatriates are involved.

"That’s where it's the responsibility of the corporation to make a judgment about who they are sending abroad. It's not just a lifestyle or a management style, but it's essential to make these [assignments] a success," she says.

Even the EU will need to address the issue if/when it confronts sending gay diplomats on missions. "I can't imagine how they will deal," says Johan. "They will have to say, 'Gay people cannot be posted in Malaysia or some African countries.'"

David Shubart, a gay American living and working in Berlin for a British media company, says "there is no situation" where his employer should take his sexual orientation into account.

"I think anybody, whether it's their sex orientation or colour of skin or whatever, who is going to another country should themselves be aware of what problems those factors could cause," says Shubart.

"And I think, if they are not aware yes, it would be a company's responsibility to possibly inform them of that."

August 2002