Like Vacant Homeowners Insurance described in the main article, international property and liability is another big problem for those on assignment between 3 and 12 months. 80% of expatriate policy manuals do not address these needs at all.

"...Almost none of them understand that their current homeowners insurance policy will not provide them with property insurance for the valuables they take with them, and won't respond in a personal lawsuit abroad."

In fact, 80% of our employers surveyed have not thought through this issue either. What happens is, the employee has a loss overseas and assumes the employer will be able to pay for the personal loss, which is almost never the case. Lack of documenting policy in this area creates a very large employee problem that could have easily been avoided if it were clearly documented in and expatriate employee handbook. or expatriate policy manual.

Internatinal Policy Issues Affecting Global Travelers, by Duration of International Travel

Should all international business travelers be treated the same? Does a company have established international policy for global business travelers? In many areas the duration of the international trip plays an important role as to what insurance or service programs may be needed. The length of the trip has an affect on what the employer needs to provide but also impacts certain things employees need to do to protect themselves.

Many international organizations break employees into three groups, classified by the length of the international trip.

When this is done, the most common segmentation is "permanent expatriate" outside of their home country a year or more, employees spending from 90 days to 1 year abroad, and short term travelers taking single trips of up to 90 days.

Should international policy be set for each of the three classes in most organization like an expatriate employee handbook? Of course, every circumstance is different but in most cases we think so.

Although we see confusion at every level regarding what employee believes the employer is providing the employee at each level, we see the most confusion in class two, employees traveling from 90 days to a full year abroad. The danger is, because this is a long term trip and not an expatriate assignment, the employee does not do the same amount of planning and research as the permanent expatriate. Let's just look at a few examples below.

Vacant homeowners insurance is a perfect example of this problem. An employee going to Thailand for 5 months to help finish a project is almost never aware that their homeowners insurance company (in the U.S. or any home country) may drop coverage after just 30 to 60 days of the home being unoccupied. Many short term international assignees have been shocked to find out a claim on their house is not going to be paid because they were residing overseas, even for a few months. If the claim is a total fire loss for example, what is the employers responsibility to this employee?

Probably nothing, but will the employee accept the fact they are out a few hundred thousand dollars while working for the employer abroad, of course not. Things could get very heated to say the least. Employers can very quickly and easily take this potential problem off the table by finding a way to document and communicate to employees the details of this risk, and that they need to take personal responsibility to protect themselves.

A few sentences of international employee policy documentation can eliminate days of headache and potential liability and out-of-pocket ex-gratia payments. There are many more examples like this one above that can be discussed. Each class of international employee should have their own international employee handbook, even if only a simplified version.