Meet the Expats

The mullah’s four o’clock call to prayer broadcast by loudspeakers across the city of Jakarta is a daily reminder to Mike and Jenny Jolley that they are not at home in Perth, Western Australia.

After several months of living and working in the Muslim country of Indonesia, Mike, who relocated there last September to be country manager for Rio Tinto, claims that he is now managing to sleep through this early morning wake up call. For him and for Jenny, it is one of the many ways in which they have adapted to living in a new land. “You accept and enjoy the differences,” says Jenny. “For us it is a great opportunity.”

As Mike is the only expat in the Jakarta office, the new role has meant adapting to all sorts of challenges – including learning a new language (“the second language here is English, but in the early days there were often conversations in Indonesian where I had no idea what was going on”) and sensitivity for his fellow workers’ religious practices.

“Throughout the Muslim day there are defined times for prayer,” he explains. “I have to respect the fact that during the working day at the appointed times everything stops and I wait until colleagues have finished praying.”

It goes without saying that within a global business like Rio Tinto there are opportunities for employees like Mike Jolley to develop their careers in parts of the world other than their own and to embrace different roles. Yet if a relocation is to work for both company and employee, boxes need to be ticked on a personal level as well as in terms of career development.