Host Manager Portal

The Manager Receiving Your Assignee Has Had No Preparation at All.

Every programme prepares the person who moves. Almost none prepare the line manager on the other end who has to lead them from day one — and lead the rest of a team that is already cross-cultural. The host manager seat is included free with every assignee.

Book a Demo →For Mobility Teams

The Gap Nobody Owns

You Spent Six Months Preparing the Person Who Moved.
Nobody Spent Six Minutes Preparing the Manager Who Received Them.

Relocation budgets are built almost entirely around the assignee: the visa, the shipment, the housing, the pre-departure briefing. Then the assignee walks into a team on Monday morning and reports to a line manager who was told a name, a start date, and nothing else. That manager sets the tone for the first ninety days — and the first ninety days decide the assignment.

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Day one is the manager’s problem

The mobility team hands over at arrival. Every interaction that follows — the first task, the first correction, the first missed deadline — belongs to the host manager.

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Struggle does not announce itself

In many cultures an assignee will not tell a manager they are drowning. They will go quiet, agree to everything, and work later. Managers read that as engagement.

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The correction arrives too late

By the time a host manager escalates, the assignee has usually already decided. Early returns are rarely a surprise to the employee — only to everyone above them.

The Host Manager Seat

A Read on Every Person You Manage — Not Just the One Who Moved

The host manager seat started as support for a single incoming assignee. Clients told us that was the wrong unit. A host manager rarely has one cross-cultural relationship — they have a team of them, assembled over years of hiring and transfers, and the friction is as often between two direct reports as it is between manager and assignee.

So the portal covers the whole team. Each person gets a coaching card built on how they actually work: how they receive correction, what their silence in a meeting means, how they signal that a deadline is at risk, and what to do differently when it matters.

A coaching card for every direct report, not only the relocated one
Team friction map showing which working relationships need attention first
Pre-briefs for cross-cultural team meetings and one-to-ones
Scripts for the difficult conversations — underperformance, correction, promotion
Included at no cost with every assignee seat

See the Manager View →

Your Team — Cultural Working Read

Priya S. · Bengaluru → RotterdamSettled

Kenji T. · Osaka → RotterdamWeek 6

Lars M. · Local hireDirect

Coaching Card — Kenji T.

When he says “that may be difficult”: read it as no. Asking again in the same meeting will not change the answer — it will cost you the relationship.

⚠ Watch: Lars gives feedback flat and unhedged. Kenji is reading it as a formal reprimand. Neither of them knows.

Work Handoff Coaching

The Same Instruction Lands Four Different Ways

“Have a look at this and let me know what you think by Friday” is an invitation to critique in one culture, a deadline with an implied approval in another, and an ambiguous instruction that produces a week of anxiety in a third. Managers do not fail at handing off work because they are careless. They fail because they only have one register and it is invisible to them.

Before you assign a piece of work, the portal shows you how this specific person is likely to interpret it, where the ambiguity sits, and how to phrase the handoff so you meet them half-way instead of asking them to do all the adapting.

Interpretation preview: what this person will hear when you say it that way
Rewrite of the handoff with the ambiguity removed — and the reason it was ambiguous
What “done” needs to mean explicitly, and what they will assume if you do not say
How this person is likely to raise a problem — and how they will not

Handoff Check — Q3 Forecast Model

As written: “Take a first pass at the forecast and push back if anything looks off.”

How Kenji will read it: the model is already agreed and he is being asked to format it. “Push back” will not be used — disagreeing with a manager’s numbers in writing is not a move available to him yet.

Try instead: “I have low confidence in the Q3 assumptions — particularly the churn rate. Rebuild that section the way you think is right and walk me through where we differ on Thursday.”

Names the doubtGives permissionSets a forum

First 90 Days

A Landing Plan the Manager Actually Follows

Not an onboarding checklist. A sequence built around the points where assignments are known to wobble, with a specific action for the manager at each one.

Set the working contract

Agree explicitly how feedback will be given, how disagreement gets raised, and what “finished” means here.

Professional culture shock

The honeymoon ends and competence feels lost. The manager is prompted to run a specific conversation, not a generic check-in.

W11

The home-side pull

Partner isolation peaks and shows up at work as withdrawal. The manager sees the pattern without seeing the private detail.

The quiet decision

The point at which most early returns are privately decided. The last useful moment to change the outcome.

What the Host Manager Does Not See

Confidential by Design

The host manager is the assignee’s boss. That relationship only works if the assignee knows the portal is not a surveillance tool pointed at them. Managers get working-style guidance and pattern-level signals. They do not get transcripts, sentiment scores, or anything the assignee said in coaching.

Signal	Host manager sees	Never shared
Working style and preferences	Full coaching card	—
Coaching conversations	Nothing	Content, transcripts, topics
Engagement pattern	Direction of travel only, at team level	Individual usage detail
Personal and family circumstances	Nothing unless the assignee escalates it	All of it, by default
Risk flag	A prompt to act, with a suggested conversation	The underlying evidence

Full detail on the two-tier model is on the Data & Confidentiality page.

FAQ

Common Questions

Who is the host manager?

The line manager in the destination business who the assignee reports to day to day. They are the corporate client’s own employee — not part of the mobility team and not a vendor. In most programmes they are the single most influential person in the assignment and the only one with no preparation.

Is this the same as the mobility manager view?

No. The mobility manager runs the programme and sees population-level health across every assignee. The host manager runs one team and sees working-style guidance for the people in it. Different job, different data, different portal.

What does the host manager seat cost?

Nothing. It is bundled with the assignee seat. The economics only work if the manager actually logs in, and charging for the seat is the fastest way to guarantee they never do.

Does it only cover the relocated employee?

No — and this was the change clients asked for. The portal covers the manager’s whole team, including local hires and people who transferred years ago. Most of the friction a manager deals with is between two direct reports, not between them and the new arrival.

Can the assignee see what the manager sees?

Yes. The coaching card is built from working-style data the assignee has visibility of, and they can see exactly what is shared. Nothing is written about them that they cannot read.

What if the host manager will not use it?

Adoption is the honest risk here, and it is why the format is a two-minute prompt before a specific meeting rather than a dashboard to visit. Managers engage with something that arrives before the conversation they were already dreading.