Intercity travel to work is a strain on you and others

By JULIE MIDDLETON

Corporate life has spawned a new social group - the commuter family.

Talent shortages and the shrinking executive job market are leading increasing numbers of executives to take jobs in different cities from where their families live.

Although there are no figures on commuter families, relocation experts like Libby Svensen, of Corporate Transfers, point to the change: "There has been more of a trend that people will commute."

Adds Geraldine Speed, of Relocations International, which has offices in Auckland and Melbourne: "I'm seeing a lot more people commuting from Sydney and Melbourne, Auckland and Wellington over the last two years. It has a lot to do with not moving the family."

However, commuters say that making the decision to live away from home for work is hugely disruptive to family life, and that the job has to be sterling to make the sacrifices worthwhile.

Newspaper editor Louis Pierard has worked out that in the two and a half years he drove weekly between the family home in Hawkes Bay and the Bay of Plenty Times in Tauranga, he spent the equivalent of 11 solid weeks on the road.

"The novelty wears off," he says, adding: "At the time I didn't have much choice, and was keen for a bit of adventure. I convinced myself I had the best of both worlds."

Taking the family wasn't an option. His wife, Jane, is head of music at a Napier high school, "and with the youngest in the family still at school, she wasn't keen to leave the city as well as her circle of close friends."

Libby Svensen says that for many executives, continuity of their children's schooling is a big deal. Often the bread-winner will commute until the family can join him or her, often at the close of a school year.

In a world where job security isn't a given and shorter-term contracts and executive leasing is a new trend, executives are reluctant to uproot their families for a new job, now nobody sees anything being for the long haul, says Svensen. Commuting becomes the lesser evil.

It's a view backed by research: figures from RRI Consulting in Boston, a partner of Relocating International, show that the single biggest reported reason for failed executive assignments away from home is spouse and family unhappiness.

However, maintaining two households was a drain, says Pierard.

Roger Kay, a professional services manager, has commuted between Cambridge and Onehunga for four years, but he goes up and down several times a week. "It's about spending time with the family."

He wasn't willing to interrupt his three sons' schooling, and wanted to give them some stability rather than shifting.

Ron Shaw, an IT project manager, commutes daily from his Hamilton home to Auckland.

He once drove between Monday-to-Friday work in Rotorua and his Auckland home for three months, and admits that he became "semi-irrelevant" to his family.

By the time he got home on Fridays, "my wife, Linda, and daughter had already organised the weekend so I just had to fit in or fit out."

But his wife "wasn't a happy camper."

"The message from the chief executive was if I continued doing it, I might still have a job but maybe not a marriage."

Now, he says, commuting "tends to mean that Linda has more enduring relationships. She can work on friendships seven days a week. I get back at night, and don't really want to make an effort."

Adds Pierard: "The sense of relocation is unsettling and the only constancy is the feeling of impermanence."

Thinking of taking a job some way from home? "The upheaval that it causes can be hard to predict," says Pierard.

"Living in two places at once is neither fair on the job nor on the family."

Roger Kay says commuting isn't a good idea - "long-term I don't think it's sustainable.

"I don't intend to be doing it for much longer - it's disruptive - and I certainly would not do it with a young child."

Adds Shaw: "I'd ask [would-be commuters] how secure their home relationship was and whether it could stand that sort of distance, and I'd ask them about their personal fitness level, whether they can stand the wear and tear of commuting.

"But if the job's good, you're working with good people, if your relationships are OK, it's worth doing."