Companies guide · retention

Retaining international talent: the lever packages keep forgetting.

Premium meal vouchers, a company car, top-up insurance: in Luxembourg everyone offers the same thing, and candidates know it. Meanwhile, the real variable behind keeping an international profile appears in no package comparison at all: does their family put down roots? That is the angle behind the Kawi company plan, and here is the full HR reasoning.

Talent almost never leaves because of the job

The Luxembourg market piles pressure on pressure: a shortage of qualified profiles, fierce competition between finance, funds and legal, and a high cost of living. In that context, market studies all point the same way: retention is increasingly decided outside the office. And for someone who has moved from abroad, the classic breaking point is not the salary, it is the partner who cannot find their place, or the child for whom school stays a daily ordeal. When the family does not put down roots, resignation is only a matter of time, and it costs a full new hire, onboarding included.

The most sensitive moment: the trilingual school

Ask any expat parent for their worst memory of settling in: the start of school comes top of the list. Around two thirds of children in the country do not hear Luxembourgish at home, and for a newly arrived child, the first day of précoce or Spillschoul brings everything at once: the separation, the group, and a language they have never heard. Parents live it by proxy, and the employer pays for it in mental load, in quiet absenteeism, sometimes in a departure.

Why this is space to stand out

The market's extra-legal benefit benchmarks all look alike, we have gathered them in the family benefit missing from Luxembourg packages. Existing family benefits stop at childcare; none address the language, even though that is THE specifically Luxembourgish subject. For an employer brand that wants to feel rooted in the country, helping employees' children get to grips with Luxembourgish is a signal no gift voucher can match: the company invests in the family's real integration, not in a catalogue perk.

How to switch it on, concretely

• In the mobility package: at the moment of relocation, when the family needs it most. Our guide relocation: what about the children? sets out the ideal timing.
• In the extra-legal benefits catalogue: alongside the vouchers and insurance, a family benefit that is visible and worth talking about.
• In onboarding: offered to new hires with children, with the internal communication supplied.

Your questions