🧭 For Employees & Families 📊 For Mobility Managers 🧠 Programme Intelligence

Coach Every Assignee.
Predict Every Risk.
Prove Every Dollar.

Bearings is the only global mobility platform that combines always-on AI cultural coaching with a live programme intelligence engine. 190+ countries. 4 languages. Measurable outcomes.

📊ANALYTICS ⚠️EARLY WARNING 🗺️POPULATION 🤝SOCIAL 📅CALENDAR 👨‍👩‍👧FAMILY 🎯MISSIONS 💬WORKPLACE
Trusted by Global Mobility Teams in
Global Mobility TeamsHR DirectorsFIDI MembersIAM NetworkRMC Partners

The Problem Nobody Has Solved

You Find Out an Assignment Is Failing When the Employee Asks to Come Home.

At that point the cost is already incurred. Every mobility manager knows this. Nobody has built the tool that changes it. Until now.

40%
of international assignments end early — cultural misalignment is the primary driver, not performance
$1M+
estimated total cost of a single failed senior assignment, including replacement, relocation and client impact
73%
of accompanying partners receive zero cultural support — the strongest predictor of early return

Two Products. One Platform.

A Coaching Platform for Your People.
An Intelligence Engine for Your Team.

Every other cultural training product coaches the employee and stops there. Bearings also tells the mobility manager which assignments are failing before they become early returns — and proves the ROI automatically.

Calendar Coaching

A Cultural Brief Before Every Meeting.
Automatic. No Extra Work.

Connect Bearings to Google Calendar or Outlook and it delivers a cultural brief two hours before every meeting with a cross-cultural dimension — without you doing anything. Not a generic country briefing. One written for that specific city, the specific people in the room, and what you already know about them.

  • Client meeting in Munich: Munich-specific formality norms, not generic German advice — plus notes from your previous meetings with this client
  • Team call with Singapore: How to run it so everyone contributes, what silence means from each team member
  • Client dinner: Hosting norms, what to avoid, how the evening typically flows in this culture
  • Traveling to a different city: Brief calibrated to where the meeting is, not just where you're based
See Calendar Coaching →
Thursday 14 Nov — Upcoming
📅 9:00 AM — Q4 Review, Hoffmann & Partner, Munich
Cultural Brief Ready — 2 hrs before
Munich vs Berlin: You’ve gotten used to first-name culture in Berlin. In Munich corporate rooms, stay on surnames until they invite the switch — which may not happen today. Default to Herr Hoffmann. From your notes on Klaus: Responds poorly to open-ended questions in group settings. Direct questions work better. Dislikes surprises — the agenda you sent yesterday was the right call. Watch for: Agreement is often signalled by silence and a slight nod, not verbal confirmation. Don’t read quiet as hesitation.
Munich, DE Contact notes active Q4 context

Managing Across Cultures

The Team Is Cross-Cultural.
The Management Approach Has to Match.

Generic management advice assumes everyone processes feedback, handles disagreement, and signals commitment the same way. They don’t. Bearings gives managers coaching calibrated to who is actually on their team.

Direct Report Cards — Your Team
Priya Mehta  ·  Senior Engineer  ·  Bangalore
Giving feedback: Always in private, never in front of peers. Public correction — even mild — can feel like a loss of face and creates withdrawal rather than change.
When she says “I’ll try my best”: This often means the deadline is at risk. Ask specifically: “What would need to change for this to land on time?”
Marcus Weber  ·  Product Lead  ·  Berlin
Giving feedback: Direct and specific. Cushioning or vagueness frustrates him. Get to the point.
When he pushes back in meetings: This is engagement, not hostility. Let him make his case fully — then respond to the specific objection. Don’t call for consensus prematurely.
+ 6 more coaching cards in your team  ·  Team friction map available

Manage the Person in Front of You — Not the Stereotype of Where They’re From.

Bearings builds a coaching card for every direct report on a cross-cultural team. How they receive feedback. What silence in a meeting means from them. How they signal they’re struggling. What scripts work for difficult conversations.

The Team Friction Map shows which pairs are most likely to misread each other — based on their specific cultural profiles — before that friction becomes a problem worth solving retrospectively.

  • Coaching card per direct report — updated as you observe more
  • Scripts for performance conversations, deadline slippage, rejection of work
  • Pre-meeting brief for cross-cultural team calls
  • Team Friction Map showing highest-risk dynamics
  • Cards update as you log observations — day 300 advice is better than day 1
See Manager Tools →

What Makes It Different

Not a Generic Answer. Your Situation, Your City, Your People.

Every other cultural coaching product gives the same answer to the same question. Bearings adjusts its response based on where you're from, the specific city you're in, and what you already know about the person you're dealing with.

Ask Anything. Get an Answer Built for You — Not a Generic Script.

The cultural gap between a Canadian in Berlin and a Canadian in Munich is real and significant — but most platforms give them identical advice. Bearings knows Berlin is casual and startup-driven; Munich is formal and corporate. The coaching adjusts accordingly.

When you've met your counterpart before, Bearings draws on what you've learned about them specifically — not just their culture. After enough conversations, it knows they're more direct than their cultural baseline. It knows what approach worked last time. It knows the deal has been waiting three weeks and not to push yet.

  • Advice calibrated to the city you're in, not the country it's in
  • Coaching that accounts for who you're dealing with specifically
  • Daily life guidance when the situation isn't about work
  • Smarter with every interaction — not the same answer on day 400 as day 1
See How It Works →
Bearings — Your Cultural Coach
"My Munich client meeting felt stiffer than my Berlin colleagues. Was I reading that right?"
Yes — and that difference is real, not your imagination. Munich's corporate world is significantly more formal than Berlin's. Coming from your Toronto background, it'll feel closer to the German stereotype you expected — whereas Berlin probably felt surprisingly relaxed when you arrived. For your next Munich visit: use their surname and title until they invite you to switch (which may take a few meetings), let senior people speak first, and always come prepared with materials. Winging it here reads as disrespect, not confidence. Bearings · Munich-specific · Adjusted for Toronto baseline
Bearings — Daily Life
"The checkout cashier in Tokyo seemed annoyed when I tried to be friendly. What did I do?"
Nothing wrong by your own standards — but Japan's service culture runs on a formal, scripted register. Sustained eye contact and small talk step outside that script and create mild social uncertainty for them. Since you shop there regularly: a brief nod, no small talk, look away while they process, "arigatou gozaimasu" at the end. That's warmth in this context.

City-Smart Coaching

Berlin and Munich Are the Same Country.
They Are Not the Same Culture.

Generic cultural training gives everyone sent to Germany the same advice. Bearings gives advice calibrated to the actual city — because the professional culture in Berlin is measurably different from Munich, Frankfurt, or Hamburg, and getting it wrong costs real relationships.

Germany — How Cities Actually Differ
Berlin
Relaxed
Hamburg
Moderate
Frankfurt
Formal
Munich
Very formal
Same country. Four different coaching profiles.
Profiles built from research, not assumptions
Bearings city profiles draw on established cultural research frameworks (Hofstede, Schwartz, World Values Survey), expat community data, and destination intelligence from organisations like InterNations and Mercer. Every profile is checked for accuracy before it goes live.
Your meeting city, not just your home base
If you're based in Berlin but flying to Munich for a client meeting, your calendar brief for that meeting uses Munich norms — not what you've gotten used to at home. The coaching follows you, not your address.
Where you're from matters too
A New Yorker and someone from rural Ontario land in Berlin with different reference points. Bearings frames every comparison against where you actually come from — not a generic "Westerner" stereotype.

Contact Intelligence

After 14 Months Working With Kenji,
You Know He's Different From the Textbook.

Cultural coaching based on nationality alone can only take you so far. Bearings lets you build a private record of what you've actually observed about the people you work with most — and uses it to give you advice that's specific to them, not just their background.

Your Contact Notes — Private to You
Kenji Tanaka · Senior Procurement · Sumitomo Corp
"More direct than you'd expect. Long silences after a big proposal mean he's seriously considering it — not saying no. Don't follow up for at least two weeks."
Katharina Schmidt · Finance Director · Munich office
"Does not like surprises. Always send an agenda 48 hours ahead. Casual tone in formal settings has backfired twice — don't repeat it."
Completely private. Your employer never sees this.

Good Advice About Someone You Know Should Sound Like It Knows Them.

When you ask Bearings how to handle a difficult conversation with Kenji, it doesn't just give you a Japan briefing. It factors in everything you've told it about him — that he's unusually direct, that the deal has been in his hands for three weeks, that the last time you pushed early it went backwards.

You build these notes naturally as you work — Bearings prompts you after sessions to capture what you observed. Over time, the coaching about each person gets more specific and more useful.

  • Keep notes on key clients, counterparts, and colleagues in one place
  • Coaching uses what you've observed, not just their nationality
  • Patterns emerge across conversations — Bearings flags them for you
  • Completely private — your employer never sees your contact notes

Partners and Families

73% of Partners Get No Support.
That's Where Assignments Actually Break.

The employee adjusts to a new office. The partner adjusts to an entirely new life — new country, new language, new schools, new healthcare, new neighbours, no professional network. When the partner is struggling, the employee is not far behind. This is documented. It is preventable.

🏠
Daily Life Guidance
The supermarket where the cashier seemed rude. The landlord who went quiet. The neighbour who won't engage. The school gate parents who already know each other. Partners get coaching calibrated to where they spend their time — not advice written for a boardroom.
🏫
Children and Schools
Age-appropriate support for children starting new schools in a new country. Guidance for parents on how to read whether a child is adjusting or struggling, and what school culture looks like in this specific destination.
🔄
Building a New Routine
Losing your daily routine is often harder than the cultural adjustment itself. Bearings helps partners rebuild practical routines around healthcare, exercise, socialising, and community — in the specific city they've landed in.

Programme Intelligence Suite

Five Tools That Turn Assignment Data Into Programme Intelligence

Built from the ground up for global mobility managers. Purpose-built for the specific decisions mobility teams have to make — not repurposed HR software.

What the Dashboard Looks Like

A Mobility Manager's Monday Morning View

This is what replaces the spreadsheet. Live, prioritised, actionable — without a single manual report.

Population Map — 47 Active Assignees
41
On Track
4
Monitor
2
At Risk
⚠ Post-Honeymoon Withdrawal — Marcus R., Tokyo Wk 9 High
⚠ Partner Isolation Risk — Sarah K., Amsterdam Wk 8 Medium
⚠ Social Stagnation — Chen L., Dubai Wk 12 Medium
✓ David M. — New York → Zurich Wk 14 On Track
✓ Priya S. — London → Singapore Wk 6 On Track
Intervention Queue — 2 Actions Required
Marcus R. · Tokyo · Week 9
Post-Honeymoon Withdrawal
High
Engagement dropped sharply at week 9 after 8 weeks of high activity. This pattern is consistent with the post-honeymoon culture shock phase and precedes early return requests if untreated.
Sarah K. · Amsterdam · Week 8
Partner Isolation Risk
Medium
Partner not enrolled after 8 weeks. Family domain stagnating at 31%.

Cross-Stream Intelligence

The Insight That Requires Seeing Everything at Once

The Early Warning Engine does not look at one signal. It looks at the combination of engagement rate, domain velocity, sentiment trend, partner status, and milestone completion — simultaneously. The pattern that matters is never visible in any single stream.

An Example: The Family Adjustment Lag

An assignee's Workplace domain is rising steadily — good. Their check-in sentiment is positive — good. Their engagement rate is strong — good. But Family domain has been flat at 0.34 for six weeks while Workplace is at 0.71.

Viewed individually: no signal. Viewed in combination: a specific pattern (EW-006) that correlates with early return requests at month 5. The intervention — a partner enrollment prompt — fires at week 10, not month 5.

Workplace ↑ 71%Family ↔ 34%Sentiment ✓Partner not enrolled→ EW-006 fires
EW-006 · Family Adjustment Lag · Week 10
The employee is succeeding professionally but the family is not adjusting. This specific pattern — high Workplace, flat Family — historically precedes assignment failure at month 5 when the partner's dissatisfaction becomes the decisive factor.
Domain Profile
Workplace
71%
Social
58%
Family
34%
Language
52%
Healthcare
77%
Recommended: Send partner enrollment invitation. Historical improvement rate with this intervention: 71%.

The Data Flywheel

Every In-Person Trainer Walks Out With Nothing.
Bearings Accumulates What No Trainer Ever Has.

The connection between specific cultural preparation, specific cultural friction, and specific assignment outcomes. Captured, synthesised, and fed back into every recommendation — making the platform measurably better with every assignment that completes.

01
Coaches Every Assignee
Every coaching session, mission, check-in, and calendar brief is a structured data point with full metadata
02
Labels Every Outcome
When an assignment ends — completion, early return, repatriation success — it is linked to the signals that preceded it
03
Trains the Models
Outcome labels retrain the Early Warning Engine and Outcome Predictor. Every 50 new labels triggers a retraining run
04
Returns Value to Clients
Sharper predictions, better intervention rankings, benchmark comparison, destination intelligence — all improve continuously

ROI Calculator

See the Number Before You Book the Call

Adjust sliders for your population. Bearings is $500 per seat per year — flat rate.

40
$250k
30%
25%
60%
Your Estimated Annual Impact
Assignments at Risk12
Annual Exposure$3.0M
Failures Prevented3
Cost Recovered$750k
Bearings Annual Cost~$32k/yr
Net Annual Return$718k
Based on published industry data. $500/seat/year flat rate. Results vary.
Get a Custom Estimate →

The Full Coaching Suite

Every Situation. Every Person.
Every Stage of the Assignment.

Not a course. A coaching system that’s present for professional challenges, daily life friction, family transitions, and career decisions — for as long as the assignment lasts.

🧭
AI Cultural Mentor
24/7 coaching across 190+ countries and 4 languages. Ask anything. Decode a meeting, debrief friction, prepare for a difficult conversation. Always-on.
📅
Calendar Coaching
Automatic cultural brief before every cross-cultural meeting. Calibrated to the meeting city, the people in the room, and what you already know about them.
🎯
Field Missions
One real-world cultural challenge per week, calibrated to your city and stage. Builds practical skills, not just cultural awareness. Streaks drive 12-month engagement.
👥
Leadership & Team Coaching
Coaching cards per direct report. Team friction map. Pre-meeting briefs for cross-cultural team calls. The manager toolkit that most platforms don’t have.
👤
Daily Life Coaching
Coaching for strangers — the landlord who went cold, the school gate community, the checkout that felt rude. Daily life norms, not boardroom protocol.
🏮
Conflict Resolution
Structured guidance when a professional relationship is under strain. Culturally appropriate resolution pathways — what works in Tokyo is different from what works in Berlin.
❤️
Partner & Family Track
Full coaching for accompanying partners and children. Daily life, schools, community integration, healthcare, routine rebuild. Partners at 50% of the employee seat price.
🏠
Repatriation & Pre-Assignment
Reverse culture shock coaching for the return. Pre-assignment support for the decision. The two stages most platforms ignore — where the biggest attrition happens.
Full Platform Overview →

Now in the Platform

Six New Capabilities. One Dataset.

The package has grown well past pre-departure coaching. These are the pieces that make Bearings present at the moment something goes wrong — and useful to the manager on the receiving end.

See the Complete Package → Book a Demo

Pricing

One Flat Rate. Every Feature. Every Country.

No per-session fees. No per-workshop invoices. No country surcharges.

$500
Core / seat / year
$750
Corporate / seat / year
Most Popular
$950
Leadership / seat / year
$1,200
Team Intelligence / seat / year
See Full Pricing →

Send Your People Prepared.
Know When They Are Struggling.

30-minute demo. We'll walk through the live population dashboard, fire an early warning scenario, and build a cost estimate for your population on the call.

Book a Team Demo → See Pricing

FAQ

Common Questions

What is Bearings?
Bearings is an AI cultural coaching platform built for international assignees, their partners and families, and the mobility managers responsible for their programmes. Employees get always-on coaching across every professional and daily life situation. Managers get live programme health data, early warning alerts, and automatic ROI reporting.
How is this different from a pre-departure course?
A pre-departure course is present for two days. Bearings is present for twelve months. The real friction happens at week three (professional culture shock), week eleven (partner isolation), and month eight — exactly when a course you took before departure is useless. Bearings is there at each of those moments.
What does Calendar Coaching actually do?
It connects to Google or Outlook and generates a cultural brief two hours before every meeting with a cross-cultural element. The brief is calibrated to the city the meeting is in, the specific people in the room, and what you've already learned about them. No setup needed — it works from your existing calendar.
What support do managers of cross-cultural teams get?
A coaching card for every direct report: how they receive feedback, what their silence means in a meeting, how they signal they're struggling, scripts for difficult conversations. Plus a team friction map showing which pairs most need your attention, and meeting pre-briefs for cross-cultural team calls.
What about partners and families?
Partners get a full coaching track calibrated to daily life — not corporate culture. The supermarket, the school gate, the landlord, the healthcare system, building a social life. Children get age-appropriate support. Partners pay half the employee seat price. 73% of partners currently get no support at all — this is where assignments quietly break.
What does the Early Warning Engine detect?
Combinations of signals that have historically preceded early returns — not single data points. A drop in engagement alone is noise. That same drop combined with a partner who hasn't logged in for three weeks and two missed weekly missions is a pattern. The engine flags it with a recommended action, not just a warning.
Is $500 per seat per year all-in?
Yes. AI mentor, calendar coaching, weekly missions, 190+ countries, 4 languages, partner seat access, SSO and HRIS integration. The Population Health Dashboard and Early Warning Engine unlock at Corporate ($750). Leadership coaching cards at $950. City-level intelligence, contact notes, and team analytics at $1,200.
How do I get started?
Book a 30-minute demo. We'll walk through the platform live, fire an early warning scenario against your destination mix, and build a cost estimate on the call. No contract required to run a pilot.