The Role of HR in Expatriate Training
As we have
mentioned this topic shortly in class and I am really interested in going
abroad, I found this article. If it makes sense or not, but when a company
decides to send employees abroad, the HR department has a major role in this
process. Beginning with the training and preparation in the home country, the
most important part is the support within the country. If the whole family is
going, things like renting, visa procedures, kinder garden and school for the kids,
language training as well as regularly feedback-meetings in order to be able to
react to certain issues as fast as possible.
I worked in China for a German car manufacturer and their were a lot of expats. In general everything was organized very well; like contracted housing- and Visa-agencies as well as a quaterly Expat-table, were current issues are discussed. Also an international kinder garden and a school with german speaking teachers is available.
What do you think about expatriate-assignments in general and the role of HR in this process?
I worked for a big company, but what about the small ones?
Looking forward to your contribution!
Markus
http://rphrm.curtin.edu.au/2004/issue2/expats.html
AntwortenLöschenHere is an article which summarizes pretty well the main points of "how" in the ideal case, which could be of your interest!
But your question on what should SME's do who simply don't have the resources surely is a good one. I would say in real life they simply don't think about all this and just send people off. But at the end I also believe that in many smaller companies people are much more entrepreneurial and are thus possibly better able to handle things - at the end the don't have to deal with that much internal rules as well. But that is just a thought of mine, and can easily be challenged!
I like your article. In my opinion the company definitely has to support the employee who is going abroad in all the issues that occur - no matter if it is cultural, social or professional. A good preparation is very important and support with visa issues, housing and so on makes life a lot easier.
AntwortenLöschenBut I think that providing an internal training for the family members as well, could go a little to far. This could possibly not only exceed the budget, but also overrun the workload of the HR department of the company.
Here, it would in my opinion better be done by external companies, that are trained on these situations. Especially for the family members that are not working, may social problems can come up, for which HR department members of a economical company are simply not trained for. - Of course this is only possible for big companies.
I also experienced the problem, with rare support from the company, in a smaller company. I was in China as well, but I was the first foreigner ever worked in the Shanghai office. The preparation was very poor and a lot of questions and problems occurred by exactly the questions mentioned above (visa, house etc). Even though, they really did their best to support me, a lot of things that where not experience for them, went wrong.
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AntwortenLöschenThanks for the article! I fully agree with Ms. Surböck, I made the same experiences. The "beauricratical Dinosaur" in big companies often wastes a lot of time, and money. Also a lot of expats I met are just relying on this system because they are used to. In their home-country you have a powerful labour union and a lot of rules in order to be able to cope with 100,000 employees and more.
AntwortenLöschenI also worked with a lot of suppliers and other supporting companies there, sending their people abroad and they have to cope with all the issues mentioned before by themselves. In my opinion those employees can gather much more "life-experience" from being abroad as those, where the company is organizing everything for them.
Thank you Markus for posting this article. Also for me expatriate management is very interesting as we've learned a lot about it in an HR course during my exchange semester and we even got the oportunity to visit a global relocation management company which is basically dealing with everything connected to expatriate planning. Thus, I learned that there are providers out there, to whom the whole expatriate management could be outsourced.
AntwortenLöschenI personally do think that expatriate programs are favourable for comapnies who are following an "ethnocentric staffing approach", thus managers from the home country are sent abroad to host country subsidaries, for example to help setting up a new plant. The managers from the host country get international experience (from which the HQ can profit) and keeps close control of the subsidary.
However, I also do think that sending expats abroad is not always necessary, nor not even possible for many companies. Due to the high costs (direct and
indirect) smaller companies cannot afford sending staff abroad.
Further, I do agree with Felix that training of family members is very costly and often does exceed the competences of the HR departments. However, as stated in the article Ms. Surböck just posted, many international assignments fail, because the spouse and other family members did not receive good enough training, are neglected and not taken care of. For me, providing job opportunities also for the spouse are very important.
What do you think? Should companies focus on the spouses career as well, eventhough they are working in a completely different company?