Author: Valerie Frazee

From WFUV FM in New York City to KUSC FM in Los Angeles, listeners all over the world know they can expect top-notch programming from the journalists and broadcasters at Washington, D.C.-based National Public Radio Inc. (NPR). And those who work there are proud of this. There’s a tangible sense of commitment among the employees who deliver programs like “Morning Edition,” “Talk of the Nation,” “Fresh Air®¨ with Terry Gross” and “Jazz from Lincoln Center” to 530 member stations and 17 million listeners weekly.

And why wouldn’t they be proud? Beyond a stellar reputation for in-depth reporting and high-quality programming, employees can look to a management team that stands firmly behind the company’s People Principles-a set of corporate values exclusively tied to how employees work together.

But installing the Principles was just the first step. President and CEO Delano Lewis recognized that in recent years NPR has been placing more emphasis on producing quality journalism than on providing service to its employees. To answer this challenge, he brought on board Vice President for Human Resources Kathleen Jackson. She’s now redesigning all of NPR’s HR strategies to support the company’s People Principles.

How is your experience with NPR different than previous HR jobs?
I’ve been in HR for close to 20 years, but I’m new to broadcast journalism and to nonprofit. Most of my positions have been in financial services, but my last assignment was with Atlantic Energy, an electric utility in New Jersey.

One of the things that struck me here that’s different from any other place [I’ve worked] is how passionate the employees feel about their work: getting out information that isn’t merely sensational but thoughtful, in-depth and balanced.

And being nonprofit, although we’re concerned about money and resources, at least we don’t have to worry about share prices and return on equity.

How long have you been with NPR?
A year and three months.

What are some of your key accomplishments so far?
I negotiated a four-year contract with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA); I put in a new cafeteria benefits plan; I updated and enhanced our pension plan, and I’m in the middle of doing negotiations with our engineering group.

Also, all of our practices here at NPR need to be realigned to support our People Principles. [So I’m in the process of reworking] all of our policies.

What are People Principles?
They existed before I got here and are one of the reasons why I came. The People Principles have been articulated [by President and CEO Lewis] as part of NPR’s mission and vision.

The situation was that not all of the people pieces were in place or operating the way they should have been. In fact, one could argue that [the organization was] so focused on the journalism and making sure that the best reports went out on the air, that taking care of the people inside NPR didn’t have the same kind of priority. So it’s been one of my challenges to [create] that balance, to show the connection between taking care of the people issues and getting the best journalism on the air.

How are you doing this?
One of the things I put in place are People Accountabilities for managers. We now have six different items related to people that managers are going to be held accountable for. One of them is completing performance reviews on time. Following policies and procedures is another, especially since we are a union company.

What are some of your union-related challenges?
Half of us are union employees with AFTRA. All of our on-air personalities are members: Our hosts, our reporters, our production assistants, our editorial assistants and our newscasters. So all of our most publically visible people are unionized. That was very much a shift for me to understand what it means when the stars are in the union as opposed to the blue-collar workers and support personnel.

There’s far more cooperation because none of us wants things to get to the point where the journalism is compromised and our audience is let down. So the union employees are much less likely to threaten a walkout. On the other hand, management is much more apprehensive about that possibility, because unlike a lot of other places, management couldn’t easily step in and do the job.

For me it’s a pleasant departure from when I was involved in negotiating for my last company. Although there was never a strike at my previous company, our management had strike plans and each side did a lot more posturing. It was just more adversarial and less focused on [keeping quality high].

What made you decide to implement a cafeteria-style benefits plan?
This came up from the employees. There were really two drivers for this. One was that employees felt NPR wasn’t being family friendly. Employees had free medical coverage, but families had to pay full freight for anything beyond the cost of the employee. That’s a hefty cost because typically family coverage is three to four times the cost of a single person.

The other thing was that employees felt NPR wasn’t being equitable. A person could pick anything from a high-end plan to a low-end plan, and NPR would pay for it. A lot of families took HMO plans [to make their children’s coverage affordable]. Single people went with a high-end plan. So we were paying different amounts for different people.

The cafeteria plan allows us to reallocate the way NPR spends its money. This isn’t a cost savings for NPR, but rather a more equitable distribution. So now people on the high-end plans pay a little more, and people on the low-end plans pay a little less.

We’re also giving discretionary credits for employees to spend in ways they want, like getting prepaid legal services, additional life insurance, or adding nontraditional policies, like cancer policies or long-term care. So we’re giving more choice in this cafeteria plan, as well as reallocating the dollars we’re spending.

How did you design the plan?
Actually a task force was in place when I arrived, and it had been working on [creating the plan.] The union had a task force and the nonunion people had a task force, which were combined into one group. But [the members] couldn’t get [the plan] off the ground because [no one] here had a background in doing this.

I had been instrumental in putting together cafeteria plans in the past, so I knew what to do. The task-force members were really determined to get this thing done, so I asked them to take a year to educate themselves. We [worked together to do] an employee survey, and we hired an outside consultant. We went through the process and put it together.

The enrollment period is over, and we’re doing the administrative pieces now so that on [the start date,] [all employees] will have their ID cards and they’ll be covered. Then we’ll want to debrief the process.

Would you say that regardless of a significant change in industries, your jobs have had many things in common?
A lot of the issues are the same whatever place I’m in because people are people. All organizations face similar kinds of problems.

Consider you’re faced with this scenario: One of your competitors is gaining market share. Your organization’s strategy for counteracting this depends heavily on your French operation running at full speed 12 months from now. Management anticipated this, and sent a team of international assignees from the corporate office to France two years ago. Their objective was to gain an understanding of the European market and to infuse the local workforce with the corporate vision. But from all accounts, you sense there’s little cohesion among the local nationals and the expats in your French workforce.

What went wrong?

A contributing factor could be that the traditional balance sheet compensation plan was a poor fit for your company’s objectives. It’s possible that visible pay inequity between the assignees and their local peers has created bad feelings, thereby undermining morale.

The balance sheet can work well as an expat compensation system, but there are instances in which an alternative would be a better choice. It’s important to occasionally re-evaluate the effectiveness of your policy. Start by looking at the different options for expatriate compensation.

Understand the more popular approaches to expat compensation.
By far, the most commonly used form of expat compensation by U.S. multinationals is the balance sheet approach. As Carolyn Gould outlined in “What’s the Latest in Global Compensation?”, Price Waterhouse’s 1996 survey results show that 92.1 percent of 370 respondents use some form of a balance sheet program. (In the article, Gould discusses Morristown, New Jersey-based Price Waterhouse LLP’s survey results. Following its merger, the company is now PricewaterhouseCoopers.) Of course, this statistic varies from survey to survey, but in general, experts agree that the balance sheet remains the method of choice for U.S. based companies.

The balance sheet was designed soon after World War II as a no-gain, no-loss method of compensating employees for working overseas. The idea is that the employer sustains the employee’s standard of living throughout the assignment, so the expatriate family doesn’t come out ahead or behind because of the international relocation. That’s the definition of a pure balance sheet approach, but in reality, the company usually protects the employee from losing money if the cost of living is higher than in the States, and allows the expat to keep the windfall when the cost of living is lower.

There are two common methods of calculating the balance sheet approach. The home-based method, a term often used interchangeably with balance sheet, bases the expat’s pay on the salary for a comparable job in his or her home city. On the other hand, the headquarters-based method starts with the salary for a comparable job in the corporate headquarters’ city. For example, an expat from a Dallas office of a New York City-based company would receive a salary structured from New York City rates. The same goes for an expat from a London or Tokyo office of the same company.

Internationally-based balance sheet systems are less common, and adopt a calculated value for the net income of all international assignees, regardless of nationality. Then, a universal salary structure and benefits structure are calculated from there.

In general, a pure home-based balance sheet calculation of expatriate pay works something like this:

1. Start with home-based gross income, including bonuses.
2. Deduct home tax, social security and pension contributions (either a hypothetical tax or a real tax).
3. Add or subtract a cost-of-living allowance. Usually, companies don’t subtract. Instead, they allow the expatriate to benefit from the negative differential.
4. Add a housing allowance, either with or without a housing norm deduction.
5. Add incentive premiums, including general mobility premiums and sometimes hardship premiums.
6. Add or subtract to equalize taxes. In other words, gross the net salary to protect against the double tax obligations in the home and host countries.

Of course, that can’t be all there is to it. There are also many modified versions of the balance sheet approach and other unrelated compensation systems, including the host-based system. The balance sheet and host-based systems are at opposite ends of a continuum, with many hybrids in between.

The host-based system ties the expat salary to what a local national in a similar position would earn. Basically, the expat starts with a local salary, and then also receives a mobility premium and possibly assistance with home-country benefits. Other terms similar in meaning to host-based include destination pricing and localization.

Now that we’ve dispensed with “Expat Comp 101,” we’re ready to move on to the more interesting part: determining whether your expats should be on a home-based or host-based system — or something in between — depending on which group of employees you want your expats’ pay to be in sync with.

Where do you want pay equity?
As you design an expatriate compensation system or re-work an existing one, keep in mind that you have the option of aligning expatriate pay with one of three different groups: expatriates’ home-country colleagues, expatriates’ local colleagues or expatriates’ international colleagues working at the same location. The question to ask yourself is: Where do I want to see equity? And the answer to this question is closely tied to your global business objectives.

1. Equity with home-country colleagues. The balance sheet or home-based system ties expat pay, as the name suggests, back home. It establishes pay equity between the expats and those in similar functions where the expats came from. The result is a seamless transition when the expat rejoins the company’s workforce in the States. This is why the balance sheet is strong for one-time international assignees.

   Steven Nurney, senior consultant in international compensation services of New York City-based Organization Resources Counselors, explains: “The reason it’s so effective for these finite duration assignments is that it really facilitates the repatriation process. While expats are overseas, their annual reviews [and merit increases] are all tied back to their home countries. The home country compensation structure is the anchor, and everything — the salary, the benefits — remains just as if the person stayed back home.”

2. Equity with local colleagues. Typical American expatriates from U.S.-based multinationals relocate overseas with a rich balance sheet compensation package and settle into expatriate ghettos, isolated upper-class communities. This is especially true when the host-country standard of living is substantially lower than in the United States. But even when it’s not, you can count on your local employees noticing any differences in pay.

   Bill Sheridan, director of international compensation services for the National Foreign Trade Council in New York City, shares his personal experience with this while working for a British employer in the States. “My British colleagues (expats) were living in the choicest communities with the easiest commutes. You pay a premium price for that here in New York City. But back in London, they had been doing the same thing as the rest of us. They were commuting an hour a day in one direction.”

   Sheridan continues, “[Sure, you] recognize the disruption to their lives and [the need for] some concessions. But if expats are living a lifestyle that’s so much higher than they would have enjoyed back in England or wherever they came from, that kind of rubs people the wrong way.”

   And it’s exactly this friction that companies interested in pay equity between expats and local employees are hoping to avoid. Tom Tilghman, a senior consultant with Towers Perrin based in New York City, says: “If you look at the balance sheet, what it really says is: ‘It’s important to us that you continue to live like an American,’ which isn’t like saying: ‘It’s important to us that you live like those you work with.’” In other words, the balance sheet, in some cases, inhibits integration into the host country. So if local pay equity is your objective, consider a host-based system or a hybrid: a local system with a cost-of-living differential.

3. Equity with international colleagues. Consider internationally based pay as a system for achieving equal pay among the members of your international cadre, or the career expats who sign on for the long haul. If you choose this as your goal, and you have a group of expats of three or four different nationalities working together in Beijing, your plan ensures they aren’t working under several different compensation packages. It also ensures that if two of them accept a new assignment in Tokyo, they won’t be paid any more or less than the expats already working there.

   One way of doing this is to adopt a headquarters-based system. This is like pretending that all of your expatriate employees originated from the headquarters office and are being paid on the same balance sheet program. Or choose a different location — even a hypothetical city. Inevitably, after several modifications to your adopted base pay rate, you’ll end up with some form of balance sheet hybrid, or what’s considered an internationally-based system.

Choose a plan in line with the purpose of the transfer.
The next step is to determine the purpose behind your company’s expat assignments. Your expat compensation program should support the purpose of the expatriate assignment which, in turn, should support your company’s global business objectives. International assignments tend to fall into a handful of categories. Purposes include:

• Filling a skills gap overseas
• Transferring technology and technical skills to the local workforce
• Developing a fast-tracker’s management skills
• Transferring the corporate vision to a cross-border location.

Each of these roles demands different job skills and dictates different selection criteria. As a result, each should offer different opportunities and incentives for successful completion.

Here’s where the compensation plan comes in: If your expats are filling a skills gap or transferring technology, these types of assignments usually have a finite duration and a preference for pay equity with employees back home. Your compensation plan simply needs to motivate mobility out and back again. This is a classic balance sheet scenario. These are by far the most common types of assignments as companies work at establishing a strong international presence.

Interestingly, in the past, international assignments were viewed by employees as a quick way to fall off the corporate ladder. Out of sight, out of mind, expats worried that their chances for promotion when they returned home were slim. Sheridan explains that this led expat candidates to demand large concessions within their balance sheet packages in exchange for the risk to their careers.

Sheridan elaborates: “I think it’s getting better today, but for a long time, you didn’t necessarily send the best and the brightest. You sent the adequate and the quiet, and they went off and they did an OK job.” The difference now is that expatriates are more often being chosen from high-potential lists and told that accepting the transfer is a wise career move. Expats are recognizing that the experience abroad will translate into opportunities when they return to the U.S., either with the sending company, or with another organization.

Take this one step further, and you have a few globally minded companies that make it a matter of formal policy that senior executives are chosen exclusively from among those with international experience. In an environment like this, you’re likely to have more than the usual number of interested candidates, so you may not need to employ the traditional balance sheet program. Part of the incentive to relocate is the perceived value of the experience. If your business objectives have evolved to this level, you should also consider a destination pricing system, which is not necessarily less expensive, but can be.

If your expats are developing management skills or are charged with transferring the corporate vision, you have a different set of circumstances on your hands. To begin with, it’s likely that companies with these types of assignments have made a commitment to build a business that isn’t just international, but global. This means that global competition is increasingly significant and corporate objectives include placing more emphasis on growing the company outside the home country than inside.

Companies like this send people all over the world so that executives and managers can learn about foreign markets. These situations certainly challenge the balance sheet. As Tilghman explains, “If the purpose is for you to go to Asia and really understand Asia, then maybe I don’t want to put you in a position where all you’re doing is visiting Asia. The balance sheet [encourages] you to live more like a visitor.”

A point in favor of a host-based or hybrid system with these types of assignments is, again, the heightened level of interest among candidates, especially Generation Xers and other recent college graduates. Director Anders Halden, of the New York City office of Geneva-based Corporate Resources Group, says: “These people are at an age at which they’re not yet bogged down with mortgages, they’re not married, and they haven’t had kids. So it’s much easier to move them around.” Some of these potential expats recognize the value of the experience and take the initiative by volunteering. When the interest is keen, why not go with the least expensive option? You might even consider filling a slot with a host-based expat that you had intended to fill with a local-based employee.

And what happens when the company isn’t really going global, even though the president might think so? This is probably the case in many American organizations. Halden elaborates: “Say you have a manufacturing facility in Kentucky, and you want to send people overseas to help sell your widgets. They’re going to train local people to sell the widgets, and then they’re going to come home. That’s not a global mindset, so forget about a destination kind of package. The less disruptive way is to use the balance sheet in that case.”

Pay close attention to the objectives of your current or proposed expat assignments, and use this information to gauge your company’s true global strategy — or at least to determine where it falls in the evolutionary process.

So keep an open mind. Re-evaluate your compensation policy as business objectives change, and strive for cost efficiency by working through the calculations under several different models — because in an era of intense worldwide competition, you can’t afford to send mixed messages to your global workforce.

Global Workforce, September 1998, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 19-26.

Recruiting that first group of local employees for your overseas operation is no small task. Lance Richards knows. “In the startup phase you’re creating a culture,” he says. “You’re building the business. And in some cases like mine, you literally walk into an empty hotel room, turn the lights on and say, ‘Hmmm. Where do you go buy stuff?’”

Richards, now based in Irving, Texas, helped GTE staff 1,400 positions in new locations in 16 cities of China. Whether your recruiting responsibilities are similar or on a smaller scale, the process can be daunting. Fortunately, there are a growing number of resources out there. International search firms, online job boards and contingent staffing companies offer a wide range of services that will help you build a competitive international workforce.

Executive recruiters span the globe.
Several recruiting firms have formed strategic alliances with local search firms around the world. Others have been undergoing the global expansion process just like your business: acquiring local companies or starting up operations in foreign markets. In either case you benefit by tapping into the networks they have been working to build.

MRI is one example. Vince Webb, vice president of international marketing in Cleveland, Ohio, says, “IBM knows how to hire people in France. Many small software companies, however, have never done this before. They were working with us to find talented people here in the U.S., and it was just a natural evolution for us to say, ‘Well, gee, instead of referring them to competitors, can we help them ourselves?’” So MRI formed partnerships with like organizations in Europe and Asia. Now its clients can work with the U.S.-based recruiting firm they’re familiar with and count on it to coordinate searches with overseas companies.

This indirect connection to an established search firm in the location gives you the advantage of having a partner that understands the local customs. Karen Bloomfield, manager of field office marketing for MRI, says, “Many countries have very different employment laws than we have. And there’s a lot of cultural differences that affect your ability to hire in those countries.” She adds, “In China, for example, where there’s a great candidate shortage, that’s extremely important. You can lose viable candidates easily by not knowing the right way to approach them.”

Running into legal difficulties might be the worst case scenario, but obviously another costly problem is hiring the wrong person. And when you have zero experience with a particular culture, a service provider that has been working in the environment for several years can help you guard against this mistake.

Kerry Moynihan, Tysons Corner, Virginia-based vice president of Korn/Ferry International’s advanced technology practice, says this is especially important when hiring local nationals in emerging markets where the talent pool isn’t as well developed as here in the States. “A common error Americans make — we’ve seen it in our own hiring as we’ve opened offices — is we think that just because people speak five or six languages and have a doctorate in a technical discipline such as engineering, then they’re brilliant. But that doesn’t mean they really get it when it comes to business because they just don’t have the training. They don’t have the background.” Coming from a different culture, they aren’t automatically going to understand the ins and outs of Western business practices.

Something else to keep in mind: Looks can be deceiving, because perception is based on cultural biases. Moynihan explains, “Americans want to get things done quickly. They parachute somebody in and get him or her set up. Then if that person is choosing a local [executive], they choose somebody who has nice manners, speaks English well and with whom he or she is immediately comfortable. That usually isn’t the best person for the local marketplace. It may be the guy in the corner who doesn’t look as good and only speaks Arabic or Russian or Czech.” After one or two false starts, the hiring manager learns the lesson. But with a local partner you may have a better chance of making the right choice in the beginning.

Sometimes a service provider or other local contact can warn you that a local hire may not be the way to go. In some parts of Latin America, for example, the labor shortage has driven the cost of local managers as high as the compensation packages of executives two levels above them in the hiring organization. You might learn it’s actually cheaper to send in an expat. It’s valuable advice such as this that you should be seeking from your local contacts.

Resources for recruiting online.
I know what you’re thinking: There must be an online solution. The Web, after all, is a global medium. You’re absolutely right. Other than language barriers, which can be overcome, the Internet has no boundaries.

This is something U.S. businesses advertising domestic jobs have known for some time. Barb Ruess, marketing director for Indianapolis-based E-span says, “People have been posting jobs from all over the world pretty much as long as we’ve been around simply because we draw an audience from everywhere.” She adds, “It’s funny, we’ll even have companies that will post a job opening for here in the States and then will complain because they’re getting so many resumes from people who don’t live here.”

Some companies have started to take advantage of this fact to facilitate the recruiting process for their overseas operations. Ruess explains, “We do have a number of sites — Lotus comes to mind as well as Intel — that have divisions all over the world. And they place openings on their site for all of their positions.”

Of course there are limitations to this strategy — which the Net will outgrow eventually. Bruce Skillings, executive vice president for Career Mosaic in Palo Alto, explains one drawback: “The fact still remains that the Internet is a very popular tool here in the States, but it’s in its very infancy in other parts of the world.” Highly educated technical individuals are the first to plug in, in any culture. Then eventually, as a market matures, the demographics shift to include postings for a wider variety of skill sets, including those of waiters and retail clerks. Rest assured, it won’t be long before things even out. Think how far we’ve already come when, as Skillings reminds us, “The Web is only four years old.”

Of course service providers are looking for ways to make your job easier, so you can expect significant advances in the near future. For example, Career Mosaic is launching country-specific sites all over the world. With sites for Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Singapore, Korea, Japan and Australia, and more to come in the next 12 months, this job board recognizes there are cultural differences between countries, and one site does not fit all.

“We manage a database that’s multilingual. So, if a company wishes to publish in native languages, we can do that,” Skillings explains. But he says many U.S. companies choose to run their ads in English, because they’re searching for fluent English speakers.

Help from contingent staffing service providers.
Another group you’ve worked with in the past on the domestic side and should try turning to for help globally is contingent staffing organizations. Many have had an international presence for years, and some of the U.S.-based firms actually do more business overseas than they do here in the States.

Gary Peck, president of the commercial staffing group of Interim Services Inc. based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, says, “If you go back even as recently as three or four years ago, it was relatively uncommon to have someone in the States say, ‘We know you take care of us in many locations here in America, but we also need some help overseas. Do you know anyone who can help us?’ That’s evolved to the client who says, ‘We need help overseas, and we’d like you to replicate your service model over there.’”

Peck explains companies in Western Europe actually use staffing services with a greater frequency than those in the States. “That’s been true for a while,” he says. “In almost every country — whether it’s easy to hire or fire, or difficult to hire or fire — it’s almost always more expensive to employ because of legislated benefits.”

So in some parts of the world avoiding these costs by contracting workers through a staffing organization is something to consider. This would require you to identify and define core and noncore jobs. Noncore jobs could be manufacturing positions or administrative functions that you would farm out to a service provider, leaving the provider to wrestle with the day-to-day issues including compensation and benefits. Peck says, “By allowing a company like Interim to manage those kinds of jobs, we think we can actually drive higher productivity and higher retention rates.”

In case you were wondering about temp-to-perm as a hiring strategy, Peck explains this isn’t yet a widely practiced service outside of North America. He says, “The European market in particular is three to five years behind the U.S. market in terms of development or sophistication.” Peck continues, “They all use a lot of staff, but how they buy, why they buy and what they’re looking for is reminiscent of the U.S. three or four years ago.” So temp-to-perm and onsite vendoring haven’t yet been embraced. But that may change as more U.S. companies request these services.

Peck adds, “We anticipate significant growth overseas. It’s still a relatively small portion of our revenue. But we continue to see the market there accelerating in its development and following very much of a curve like the U.S. has.”

In cases in which a U.S.-based provider does service the overseas location, you benefit from having a single point of contact and a consistent and familiar way to monitor progress with your recruiting efforts. And that’s something that’s going to be increasingly important to you as your business continues to expand globally.

Global Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 19-23.

Even before the world learned of the nuclear testing a few weeks ago, India has been at center stage in the consciousness of Corporate America. The largest democracy in existence and home of one-sixth of the world’s population, India is an emerging market. Foreign direct investment by U.S. firms is growing, and the Indian labor pool has become a well-regarded source of technical talent in a time when a shortage of skilled labor has dampened recruiting efforts here in the States.

In fact, record low unemployment rates in the United States have inspired American companies to recruit Indian nationals to fill open positions. And many U.S. firms have relocated technical jobs to India. This may be your experience. Or you may simply be interested in learning what to look for when encountering people from another country. Either way, the Indian culture holds some key lessons.

Wide-ranging diversity.
An unrivaled level of diversity exists in India. As Americans we’re fairly sensitive to this issue. But in India it’s more complicated than here in the States.

First there’s the caste system. With four main groups and thousands of subgroups, the caste system still today dictates whether two people may marry and whom a person should socialize with. Although outlawed by the Indian Constitution, the caste system unofficially may lead to uncooperative behavior in the workplace if you’ve asked two people to work together who don’t view themselves as equals. This factor contributes to the trouble some Indian businesses run into with the American management concept of teamwork. Carolyn Ryffel, trainer with Chicago-based Cendant Intercultural, The Bennett Group, says: “I have been told that in the workplace caste issues can be forgotten, but I’m not sure.”

Geographically, religiously and economically, Indians are subdivided into many social groups. The country has 14 official languages and hundreds of unofficial ones. There’s a sense of association among Indians from either the northern part or southern part of the country. Although the majority of the population practices Hinduism, there are also significant numbers of Muslims and Christians. And add to the list the fact that education is highly valued: A person with more education ranks higher than one with less.

So what can you do knowing this? The important thing is to be aware these differences exist. Then learn as much as possible about your Indian partners and employees. Their place in the social hierarchy will color their approach to foreign people and their customs and habits. And if you and your international assignees know what to expect, it will lessen the chance of miscommunication.

Valuing the family and social relationships.
Ann Ferrante, formerly an international HR professional with New York City-based AT&T, has written her Ph.D. dissertation to answer the question: “Are American management practices transferable and can they be implemented in the Indian work context?” In the process of conducting her research, Ferrante found that Indians have two core social values: 1) a close connection to their families and 2) a high regard for their social relationships and status in society. Ferrante says, “Those are absolutely paramount — above and beyond work and the meaning of work.” She explains this is important to keep in mind because it has an impact on what motivates your Indian colleagues.

The result? Indians work to support their families and to improve their status economically and socially. They don’t tend to work to fulfill career goals, to meet corporate objectives or for personal recognition. This can render pay-for-performance management strategies ineffective.

Whatever will be, will be.
Perhaps one of the fundamental differences between the Indian and American cultures is our two perspectives on the issue of control. As Americans we have a tendency to believe that we can make anything happen — including the American dream — if we work hard enough. We install air conditioners to control temperature. We build dams to control water. We design our own career tracks and manage our progress. We believe we can fix things, solve problems and beat impossible odds.

But Indians have a different outlook. The influence of the Hindu and Muslim religions gives them what some might consider a fatalistic perspective. Ryffel gives an example. If you’re an Indian, “you can commit to a social event — you can commit to a deadline — but always in the back of your mind is the thought that it’ll be nice if it happens, but I can’t totally control this.”

The result may be what Americans would see as a lack of initiative when it comes to wrapping up the final details of a project. Ferrante says you may see that your Indian colleagues are eager to dive in and pull together the first 80 percent of a job. But then when it comes to handling the straggling details, they may view them as unpredictable variables not worth worrying about. This outlook can make cultures that tend to drive to closure a bit crazy.

A high-context culture.
Differences in communication styles can be tricky, even when you recognize them. Consider critical feedback. You’ve heard of the sandwich approach? This is the Western way of delivering bad news: first a compliment, then the critical feedback, then another positive statement. Compared to some cultures this is a fairly indirect strategy.

But Indians prefer a far more indirect approach. This means your Indian colleagues are likely to deliver criticism in a form too subtle for Americans to notice. And in the case of a serious matter, they may involve a third party in order to protect the relationship between the giver and receiver. Not surprisingly, delivering criticism is likely to be a more lengthy process than your expats are used to.

Overall these differences may sound exaggerated if you have experience working with Indians who have been educated in one of India’s business schools where Western management practices are part of the curriculum. But it’s likely that even then you’ll observe signs of cultural variances.

And remember: Americans derive a good deal of their self-identity from their jobs. So the last thing you want to do is send a team of American assignees planning to be successful with the same programs that won them praise in the States. It could demotivate everyone involved. Setting expectations through cross-cultural training — on both sides of the ocean — will ensure positive results.

Global Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp.10-11.

The success of your entire overseas venture may rest in the hands of one expatriate employee and his or her family. So how do you make sure you send the candidate most likely to live up to the challenge? This was the question on the minds of three readers who recently posted discussion threads on the topic in the Global HR Forumon Workforce Online. Responding to their inquiries, we asked an authority on the subject to share her perspective. Here she outlines a strategic approach to expatriate selection. She includes an overview of how assessment tools can aid the process.

Dr. Paula Caligiuri from Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, researcher on the topic of managing global assignees, says:
Selecting global assignees is both a critical and frustrating topic for global HR professionals. Most human resources professionals agree that not all employees sent on global assignments will succeed. Some will flourish, while others, unfortunately, will fail. Seasoned global HR professionals may pride themselves on the fact that they can predict the outcome of an assignment — after just a few interactions with a prospective assignee. They have developed the sixth sense for selecting global assignees.

Despite the sixth sense that these HR professionals may have, the unfortunate reality is that most are unable to stop a risky global assignment from moving forward. Frequently, an assignee is chosen within the business unit based only on the person’s technical or managerial skills. HR has little involvement, except to process the appropriate paperwork. This typical scenario is both myopic and deleterious for organizations valuing the strategic management of their human talent worldwide.

Appropriately, this scenario is beginning to change in many multinational organizations as global HR is becoming more integrated into the overall global business strategy. In fact, research suggests that your involvement in the global assignment process is related to better bottom line success. As a function, global HR is becoming more involved in the strategy and practice of managing the global assignment process.

Many global human resources professionals have started their strategic roles with improvements on the global assignee selection process. The process outlined below is a description of what global HR professionals in these strategic multinational organizations are doing to select their international assignees.

The most effective process for selecting global assignees involves four distinct phases:

1. Self-selection
2. Creating a candidate pool
3. Technical skills assessment
4. Making a mutual decision.

Phase One: Allow for self-selection.
Employees who may be on the track for a future global assignment should begin the decision-making process about a year or more before a position becomes available. (The way companies identify this group will vary.) In this self-selection phase, employees introspectively question whether they are right for a global assignment, if their spouses and children would be interested in relocating internationally, if this is the best time for them professionally, and so on.

The greatest criticism of self-selection is that candidates and their spouses will not be honest. I have found this criticism is unfounded given that most people are very honest with themselves — if they know that the information is private and confidential. People would rather learn for themselves that they may not have what it takes for a global assignment, rather than go through formal company-initiated testing — a process they are likely to fake to save themselves the embarrassment of failing the test.

Given that the consequences of being unsuccessful on a global assignment are high, people will seek out information that helps them predict the likelihood of their success living in another country. During self-selection, your employees and their families can be honest with themselves without fearing negative repercussions from the organization and without the pressure of having to make a quick decision.

Self-selection instruments such as The SAGE (Self-Assessment for Global Endeavors) and The SAGE for Spouses (both by Caligiuri & Associates in Edison, New Jersey) can help employees and their families through the decision-making process. Some organizations, such as Plano, Texas-based EDS, have made a self-selection instrument generally available on their company’s intranet to encourage self-assessment among those who may not have previously considered a global assignment.

Other organizations, such as Wilton, Connecticut-based Deloitte and Touche LLP, give the self-selection instrument to targeted employees. Then human resources is available for follow-up discussion meetings after the employees have taken the instrument. In either case, the purpose is for HR to provide information and assist in the decision-making process — without evaluating the candidates’ potential.

Phase Two: Create a pool of candidates
After the self-selection process, employees should have the option of putting themselves in a candidate pool. You can organize this candidate pool in an electronic database. Each multinational organization may organize the database differently, depending on its staffing needs. Some examples of employee information for the database include: the year the employee is available to go, the languages the employee speaks, the countries the employee prefers and the jobs for which the employee is qualified.

HR, in this phase, creates and manages the database. It’s imperative that you include all possible candidates who may be considered for a global assignment in the database.

Phase Three: Assess candidates’ technical skills
Once the business unit has identified a position, you should scan the database for all possible candidates for a given global assignment. This short list is forwarded to the department requesting the assignment. It’s now the job of the sending manager to assess each candidate on technical and managerial readiness relative to the needs of the assignment.

You can offer guidance in phase three to help the sending manager identify the knowledge, skills, abilities and experience needed to perform a given job. In this phase, the job requirements of the global assignment should be the focus.

If a global assignment is for director of production in China, for example, assess candidates on their records as production managers, not on their cultural skills or competencies to operate in China. (The exception to this would be if a position had been analyzed for the necessary global competencies. It has been my experience that this is done very rarely.

Phase Four: Make a mutual decision.
In this final phase, the sending manager has identified one person as an acceptable candidate based on his or her technical or managerial readiness. You know the candidate family is willing to accept the assignment because it has placed itself in the candidate pool. At this point, an assignee has been tentatively “selected.”

To offer a realistic preview to these tentative global assignees, organizations have matched repatriate families with the selected families. The purpose is for the repatriate families to share experiences and difficulties.

As a caution, the repatriate families doing the previews should be chosen carefully. Find repatriates who had positive experiences but who are also realistic about the challenges of the assignment. If possible, match families with children of similar ages.

An honest discussion between repatriates and future assignees gives the assignees more information and an additional opportunity to deselect if they feel that a global assignment is not right for them. Often, these meetings are encouraging and supportive — strengthening a family’s commitment to the assignment.

Some organizations, such as Brampton, Ontario-based Northern Telecom, conduct a more thorough assessment of the selected assignee and his or her family, in an attempt to ensure their assignees’ success. Some consulting organizations, such as Thornhill, Ontario-based FGI Global Relocation Services, conduct a pre-departure family assessment. The relocating family and a family counselor determine what, if any, accommodations the family may need to be successful in the host country. Then human resources works through the counselor to provide the family any necessary accommodations detected in the assessment process. This is a very proactive strategy.

Post-selection preparation.
Many consulting organizations offer thorough cross-cultural preparation to prospective global assignees and their families. These cultural preparation programs, while falling under the heading of training, sometimes uncover specific cultural concerns. From an assessment standpoint, HR can use this knowledge to prevent a potential problem when the family is on assignment.

In the extreme cases, a family realizes that its decision to accept the assignment was a mistake. Employees may, even this late into the process, deselect. As with Phase One, I recommend that the decision to refuse an assignment in this phase be made by the assignee and not by the organization. Fortunately, for organizations going through the first three phases, a deselection at this stage is a very infrequent occurrence.

In conclusion, there are three themes in this global assignee selection process.

The first is to plant the seed as early as possible. You will get the best possible candidates when you cast a large net and engage individuals’ decision-making processes long before a position becomes available.

The second theme is to involve the family from the very beginning. A global assignment will disrupt the lives of every family member — and each member will influence the assignment positively or negatively.

The third theme is to allow for deselection at every phase. Traditional selection methods simply do not work for global assignments — unless a thorough job analysis is conducted for each assignment.

The decision needs to be mutual among the employee, his or her organization, and his or her family. Organizations should convey to their employees that a global assignment is not right for everyone.

Global Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 28-30.

Can you imagine buying something with a $1 million price tag and then leaving it in plain view in your unlocked car while you run in the store for milk and eggs? Anything could happen. Most folks would consider it worthwhile to protect something so valuable.

Yet it’s a fairly common practice to send expatriate families overseas with little or no preparation for the tremendous transition companies expect them to make. And you’ve heard the statistics: Cultural adaptation trouble is the one of the leading causes of failed assignments. Clearly, international assignees would be better prepared for the cultural adjustment if companies were more consistent about offering predeparture culture and language training. Consider it an insurance policy. With a budget of only 1 percent of your $1 million investment in an expat assignment—or $10,000—you can put together a predeparture orientation program that will do the job.

To help you design this program, or to provide you with some benchmarking standards for your existing program, Global Workforce interviewed a dozen service providers. In the next few pages, you’ll find a summary of their collective wisdom.

Train the whole family.
Experts agree that every family member should be involved in predeparture orientation. It’s true that employees face a good deal of stress as they adjust to the new workplace culture, perhaps struggling with a second language in informal business situations and learning to read their local colleagues during meetings and negotiations. But in many ways they’re sheltered from the local culture. The language of business is often English. The employees are surrounded by co-workers who realize they may need assistance. And for eight or more hours a day, employees have someplace to be and something to do.

On the other hand, spouses and partners rarely are permitted to work in the host country. For starters, this means they have all day long to think about how different things are. They’re also typically the ones who keep the household running. They’re forced to interact with the local culture as they struggle to buy groceries, meet with their children’s teachers and communicate with neighbors.

So it’s imperative that partners participate in the orientation program. Tracy Colquhoun, manager of client communications in the Chicago office of Cendant Intercultural, The Bennett Group, says: “It’s important the employees understand the kinds of difficulties their spouses are going to face. It’s also important for the spouses to have a realistic understanding of what the expectations are going to be of the employee.” Too often, spouses leave for assignments with a vacation mindset, thinking they’ll enjoy seeing more of their husbands and wives than they would usually. Well-prepared spouses understand the opposite is more likely to happen.

Patrick Burns, a trainer with Chicago-based International Orientation Resources, shares another advantage of keeping the employee and spouse together during the training: It gives them an opportunity to talk through their concerns about the assignment with each other. “It’s often very hectic before the move and sometimes people don’t have time to just sit down and discuss what’s happening,” he says.

As you’ve probably heard, children make the adjustment extremely well. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for them. They leave behind friends and relatives—and possibly favorites like french fries. They face new grading systems. And although they may acquire the local language with a flawless accent, they may be embarrassed about their parents who sound like foreigners in front of their classmates.

It’s unlikely an employee is going to be successful on the job with an unhappy family. Worst case, this results in an early return home. Structuring your orientation program to include the partner and children may prevent this.

Conduct the orientation one to two months out.
On average, predeparture cultural orientation programs run one to three days in length, depending on a variety of factors:

• The family’s level of prior international experience
• Whether the focus is country-specific or regional
• The time and money the company is willing to invest.

When asked when is the ideal time to conduct the training, service providers respond unanimously: Don’t wait until the last minute. In the final weeks before the transfer, international assignees are preoccupied with a mound of tasks that absolutely have to happen before the move: selling the house, selling the cars, packing, arranging for elder care and saying good-byes. Sitting quietly in a two-day training session is the last thing they’ll be in the mood for.

So if two weeks out is too late, when is the best time? “As soon as you know they’re headed to another country. You can’t start too soon,” says Chris Roosevelt, director of distance language training for Alta Language Services in Atlanta. Several experts explained that the day the family learns of the transfer, the adjustment phase begins. And any point from that time forward is appropriate because families will be eager to learn more about their destinations.

Karen Hamady, director of client services with Prudential Relocation International in Houston, recommends waiting a bit later. “If it’s too close, they’re harried. If it’s too early, they’ll forget everything.” She adds, “So the ideal time I would say would be anywhere from a month to three weeks before the move.”

But many companies don’t allow enough lead-time to do so. Last-minute decisions result in frantic training schedules, including post-arrival culture programs. Although not ideal, this arrangement is more effective than trying to squeeze in the training during the final days before the transfer.

Language training is an entirely different story. It’s certainly possible to cram in two weeks of immersion training in the month before the transfer, but families would feel better prepared if they had time for a 10- to 12-week program, allowing more opportunity for the material to sink in. Progressive companies recognize this and offer language training to potential expatriates so they can begin preparing far ahead of time.

On the flip side, the shorter immersion schedule can be followed by a continuation program in-country. Service providers offer a range of options for long-distance learning or instruction from local consultants or training centers.

Include key elements during the culture segment.
A family leaving on its first international living experience is going to require more in-depth information than one accepting a second or third assignment. So an important first step is a thorough assessment of the family’s experience. Often conducted via a written survey or a telephone interview, the assessment will help the trainer custom design an appropriate program. Programs usually include key components such as these offered by Boston-based Eaton Consulting Group:

Culture profiles. This element explains the differences and similarities of the home- and host-country cultures.

Cultural adaptation. This section communicates the theory of the culture shock curve, alerting families to the typical time frame during which culture shock hits, describing the symptoms and providing tools to counteract it.

Logistical information. When this piece isn’t already handled by global relocation companies, culture trainers share these types of details: the etiquette of gift giving, whom to call in an emergency and how to write a check.

Application. This section applies the cultural background to the roles employees and partners will assume in the new location. The trainer will pick apart the expat’s job description, for example, identifying the adjustments he or she may need to make to be successful performing a familiar function in the context of the host country.

Joerg Schmitz, director of global management development and training for Princeton, New Jersey-based Training Management Corp., shares an interesting example of the impact of culture on an employee’s job performance. “The U.S. [culture] is extraordinarily task-oriented. Northern Europe is perhaps the closest to the type of task orientation you’ll find in the United States.” He adds, “But about every other country in the world is relationship-oriented.” Clearly it’s important your expats understand this as they struggle to build rapport and gain credibility with business colleagues.

Expect the expat and partner to attend training sessions together. It’s important they experience the same training because they will be each other’s primary support system abroad. Children often attend separate age-appropriate programs focused to their needs.

You’ll see a lot of variety in terms of the backgrounds of those who conduct the training. Generally, a facilitator skilled in training leads the discussion. Then country experts, often natives of the subject country with business backgrounds similar to the expat employee, come in on a consultant basis to contribute their perspectives in a short segment or two. You may also see panels of returned expatriates offering the inside scoop from an American viewpoint. In one case, a vendor even offers a panel of returned children to answer questions from the expat children.

Follow these guidelines for the language segment.
On the language side, you should expect most of the instruction to focus on building conversation skills. There may or may not be some emphasis on grammar, but the service providers agree that in a short time frame, it’s more important to concentrate on speaking.

“Our goal at Berlitz is to train people with enough vocabulary—with the use of about 40 verbs in present, past and future tenses—so they have the basics to be able to ask for a taxi, make their way out of an airport, go shopping, give compliments to their colleagues, and so on,” explains Michael McCallum, national director of business development for Berlitz International Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey. Then families can build on this base in the host country.

One way to get the basics is through an immersion program. If you go this route, keep in mind that experts suggest participants’ ability to absorb the material wanes after four hours of study. Half-day sessions for two or three weeks running works well for most students.

If your employees will begin language training a few months before departure, frequency is still important. Consider sending them in for two or three, two-hour sessions each week.

Ideally, you’ll provide your expat families with 100 to 150 hours of language training. Since it’s unlikely they’ll have enough time to complete this many hours before the transfer, your goal should be to give them a solid start before they relocate. Then you’ll need to make arrangements for ongoing education in-country.

Be prepared for families to opt out of training.
So you’ve designed the perfect orientation program, but families are choosing not to participate. How can this be? A couple of things might be happening. The obvious answer is that families don’t understand the value of the culture information. Maybe they haven’t made the connection between knowing the basics of the host country language and forming relationships with co-workers and customers. So the first thing you need to do is to publicize these benefits. Take a “what’s in it for me?” approach: Market the career-development value of the program to expats and potential expats.

Second, your line managers may not understand the value of the program, and as a result, they may be discouraging assignees from participating in the face of all the work they’re hoping these employees will wrap up before leaving. If you suspect this may be the case, you might want to consider a radical idea: Make the training mandatory. Remove pressure from the expats entirely.

And third, if your organization selects expats and gives them short notice, these employees may feel too rushed to take the time for predeparture training. If this sounds familiar, make yourself aware of the long-distance and in-country training options so you have a back-up plan ready to go.

Make employees aware that language training is always an option, so they can start ahead of the rush when they have “potential expat” status. Pete Simmonds, director of corporate sales for Syracuse Language, based in Syracuse, New York, says: “Several of our clients have asked us: ‘Can you provide us with tools we can use to tell our employees these kinds of language training programs are available?’” In response, Syracuse offers a variety of solutions—e-mails, Web pages and newsletter articles to name a few.

And that’s all there is to it. Your expat families are counting on you to give them the tools and skills they need to adjust successfully. Not only are you saving them from unnecessary frustration and anxiety, but you’re also protecting your company’s $1 million investment. Just think how much better you’ll sleep.

The Dilemma:

Dan is a vice president who has been heralded as a champion of diversity awareness. But you’ve been told he doesn’t carry this sensitive attitude into his personal life. Should you confront Dan about his public image? Or should you let it go assuming the report is untrue—or even if it’s true, dismiss it since he never has acted inappropriately on the job?

I would never confront an employee with an unsubstantiated claim, let alone a vice president. If the claim is true, however, then I would absolutely confront him. If you don’t “walk the talk,” then you have no credibility—especially in an area as sensitive as workforce diversity. Eventually, Dan’s behavior will catch up with him and worse yet, his company.
Eric Burfeind
Manager HRIS and Payroll
Owens & Minor Inc.
Glen Allen, Virginia

There needs to be a line drawn between the workplace and the private lives of employees. Neither corporations nor government agencies should play Big Brother and legislate whom employees should socialize with outside work.

As long as Dan practices and preaches diversity in the workplace and is sensitive to diversity in handling work issues, problems and policies, then I see no need to discuss with Dan his private life and social interactions. Many individuals choose to live in neighborhoods that reflect their own political and religious beliefs, worship with others similar to them, select friends from groups who share interests and plan their social activities with relatives and people from their communities and schools.
Sherry Ann Kavaler
Director of Personnel
Fire Department of New York City
New York, New York

Having been told something doesn’t make it necessarily so. Talk to Dan. Let him know what’s being said and see if this is a perception problem rather than one of cognitive dissonance. Don’t see this as a disciplinary issue so much as one of fairness to Dan and the company.
Philip R. Fenimore
Labor Relations Administrator
Delaware Department of
Transportation (DelDOT)
Dover, Delaware

First it’s critical to obtain the facts. The only person who has the facts is Dan. Therefore, his supervisor must sit down and discuss what he or she has heard and ascertain if it’s valid. I suggest taking the following steps.

Explain to Dan what you’ve heard and why it concerns you. Ask for and listen openly to Dan’s explanation. If he admits to this divergence of attitude, ask him to explain how he plans to continue with his current responsibilities and maintain credibility. Present to Dan several options. 1) Suggest he develop a plan to change off-the-job attitudes to match his behavior on the job. 2) Suggest a reassignment. 3) Suggest resignation may be appropriate. Then ask for Dan’s suggestions.

Assuming the option selected is for Dan to change his behavior, then agree on the actions to be taken by each of you and set follow-up dates to review progress. The worst thing to do is to ignore this situation.
John A. (Jack) Tirrell
Founder & President
The Jethro Consultancy
Tucson, Arizona

It’s a poor manager, especially an HR manager, who isn’t willing to communicate openly with all levels of staff. The situation definitely needs to be discussed with Dan. If nothing else, Dan needs to be aware that there might be situations that he needs to look into regarding his public image or the fact that someone isn’t happy with him.

It’s usual that employers limit their interest to an employee’s actions and performance at the worksite. I don’t believe, however, that any of us would continue to employ a truck driver whom we’ve learned has DUIs (citations for driving under the influence) off the job. Therefore, it might be a hard situation to employ an individual responsible for diversity in the workplace, who had a reputation as a racist off the job.
Max Wagoner
Professional HR Generalist
Cypress, California

A VP can’t continue to function effectively if he or she demonstrates publicly known behaviors off the job that contradict the cause he or she champions at work. The advocate’s credibility is compromised, as is the cause. Ultimately, Dan must be advised that others have reported his contrary behavior and you’re concerned about his continued effectiveness. The question then is whether the contrary behavior is true. If it is, he can’t effectively continue in his current role. If the reports aren’t true, a strategy to counter the false information should be implemented.
Calvin S. Crawford
Vice President of HR
US Assist®
Bethesda, Maryland

Workforce, May 1997, Vol. 76, No. 5, pp. 105-106.

Staggering numbers point to the fact that American multinational corporations are spending millions of dollars to place expatriate employees in overseas assignments only to see their investments walk out the door—literally.

According to the report “Managing Expatriates’ Return,” published last year by The Conference Board based in New York City, two-thirds of the HR expatriate managers who responded said their expats cost three or more times their domestic salaries. Many experts estimate that number to be as high as $250,000 a year, or $1 million to send an expatriate family overseas on a four-year assignment.

Now consider these statistics: Repatriated managers in U.S. firms leave their companies at twice the rate of domestic managers without international experience. Another study cited in the Conference Board report shows that 20 percent of repat managers leave their companies within one year after returning from overseas assignments—and as high as 50 percent leave within the first three years.

It’s impossible to know the opportunity cost to these organizations of losing their repatriates’ global experience. But the good news is it’s not hard to take the first steps in addressing the problem. Global Workforce assembled the following round table of experts to discuss the key issues.

• Steve Shephard is a senior member of the technical staff for Colchester, Vermont-based Hill Associates, a telecommunications education and consulting firm. He is also the author of “Across the Great Divide: Managing Cross-cultural Transition” due to be released this spring.
• Carol Jones is the regional director of international human resources for Deloitte & Touche LLP in St. Louis. Until February she was with St. Louis-based Monsanto, working with approximately 100 assignees to and from the United States.
• Michael Tucker is the president of Tucker International, a cross-cultural consulting firm based in Boulder, Colorado. He is an organizational psychologist with more than 30 years’ experience working with individuals and companies to help them succeed internationally.
• Kevin Jeffries is the director of international HR for SBC Communications Inc. in San Antonio, Texas. SBC has maintained international operations since 1990 and currently has approximately 70 American expatriates in Chile, China, France, Korea, Mexico and South Africa.
• Ann Tagawa is a trainer and consultant for Prudential Relocation Intercultural Services in Boulder, Colorado. She has worked for 10 years in the areas of needs assessment and design and delivery of cross-cultural training programs.
• Martin Bennett is the director of training and consulting services for Bennett Associates, a Chicago-based intercultural training management firm. He has more than 22 years of experience in the field of cross-cultural education and training.

Throughout the round-table discussion, several themes emerged as key strategies for implementing a successful repatriation. It’s clear that HR must work closely with line managers and expatriates throughout the term of the assignment to implement programs and strategies that will safeguard the assignment. It begins with managing expectations and it ends with creating a receptive, globally minded environment to which your expats can return.

As Steve Shephard of Hill Associates pointed out: “Repatriation begins at the time you put your name in the hat to go overseas.” So our conversation started there.

Manage expectations with a repatriation agreement.
The most simple lesson this round table brought forth is that HR can head off a slew of problems by doing one thing: making sure everyone involved has realistic expectations about certain key issues. Can such an obvious idea really be a standard problem? Absolutely.

In general terms, expats are sent overseas to do one of three things: “fight fires,” develop their management skills or satisfy a job-rotation requirement. The majority of assignments are firefighting missions that call for immediate attention. In such cases line managers and HR are happy to find an appropriately skilled person who has a profile indicating he or she will adapt well in another culture. There’s little thought given to anything beyond the short term.

If you can get the key people involved—the line manager, the would-be expat and yourself—to talk through long-term expectations, you’ll improve your odds of a successful repatriation. Carol Jones of Deloitte & Touche LLP explained: “We encourage our assignees to sit down with the people who’ve asked them to go on assignment [to ask questions like:] ‘Why am I going? Am I supposed to go out there to fix this technology problem in Japan? Or am I supposed to learn everything I can about the Japanese way of doing business because I need this for managing my next assignment?’”

Simply put, expats need to know why they’re going to a foreign post. It makes a difference if it’s simply a functional assignment and not meant to be an opportunity to develop management skills. If they mistakenly believe it’s the latter, of course they’ll be disappointed when they return to a lateral position years later.

Michael Tucker of Tucker International added that expats these days are often very direct about asking what the company will offer them when they return: “[Expats ask:] ‘What are your plans for me, assuming I do well and this works out?’ And there should be a pretty darn good answer to that. There can’t be a guarantee, but there should be an international/domestic career-planning process with options laid out and requirements set so you can tell the person: ‘These are the things you need to do to be continually seen as an attractive person and to get the best assignments after this,’” Tucker said.

Of course, with organizational change, it’s tough to predict what the company’s hiring needs will be several years down the road. But today’s international assignees are going to expect you to try: “I think most HR people would say that employees just aren’t accepting the job anymore unless they’re given some sort of assurance that at the end of the assignment, there’s a job for them somewhere in the 50 states,” Tucker said.

Once you’ve had a conversation, put what was discussed in writing. Create a repatriation agreement outlining the expectations of each party. Shephard shared his suggestions for what should be included in a repat agreement: information about compensation, transportation, schools, the domestic residence, in-country support and placement following repatriation.

Money matters also are bound to become a big issue for returned families if they come home with unrealistic expectations. According to Ann Tagawa of Prudential Relocation Intercultural Services, expats experience approximately a 30 percent decrease in salary after losing their expat bonus. She said: “They lose all the perks like their housing allowance, their children’s tuition, the [club memberships]. Someone once described it like being Cinderella and midnight has struck: They’re stripped of all these things.”

At the same time, expats are struggling with a significant number of one-time expenses, such as a house and new cars. Tagawa added: “Companies can alleviate some of this by providing financial counseling for their expats before they expatriate. Then when they return, [companies] can provide tax counseling and financial planning to help ease this process, as well. Almost [all expats are] going to have to go through some [financial] loss unless they’ve been saving like crazy while they were overseas.”

Carry career planning throughout the assignment.
Before the employee accepts the assignment, he or she wants to know that it fits logically into his or her career path and that the company will value the experience. Up-front discussions and a repatriation agreement may have allayed any fears at the outset, but once expatriates are overseas and they haven’t heard any ongoing discussion of their career advancement, they’re likely to begin worrying. “There’s always that issue of being out of sight, out of mind; and that’s the most difficult thing to overcome. I think every company struggles with it,” Kevin Jeffries of SBC Communications explained.

According to our experts, career anxiety is an early symptom of repatriation. It often sets in long before the employee returns home. And with reason—according to a study by the Conference Board, 60 percent of respondents reported that fewer than 25 percent of their expats know what their home-office position will be as close as four months before their return.

There’s another dynamic that makes the situation different from domestic career planning. Martin Bennett of Bennett Associates explained that international assignments tend to create an attitude of dependency in expats since so many details of their lives are handled by their companies while they’re abroad. This often carries over into their career-development plans. “If a person’s not working on their own career advancement as they would if they were in their home environment, then they’ll quickly find out that companies aren’t necessarily going to have a position for them.”

So what can you do? Create opportunities for expats to manage their career development themselves. Several panelists stressed the importance of sharing information about available positions worldwide. Provide home leaves so expats can check in with business contacts at the corporate office. Establish a resource center that expats can call on a regular basis throughout the last year of their assignment. “We have our Staffing Center here [in the States] that’s responsible for staffing throughout our whole company. And we have specific individuals who have responsibility for our international folks, both on the expatriation side and the repatriation side,” Jeffries explained. “They know [what’s available] and they know the skill sets of the people whom they’re trying to place.”

Even if your expats have taken a proactive approach to their career planning, they’re still going to need you to keep them informed. Bennett said that he has worked with repats who were stunned to learn some things that their peers had known far in advance. “We saw many angry people in repatriation because No. 1, they didn’t understand that when a company downsized people were going to be asked to leave. They hadn’t had all the warnings that their colleagues [at home] had who are now situated very well in other companies,” he said.

It’s important to challenge your expats to maintain relationships with several of their colleagues to help them monitor organizational changes. Providing them access to a corporate intranet and an Internet e-mail account was suggested. Some companies organize regular visits from home-office personnel. But the favorite idea among our round-table participants was establishing expatriate/mentor partnerships.

“The most successful program I’ve found is AT&T’s HR International,” Shephard said. He described the program: “Every employee sent overseas has a person who’s responsible for their well-being and is two levels above them in the corporation. That person is tasked with ensuring that the offshore employee is kept in the loop and comes home periodically for meetings and just to hang around the office and be seen.”

Tagawa explained a common oversight in such a mentoring arrangement: “One problem with reorganization and personnel changes is the person who’s assigned as a mentor and knows what that expat’s going to be doing may not even be with the company four or five years from now. So it’s the kind of thing that if it’s offered to the expat, and there are changes like that, then management needs to put someone else into that position to continue the process and not leave the expat just dangling out there.”

Prepare repats for reverse culture shock.
After career planning, our expert panel cited handling the cultural transition as the next difficult challenge. When our conversation turned to culture shock, Jones summed it up, “I think the most difficult adjustment is that they don’t expect to have to adjust.”

Shephard, having experienced repatriation and reverse culture shock firsthand after five years in Spain as a teenager, described the experience of an expat: “You go [overseas] and although, yes it’s different, you’re prepared for it, so the transition is somewhat manageable. Now, in the course of your four-year tour, you’ve learned new languages; you’ve learned to operate in a multicultural and multinational environment; you know how to do business with people from different cultures; you’ve adapted to a set of skills that you never had before. You’ve had a big office and a car with a driver. You’ve lived in a huge house. And now you’re going home.

“Well, this is when the problem starts to happen,” Shephard continued. “Your company typically treats your return as an [evacuation]—because how hard could it be? You’re coming home. But point of fact, [where you came from] is now home, and as a consequence, your return to your passport country is just like another foreign assignment.”

Shephard described what our experts said was a common experience of repats when they’re faced with friends and family members asking about their time overseas: “Their eyes glaze over for the first 10 seconds because they don’t have a clue what you’ve talking about or they brand you a braggart because: ‘All he ever talks about is the time when he was in Abu Dhabi. Well, who cares about that?’ But in fact that’s all you have to talk about.” This is a painful experience that often causes the returnees to migrate to the social sidelines.

You might be surprised by the type of person who has the most difficult time with this cultural adjustment. Tucker explained: “We find that those who adapt most completely to living and working in another culture are the ones who have the toughest time coming back again. We think that it’s because their lives have changed so much… Their values have changed, their lifestyles have changed and so readjusting back to the home environment is really hard for them.”

That begs the question: Would you be better off selecting a person less-likely to adapt well? Tucker responded: “[No,] but it’s even more important to do training on the other end—and to help people remember how they adapted to the other culture and pull out all those skills and attitudes and apply them back in their home country.”

Other than planning a debriefing session in the form of a traditional intercultural training program, what can you do to help them cope? And what are the issues you should be prepared to deal with? To start off, you should identify whether any of your expats are likely to experience more trouble than average and expect to give those individuals more attention during their adjustment period. Younger expats who’ve embraced the culture completely (older people have more experience adjusting to life’s transitions), a spouse planning to re-enter the workforce and children are going to need your support more than the others; although it’s likely that every repatriate, to some degree, will suffer some discomfort.

Also, the members of our round table suggested you make a commitment to help your expatriates start the readjustment process before they return. “Give at least six months’ notice to the repat family that they’re going to be coming back home. That’s really important because it gives them a chance to reach closure on the assignment, say their goodbyes, finish their projects, complete the work that’s under way and try to tie up all the lose ends,” Tagawa said.

Several intercultural service providers have programs to incorporate the adjustment period into the last year of the overseas assignment. Tucker explained his company’s program: “We like the employee and the spouse to complete [our “Repatriation Planning Guide”] several months before they come back. It starts them thinking about the international assignment, summarizing how they’ve learned and changed, and preparing them for the repatriation process… [When they return] we help them focus on some of those issues they’ve already identified. We like to wait and do the training a few months after they’ve come back, so they’ve experienced a lot of the repatriation difficulties.”

Cultivate a global mindset in your home office.
Let’s say you do everything right up until this step. You defined expectations upfront; you established ways for expats to manage their career development and stay connected to the home office; you acknowledged the difficult cultural conflicts your repats would be experiencing; and you implemented methods to help them with the transition. Even so, your repat program isn’t in the clear. It has yet to face its toughest challenge: incorporating your repats into their new work environments.

Shephard described the situation from the assignees’ perspective: “[Repats] want to use their new-found skills. They feel empowered. They feel special. They feel like they’ve done something good for the company, and they have. … But what happens is HR and line management don’t understand this since they haven’t been through it, so they put [the repats] in cubicles and they bring their salaries back down to where they’re supposed to be in the domestic environment.” Then, doing what feels like mundane work and using none of their newly acquired skills, some of the repats quickly grow dissatisfied. Shephard continued: “I now have interviewed hundreds of people. I’ve seen the same cycle over and over again, and it works like this: They get bored; they get frustrated; they get angry; and they leave.”

At this stage, more than any other, our experts advised handling repats with care. It’s not difficult to show your repatriates that the company values their international experience—so long as your company actually does. Members of the round table suggested holding a homecoming reception. They also suggested asking the repat to give a presentation to key executives or present his or her findings in a report. The repat could be invited to participate on a global task force, or could be encouraged to contribute his or her international perspective during regular meetings.

If your company is committed to developing a global business, making repats feel valued will be a simple task. Managers won’t forget to use their repats as internal resources and will look for ways to make use of their global competencies. If this isn’t the case, you have a bigger job at hand. You’ll first need to work at establishing a corporate value that embraces the idea of transforming your company into a global learning organization.

It makes sense that if your repats feel the organization isn’t receptive to their perspectives, then they’ll soon become reluctant to contribute. Jones explained the situation at Monsanto: “The hard part is to get the employees to go through the debriefing because they feel somewhat hesitant to showcase their knowledge [in this] organization that they’re trying to fit into. So we’re trying to get upper management to send the message that employees are going on assignment, that it’s an investment, and that the company wants a return on the investment and expects an acquisition of knowledge while they’re out and a transference of knowledge when they come home.”

The intercultural training offered a few months after arrival in the home country will be of use in this area too. As our experts said, trainers can help the employees learn to recognize some of the skills they developed. And the counselors may help the repat find a new position within the organization that will make use of these skills.

So why aren’t companies offering repatriation assistance more consistently? Tucker said: “For many years, we’ve had the lip service of people who say they want to do repatriation training, but that seems to be the last place they put their money. … More are doing it now than before, but it’s still the poor stepchild of the intercultural services.”

Tucker said that the reason may have to do with trying to determine whose budget would cover the expenses. He added that some of the problem may be that HR and the line managers simply don’t understand the importance of the issue. Tucker explained: “[They may be thinking] ‘What’s the problem? I mean, this is our country, after all, and we don’t have a problem.’”

Even so, Tucker believes companies recognize that retention is a challenge: “I think many companies would say the loss of talent upon repatriation is a bigger problem today than overseas failures.” And at a million dollars a shot, most of us would agree that it’s an issue worth reevaluating.

It’s been known to happen. Job applicants sometimes embellish the truth. And in over 20 years of executive recruiting, Chip McCreary, president of Dallas-based Austin*McGregor International has heard everything. Five key areas he suggests you closely watch follow.

1. Compensation. For applicants who don’t work for public companies at which executive pay is a matter of public record, compensation is the No. 1 embellishment. Some executives exaggerate salary and bonus and stock-option programs by over 100 percent.

2. Tenure. On average, senior-level executives spend between four and seven years with the same employer. It’s not uncommon for executives who’ve spent more than 10 years with one organization to indicate they’ve spent less time with the firm. The rationale is that an overly long stay with one company reveals a lack of initiative and drive. Other executives with less tenure may exaggerate the time they’ve spent with a firm in order to emphasize their staying power.

3. Reasons for leaving. Leaving a company is no disgrace. But lying about why one left may be. Everyone has his or her reasons for leaving a situation that isn’t working out. It’s become practically a rite of passage in recent years for executives to be let go when a company is acquired. Yet some very capable executives refuse to admit being laid off.

4. Age. Gray hair used to be obligatory for any senior executive. Now, many applicants over 50 tend to mask their age or simply refuse to admit they’ve crossed into their sixth decade. Although it’s illegal to discriminate against job applicants based on their age, most employers will draw conclusions about an applicant’s age through deduction (generally by checking the year they graduated from college).

5. Hierarchy. Executives commonly will exaggerate their position on the organizational chart. One executive McCreary worked with stated that he reported directly to the CEO, when in reality he reported to the CEO only on special projects. As a vice president of marketing, he reported to the senior vice president. Though they fall more in the category of fibs than outright lies, such exaggerations tend to surface during interviews and reflect poorly on applicants.

Workforce, March 1997, Vol. 76, No. 3, p. 21.

The Dilemma:
You’ve had success with local telecommuters. Now, Scott—an employee moving across country because of his spouse’s job relocation—has asked to stay on as a long-distance telecommuter. The trouble is you aren’t sure Scott has the self-discipline to perform independently. Since you’ve already set the precedent of offering telecommuting arrangements, how do you respond to his request?

Readers Respond:
Scott’s self-discipline is the key issue here. An employee who performs at an average level in the work environment may blossom as a telecommuter. I would talk to Scott’s managers to see what their perceptions are. I would talk to Scott to let him know of the existing concerns. Then I would suggest allowing Scott to perform as a telecommuter, letting him know he’ll be monitored for deadlines, follow-up and communication with his supervisor for the first three months. With increased awareness on both sides, this should turn out to be a mutually beneficial work relationship.
Lissa Muse
HR Manager
National TechTeam
Dallas, Texas

What’s offered to some should be offered to all. An employee should be dealt with just as if he or she is a business partner, a customer or a vendor. Professionalism and respect need to be emphasized. An employee should be given just as much of an opportunity as a new hire. Outline the expectations and evaluate performance regularly. If the self-discipline problem is evident at the time of review, let Scott know and schedule another review. Always allow people to show you their best effort.
Eric Ehrhardt
HR Director
Imperial Food Services Inc.
South Elgin, Illinois

Before Scott moves across country, allow him—on a trial basis—to work as a full-time telecommuter from his current (local) home. Inform him upfront that this trial basis doesn’t constitute approval. Conduct regular performance evaluations throughout the trial period. If he doesn’t perform up to the established standards, you have the basis to deny his request. If he does perform well, grant his request consistent with the precedent at your company.

Even if he’s approved, continue to evaluate his performance to be sure the trial period wasn’t just a show to get quick approval. This practice subsequently should be consistent with all employees with similar requests, even the ones whose self-discipline isn’t questionable.
Mavis Smith
Human Resource Assistant
Kasie Steel Corp.
Dearborn, Michigan

I faced a similar situation. In our case, the employee was key to the organization. As a result, I decided to set up a three-month trial period. During the first month it was critical to keep an open mind as we both needed to work around initial challenges. It turned out that we retained a valuable employee and realized new business opportunities in his geographical region. For us, the bottom line had to be a win-win situation for the company and the employee.
Michael D. Bovaird
Manager of Human Resources
SABRE Canada
North York, Ontario

This situation brings up questions that need to be answered. Telecommuting usually means using fax machines and telephones, as well as the Internet. How much contact does Scott need to have with local clients or vendors? How much need is there to fax documents back and forth? How much will this cost? Offer a trial period if it’s economically feasible. But if the costs involved are more than the value of the option, then Scott will have to look for work in his new locale.
Max Wagoner
Professional HR Generalist
Cypress, California

I would say you don’t necessarily have to offer this option to Scott. But first, look back at the performance of those you have transferred. Consider the performance of Scott currently and also any discussions his manager may have had with him. If his performance is only so-so, but no one ever brought it up, then you should offer the option and monitor his performance diligently (and monitor everyone else’s equally). If Scott has had performance discussions recently, then I wouldn’t offer the transfer (assuming those who have transferred had good performance). I’d explain to him that to qualify for a transfer, performance must be satisfactory.

Second, you should set some standards for a person to qualify for this arrangement. For instance, performance must be at X level. This should save this type of headache in the future. And, of course, communicate, so employees understand the standard.
Brook A. Carlon
HR Programs Manager
Technology Service Solutions
Austin, Texas