Human Resources Expatriation And Repatriation

Human Resources deals with people and this is, basically, why expatriation policies fail, because they are intrinsically connected to human condition.

Nothing is sure when dealing with people; this is why the companies must be aware of every factor potentially capable of creating a problem. These factors mainly concern the enterprise itself; the country to which it is sending the expatriate and its peculiarities; and the candidate and his circumstances.

No expatriation policy is perfect because no human person is, either. However, a conscientious preparation of the assignment, a continuous communication and exchange of feedback during its execution and a good reintegration of the worker in its natural environment once the assignment has been finished, will help preventing the worst problems which may arise when expatriating an employee. Therefore, the enterprise has the biggest proportion of responsibility in the success or the failure of the project.

These three stages are the ones that I have used in this essay to identify and define the concrete problems which enterprises encounter with their expatriation policies. These stages are overlapped and confused in real life.

PREPARATION

a. Scan of the country of expatriation:

Before starting making business in other countries, the companies study them very deeply, in order to be sure that the adventure will be profitable. However, too often, the enterprises fail to do this scan in relation to the person who will be sent there to work. This creates many problems, being some of the more important:

- Employment and immigration laws of the host country. The company has to be familiarized with the legal environment of the host country and help the expatriate understanding it, because the legal jungle can discourage him, get him lost in bureaucratic proceedings, and even have problems with justice.

Just as an example, some workers have found themselves refused of re-entering the host country after a weekend passed in a neighbour country because their documentation didn’t allow them to do that; or even, in the situation of not having the correct visa (situation more than alike to happen in countries like Thailand, where there are four different types of visas for foreigners).

Most of the big enterprises avoid these problems by contracting specialized companies like ASN, Exfin, or KPMG to deal with legal issues.

- Taxes. There are two big problems for the expatriated in relation with taxes. First, the employee may finish paying more taxes in the host country that what he paid before moving; or even, paying double taxation.

According to KPMG’s Global Assignment- Policies and Practices Survey 2003, 78% of companies (between them NestlÐ"©, Pepsi, Pfizer…) tax equalise their assignees, so they do not pay more or less than they would pay at home.

- Safety. It is the responsibility of the enterprise to assess the potential danger of the countries where it operates and to plan the way to protect its workers.

Examples of companies that have to face this problem in its every day operations are the companies in oil industry, which have workers in Middle East, Russia… Some of these enterprises, as Orica, have contracted KPMG or other companies to manage all the staff related to expatriation, including security bulletins every week in order to have a guarantee that the security of the expatriates will be assured.

b. Scan of the candidate and his particularities

A detailed candidate selection can avoid to the enterprise and the worker thousands of problems like loss of motivation, underperformance, abandon of the assignment, and even abandon of the company. Some of the most common problematic points are:

- Individual candidate. More often than desirable, the enterprises select their expatriates only based on their technical competences and their performance. This mistake shows us that some enterprises don’t realize the complexity of moving to another country, dismantling in most of the cases yours and your family life, and rebuilding it in an unknown place.

To be successful in this process, a lot of other capabilities are needed, capabilities which the company must check if it wants the expatriation to be successful: personality and social capabilities of the candidate, attitude, openmindness, motivation, adaptability to change, intercultural skills, previous international experiences…

- Family. The scan of the candidate’s family is sometimes even more important as the scan of the candidate himself.

One of the biggest troubles the enterprise may meet is the inadaptability of the expatriate’s partner. Even if the enterprises make everything possible to make sure the expatriate will fit and find his place in the new country, sometimes they forget their family, ignoring the crucial importance of the satisfaction of the later in the worker’s satisfaction. The partner may be unable to find social relations, suffer cultural shock, loneliness, the absence of the family and friends, difficulties in finding other expatriates…

Many enterprises prevent this situation by checking the partner during the process of the candidate’s selection. Once the candidate has been decided, these enterprises get also involved in facilitating the social contacts and the cultural training needed to make things easier to the expatriate’s partner.

Besides, there is the problem of the partners’ career disruption. If the enterprise doesn’t take into account the sacrifice of the partner’s job and salary when moving a worker outside, the assignment is almost condemned to fail.

Many enterprises have built a network of contacts to make the partner’s job search easier; some of them also facilitate all the bureaucratic staff in order to get a working permission; others do even give an employ to the partner.

But the reality is that there are too few enterprises which have realized of the importance of doing this. FOCUS, a resource centre for expatriates, surveyed its London members and found out that only 11 percent of the enterprises offered career support to the trailing partner.

However, some companies have taken the right way and, for example, HP takes the fact of loosing one of the salaries into account when negotiating the contract of the expatriate; or Toyota funds the partner’s visa application for Japan, which is extremely hard to get, and also provides resume and job hunting services for the working partner.

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