HOW TO MANAGE AND INTEGRATE GLOBAL HR PRACTICES

SUBMITTED BY: Khadija Tahir (7554) Nida Khan (7525) Parishey Agha (7059) Umair Siddiqui (7056) Shamroze Khan (7771)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................. 3 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 4 STRATEGY LINKAGE AND GLOBALIZATION ................................................................................................... 4 Practices to Manage HR Global Practices ................................................................................................. 6 GLOBAL RECRUITMENT ................................................................................................................................. 7 Global Employment Branding ................................................................................................................... 9 FUTURE OF GLOBAL WORKPLACE AND HOW CHANGING TIMES ARE AFFECTING IT: ................................ 11 RESEARCH PAPER: THE GLOBALIZATION OF HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES ............................................ 16 Purpose ................................................................................................................................................... 17 General Profile ........................................................................................................................................ 17 HR Priorities ............................................................................................................................................ 17 Consistency of HR Practices .................................................................................................................... 18 Challenges to Consistency ...................................................................................................................... 18 Best Practices .......................................................................................................................................... 18 Creating a Corporate Culture .................................................................................................................. 19 General Challenges for Global HR Function ............................................................................................ 19 International Assignments ...................................................................................................................... 20 The Global Picture ................................................................................................................................... 20

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report is about How to manage and integrate Global HR practices. The report is about different multicultural practices and how different cultures have affected the global HR. Also, how different companies are standardizing their HR practices across the globe. The reports talks about different strategies that can be used to manage and integrate global HR practices and how globalization has affected HR as well. How important is strategy linkage with the global HR practices. The report also has Global Recruitment practices and how they vary from country to country. Next, the report talks about how the future of the global workplace is changing with the help of an article. In the end, a research paper is summarized which is regarding the Globalization of Human Resource practices by Sheila M. Rioux, Paul R. Bernthal and Richard S. Wellins.

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How to manage and integrate global HR practices

INTRODUCTION
This paper outlines the global HR practices practiced worldwide and the steps used in multinational management that makes an organizations working effective. Four global strategies are examined in depth in this report that includes ethno-centric, region-centric, polycentric and geocentric. It is seen that HR practices vary on a global basis. They have sound policies which vary depending on the company and the country social, economic and global factors. It is generally seen that companies that have ethno centric strategies are generally less successful than those companies that follow the remaining three strategies. It is seen that for global policies and practices to be integrated fully into the system a company must manage its recruitment, selection and other staffing decisions well so that responsiveness and alignment can be fully integrated into the system.

STRATEGY LINKAGE AND GLOBALIZATION

Globalization has two main features. Firstly it directly links countries, Secondly it is aligned with different business perspectives. For a company to fully integrate global HR practices it needs to consider the following factors which include areas such as economical, social, political, technology, production and finance. A fully integrated HR policy is that which is fully aligned and well integrated into the system and which considers all facets of business production. Political: Companies need to sharply consider the huge contrast between the major democracies of countries meanwhile also considering their political activity so that practices can be aligned accordingly. Economic: the economy and the situation of the country. Sociological: the immense differences in family size, education, health and other matters among countries. Technology: The changes in technology that also depends upon country to country, it is argued elsewhere in this website that changes in technology have been one of the driving forces for integrating global practices.
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Culture: the differences that exists in the countrys national culture and that which is well documented by researchers. From an HR point of view the companys and the countrys organizational culture needs to be analyzed for globalization to play a prime role. Global management strategies vary immensely in multinational companies. The processes, practices and structures that are designed to implement these strategies also differentiate depending on organization to organization and country to country. Developing and managing global strategies is a difficult task and greatly depends on the impending demands of different multinational corporations, demands often take place as MNCs try to capitalize on their abilities to take action to the host countrys needs while at the same time trying to maintain their global integration process. More often than not it is the subsidiaries that have to act independently and respond to the local countrys demands to integrate the organization systems and practices. In general, the ethnocentric strategy states that companies should capitalize on the parent company so that they can integrate global HR practices and subsidiaries at the cost of local sensitivity. The region-centric and polycentric approaches both allow for local sensitivity with less focus on corporate integration. The geocentric strategy strives to balance both global integration and local sensitivity. In an organizational hierarchy the geo-centric would be the best strategy would be the best strategy as it incorporates on both global integration and local sensitivity. Meanwhile the poly and region centric come in as a close second as they focus on local sensitivity usually at the cost of global integration. The ethno centric strategies focus more on the headquarters control and they dont focus much on global integration nor local responsiveness. The extent to which MNCs want their worldwide employees to fully integrate into the system depends on how the host nationals are socialized into the parent corporate culture. This is experienced through the system strategies and the resource allotment given to the socialization methods which means sending employees abroad to share the respective organizations values. Various human resource management practices greatly depend on the MNCs global management strategy and it is the duty of the HR department then to look closely into HR practices and global management strategies and then align practices and policies accordingly. For example, when appointing a foreign subsidiary several MNCs appoint expatriate employees to fill in a variety of prime positions abroad. When positions in foreign subsidiaries are not staffed in by expatriates they are either filled in by host country nationals. There are some benefits while staffing host nationals as they are familiar with their countrys language, culture, values, laws, rules and regulations. In relation to that there are no relation costs associated with host nationals. Despite these benefits, given on their business strategy many host countries are unwilling to give up bureaucratic control over foreign subsidiaries.

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Practices to Manage HR Global Practices

As HR specialists companies should adopt the following practices into the organization to manage global HR practices. 1. Globalization and its importance in todays market: Companies will become dynamic with extending operations in numerous countries and they are bound to become larger and more global. 2. Aptitude management: Finding talent and people with particular capabilities is also very important and it is important when we talk about business retention and sustainability. According to a study it was found out that 15% countries and companies place great importance in managing global HR practices and finding relevant talents accordingly. most industries experience a wide talent gap, notably for highly capable positions and for next generation of mid and superior leaders. 3. Crossing boundaries and geographies that intensify: Localizing supervision of out of the country operations is the means to form a global outlook that is just as imperative as confined knowledge. Businesses need to find new ways to connect people to each other and to information, both internally and externally. 4. Global employee engagement: Retaining appreciated talent is more essential, but the drivers to retain talent are diverse depending on the category of market. The slit in inventive leadership, executing for pace, and managing collective intelligence must be addressed. Employee rendezvous has suffered; companies are now trying to refurbish selfimportance and conviction. 5. The economic catastrophe and fewer accessible business opportunities generate a high demand on the global HR function to demonstrate greater adaptability. HR will be a central link between corporate headquarters and overseas operations. HR conducts too many initiatives, with middling outcomes. Companies need to reboot their HR function and enhance resources devoted to HR. 6. Economic qualms essentially change motivators that exert a pull on employees There is a cut off between what companies have to offer employees and what employees really value.
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7. Human capital protectionism 8. Global mobility of high-value workers: multinational companies confine new hires and change talented employees from inside their accessible work force.

9. Companies that start off in rising economies will persist to be successful in the global marketplace.

10. Increased claim for HR metrics may bring about a widely accepted set of analytic measures and methods (global standards) : illustrates calculate and estimate the quality and impact of HR practices and the efficiency of the work force. However, globalization is also driving motion toward the use of more metrics with greater cultural compassion. Therefore as HR professionals companies must make sure what really is globalization and what does it really mean to you, the business and the company. Ernst & Young describes globalization in The New Mindset as the level of a countrys integration with the world economy through the exchange of goods and services, movement of capital and finance, movement of labor, exchange of technology and ideas, and cultural integration. Martin Wolf, in why Globalization Works, sums it up more simply as, economic integration across borders through markets. And every person you ask will probably define it a bit differently. Therefore in order to fully integrate HR Practices Company must understand the organizational, cross functional and global boundaries for them to actually move forward in todays competitive market.

GLOBAL RECRUITMENT
In order to have a partly or fully centralized global recruitment model, the company should consider standardized policies and procedures. For example, some companies may need to consider whether to create globally consistent assessment tools. However, while all countries tend to use application forms and interviews, situational tests and assessment centers are more common in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands than in France or Belgium. The company will need to do a comprehensive research on local customs and norms to set policies that can be standardized globally. All hiring that is done needs to be suitable to the culture. Companies often use and customize behavior-based interviews and online screening for global recruiting Organizations may wish to consider the following six factors when creating a global recruitment technology platform. These factors are the following: Factor # 1 Differences in Legislation of Countries
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Countries have different laws and legislations regarding data privacy and applicant rights. Therefore, companies who are recruiting need to analyse the extent to which an online solution will be suitable for countries in which they are hiring. For example, several countries in Europe have their own regulations surrounding data privacy and EEOC compliance. In particular, candidates in Northern Ireland are required by law to provide their religion when applying for a position; in Germany, organizations must secure written authorization from a candidate to retain candidates details (including resumes and professional certificates). Factor # 2 Resistance to Process Standardization by Employees across the Globe Employees often show resistance when asked to adopt a single global standardized process. Because of this organizations should develop and implement a comprehensive change management program to minimize the risk of resistance. Also, they should take into account the political and organizational realities that may harm the global standardization. Factor # 3 Assess the Degree to Which a Company Needs to Present a Global Offer Companies should consider the extent to which they want talent to be able to apply for positions across regions. If this is a high priority, then it will be essential to not only provide candidates with line-of-sight to all opportunities, but also to enable some degree of cross-regional workflow. Factor #4 Determine the Degree of Desired Internal Labor Movement Organizations need to determine the extent to which their employees should be mobile also keeping in mind the opportunities for employees globally. To help facilitate the internal recruiting process the company should firstly consider when the employees should apply for internal positions, how should they apply for internal positions, to what level should the organization source candidates from the internal pool of talent, can employees apply for positions outside their country of residence etc. Factor # 5 Consider the Scalability of Cost in Terms of Diminishing Returns In theory, a global technology platform offers dramatic efficiencies through standardization. In practice, however, each incremental extension of the platform can run the risk of diminishing returns if the size of the recruiting organization falls below a certain point. Research suggests that the right level standardization via a global technology platform will vary by organization. Factor # 6
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Consider the Need for a Bail-Out Cost When Using a Third-Party Vendor Organizations that deploy a third-party vendor to support their global recruiting efforts need to ensure that the potential cost of a providers termination of business does not outweigh the benefits derived from system utilization. Emergency contingency plans should include assessment of the potential cost of bailing out as a result of a providers demise. In evaluating this decision, the companies must do a cost-benefit analysis of the risk of the bailing out of a single system or the risk of having small regional or country-specific providers bailing out.

Global Employment Branding

Companies may improve global employment branding better by studying and understanding the employee preferences in different parts of the world. Offers can be made according to these preferences. Importance of Base Pay and Manager QualityEmployees across all seven geographic regions generally agree that base pay and manager quality are the two most important components of the job offer. Value of Health Care Benefits is Perceived Most DifferentlyThe largest single difference across geographic region is the value placed on health benefits. Employees in North America place significantly more importance on high-quality health benefits as an important element of the job offer then the non-North Americans. Preference of non-North American EmployeesIn general, nonNorth American employees place greater significance on development and work environment; specifically, this includes empowerment, work challenge, recognition, and project responsibility. Council research also revealed that the meaning of a challenging offer changes significantly for employees from different parts of the world. As such, companies have the opportunity to have a positive impact on their global recruitment efforts by tailoring the overall job offer to each region. The table below outlines the most and least important attributes of a job offer by region:

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Recruitment and retention of talent worldwide can be a strategic advantage to a company. While planning how to manage global recruitment the HR should know the following issues:

Who needs a work visa, and when. Types and limitations of temporary visas. H-1Bs, foreign students and transferees. Green cards, labor certification and the quota system. Corporate policy tips and recommendations. Immigration issues and workforce change (RIFs, mergers, restructuring). Immigration compliance (I-9 basics, tips).

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FUTURE OF GLOBAL WORKPLACE AND HOW CHANGING TIMES ARE AFFECTING IT:
The global market for labor is evolving in numerous ways. In urbanized markets, like the United States and Western Europe, executives facade a rapidly aging workforce and high labor costs. Meanwhile, Chinese executives and places like India and the rest of the world face a shortage of qualified candidates as well as the changes associated with the increasing pace of economic growth that makes it troublesome for companies to attract as well as retain their existing base of qualified candidates. Jeffrey A. Joerres, the president and CEO of Manpower since 1999 and its chairman as well since 2001, has a rare vantage point on these and other issues affecting the global workplace. He says that With revenues of nearly $15 billion in 2004, Manpower is the world's secondlargest provider of employment services, placing some two million workers a year into professional, industrial, and office positions with companies in 72 countries. Moreover, since 2003 Manpower's permanent-placement division has doubled in size. Through four acquisitions since 2000 (including the purchase of the permanent-placement operations of India's ABC Consultants, in October 2005), Joerres has guided the expansion of the company's employee-assessment, recruiting, and training services, as well as the addition of outplacement, organizational-consulting, and internal-auditing services (exhibit). In May 2005 Manpower signed an agreement with the Chinese government to provide, among other things, vocational training and Internet-based employee-assessment systems for local employment offices. Following is an extract that is ample to understand the changes in workplace dynamics along with its relevancy to global HR. We have added the quarterly questions as well as Jeff response to it in this regard. The Quarterly: Running Manpower would seem to give you a unique view of global labor markets. What do you observe? Jeff Joerres: The first thing is that major companies are trying to become more agile by using flexible staff. In our top ten global clients, for example, nonregular employees make up about 10 to 25 percent of the workforce. The data from the US Bureau of Labor Statisticsin other words, the US averagesays that the figure is 3 percent. The difference between the two percentages indicates that big companies are ahead of the curve. Midsize companies haven't felt the squeeze yet, and small companies definitely haven't, but it's coming. Big companies aren't using nonregular employees for abatement on their health insurance costs. They're calling us because they need talent and because they can't move fast enough. As the world gets more talent constrained and organizations get more competitive at all levels, you'll see this more frequently.
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When I look ahead, I see the talent crunch creating structural changes in the workforce, and companies that aren't paying attention might find themselves healthy one year and in trouble the nextit will be that dramatic. The focus can't be just on the top 10 percent of your organization; your janitor had better be good and your clerks had better be good because the whole process is different. Companies will need to focus on the whole equilibrium of talent because they're running themselves so lean that if they get a little sand in their gears, the whole organization breaks down. Some leading-edge companies see this, but they're being quiet about it because they don't want to sound any alarm bells. Define non regular temporary staff o Temporary employees are hired to assist employers to meet business demands yet allow the employer to avoid the cost of hiring a regular employee. Sometimes, it is the expectation of the employer that if the temporary employee is successful, the temporary employee will be hired. flexible non regular staff are priority of big organizations 10-25% is total non regular staff in big companies while medium have only 3%. Whereas small companies have just started to feel the shrink The Quarterly: How has the global market for temporary labor changed? Jeff Joerres: For the biggest companies, temporary labor is no longer an incidental concernit's now strategic. Particularly after the downturn in 2001, we saw major companies reevaluate themselves in an effort to become more efficient and more productive. They "leaned out" their entire organizations, thinned their product lines, stopped their nonessential projects, and started expecting more from their people. As they stretched the limits of their people, companies found they were getting by with a leaner organization. Now executives won't go back to the way it wasthey can't, because their companies are publicly traded and investors won't let them. Of course there's still plenty of incidental usage of temporary labor, but it's at smaller companies, and in many cases it's below the radar. However, for the large companies temporary labor is no longer about covering for vacationing administrative assistantsit's about workforce optimization. It's about deciding whether to stay in New Jersey or move to Chennai. The competitive pressures have been reformulated. The Quarterly: What challenges do workers and the companies face in this environment? Jeff Joerres: Think of a Webmaster. As my children would say, "That's yesterday." That was a pretty hot job not so long ago. Now, with the right software you can press a button and create a Web site, so the market for those skills is significantly lower. Today hot jobs turn cold almost as fast as a product's life cycle changes. So if the cycle used to be three years, now it's nine months. Every industry has its own speed of compression, of course, but underneath the compression is a never-ending treadmill of improving your skills, and it's
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quite sobering for people to find themselves on the cold list when 12 months before they were on the hot list. This makes the retraining of employees immensely important. The Quarterly: How have companies fared with their retraining efforts? Jeff Joerres: Too many companies view retraining as window dressing. The largest companies have good training programs, but they don't mandate training, because there isn't time in the day given this lean machine they've created. Companies provide access to training materials but no longer say, "Take four weeks off and go to our training school in Pasadena." Training is offered at night, on weekends, over the lunch hour, and employees are ignoring it. Individuals may choose training if it is tied directly to a stipend, but they haven't embraced training, and they need to. The Quarterly: What's the future of HR departments at a time when some companies are outsourcing that work? Jeff Joerres: Outsourcing the transactional side of HRthings like payroll or administering the 401(k)to someone with the right expertise is probably the best thing a company could do. But outsourcing the things that create the company's culture or the engagement that employees feel with the company would be dangerous and very shortsighted. The new challenge for HR is to move beyond transactions and into areas where HR can bring competitive differentiation. The CEO is asking, "How do I get my employees to feel engaged with my company? How do I make them feel more strongly tied to my company's mission?" And then, "How do I optimize my talent?" This is where HR professionals need to step into the batter's box and make a difference on everything from the in- and outflow of people to how connected people feel to the company. Nobody's solved this yet, and I've talked to people at some very large companies that are really wrestling with it. IBM is around the fringesthe closest to it we've seen. The Quarterly: What is your assessment of the market for skilled labor, including managers, in China and India? Jeff Joerres: China's biggest challenge is line management. You can get 1,000 workers, but who's going to manage them? How do you find a quality assurance manager? There's nothing like that in China. Companies have entered into partnerships with Chinese universities and technology centers, but there's still frustration. Multinationals are spending money and not getting the returns they had hoped for. There are obviously many reasons, but a big reason is that the labor market in China is so active. To make it even more difficult for multinationals, local Chinese companies have gotten into the game. Until about a year ago, you would see a 50 percent disparity in pay between managers working for multinationals and for local Chinese companies. Now Chinese companies say, "Not so fast. I'll pay what they're paying," and the Chinese people, who now have more confidence in
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their own institutions, are willing to work for a local company because they've already got that multinational stripe on their shoulder. So a multinational takes a double hitit doesn't have the talent in China, and when it tries to develop employees, the Chinese companies pull talent out of its organization as if it's a minor-league baseball team. But beyond line management, companies must understand that if they're in China to arbitrage labor, they're going to be very disappointed in the long run. Be there because the market is good, and be prepared to deal with the talent shortage because it is absolutely going to get worse, and the government knows it. In fact, the government passed a law that expands special manufacturing zones beyond the major cities because the flight of workers from agricultural jobs into the cities has created some pretty rough, desperate cities. Multinational companies that were used to setting up on the coast whether it be Guangzhou or Tianjinwill now have to move west. It's a whole different culture, and it will be even harder for companies to find management talent there because they don't know the ropes. The Quarterly: What mistakes do you see companies making with respect to labor when they enter developing markets? Jeff Joerres: The most classic mistakeone that's perpetrated again and againis to start by bringing in an expatriate management team. It's seductive because when you bring in expatriates, communication throughout the organization is right and everything seems to be working fine. Executives make site visits and it all feels right. Then, about three or four years later, the CEO is thinking, "OK, we had this big growth spurt but now we've plateaued." So the CEO puts in new expats and still can't get growth out of the company. If you're going to be in a developing market, you've got to invest in nationalsin your own way and in keeping with your company's culture, of course. It's fine to bring in expatriate teams for a short time to make sure the culture of your company is transferred to the new location, but that's it. Expats simply won't have the local market knowledge that the national managers have. Paradoxically, one reason some companies are using expatriates less frequently now is that the lean machine is at work again. Executives look at their expat bill and say, "Too expensive. I can't keep doing that." They're arriving at the answer in a different way, but I think they're going to be solving a much more systemic problem by not overusing expats. The Quarterly: What lessons has Manpower learned about entering developing markets? Jeff Joerres: The first day we opened in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, in 1997, we opened as a temporary-help company. We had 500 people lined up outside our doors. We assessed them, interviewed them, and put them out to multinationals. And by 12 o'clock that day the companies called and said, "Well, they're no longer tempswe just hired them permanently." We switched to a permanent-placement model pretty soon after that. So when it came to China and, to some extent, India, we made the decision that, at least for now, we don't see temporary staffing as our major role. Instead we find companies permanent
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managers and assess a fee. And the reason is that if we put 1,000 people to work as temporary workers at a dollar an hour and then assess a markup, the math simply doesn't work for us.

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RESEARCH PAPER: THE GLOBALIZATION OF HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES BY SHEILA M. RIOUX, PH.D., PAUL R. BERNTHAL, PH.D., AND RICHARD S. WELLINS, PH.D.

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Purpose
The research is about the changing roles the human resource function in a globally competitive marketplace. It also identifies the challenges of adapting to these roles. The objectives of this study are to: Investigate how domestic and international companies conduct HR practices around the world. Determine the top HR priorities for each organization type. Determine the challenges that organizations face when trying to globalize their HR function and practices. Determine what organizations are doing to institute a consistent corporate culture across all locations/offices.

Responses were gathered from 206 members of DDIs HR Benchmark Group. Two-thirds of the respondent organizations had operations in multiple countries (international); the remaining third operated solely in one country (domestic).

General Profile
The globalization of HR is characterized by increasing levels of decentralization. Half of all international organizations reported having one primary HR department with independent regional HR staff. Many international (37 percent) and domestic (42 percent) companies reported using a more centralized approachone primary HR department with dependent regional HR staff. More than a third of domestic organizations reported having only a primary HR department with no regional HR staff.

HR Priorities
International and domestic organizations identified similar HR priorities for the next two years. The top priority, identified by 52 percent of international companies, was leadership development. Domestic organizations also ranked leadership development as a top priority (35 percent).

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Recruiting high-quality employees ranked second as a priority for both international (40 percent) and domestic companies (46 percent). Employee retention was also a top concern for both international (33 percent) and domestic companies (46 percent). In fact, retention was the top priority for domestic organizations.

Consistency of HR Practices
A majority of international (79 percent) and domestic (87 percent) organizations reported that their parent organizations are taking action to make HR practices more consistent across all locations/ offices. International organizations use consistent HR practices to help develop a common corporate culture (75 percent) and to improve the effectiveness of the HR function (73 percent). Domestic organizations are creating consistent HR practices to improve both the effectiveness (81 percent) and the efficiency (71 percent) of the HR function. Selection practices vary greatly across locations in international organizations. Selection practices that vary the most include: 1. Assessments (role plays and simulations). 2. Testing for selection purposes. 3. Internet advertising (recruiting).

Challenges to Consistency
International companies face many challenges when trying to make HR practices consistent across all locations/offices. The top three challenges include: Variations in social, political, and economic circumstances. Different locations/offices have their own way of doing things and are resistant to change. The perceived value of the HR function varies across locations/offices.

Best Practices
Organizations were asked to respond to the following: What is the most effective action your parent organization has taken to make HR practices more consistent across all locations/offices?
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The following is a sample of responses: Developed a long-term HR plan to ensure alignment of HR strategies/objectives with corporate objectives. Created centralized reporting relationships around the globe. Standardized assessment, development, and compensation practices. Introduced practices to regions around the globe and allowed the HR function in each region the autonomy to do [its] job. Created global policies/processes for data management, performance management, compensation, education, and development. Tied regional accountability to performance management. Shared HR best practices used in certain locations with all other locations. Developed an HR mission statement.

Creating a Corporate Culture

Many international companies (84 percent) indicated that their parent organization was trying to establish a corporate culture at all locations/offices that was consistent with its goals and vision. Most organizations (88 percent) reported that creating a corporate culture is difficult because, in certain locations, local cultures and customs have a moderate to great influence on the way business is conducted. Organizations have taken the following actions when trying to create a consistent corporate culture: Communicated to all locations about a common corporate culture. Allowed local cultures to maintain their identity in the context of the corporate culture. Established common systems (e.g., accounting, marketing, MIS). Provided management with education outlining how the company does business. Created an organizational mission with input from all locations. Created a written strategy outlining the corporate culture.

General Challenges for Global HR Function

Functions such as operations, sales, and marketing have generally made great progress in adapting to the global reality. However, the HR function has typically lagged behind in developing policies and structures that support globalization. The top challenges HR faces in the globalization process include: Coordination of activities in many different locations.
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Understanding the continual change of the globally competitive environment. Building a global awareness in all HR departments/divisions. Creating a multicultural HR team.

International Assignments
Finding, developing, and retaining global leaders tops the priority list of international companies. International, or expatriate, assignments are often used as a way to develop the talent of global leaders. Many international companies (83 percent) use expatriate assignments, which last an average of 2.65 years. International assignments are quite expensive. Most international companies (88 percent) report spending more than two times an expatriates salary during the span of the assignment. The most important characteristic to look for when recruiting an expatriate is a willingness to travel. The ability to speak other languages was third, behind having international business experience. Most organizations provide pre-departure training for expatriates, but relatively few provide a process for managing the expatriates re-entry to his or her home country. Only 68 percent of respondent organizations agreed that international assignments help an expatriates career.

The Global Picture

When it comes to business, the world is indeed becoming a smaller place. More and more companies are operating across geographic and cultural boundaries. While most have adapted to the global reality in their operations, many are lagging behind in developing the human resource policies, structures, and services that support globalization. The human resource function faces many challenges during the globalization process, including creating a global mind-set within the HR group, creating practices that will be consistently applied in different locations/offices while also maintaining the various local cultures and practices, and communicating a consistent corporate culture across the entire organization. To meet these challenges, organizations need to consider the HR function not as just an administrative service but as a strategic business partner. Companies should involve the human resources department in developing and implementing both business and people strategies. This type of partnership is necessary if an organization wants to change potentially inaccurate
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perceptions of HR and reiterate the HR functions purpose and importance throughout its global environment. Organizations will also discover that HR can be invaluable in facilitating the development of a unifying corporate culture and finding and cultivating much needed leadership talent around the world. The process of globalizing resources, both human and otherwise, is challenging for any company. Organizations should realize that their global HR function can help them utilize their existing human talent from across multiple geographic and cultural boundaries. International organizations need to assist and incorporate their HR function to meet the challenges they face if they want to create a truly global workforce.

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