Expatriation Essay

1359 Words3 Pages

China is now playing an important role in international business, more and more western companies have stated to running their businesses in China. However, due to the different culture issues, how to prepare and help their employees overseas should be seriously taken into account. An expatriate is a person who lives and works in a foreign country. It is no doubt that expatriates play an important role in how international businesses operate. There are ways for organizations to manage expatriates in the workforce, which is known as the cycle of expatriation (Brewster, Sparrow, Vernon & Houldsworth, 2011). Managers can follow this cycle in order to prepare employees to successfully work and live overseas. Selection, training and preparation, adjustment and repatriation are the four stages of the expatriation adjustment lifecycle. For the rest of this essay, this cycle and its effect on expatriates will be discussed with a focus on people relocating to work in china. The first stage of this cycle is called selection, because how to successfully achieve a long-term international assignment is a complex procedure, and therefore, the process of selection of individuals is totally different to the selection of employees domestically. If there is an error in the selection process, it could lead to a wrong candidate being sent out; which would, therefore, have a negative effect on an organization’s international achievement. So the human resource manager should identify all desired skills and search for the best candidate, for example, the criteria for selection could be technical ability, emotional maturity, cross culture suitability and family adaptability (Brewster, Sparrow,Vernon &Houldswortjh, 2011). A good candidate should b... ... middle of paper ... ...s, so they have a better understanding about the host’s country culture. During the international assignment, the human resource manager should offer the sufficient support from the host country’s business colleagues to their employees, and they also need to offer help to the expatriate’s family in order to let them adjust to the different culture smoothly. In the repatriation period, the human resources manager need to prepare a careful plan for their employees and often contact them and check the progress, such as keeping an open conversation for their employees when they go back to their home country. Nowadays, more and more expatriates have been sent out to do the international business, when the human resources manager uses the expatriate cycle properly, it will make a company more successful in achieving their goals with the help of an international employee.

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