Company Presentation - PowerPoint

EXPATRIATE TURNOVER 1

MEMORANDUM

From: Dave Kelly

To: The Human Resource Manager

Date: 30-01-2017

Subject: The Need to Reduce Expatriate Turnover Rate

In the last two decades, globalization has been taking place at a rapid pace. This impact is being

felt in the corporate world, as companies are forced to employ a mobile workforce with the

objective of expanding their influence to the global market. Multinational corporations also seek

to maintain a team of employees with high multinational knowledge and expertise. As a result,

firms allocate a lot of money and resources in deploying their workers on assignment to foreign

localities. Nonetheless, high turnover of expatriates and repatriates brings about huge losses to a

firm that needs to be addressed from a strategic perspective. In view of that, there is an emerging

wave of company leaders who are overburdened with the desire to reduce expatriate turnover.

Therefore, I shall propose two strategies that can be employed to minimize expatriate turnover

rate for our organization.

Reducing Expatriate Turnover

There are various strategies that can be utilized to reduce the worrying expatriate turnover rate.

First, companies must assign overseas roles to employees whose intellectual and technical skills

are matched or exceeded by their cross-cultural abilities (Regis, 2008). One of the biggest

mistakes that multicultural organizations make is to assume that employees who perform

extraordinarily at home or local levels are most likely to reflect their performance in different or

new cultural environments overseas. While employees may be highly talented, educated and

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experienced, their performances may be influenced by the cultural environments under which

they operate. Therefore, it would be unwise to think that the best performing American employee

would still maintain his or her excellent performance when deployed to a foreign cultural

environment such as India or China. Therefore, it is the task of an organization to assign

employees roles and environments in which they are culturally competent. This is likely to

reduce a feeling of unfitness or discontentment that often results in high turnover (Regis, 2008).

To sum it up, an organization should focus on assigning international roles to employees who not

only have the necessary technical skills, but also have shown that they are likely to live and

operate comfortably in different cultural contexts.

Another major step that can be taken to reduce expatriate turnover rate is career development.

Organizations should focus their attention on improving the services related to career building

for their mobile population (Van der Heijden, Van Engen & Paauwe, 2009). This is because as

employees move from one country to another, they experience new career challenges that require

constant training, coaching and mentorship programs to overcome. While most companies have

such programs, their procedures do not take into account the unusualness or distinctiveness of

expatriates’ circumstances. The talent management or human resource departments are

responsible for career development of the home country populations but do not feel responsible

for workers who deliver their duties in foreign nations. At the same time, the individuals charged

with the responsibility of international human resources or global mobility may not have the

capacity or knowledge to develop expatriate’s career (Van der Heijden, Van Engen & Paauwe,

2009). Therefore, HR functions should work hand in hand with the concerned international

departments to address this problem.

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References

Regis, R. (2008). Strategic human resource management and development. New York: Excel

Books India.

Van der Heijden, J. A., Van Engen, M. L., & Paauwe, J. (2009). Expatriate career support:

Predicting expatriate turnover and performance. The international journal of human

resource management, 20(4), 831-845.