International Assignment Briefings

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How do you quantify the impact on the local operating company of an assignment?

How can you ensure that your assignee will perform to the best of his/her ability?

How do you evaluate a successful assignment?

If you buy a very valuable piece of equipment, would you give it to an untrained person to operate? Why then would you consider sending an expensive assignee to operate within a subsidiary company in another country without ensuring that he/she is fully prepared and equipped with all the tools and training necessary to be truly effective from the outset?

Assignments are very expensive, both to the company and to the individuals concerned, and the value of a successful assignment is lost before it even starts if the employee does not have an in-depth knowledge base to adapt to the new business environment quickly and easily.

Mistakes and misunderstandings made during the initial period of an assignment are very difficult indeed to recover and, far too often, are irretrievable. Local staff will frequently remain silent rather than advise an assignee that he or she is acting incorrectly or misunderstanding what is to them, a normal practice, for fear of causing loss of face. Unfortunately, all to often, such mistakes will therefore continue and, compounded by time, produce a major breakdown in communication and operations.

The assignment may continue for several years and seriously affect not only the internal workings of the local operating company but also relations with clients and possibly government officials. The standing of the company can be seriously compromised by just one ill-informed assignee for years and recovery from such a position can be costly indeed.

However, this is not the greatest cause of failed assignments. Statistics are clearly identifying the biggest single cause of a failed assignment as being the lack of the family's ability to adapt to their new environment.

Support needs to be provided for the personal aspects of transferring to a new country which affect both the employee and his/her family. The average age of an assignee is mid-20's to mid-40's which is exactly the period that a family will comprise school-aged children and an assignee's partner with a career to consider.

Although some of the issues involved may be specific and personal to the individuals concerned, there are many that are general to all transferees. Any information that can be provided to a family will go a long way to assisting them to understand the differences between living at home and in the new country. They will come to see these differences as positive rather than negative. Fear of the unknown is generally the greatest difficulty of all and many fears are unfounded once knowledge is applied.

HR managers who offer such programmes to assignees are demonstrating their consideration towards those individuals and an understanding of the very real difficulties associated with a period abroad. The rate of attrition following assignments is quite alarming and all the expertise that the assignee has gained over the period abroad is left to walk away, usually directly to a competitor if the assignment is unsuccessful or not handled effectively. HR managers have some influence over the specific issues the relating to the assignment package and the company but the other issues of settling in are somewhat more difficult to cover.