Over the past five years, the international human resource management field has been buffeted by a variety of forces, one of the strongest being the trend toward the outsourcing of a variety of IHR services. One of the benefits driving the trend to outsourcing was the recognition by organizations that it allowed them to stay focused on what they do best: their core competencies, if you will. The irony is, of course, that the outsourcing trend also merged with a parallel trend toward consolidation of services among IHR services providers, so that while organizations could focus on their core competencies by outsourcing many of their IHR functions to independent providers, these independents were themselves ignoring their core competencies in order to provide fuller consolidated menus of services to their clients. Many organizations are now in the uncomfortable position, in order to re-focus on their own core competencies, of having their IHR services outsourced to independent organizations with little or no core competency in the services they attempt to provide.
This is a serious issue. For one thing, it means that consolidated IHR providers often themselves go to secondary, tertiary (and beyond) vendors in order to accomplish their work for their clients. In this scenario, there is little guarantee of seamless, universal and dependable service. In exchange for the privilege of "one-stop-(outsourced)-shopping", many organizations have also surrendered the right of control and selection, and are often at the mercy of decisions made by their outsourcing vendor on issues they have no core competency in. I know of no organization that would willingly put themselves in this position, and yet that is the position that many organizations with outsourced IHR services find themselves in today.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this situation is that the need for and nature of the IHR services being outsourced cries out for high-level, focused attention. Survey after survey (ERC, 1992; NFTC, 1994; SHRM, 1997 and others) have indicated, with no surprise here, that the primary needs of international assignees are still not being addressed to the degree necessary by IHR service providers. This article will take a closer look at what those needs are, and make some suggestions for more successfully addressing them than the current situation presently provides.
Relocating abroad, as all IHR professionals now know, is an anxiety-ridden, difficult transition that requires, for the sake of the individuals involved and for the organization's bottom-line, a rich combination of training and support services. In fact, the international assignee and family is a very needy entity, and requires a full menu of services for proper care and feeding. Obvious "nuts and bolts" or "hard&" services include the shipment of household goods, property maintenance, compensation and benefits counseling, destination services (such as neighborhood familiarization and local settling-in services), insurance and security arrangements, etc., etc. Less obvious, but more critical, are the "soft" training services, such as cultural orientation, language training, spousal career counseling, children's adjustment programs, repatriation orientation, and in-destination mentoring and counseling. Aforementioned surveys, and our own experiences, clearly highlight, in the words of the expats and their IHR counselors themselves, that the one, primary, essential skill required to succeed abroad is the ability to relate and communicate within the local environment. All other services, including every one of the "hard" services listed above, and any and all other training programs (i.e, technical skills training) take a backseat in the minds of both expats and global managers alike to services that can help develop what I refer to as effective global relational and communication skills.This is an extremely important point. In the words of one global manager, "I know my company will get my TV shipped, and my insurance paid. I'm not sure, however, that they understand just how important it is for me to figure out how to thrive here." It is an irony that in the one area that most organizations are experiencing their greatest growth - the international arena - organizations spend the least for training and development. Training and development departments will take culturally similar individuals speaking the same language and enroll them in all sorts of training programs in order to get them to perform at yet higher levels of excellence in all sorts of functions. However, when it comes to helping individuals perform internationally - the one area where individuals will be expected to perform in very different cultures with people who do not speak the same language - more often than not, the response has been, "speak to Joe when you get there, he's been there a while, he'll show you the ropes." Another way to look at this is to realize that since the greatest source of growth for most organizations is international, then dollars spent on training for international success go farther than training dollars spent on anything else. Nevertheless, most organizations continue to ignore this bargain investment, and spend training dollars on programs with less return.
What makes this myopia even more remarkable is what is at risk, in terms of the expense and resources needed for the international assignment. Most statistics speak of the million dollar investment, which is the average cost to the organization of the average assignment for a family abroad these days. If the assignee should fail and need to return prior to the term of the assignment (a "failed" assignment according to the gross measure of "premature" or "early" return), that cost can double. I know of no organization that wouldn't try to minimize the risk to such an investment by taking every measure available and yet, when it comes to the international assignment investment, apparently speaking to Joe is a good enough insurance policy. Furthermore, we are speaking of the costs associated with the obvious: a "blackout" or premature return. In fact, the greater cost to organizations when they work internationally with untrained staff is the "brown-out" phenomenon: employees and families who manage somehow to stay, but who, because they are untrained, fail to maximize their assignment. They may be surviving, but they definitely are not thriving, and neither is the organization. Professionally, these brown-outs, because they do not deeply understand either the language or the culture of their host country, fail to see opportunities, do not make the contacts necessary, in short, slide through; personally, families muddle through, sticking close to the U.S. community, with children typically doing best, if the underlying family discontent does not wear them down, while partners fare worst of all, failing to develop their careers while abroad, and generally being unhappy and counting the sentence of days and months left till they return home. The costs of "brownouts", while difficult to document, I am convinced, far outweigh the already staggering costs of blackouts.
If we are learning (apparently again and again, I am afraid) that the most important primary skills to develop among global managers and international assignees are relational and communication skills, then it flows logically that, while not ignoring the "hard" services, organizations must first seek out providers whose core competency is in the seamless, reliable and dependable global delivery of communications and relational skills development training. In fact, as the title of this article implies, we need to re-define the central goals of international relocation, and re-discover the heart of what needs to be done in order to service and support our international assignees adequately.
First and foremost, we need to prioritize: put first things first, if you will, and develop your organization's criteria for the selection of IHR service providers based on what we know to be the essential priority: relational and communication skills development. In the present climate of outsourcing and consolidation of services, we need to re-think our primary criteria for selecting these providers. "Is my provider's core competency in the one area of greatest importance, where my organization will see the greatest return, or am I selecting them because of their supermarket menu of services?" Another question to ask, in order to gain clarity on provider selection, is: "Which provider can clearly demonstrate a singular history and mastery of training and development services that provide these skills?" Finally, the organization needs to ask itself: "Do I want a one-stop-shop provider with a core competency in a less-important service, such as insurance or move relocation, which happens to offer international relational and communications skills training as a value-added, or do I want a provider with a core competency in these skills first, and with the ability to provide the easier-to-access "nuts and bolts" services, too?"
Like the adage says, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance". This is all the more true in international training and development. Relying on informal networks of support, like Joe "who's been there a while" is only scarcely better than nothing (and sometimes worse, if Joe's experiences haven't been accurate or typical), and certainly not the kind of rigorous, in-depth and substantive quality training that an organization wants to use to guarantee performance levels of excellence in an area as critical to growth and profit as international. Yet, precisely because international is so critical, we know these training dollars produce the greatest return. Why then, do organizations continue to avoid focusing on the need for international training, and, instead, measure the degree to which they are successful at serving their international assignee in terms of how well they've arranged to sell their home or set-up their insurance and compensation and benefits packages?The answer, I believe, lies in the premise that such training and development is viewed as yet just another international assignee cost, like the moving of household goods. The fact is, of course, just the opposite. While the "hard" services do represent real costs, the "soft" services, such as the providing of international relational and communications skills training, actually represent an investment. International training and development needs to be looked at in terms of ROI, because the value of training to these skills far outweighs the cost. Not only in immediate terms (the success of the overseas assignment), but also in terms of the development of an employee who is capable of bringing a great deal of information and skill to the organization for many years to come, international training and development is an investment with an immense return.
Relocation training, therefore, essentially is about communication and relational skills training. That's why it's really relocommunication. The heart and soul of the services provided by organizations must be focused around these training services as their first priority. And identifying a provider of IHR services must require that the provider have, as their core competency, their ability to train these skills globally. Anything less shortchanges the international assignee, family, and ultimately, the organization, as it attempts to achieve success in the global arena.
© 2000 Dean Foster Associates