What Is Management

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With human capital increasingly acknowledged as an organization’s strategic asset and competitive advantage, the HR function is increasingly under pressure to create value
for the business. This statement has been repeated so often that it has almost become clichés for the HR community. But there is more: today's businesses are also constantly operating across borders, helped by advances in technology and logistic infrastructure. For the HR practitioner, this means dealing with a growing number of employees moving across borders for periods ranging from a few days to several years.

Adding complexity to the HR function
Cross-border assignments present several additional complexities for the HR function. The modern HR practitioner should know how to handle thorny issues such as international compensation and benefits, foreign taxation, and unfamiliar labour laws, not to mention the logistics associated with moving employees, spouses and children to a foreign land and helping them to happily settle down without the risk of eroding the employee's morale and productivity.

Back to basic questions
In ...
... view of these heavy demands on the HR function, some progressive companies have taken a step back and made some fundamental decisions on how to handle that special population of employees who work outside their home country - the "expatriates", also called "international assignees".

Most companies would have some policies outlining how these assignees will be remunerated and supported during their overseas posting. But there are some big questions to be asked:

If you have a population of employees of various nationalities, originating from a large number of countries and being deployed to an equally large number of assignment locations, which HR team should write the policies?

How many policies would you need?

How do you categories the various types of assignees and assignments so as to have a small number of policies covering your whole assignee population?

Needless to say, similar questions could be asked about the processes and infrastructure required to administer those policies.

A matter of perspective?
These may seem basic questions, but answering them is not always easy. The final decision could be driven by corporate philosophy as much as by practical business needs - some organizations firmly believe that all policies and processes should be dictated and driven from global headquarters (HQ), whereas others have devolved decisions about policy design and administration to the regional HR teams, perhaps even including some location-specific exceptional cases. The fact is, reality can look quite different, depending on where you are. For example, many HR practitioners and assignees in China would swear that "blanket policies" designed in some United States HQ reflect a lack of understanding of the local environment, whilst their colleagues back at HQ would insist on global consistency and standardization.

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