International Assignment



International Assignment

Introduction

International assignments are an important part of an organization's business operations and a different kind of strategy is required for international assignments to complete these assignments effectively. An expatriate is referred to an individual who is residing on temporary or permanent basis in a country other than the place of that individual's upbringing. It is very important to understand that the business organizations have to adapt to some specific changes in the strategy to manage the international assignments that would also involve expatriates. The core focus of this paper is to discuss the training and other related aspects of expatriates that would further lead to the effectiveness of international assignments.

Discussion

The following discussion would involve the training, selection and other related aspects of an expatriate in international assignments.

Pre Departure Training

The pre departure training is a very effective and important training that is required to be conducted before the beginning of the assignment. The most important components that should be involved in this pre departure training should include the information and knowledge about the place that is to be visited by the employees for the international assignment. The cultural background and the values of the people of the target country should be well communicated to the employees selected for the international assignment. A very important component to be included in the pre departure training is to learn the language that is common in that country. It is very important to learn familiar words to avoid any sort of debacle in communication with the people in the target country. The emerging trends of the market of that country should also be analyzed by the management and communicated to the employees to create marketing strategies based on the same emerging trends in that country. Another important component of this training should also be the development of an effective and clear communication strategy that would play a vital role in the continuation of the business operations according to the plan and objectives of the business in the international assignment (Selmer, 1995). It is very significant that the inclusion of the above mentioned components should be present in the pre departure training because these would help the individuals to continue the international assignment in another country in an effective manner.

Methods of Assessing the Performance of Expatriates

Assessing and evaluating the performance of expatriates in an international assignment is also very important because the promotion of the expatriates is dependent on the performance evaluation. The following are the most significant performance assessment methods that could be used in the case of international assignments along with the rationale of selecting each of the following assessment method.

Critical Incident

Critical incident method focuses the attention of appraiser on the employee acts that make the difference between effective and ineffective job performance. Appraiser captures the specific situations that reflect the most effective or ineffective actions of the employee. The main challenge in this case is to specify only specific actions, not vaguely formulated traits ...