Expanding into Switzerland - Case Study Example

There is also the risk that retaining employees will be difficult, creating higher turnover costs and training issues, when employees seek other opportunities with better benefits or salary. Career management becomes an issue when training must be ongoing to fill positions that are constantly being vacated by employees who leave the business because there is such a high volume of job opportunities in the external job market. There is also the possibility that child care needs will require flexible schedules which could interrupt productivity or normal business operations with the United States as the home country of operations.

Question 2 Switzerland is an individualistic culture, meaning that they value self-expression and independence (Blodgett, Bakir & Rose, 2008). The business might have to decentralize its operations and management as a means to ensure that employees stay once they have been selected for employment. On Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions framework, Switzerland ranks 68 against a world average of only 43 on individualism needs (Hofstede, 2009). This means that group-oriented policies and procedures that build a family-type of culture or teamwork might not have success in recruiting or retention.

This could mean developing more individual programs for development in human resources, such as individual coaching or mentoring. “Great companies rely heavily on their cultures to support change management efforts” (Want, 2009, p.10). The business might have to develop more individualistic coaching to give effective feedback and assessment regarding performance in order to build a strong culture. At the same time, Switzerland has a low uncertainty avoidance measurement on Hofstede’s scale, which means that the population is more “accepting of unique and unusual situations and ideas, with greater tolerance of divergent points of view” (Hofstede, 2009, p.

2; Donnison, 2008). This has advantages for launching new development programs to address the challenges for this expansion project. For example, development of in-house work-hour child care services to help educated mothers in their job role would likely be accepted. Flexible working hours or telecommuting (work at home) would probably meet with little change resistance and be accepted by this individualistic culture. Question 3 A potential solution to the challenge of labor shortages is to transfer expatriate managers and employees from the United States.

Expatriates can be trained on Swiss culture and lifestyle so they can be ready for transfer with the option for short- or long-term job contracts. This would give the new Swiss division more home country expertise and also ensure that there is not a staffing shortage. By recruiting dedicated and high-performing managers and employees overseas, it will lessen the likelihood of high turnover rates and costs. Mentoring that comes with intensive training packages can also support new HR policies in Switzerland.

“Training that offers employees benefits that are perceived as non-transferable to another organization makes it too costly to leave” (Bambacas & Bordia, 2009, p.225). Innovative companies are usually the ones that succeed and have the most competitive human capital, therefore internal promotions about the benefits of new training could reduce long-term turnover rates. For example, job rotation training for multi-skill development could be promoted in recruitment