How to Handle the Repatriation Practices throughout the Organizations Efficiently - Coursework Example

?Marketing Research Contents Executive summary: 3 Introduction and problem definition: 3 2. Research method and limitations 4 3. Research findings: 6 4. Conclusions and Recommendations: 9 Reference 14 Executive summary: In this research as a manager of an IT company I have discussed a very relevant problem regarding current corporate culture that is repatriation. In this research I have seen in most of the IT Company’s manager’s faces this kind of situation now a day. They send employee to the on site for better client handling and to do that they train their employees that is known as expatriation but when those employees return to their home land after certain time period they face an adjustment problem with their old job and even with their family. That is a serious issue and that is the reason behind loss of skilled and experienced employees as those employees quit their jobs. Here in this research I discussed about this problem thoroughly and some solutions I have given at the end. 1. Introduction and problem definition: As a manager of an IT farm I found that there are several corporate problems a organisation faces like drop in market share, profit fall, employee turnover reduction, quality assurance issues, problem form client ends, government policies and several rules and regulations etc. But here I am going to discuss the problems regarding my various employees who just came back from onsite jobs or foreign locations. The details of the problem is discussed below- In modern days it is common to give strategically important tasks to top level executives and send them to foreign countries for a certain time interval. It is widely known as expatriation. To reduce cultural shock it is very important to make those employees aware and train for the culture of new countries and locations. It definitely cost a large amount of money for the organisations to train its employees for a new country. At the moment work in abroad complete that employee comes back to its older location or may be in home country then that employee have some problem regarding this cultural trauma this is known as repatriation. (Nikolaeva, 2010, p.5) Objective of our research is how handle the repatriation practices throughout the organisations efficiently. To gain international market knowledge expatriation is the effective tool. It is also helpful for the organisation when that employee after coming back to home country apply their international knowledge in the organisation. But it is proven that repatriation process is worse than expatriation process, because when an employee having problem regarding his/her own countries culture then that employee is in real problem. That is why in corporate culture repatriation is dangerous than expatriation. (Arman, 2009, p.1) 2. Research method and limitations To accomplish a valuable research an authentic and generous data collection method need to be followed. Relevant data are collected from market research, after processing those data, they can be used in various research purpose. Hidden knowledge behind the research is understood by the research results and it makes aware the researcher about the problem thoroughly (Kolb, 2008, p. 12). By the market research, researcher get the data form very wide range of population like clients, employees, management people, logistics agents etc (McDaniel & Gates, 1995, p. 5). From several researches methodology researcher can choose couple of them or only one of them. But researcher always needs to keep one thing in mind that his goal of research should not ever get distracted from the previously decided path. Research methodology is the most important factor of the framework as whole analysis is depending on this. Source is the next important part of the research. Researcher chooses what research approach is also another important factor. After that selection researcher needs to calculate how much primary and secondary research is need to be done and how much importance they need to give each method. After that its only remaining thing is the data analysis and discusses the findings of the research and makes a suitable conclusion on it. Source: Kolb, 2008, p. 23 Two types of research approach researcher follow- primary or secondary. For primary research approach researcher distribute questionnaire among the sample population to gather their responses. This can be called survey technique. For secondary data collection researcher can gather data from sources like journals, scholarly publications, financial reports, census data, magazines, government sites, reputed news blogs and pages etc. Research methodology is generally very descriptive in nature and researcher can use their innovative ideas into the research to make the research more innovative type (Goddard & Melville, 2004, p.8). When researcher try to discuss about a problem and give respective solutions for it then researcher do very much explanations (Panneerselvam, 2004, p.6). To give a idea of the topic researcher writes too much descriptions on it. For any social topics researcher will analyse each problem with a suitable explanation (Malhotra & Dash, 2009, p. 81). Here as researcher will do secondary research so data collection will be qualitative type. Qualitative questions cannot be answered in one line, these are open end type. During one to one interview or group interview or telephonic or mail interview these process followed (Lapan and et.al, 2011, p. 2). For quantitative questionnaire researcher gives probable answers after the questions and responder have to choose one from that (Thomas, 2003, p.2). As per research topic researcher has to follow secondary research method and qualitative data collection method. Secondary data will make the research more fine and pure. (Harrison, & Reilly, 2011). Mixed methods designs in marketing research. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 14(1), 7-26.) Secondary data collection can be done from several scholarly journals and business magazines. Qualitative answers are more suitable for a research because answers are descriptive type and they cover a wide range of area. ( Aaker, Kumar & Day, 2008 pp. 189) 3. Research findings: As discussed earlier, the objective of our research is to handle the repatriation practices within the firms in general successfully and efficiently. In the secondary research conducted and through the findings from the qualitative studies we look forward to discuss what exactly influences the employees to repatriate or reside in a foreign nation. It has been evident that most of the professionals today appear to set off their own programs related to expatriation even before they are assigned to a foreign country by their organization. This trend can be observed mainly in the Western countries (35 % expatriates by the company vs. 65 % self expatriates), female employees from a number of nations (20 percent organization’s expatriates vs. 42 percent self expatriates) and the Australian employees (almost 19 percent company expatriates vs. 60 percent self-expatriates). The exclusion can be seen among the Finnish engineers (63 percent company expatriates vs. 33 percent self-expatriates) and among the economists (50 percent company expatriates vs. 50 percent self-expatriates). The occurrence of self expatriation can become evident by the number of people migrating. Almost 1.5 million professionals settled to an OECD nation during 2004. Even though 25 nations had lesser than 5% skilled expatriates to an OECD nation, a rising 25 nations had 5 to 10%, 23 nations had 10 to 20% and 21 nations had more than 20% (THARENOU, P, & CAULFIELD, 2010). For the multinational firms of the new era, international transfer of employees forms an essential element for the strategy of staffing within the firm. This trend has been exhibited in a growing field of research analyzing dimensions and the correlations attached to the success of the international assignments. Particularly it have been argued by several scholars that success of the business is not only restricted to the initial assignment but it also consists of the stage of repatriation. Earlier studies have discussed several aspects related to repatriation by the evaluation of the role played by the HR practices of the firm, the expectations of the repatriates, their commitment to their jobs and the facets that affect the assignee’s professional success/failure on the occasion of repatriation. A developing knowledge research body has recognized the responsibility of worldwide assignees as knowledge mediators who are capable of adapting institutionally and culturally encouraged knowledge from one organization’s framework to another. However whilst it has become a widespread concept to learn the procedure of knowledge sharing throughout the assignment, comparatively a smaller amount of consideration has been offered to the constant knowledge distribution upon the process of repatriation (Reiche, 2012). Thus it is of utmost importance to make the repatriates realize their role in the process of knowledge sharing while representing their country and organization in a foreign nation and a foreign firm. There can be various ways of handling the practice of expatriation and repatriation. The real life situations can prove to be of great support to our research study. For instance the case of Ford Motor Company can be taken into consideration. The company follows the practice of developing the employee’s skills and efficiency within the smaller firm first and then it sends those expert employees to the foreign nations to run the larger firms owned by the company. In simpler terms the employees are sent to Italy or Argentina to operate a smaller plant and then they are brought back for the purpose of running a larger plant in the U.S. or Germany. Another instance can be taken into consideration that is the approach of the Texas Instrument. This firm has a cluster of professional people who are experts at handling assignments and they keep on moving from assignment to assignment. These people are better paid and they keep no expectation of returning home ever. However the worst means of practicing repatriation is considering the employees like a milking cow where the employers tend to draw out every skill and capability out of the employees and the process frustrates the workers to a great extent. International firms supposedly spends above USD 1 to 2 million for each expatriate manager throughout the 4 year duration just to find that merely 20 percent to 50 percent decides to resign of their jobs within one year of their comeback. The expatriate managers are known to return back with a wide dimension of ideas and experiences but still the poor practice of the repatriation process within the firms are blamed to a large extent for the reason of losing human resources, under exploitation of talent, and de motivating the proficient managers from working for the foreign assignments (Jassawalla, Connolly & Slojkowski, 2004). Today the activity of repatriation within the organizations has increased relatively in comparison to the procedure of expatriation management. The staffs who are returning back from the foreign nations are experiencing diverse ethnic shock. They are also going through other problems related to adjustment in the foreign countries. This often takes place when the domestic firm has experienced reformation or some other type of managerial transformation or if the actual job role of the repatriate has drastically transitioned or eliminated on the whole whilst they have been out of the country (Rao, 2008, p.98). The following steps can be practiced for the purpose of dealing with the issues of repatriation and expatriation- Carrying on an expatriate inspection. Carrying on a cultural assortment assessment. Refining the method of selection of expatriates. Offering inter cultural training. Offering support to repatriation 4. Conclusions and Recommendations: The human resource department wrongly taken it as they feel employees are returning to its home country so employees will be very happy but what they do not realize is that particular employee is having a cultural gap for couple of years and that employee had the test of a different culture and it is very hard to transform this changes. Most of the cases in my research troubled, frustrated and unsatisfied employees turn up quitting their jobs or live with a very stressful situation. As per my research it is clear that 25% of the total repatriate employees of the researched organisation already quit their jobs and the reasons they shown to me are all indicate the effect of cultural gap and discomfort to cope up with it. That implied to the repatriation process. My recommendations for the top management as per my findings are shown in the diagram below: This diagram consists of four stages; those are shown in above diagram. Principle of the philosophy of repatriation process and development of the strategy consist of the first phase of above cycle. The particular employee who went for the foreign trip and before completing his jobs in that foreign land, organisation should make a repatriation program as effective as expatriation program and make that employee go through with that course of program as seriously as an important task. These kinds of planning and processes help the employees to reduce their anxiety over repatriation and help them to cop up with their dissatisfaction regarding cultural trauma. But a organisations repatriation policies should be transparent one and effective that will not put employees into another trauma. That policy can be implemented like this- 1. To reduce the effect of repatriation a statement needs to make that will be the punch line of the whole program. In that statement it will be clearly mention that what are the steps where organization will actively support the employees during the counter repatriation process. 2. Organisation have to make its expatriate employees aware that there knowledge and experience are too valuable for the organisations future and those skills they got are worth very much to keep them practice it in their organisation. 3. In that process a framework should be include where that expatriate employees family settlement issues need to be discussed because after coming back to homeland employee first face the hurdle is regarding their families and uncomforted with them as new culture pull them back from their old culture. 4. Specialist experts from the psychiatric point of view need to be employ to help the employee in that transition period as it is a serious situation and its impact fall on that employee’s work and family life both. Formal documented repatriation methods need to be discussed in second stage. To manage the employees’ expectations and their achievements successfully it is important to make them aware of international customs and global cultures. The key factors for the assignments can be time interval, incentives during the process, a re-entry training must be in place after coming back from abroad, details regarding employees return to their home country, job security need to provide after completing their foreign assessment and if possible during the transition period employee should be given some time and better job guarantee. Employees get more tensed when they shift their existing location regarding new home, shipment of luggage, new schools for kids etc. Repatriation agreement is a contract between employer and the employee. Supportive programs need to be implemented in the third stage. There can be several issues after the returning back of employees from foreign location. Organizations understand that foreign trips are helpful for the employees’ future career and their responsibility must be shown to other employees. Repatriate employees should be given some challenging and innovative jobs where they can showcase their talents and ideas and some experiences which they gather from foreign experiences and apply that in their current jobs in home countries to explore the business in new dimensions and expansion of the business also. Most of the time organisation encourages expatriation at this process expatriate employer gather significant amount of international experience, those international experiences helps organisations to gain competitive advantage over its competitors. To make a effective repatriation process it is necessary to bring repatriation management into human resource management. International Human Resource Management team needs to always monitor the re entry process of the repatriate employees in fourth or last stage of the process. Evaluation process mainly follows these guidelines- Job satisfaction, commitment towards organisation and retention of repatriate candidates is the first priority. During implementation of new strategies repatriate candidates decisions need to be considered. Always monitor this support system and find out if any gaps are in the system and if any gaps found it should be quickly fixed. Continuous evaluation of the system and benchmark it as per the standard system is necessary and it have to be done regularly. So it is quite clear that effective measures should be taken to help the repatriate candidate to overcome their situation regarding adaptation in home country and if this process implemented it will not only retain strategically important employees of the organisation who have enormous amount of international knowledge and experience but also save organisations money to train new employees and make them as skilled as the old employees. (Chew & Debowski, 2008, pp.7-15) Reference Nikolaeva, T.G. 2010. The Challenges of Expatriation and Repatriation. Aarhus University: Department of Management. Arman, G. 2009. Journal of European Psychology Students. USA: Chicago DePaul University. Chew, J & Debowski, S. 2008. Developing an Effective Repatriation Strategy for MNC: A Model and Tools for International Human Resource Management. Canada: Management Futures. Kolb, B., 2008. Marketing Research: A Practical Approach. California: Sage Publications Inc. McDaniel, C.D and Gates, R.H., 1998. Marketing Research Essentials. USA: South – Western College Publishing. Online Goddard, W. & Melville, S. 2004. Research Methodology: An Introduction. Juta and Company Ltd. Panneerselvam, R. 2004. Research Methodology. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. Malhotra, N. K. and Dash, S. 2009. Marketing Research: An Applied Orientation. 5th ed. India: Dorling Kindersley India Pvt. Ltd. Lapan, S. D., and et.al, 2011. 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