Companies wishing to expand into new international markets often assume, wrongly, that all employees work in the same way regardless of the country in question, the personality of the employee or his awareness of specific cultural issues. to the company. It is even more common to see the failure of an international mission because the organization has not sufficiently prepared the project upstream and because it has not taken into account the level of complexity of the project. such a mission. Misconceptions about international positions are commonplace and professionals in Global Mobility, HR and Talent Management teams are not the only ones to fall for it.
Why International Mobility should contribute to the development of company talent
But know that it is even worse when the manager maintains his position in the host country. Relationships deteriorate a little more each day, employee morale drops as a result, local talent essential to the proper functioning of the service quits and the overall performance of the team ends up collapsing. And yet, this could undoubtedly have been avoided if the International Mobility service had been requested earlier.
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Since they regularly send employees to work abroad, they have a fairly complete overview of the soft skills that expats need to acquire. They have tools to assess the potential cultural challenges that employees will face once they arrive on site. Thus, it would undoubtedly have been relevant to offer the American manager to take intercultural training on Japan and Japanese habits and customs in the professional sphere – an investment that the company would certainly not have regretted. It is always wiser to provide adequate support to expatriates rather than to consider them once and for all as a regrettable failure. This allows them to be more aware of their skills and their limits in order to be able to adapt their management style to their future employees.
Culture in the broad sense and cultural differences in particular are elements that are acquired over years, throughout life, according to the experiences we lead and which are deeply rooted in each of us.
Recommending your employees to imitate the premises and their uses would go against the international mindset that every multinational company must develop. Expats who adopt this attitude are generally seen as superficial, inauthentic and condescending. For an expatriation to be a success both for the employee and for the host country, it is on the contrary recommended to develop the cultural sensitivity of the expatriate, as well as his empathy, and to find a compromise. Explicit and achievable objectives must be formulated for each stakeholder, favoring open and transparent communication.