Checkpoint: International Staffing Companies today are becoming aware of how competitive the environment that they work within is. As the markets expand in today’s economy, national boundaries disappear. Major multinational corporations are now coming up with plans for international human resource management. The term IHRM means to put into place the capabilities of human resources, but over an international field. Many companies want multinational IHRM policies, but this has its own challenges.
One of the most important difficulties is cultural differences. Staffing can become difficult when culture comes to play. This is only one of the challenges to staffing a company international. The “expatriate problem” becomes important when considering international staffing. An expatriate is a person who leaves their country and works in another. Workers on expatriate assignments often face the following problems: * Helping their family adjust Change of lifestyle * Change of type of work * A drop in performance * Leaving for other opportunities * Difficulties returning to their home country * Adjusting to a new environment * Learning a new language Expatriate failure is a common problem, and to prevent this, companies need the best employees to send abroad and must be able to give them intense training and development. This employee must expatriate with a background in potential cultural differences.
It is also difficult to train international staff thoroughly enough. People who are sent abroad to work need to know as much as they can about the culture and the country that they are going to. International recruiting is also not easy. “HR departments must be particularly responsive to the cultural, political, and legal environments both domestically and abroad when recruiting internationally” (Bohlander & Snell, S. A. , 2007, p. 648).
