It pays to develop your cultural sensitivity!
Expatriation has long traditions. International assignees are a significant resource available to companies in terms of their global success. The reasons for international transfers are varied. The job may need a competent, qualified person not readily available in the host country. There may be a need to train local staff in corporate procedures, or an international assignment may be part of the company training process.
There are an estimated 100,000 expats in Poland which is quite a substantial number of foreigners in business. Ernst&Young's research from last year ranked Poland high on the list of the most attractive places for investment both world wide and in Europe.
In traditional expatriation the employee stays in the host country for a few years, usually accompanied by the family. Sometimes expats choose to continue on local contract afterwards, like many have done in Poland as they really like the country and/or have perhaps fallen in love with a Pole. One kind of expats are the so called commuters who travel regularly back and forth between two countries and come back home for the weekend.
Corporations often also have multicultural and multi-local teams whose members can be both expats and locals cooperating across boarders delivering e.g. customer service support to clients in different regions.
What do all these people have in common? The obvious fact is that they are dealing with other cultures and for sure they have mixed feelings at times in unexpected situations, when facing challenges and surprises originating from cultural differences. How do the expectations, communication and problem solving process meet both ends? Our experience is that many expats and local managers likewise simply feel at a loss or are frustrated as they don't know how to go about in cultural emergencies. Emotional intelligence, if existent, is not always enough.
International companies make a huge investment when relocating employees and their families. Corporate interest in expanding into new markets is to collect return on investment (ROI) but do they provide their people with enough knowledge about how to achieve the ROI in a destination where things are not done in the same way as in the headquarters? Unfortunately corporate culture cannot be exported by ignoring the local culture even if it looks good in the strategy paper. Fortunately it is after all people who do the business and bring results.
ExpatHouse conducted Working Across Cultures Survey in 2004 for the Scandinavian-Polish Chamber of Commerce. The respondents ranked different management styles, decision-making process, teamwork and negotiating behaviour as their greatest challenges.
All these clearly reflect different cultural characteristics. The next question is how to reconcile and how to get to common agreed practices?
In expat recruitment technical skills are highly respected, in expat selection criteria they can account for 90% of the recruitment decision. In this world of constant change there is no doubt that substance knowledge is important but good team players who know how to build trust, relationships and respect are needed as much or even more. Expats with good communication and cooperation skills are like company's PR Managers abroad. They should be interested in and sensitive to their new destination culture, create reconciliation and communication channels in culturally heterogenous environment and be open to everything new. The ROI emerges from superior sustainable performance.
Cross-cultural cooperation means there are at least two parties. With international assignees the other party most often is the local colleague. When you talk to Polish employees you can very often hear that they are also uneasy and embarrassed with the ambiguities. Sometimes dormant conflicts can develop into costly culture clashes. To avoid this from happening time and effort should be invested in helping people to develop their cross-cultural communication skills right from the beginning of the international cooperation.
In the GMAC GRS Global Relocation Trends 2005 Survey 23% of expats were female. The figure is the highest record in their reports in the past 11 years. Still in most cases the expat is male. In the same Survey year after year the main reasons for early return from assignment are family concerns (67% last year). How to keep the family happy is the message to companies and a key factor for assignment success. By putting ourselves in the spouse's shoes we can easily understand how hard it can be to look after family matters without local language skills, without relatives' and friends' support not to mention colleagues. Most women have left their work place which in itself is a big sacrifice. Expat spouses really need encouragement and guidance to survive, to find places for their hobbies, to get local friends and find intellectual input. "The company should know how difficult it is for the wife down here. Family is not an extra cost, to me it is the most important thing in my life", expressed one expat.
Cross-cultural issues and expat matters are attracting more and more interest in international companies here in Poland. ExpatHouse started running the HR Committee for Scandinavian-Polish Chamber of Commerce this year and to our surprise and delight the attendance and interaction in the first event was just fantastic. We look forward to the next event where the results of the International Business Communication Survey will be presented.
In ExpatHouse we have a network of culture specialists from over 30 cultures who have themselves expat experience from all over the world. When we update each other with our client experiences we wonder over and over again why it is so hard for the companies to accept what the common sense tells us. According to GMAC GRS Global Relocation Trends 2005 Survey 20% of the respondent corporations (total 125 biggest companies in the world) have mandatory culture training for expats. It is people who matter, at least so they say, so why do they not invest on their people to develop the employees' cultural competence, giving them tools which enable them to gain better results, superior sustainable performance, more ROI.
Anitta Koskio
Managing Director
ExpatHouse Ltd
anitta.koskio@expathouse.fi
