Expatriates

Introduction

Expatriates are the people sent away from their country by companies they work for. These people reside in the foreign countries while transacting businesses for their companies. The expatriates in their foreign countries can enjoy reduced tax rates on them. The recommended expatriate period is five years or less whereby the manager will go back to their home country after accomplishing some set targets. The company that wants to move miles ahead will choose the best people within it and expatriate them to the developing countries. The role of these expatriates will be trying to make good relation with those countries .they act as the company representatives in the foreign land and therefore the growing of the firm in the new land depends on them (Anna ,2010).

There a various successful firms in China. A company that is expatriating a number of staffs faces many challenges before achieving its success. Together with their human resource managers, they face the difficulties in locating the residential places for the expatriates, demanding the vital support towards the expatriate from the country they are going to. The company also faces a challenge when determining the benefits. After choosing the expatriate and sending hi to the new country, the company may suffer the risk of expatriate failure in their work. As compared to domestic workers, the expatriates cost the company three to ten times their management. Failing to achieve the desired goals hence renders the company to a great loss and not success. A number of factors cause failure in performance. These factors may be either direct or indirect. Some of these factors include the difference in norms and cultures of the expatriate and the country he goes.

When an expatriate does not receive sufficient education concerning the business he expects to transact, he will not achieve the set goals by the company and this becomes a risk to avoid. When the person expatriated does not adapt to the norms of the new land, good relation will not be build and this makes it hard to achieve the set goals. A problem in the expatriation process within a company is the enormous turnover rate within managers. The managers tend to shift from one job to another after travelling to other countries when expatriated. Besides the company having catered for the needs of its expatriates, it ends up losing qualified personnel within their firm. They begin employing new staffs who require training first for the job. Apart from the company benefiting from the expatriates, it results in loosing them to other firms (Xu, 2002).

Being an expatriate manager requires one to possess certain skills. The method s used by the companies in selecting their expatriates tends to be common in a certain manner. The human resource managers should know well the history of the expatriates before choosing to send them away. A person who is social and can easily cope with the   cultural behaviors of the country he is travelling to. The expatriate should be strong enough to handle the loneliness of being way from their family and home. A person who cannot miss being with the family he belongs to cannot be effective for expatriation. If the entire family has to accompany the manager to his new land, they should also be people who can smoothly adapt to the norms of the country too.

Before setting off, the manager should consider these facts among many others (Dowling, 2008). Moreover, it is not the culture of the new country that counts but how much can the person adapt to it. To ascertain the capacity that a person can adapt to something, it begins with the simple duties carried out within the company. People with promising behaviors will qualify to being good expatriates. Having knowledge on the job being carried out, having skills in motivating other people, being flexible to any kind of environment and having well established family basis are the major factors to be considered.

Every expatriate sets off with high hopes of achieving the set goals for the companies' success. However, it is hard to achieve this since various drawbacks take place. Ineffective selection criteria when choosing the people to expatriate affects the expatriate performance. When they chose the wrong category of people, they will definitely not strain towards achieving the desired expectation since they lack the core values for the task. Before sending the mangers away, they require training on the ground they are going to work on. Training them on how to cope with the ethics and cultures of the foreign land is of great essence.

Making them aware of the work values at the host country will also enhance their effectiveness in job performance. When a manager travels together with his family, they are supposed to be easily flexible to the host country's culture. If the family does not adapt to this, they may cause the manager not to have smooth going in the new country and hence poor expatriate results. Poor communication system towards the expatriate during their assignment absorbs poor or even failure in expatriation. Efficient flow of communication enables the company to stay in good touch with their manager. This will help them tackle issues that tend to hinder good business transactions. When the communication becomes disturbed, poor results come along.

When the MNC sends expatriates abroad, they should constantly keep on monitoring their progress in the new country. Once the council relaxes, the expatriate also becomes less concerned in his tasks and therefore ends up becoming failures (Salmon, 2010). Success in expatriation comes along with adequate selection of the persons under expatriation. When the right types of people are set to be the managers abroad, they will call for more success since they bear the major qualities of a good manager. They will call for success within a company and hence successful expatriation.

Monitoring their performance time after another will help them work tirelessly towards the company's success. Educating them efficiently before sending them to a new country will also contribute to positive expatriate results. Repatriation can be regarded as the process of changing the different countries currencies into the currency that will suit the country one is in. the private sectors play a major role in promoting the business in repatriation fields. When expatriating their members, they are creating more and ore profits to the repatriation sector (Selmer, 2000).

Conclusion

Expatriation plays a major role in attracting the success of a company. Critical selection of the expatriates also pulls along great success in a firm. When firmly observed, expatriation can take a company to greater heights. On the other side, its ignorance cans also call or enormous failure and collapsing of a company. Any company undertaking it has to consider a number of issues like the risks associated with it and the expenses it requires. However, keen consideration on expatriation has taken most of the companies within china to far heights.