Expatriate assignments and overseas experiences

An expatriate is a person that lives permanently or temporary in another country different from the birth country. An expatriate assignment is when somebody is send to a different country for making a specific assignment and for a certain term of time. An expatriate assignment is the one that includes the moving of the person from a country to another, this kind of experience is very common in the nowadays world were the globalization ask the companies to expand it knowledge and to act worldwide, an expatriate assignment in most of the cases is well accepted by the worker because it doesn’t implies a definitive movement, and in most of the cases it means better economical conditions and more knowledge.

It is different from a migrant worker because the second implies a definitive movement and a lot of changes for the worker and for his family; it is harder to find a worker that is able to move from his home country that one that is agree with moving for a certain time.

An overseas experience is when somebody plans a travel for a certain time, and the objectives are for having a different experience such as learning a language, studying abroad or just spending some time in a different country. It is different from vacations because the main objective is not for having fun but for learning something and learning from a different culture.

This kind of experiences (expatriate assignments and overseas experiences) are very common around the world and in most of the cases they represent an advantage for the host country because it receives a person that is not going to state for ever but they have to spend some money for living the time they are going to state.

Bibliography:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_experience

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriate

3. Slides presented in class by: Alejandro Peláez, and Juan David Pardo

taken from:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud93I_adtJE&feature=related

Answer

Expatriate assignments are issues that are uncharged to somebody in order to obtain a benefit from the movement of the worker abroad.

Sometimes this kind of assignments can fail because of the lack of commitment of the chosen person, it means that this issues demand a lot of money for the company making the assignment, it also includes a lot of preparation for the worker and a lot of commitment for being able to complete the task.

Some of the cases the expatriate left the job because he doesn’t feel able for making the whole work, some pressures like the family and the culture could end up with a process of an expatriate assignment.

For making this risk lower, companies should make the process of selection of the expatriate better, for this I recommend 3 important issues:

1. The preparation have to be clear in order to let the future expatriate know what is all the activity about and how is going to be the time outside, for this is important to make a concretization process which should include a psychological analysis in order to establish if the worker is in the conditions for affronting the following experience.

2. The second task that the enterprise should do is to make a serious commitment of respecting the expatriate job, some of the expatriates are afraid of losing their jobs when they come back, because of the replacement by another person. It is a matter of the company to preserve the job for the expatriate in order to keep hem comfortable with the things back home.

3. The third thing that should be done is a responsibility of the family of the expatriate. In most of the cases, family is the stringer link with the home country and is one of the most common reasons for ending up the assignment. It is important that the family agrees the activity that is going to be done in order to make easier the whole expatriate assignment.