A Worldwide ERC® publication - November 19, 2008

Letter to the editor

Global News Briefs

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Expatriates Gain Faith in Doctors Where They Live (Global Interest)
A.M. Best Company (11/04/08) Panko, Ronald J.
Expats' ability to receive quality medical care abroad is becoming easier as more information becomes available about overseas providers and insurers gain more confidence in the providers. One organization that has taken a key role in accrediting overseas medical providers is Joint Commission International, which "has created standards ... that are a first step toward internationally improved quality consciousness," according to Lisa Beichl of Milliman Care Guidelines, who says that foreign countries' medical costs can be as little as one-tenth of those in the United States. Also involved in the field is HTH Worldwide, which has put together a database of roughly 5,000 contracted doctors and 3,500 medical facilities in 180 countries. According to Beichl, there is still some work to be done on defining exactly what constitutes "quality" in terms of a medical provider, as well as the issue of using devices and drugs that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "We see that hospitals look Western, and they have the accreditation," Beichl says. "These are all great steps. But we need to expand the conversation and really dig in a little more. What do we mean by quality, and what does the patient journey look like in that hospital?" Beichl says she would like to see greater use of measured outcomes in foreign health care, and one of the key things she is working on is whether providers in other countries use evidence-based medicine. Information Source

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Kidnap Inc. (Global Interest)
Forbes (10/13/08) Vol. 182, No. 7, P. 94; Vardi, Nathan
The kidnapping of wealthy business executives has grown into a worldwide franchise, with incidents occurring in countries not normally known for being dangerous. Although no international law enforcement agencies have compiled statistics on kidnapping, the Utrecht, Netherlands-based agency IKV Pax Christi estimates that around 100,000 kidnappings occurred in 2006, though 75 percent of these likely went unrecorded. Executives traveling for business should hire bodyguards who blend in, and executives should never stay in the same room, hotel, or eat at the same restaurant twice in a row. Additionally, when choosing a hotel room, executives should be as far from the hotel entrance as possible and in a non-public area. Drivers, bodyguards, and other assistants' backgrounds should be checked, and executives will want to research the city in which they will be staying, the taxi companies, and learn how to determine if he or she is being followed or watched. Experts also recommend executives avoid extended trips and armored cars. Finally, if a kidnapping occurs, executives and other workers should comply with abductors demands.
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HR Strategy: Why Global Ethics Count & How HR Can Help (Global Interest)
HRfocus (10/08) Vol. 2008, No. 10,
In an increasingly globalized marketplace, ethics in the work place is more important—and more challenging—than ever. Different countries and cultures have different codes of ethics, and the onus is shifting from the legal department to HR executives, as culture and communication experts, to establish and monitor a company’s ethics policy. Convincing employees that ethics issues are a permanent concern is part of the battle, HR experts say. The focus is moving from a compliance-based policy to a value-based one, because focusing on compliance amounts to merely not breaking laws and will likely result in offending someone’s values. HR executives should work with senior management to create a working statement of the company’s values and make sure it gets communicated to employees. HR should also have a handle on how a foreign subsidiary is operating, as cultural differences may lead to violations that will harm a company’s reputation and legal standing. Many companies’ policies and controls are poorly designed for handling executives that operate in areas that may have very different ideas of what is ethical. In a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers poll, 66 percent of executives said the area with the greatest risk for corruption is procurement, followed by bidding/sales, establishing business presence in new markets, and licensing. Lori Tansey Martens, president of the International Business Ethics Institute, says the six steps to establishing a code of conduct include creating an international advisory group, setting clear and realistic objectives, drafting the code, making sure the design is culturally neutral, using focus groups to finalize the content, and translating the code into all languages where the company operates.
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Encouraging Absenteeism (Global Interest)
HR Magazine (10/08) Vol. 53, No. 10, P. 103; Segal, Jonathan A.
Businesses should be ready to take counterintuitive measures, like encouraging employee absenteeism, when dealing with a global pandemic. Employers should not assume their preexisting business continuity plans would suffice during an epidemic, which could force the organization to function in a limited capacity for many weeks if not many months. Due to the nature of influenza, which is most likely to be responsible for the next pandemic, a single employee could easily infect the entire workplace, which should prompt employers to prevent infected workers or those believing they are infected from entering the workplace. To ensure these policies are enacted, employers would have to create a set of procedures to determine which workers are potentially infected and which are not, though these procedures are not likely to be accurate. However, employers will need to liberalize paid-time off or extend their telecommuting abilities to permit ailing employees to recover, taking care not to terminate workers ill for an extended period of time. Additionally, some workers may take advantage of telecommuting opportunities simply because they fear infection or because they have ill family members at home. Medical professionals should be consulted before employers draft guidelines on what symptoms workers should watch out for and which symptoms signify workers should return to their homes. Compensation policies should be tweaked as well given that a number of divisions or the entire business may have to shut down for an extended period, depending upon the severity of the event. Compensation also must abide by the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act and ensure employee morale and satisfaction under duress. Information Source

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Untapped Talents of Educated Immigrants (U.S.A.)
Washington Post (10/23/08) P. B1; Aizenman, N.C.
One in five college-educated immigrants is either unemployed or working in an unskilled job, such as dishwasher, fast-food restaurant cashier, or security guard, depriving the U.S. economy of a potential 1.3 million highly skilled foreign-born workers, concludes a Migration Policy Institute report. Highly educated Latin American and African immigrants fare far worse in the job market than Europeans or Asians, the report notes. Almost half of recently arrived college-educated Latin Americans hold unskilled jobs, as do more than one-third of those who have been in the country for more than 10 years. The problem is even prevalent among immigrants who are in the country legally. Grego Pineda, a former bank official and lawyer in El Salvador, fled seven years ago fearing politically motivated death threats. Pineda, who has won international literary prizes for his essays in Spanish, says his trouble learning English is the only obstacle preventing him from resuming his former career in law and banking. Pineda says he was shocked to learn that the only job he could find in the Washington, D.C. area was as a laborer with a construction company. Now, Pineda is a regional safety manager, thanks to his supervisors who recognized his potential and paid for him to take advancement classes, but he still says he is not satisfied and that he wants to return to practicing law. Although African immigrants are more likely to come from highly-skilled jobs, they have the highest unemployment rates of all foreign-born groups. Study co-author Michael Fix says discrimination against Latinos and Africans may affect how they do in the job market, but that much of the gap can be attributed to language skills and immigration circumstances common to people from those regions, such as low employer sponsorship.
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Trend of Foreign Workers Leaving Likely to Accelerate as Economy Struggles (U.S.A.)
ABC News (11/07/08) Khan, Huma
Economic experts are concerned that rising unemployment rates and fears of an impending recession could push foreign nationals to leave their jobs in the United States and return to their countries. Duke University's Vivek Wadhwa thinks the departure of visiting scholars and professors from the United States could contribute to a significant "brain drain" that would have devastating effects in the long term. "It's a ticking time bomb for the U.S.," said Wadhwa, a senior research assistant at Harvard and an executive resident at Duke. "If they go back to their home countries, not only will we lose critical talent we need for the future, we will also bolster our competition." A paper produced by Duke University and the Kaufman Foundation shows that more than one in four U.S. technology companies founded between 1995 and 2005 employs a chief executive or lead technologist who was born in another country. Companies founded by immigrants within the same time period employed a total of roughly 450,000 workers and brought in $52 billion in revenue, according to the study. In Silicon Valley, the percentage of firms started by foreign workers--particularly Indians--had risen to more than 50 percent in 2005. Researchers found that 60 percent of Ph.D. candidates and 42 percent of master's candidates in U.S. engineering schools are foreign. Information Source

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Immigration to Go Paperless (U.S.A.)
Washington Post (11/07/08) P. A17; Hsu, Spencer S.
The Bush administration has formed a coalition to improve how it handles some 7 million applications annually for citizenship, visas, and work authorization in the United States. The five-year, $500 million project will convert U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' case-management system from paper-based to electronic. Backlogs and processing delays might be reduced by 20 percent to 50 percent, officials estimate. The new system would enable agencies such as the Border Patrol, the FBI, and the Labor Department to access immigration records quicker and with greater accuracy. Efforts also have been launched to link unique identification numbers to digital fingerprint scans, allowing the new system to create a life-long digital record for applicants. The need to fill out paper forms would be eliminated as well; such documents are currently stored across 200 locations in 70 million manila file folders. Information Source

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Foreign Workers in Bulgaria—the Latest Numbers
Sofia Echo (Bulgaria) (11/10/08) Kostadinov, Petar
Close to 1,500 work permits were issued to foreign workers living in Bulgaria between January and September 2008, according to a statement on the country's Employment Agency website. Bulgaria sent out 7,407 of its workers to Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and France, and in exchange processed 2,469 work requests from 19 European nations in the first nine months of the year. Though Bulgaria and Romania obtained complete membership to the European Union in 2007, both countries still face some regulations on their labor force from other EU countries, including Great Britain. At present, a London ban on the hiring of Bulgarian and Romanian workers--with the exception of university students, seasonal farm workers, and so-called "free" professionals--is valid through December of this year. British government officials have implied, however, that the hiring freeze might be prolonged as a way for the nation to ensure jobs for its own workers in light of global economic woes and a rising domestic unemployment rate. Information Source

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Royal Dutch Shell Is First Oil Company to Plan a Joint Venture in Basra Staffed With Expats (Iraq)
Times (UK) (11/06/08) Pagnamenta, Robin
Royal Dutch Shell intends to transfer many of its expatriate employees to Iraq to supervise a natural gas joint venture. Up to 200 employees and foreign contractors could be sent to Basra to process and market the gas. However, Shell said it would not send staff to Iraq until it becomes safe enough, according to a spokesman. The contract has yet to be finalized, so the plans would not take effect immediately. The company has turned to security companies, suppliers, and logistics firms in Iraq to learn about how to sustain an expatriate operation. Shell would likely dispatch a scaled-down team of foreigners initially who would work with local employees. Experts like Andreas Carleton-Smith, director of Control Risks Group, believes that the situation in Basra is stable enough to enable expatriates to live there. "People are very experienced now with dealing with the level of threat in that area. While not easy, people can gear up and deal with it ... I think security is one of the least difficult of the issues they will have to deal with." He cited such potential obstacles as regulatory problems and contractual disputes with the Iraqi government and suppliers. Information Source

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India Imposing Pension Contribution Requirement on Foreign Employees
Pacific Bridge (11/04/08) Vol. 8, No. 11,
The Indian government announced on October 1, 2008 a new contribution obligation to the Employee Provident Fund (EPF) for virtually all foreign employees based in India, consisting of 24 percent of base salary, split 50-50 between the employer and the employee. Currently for Indians, EPF contributions are required only for people earning about $1,600 annually. Most foreign employees working in India earn more than that, and they will now be required to pay the 24 percent contribution irrespective of income. The inclusion of foreign workers in the EPF system will entail a substantial administrative burden for employers in India and raise the cost of hiring expatriates. Foreign employees will be excused from EPF if they are from a nation which has concluded a Social Security Agreement (SSA) with India. Improving the treatment of Indians working overseas was the rationale for the institution of the new EPF requirement. Immigrants automatically pay payroll taxes under American rules but cannot receive benefits unless they continue to work for 10 years, which means that many Indians working in the United States relinquish their contributions if they move back to India. The new regulation is a reprisal for this treatment, as well as an attempt to press countries to sign SSAs to address the problem. It is specified in the requirement that foreigners cannot reclaim EPF contributions upon leaving India unless the same privilege is granted to Indians in the foreigners' home country. Information Source

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Israel's Efforts to Bring Emigrants Back Home Continue
Ynetnews.com (11/09/08) Eichner, Itamar
The government of Israel wants to launch a study of the country's expatriates around the world. The aim is to form a uniform means of communication with expatriates to bolster their link with Israel and possibly convince them to return. The plan was formed by Cabinet Secretary Oved Yehezkel, who turned to Jewish Agency Chairman Zeev Bielski for help. The survey will be conducted by Uzi Ravhon of Hebrew University. In a few weeks, the government plans to urge expatriates to fill out an online survey available at the website of the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption. Expatriates will be asked such questions as why they left Israel, what is preventing them from returning, and the extent of their involvement with Israeli or Jewish communities in the host country. "We have a crazy number of Israelis living elsewhere in the world and we don't know where they are," says Yehezkel. "Our working assumption is that they don't want to cut off ties with the state. We are past the time when the State can allow itself to view expatriates as wimps." Information Source

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Doctor Shortage Still a Civil Service Bug (Fiji)
Fiji Times (11/03/08)
In Fiji, one-third of the country's 400 employed physicians are expatriates. Iferemi Waqainabete of the Fiji Medical Association says this points to the failure of the civil service to retain local doctors. He asserted that the number of expatriate doctors does not correspond with the population. "About 30 doctors graduate from the Fiji School of Medicine every year," Waqainabete observed. "These doctors can be retained by improving their work conditions, by paying them for overtime, or giving them a relatively adequate allowance." The doctors typically work for 57 hours each week, or up to 140 hours for two weeks. Public Service Commission chairman Rishi Ram said Fiji's Health Ministry has guidelines on employing medical professionals, which include doctor and patient ratios approved by the World Health Organization. Information Source

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