While often located down the same corridor in the HR wing of most corporate headquarters, the directors of global mobility and talent development lead their respective complementary, but not often strategically-integrated, functions.
As complementary HR functions, leadership development and talent management professionals identify the firm’s talent deemed to be ready for international assignments, when (and sometimes where) they should be assigned, and what they will be expected to do. Once talent has been identified, global mobility professionals manage the myriad complexities (and vendors)—everything from their taxes and visas to the movement of their household goods and enrollment in international schools.
In these complementary roles, the collaboration is generally minimal once a prospective international assignee is handed-off from the talent management or leadership development professionals to the global mobility professionals. An assignee has been identified, and it is up to the mobility department to make the move happen. This is the general state of affairs in many companies. As a matter of practicality, there is some efficiency-based value in global mobility and talent management operating as complementary functions (especially in firms with international assignee populations predominantly placed in less developmental—and more technical and functional—assignments).
While efficient, having these functional areas operate as autonomous and complementary functions is less effective from the perspective of global HR strategy.
For this reason, the situation is changing in many HR corridors as mobility and talent management teams are spending far more time together. Their collective goal is to more effectively align international assignments around global HR strategy.
A Growing Need
There is a growing strategic need in most firms to produce more culturally-agile leaders through systematic global leadership development programs. This strategic HR need has led to a paradigm shift, as the global mobility and talent management functions are being reconfigured to be more strategically-integrated HR partners.
Dr. Kyle Lundby, an expert in strategic HR solutions from Kenexa, Durham, North Carolina, noted, “just as organizations have moved to a shared services model in order to maximize efficiency whilst minimizing costs, organizations can realize similar efficiencies by bringing together the global mobility and talent management practice areas.”
As strategically-integrated partners, both talent management and global mobility professionals work together under one set of strategic business goals guiding where international assignees should be placed and why. Lundby contends that there is a very real strategic need—retention. He states that “given that nearly one-third of all repatriates voluntarily turn over shortly after returning, organizations simply must approach global mobility with more of a strategic mindset.”
For those involved in leadership development, as strategically-integrated HR partners, these HR professionals now have a deeper knowledge of the specific global competencies needing to be developed for any given high potential; they are able to readily identify who is predisposed to achieve the desired developmental gains from a given international assignment.
Global mobility professionals also operating as strategically-integrated HR partners possess the same knowledge of the desired developmental global competencies and, in turn, are able to design international assignments with associated support practices to increase the probability of the desired developmental competencies being gained.
An Overview of the Four Elements
In firms where the global mobility and talent management functions operate as strategically-integrated partners, four elements are recognized by both functions:
1. Not all international assignments are intentionally developmental. Some international assignments are purely task-oriented or technical in nature. With respect to these assignments, there is no intended developmental component. These assignments require few, if any, intercultural skills to be successfully completed. Technical assignees work in the host country solely to complete the job and return home, and often are called in when a given skill set is unavailable in a host country. It is important for mobility and talent management to recognize the differences among the various international assignments. For an assignment to be developmental, it must include the following two features: significant peer-to-peer contact with colleagues from the host country; and opportunities to question one’s own assumptions and to realize the cultural limits of one’s knowledge base or professional behaviors.
2. Not all individuals have the ability to develop from the experience of international assignments. There are characteristics that predispose individuals to develop professionally from the experience of an international assignment. These traits enable them to be open and receptive to learning the norms of new cultures, to initiate contact with host nationals, to gather cultural information, and to handle the higher amounts of stress associated with the ambiguity of their new environments. These traits include:
- Extroversion and agreeableness. These characteristics enable individuals to form reciprocal social alliances and build relationships cross-nationally.
- Conscientiousness. The tenacity of conscientious employees often is needed in international activities and is important for effectiveness in intercultural activities.
- Emotional stability. This is important given the stress often associated with living and working in ambiguous and unfamiliar environments.
- Openness or intellect. This personality characteristic enables people to have fewer rigid views of right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, and the like.
3. The completion of an assignment is not the same as gaining desired developmental competencies. This is a major shift. It often was assumed that the accumulation of international experience was equivalent to global leadership development. We now know that finishing an international assignment is not the same as, in fact, developing those critical global leadership competencies, such as, building a global network, cultural sensitivity, global strategic thinking, and the like.
4. Some predictors of success internationally are outside of traditional competency models of talent management and leadership development. This is the air that mobility professionals breathe—that many things (not just prior experience) can affect the outcome of an assignment. Considering that international assignments are job contexts, not job descriptions, the predictors of international assignee success relate more to the idea of living and working in a host country as opposed to successfully completing any specific job-related tasks. These predictors often are related to personal issues or family-related challenges—such as the special needs of a spouse or partner and child or children, who often accompany an international assignee to the host country. The family members’ experiences often can have a profound influence on the assignees’ sense of work-life balance and, subsequently, on the outcome of international assignments. While a stable marriage or an adaptable family can be tremendous assets for international assignment success, they are not attributes that fit neatly into competency models or other such evaluations of an organization’s talent pool.
A Paradigm Shift
Companies are recognizing the demands of international assignments along with their developmental potential, and are designing HR practices to support the developmental and learning potential of the international assignees. Lundby, a former expatriate in Hong Kong for two years, knows first-hand that employers can assist in providing support services to encourage positive assignment outcomes. He adds, “Gone are the days when expats are simply dropped in-country and expected to fend for themselves. Today, pre-assignment assessment for ‘fit’ and cultural training are just a few of the things that organizations can do to maximize the effectiveness of these high-potentials as they journey abroad.”
There is paradigm shift within the HR function affecting talent management and global mobility professionals equally: both need to gain new knowledge about the repertoire of possible developmental competencies potentially inherent in international assignments, how to craft the experiences to elicit those developmental competencies, and how to identify talent most likely to experience the developmental gain.
Within firms, this change tends to be viewed favorably on both ends of the HR function’s corridor, especially among more strategically-oriented global mobility and talent management professionals; they welcome the opportunity to work together, share their areas of expertise, and learn about the burgeoning (and nuanced) area of global leadership development.
Paula Caligiuri, Ph.D., is a professor of human resource management and the director of the Center for HR Strategy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is an expert in strategic global assignment management and global leadership development and works with firms globally in these areas. She can be reached at +1 732 445 5228, at www.PaulaCaligiuri.com., or Paula@PaulaCaligiuri.com.