After reading/watching the attachments, share your views on the following question: If you were considering an international assignment, which of the expatriate selection criteria would be of greatest   Answer Only (200-300 Words) ATTACHMENTS: 1. First article: Expatriate Selection Criteria The demand for expatriate employees is growing rapidly. Companies, repeatedly report that one of their top strategies is to “deploy” more staff on international assignments.” Selecting someone for an international assignment depends on a variety of different employment factors, including the extent of contact the business will have with local citizens and the government and the degree to which the foreign environment differs from the home environment. The magnitude of differences between the political, legal, socioeconomic, and cultural systems of the host country and those of the home country should also be assessed. Even companies that believe they have selected the best candidates frequently experience high expatriate failure rates. Poor cultural fit is a major reason why assignments fail. A lack of expatriate support from headquarters is another major cause. Yet another big factor is a spouse’s inability to adjust to his or her new surroundings. Today, more companies are preparing families by offering them cultural and language training. 2. Second article: Strong HR Leads to Better Business Performance Worldwide By Roy Maurer 12/19/2014 Permissions Companies with strong people management capabilities such as talent and leadership management and HR strategy and data­driven insights show significantly better finan­cial performance than companies that are weaker in those areas, according to a new report released by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA). The report titled How to Set Up Great HR Functions: Connect, Prioritize, Impact is the latest in BCG’s annual Creating People Advantage series, which explores emerging trends in HR. In this year’s survey, 3,507 respondents from 101 countries participated, representing a variety of industries. In addition, 64 HR and non­HR executives at leading companies around the world were interviewed. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) collaborated with BCG and WFPMA on data collection efforts in the U.S., China and India. In the U.S., 319 SHRM members completed the survey. In China, SHRM collected 71 responses. SHRM India worked with the National HRD Network in India to collect 112 responses. “As part of SHRM’s ongoing involvement and commitment to the WFPMA, we’ve participated in the survey every two years in an effort to generate data worldwide, and this year we were able to assist in getting more countries into the mix,” said Howard Wallack, SHRM­SCP, vice president for global business development at SHRM. “The biannual results consistently show that there are more commonalities of HR and business challenges across regions that u.

1. After reading/watching the attachments, share your views on the
following question:
If you were considering an international assignment, which of
the expatriate selection criteria would be of greatest
Answer Only (200-300 Words)
ATTACHMENTS:
1. First article:
Expatriate Selection Criteria
The demand for expatriate employees is growing rapidly.
Companies, repeatedly report that one of their top strategies is
to “deploy” more staff on international assignments.” Selecting
someone for an international assignment depends on a variety of
different employment factors, including the extent of contact
the business will have with local citizens and the government
and the degree to which the foreign environment differs from
the home environment. The magnitude of differences between
the political, legal, socioeconomic, and cultural systems of the
host country and those of the home country should also be
assessed. Even companies that believe they have selected the
best candidates frequently experience high expatriate failure
rates. Poor cultural fit is a major reason why assignments fail.
A lack of expatriate support from headquarters is another major
cause. Yet another big factor is a spouse’s inability to adjust to
his or her new surroundings. Today, more companies are
preparing families by offering them cultural and language
training.

2. 2. Second article:
Strong HR Leads to Better Business Performance Worldwide
By Roy Maurer 12/19/2014 Permissions
Companies with strong people management capabilities such as
talent and leadership management and HR strategy and
data-driven insights show significantly better finan-cial
performance than companies that are weaker in those areas,
according to a new report released by the Boston Consulting
Group (BCG) and the World Federation of People Management
Associations (WFPMA).
The report titled How to Set Up Great HR Functions: Connect,
Prioritize, Impact is the latest in BCG’s annual Creating People
Advantage series, which explores emerging trends in HR.
In this year’s survey, 3,507 respondents from 101 countries
participated, representing a variety of industries. In addition, 64
HR and non-HR executives at leading companies around the
world were interviewed.
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
collaborated with BCG and WFPMA on data collection efforts
in the U.S., China and India. In the U.S., 319 SHRM members
completed the survey. In China, SHRM collected 71 responses.
SHRM India worked with the National HRD Network in India to
collect 112 responses.
“As part of SHRM’s ongoing involvement and commitment to
the WFPMA, we’ve participated in the survey every two years
in an effort to generate data worldwide, and this year we were
able to assist in getting more countries into the mix,” said
Howard Wallack, SHRM-SCP, vice president for global
business development at SHRM. “The biannual results
consistently show that there are more commonalities of HR and
business challenges across regions that unite the global HR
community than divide it—those being leadership, talent
management, behavior and culture, HR and people strategy, and
employee engagement,” he said.
Top Companies Master HR
The report’s authors segregated the top 100 and bottom 100

3. companies according to financial performance, as measured by
average operating margins and average revenue changes during
2012­ 2013. “We found that companies that are stronger in
people management have a correspondingly higher financial
performance. In contrast, companies with the worst financial
per-formance show a greater need for action across virtually all
27 HR subtopics,” the report said.
The authors also looked at the financial performances of
Fortune magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For” in 2014, and
compared them with the S&P 500 Index. The 100 best
companies—those with the strongest HR performance—
outperformed the index by nearly 100 percentage points.
That finding, in addition to the survey results, led BCG to
conclude that “great HR functions are critical differentiators
that separate high-performing companies from the rest.”
Best-in-class HR functions were found to be set apart by an
ability to connect with internal clients in order to link overall
business strategy with HR strategy; being able to target
investment toward the most urgent organizational priorities; and
the ability to generate and report HR analytics, which provide
the data for formulating strategic actions.
The areas of greatest difference between high performing and
low-performing companies were found in HR
internationalization, employee engagement, career models and
competencies, and behavior and culture. High and
low-performing companies also have different priorities in
terms of future -importance, with global HR, workforce
analytics, recruiting strategy, and career models and
competencies significantly more important to high performers
than low per-formers.
“The report shows that while respondents consistently rated ‘HR
internationalization’ of low future importance and generally low
capability, it’s the single item showing the greatest capability
gap between low performing and high­performing companies,”
said Wallack. “To me that signals that HR practitioners,
particularly in lower performing companies, still seriously

4. underestimate the importance and effects of globalization for
growth and strong financial performance.”
Strategic investment is one possible explanation for the superior
HR achievement of high performers, according to the report.
According to the results, high performing companies are “more
strategic in the way they allocate their efforts; they take a
systematic approach to improving capabilities; they are able to
accurately distinguish high-priority topics from lower priorities;
and they can then direct their resources accordingly.”
Low performers, by contrast, “have a more arbitrary
relationship” between efforts invested and the importance of
areas targeted for improvement, suggesting that lower
performing organizations lack a rigorous process for improving
HR management. “They struggle to implement governance that
effectively targets their resources, and they lack the discipline
to enforce alignment with need over time—a necessity for the
kind of sustainable improvements that can ultimately impact the
bottom line.”
Onus on HR
The survey results also found that data-driven, analytical HR
departments that can quantitatively demonstrate supporting the
organization’s strategic decisions are more likely to play a
strategic role in those organizations.
The use of HR key performance indicators (KPIs) and steering
tools such as simulations and forecasts is another differentiator
between high and low performers, according to the report.
“HR functions that use people­related KPIs and steering tools to
measure areas such as workforce productivity and personnel
costs, and then analyze and communicate the results throughout
the organization, have a greater strategic role in the
organization,” the report said.
HR departments that neglect metrics and analytical techniques
“simply cannot play a strategic role. Without a clear,
data-driven understanding of how the organization is leveraging
its human capital, HR leaders have little to contribute to
big­­picture strategic discussions.”

5. HR Areas in Need of Improvement
Both HR and non-HR respondents identified the same human
capital areas, such as talent management and leadership, as the
areas with the lowest current capabilities and the highest future
importance. However, there were significant differences in
perception. HR respondents rated capabilities more highly than
non-HR respondents and did not consider any areas to be in
urgent need of action. By contrast, non-HR respondents
categorized nearly half of the 27 HR areas as urgently needing
action. Over the past several years, talent management has been
consistently rated as one of the HR areas in the greatest need of
action.
In many organizations, the HR function is perceived as not
meeting the expectations of its internal clients. “To address this
misalignment, HR departments must better align with business
units throughout the enterprise, to increase the impact of HR
and generate stronger business performance,” the report said.
Regional Breakdown
Across most countries surveyed, leadership was ranked as the
most urgent HR area in need of action, and talent management
was ranked the second most urgent. Beyond those results,
however, there were considerable differences in the rankings of
HR areas across international regions.
For example, behavior and culture, and employee engagement
were all ranked as more urgent in the U.S. than they were in
most other regions.
Companies in Brazil are primarily focused on talent
management and on rewards and recognition, given the shortage
of candidates for many positions and the need to motivate
existing employees. “The challenge that we see is a huge lack of
qualified professionals in Brazil, which is restraining Brazil’s
growth and, consequently, the growth of Brazilian companies,”
said Simone Cristina T. Salsa Nunes, a corporate strategic
people development manager at Queiroz Galvão, a Brazilian
conglomerate.
Talent management is also a challenge for Asian countries.

6. According to Joseph Bataona, an HR director at Indofood
Sukses Makmur, “Indonesia has a talent crisis at the national
level—in almost every sector, including government. The
shortage of talent is not being addressed in higher education,
whereby graduates are not really ready for the professional
world. There is also a shortage of vocational training.
Companies really have to invest more in developing people,
even at the entry level.”
For many European countries, demographic challenges, such as
an aging labor pool, are compelling companies to adopt
strategic workforce planning, which was ranked as far more
urgent than the global average.
Roy Maurer is an online editor/manager for SHRM.
3 Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oTLyPPrZE4&feature=yout
u.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc29Ro9TOKg&feature=you
tu.be
https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/human_resour
ces_creating_people_advantage_2014_how_to_set_up_great_hr_
functions/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COQgJyCpU4A&feature=yo
utu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUYNB4a8d2U&feature=yo
utu.be