The purpose of this individual assignment is to encourage you to explore and begin developing your own approach to financial counseling. You will consider your assumptions about the nature of individuals and how they change behavior. To begin this process, an article presenting an overview of the major traditional and contemporary theories of the helping relationship is provided (see in Week 9 Module: Theories in Counseling). Addressing the following questions will assist you in developing your personal theory. Integrate the answers into your paper, where possible. -What is your view of human nature? -What are some of your specific concerns or fears regarding your work as a beginning financial counselor? -Personal Strength and weakness you may bring to the financial counseling process. -Basic assumptions and explanations about how a change in behavior can come about? -How do you typically deal with your crisis situation? With your own personal problems? -How would your approach or theory assist in your anticipated work setting? With those points in mind, write a 4-6 pages paper (Times New Roman, 12pt, Double Space) that articulates your approach for helping others. Throughout your paper, indicate how your views on helping are similar to and different than the theories presented in the reading and in references you find to support your paper. Include a list of references you use. 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. If you were considering an international assignment, which of the expatriate selection criteria would be of greatest concern to you. Share your views. Figure 15.4 (page 588) Expatriate Selection Criteria 1 | P a g e 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 s ...

1. The purpose of this individual assignment is to encourage you
to explore and begin developing your own approach to financial
counseling. You will consider your assumptions about the
nature of individuals and how they change behavior. To begin
this process, an article presenting an overview of the major
traditional and contemporary theories of the helping
relationship is provided (see in Week 9 Module: Theories in
Counseling). Addressing the following questions will assist you
in developing your personal theory. Integrate the answers into
your paper, where possible.
-What is your view of human nature?
-What are some of your specific concerns or fears regarding
your work as a beginning financial counselor?
-Personal Strength and weakness you may bring to the
financial counseling process.
-Basic assumptions and explanations about how a change in
behavior can come about?
-How do you typically deal with your crisis situation? With
your own personal problems?
-How would your approach or theory assist in your anticipated
work setting?
With those points in mind, write a 4-6 pages paper (Times New
Roman, 12pt, Double Space) that articulates your approach for
helping others. Throughout your paper, indicate how your views
on helping are similar to and different than the theories
presented in the reading and in references you find to support
your paper. Include a list of references you use.
Expatriate Selection Criteria

2. 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.
If you were considering an international assignment, which of
the expatriate selection criteria would be

3. of greatest concern to you. Share your views.
Figure 15.4 (page 588) Expatriate Selection Criteria
1 | P a g e
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,

4. 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

5. 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
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

6. conclude that “great HR functions are critical
differentiators that separate high-performing companies from
the rest.”
2 | P a g e
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.

7. “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 high-performing companies,” said
Wallack. “To me that signals that HR
practitioners, particularly in lower performing companies, still
seriously 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

8. 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.

9. Without a clear, data-driven understanding of how the
organization is leveraging its human capital, HR
leaders have little to contribute to big--picture strategic
discussions.”
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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.

10. 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

11. 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.
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.