Expatriate Retention & Success

Expatriate Retention & Success
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT –
986721
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Expatriate Retention & Success
Table of Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................................................3
Strategies for Expatriate Retention and Success.................................................................3
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................5
References.........................................................................................................................6
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Expatriate Retention & Success
Introduction
Expatriates are those employees who are sent from one country to another country for the
fulfilment of a specific task or assignment. In terms of international business, the term
expatriates is used for home country employees that are working in a host country (Adekola
& Sergi, 2016). Expatriate programs can require a lot of heavy investment of time and
resources and their success is also imperative for business organizations (Ang & Van Dyne,
2015). Therefore, it is important for business organizations to ensure high retention rates of
their expatriates and implement strategies that would ensure success of expatriate programs.
In this report, we will discuss certain strategies that can be helpful in expatriate retention and
can also increase their chances of success.
Strategies for Expatriate Retention and Success
The strategies that can increase expatriate retention and their chances of fulfilling the task
assigned to them are discussed below:
First of all, choosing the right person for the expatriate program is the step that decides the
success of an expatriate program. If an organisation choses a wrong person i.e. a person who
lacks the desired skills and competencies to complete a task in question, it will be impossible
for that person to achieve success in an expatriation program. Further, due to high expectation
of the company, such as person would become more likely to experience stress and negative
job attributes while working in a foreign country, which would lead to the failure of the
program and the employee becoming more likely to quit (Pinto, et al., 2017). Therefore,
choosing the right person in the first place is the most important step to ensure expatriate
success and retention.
Secondly, cultural training is an important step towards expatriate retention and success.
When expatriates are transferred to a host country for fulfilling a specific task, they are
required to deal with people from different cultural backgrounds. While working in the host
country subsidiary, they have to adapt to the national culture and also learn the
communication styles preferred in that very country (Okpara & Kabongo, 2017). The failure
of an expatriate to adjust to the new culture can make them go through a culture shock, which
would result in the failure of the program and they might even show a tendency to quit their
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