Selection of expat project personnel

When you need to send your people over­seas for exten­ded pro­ject deploy­ments, how do you pick the right ones?

Much of the early part of my career was spent work­ing as an expat rep­res­ent­at­ive of my par­ent com­pany in vari­ous parts of the world in small, tight knit teams of engin­eers, man­agers and sup­port per­son­nel. In most of these situ­ations the teams worked well, with a strong internal, mutual sup­port philo­sophy and genu­ine com­mit­ment to the task at hand, though there were excep­tions to this and the les­sons from those exper­i­ences have stuck with me ever since. I have attemp­ted here to list some of my pos­it­ive and neg­at­ive recommendations.

1. Expat per­son­nel must be con­vers­ant with the com­pany they work for and be com­mit­ted to the work in hand — I have seen instances where new per­son­nel are hired spe­cific­ally for an over­seas assign­ment, to rep­res­ent the com­pany that has hired them, my exper­i­ences with this is that these rarely are as suc­cess­ful as deploy­ing estab­lished per­son­nel. Like­wise, the expats must be com­mit­ted to the suc­cess of the task, in some instances to the det­ri­ment of their own level of short term reward, if they are there to make money, great, as long as that is their only motiv­a­tion, any­one who is not fully com­mit­ted to the work will lack com­mit­ment when the pres­sure is on.
2. Wherever pos­sible, send some seasoned expat per­son­nel as part of the team, these per­son­nel will typ­ic­ally become ment­ors and coaches to the new trav­el­lers. Hav­ing a whole team of new­bies will lead to a lot of wasted time in the set­tling in process.
3. Set clear expect­a­tions of beha­viour and liv­ing con­di­tions before the expats depart, every pro­ject and situ­ation is dif­fer­ent so it is very hard to gen­er­al­ise, but expats should know their lim­its and author­it­ies before they arrive in coun­try, this would encom­pass any allow­ances, liv­ing costs, trans­port both to and from and while in coun­try, med­ical cov­er­age, etc.
4. Encour­age your expats to integ­rate into the local com­munity and cul­ture as much as pos­sible. While this is not always easy to do, and again every situ­ation will be dif­fer­ent, I would coun­cil against expat per­son­nel liv­ing in closed com­munit­ies if at all pos­sible, even mix­ing with expats from other com­pan­ies, com­munit­ies or coun­tries is bet­ter than hav­ing a single com­pany liv­ing community.
5. Select your expats on their per­son­al­ity, aptitude and exper­i­ence before their level of tech­nical expert­ise, it does not mat­ter as much how tech­nical strong they are if they are unable to work in the situ­ation they are placed in and/or can not work with their col­leagues and local personnel.
6. Plan for, and expect, some issues from your per­son­nel, but try not to be too judge­mental about motives, things can hap­pen when you live in an expat situ­ation that are crit­ical to the expats but seem excess­ively trivial and incon­sequen­tial to those in the home office.
7. Lin­guistic sup­port is essen­tial, this can be any­where from the pro­vi­sion of inter­pret­ers, lan­guage les­sons, pro­vi­sion of phrase books or simply learn­ing to com­mu­nic­ate in a form of simple com­mon lan­guage that relies on basic vocab­u­lary and com­mon tech­nical terms.
8. Provide flex­ible travel and vaca­tion sched­ules as long as they are fair to all per­son­nel and do not impede the deliv­ery of the pro­ject. Expats may have spe­cific needs to return home for fam­ily or other events where this travel may fall out­side of a fixed roster, or may wish to take their home trip in kind as a sep­ar­ate vaca­tion to another part of the world or spend it in-country. I would advise, wherever pos­sible, try to accom­mod­ate these as long as they are reas­on­able, since demon­strat­ing flex­ib­il­ity toward your people will typ­ic­ally be rewar­ded in kind.
9. The most senior expat rep­res­ent­at­ive must be a seasoned expat, have an estab­lished track record with your com­pany and have a reas­on­able level of author­ity to act inde­pend­ently with regard to both the treat­ment of the expat team and also spe­cific pro­ject situ­ations. Hav­ing this per­son ham­strung by home office red tape can lead to frus­tra­tion and wasted effort by both sides of the pro­ject team.
10. Pre­pare for, and expect, one or two fail­ures in your choices. The expat life­style is not for every­one and even the most exper­i­enced and enthu­si­astic employee will have prob­lems on some deploy­ments. These people should feel com­fort­able put­ting their hand up as need­ing to be relieved from their post­ing without com­prom­ising their stand­ing with the organisation.

Copy­right secured by Digiprove © 2010 Francis Norman

Related Posts:

• Con­sist­ency of mes­sage in com­mu­nic­at­ing to your team
• Provid­ing ongo­ing assist­ance in the devel­op­ment of inter­na­tional com­mu­nic­a­tions skills
• Find­ing the right motiv­a­tion to suc­ceed in inter­na­tional communications

Tagged as: expat, personnel, Project Management, selection