How To Help Managers Oversee New Inpatriates

These five tips can help you make the transition smooth:

• Give managers who will have responsibility for international assignees classes in cultural awareness, especially in ways that America may differ from the rest of the world
• At the very least, use your company’s diversity program to highlight working with different kinds of people
• Help managers become sensitive to different communication styles
• Remind managers not to assume the international corporate culture is the same as the one at headquarters. For example, a U.S.-based company may have a do-it-yesterday type of attitude that isn’t shared in other locations around the world. This will affect employee performance, especially at the beginning
• Help them realize that the employee-if coming from a subsidiary-may not be used to the scrutiny of working at headquarters. The same holds true for the bureaucracy.