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Strasbourg, France

Career Focus: International Human Relations
by Mary A. Schumacher

Human resources professionals often wear a number of hats. They recruit new employees, they implement employment laws and they maintain employee files containing information such as personal contacts and performance reviews. They devise policies and programs that help retain and reward employees, and train and motivate them. They may be generalists or they may focus on a specific activity, such as payroll, education, or labor relations. 

Increasingly, as companies and organizations expand their activities to an international scope, human resources professionals must fill in the information gap about expatriate employees, whose needs will vary vastly from domestic staff. This international expansion offers opportunities for human resource professionals who either wish to have an international aspect to their jobs while remaining in their home country, or to work abroad themselves. Human resource professionals are themselves relocating abroad in greater numbers, as a company's activities expand to new locations in other countries.

International human resource issues include work and residency authorization in the new country, compensation, health benefits abroad, whether or not there should be a housing allowance, or even a school allowance for children. Should the organization assist the spouse with finding employment in the new country? How many times the company or organization will pay for travel back home? How and to which country does the expatriate employee pay taxes? These are all questions that international human resource managers have to either know themselves, or be able to find experts who can answer them.

Imagine the complexity of managing the expatriate employees of Abbott Laboratories, Inc. of Abbott, Illinois, USA. Through 60 different legal entities, Abbott has activities in 130 different countries. Simply developing a payroll system to accommodate the various employees, whether domestic or expatriate, required significant planning and examination of possible delivery systems. 

Importantly, the human resource professional must also deal with helping the expatriate employee deal successfully with a new culture and new patterns of professional behavior. Making sure an expatriate, and any accompanying family members, understands the need for flexibility and tolerance while working and living in another country can be challenging. The primary reason why expatriates fail in their assignments is because a family member could not cope with the new country. Human resources staff also often are integral in helping an overseas employee repatriate, a process that has its own issues.

As human resource positions continue to focus on ever more complex and global issues, this career choice offers expanding international job opportunities. Be aware that certification enhances career prospects. 

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