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Why should international companies pay more attention to the personal needs of staff when offering them a foreign assignment

Written by: Robbert-Jan Nuis

Article Overview: With the increasing competition in the global markets we see more and more managers and employees traveling, moving and re-locating to all parts of the world. For the companies it means offering more, better and ever more elaborate packages to “motivate” people to be part of the Expatriate community. It also means higher demands, both professionally and personally from the employees, increased workload and thus stress levels. This compounds exponentially when there are partners and/or children involved. If local families experience 15 % of stress on a daily basis this number would increase rapidly when moving abroad. Therefore help is needed for the company as well as the employees!

Why should international companies pay more attention to the personal needs of staff when offering them a foreign assignment

With the increasing competition in the global markets we see more and more managers and employees traveling, moving and re-locating to all parts of the world. For the companies it means offering more, better and ever more elaborate packages to “motivate” people to be part of the Expatriate community. It also means higher demands, both professionally and personally from the employees, increased workload and thus stress levels. This compounds exponentially when there are partners and/or children involved. If local families experience 15 % of stress on a daily basis this number would increase rapidly when moving abroad. Therefore help is needed for the company as well as the employees!
• Because surveys show that many projects involving foreign assignment fail before the deadline!
• Because employees sent abroad need special skills!
• Because employees stepping into the Expatriate community may need extra help before, during and after the assignment.
• Because HR and management can play an active role in decreasing the percentage of failure, sickness, absenteeism, lack of motivation etc.
• Because International companies with staff abroad need HR and Management to be aware of and pay attention to the personal side of such situations in order to increase overall success for both employees and companies.
How can HR and Management increase their own success rate with foreign assignments?
No doubt you already screen your potential assignees carefully or perhaps you even have a personal coach as part of your staff but do you have somebody who knows from experience what the intricacies, pitfalls and possible problems of starting to work and live in a foreign country and unfamiliar environment are?
NLP can help for you!
What is NLP?

NLP is the study of how people organize their thinking, feeling, language and behavior to produce the results they do.

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is about understanding the structure of how the human nervous system (Neuro) transforms data received through the 5 senses into mental descriptions (linguistic) and then unconscious behavior (programming).” With NLP, you have a model for understanding the unconscious thinking processes that drive behavior.
Neuro refers to our nervous system/mind and how it processes information and codes it as memory inside our very body/neurology. By Neuro we refer to experience as inputted, processed, and ordered by our neurological mechanisms and processes.
Linguistic indicates that the neural processes of the mind come coded, ordered, and given meaning through language, communication systems, and various symbolic systems (grammar, mathematics, music, icons).
Programming refers to our ability to organize our sensory-based information (sights, sounds, sensations, smells, tastes, and symbols or words) within our mind-body organism which then enables us to achieve our desired outcomes.
Taking control of one’s own mind describes the heart of NLP. NLP has become famous for the techniques it offers to bring about fast, effective and lasting change.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) explores the inner workings of the human mind; how we think, how we develop our desires, goals and fears and how we motivate ourselves, make connections, and give meaning to our experiences. NLP presents specific skills and patterns necessary to make positive changes, create new choices, be more effective with others, break free of old habits, self-destructive patterns and behaviors, and think more clearly about what it is we want and how to get it.
What can NLP be used for? What can you do with NLP?

NLP can be used by individuals, couples, families, groups of people in the workplace or out and anywhere you interact with people NLP is used. Using NLP consciously gives you great tools to make yourself better understood, to understand the other person(s) better, to improve your life experience and to help other people if they choose to be helped! NLP can be used for anything that is stuck, unfinished, undone, broken, changed etc.etc.

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Related Forum Posts
Experienced Consultant / Advisor - Thanks for offering your help Its people like you who are valuable to a forum like this. Your guidance will indeed benefit this forum in many ways. Hey since your still in Law School, I am sure you would know something about importing foreign drugs. I did some checking and I believe the FDA just recently passed some bill making it illegal to import foreign drugs. Yet they don't really crack down on individuals buying foreign drugs because the majority are seniors. Can you confirm that this is true or contribute anything on this topic? I believe there is a big market out there for something like this, but the main topic remains. Is it legal?
Experienced Consultant / Advisor - I assume you are referring to the sale of foreign srugs on the internet. Without doing the real research I can tell you that it most likely still a somewhat gray area, only because the ways our laws our written don’t always address e-commerce. For example, there are a ton of gambling sites and while Internet gambling is illegal in the US, the companies simply set up operations overseas, allowing US citizens to still gamble. Perhaps this is why we have yet to see a lot of enforcement on the foreign drug issues - there is still a question in terms of how things are set up...I’m sure you also get a ton of junk email offering prescription drugs online without a Dr's RX. Another area which I think will eventually experience a crackdown but since it has just become a fad it may take a while for anything to happen. While there may be an interim opportunity in the market, which I cant confirm without looking at the specifics of the law, I always feel that the earlier in your career you are, the more clean and by the book you need to play it - reputation is everything. On the other hand, some people will say you have a lot less to use. If it is something you are seriously considering, I would be happy to pull some research articles for you...
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Re: Search Engine Optimization - there are companies offering more than brochures, they are offering more than ideas so besides a brochure you can get many tools and services allowing you to increase your business. Check it out and take from there as much as you can
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