Case study. What are the issues with Yalia’s expat mobility approach?

CASE STUDY: YALIA
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Case Study: Yalia
1 What are the issues with Yalia’s expat mobility approach? What measures should they introduce to improve their program?
Issues
Jian faces a crisis in the overseas operations as a human resource director. A senior level employee is threatening to leave if the company does not raise his compensation plan. This problem arises when Kewen (an employee based in Dubai) visits Ryan’s home. Yalia acquired Cloudies and there are inconsistencies in the companies’ package policies. Cloudies has a more transparent and comprehensive compensation plan while Yalia has an unpdated one. This causes problems. When Kewen demands for an increase in his housing money, it is evident that there is no proper policy which guides such cases. Another problem arises when Kewen is informed about a new assignment which he had no expertise making him to question the role of HR in supporting overseas employees. This gives Kewen a leverage to negotiate for his compensation package. However, the major issue with Yalia’s case revolves around the company’s ineffective international human resource strategy. Although, the key issue is with the compensation package, there are other issues such as the procedure of sending experts to overseas assignments. There are major issues with job design, recruitment and selection, training and development as well as appraisals of overseas assignees.
First, there is a mismatch in Kewen’s abilities and the nature of the new responsibilities. The company does not consider whether an employee’s expertise match with the new assignments and determine if they need to be trained. There is also the issue of adapting to the new culture. The company does not train or prepare their overseas assignees towards the new culture. This demonstrates a flaw in the company’s training program. Finally, the management is a problem since it is not ready to review its mobility compensation policy. Hong Liu, holds that overseas assignees should be given what they want and does not want to listen to Jing’s insights and advice.
Measures
The first measure Yalia should take is to rewrite its mobility compensation policy where it should introduce more incentives such as education, transportation, hardship allowances as well as mobility premiums. The current program does not clearly define the duration of overseas assignments; therefore, the new policy should define this to provide guidelines for compensations. For instance, if the duration of the assignment is longer, the assignees should be provided with more generous assignments. The new policy should also provide for training of the expatriates before they are assigned to foreign assignments. Additionally, the policy should provide a clear process of recruitment and selection before assigning employees foreign responsibilities.
Another measure is to standardise the compensation packages between the two companies (Hu, 2018). Yalia should adopt Cloudies’ policy due to its comprehensiveness and has proved to be effective in years. This will help Yalia develop a detailed policy that will clearly define the responsibilities of everyone to en...