The company is a leading global provider of process solutions, technologies and services for its business segment. It employs over 2,000 people, more than half work of whom work in foreign subsidiaries. The first international assignments in the company took place in the 1960s and since then the number of employees working abroad has grown steadily. As is typical in many companies, it has already created good assignment policies concerning long-term international assignments, while a need to develop better policies for managing increasing numbers of short-term assignees, and in particular project assignees, has emerged.

So, a project concerning the development of new policies was launched involving interviewing assignees, line managers, and HRM-professionals. Among the different types of assignments, project assignment was clearly the most common type in the company. From an organisational perspective, the key benefit of short-term assignments was flexibility in human resource planning with shared utilisation of individual work and short-term transfers of human resources to fulfil urgent or short-term staffing needs. Project-based international mobility was expected from employees also, since technical assistance and support is included within each sale. Shortterm staff transfers were seen to enhance the communication and knowledge-sharing between units - an issue that was seen to be of increasing importance. Thus, the assignments were seen to support the strategic aim of increased global integration. Close contact with customers was also stressed, since the assignees got a lot of feedback for their services and products which could then be utilised in R\&D and marketing.

From the individual perspective, the positive characteristics involved the development opportunities the international projects offered assignees. This involved seeing different ways of doing things across units, formation of personal relationships across organisational and national borders, in-depth learning of environments in which customers operate, an opportunity to see how technological solutions operate in the field, as well as contacts with foreign customers and the understanding of their specific needs. International project work typically also included challenges such as tight schedules and intensive working, often in pressured or even dangerous circumstances. The main challenges faced by project assignees involved distance from family - sometimes with limited communication possibilities due to working in difficult environments or different time zones and also the intensive nature of the work. Due to the limited length of stay in each location, it was difficult to get adjusted to any specific place. Due to the intensive group form of working during projects, individual problems caused challenges for the wellbeing and performance of the whole group.
The company lacked guidelines on how to deal with these kinds of problem situations and often they were not dealt with early enough. The other concerns faced by the HRM specialists were related to challenges in developing fair assignment policies that would apply in a multitude of different circumstances and the sensitivity and complexity of handling family-related concerns. The assignees called for more support from HRM.
The company is trying to clarify its policies on these short-term assignments. Separate policies were determined for short-term assignments (as opposed to the policies for more traditional expatriate assignments) because the management processes are very different. Previously, everything up to three months had been classified as a business trip. More recently the company has developed a separate policy for project assignments to cover all assignments lasting more than a month. Assignments between three and six months have been administered with something called the memo in which terms and conditions have been specified. Assignments over six months involved more detailed contracts, and in many countries such a contract is required in the host country as well. Assignees with shorter contracts receive their salary in their home country, whereas for longer stays salary arrangements may differ. Employees may, with company support, move their family when assignments are more than four months long. The company also started to arrange visits and informal guidance on these issues for the whole family before the assignment.
It was also felt that the selection of project assignees was not systematic enough. Assignees argued that not all employees are suitable for such assignment and stressed the need for more careful selection. Project assignees tended to get the posts because of their personal relationships with the project manager. Senior managers either confirm the selected group, which is formed by the project leader, or jointly plan the recruitments so that the best people are allocated to different projects. A new selection process for project assignees was created. In this new process, the project management initiates recruitment, and candidate selection is completed together with the line manager. A need for more systematised processes, including a pre-selected pool of candidates available for transfers, was identified. Also, the development of better tools for screening people was raised.
Contract negotiations had been conducted up to now on a case-by-case basis. Contract and compensation negotiations were very time consuming for the HRM specialists - the amount of time being dependent on the length of the assignment, the need for insurance briefing, the need to involve family issues, and the type of the assignment. The contract negotiations took place between the assignee, his or her supervisor/ine manager/. project manager and the HRM manager. When the assignee works for the host subsidiary, the latter covers the compensation, so the assignee's superior there will also be included in the negotiations. In a new policy, flexibility in project assignment compensation is being reduced as increasingly strict project budgets give guidelines for negotiations. Overall, the HRM department saw a need to standardise the process in order to cut time spent on negotiations and to create fairness.
The new policy also includes new guidelines for training. The project managers were made responsible for organising training, as they know the project, the location and the related training needs best. With regard to performance management (PM), assignees felt that the standard process was problematic, as their supervisors had little knowledge about their performance during the project assignment. They also felt that, overall, they did not get much feedback on their performance. The whole process was seen to be too dependent on a single supervisor: it was seen that the PM process must involve additional discussions at the end of the assignment (even if informally conducted), besides the annual PM process.

Questions
1 Analyse the advantages and disadvantages of flexible alternative forms of international assignments.
2 Many organisations tend to have a 'one size fits all' international mobility policy. Why do they do that? How would you manage international workers in the different categories? Would you design diverse policies?
3 What can you do as an individual and as an organisation to counter the impression that expatriates go to exotic locations to have a 'jolly' time in which they simply relax and enjoy their lives?