IHRM Staffing Practices What Are the Best

IHRM Staffing Practices

What are the best IHRM staffing practices for an international assignment?

Big companies have already expanded their businesses all around the world and now other companies are also following the track. The trend of international businesses has changed the traditional ways of managing people. An IHR manager has lot more to do for the organization as compared to the local HR manager. The foremost responsibility of an IHR manager is to hire the appropriate employee for his/her international organization and assignments.

An IHR manager has to deal with number of challenges when preparing for an international assignment. Appropriate HR policies and procedures developed as according to the assignment requirements. While selecting the candidate for the particular international job, an IHR manager has to make right assessment and identification of the candidate. Moreover, the cost projections calculated like which decision would be more cost effective, using an expatriate or a local employee. In addition to the basic expenses, organization also needs to take care of an employee's living, transport, appropriate compensation as per the working environment and family support.

International organizations' managers have any of the four mindsets that are ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric and geocentric. These four mindsets define international staffing policies.

In Ethnocentric Staffing Policy, the parent country nationals are prioritized and thus key management positions reserved for parent country citizens. This policy is usually applied where there is doubt of lack of management talent in the host country nationals. Moreover, the organization wants to have tighter control, maintain a unified corporate culture, and transfer parent firm's core competencies to all of the other foreign subsidiaries.

In Polycentric Staffing Policy, the host country nationals are hired for key management positions. However, the parent country nationals are hired for the home offices headquarters. This policy is applied to reduce the local cultural misunderstanding, since local nationals can better deal with the cultural issues as compared to the expatriate managers. Moreover, hiring local nationals cost less to the organization; whereas, in case of expatriate manager, the organization has to bear the income taxes, living expenses of the employee and its family that triples the cost.

The Geocentric Staffing Policy is the most common policy that is practiced in IHRM. As according to geocentric policy, the best person is selected for the key position throughout the organization irrespective of nationality. The organizations practicing geocentric policy emphasize more on performance or competence as compared to costs or cultural hold; however, this may also help in building a stronger set of values and culture all over the global management team. Moreover, the team continually interacts and consults each other for global assignments and development activities.