Bon Voyage! Sending employees <i>over there</i> starts with a little work <i>right here</i>.

Do your plans for international expansion include opening anoverseas office? Your chances of success and profits are greater ifyou develop a comprehensive expatriate program before you transferemployees to a foreign country. Sending someone overseas to live,even temporarily, is far more complex than sending someone on ashort-term business trip. Denise Oemig, director of internationalcompensation and assignment services with Runz-heimerInternational, offers this advice:

Decide in advance whether the position you're creatingwill always be filled by someone from the United States or if theperson you're sending overseas will identify, hire and trainlocal personnel to staff the fa-cility.

Get country-specific tax advice before you spend any money.Companies usually pay for things like household goods, overseasschooling for employees' children and the like. "Taxramifications surround every part of the assignment," Oemigsays. She suggests entrepreneurs consult an ac-counting firm thatspecializes in international tax issues.

Provide cross-cultural training for the employee and his orher family. This lets everyone know what to expect in the foreigncountry and should include an advance trip to the location beforethe actual move. Language training for the family-both in advanceand after they arrive in the new country-should be part of thepackage.

Arrange for destination services, which include havingsomeone meet the employee and his or her family on their arrival,helping them get settled and acclimated, and identifying some localresources for them.

Before the employee and his or her family leave, be sure towork out all the logistics, such as visas, medical exams,inoculations, foreign medical coverage, school for the children,storage of personal property they won't be taking, howthey'll deal with their home if they own one, and so on.

Set policies on annual home leave and perhaps paid R&Rtrips if appropriate. Your expatriate plan should also include arepatriation plan. Oemig says most companies simply guaranteeemployees their jobs when they return from overseas but don'tconsider what those jobs might be. "They need to think abouthow they're going to use the skills the person has gained, howthey're going to get a return on the investment. It's veryexpensive to send somebody to work in another country for a coupleof years," Oemig says. "What often happens is the personcomes back, [and] they don't have anything meaningful to do, sothey leave the company-and the company has just lost thatinvestment."

For information and resources on foreign countries, contact theU.S. State Department and ask for the appropriate country desk,that country's embassy in the United States and the U.S.embassy in the foreign country.

Jacquelyn Lynn left the corporate world more than 14 yearsago and has been writing about business and management from herhome office in Winter Park, Florida, ever since.

Contact Source

• Runzheimer International, (800) 558-1702, www.runzheimer.com