Global Training and Development - Research Paper Example

? Global Training and Development Global Training and Development Introduction Organisations today function in a more global environment (Dumaine, 2008). Leaders should be set to thrive in a thrilling, competitive and complex world, making the most of each and every resource. It is not only lip service to argue that individuals are truly organisations’ greatest assets. People in positions of headship or leadership or who write on successful leadership all argue that competitive advantage is prevalent to those who endeavour to effectively use their human resources, providing environments which enable and engage workers (Dumaine, 2008). A trendy phrase employed in organisational communication, as well as other organisational circles these days, is employee engagement. The phrase is used in describing members of a company who are individually invested in their duty and in the triumph of their business. These are not people who are just marking time or putting in hours, but those who, in reality, care about the organisation’s future. They are also willing to invest their effort and time to guarantee organisational success. A study carried out among non-international companies in Europe shows that only about one in every four workers actively take part in their roles. In addition, as many as one in ten workers are actively disengaged in their duties. To use an accepted example, this would imply that if you were to place a football team on the pitch, then only two players would be absolutely dedicated and keen to take the individual initiative to assist the team succeed, and one of the players could be actively impairing the team’s attempts through their meager attitude and resistance to direction from the coaching team. Imagine attempting to win a game with that blend of players, yet a majority of organisations are attempting to participate in a global environment today with precisely that type of lineup (Foster, 2000). Effective leaders and successful organisations find techniques to enhance their odds, perfectly setting up a culture and climate in which every member is truly incorporated (Earley, 2008). This shows the importance of expatriate development and cross cultural training, as well as development for expatriates. Not surprisingly, when scholars or theorists talk about means to improve or achieve employee engagement, the dialogue turns to the culture of the corporation, and the role of leadership in forming and sustaining that culture. Normally, successful organisational culture looms on such variables as confidence, credibility and collaboration, where a hefty measure of power shifts from leaders to their subjects. Even though, not particularly writing on employee engagement, Brislin (2008), and Darby (2007), wrote of organisations that successfully compete amidst the hurdles of globalisation, expanding unrelenting social change and technologies. Both the author believed that leadership was essential, not just at the chief executive officer level, but at all levels of the organisation. Leaders of today should recognise that a serious measure of their success is their skill to develop and inspire other leaders within their organisations. Organisational leaders should serve as architects who successfully analyze the present cultural structure of their companies and redesign them so that the culture itself turns into a source of engagement and energy. Expatriate development is known to be extremely helpful in erecting internationally recognised companies. Also, due to globalisation, it is vital for organisations to be willing to embrace diversity in order to be able to compete internationally. The importance of diversity cannot be overemphasised, but it is vital to note that diversity enables organisations to better establish themselves as international organisations because they have a wider pool of resources and ideas. Also, as companies grow and develop into more complex surroundings, management and leadership hurdles grow, as well. The leader of a small, local organisation is most expected to supervise a mix of workers with shared values and similar experiences. Those matching cultural views are normally shared with clients and other people likely to interact with a small, local business (Tung, 2004). Nevertheless, as companies grow and develop across regional and national boundaries, both the study of organisational culture and its successful adaptation to contain multinational settings become more challenging and difficult. On these grounds, it is vital to train expatriates on how to embrace diversity in their organisations, and how to make it work for them. This paper will discuss expatriate development and cross cultural training, as well as development for expatriates. It will also look into the effectiveness of cross culture training and development for expatriates. Leading Organisation in the Global Environment Organisations everywhere offer products and service to their clients with the help of a multi-cultural labour force (Foster, 2010). This is despite whether they are global companies or not. Workers, executives and managers should be capable of working productively with individuals who are different from themselves. These are individuals who require the same things; security, safety, a good job, an interesting work and a decent wage (Scullion, 2006). They should also note that these people might have diverse perspectives on what forms a best-suited manager with regards to factors such as how to manage conflict, what is needed in getting a job done or how to assist the client even if it takes a longer period of time than intended. To be successful across all borders, companies and their workers, at all levels, should broaden their combined understanding, knowledge, and skills of other cultures (Foster, 2010). However, it is vital to note that it takes a number of generations before a majority of strong cultural values and beliefs are eroded, if at all in the first place they were eroded (Business International Corporation, 2009). Some proponents of global personnel development argue that, managers should discern how to organise and motivate individuals from various cultural backgrounds. Sales persons should discern how to form relationships, negotiate, as well as sell across cultures. Human resource specialists should discern how to expand the skills of employees in other nations apart from their own. Employees should be capable of working efficiently with a broad variety of cultures. Financial advisors, on the other hand, should understand how disparities among cultures and traditions affect the ethical behaviours in their area of accountability. Finally, contact center offshorers should discern how to offer successful learning and development in other regions of the world and cultures on special-ordered products while making sure they maintain high quality or superior customer service levels (Business International Corporation, 2009). If an organisation does this, it could be best assured that they can compete on a global level. It is, therefore, vital to look into some of the organisations that have endeavoured to instill the above stated factors in order to realise international recognition. This paper will focus mainly on some of the organisations in the United Arab Emirates. If anybody is asked to name a company that it well known all across the world from the United Arab Emirates, then it definitely has to be the Emirates Airline. However, the region also has various companies, which have had a profound impact on the international market. Such companies include Etihad Airways, First Gulf Bank, Air Arabia and Exillon Energy (Gertsen, 2010). This segment will talk about some of the international strategies that these companies are using in order to gain the significant competitive advantage they have. Emirates Airline Located at Dubai International Airport, in Dubai, Emirates Airlines is the largest corporation in the Middle East (Walid, 2013a). It operates more than 3,000 flights every week to 133 destinations in 77 nations across six continents from its hub at Terminal 3 of the airport. In addition, the organisation operates four of the globe’s 10 longest non-stop (one trip) commercial flights from Dubai to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston and Dallas. Numerous industry analysts deem that the company is second to Ryanair on “cash cost per seat” because of its low cost of operating at the Dubai premise. This allows it to offer secondary destinations beneficially through connecting these from its worldwide hub in Dubai (Clark, 2012). The organisation has not joined any international airline coalition, confirming that unless their company is the lead member in such an alliance, then they would keep off. Such a case appeared similar in Lufthansa’s and Star Alliance’s case and Air France’s and SkyTeam’s case. Individual alliance associates’ freedom of action, the company states, is compromised by the burden of common alliance objectives, which mainly cater for the interests and well being of the alliance leaders. The company operates an all wide-body fleet (Goodman, 2009). Hence, this ends up in lesser unit costs compared to other prime airlines operating mixed wide- and narrow-body fleets and permits the company to use the their plane’s cargo capacity to raise its total profits and revenues. Since the international airport (Dubai) that Emirates operates on does not have any day or night operation restrictions, the organisation attains a much greater utilisation of its aircraft compared to its rivals. It also has much fewer legacy costs compared to longer recognised rivals (Walid, 2013b). It is also helpful that all forms of worker strikes and demonstrations are forbidden in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This was a ruling reached at by the leaders of the UAE in order to maintain the pride of their land (Goodman, 2009). To structure a travelling, as well as a tourism empire, at such an astounding pace would not have been possible if it was not for the combined skills of a group of men who have confirmed to be able leaders in their field of practice. Almost every executive at the wheel of the Emirates Airline has been with the company since its dawn (Mnisri, 2010). It is also their pioneering dream, combined with painstaking ideas and brave, but planned decision making, which has given flight to the fastest developing airline company the world over, as well as the Middle East's prime provider of travel and airport services. The organisation is growing extremely fast in the airline industry, and opponents are worried about the upshots of its success. Emirates Airline has been accused of attaining fuel grants from the Dubai government and hiring low-cost labour. Instead of such issues, the airline has a well-built marketing strategy, which has fashioned an extremely strong brand all through the world. It sponsors/supports sports events and clubs in both the United Arab Emirates and all through the world (Harzing, 2008). It regards sponsorship as a significant factor to the airline’s marketing plan. The latest order of airbus A380, and its outstanding geographic location, will allow the firm to continue to develop and serve its competitors’ major hubs. Etihad Airways Etihad Airways, on the other hand, is the leading carrier of the UAE. Set up by Royal diktat in July 2003, Etihad based in Abu Dhabi, started it operations in November, 2003. "Etihad" stands for "union" in Arabic. The company operates over 1,300 flights every week to 86 cargo and passenger destinations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Australia, as well as the Americas, with a fleet of 72 Boeing and Airbus aircrafts. Etihad Airways, in 2012, carried 10.3 million passengers, accumulating net profits of US$ 42 million from revenues of US$ 4.8 billion. This was also a 23% increase on the former year (Walid, 2013b). Besides being compliant with local and international legal rules, Etihad’s CSR marketing plan covers the company’s liability to its workforce, the environment, as well as the community, and is planned to complement its long term commerce idea making sure that environmental, material, financial and social effects, are managed and measured in its daily operations. Human development and empowerment is a vital pillar of the firm’s CSR programme both at its Abu Dhabi base and the market areas to which it operates (Nicholson, 2007). The airline invests vital resources in its Emiratisation programme. It provides exceptional training chances in the airline industry for United Arab Emirates nationals (Walid, 2013a). Cross Cultural Training and Development for Expatriates There is a small hesitation that pre-move cultural briefings benefit most workers, as well as their dependants (Business International Corporation, 2009). Nevertheless, the success of this is powerfully persuaded by additional factors, for instance the length of notice before the move, family relationships and the scene of the international assignment. A large minority of staff of non-international organisations are normally critical of the briefings they go through either in-house, at training centres or from consultants (Clark, 2012). Their main criticisms are about the lack of advanced knowledge and skills regarding local business surroundings, the very short period of a majority of these courses, the lack of guidance on dealing with family issues during international assignments, as well as the lack of follow-up training following the started international assignments. These condemnations are particularly widespread amongst expatriates who act as vanguards in fresh markets, mainly in East Asia, as well as the former Soviet Union. This confirms that organisations should either make sure that they are acquiring value for funds from the providers of the services or look for alternative sources. Language training should be a central factor among all organisations that seek to attain international recognition (Clark, 2012). Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways train their workers to relate to various cultures across the world. They also employ people from diverse cultural backgrounds in order to have a culturally diverse background (Clark, 2012). The Effectiveness of Cross Culture Training and Development for Expatriate The growth and development of global competition, in the future, will demand the constant development of briefings and training for employees (ITAP International, 2013). Therefore, cross culture training and development for the expatriate will ensure that they meet the requirements for these future standards. International assignments will most likely engross more frequent cross-border work swops, as well as short assignments. This, therefore, will assist the expatriates to keep up with the stiff competition. Recent research showcases that the problems of dual-career couples, as well as children’s educational requirements are already diminishing workers’ desire to go on international duties. More employees, hence, will find themselves working for shorter time periods in diverse regions of a company’s overseas operations devoid of the need of moving their family members. There is surely very tough subjective evidence from airlines, which this is happening, but this growth is almost entirely under-researched (Business International Corporation, 2009). Conclusion In conclusion, there is no doubt that cross-cultural training will remain a significant part of global HR strategies for the anticipated future. Nevertheless, instead of being the key factor of senior managers, as it has been in the past, workers should be trained on the importance of culture early enough in their careers (Hamill, 2001). This is because at this time, the learning curve is prone to be greater plus they are also unencumbered by family restrictions. Today’s new generation is much more open to learning about other traditions or cultures. This is because many have travelled to foreign nations and more people are chasing international jobs. A majority of people are tuned into the worldwide learning potentials of the Web and they are also highly literate, technologically (Vemic, 2007). If organisations want to improve people’s global mind-sets, then they should endeavour to recruit the kind of people stated above in great numbers. In the future, the organisation of global assignments will have to evolve to deal with both the altering dynamics of these ‘third-wave’ global workforces, as well as the changing nature of the worldwide economy. Only those organisations, which are strictly dedicated to learning rapidly in this area of strategic human resource management, will be successful in the disordered global business environment of the first ten years of its operations. References Brislin, R. (2008). Cross cultural encounters. New York: Pergamon Press. Business International Corporation. (2009). Managing people in today’s global economy. New York: Business International Corporation. Clark, C. (2012). Selection methods used by executive search consultancies in four European countries: a survey and critique. International Journal of Selection and Recruitment, 7(2), 53-71. Darby, R. (2007). Developing the Euro-manager: Managing in a multicultural environment. European Business Review, 9(1), 13-15. Dumaine, G. 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Etihad Airways: The number one airline in UAE. New York: Oxford University Press. Read More