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HR Trend #3 — Bringing in Expats

CEO: “We need to hire someone from the outside into this position, as there is no expertise in this area in the region. Do we have a programme in place to help them to assimilate once they get here?”

VP-HR: “Huh?”
CEO: “How about their family?”
VP-HR: “Hmmm….”
CEO: “Does it make a difference if they are coming from another Caribbean island?”
VP-HR: “To be honest, I have no idea….”
It’s a good idea for human resource professionals across the region to ensure that when the above conversation takes place they are ready. What are some of the things that they should be ready to tell the CEO? How can they prepare themselves to address what is quickly becoming the norm for most progressive companies? What are the essentials they need to address?
Here are some facts that the VP-HR needs to know at the onset:
  • They will probably underestimate the difficulty of the expat’s adjustment (especially if they have not lived abroad recently).
  • The emotional issues are intense, and come in all flavours.
  • The main success factor will surround the experience of the “trailing spouse” (usually a woman). 67% of failures can be traced to the trailing spouse.
  • The non-working spouse will probably be a professional who has had to give up their own career.
  • A simple set of policies created from the beginning will make things much easier.
  • The move will cost up to US$1million for an executive and family.
  • Of all age groups, teenage children have the most difficult time adjusting.
  • The pre-transfer trip and negotiations will be critical to the success of the transfer, and must include the non-working spouse.
  • Preparing the company for the arrival of the expat will be important (especially in terms of understanding, and expectations).
  • There will be varying degrees of culture shock experienced as the family makes the transition.
  • Few companies offer assistance to either spouse in making the cultural adjustment (and end up paying for it in the long term) .
  • At times a professional mentor, a trained counsellor or a psychologist are needed.
  • Expats who build their network of friends around other expats, rather than locals, will not be as successful.
  • The couple needs a way to escalate their issues and concerns outside the regular company hierarchy.
  • A transition from one Caribbean island to another is no easier than any other transition, IMHO.
  • Some expats have mastered the art of adapting to local conditions, and of working in developing countries
These are just some of the issues that a VP-HR can prepare the company to deal with. The better prepared they are, the greater the chance of success from everyone’s point of view.
In the worst cases, when there is a failure and early termination, the couple and the company end up at loggerheads, blaming each other for things going badly.

The job of HR is to make sure that the company’s investment is not wasted, and sometimes it may require them to say no to someone who they think will just not make it. Saying “No” is not easy to do, but it could be the very best thing for the working spouse and their family.

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Transferring Expat Skills

In an interesting conversation with an expat manager yesterday, I realized a few things that might be of use not only to expats, but also to other managers.

A successful manager is not necessarily the best teacher, partly because their success may have come in ways that they are unable to clearly distinguish. This is why some of the most most accomplished sportsmen and women make terrible coaches. Their achievements came from their abundant talents, rather than from their ability to break their actions down into small elements that they then could practice diligently.

In this sense, someone who has less talent could well be a better teacher.

An expat coming to manage Jamaicans has a possible advantage.

Because they are entering a new culture, they often migrate with open minds, and they often are willing to take nothing for granted. They know that the environment they learned to manage in is very different. They know that there are some things that they learned when they were young that managers in Jamaica do not learn as readily.

What they (and Jamaican managers) can do is to take the following steps to coach those who report to them:

1. Distinguish the distinction that they possess
2. Articulate it in new-sounding language
3. Introduce it as a new item to be learned to their teams
4. Demonstrate that they are also learning how to apply it in this
environment
5. Share what they are learning and encourage others to share

An example:

The distinction “being on-time” can mean something very different to expat managers, and is often a source of irritation. This distinction can be introduced by a savvy manager who wants to create an immediate change in the way people are managed.

Sometimes an outsider can bring these distinctions to bear on a group (which is often the role I play as a consultant) but this is only needed in the exceptional circumstance where the manager
has tried everything they can think of.

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Developing Trinidadian Managers

Last year Framework Consulting issued the findings of a study of Trinidadian executives in Jamaica (the report is available by sending an email to fwc-triniexec@aweber.com.)

In the study, we interviewed over 30 Trinidadian executives on their experience working in and leading companies in Jamaica, and the report distills the best practices that we found.

A new Trinidadian manager to Jamaica needs to keep in mind certain Guiding Principles, and also to learn some new habits.

Principle #1: Accord Respect
Above all, a manager must be respectful towards each and every employee. A manager is conferred with greater hierarchical power than they would normally receive in Trinidad, and when they come to Jamaica this power may not be well understood.

Practice #1: Be deferential and humble, until it starts to almost feel silly. Use Mr. and Mrs. wherever possible. Start conversations in formal language, and in a very formal manner, as if one were meeting the Queen of England. Say Good Morning, Good Evening and Good Night in a way that connects with people. Look for the moment when the formality is broken, and seize it, because at that moment the real conversation is about to start.

The manager is expected to be the most formal person in the room, until the environment becomes relaxed.

e.g. Say Mr. __________ or Mrs. ______________ even with good friends in the workplace

Practice #2: Don’t tell jokes in public at other people’s expense. Pecong has no place in the Jamaican workplace. It is a dangerous practice in this environment, to be used only in private, and only with the closest of friends. Never use humour to pull people down, or to give any kind of feedback, even jokingly. A Trinidadian manager is better off practicing jokes at their own expense.

Principle #2: Stay in the Role of Manager
Jamaicans will expect a manager to always be the manager — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They don’t expect them to behave, dress, socialize or drink differently after hours, on weekends, on holidays or at parties. It is better to play ignorant, and ask for help about how to interact with people in a new social environment.

Practice #1: Dress the part of manager, even on weekends, until it becomes abundantly clear that the culture will accept any deviation from the expected.

Practice #2: Drive a clean, modern car.

Principle #3: Demonstrate a powerful social conscience
If there were ever a “History of Jamaican Workplaces” book written, the dominant themes would be force and exploitation. The idea that a company exists primarily to enrich its shareholders is one that is simply unacceptable. A Trinidadian manager must learn that a Jamaican company exists for everyone in society and in the community.

Practice #1: Seek to give back to the community outside the company in tangible and visible ways.

Practice #2: Give gifts to employees at Christmas and Easter time, and create programmes to assist employees’ families that are well publicized.

Principle #4: Understand an Executive’s Phases of Adjustment
Coming to fully appreciate Jamaican culture is a process, and the Trinidadian manager needs to understand the phases that they will go through as they adjust to the new environment. Read the section on Phases of Adjustment for Executives from the report.

Practice #1: Get help. Cultivate a network of other Trinidadian executives outside the company. Get outside help if the transition is proving to be difficult.

Principle #5: Maintain the Hierarchy for a Long Time
While Jamaican workers appreciate being included in decision-making, executives need to be seen as the decider of important decisions (until sufficient trust is built). Workers will quickly criticise a manager who delays making decisions by trying to be too participative.

This is not to say that the hierarchy should be maintained forever. Instead, it should be abandoned only slowly, and carefully, as the manager transforms his relationship with the workers. It often takes longer than the Trinidadian manager thinks it should, but once the foundation is built, he/she will frequently find that the depth of loyalty that’s generated is deeper than they found in Trinidad.

Practice #1: Ask for input to decisions, but stand ready to make a command decision.

Practice #2:Break instructions down into the simplest details, and be ready to follow-up intensely. The average workers education level in Trinidad is much higher, and it shows.

Learning Points

Learning Point #1: Individual Application

One manager’s habits and style may not work for another. Each manager must develop their own style, and experiment with different approaches until they find one that works for them. This takes some willingness to feel uncomfortable as they adapt practices that might be laughed at in Trinidad.

Learning Point #2: Experimentation

Learning Point #3: Learn about oneself is the key to changing

Learning Point #4: Most practices will feel unnatural and phony

Many of these practices will feel unnatural at first, and would fail miserably if attempted in Trinidad. The point is that they work here in Jamaica, and they are exaggerated somewhat in order to provoke a Trinidadian manager into a different mode of action. The mistake that many Trinis make is to assume “all a we is one” when in fact the workplaces in both countries are very different.

Many of the ideas in this article were developed from the Caribbean Acquisition Project and the book “Why Workers Won’t Work” by Kenneth Carter. They are available as downloads from the Framework website (http://www.fwconsulting.com).

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Trinis in Jamaica

My colleagues and I are engaged in a very interesting project: what is the Trinidadian manager’s experience in Jamaica?

We are also on the lookout for some help.

Recently, we completed the first report from the Caribbean Acquisition Project. We decided to do a follow-up study, interviewing Trinidadian executives on a few dimensions of their relationship with Jamaican workers who, from all accounts and my own experience, differ significant from the workers they deal with at home in Trinidad.

This difference is one that they are not prepared to deal with, unless they have spent significant time working in Jamaica.

Without going into too many details about what we are finding, suffice it so say that some of the results are surprising yet, thankfully, not impossible to deal with effectively. The problem is that currently exists no resource to deal with the gap that Trinis face when coming to manage Jamaicans (or Barbadians, or Guyanese, or anyone else for that matter.)

The odds, however, of a Trinidadian executive being sent to run a company in Jamaica are greater than any other combination of 2 nationalities, due to Trinidad’s economic strength, Jamaicans’ willingness to emigrate and the poor historic performance of Jamaican managers. This makes for a sizeable population of Trinidadian expat managers in Jamaica, many of whom are willing to be interviewed!

And this is where we could use the help — to identify Trini executives working in Jamaica, or who worked in Jamaica for at least six months.

Email me directly with any one you might know who qualifies.

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Living the Good Life


When I’m in Barbados, I’m reminded how lucky I am to be working here in the Caribbean.

I woke this morning at about 6am and went for a swim in the sea just as the sun rose. That by itself is not so unusual, and the fact is that most hotels here in Barbados are right on the water.

As I was swimming I was thinking about the news I heard that a major snow-storm is heading towards the north-east. Memories of a project I once worked on in Toledo, Ohio came to mind…

I also know that many people coming here to the Accra Beach Hotel, have saved for years and months for the opportunity to come to the Caribbean on a vacation. I come here every other week or so, and barely blink an eye.

It made me think of how good life is here in the Caribbean, and how easy it is to convince oneself that the grass is greener on the other side — over there in the US, Canada and England, where most migrating West Indians end up. The tragedy is that most are able to fulfill only the first part of the dream — to leave.

Part 2 of the dream almost always includes some kind of return, and this is where the challenge lies. It’s relatively easy to leave the Caribbean to live outside the region, but quite hard to return.

The reasons aren’t legal, either.

They have more to do with the psyche that develops in the minds of those of us who have left. The result is that a return remains nothing but a dream, which ends up drifting into a permanent stage of being “neither here nor there.” Eventually, the kids become American, Canadian or British, and then they get married and have children who have just about no connection to the homeland. Then the only practical thing to do is to live close to them. And, thus, the dream dies.

If only this were understood before making the decision to leave.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to evaluate the pros and cons of migration. Even worse, I’ve never seen any kind of service, website or book that offers any help for those are thinking about migrating. They inevitably end up making the decision on only partial information.

When they reach the U.S. unfortunately, many fall into the “justify my being here” frame of mind in which they complain about their home country in the most exaggerated way. To hear them talk is to to think that nothing good could ever come from such a place. The irony is, they also have no idea that they are also talking about themselves.

The law of unintended consequences seems to be at play here.

For example, most West Indians moving to the US have no interest in raising their children as African Americans. Being West Indian is different. However, for Black Caribbeans, there is really no choice . The forces they confront at school, the workplace and in the larger society are just too big to resist, and they inevitably leave the accent, the food, the music and the vibe behind.

Yet, it seems that these kinds of questions are not openly asked and answered, and most who do migrate end up saving for months for a one week opportunity to return home to enjoy the beaches that they, and I, took for granted. The sad thing is that this all just an unintended consequence.

I’m trying hard to not take it all for granted.

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On Transitioning to Work in Jamaica

In the Caribbean Acquisition Project (CAP) one of the issues that surfaced was that of the built in assumption that the Caribbean worker is the same from country to country.

As my wife has been telling me – “It’s one thing to act like we’re all one Caribbean in New York or Miami, and quite another to take over a company in another Caribbean country.” In other words, if there are cultural issues when a company from Antigua takes over one from Barbuda, or one from Nevis takes over one from St. Kitts, or one from Trinidad takes over one from Tobago; then there must be issues when the differences are more significant.

I’ve seen senior executives moved from their home country to new countries in the region, and the only preparation they were given was a map.

There is no Department of Cross Cultural Management Studies at UWI.

Yet, with the advent of CSME, it’s likely that there will be more and more of these kind of executive transfers. At the moment, there is nothing like a “boot camp” to prepare expat executives. What would such a learning experience look like?

  1. It would be built on facts
    Many executives coming to     Jamaica arrive pre-loaded with some combination of the best things imaginable, and the worst.

    Is this an island paradise? Or a breeding ground for hardened criminals? Is it the cradle of reggae and rap music? Or is it a place that encourages violence against gays? Does it have a full, functioning and vibrant democracy, or is it a place where vigilante justice takes place even in high schools? Should the relocation be welcomed, or cursed? Can ackee kill you? Is it safe to eat fruit sold at a stop-light?

    These questions can all be debated by an expat, and should be. Yet, there are hard facts are available to guide a working visitor, and they can be used to help make critical decisions.

  2. It would be experiential
    This could not occur in the classroom only. In the past few years, I was lucky enough take 3 ghetto tours. I took the first in     Soweto, the second in Crossroads and the third in a favela in Rio de Janeiro.

    They were all well off the beaten path, and were the highlight of their respective trips. The sights, temperatures, smells and scope of each place were unimaginable from text or video, and today they remain in my memory in a way that will never be lost. I once heard someone say that the most important things in our lives cannot be learned, but they can only be experienced.

    A course for expats would have to put people in contact with other people, and give them a sense of an unfamiliar environment in the host country by immersing them in what might be a somewhat uncomfortable situation. In fact, there would have to be several such experiences. The key would be to manage them in a way that learning is possible, and transforming.

  3. It would be reflective
    Whereas it might seem that the process of learning to operate and manage in a new culture is a matter of learning information, the truth is that no two people experience with a new culture in the same way. In other words, the experience has everything to do with the interaction of two different cultures and not on one culture or the other.

    Also, different people within different cultures interact with new cultures differently, so that, for example, a Black American’s experience of Jamaica would be very different than a white American’s.

    Instead of trying to customize the course to every single possible variation, it’s much more powerful to teach the visitor some tools to understand their own background, and their own blind-spots. They would learn to be reflective in a way that would teach them to understand how they react to unfamiliar situations, and give themselves a chance to respond effectively regardless of whatever new situation they find themselves in.

I think that a course that hits these three elements – fact based, experiential and reflective would be a lot of fun to design, and to conduct for real-life people.