Mentoring could prove the best investment you make in expatriate workers who might otherwise leave the company after they return home. Rob Hyde reports.

Each year, expensive international assignments go to waste as workers return to their home-country offices to find that few people, if any, understand and appreciate their experience abroad.

Even companies that make some effort to re-integrate the former expatriate may fail to grasp that the worker has developed new skills that should be exploited fully instead of ignored.

The worker, who may also have entirely different needs and demands than before he left the country, could feel frustrated that his home-country office does not appear to care. The result — he seeks work elsewhere.

To combat this, HR professionals may consider a mentoring programme that would pair an expatriate with a senior executive (preferably someone with international experience) in the home office.

Rather than serve as a teacher, this type of mentor would be available for support, keep regular contact with the expatriate, and help integrate the expatriate upon return.

Mentoring as a concept is supposed to date back to Greek legend and King Ulysses. Before departing for battle, the warrior King is said to have instructed ‘Mentes, son of Anchialus’ - to council and care for his son, Telemachus.

Today the basic concept of wise superior mentoring the young inferior has developed considerably and even to some extents, been turned on its head, as now employees and managers alike are offered a combination of subject training, cross-culture and inter-company training, self development courses and counselling.

The aim is to make the workers feel they are both well supported and being given the opportunity to develop skills with a view to pursuing their career within the company, while also making sure the managers or in touch with the employees’ needs.

And the mentoring certainly seems to be a success with many companies and their expatriate workers. Dr Wilfried Weiss is the Equal Opportunities Officer for Lufthansa in Cologne, Germany, which takes part in a 120 person-strong mentor and mentee exchange programme between workers from seven major German companies including Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom and Bosch.

He says expatriates tend to notice a considerable difference in their own behaviour after the course, particularly when it comes to self-confidence.

"Many female workers in Germany are nervous but competent," says Dr Weiss. "However, when they take part in the scheme, they find themselves either teaching, or being taught by other workers from other multinationals and they are made aware of their own skills and qualities."

As well as setting individual objectives, developing personal and inter-personal skills, giving and receiving constructive criticism, mentors sometimes also offer career advice.

Dr Weiss does not see this past part as a problem, though.

"Most of the staff sent on these mentoring programmes are flattered that we have shown them that we value them and that we have a place for them to grow and develop in the company," he explains. "If we want to keep our workers, we need to do this."

And the mentoring courses are already proving a great it with many foreign workers. British citizen Valerie Walwyn is a Birmingham-based mentoring services manager who provides mentoring courses for a wide variety of individuals and organisations.

Walwyn says she has already experience scores of foreigners benefiting from one-to-one mentoring, especially when this has taken place in the form of cross-culture training with a view to becoming expatriates or finding employment in their new country.

"For some of the them it's about just getting used to the country and how it works. The last person I mentored was a man from Monserrat. Culturally what he came to Britain with was quite different to the cultural understanding he needed to be able to take up work effectively," Walwyn says.

This high level on one-to-one care and support is something lacking in everyday business culture, Walwyn believes, and HR departments would do well to take adapt it in some form.

But not all expatriates are taken with the concept on mentoring within the workplace.

Canadian expat Karen Holloway is the deputy editor at London-based expatriate and travel magazine, Southern Cross, part of the TNT group.

Holloway, who has lived in England for four years and has managed well as an expatriate without any mentoring, says the concept has a fundamental flaw to it.

"This criticism – even if told in confidence — still has to go back to the employer at some point if there is to be any hope of the firm being able to act on it," she explains.

This is especially relevant to repatriating an expatriate, says Holloway.

"HR managers must liase with the workers and encourage them to communicate honestly and unreservedly."

June 2002

UK-based freelance journalist Rob Hyde is a regular contributor to Expatica HR. A British national, Rob has lived and worked in England, France, Germany and Austria. His work has appeared in The Times, The Sunday Express and the Wall Street Journal Europe.