HR assignment essay on: Cultural Integration for the company ABBOTT Pharmaceuticals

Culture is a powerful tool used to explain the behavior, pattern of life, language, habits, of people who come from diverse cultural backgrounds. It is important to understand the cross cultural aspects in societies and organizations for coordinating with each other. The employees of an organization have to follow a single culture because it will help to maintain harmony and everyone in the organization will be aligned for achieving the same goal. In my opinion S.A.B consultations PTY Ltd has been designing cultural integration of expatriates and their families for their client Abbott Pharmaceuticals. S.A.B is a HR consulting firm and is designing the cultural Integration plan by linking it with internal existing policies of Abbott, expatriate management, compensation and etc. A proper cultural plan is being created for the Expatriates and their Families so that they get a better environment to perform their best. According to me Abbott Pharmaceuticals is a global company dealing with advancement, discovery, marketing and production of health related products. The employees have been located by Abbott at different units across the world. The employees have been cross culturally hired and are being provided support in terms of resources to grow their organization and their career. I think that S.A.B plan is to help the senior and the middle management by modifying and implementing effective HR policies. S.A.B has researched the benchmarks of Abbott and the cultural plan has been designed keeping in mind such factors that it has been expanding its business in terms of Acquisitions and being the partners of other companies. The generation X and Y employees have been highlighted by the consultant to show that both aspects have different views points of Business. In my opinion Abbott has been showing the preference of Generation Y over X because these age group employee’s are young, energetic, technology users, possess social networking and are flexible to locate at any place. Cultural Integration Plan is required for Abbott because stakeholders, shareholders and global competition have forced the middle and senior management to move across the global locations. The appropriate customer service can be delivered by Abbott when it will have knowledge related to particular country’s culture, language, government policies, and its communities. S.A.B wants Abbott to achieve the required skills sets that can be screened out from the diverse cultural backgrounds. The proper corporate culture is required by all the employees to be followed by keeping in mind the expectations of the employee’s and its families. The purpose of this plan framed by S.A.B was to attract, select and relocate the employees on certain factors such as understanding the individual and business needs and reducing the financial costs. I think strategic human resource and behavioral policy suggested by S.A.B is helping Abbott to expand their business in a better manner.

The learning that, I have learned from the given project report are explained in this paragraph. Organizations should expand their business seeing the viability of the business in the host country. The employees who come from diverse cultural backgrounds who are being located at different locations have to stay for at least 12 months in that location. Abbott wanted cultural integration for solving the issues arising at three levels such as preparation process of an international assignment, during the assignment, and post cultural integration process. When an employee is being located at Abbott unit in such case nature of job such as temporary and permanent should be identified. The company should create confidence among the employees and their families that whenever the employee and their families are being shifted to the host country in such case the employer should ensure that same type of lifestyle is to be maintained. Abbott should identify the number of members in their employee’s family because the salary structure of the employee will be linked with certain factors such as visa, travel expense, shipment and storage, house rent, education of children, and medical facilities. The support should be provided by the appointee and his family side to relocate in particular facilities. Abbott will be selecting the employees for international assignments on the basis of required skills sets, desire, success and the ability to fit in its organizational culture. The learning are like before relocating the employee S.A.B is suggesting to Abbott that it should know their organizational philosophy very well, the purpose and context of relocation should be identified, the definition of cultural integration policy to the employee’s and their families should be explained well, formal appointment process is to be applied, the duration of international assignments /projects should be made clear, payment for the relocation process should be designed, the legal system of the host country should be known properly, employee related expenses and allowances should be planned well, and the cross cultural training and its cost should be  explained well to the employees who are to hired by Abbott. The situations or events that I have learned which can be applied are about how the cultural integration prior to the projects or assignments is being planned in terms of five different factors.

• The first factor is related with different ethnic cultures by integrating corporate culture with customs & traditions and targeting the geographies in search of talent.

• Second factor is to provide a varied corporate culture for providing the comfort level to the employee’s.

• Third factor is related with time which explains how to maintain a balance between work and personal life.

• The fourth factor is related with global learning which is connected with training and development aspects to know about food, protocols and language of the host countries.

• The fifth factor taught me that connectivity should be maintained with the employees by communication with them which will increase the performance and promote management’s decisions.

I have also learned about the cultural integration during the assignment which will be linked with a proper mentoring program which will explain the employee’s about four elements.

• I have learned from the first element that preparation will help to explain the expatriate to move easily to the host country by learning its culture and language.

• The second element will help in setting down by adapting with the customs and traditions of the host country. It will also help to find a proper residence for the expatriate and their families.

• The third element will explain about frequent support being provided to settle down in completely new environment.

• The fourth element is repatriation which will be related with the returning plan of expatriate to return back to the parent country as soon as the assignment or the project is being completed. The employees who return to their home country should not be affected with cultural shock.

 It has also taught me how Cultural Integration after Assignment is related with the returning of expatriate and its family by reducing the anxiety. It will help to minimize the cultural problems during the transition process. It will help to know some factors such as preparation of physical relocation and transition, financial tax assistance, workplace change and the social contacts. Preparation of physical relocation and transition provided me awareness related to the living arrangements. The financial and tax assistance will help to classify the business related and personal expense of expatriate. The workplace change will offer the expatriate with job promotions and etc. The social contacts will help to take care of family members by preventing from the reverse shock of culture. The things can be applied by me is S.A.B has identified the four factors to integrate the cultural policy properly by Abbott.

The first point is that the situation can be changed as per my opinion by developing the policy which will help the client’s organization to cope up with the different radical changes. It will explain the home countries and the host country’s culture while expanding the business. I have learned the general view regarding the cultural integration.

• The second policy is to inform the employee’s of Abbott regarding the integration of cultural policy because it will help to inform the employee’s in preparing for the success and failure of the assignments. I have learned that information related to four factors will be provided to the employees such as supervisory support, Universal ability, Negotiation and Communication. The supervisor support can be used by the expatriate to spend some time with his family members. Negotiation process will help the employees to enjoy the flexibility in making the decisions for new career set up in a new country by linking it with their company’s culture. The communication process will ensure the acceptance of the employees for the implementation phase of the change of new culture.

• The third policy will explain the training program which the Abbott employees should undertake for exercising the responsibilities and the role for improving the performance for the new assignments in the host country. This policy is being mailed to every employee either experienced or the fresher. The employees should send their consent to the management that they want to have training for the successful implementation of the new policy. The commitment of the organization for the employee’s training program reflects the success story of Abbott. It will provide the training related to the integration of cultural policy during the acquisition process. The factors such as Orientation, presentation and management support will be explained properly with the training sessions for the employees. The knowledge and competence factor can be used by Abbott to make the new employee’s familiar about their working culture by conducting the face to face interactions to provide the assurance to the employee’s. It is a program done on face to face basis for creating higher confidence level among the expatriate and their families. It will provide the deep level understanding about the company’s policies in a completely new working environment. The commitment of the employees should reflect the career and the family needs for the entire program. Management can support the employees by explaining each and every policy that is required in organization to be followed by the employees who come from diverse cross cultural backgrounds to promote the better corporate culture.

• The fourth policy created by S.A.B will help their client Abbott to review the consistency of the framed policy in terms of the employee’s, law current operation and etc. According to me it will help Abbott to measure the training effectiveness to build the confidence level of the employees and motivate them for increasing the productivity. It can be done when the expatriate family will provide the feedback and remove the feeling of isolation. Communication will also help to overcome the cultural shocks. A proper check should be conducted to see whether the expatriates and their family members have been setting well or not in the host country. To ensure the effectiveness with success the progress related to the international assignment can be tracked every month. It helps in learning that Abbott pharmaceutical will help to resolve the problems by appointing a mentor who will provide the solutions related to work life. A personal monitoring process will help to motivate the employees for their work. The complete documentation process will help to explain the entire documentation process of the employees. The feedback leaves of the expatriate will explain whether he is comfortable working in a host country. The feedback in terms of learning by expatriate and his family members is to be accessed by interacting with different people in host country. It also provides a competence because the expatriate will be motivates if spouse lives along with and get a job in related field in the host country. To ensure better cultural integration of Abbott, S.A.B has provided a plan to create an awareness related to the fluctuating and unstable surroundings by integrating the HR policies with the Cultural policy. This is how, I learned about the cultural Integration policy which has helped Abbott to achieve the success and satisfy the employees when they have to migrate to the host country for growing the business and their career.

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