Continuous learning and life-long learning have become essential features of human resource management consequent upon globalization

and strides in information technology. The intensive competition arose out of globalization, led to the creation of new technology and new organizational structures and work systems. This development made international training and development most crucial and essential factor in global human resource management.

WHY GLOBAL TRAINING? Transnational companies believe that their distinctive competency is determined by the mindset and talent of their human resources rather than by other resources/factors

AREAS OF GLOBAL TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

1. Technical training; 2. Functional training 3. Strategic management skills training; 4. Soft skills training; 5. Cross cultural training; 6. Language training; 7. Pre-departure training; 8. Expatriate training; 9. Training for short-term assignments; 10. On-the-job training assignment; 11. Global mind-set training; 12. Team training; 13. Management development.

TECHNICAL TRAINING

Most of the MNCs select the expatriates, mostly based on the technical skill background to perform the new job successfully. In fact almost all of the expatriate employees were best performers in their previous jobs. As such, most of the expatriates feel comfortable technically during the early days of their overseas assignments. But they feel comfortable , on the job, when there would be significant shifts in technology in the long run.

FUNCTIONAL TRAINING

Expatriates are employed in functional jobs like accountants, lawyers, lecturers, professors, production specialists, manager and sales personnel whenever there is shortage of such professions. They may possess the required skills but those may not suit to the functional job requirements. And hence the MNCs require such training to plug such gaps. MNCs should also provide functional training to the host country nationals.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT SKILLS

Strategic managers are core and critical managers of MNCs and they are viewed as critical strategic assets of the organizations. These employees have to acquire comparatively recent and competitive skills to be ahead of the customer expectations as well as competitors moves. Therefore, MNCs train and develop these employees on priority basis in internationally reputed institutions

HUMAN RELATIONS/SOFT SKILLS TRAINING

interpersonal communication, leadership skills, motivational skills, commitment skills, transactional analysis, team building and skills of working in teams, emotional balance skills, skills of influencing others, social skills and the like.

MNCs train both expatriates as well as host country employees in all kinds of soft skills in order to enhance the human relations skills of managers under multi-cultural environment.

CROSS-CULTURAL TRAINING

Cross Cultural Training is most significant and critical one among the areas of global training. Therefore, most of the MNCs follow the training procedure systematically to conduct cross cultural training. MNCs follow different approaches to train expatriates, nationals of the subsidiaries and employees of joint venture partners.

Who are trainees for cross-cultural training?

Not only expatriate but1. Parent country nationals, 2. Host country nationals of subsidiaries,3. Third country nationals, 4. Other kinds of expatriates, 5. Employees of all partners of joint ventures.

Process of cross-cultural training Analysis of organizational requirements Analysis of employees and their families Analysis of employee assignment

Crafting/formulating cross-cultural training goals Aligning the cultures of different categories of employees with that of cultural requirements organization strategies. Balancing the cultural variations and conflicts of various culture Imparting cross cultural knowledge to employees and skills to mould the own culture in accordance with the cultural requirements of other societies. Short term training goals are to bring about cognitive, affective and behavioural changes. Cognitive goals are to provide the knowledge of cultural values to expatriates on behavior in the host/destination country. Specific cognitive goals include understanding the values of assignments, awareness of norms required to interact with nationals effectively. Specific affective goals are to help expatriates to manage their attitude towards new culture and manage emotions. They also include: modify the expatriates perception about the host

countrys culture, enhance the self confident of the expatriates to communicate with the people of different cultural backgrounds. Behavioural goals help expatriates to modify their behavior in accordance with the cultural and behavioural requirements of other nationals. Cross-cultural training for technical employees aims at providing social and cultural information of the country concerned. Cross-cultural training for strategic and managerial employees aim at modifying their behavior. Forming and developing a common culture by incorporating the best of all cultures that fits with the organizational culture and cultural requirement of strategies.

Design and deliver cross-cultural training The analysis of cross-cultural training needs in terms of organizational analysis, assignment analysis, and employee culture background analysis, help to identify cultural skill and knowledge gap and design the training program. The content of the program and sequencing the content are based on the new cultural skill and knowledge required for different kinds of employees to implement the strategies efficiently. Sequencing the content is based on the nature of the content, relevance and inter-linkage of one culture with other cultures and time frame for strategy implementation.

It is often felt that ethno-centric approach to training i.e., designing and delivering the uniform training by headquarters to all subsidiaries wont produce desired results due to:

 Non-compatibility of the content to subsidiaries of various countries; Language problem/issues in deliver Badly interpreted material Organizational [politics Employees may not adjust to the way the training program is delivered.

Integrative training: integrative training is provided in order to integrate the expatriate with the host country culture as well as organizational culture and culture of other expatriates those work in/join the same subsidiary.

Pedagogy instructional methods: training program should incorporate a variety of instruments in order to make the trainees to feel at ease during the deliver of the program

Pedagogy specific to cross-cultural training include: Didactic cultural general training Didactic cultural specific training Experimental cultural general training Experimental cultural specific training

Cross-cultural training program can be conducted in different phases. These phase include: Pre-departure Post-arrival Integrated.

Evaluation of cross-cultural training

Training evaluation can be done against short-term goals and long-term goals.

Evaluation against short-term goals: evaluation of training against short term goals includes the extent to which cognitive, affective and behavioral changes have occurred during training. Cognitive outcomes indicate the acquisition of new knowledge of the culture. Affective outcomes like attitude and motivation measures the shifts in expatriates perception about the culture. Behavioral outcomes measures the change in cross-cultural skills like inter-cultural communication skills and language skills.

Evaluation of long-term goals: long-term goals of cross-cultural training would be the adjustment of the expatriate to the host country culture. Expatriates adjustment is measured through raper and pencil questionnaires, telephonic interview, personal interview, electronic surveys, and expatriates performance analysis.

Link cross-cultural training with other HR practices

Cross-cultural training should be linked to all other HR practices for efficient performance. Recruitment of employees with multicultural background reduces the degree of cross-cultural training requirement and enhances the chances of employee adjustment to host country culture.

LANGUAGE TRAINING

Why language training?

Language training is essential due to following reasons: Use of English language for business transactions by MNCs in most part of the world.

 Following of various languages other than English by customers, marketing intermediaries and suppliers of various inputs even in English speaking countries. Following of different languages, other than English in some countries like France, Germany, Italy and Arab countries. Use of different technical terminology/jargon among the countries the same language.

Alternative to language training

Some of the MNCs have been developing alternative measures to language training and these includes;

Searching and employing people with multilingual background.

Encourage the employees to undertake language courses conducted by various educational institutions in different languages particularly those languages which are widely used in countries where their subsidiaries are operated.

Alliance with the educational institution.

Produce audio and video tapes and CDs and DVDs on language self learning and supply the same to employees.

Appointing the translators

Global mindset training Globalization is a comprehensive act it includes globalization of business, culture, technology etc, yet the national and domestic business, culture ,technology and social factors prevails.

 Therefore, the popular business slogan these days is thinking globally, but acting locally. Internationalization of jobs in its turn requires the people to think globally, but act locally. As such employees of MNCs have to serve the customer s of the host country. Comprehensive thinking of the globe by the employees of MNCs would be possible only when they have the knowledge as well as experience of working in different countries. Other wise there is a chance of mistakes. For eg :- Failure of the Chinese toy companies in designing appropriate toys from the point of safety for the European and North American markets is an eg of this juncture. In fact customer in foreign countries expect the MNCs to behave as they behave. Domestic company deliver the goods and services with the customers expectations, so they have to compete with them.

The conflict between global focus and national focus of employees may create a problem of acquiring required global human resource skills and mindset.

Cope up constructively with globally competing priorities.

Zeal to become internationalists characterizing by tolerance, flexibility, curiosity, inquisitiveness and ability to deal with ambiguity.

Global awareness of behaviors and cultures.

Flexible, adaptable, and shift from one ego state to other ego state.

Knowing how to live and work across cultures and practice it.

See the foreign country and makers from the aspects of nationals as well as foreigners.

What is global mindset?

Global mindset is the ability to scan the world from a broad perspective, always looking for unexpected trends and opportunities that may constitute a threat or an opportunity to achieve personal, professional, and organizational objectives.

Characteristics of global mindset Broader skills and outlook. Ability to conduct business on global scale. Awareness of national differences, view them as opportunities and design the strategy to make use of such opportunities. Ability to tolerate the differences in culture and interact with people of different cultures with an understanding, passion, and sensitivity to other cultures and customs. Ability to manage global complexity, contradictions and conflicts in international transactions as well as in international human resource activities and behaviors, that result due to conflicting cultures , values, attitude and norms among various countries. Creating organization change managing change and adapting to change. Creating and building multicultural teams, adapting to team norms team behavioral requirements, managing the storming stage of the team and contributing to the performance of the team.

Understanding viewing positively and analyzing from multiple view points of the uncertainty, chaos, and crisis situation and managing them rather than either sailing with them or making such situation worst.

Intuition to enhance learning of the global issues and conceptualize them.

Enable the organization to learn and adapt to global context and global changes and developments.

How to develop global mindset?

Working in foreign countries, passing through various stages of learning of the culture including culture shock, absorbing those shocks and learning out of them and learning business transactions, culture interface.

Involving in a variety of social and cultural events while working in foreign countries, interacting with a broad variety of people, learning from these interactions and modifying ones own personality by changing ego states rather than sticking to one ego state for the mutual benefit of expatriates and HCNs as well as broader benefit of the MNCs.

Take up short run assignments that would involve conflict resolution, crisis management and negotiation with managers and stakeholders of subsidiaries in other countries.

Conduct of simulation exercises involving the employees from different countries with a briefing of cultures of each participant.

Conduct of online training with regard to general cultural background of various countries.

Production and supply of video material with regard to specific and critical cultural issues and events.

Conduct of online counter and encounter group training sessions in cultural, behavioral and other related issues.

Conduct on the job training via on line with regard to interaction among the employees of different subsidiaries.

Conduct of conferences and annual events for cultural adaptability.

Exchange of employees among subsidiaries and head quarters on short term basis.

Conduct of lectures on the topics like cross cultural desirability how to view cultural variation as an opportunity and how do the culture emerges, and how to adapt to the cultures and managing cultures.

Pre departure training

Pre departure training is provided to the selected candidates for jobs, new employees and the existing employees who are assigned a job in other countries. This training is provided at the country where the candidate currently lives or in other nearby country other than the future place of work.

WHO ARE TRAINEES??

Employees, Employees spouse, Employees children, Other accompanying family member of the employee.

WHY EXPATRIATES FAIL?? The employee's inability to adapt to social and cultural environment and physical factors in the foreign countries. Employee's immature personality factors and less emotional intelligence, Employee's inability to cope up with the responsibilities and challenges of the foreign assignment. Employee's lack of technical competence, and Employee's lack of motivation to work in foreign countries.

WHAT TYPES OF TRAINING ARE GIVEN??

Language training, Cross cultural training, Field experience, In house training programs, Training by outside agencies

ON THE JOB TRAINING ASSIGNMENTS Coaching from the superiors Understudy A) Multiple management skills B) Developing global mindset

WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL TEAM TRAINING

Advantages International team training offers a number of advantages to the MNCs like: Sharing and exchanging of technical skills, functional knowledge and cultures across the nations. Developing global mind set and preparing the employees for effective international assignments. Creating challenge and competition among employees and thus provides an opportunity to realize highest potential of international employees Realisation of highest human potential results in innovation and creation. Developing problem solving skills, crisis management skills and conflict management skills and Developing organizational learning, global culture and global human resources.