Working Internationally and Organization Culture

One of the things that I found interesting was the topic of working internationally. When working overseas (outside your bubble) there is this process of adjustment. The stages are: Honeymoon à Culture Shock à Learning à Adjustment. At first (the honeymoon stage) things are exiting. They’re new. But then the employee realizes that he doesn’t fit. Things become overwhelming. That creates the culture shock. Then the employee will try to learn better the culture so that they can fit in better. As the employee learns his rolls and abilities in that culture they will make appropriate adjustments. With all of this, it is important to give that international working employee the proper support. This could include additional benefits, family moves with the employee too, etc, otherwise they will get burned out and not perform productively. Because of that possibility, it would be worth proper investments from the company for that employee’s support and training.

Another thing that we talked about this last week was elements on organizational culture. One thing that stood out to me is when employees are valued. I would be willing to bet that nearly any company would say that they value their employees. Regardless of what a company may say, it’s their actions that really show the culture. Seeing that this blog is for my HR class, HR is one of those organizations (or part of an organization) that is often lessened by its rolls (not given credit for everything that they truly perform or can perform). HR is much more than the payroll or legal department. HR should have the ability to aid companies to value their employees.