The current level of project progress will be considered. The following subparts of the project will be addressed: a draft problem statement, purpose statement, and research questions, as well as comments concerning the research topic itself and the level of project accomplishment progress.
The research topic relates to the variety of security and safety hazards faced by expatriates. The scope of the topic is broad because it concerns the problems that both the workers of the male and female gender and their relatives traveling with them may have in the foreign assignment (Forrier et al., 2009; Harvey, 2013).
Problem Statement
Travelling to other countries subjects an employee to such serious risks as accidents on transport, fires, low-quality medical service, limited access to medication, poor sanitary conditions, epidemics, infectious diseases, criminality, hostage-taking, and terrorism, to name just a few (Harvey, 2013). Thus, sending an employee to a different country without the necessary training is highly irresponsible and thoughtless of company management. To address this difficulty, companies need to develop security training programs and educate employees regarding any existing risks they may face in the country of their assignment and on their way to this country before they depart (Fu, Hsu, & Shaffer, 2008).
Purpose Statement
The selected topic is of high importance in connection with the current situation in the global human resources market (Greenhaus, Callanan, & Godshalk, 2010). Due to the lack of talents in multiple areas of the world where global companies operate, employers decide to send their human resources to other countries.
Since the regular labor force is the most valuable resource, companies are responsible for providing the necessary help with settling and living safely to expatriates in the country of their assignment (Forrier, Sels, & Stynen, 2009). To enlarge the scope of understanding of the problem under consideration, the ultimate goal of the given project is to develop an effective safety program for the traveling businesspeople and provide recommendations for its implementation.
The program will need to include sufficient training that will help an expatriate avoid a range of possible threats and develop the right behavior that will help overcome any possible hazard. At that, the program will consider the fact that expatriates may have different circumstances depending on their gender, family status, and origin and therefore, it may need to include the measures aiming to address the problems that expatriates’ family members face (Forrier et al., 2009).
Research Questions
Q 1. What are the specific difficulties expatriates may face in other countries and on their way to these countries?
Q 2. Do male/female and married/unmarried employees face different challenges?
Q 3. What are the effective strategies for preventing and managing the risks the expatriates face?
Q 4. What are the further investigations that may be done in the chosen field of study to expand the scope of knowledge on expatriate’s safety and security?
Level of Project Progress
The project is reaching the state of its completion. Currently, the work is being performed on the prevention plan building, with the following milestones passed: initial research and data collection, proposal statement, and annotated bibliography completion. The focus of this project is thus the development of the expatriate safety and security program plan. The plan is being completed with the different categories of the population at risk in mind along with the variance of approaches practiced by business players.
The specific research efforts made to develop the project will be discussed along with the sources utilized to make this project. Research efforts focused on the objective to perform a fully-comprehensive and practice-oriented observation of the studied subject with the purpose to develop an effective program for expatriate security and safety.
The problem of expatriate security and safety relates to a variety of aspects with a wide scope and range. It is thus important to make sure that the research conducted for the project has concerned all these issues from different perspective and angles, including the point of view of human resource managers, assignee workers themselves, and their family members. It is also essential to obtain information both from the theoretical and practical fields (Cole & Nesbeth, 2014). Therefore, the scope of research should concern both academic resources and practice resources containing information on the company experience in the field of expatriate security and safety promotion.
With this in mind, this research project has addressed seven sources of diverse origin. The sources included four academic articles from scientific journals and industry publications, one book observing the issue of expatriate adaptation in its all complexity, and the two business reports from the leading specialists in the field and consultants.
Specific attention was paid to the reports from the field leaders because these pieces contain the up-to-date data showing both the scope of the problem and the variety of methods utilized by international businesses to ensure effective adaptation of their workers in their foreign assignments. Interestingly, the comparison of information in the academic articles or the theoretic frame did not demonstrate a broad view on the problem as it is in the reports by the experts in the field. The reports analyzed the complexity of expatriate security and safety risks on transport, in the land of destination, and the collective body of local workers (Expat explorer report, 2014; Your Assignment, 2009). The reports demonstrated that the problem of expatriate safety in connection with the need to adapt to the local mentality of fellow workers is especially serious. These valuable guides also indicated the specific measures to be undertaken to eliminate such risks. This important data will help generate a more specific and effective plan of better protection for expatriates in foreign countries.
Studying the theoretic sources including Forrier et al. (2009), Greenhaus et al. (2010), Harvey (2013) helped understand the most frequent hazards met by expatriates in the countries of their destination and on their way to these countries. These hazards included low-quality medical service, limited access to medication, poor sanitary conditions, epidemics, local infectious diseases, criminality, hostage-taking, terrorism, existing diplomatic tensions, fires, and transportation-related accidents. This information suggested the main issues that will be responded to by the final program proposed in this project. The main issues and the issues detected in the experts’ report served as the basis for the development of the expatriate security and safety program. The data obtained from the above-mentioned sources also helped to itemize the recommendations for male and female assignees. Finally, analysis of all the sources studied suggested conclusions on the further investigations that may be done in the chosen field of study to expand the scope of knowledge on expatriate’s safety and security.
References
Cole, N., & Nesbeth, K. (2014). Why Do International Assignments Fail? International Studies Of Management & Organization,44(3), 66-79.
Expat explorer report. (2014). Web.
Forrier, A., Sels, L., & Stynen, D. (2009). Career mobility at the intersection between agent and structure: A conceptual model. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 82, 739-759.
Fu, C. K., Hsu, Y., & Shaffer, M. A. (2008). Socialization tactics, fit, and expatriate outcomes. Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 1-6.
Greenhaus, J. H., Callanan, G. A., & Godshalk, V. M. (2010). Career management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Harvey, B. (2013). Safety while working abroad. Professional Safety, 58(12), 20-21.
Your Assignment Abroad: The 50 Most Common Concerns. (2009). Web.