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Latter-day wandering Jews By Tali Heruti-Sover Tags: Israel Sometimes life is like an impressionist painting. Stand too close and all you see is blobs of color. Stand back and you realize it's a picture of a family having a picnic on a riverbank, or whatever. The view from afar can be enlightening. "The view from there isn't the same as the view from here - The journey of relocation: Traveling to work in a foreign culture" is the full title of Dr. Hana Ornoy's book. The book, whose title references a song by Judith Ravitz ("Dvarim sh'ro'im mi'kan lo ro'im mi'sham"), is about relocation, which companies tend to take too casually, to the detriment of their bottom line and the relocater, too. Ornoy's book is the first guide to relocation. It discusses every aspect of the subject, and provides advice backed by professional literature and the latest studies in Israel and abroad. Potential readers include management, relocation candidates and even people who already have moved. Advertisement Companies relocate thousands of Israeli families every year, says Hana Ornoy, a faculty member at the Open University MBA program. "Yet managers often fail to consider many of the aspects of relocation, which leads to high failure rates. Professional literature says that as many as 45% fail," she says. Define failure in relocation overseas. "There are several types of failure. The first is coming back home early. The literature says that 16% to 40% of relocated employees come back before the end of their designated term, for various family reasons or because they simply didn't make the grade. "Another is the relocated employee abandoning the company. One out of five relocated employees say they don't want to return to their original employer [who relocated them], sometimes because they feel they've grown and sometimes because they don't have anywhere to go back to - somebody else has their original job, and the conditions have changed." In short, relocation creates upheaval. Ornoy says 20% of relocated employees who do return to their original company quit within six months, and up to 30% leave within two years. The costs can be huge. "The cost of each lost employee can reach $1.2 million," she says, based on the company's investment in manpower: Companies typically invest much more in employees who are relocated as compared to the rank-and-file worker. Can failures be eliminated somehow? "Not entirely, but the chances can be reduced by properly gauging potential relocaters," Ornoy says. Companies have developed highly efficient parameters for hiring in general, but very few have mechanisms to accurately judge which employees might do well in another culture. "Managers mistakenly assume that what works well at home will work well overseas - if you have a technological or management genius, he'll certainly do fine abroad," she says. "That simply isn't so, and to avoid that trap, there has to be a filtering mechanism, internal or external, with clear testing criteria involving less pleasant matters, such as the family situation. If the candidate passes the tests, he can go, and if not, the company spares itself a potentially embarrassing flop." And how's the dog's health? What are the criteria for testing relocation suitability? "The first is family characteristics," says Ornoy. "Sometimes it can feel like an invasion of privacy, but it's better to know everything. A sure-fire recipe for failure is ignoring family issues such as special-needs children or aged parents who need care, or even the spouse's career, which could be impaired." Take, for example, a family relocated to Paris, she says. The wife was the only child of aging parents, whose health deteriorated, which meant she had to make frequent trips to Israel. She would leave the children in Paris with her husband, whose work suffered as a result. The employer eventually asked that he be replaced. It's the company's duty to delve into details like these, especially assuming that the worker so badly wants to travel that he will blithely ignore such issues, Ornoy says. Another criterion is personality. A company ideally wants ethical workers with a sense of conscience, who won't leave for the rivals at the end of his overseas stint, Ornoy says. Workers sent overseas should generally be open, gregarious types, not people who have difficulty creating comfortable, supportive environments for themselves and their families. Is the person easily stressed, or relatively unflustered? You don't want to send a natural hysteric for relocation, which is a complex procedure involving work, societal and familial stresses. Also important is the ethnocentrism of the potential relocater. The more condescending the person and unaccepting of "the other," the less likely he'll fit in the new surroundings. Coming home is another battle entirely. Ornoy has devised what she calls a ten-step program for companies to bring their troops home. She advises starting at an unconventional point: before they leave. "First of all, a mutual agreement should be signed that details the worker's career upon his return," she explains. "It is true that it can't always be honored, but it assuages concerns and ties the worker to the organization. In parallel, the company must appoint a mentor, not a junior staff member, to maintain constant contact with the relocated employee, to keep him in the loop, market him inside the company, and hold his place." All these are essential for bringing people back home after a stint away. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Death penalty Iran hands down death sentence to man who spied for Israel. Robot hospital The place where IDF treats droids wounded in the line of fire.

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