Indian conglomerate Spice Group has based its global headquarters in Singapore since late 2008, as part of its strategic move to expand its footprint, which extends to the Southeast Asian markets and the Middle East. To further solidify this move, it has been relocating top senior leaders and their families, including A.V.K. Mohan, group president for Spice’s global HR, to Singapore and Malaysia since January.

Having only relocated from India to Singapore in April this year, Mohan says this gives the senior leadership team a closer view on its regional businesses, ranging from telecommunications and IT, to finance, entertainment and retail. In the next year, Mohan expects to relocate at least 10 members of the senior leadership team and another 10 middle managers and their families on two to three-year assignments.

But expatriation management challenges for Mohan are twofold – strategic and operational. This gives HR an integral role in helping Spice overcome them from the beginning.

From a strategic viewpoint, the first question HR needs to ask is how it aligns the organisation’s future to its business model and strategy. Next, HR needs to look at the type of organisational structure and design needed, followed by the cultural and communication issues, no matter how slight, expatriates would face moving to Singapore. And that’s just the starting stage, according to Mohan. “These issues will become bigger as we move more people over,” he says.

The operational challenges focus on a more personal aspect, says Mohan. It’s selling the new role and opportunity to the talent and easing the transition process and providing sufficient training in “culturalisation” issues once the talent takes up the assignment to Singapore.

While it wasn’t hard to sell Singapore to his leaders, thanks to its attractive “world-class” quality of living, there was still hesitation on

their part.

“If you look at India, it is a big geography with big opportunities,” says Mohan. “People will wonder if they go outside, will they get opportunities again, will their role shrink or become smaller.”

Therefore, it is very important to select the right person and align their personal motivation with the right role, says Mohan, on top of the compensation packages and their family’s mobility concerns. “When you move a person from one place to another, if the role is not clear or motivational, the person would not be attracted to the role. If you force it, they are not going to be very happy.”

Bob La Rue, senior director of FormFactor’s human resources, agrees it is part of the job to have many conversations with international assignees, even though Singapore isn’t a hard place to live in. Having been in Singapore for about three months, La Rue is in the midst of bridging the cultures of the global advanced wafer-probe card technology and design provider’s corporate headquarters in California and the new headquarters in Singapore.

La Rue is also tasked with integrating FormFactor’s expats who are on global assignments in Asia. There are currently five senior expat leaders in Singapore to ensure

its manufacturing plant which opened in

March gets on track with its operations and

local recruitment.

“I’m here to support them and making sure their assignments are going smoothly and they get everything they need,” he says.

But La Rue acknowledges that relocating to Singapore was “a trying process” for both the assignees and the company. While La Rue himself is on assignment here for two years, one member of FormFactor’s executive leadership team has been localised as a permanent resident. So far, FormFactor’s expatriates in Singapore have come with an open mindset and taken to the local culture very well, says La Rue. But he recommends at least touching base with international assignees at least once a month, or more frequently if they run into any issue.

“When you go into a new country, even if it is as modern as Singapore, it is still brand new. You don’t know how to get stuff done.”

The things people take for granted could be as simple as getting internet access at home – in a foreign location, that could easily frustrate people because it’s new to them.

“What I tell other people on assignment is it’s just a big adventure. If your mindset is exactly like back in the US, you are going to be really frustrated because things are different.”

But the biggest challenge that the assignees, including La Rue, are facing is “figuring a different way to do your job” once you move from the corporate office in the US to Asia. The time-zone difference is just one hurdle. And La Rue says “it’s also very easy for somebody in the corporate headquarters to make a decision without taking into account input from assignees in other regions because that’s where most of the senior executive management team is still based in”.

How La Rue overcame this challenge was installing a video conference capability in the offices located in Asia and moving meeting times to the end of the day in California and to the beginning of the day in Singapore.

“More and more people here in Singapore are open to getting up at 4am in the morning to make sure they are participating in the meetings.”

Having a good understanding about the local practices and employment laws is another skill HR professionals should have, says Mohan. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult for HR to strategise their expatriate management process.

More importantly, both senior HR professionals from Spice and FormFactor say getting connected with their professional HR networks was how they got through their individual relocation challenges. Local mentoring from Singaporean leaders in the company, such as his local HR director, is very important as well, says La Rue. “They know how to get things done, they have contacts and they can guide you in dealing with any problems that come up. I would not hesitate to call other HR people who have done it and ask if they have any advice.”