AstraZeneca is the worlds fifth-largest pharmaceutical company by global sales. It is headquartered in London, UK and Södertälje, Sweden. For the year 2008, AstraZenecas revenues were US$31.6 billion and it employed around 66,000 employees. As of 2009, AstraZeneca had around 350 employees working on international assignments in 140 countries worldwide. These were employees who were on short-term, long-term, or commuter assignments. According to Ashley Daly (Daly), senior manager of international assignments for AstraZeneca in the U.S., the companys employees were mainly concentrated in Belgium, the U.S., and the UK, but they also have a significant presence in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions. AstraZenecas policy stipulates that for any international assignment, there had to be a business rationale. The company saw to it that the costs involved were acceptable, and that the career management of the employee during the assignment was consistent with personal development goals as well as business needs. The contractual arrangements for the assignment were also centrally managed. From the outset, if there is not a clear sense of how the international assignment experience can be applied at the end of the assignment termat least in broad termsthe business should strongly consider whether an international assignment should even move forward, said Daly. Once an assignment offer was made to a potential expat, AstraZeneca (IA manager), who briefed them on company policy and opportunities for Before leaving for their international assignment, employees were provided training in a workshop that focused on relevant issues (such as leaving the destination location and returning back to the home country). The expats were given information about the culture of the destination countryparticularly differences with the home countryas well as social considerations and dos and donts. If necessary, the employee and his/her spouse were given . Tessi Romell (Romell), research and development projects and HR effectiveness leader at AstraZeneca, said that the company also helped connect . Sometimes, follow-up workshops were held in the host country. Once on assignment, expats stayed in touch with their IA manager in addition to the manager they reported back to in the home country. AstraZeneca saw to it that expats were given the . AstraZeneca is really good at allowing people to manage their own time and being aware that we are working across different time zones. said Romell. With AstraZeneca taking various initiatives on this front, there were few complaints about work/life balance among the companys expat population. Romell attributed this to the mechanisms the company had put in place to . Its a combination of things that the company is doing and , as well as encouraging individuals themselves to she said. Experts too felt that the practices followed by AstraZeneca, such as preparing the employees for international assignments, providing them with support, and assigning IA managers, were effective. They lauded AstraZenecas practices, which were in contrast to those of many companies that rushed employees to foreign assignments without adequate support. Chris Buckley, manager of international operations for St. Louis-based Impact Group Inc., pointed out that the expats knew that the organization was spending a lot of money on them and they might be wary about coming up with any complaints regarding their new assignment with their boss. In such a scenario, contact with . With the economic situation around the globe continuing to be grim, experts felt that organizations would be forced to take a second look at the costs associated with international staffing. Some felt that organizations would send fewer people on international assignments, or allot them to shorter terms abroad. They even predicted that the high compensation and benefits generally associated with foreign assignments could also see cuts. While AstraZeneca had also taken measures to cut costs (specifically tax costs) by sending employees on short-term assignments, Daly noted that this was not always possible. When the expat had a family and was being posted for a longer term, Daly pointed out that some of the elements of AstraZenecas These supports ensured that the expatriate family was able to settle down in the host country. Not providing them could result in employees not being able to focus on their new job, putting the companys investment at risk. So, the company was not looking at this issue in terms of expenditures alone. The company also did not have any plans to decrease the number of its staff deployed internationally. According to Daly, why they go; and perhaps most important, how the skills and experience gained abroad will be leveraged in their next role, post assignment.
