"Hold On To The Center"
-Tao te Ching

The advice of this ancient Chinese writer is still valid today. Tucker International people have been at the center of International Human Resource Development for a long time, and our clients benefit from our central position and focus.

"The pace of globalizing business strategy is staggering. Successful implementation of strategy, however, by interculturally competent people, supported by appropriate corporate practice, is the greatest need and the key to success."

-The conference Board

"The normal processes of selection and development are not very efficient at producing international managers."

-Executive at Grand Met

"Research has shown that intercultural training
programs improve expatriate job performance, adjustment to the new culture, and development of
cross-cultural skills."
-The Conference Board

"The process of management, and certainly the roles of leader and of manager, are very much defined by the values of the local and
national culture."
-Management Consultant International Journal

"I remain convinced that much of our difficulty with people in other countries
stems from the fact that so little is known about cross-cultural communication."
-Edward T. Hall

CAPABILITIES AND SERVICES OF TUCKER INTERNATIONAL

Introduction to Tucker International

Long before the concept of business globalization was on everyone’s mind, before the flood of corporate families being sent to countries around the world, and before there was much of an International Human Resource Management discipline, the people of Tucker International were pioneering ways to select and prepare people to work in other countries. From early work in diverse settings like Afghanistan, Brazil, Iran and the former Yugoslavia, to the "hot" markets today in Asia, Europe and Latin America, our people have made a life’s work of helping people and companies to be successful in completing their international missions.

Today, Tucker International provides personnel assessment, intercultural and language training and consulting to a select group of multinational client organizations. Each service is custom made to fit client needs. We have always believed that standard models and off-the-shelf products are not very effective, given the unique circumstances of each organization and the individual expatriating family or business executive. The single service objective at Tucker International is the development of intercultural competence.

Our base of operation is nestled against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in the city of Boulder, Colorado. Although our services are provided at many client locations around the world, our executive offices and training center are located on Central Avenue. The small campus grounds located next to a lake and park-like setting at our training center provide an ideal, relaxed environment.

Description of Services

Tucker International views the international positioning of employees as a process. From the time when an employee takes on an international position to when they repatriate back to their home country, Tucker International has the tools needed to promote success.

As a full-service international human resource development company, Tucker International provides the following services and products:

International Mobility Assessment (IMA®)

The IMA is an interactive on-line self-assessment designed to help employees and families evaluate their readiness and mobility for an international assignment. With the IMA, people can select or deselect themselves for international assignment - often saving international human resource professionals valuable time.

Once this assessment is completed, potential expatriates have a more realistic perception of what an international assignment will require from them both personally and professionally. After this internal evaluation, they may decide that they are indeed ready to take on an international assignment or they may choose to de-select themselves.

The IMA is accessed via the Tucker International Website.

International Assessment, Selection and Development Service

This service features the Tucker Assessment Profile TAP® and the Overseas Assignment Inventory OAI, authored by Dr. Tucker. These are highly reliable instruments that assess intercultural competencies required for success on an international assignment. They are the only instruments available that have been validated according to a longitudinal, external criterion method (prediction of intercultural adjustment over time). They are used for candidate selection, as well as for feedback and development.

Our database includes thousands of international employees (and their spouses). Individual profiles are created for each new respondent and are then compared to this database. This service represents a solid step forward in the application of objective data based approaches to the challenge of selecting international talent. The benefits of proper international employee selection include reducing the loss of corporate investments made on failed expatriate assignments and avoiding the human costs of damaged self-concept and reputation of culturally maladjusted assignees. Most importantly, well-prepared expatriates are more trouble-free and productive internationally, which gives organizations a competitive edge in the global marketplace.

There are three primary ways that this service is applied:

1. To help select and develop employees and spouses for specific international assignments.
2. Integrated into an intercultural training program.
3. Part of an international career planning and development process.

In all three cases, the employee and spouse complete an on-line assessment which is then sent to Tucker International for scoring, interpretation and preparation of reports and guides.

Customized Intercultural and Language Training for Business and Technical Personnel as well as Expatriate Families

In the 1970's, when Dr. Michael Tucker and his colleagues pioneered the delivery of intercultural training for corporate employees and their families embarking on international assignments, these assignments were generally not where the "best and brightest" were sent, the world was much less globally competitive than it is today, and intercultural training was little known in the private sector.

Much of this has changed. Fierce global competition requires the very best corporate talent to be assigned to strategic worldwide locations. The cost of these assignments has skyrocketed, and yet the numbers have grown to hundreds of thousands of employees and their families living and working abroad. In addition, surveys have shown that many multinationals are increasing their number of expatriates, while many smaller organizations are entering international markets for the first time.

To meet these needs, intercultural training has become a critical part of the preparation of expatriates. Surveys by the Employee Relocation Council and the Society for Human Resource Management show that the majority of organizations now provide intercultural training, because it has proven its worth. A key decision for these organizations is what approach to use and what supplier to choose.

Tucker International has been working with expatriates and their families for the past thirty years. We have provided intercultural training programs for thousands of people preparing for assignments in many parts of the world.

Survey of Expatriate Training and Development SETD

A safety net to offer to your existing expatriates.  This assessment is used to evaluate expatriate adjustment to living and working in the country of assignment.  Their results can be incorporated into an Expatriate Evaluation and Development EED® guide which is given to the expatriate. This country specific guide provides feedback and guidance for expatriate employees in order to help enhance their international experience and therefore their overall performance and job satisfaction.

International Career Transition and Repatriation Services

Tucker International offers a service that guides returning expatriates toward satisfying career transitions. This service is designed to help international employees leverage their international experience as they transition to their next professional position. These services begin while employees are on an international assignment and continue when they repatriate to their home country. The goal of these services is to help employees secure their next professional position as quickly and smoothly as possible, while ensuring that the position makes maximum use of their international experience.

The repatriating employee, spouse and family find themselves in a very different situation than when they were preparing for the expatriate assignment. At that time, they needed a great deal of information about the country and culture of their assignment in addition to intercultural adjustment training. When they return back home, they need assistance in guiding them through the process of establishing a new position as well as the strange process of "reverse culture shock." When combined with the International Career Transition Service, companies can provide their employees with a much needed repatriation support system.

Intercultural Consulting

Tucker International clients look to us to help with the unique organizational and human resource issues involved in doing business across nations and cultures.

This unique type of consulting practice is illustrated by the following three areas of activity.

Intercultural Consulting for Business Travelers

Tucker International provides intercultural information and training that helps business travelers succeed with their immediate tasks as well as to promote worldwide organizational learning. This can be a technical team traveling to Russia for purposes of technical transfer; a negotiating team traveling to Japan to work out a joint venture partnership, a senior management group traveling to Southeast Asia or Latin American to work out business expansion strategy; or a marketing executive traveling to Europe to develop a new corporate positioning and image.

Intercultural Team Building for International Joint Venture Companies

The international joint venture, or IJV is a primary means for international business expansion. However, the IJV failure rate is high, which makes it a risky way of doing business. Cultural differences in expectations, business relationships and operating styles are often cited as primary reasons for failure.

Tucker International consultants work with IJV partners early on in the business development process in order to bring to the corporate and national cultural values, assumptions and styles to the surface.

In this way, Tucker International consultants help IJV partners to build businesses that can last and can withstand market pressures, because they are built on a foundation of understanding and trust.

IHRM Best Practices Consulting

The globalization process presents corporate human resource professionals with difficult and unfamiliar challenges. In most corporations the recruitment and placement of international personnel occurs at a very fast pace. Successful implementation of corporate globalization strategy must be supported by an appropriate corporate culture.

Tucker International consultants can help the human resource function meet these challenges by helping to develop international managers in the following ways:

• Getting away from treating international assignments as fire-fighting exercises and establishing their strategic role
• Establishing the HR role in the selection of international managers
• Managing repatriations
• Managing the international career planning process

The services provided by Tucker International are solidly grounded by empirical research. Our Assessment Service is based on almost forty years of research on the factors that differentiate between successful vs. unsuccessful expatriates and on longitudinal predictions of those factors. The Tucker International Expatriate Training Service is also based on this research, augmented by interviews, focus groups and surveys of expatriates around the world.

The research capability that stands behind these assessment and training services is also made available directly to clients. Examples of this capability include:

Bench Marking Research

There is a bewildering array of questions involved in implementing international business strategy through appropriate IHRM systems:

• How can we set up an effective international career-planning program?
• How can we establish a mentor-program for expatriates that really works?
• How can we be sure that human resource management practices at subsidiary companies are consistent with corporate policy and yet sensitive to local needs?

Tucker International's assistance in this type of research add value to what is done in-house because of the objectivity of our approach and the broad access that we have to research data and to other international companies.

Research on Special International Business Problems

There are many perplexing situations that arise as companies expand their businesses across nations and cultures. These situations do not readily lend themselves to familiar forms of analysis. They must be looked at through an unbiased cultural "lens" to correctly search out the causes and answers. For example:

•  What is the best way to position the company in a new market?
•  How can we attract and retain the best people in an important world region?
•  What is our reputation among the people in an important international market?

Tucker International assigns bi-cultural and bi-lingual researchers to study these issues first-hand from multiple sources in the target area. They not only provide answers, but they help to develop strategies that will best deal with the situations in the future.

Whatever your international human resource needs may be, we can help.