Your job doesn’t end once you’ve recruited someone from a different country. You also need to make sure that you retain that employee.

In fact, employee retention is a major concern for all employers—those who are hiring locally and those who go in for international recruitment. If your company has a high turnover, you’ll be wasting a lot of time and money hiring and training new people, only to have them leave in a short period of time. Every employer wants to avoid this situation, which is why they have certain procedures in place for employee retention.

If you’re recruiting internationally, you might have to do a little more to make sure that your employees stay with your company. Fortunately, most people who switch countries in order to find jobs know that they’ll have to go through a period of adjustment. So they come prepared. But there are definitely things you can do to make their transition easier.

Relocation Allowance

Moving to a new country is going to be expensive. You have to spend on airfare and at least a few nights in a hotel. You might need to pay a broker to help you find an apartment. You’ll have to get furniture, bedding, curtains etc. for the new apartment. If you’re moving somewhere where the weather is different from your home country, you’ll have to buy a new wardrobe. So even if you’re getting paid more in your new job than your old one, all these expenses will cut into your pay.

It helps if the company you’re working for considers all these relocation expenses and gives you an allowance to cover them. Some companies might even make arrangements for the employee to stay in a company-owned apartment, so as to defray some of the moving costs.

Visa Paperwork

Most people don’t know that much about what kind of paperwork is needed for a visa. It helps if the company sponsoring them arranges for a lawyer to help them out. This way, the new hire can just provide whatever is needed from them and go for the interview. The visa application is simplified by the lawyer who keeps track of all the paperwork needed.

Mentoring

High schoolers who transfer from one school to another have students assigned to them at the new school; the job of these “mentors” is to make sure that the new students learn their way around easily. Similarly, you can assign a mentor to any international new hire.

It helps if the person doing the mentoring used to be a new hire themselves. That way, they’ll know what the new person needs help with. But even if you don’t have someone like that, find someone in your team who is gregarious, likes to talk to new people and is culturally sensitive.

The first few weeks or months when a new hire arrives from a foreign country are going to be full of little cultural misunderstandings. But eventually, everyone adjusts to the slang in the new country, the way in which people dress and the things which are considered polite and impolite. Still, it helps to have someone helping them along the way.

Make Them Feel Welcomed

The main thing you need to do, as a company, is to make your new hires feel welcome. They should feel valued within your company.

And sometimes, it’s the little things that matter more than the big ones. You might give your international hires a large relocation allowance. But they might feel more welcome when they receive a “welcome” mug with the company logo.

So do what you can to welcome your international recruits and make sure that other people in your company do the same.

The Network Editorial Team