5 Tips for Promoting Assignee and Transferee Engagement

How can you keep your assignees and transferees inspired and engaged while considering remote assignments, managers and assignees facing motivational challenges?

Although the post-pandemic shift toward remote work may be uncharted waters for many industries, the prevalence of remote work has been an increasingly utilized component of globally mobile companies for many years. However, despite years of experience operating with dispersed workforces, many international companies fail to encourage and maintain adequate employee engagement.

Failure to ensure assignee engagement leads to decreased productivity, lower employee satisfaction, and increased turnover. Assignment success and your bottom-line hinge on the success of your remote employees. Fortunately, promotion of assignee engagement requires little investment, and ramping up initiatives to keep assignees engaged will pay off in business-related dividends.

This article will outline key steps your mobility program can implement to motivate your remote assignees.

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is a broad term involving intellectual, relational, and social elements. Specifically, it refers to how your assignees actively participate, the emotional connectedness and sense of purpose they derive from their assignments, and their continued interactions with colleagues at work.

Engagement may be considered in either measurable behaviors or assignee attitudes. Your employees can be variously engaged with your business, their peers, or their individual roles. Employee engagement may refer to an assignee’s motivation, commitment, or performance levels. Markers of employee engagement include positive attitudes, participation in company culture, attentiveness, loyalty, productivity, and career satisfaction. In addition, assignee engagement leads to diminished employee attrition.

The characteristics of employee engagement might be hard to pin down, but there’s one certainty – when assignee engagement begins to falter, it can be difficult to salvage. Instead of losing your assignees to distractedness or complacency, be proactive about fostering engagement with these tips.

Encourage personal connections

When there’s an entire ocean between an international assignee and the home office, it’s understandable that distance might leave inter-company communication wanting.

If you take anything away from this article, it should be the importance of exercising time-tested human empathy. Empathy enables you to recognize when an assignee feels isolated or lonely, and extending empathy through personal conversations helps assignees to connect in healthy, productive ways.

Cultivate a company culture of open discussions, whether these conversations are project-focused, problem-oriented, or just for conversation’s sake, even for purely social reasons. Encourage discussions between departments and facilitate your assignees’ ability to feel comfortable communicating issues without trepidation or fear of reprimand.

All work and no play make for a dull assignment experience. For example, virtual team-building games can be a fun method of building personal bonds between assignees and keeping them engaged.

Modify your management approach

Strong managers should individualize their management approach per assignee, taking the time to create the best structure based on the assignees’ personal needs. Based on the international time difference, are mid-morning Zoom meetings more reasonable for the assignee than late-afternoon calls?  Be mindful of the assignee’s individual needs, including applicable cultural factors, and adjust interactions accordingly.

Clear and honest communication is equally important in managing a globally mobile team. When communicating with remote assignees, aim for clarity and be mindful of your tone. If you foster a company culture of open communication, assignees should feel comfortable expressing any uncertainties or questions. Manager-to-assignee communication should also include positive coaching questions, such as, “What challenges do you foresee yourself encountering in this project?”

Assignee accountability can be challenging unless you establish visibility through online project or task management tools. Implementing these tools, partnered with regularly scheduled check-in meetings, can help encourage project progress and continued assignee engagement.

Utilize assignment management software

Assignment management software provides accountability and transparency for assignees and their teams, which translates to increased employee engagement. Ineo’s TechSuite global mobility solution includes robust assignment management software that allows you to oversee and maintain complete line-of-sight to your active assignment population.

Communicate, communicate, communicate!

If an assignee feels abandoned to their own devices, they’ll likely experience difficulty maintaining engagement during the assignment. Continued employee engagement requires regular check-ins by phone and video when your assignees work remotely. Additionally, because assignees communicate differently, consider developing multiple methods to interact to ensure effective collaboration with your dispersed workforce.

Feedback is an essential factor in employee communication.  Data shows that assignees are 3 times more likely to be engaged when they receive regular, meaningful monthly feedback from managers. Periodically check in at regular intervals to determine whether your assignees are receiving adequate feedback, especially in relation to team feedback, to assist them in accomplishing objectives.

Feedback is a two-way street. To support assignee engagement, ensure your dispersed employees have opportunities to provide feedback, and then make sure their feedback is utilized to make necessary adjustments accordingly.

Recognition and appreciation

Everyone appreciates recognition for a job well done. For mobile assignees, recognition may take the form of stipends, bonuses, stipends, increased involvement in decision-making, and published company-wide praise for their contributions, A key element of employee engagement is giving credit where credit is due to reinforce your assignees’ sense of inclusion, impact, and importance.

Keep assignees and mobility managers interconnected with Ineo

From complete mobility software solutions to financial and tax services, Ineo has everything your mobility program needs to meet your goals. Contact our industry experts today to learn how our global mobility software solutions can help your mobility program succeed.

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