 In this topic, we are going to take a look at what is the situation of expatriate training in practice. Actually, what are the aspects of expatriate training? And in real life, what are the statistics of expatriate training? And how expatriate training is provided? So let's take a look. In the previous topics, we discussed it several times that most of the international selections, they are based on technical ability. And why that happens, this is something that we have discussed in the previous topics, why selections are based on technical ability. So when selections are based on technical ability, that means that people who are selected on the basis of technical ability already have that particular ability. So training is not required for that particular aspect. So usually, literature on expatriate training is mostly concerned with pre-departure training. And that also, that is mostly targeted towards cultural awareness training programs. So when people are sent on international assignments, most of the training that is focused on pre-departure training, particularly on cultural awareness training programs. Why do we need and why international training is mostly focused on intercultural training? That's because there are huge cultural differences. And if people make cultural wrong cultural choices, if they respond to cultural situations incorrectly, that can actually lead to a number of problems. This is something that we had discussed in previous topics as well. What are the costs of not being able to respond to cultural requirements? So intercultural training is something which helps people cope with unexpected events in a new culture. So when you train people for intercultural training, that helps them to behave in a way and to respond in a way which is conversant, which is familiar with that particular culture that they are going to. However, when we look at the data on how much training is provided to people who are going to international assignments, we see that previously, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, that was a very small amount of training which was provided to people who were going for international assignment. So for example, a study in 1982 found that US multinationals, they are most reluctant to provide even the basic pre-departure training to their expatriates. So you can see from data that US multinationals, only 32% of the multinationals, they were providing training to people going for international assignments. Whereas it is a little bit different in European and Japanese companies, European companies provided, most of the training was provided by European companies and that is 69%. And Japanese companies provided training to 57% of their expatriates. In 1997, a survey of European countries, it showed that only 13% they always provided training to people going on expatriate, to people going on international assignments going as expatriates. So only 13% always provided. But this was something which was complimented by the fact that 60% provided for culturally challenging postings. So where they were sending people to culturally challenging locations, they provided training 60% of the time. So the data was a little bit better in terms of positions which were culturally challenging. So this is the situation of one survey of 1982 and then of 1997. Then when we look at data from the Brookfield survey, the Brookfield Global Relocation Survey that calculates global trends in international assignments on a various different locations. And we have discussed statistics from various different aspects in previous topics as well. So this data is about cross-cultural training. So in 2009 and 2011, you can see that cross-cultural training was available to 81% and 74% of the people. It was provided to them. But cross-cultural training was provided to employees only. You can see that there is an increasing trend of cross-cultural training being provided to other members of the family as well. So cross-cultural training being provided to employee only was happening for only 7% of the times and 4% of the times in 2011. And cross-cultural training was being provided to employee and spouse in 32% of the times and 46% of the times and to whole family in 56% of and 49% of the times in 2009 and 2011 respectively. So from this data, you can see that the situation has improved a lot from previous numbers to the current numbers and quite a lot of companies and multinationals, they are providing cross-cultural training to people who are going for international assignments and something which is very much interesting and very much encouraging is that they also include the employees' spouses as well as their children for the cross-cultural training so that when people as a family they are moving from one place to the other, it's not just that the person who has been employed needs to be trained for the new culture. People who are accompanying them, the spouse and the children, they are also going to be exposed to the new culture and they also need to be behaving in the right way and they also need to be aware of the cultural differences and therefore cultural training is provided to the whole of the family in maximum of the cases. So this is something which we see that the trend of expatriate training particularly cross-cultural training is increasing these days. Another aspect of the statistics that are related with expatriate training is that the sector also makes a difference. So research shows that provision of training varies across sectors. So all sectors they do not provide training, cross-cultural training in the same way. So the data and research shows that chemical, pharmaceutical, healthcare and consumer firms they are most generous in providing cross-cultural training whereas IT firms they are least generous in providing cross-cultural training. So this topic discussed about the various different aspects of expatriate training which is being provided. What are the historical numbers, what are the recent numbers and how these numbers are changing and they are becoming more inclusive by including people from the rest of the family in the cross-cultural training of international assignees and then we also discussed that sector also plays a role in how training is provided to people going for international assignments. So this topic discussed about expatriate training aspects in practice.