 In this topic, we will be discussing another aspect of multi-nationals reaction to repatriation process, and that is calculating the return on investment on the expatriation process. The amount of investment that you make on the person who is sent on an international assignment and the benefit that you get out of that person is directly related to the repatriation process. How is it related to the repatriation process? Let's discuss that. Number one is that expatriates are quite expensive, particularly expatriates from first world advanced countries. So from people who are sent on international assignments from America, Canada, US, UK, the European countries, the first world countries, when they are sent on international assignments, they are quite expensive. That is why the multi-nationals, they try to localize positions through the employment of home country nationals, people who are, sorry, the host country nationals, people who belong to the host country. But it is not always possible and not always strategically correct to employ host country nationals because there is a lot of transfer of knowledge, transfer of skills and transfer of the strategic objectives of the organization that has to be done through the people of the organization and that is why people need to be sent on the international assignments. But cost is something which is a very important aspect of expatriate management and that is why many firms, organizations, they are moving towards the local plus compensation of parent country nationals and third country nationals. We had discussed about the approaches to compensation and local plus is the one which takes into account the local context as well as the organization's context as well. And that is why short term and non-standard assignments are also being focused rather than a traditional expatriate career. However, this is something which cannot be ignored all the time and a lot of money and investment is done on the international assignees and survey data shows that cost containment is one of the major primary drivers of expatriate assignment. You want to manage it in the minimum possible money but still a survey in 1991, it's like something like 30 years ago, found that a traditional, a usual US multinational spends about one million dollars on an expatriate assignment. So that is the magnitude 30 years ago so you can add the inflation rate and you can calculate how much would it be costing the organization at this time. It is also found that if one in four expatriates exits within one year of repatriation, it turns out to be a substantial human capital and financial loss to the organization. So if one in four, if one of four of your international assignees comes back and quits within one year, which you will remember in the case study when Belova was put in after six months because of poor repatriation process, it is something which is detrimental and substantially creates a loss for the organization. So when we are talking about return on investment, a repatriation process is very much important because if the person exits the organization without transferring the basic learning that he has taken from the international assignment and implementing it in the home country, then it would be a substantial loss for the organization. So that is a very important aspect. But when we talk about defining a return on investment, it is something which is very much complicated because it is first of all very difficult to define what is the return? What do you consider to be a return? Many organizations, they responded on accomplishing the assignment objectives at the expected cost. So if you are able to accomplish the assignment objective at the expected cost, this is a good ROI. This is a good return on investment. But companies, they varied their responses from 96% companies said that yes, this is the way to calculate ROI in 2002. And then only 10% said that in 2004 and then 70% again said that in 2011. So you can see the amount of variation in perception of what is return on investment. Carrying that forward, a meaningful definition of return on investment should include a cost-benefit analysis including analysis of financial and non-financial data measured against the purpose of the assignment. So it must be taken into account what was the purpose of the assignment and then what were the financials involved in it and then what was the non-financial aspect of the benefits and costs that were incurred regarding that. And that makes it something which is really complicated. For example, if you are talking about calculating the costs. So costs are number one direct costs which are easy to measure and easy to get information about. For example, the direct costs are the relocation expenses and itemized compensation package and other international assignee entitlements. So whatever is spent financially on the organization, on the international assignee by the organization is the direct cost. But then there are many indirect or intangible costs that are difficult to measure and what are those intangible costs those intangible costs are expatriate failure if the person is unable to complete the assignment under performance if the person is not able to perform according to the objectives of the assignment and then the opportunity cost of not hiring a host country national that is also a part of the cost as well and that is something which also should be included in calculating the cost. On the other hand, when you are calculating the benefits, it is also something which is quite complicated. Placing a monetary value on benefits is definitely a challenge because there are a number of intangible benefits. The completion of the assignment is not only the intangible benefit of the international assignment. There are many intangible benefits and those are mostly tacit and person bound. Every person brings different type of intangible benefits from a particular international assignment and it is something which is tacit. It is not something which is explicit, it is something which is tacit, something which cannot be actually pinned down or explicitly measured or stated out. What type of benefits that are tacit and person bound are well, the knowledge and skills transfer, how much knowledge you have transferred, how many people you have taught, how many skills you have transferred, how much capacity you have built in people, how much you have enabled them. If you are doing this in a very good way, it is not necessary to assign the international assignment, host country nationals will manage the organization and it is something which is of a high benefit for the organization. But if you did not transfer anything at all, if you did not build any capacity over there, it is something which is not going to be either reflected in the cost or the benefits which are being calculated. Then another aspect of it is the management development. The development of the international assignment itself depends on the assignment, it depends on the individual, it depends on how the organization manages the expatriation and repatriation process. So it depends on the learning culture of the organization, it depends on so many aspects of the organization that it is something that cannot be pinned down as something which is of a monetary value. It is an intangible benefit and then thirdly, the intangible benefits of the international assignment is the relationship and the networking that a person is able to do. So how much relationship building, how much networking, what type of networks does it build, are they strong networks, are the relationships reliable, are the relationships going to be beneficial in the long run. It is something that you cannot say, it is something that you cannot measure. So that is something again which is difficult to be calculated in monetary terms. So when you are calculating the benefits side of the return on investment equation, it is something which is difficult to measure because it is difficult to measure the intellectual, social and human capital gains that are reaped out of an international assignment. And therefore it is difficult to measure the return on investment of an international assignment. But it is something which is doable because it is always possible to draw some kind of information out of subjective data as well. That is something which social sciences researchers do and if your human resource management department is strong and knows how to measure these various different aspects of the processes of the human resource, if they know how to measure that, it is possible to calculate the return on investment on the international assignment and what the organization has gained out of it and what it has spent as cost. So these are the different aspects which must be taken into account while calculating the costs, the direct costs as well as the indirect costs as well as the benefits, the tangible benefits as well as the intangible benefits. These are the ones which must be taken into account while calculating the return on investment equation of an international assignment.