You are Jason Bourne, you wake up in a hotel room in a Middle Eastern country. It’s too hot in your room. You sweat and you just woke up from a nightmare. You are not sure if this nightmare is a memory because you cannot remember who you are. How will it be possible for you to connect with anyone? How will you trust others if you do not even know who you are? What if you have changed your identity so often that you cannot even clearly pronounce your name? This is a challenge and you are probably shaking your head. “This is a movie, it’s not real.”.  Yes, but there is a truth in this movie that is […]

The holiday season is upon us — and most of us are ready for a well-deserved break. I bring this up for two reasons. First, there’s solid evidence that time away from work supports the body and mind: vacations improve sleep, reduce stress, and increase positive mood and life satisfaction. Recent meta-analyses and reviews confirm these benefits and show they can last well beyond the trip itself. Second, large-scale data analyses have found that employees who actually take their allotted vacation are, on average, somewhat more likely to receive raises or promotions — although this is a correlation (other factors such as role, visibility, and network matter). Importantly, the benefits come when people truly detach and recover during their time […]

Over the last two decades in Human Resources, I have noticed that many international talent have been left frustrated by the process of moving to another country for work. I observed that the issues weren’t just financial; they also affected both the individuals and the company, and I underestimated the challenges involved in moving to a new country. Therefore, today I would like to draw on my experience and discuss some crucial practices for that critical period, the first 90-odd days, of an expat landing in a new country and beginning their onboarding process in the host company. 1 – Prepared Before You Land Increasingly, in this age of protectionism, many countries now require you, the expat, and your accompanying […]

Yesterday, on the way to a meeting the train announced another death on the tracks. At this time of the year it happens more than at other times and even though I am used to hearing these announcements they always make me sad. Another human who suffered depression or anxiety and did not see another solution other than to end their life. Another life wasted. During this time of the year, it’s not jolly for everyone. I was reminded that some of us aren’t lucky and privileged. Even in such a wealthy society, we have poverty, and many people get by working in restaurants, health care, and child care for less than the minimum sustenance. And we don’t often know […]

The German language or “Deutsch” is the world’s 15th most spoken language according to Ethnologue’s latest data. The German language is spoken in 28 countries, and 76 million people worldwide speak it as their mother tongue. Globally, there are 132.1 million German language speakers. As of 2016, Germany is home to 82.67 million, 95% of whom speak German as their first language. Status of the German language German is the official language in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein. In Switzerland, it is one of the country’s four official languages. German, which belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, shares some of the characteristics with its co-branch members, English, Dutch, and Frisian languages. It is […]