Companies have traversed borders to exploit value-adding opportunities abroad. Studies tell us that in just under 25 years, companies with international presence have grown from 3,000 to about 70,000. This phenomenon is a major contributor to globalisation i.e. the world has become one big village with invisible borders. These invisible borders seem easy to cross from a technological access point of view; but they have created complex challenges for human resource/people management practitioners. This evolution in HRM has brought about 5 key features (internal and external) that HRM practitioners have to balance:
1. Recruitment policies in achieving a balance between ethnocentric (home country staff) and polycentric recruitment (foreign staff)
2. International diversity management and conflict management in the workplace due to a broad mix of staff from different cultural backgrounds
3. Compliance with varied legal and industrial relation regulations of different countries or regions
4. Remuneration structures and retention strategies that are responsive to the inevitable global mobility of the company's workforce
5. Equal access to support services such as technological support, information and training opportunities