Expatica HR invites you to submit your survey for consideration in the 2007/2008 Expatica Top 5 Industry Survey Awards. The awards recognise excellence in HR surveys which demonstrate continuing relevance to the HR profession, cutting edge findings, and rigorous survey methodologies.

Read past reviews of Expatica's top industry surveys:
Industry Surveys 2005: A Review of the Best (PartI)
Industry Surveys 2005: A Review of the Best (Part II)
Industry Surveys 2005: A Review of the Best (Part III)

Following an unprecedented level of interest in the Expatica HR “Best Industry Surveys” series of articles over the past few years, this award will fill an important gap in providing an opportunity for organisations to come together to share their survey findings, and to recognise and celebrate industry surveys as a significant tool within the HR profession.  Developed in conjunction with leading academics and professionals from the HR industry, the award uses a two-tier selection and judging process which requires entrants to meet a set of essential and desirable judging criteria in each award category.  Winners of the award will be featured in an article about their survey on the Expatica HR website, to be published in the last quarter of 2008.  Winners will also be provided with an Expatica ‘Best Industry Survey 2007/2008’ logo which can be used on the front cover of each winning survey.

Nominations for the 2007/2008 Expatica Top 5 Industry Survey Awards are now open. If you belong to an organisation, or know of an organisation, that has recently released an industry survey; don’t let that achievement go unrewarded.

Why a 2007/ 2008 award?

For several reasons, rather than publish the results of the 2007 Expatica Top 5 Industry Survey Awards, we have decided to do combined awards for 2007 and 2008. 

The reasons are as follows:
•    Although we received enough high quality surveys to consider for the awards, several of them were from the same organisation, which meant that we didn’t have sufficient diversity of survey sources to render the results fair.
•    We found that many of the key players for the industry awards were unable to meet the October 2007 deadline. They wrote to us stating that they would prefer to submit surveys for the 2008 awards.
•    Expatica’s total restructuring and rebranding at the end of 2007, which involved total redesign of the website, reorganisation of Expatica’s content, the migration of our site to new technologies and the welcoming of several new team members contributed to this decision.

We are pleased to announce that Expatica is now back in even better shape than before, with more emphasis on marketing drive as well as continued focus on editorial quality, and we are eager to continue with the inaugural Expatica Top 5 Industry Survey Awards. [With the agreement of organisations involved, we have filed the surveys that have already been submitted and will take them into consideration for the 2007/2008 Expatica Top 5 Industry Survey Awards.]
How to enter

The submitted surveys should have been published by 30 June 2008. Any surveys published after this date up until June 2009, will be eligible for our 2008/2009 awards. The award recognises excellence across the entire HR spectrum including, but not limited to, international HRM, international management, compensation, policy and practices, technology, training, measurement, and talent management. Nominations will be assessed against a set of essential and desirable criteria. This approach allows for flexibility in recognising innovation and creativity, whilst also maintaining rigorous standards that match quantitative evidence with business focus in order to validate qualitative claims.

Organisations may enter as many surveys as they wish, providing each survey falls within the domain of the HR profession. Nominations are first passed on to a 6-member international short-listing panel, including three international HR academics, two international HR practitioners, and the editor of Expatica HR.  This panel is responsible for examining each submission, and short listing candidates based on a set number of essential and desirable criteria. A final judging panel, consisting of an international HR academic and the editor of Expatica HR, will select the top five surveys, based upon the same essential and desirable criteria, and in consultation with members of the short-listing panel.

To register your submission, submit one survey per email (with the survey attached as a PDF file) to survey.submissions@expatica.com with the following information in the text of the email:

Name of Survey:
Organisation Name:
Contact Person:
Job Title:
Address:
Direct telephone number:
Email:

Submit your entry by the closing date of 7 July 2008.

[Late submissions may still be considered. Please contact Natasha Gunn at natasha.gunn@expatica.com to see if you can still be included in the reviewing process.]

Essential and desirable criteria

Each survey will be assessed against the following criteria:

1.    Findings:  Does the survey contribute new findings on a topic of interest to HR professionals? Is the survey based on a current ‘hot topic’ in HR? Are the survey findings novel or unique, cutting edge, and/or representative of findings that are under-researched or undeveloped?  Do the findings build on previous survey findings in an effort to contribute towards an understanding of growing trends within the HR profession?

2.    Methodology:  Does the survey use a rigorous methodology? Is the sample large enough to be representative of the general population? Is the method of data collection (e.g. interviews, questionnaires) appropriate for the topic being investigated?  Is the sample appropriate for the topic being investigated?  Is methodological information easy to find and clearly articulated?

3.    Readability:  Is the survey easy to read and digest? Does the design and layout lend itself to a ‘quick read’ or for use as a reference guide? Are page numbers, table of contents, and indexes available and accurate?

4.    Quality of the data: Does the survey provide data that is of value to HR professionals? Can qualitative data be verified with quantitative evidence? Does it satisfy the ‘so-what?’ question in terms of investigating a topic of relevance to the profession?  Are the findings of more than trivial value?

5.    Willingness to have data scrutinised:  Is the submitting organisation willing to answer questions from the judging panel regarding verification of the survey data? Note: if submitting organisations are not willing to answer questions about a particular survey, then that survey will not make the shortlist.  Note: Scrutiny of the survey data is unlikely to be necessary if a submission satisfies the above criteria.

Panel of Judges

• Barbara Parry, Human Resources Strategic Business Partner, Lonmin Exploration, South Africa
• Kelli Johnson, Head of Global Relocation, Eli Lilly, USA
• Noeleen Doherty, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, United Kingdom
• Stephan Mol, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Yvonne McNulty, Department of Management, Monash University, Australia
• Natasha Gunn, Editor Expatica HR and Expatica Netherlands, The Netherlands

Barbara Parry
Barbara Parry is the Senior Business Partner: Human Capital for Lonmin Exploration. Lonmin is the world’s third largest primary platinum mining company. Based in South Africa, she is responsible for Human Capital strategy, policy, legal, and tax compliance, and expatriate management as well as total reward for all exploration employees. Previously she was with MTN Group Management Services, the leading mobile telephone service provider in Africa and the Middle East, where for 11 years she was International Human Resources and Reward Manager, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her experience includes working with due diligence teams researching both greenfield licenses, and acquisitions and mergers. She also has broad experience setting up operations in countries with extreme legislation or hardship factors, including each of the 20 countries located in Africa and Middle East. She managed over 500 Expatriate families at the time that she left MTN. Barbara holds a teaching diploma, a marketing management diploma, is a certified Global Remuneration Practitioner (GRP) through World at Work, and has participated in an Advanced Management certification programme and the Leadership Academy programme, with MTN. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Commerce degree. Barbara has served on the Executive Committee of the South African Reward Association (SARA) for 10 years, and in 2005 founded and chaired the Expatriate Management Association to provide a professional platform from which to develop expatriate managers in South Africa.

Kelli Johnson
Kelli Johnson, SPHR, is currently manager of Eli Lilly and Company’s Global Relocation Department.  In this role she is responsible for the strategic direction of the department and is global process owner for Lilly’s expatriate programme, as well as the US domestic relocation and immigration programs.  In her last role she led the company’s career development department and had global process ownership for career planning, performance management, 'multi-rater' feedback, and educational assistance processes.  She is certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and has a Masters of Business Administration from Butler University.  During her 23 years with Lilly she has held multiple positions in Information Technology, Financial, and Human Resources.

Noeleen Doherty
Noeleen Doherty’s research interest is in the area of career management, both organisational and individual aspects, with a particular focus on global careers. She holds an Honours degree in Psychology (University of Ulster) a Master’s degree in applied psychology (Cranfield University) and gained her PhD by publication at Cranfield. This work spanned nearly 10 years of research in the careers field focusing on the personal and career transitions of redundant executives and survivors of redundancy. Noeleen is a Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society and was previously an Occupational Psychologist with a number of organisations, including the Employment Services and the Royal Mail Group. She is the author of numerous publications in the field of careers and human resource management.

Stefan Mol
Stefan Mol is assistant professor at the Amsterdam Business School at the University of Amsterdam. He was previously affiliated with the same university as a student and received his Master's degree in psychology upon the completion of a thesis validating the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) among both expatriate and international student populations while living in Taiwan. Upon returning to the Netherlands he worked as a research consultant with GITP International BV, but returned to academia in 2002 when he started his PhD in psychology at the Institute of Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Stefan obtained his PhD in December 2007. His dissertation consists of four studies investigating expatriate selection practices and one study aimed at assessing the performance of police trainees in South-Africa. His research has appeared in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, The International Journal of Intercultural Relations, and Asian Journal of Social Psychology.
 
Yvonne McNulty
Yvonne McNulty is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University, Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Business degree in Human Resource Management and a Bachelor of Business with Honours degree in International Human Resource Management from Southern Cross University, Australia. Yvonne’s PhD research focuses on the management and measurement of international assignees and their impact on firm performance for global organisations. She lectures in International Human Resource Management and International Management and has published over 20 articles in the academic and practitioner literature, including a book chapter in "New Directions in Expatriate Research" (Palgrave-MacMillan) published in October 2006; she has also featured in The Financial Times, The Australian Financial Review, and HR Monthly.  In 2004 she was awarded “Best Paper” by the IM division of the US Academy of Management meeting, and has twice been awarded “Best Reviewer”, in 2005 and 2007.

Natasha Gunn
Writer and online journalist Natasha Gunn is the editor of Expatica HR, a website giving news and information (with no subscription charge) to HR professionals and mobility managers on international and expatriate management issues. She is also the editor of Expatica Netherlands, an online resource for expatriates living in the Netherlands. In 2008, she was the editor of the European Professional Women’s Network’s latest publication Women on Boards: Moving Mountains, a book which discusses the key issues concerning board diversity and how it adds value to corporations. Before joining Expatica, Natasha worked for seven years teaching intercultural communication skills at two of the top business schools in Paris, France. She then moved to Amsterdam to run the Internal Communications Department for global science journal publishers Elsevier, and six years later joined Expatica. Natasha has built up the Expatica HR website over the past four years to help international HR and mobility managers keep up with the latest trends and best practices in expatriate and mobility management. Reflecting the needs of its professional readership, Expatica HR features include articles on cost management, family and spouse support, cross-cultural training, HR strategy, pensions, international tax issues and career management.