The Assignment The Palmeris Company has recently transferred 50 employees to the companys plant in Brazil.

On June 6, 2005 the Human Resources team of Palmeris Company, Jennifer Hendrickson, Drew Roberts, Erin Williams, and Marcos Zacariasr, held a relocation-training seminar to make the transition for the transferring employees a success. The following are the steps and research that were conducted for the training seminar. The Pre-Assessment The team initially met on May 5th to discuss the type of training that would take place and assign topics of research. In the beginning of the teams research stage, a survey among eight of the employees being transferred was given to test their knowledge of Brazil. Survey questions were comprised of a long list of things that people might need to know if they were relocated overseas that was given to the group on April 11, 2005. The group then took this list and discussed who was interested in which part. They then split up the information that was to be researched, and decided to come up with 7-10 questions for each group members topics. The group felt that 25-35 questions would be sufficient to test the training groups knowledge on Brazil. The questions were then sent to

Hendrickson who compiled them into one test. The test was very professional and included instructions and thanked the group for their participation. After the tests were completed, they were collected and analyzed by Roberts. The surveys showed that the knowledge of the subject was not very high and that the group would need to do more of a broad overview of Brazil,

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rather than focusing on just a few of the categories listed in the April 11 document. The average score or mean for the Brazilian pre-assessment was 45%. The median score for the group was 12.5/30 and the mode was 11. The group felt that by compiling this information they would be able to better analyze the training seminar. The questions were broken down and deciphered how many of the eight group members missed each question. After getting deeper into the project and realizing what kind of time frame the training team had, they had to choose certain questions to spend more time on, and add more pertinent information to the training that had been originally left off of the pre-assessment. The addition of new material, as well as the low number of surveyed employees, may cause the post-assessment results to reflect adversely on the human resources training team. The trainers decided to focus less on percentage answers, like the inflation rate and population below the poverty line, and rather to focus on information that the class would find more interesting and beneficial in their impending relocation. There were nine questions that were answered correctly at a rate below twenty percent. The group chose six of them, hoping that the information would have a stronger impact. The trainers wanted everyone to know the type of currency, the most popular form of transportation, type of language, main economic partners, favorite sport, dominant ethnic group and age demographics in Brazil. These topics were assigned to team members for research.

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After the topics were decided on and assigned, the group needed to make a lesson plan for the training session. Hendrickson was able to complete this task. She included all of the topics that were going to be covered in the training, as well as the methods and materials that the group was going to use during the training session.

Team Research Highlights Jennifer Hendrickson Assigned Areas: Environment, Services, & Travel I began my research by contacting the Global Mobility Services (GMS) Team at my company who assists with the coordination of the global assignments, as well as providing on-going support to the assignee and his/her family throughout the duration of the assignment. They were able to provide me with a Global Assignment Policy that they give to all employees leaving for an overseas assignment. The information in this guide was extremely specific to the company and very vague on specific country information. Although I felt that the guide was very informative, our group had decided that we wanted to focus on information that was very specific to assimilating employees into the Brazil culture. I interviewed a contact at one of our third party vendors, Cendant Mobility who provides an infrastructure of support for covering many of the logistical needs when moving employees across the globe. The services that this group provides includes: an orientation trip, language instruction, cross-cultural preparation, destination services/settling-in services, household goods

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transportation/storage, temporary living, and travel expenses.

They were not

able to provide me with the exact training material that they use when assimilating an employee into the Brazil culture but they were able to provide me with an entire list of selected Brazil resources including books, articles and web sites. In addition, I contacted an HR employee in my company who lives and works in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She was able to provide me with a wealth of

information on what a person should know when coming to Brazil. She also provided me with resources of where I could find additional information. After taking the advice of all my contacts and researching the resources they recommended I was able to utilize a lot of relevant information to use in the training aides I put together. One of the most influential sites that I visited and pulled the majority of my information from was the Brazilian Embassy at the following web site http://www.brasilemb.org/. While on the Embassys website I downloaded the, Brazil in Brief, guidebook. In that guidebook I was able to find the structure we needed for our training session and useful information that I used to create a condensed Brazil Training Guide. Drew Roberts Assigned Areas: Food, Sports, Culture In beginning with my research for Brazilian Cuisine to serve during the training seminar, I started by researching the types of food that are served in Brazil and where their influences came from. I was hoping to prepare the dishes after I located their national dish and other main dishes on the internet at globalgourmet.com. These dishes were very extensive and took preparation that

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I thought might have been above and beyond my culinary skills.

After this

realization, I searched digitalcity.com in St. Louis to locate any and all, authentic Brazilian restaurants in the St. Louis area. Luckily, the search ended with the most authentic restaurant being the one located near my house in Rock Hill. Then, I decided to go to the restaurant in between the lunch and dinner rush to try and sit down with the chef. In the review, the executive chef/owner was described as a culinary master who wants each customer to experience the feeling of his home country, Brazil, in every bite. The restaurants name is Caf Brasil and the owner is Jorge Carvahlo. I met with Chef Carvahlo for around 30 minutes and he explained the proper way to prepare the Brazilian national dish. We discussed its influences and its history. He explained to me the ways it was served in restaurants in his home country and then showed me the way it is prepared at his restaurant. By the time he was finished, I felt completely

comfortable serving the dish to the training class and describing it while doing so. I then told him that I wanted to make the presentation more enjoyable for the seminar by serving a drink that I had researched online as well, the caprihinia. The caprihinia is served at his restaurant and he offered me a sample taste. I think he would have shared a drink with me during this meeting but he seemed very busy and must have had a lot of preparation to think about for dinner. After he explained the proper technique to concoct the cocktail, he asked if I knew where to get the special Brazilian liquor. He told me where to get the cachaca and what to mix it with to make it more appropriate for class. He then recommended the amount of feejoida to purchase for eight people and gave me

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his business cards. I left the experience feeling that this was a major step in doing the proper research and also found it by far the most enjoyable part of the project.

Erin Williams Assigned Areas: Economic Factors of Brazil I began my research through internet searches; however, each site had major differences from the one before it. I was then invited to attend the World Trade Day Summit on Thursday, May 12th at the Chase Park Plaza in St. Louis. The event was geared towards businesses looking to relocate. At the Summit country representatives held break out sessions to explain their countrys status in more detail than was given in the event program. During the Brazil session, representatives discussed the changing political atmosphere and the effect that that is playing on the economy. The representatives were not shy about mentioning the corruption that is still taking place, but assured the session attendees that change is a process and that the US Embassy would be more than happy to provide guidance. Although the Summit was interesting, I didnt think that the information given would be pertinent to Palmerias employees. After more useless internet searches, I called the Brazilian Embassy in Washington D.C. During the first phone call I only requested basic information for employees transferring to Brazil. On the second phone call I requested more detailed information and was transferred to a nice embassy worker named Claudia. Claudia assured me that the economic information I was researching would be sent in the packet that I had originally requested in a book entitled,

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Brazil in Brief. It was in this book that I was able to find reliable information about the economy. Not only did it include statistical information, but also a history of Brazils pitfalls and successes.

Marcos Zacarias Assigned Areas: History, Politics My starting point was Internet; I used different search engines looking for general information on Brazil. Our teammate, Jennifer Hendrickson, helped a lot by sending some links with very useful information. However, one of the main problems of Internet is accuracy. Depending on the source, some data varies. For that reason, I decided to focus in just a few educational and governmental website that guarantee reliable information. Since I was assigned to the general information topic, my second task was to define the relevant information to be included in the training. Some general information was already covered in the topics assigned to other members of the team, so I had to be careful with the selection. The local university (Lindenwood) has a considerable amount of international students, including myself, and I took advantage of this situation. One thing is to have an idea of what you need to know when moving to another country, and another is to live it. First, I used my personal experience, then I asked to some international students for their point of view, and it was really helpful. Subjects such as history, political structure, geography, climate, ethnicity, language, food, communications, demographics, transportation, and sports arose during these conversations.

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Something that caught my attention was history. People from different countries feel proud of their history, and they consider it to be an important part of their culture. Although this was not a history class, it was necessary to include it. Just giving some facts would not help too much, so I decided to use a different approach. Briefly narrate the whole history of Brazil, putting emphasis on the points trainees should remember. Because the other topics were very straightforward, I decided to mention them and make a point around each one, including an explanation of their relevance. On the meanwhile, Hendrickson and Williams found what later would become our main source of information: Brazil in Brief, the guidebook. The finding was very important because it guaranteed consistency and flow in the information we were going to provide during the training session.

Presentation Creation Team member, Hendrickson, created a PowerPoint template for the presentation on Tuesday, May 24th and sent it via email to the other three group members. This was done so that all group members could create their assigned section of the presentation and then compile all of them. The team thought that this would make their time together more efficient. The team met for the final time on Sunday, June 5th to compile the presentations and go over the training session before it was presented on Monday, June 6, 2005. At the final meeting, the team members decided to change the originally planned template of the presentation, and instead use one

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that was used in literature provided by the Brazilian Embassy. The team members all agreed that this template gave their presentation a better flow, while being able to still include all of the topics they felt were important. Hendrickson was able to create a training guide for the employees using the information from the Brazil in Brief book, as well as the team members research. The group was able to utilize the training guide to develop most of their individual PowerPoint slides for the selected areas of responsibility. Hendrickson then formatted the consolidated slides into a professional presentation, and incorporated multiple relevant pictures. She also formatted, printed and made copies of all of the training aides and brought them to the training pre-assessment questionnaire, lesson plan, training guide, PowerPoint presentation, presentation questions, and postassessment questionnaire.

Training Session The training session was given to eight employees on Monday, June 6 th at 7:30 p.m. covering the information that the human resources group felt was most pertinent to acclimating them to their new country. Hendrickson opened up the training session by welcoming the employees to the training, and introducing the rest of the group. After the introduction and welcome, Roberts, Williams, and Zacariasr served Brazilian cuisine to the employees. The relocation training session resumed after the food was served. Between each area of information, the employees were quizzed on information that had been covered in that area.

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The first correct answer was rewarded with a handful of candy. The group felt that by including the regular quizzes the employees would stay interested in the information that was being covered.

Post-Assessment After the training session, the employees were given the same preassessment test. This was a chance to see how well the group presented the information that they had decided to use. After analyzing the post-assessments, the group found the mean to be 62.5%, which is a 17.5% increase from the original assessment. The median increased to 19, a 6.5-point jump, and the mode increased by 8 points. The small number of employee participants makes it difficult to draw steadfast conclusions from this information. However, it should be realized that the class was taught well enough to increase their score by nearly 1/5. The analysis of the post-assessment is very tricky to discern in order to make distinct correlations between the information covered, methods used to cover it, and how well those methods worked. Only two people missed the key areas that were focused on by the team, which was a 75% increase in the right direction. A few areas that were not known during the pre-assessment remained constant with wrong answers in the post-assessment, even though the information was included in the presentation, and the group tried to convey it to the class in an interesting way.

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In retrospect, the group feels that when making the pre-assessment, statistical questions were relied on too heavily because of time constraints needed to fully understand the Brazilian culture and choose questions that were a reflection of that understanding. Most of the questions that were not improved on were questions pertaining to statistical information. The fact that the wrong answer was numerically close to the correct answer may have played a part in the lack of improvement, as it was hard for the class to see the distinction. The post-assessment did show an increase in correct answers on 29 of the 30 questions. Evaluations The employees were also given a training evaluation after the training session, so that the trainers could have a guide for improvement. The ratings averaged out to show that all of the trainers were very knowledgeable and had a good role in the presentation. When asked, How would you rate the trainers knowledge of the subject? the participants answered Extremely Knowledgeable, Very Knowledgeable, Fairly Knowledgeable, or Not Very Knowledgeable at All. The scores for all trainers were averaged together to show that 53.25% of the participants felt they presenters were Extremely Knowledgeable; 43.5% viewed the presenters as Very Knowledgeable; and 3.25% of the participants found the trainers to be Fairly Knowledgeable. When asked, How would you rate the trainers role in this presentation? the participants had the same answers available, however only seven of the eight responded. The answers to this question averaged out to show that 46.4% of the participants felt the trainers

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were Extremely Knowledgeable; 49.9% of them responded that the trainers were Very Knowledgeable; and 3.5% of the participants felt that the trainers were Fairly Knowledgeable. None of the participants answered, Not Knowledgeable at All, to either of these questions. The evaluation also included an area for the employees to give suggestions to improve the presentation for the next time that it is given. Suggestions given included presenting more information on the area that Palmeris is located, the areas cost of living, fashion, and the family culture of Brazil.

Conclusion In conclusion, the group assigned to conduct the training on the Brazil relocation has learned a lot about another country, but more importantly about preparing this type of a training session. As the evaluations showed, the employees would have preferred more information that would be specific with their day-to-day lives. This will be taken into consideration for following training sessions, however, the group believed that general information would help in the acclimation process of the employees. The group agreed that during the next presentation they might cut down on the amount of questions given. During the session on June 6 th, many of the participants no longer were interested in the candy reward. Although this group of employees remained attentive, other groups may not be so gracious. The group also discussed devoting a section of the introduction to explaining the materials that were handed out to the participants. Each

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participant was given a Brazil at a Glance guide that included the information that was covered in the presentation as well as a listing of informational websites and Embassy contact information. They were also given tourism brochures and a conversion chart for thing s such as clothing sizes, weights, distances, and temperatures. A brief explanation of these materials would have allowed the participants to concentrate fully on the presentation and not look through the material that they had been given. Overall, the Palmeris Human Resources group was satisfied with the training session that they administered. They unanimously agree that the employees left the training more knowledgeable about Brazil than when they entered the training room, and that with each training given the group members will all become stronger trainers.

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Works Cited Brazilian Embassy. Brazil in Brief. 1997. tp://www.maria-brazil.org/fdind.htm www.globalgourmet.com/destinations/brazil www.sallys-place.com/food/ethnic_cusine/brazil.htm www.v-brazil.com/culture/cuisine

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