Migration flows in Turkey: solving problems and making decisions

Absolutely that migration brings benefits but also carries costs. Countries of origin for most of migrants in Turkey are Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Moldova. These people are economically active, otherwise engaged in remunerative activity. The increased availability of skills provided by migrant workers helps to boost gross domestic product (GDP), stimulate business development and job creation. But surely there are problems demanded to be solved. The author faced with the problem of migrants’ low awareness of their rights and responsibilities, difficulties with adaptation in foreign country and as a result low efficiency level of business even in high tourist season. Migration often brings ethic, cultural, racial, religious and linguistic identities that differ from previously dominant. It requires adaptation and accommodation to the new identities and to diversity itself.

During one month of working at the hotel the author had been making a research on the reasons of the problem, its scope and impact, analyzing possible solutions and giving recommendations.

In order to achieve the main objective of this research the following objectives were framed:

- to gather available information about migrants’ satisfaction of work conditions, level of adaptation and employer’s attitude to the problem.

- to identify problems faced by the migrant workers in working process.

- to access the solution for the problem.

Gather and interpret information to identify possible solutions to the problem.

A lack of data collection conceals exclusion and inequalities and makes it difficult to measure progress. Often the issues relating to migrants tend to become blind spots when priorities are set, policies defined or budgets allocated with resulting gaps in monitoring and accountability.

The author was aimed to find the best strategy for following up with migrant workers to determine their level of satisfaction with their work at the hotel. In order to understand what aspects of management should be improved two kinds of research methods, qualitative research and quantitative research were used.

Quantitative research was done by offering questionnaires to hotel’s staff, and qualitative research— by personal interviews with employees, Human Resources Manager, Training Manager and supervisors.

Method 1: Staff questionnaire.

Aim: To understand the level of employees’ satisfaction and area for improvement.

Interaction with the hotel staff was very informative and gave the opportunity to store information about them and their needs. About 50 employees were asked to answer some short questions in the questionnaire about the level of their satisfaction of working abroad.

Subsequently analyzing all the answers of the employees the author got the picture about people’s expectations and the reality, how they felt during the days, what is good and what - not satisfying.

Findings: 55% of respondents were satisfied with their working conditions but had difficulties with adaptation in foreign country and in a team, 25% - not fully satisfied with working conditions due to higher expectations of the level of compensation, 10% - not satisfied at all mostly because of psychological factors, such as lack of communication with relatives and friends, need of socialization in other culture and language barrier, 10% - fully satisfied.

It was found that most of migrants were not fully satisfied with their life in foreign country and working conditions. As the time passed by and the problem was not solved the staff had become not very friendly in communicating and handling guest problems. Some guests complained on catering staff and service in restaurants. Staff was not punctual which results in delay at time of changing the shifts and the order’s get delayed. All these things lost guests dissatisfied and disappointed as well as employees and the employer.

Method 2: Interview with the hotel’s employees, Human Resources Manager, Training Manager and supervisors.

Aim: To understand their attitude to the problem and listen to their views on improvement.

Findings: There were 10 personal friendly open-ended interviews with the hotel’s employees, Human Resources Manager, Training Manager and supervisors. During the interviews it was found that international staff has in some cases lack of practical experience and wish they will be provided with coaching, mentoring or training. International employees on 90% consisted of newcomers. Some of them have never had similar experience in hotel, others used to rely on standards of previous employer.

Migrant story: Anastasia is a 20 year-old migrant from Ukraine who has been living in Turkey for a year. Anastasia lived in South-East Ukrainian town and rescued from the war. She is young and quick-learner and despite the lack of education works good. She relocated to Turkey with her mother who is retired and can’t work as hard as young people do. The money that she earns is enough for living, renting the apartment and spending on entertainment, clothes or medical treatment. But she felt some inconveniences in front of locals because of the belief that being a migrant she is taking away the jobs of nationals.

Prepare a summary of the options providing facts and evidence.

It is essential to create a satisfying, pleasurable and memorable experience for people around whoever you are: a migrant or a national. Hospitality, trust, commitment, fulfillment of promises, care, emotional bonding are the key tools that allow people and companies to be together.

The values which the hotel management associate with corporate culture and management style today - concern for all employees, hands-on management, and an unrelenting commitment to meeting migrants’ needs.

Everything the good employers do is based on uncompromising beliefs in treating people fairly, working hard, paying close attention to details, and listening to arid giving personnel what they expect.

Generally speaking there are some rules that should be obeyed by all the countries and companies such as:

- Implement measures to combat racism and xenophobia;

- Meet minimum labour standards ;

- Reinforce social safety net coverage.

According to the author’s findings the main reasons of migrants’ dissatisfaction of their job are the lack of migrant workers’ awareness of their rights and absence of preparatory training that is seen in performance.

Training could be enormously demanding and should be in-depth. Lack of training or poor training brings out high employee turnover and the delivery of substandard products and services. Training of work tasks is one of the main aspects of staff training, including principles at work, professional knowledge and skills. By offering employees these essentials, staff training helps personal abilities match with business requirements.

It was also found out that staff motivation was not enough for good performance. This is closely connected with training because for being highly motivated personnel also should be well trained.

Reasons to implement training for migrants on the issues of profession, culture and adaptation:

- to share the essential legal framework that regulates migration in Turkey;

- to show that migrant origin and destination countries are accountable to the same basic rules for citizens, nationals abroad and foreigners on their territories.

- to guarantee freedom of association and collective bargaining for all workers;

- to reduce irregular migration and trafficking in persons;

- to obtain guidance for national policy and for international cooperation.

Know how to evaluate options to make a decision

Choosing the evaluation method

There are many decision making tools and techniques for the purposes of options’ evaluation. Among them are decision trees, decision matrix, decision risk schemes, etc. Firstly, it is essential to select an option from the alternatives and then to adopt an appropriate way to evaluate them. Also academic literature or assessments and research projects conducted in the migration field can be used. In order to evaluate options I used decision matrix which prioritized a list of options. The final decision must be made on the basis of several criteria that are most important for the hotel.

Selecting criteria

Criteria used often fall under the general categories such as effectiveness, financial resources or costs, time required, management support and others. In our case such criteria as costs, resources required, management support, time required, ease of implementation, potential effect on result were used in order to evaluate options.

Making a decision

Aim: to choose the best alternative and use it in order to solve problems.

Rating scales should be summed up against every option. Options which win the highest score are considered to be the best in current case.

We used the decision matrix to choose the right option and the highest score (60) received “ Training for migrants”. It means that in current situation this option is the most preferable and favourable.

Selected option does not pretend to be perfect because complex problems rarely have ideal solutions. Other options “Developing an adaptation program for migrants” and “Developing a motivational system for migrants” also can be implemented after implementing and evaluating training option.

Know how to plan, monitor and review the implementation and communication of decisions

Plan the implementation and communication of the decision

The first step in decision-making process is communicating the decision with all responsible parties (Human Resources Manager, Training manager and employees). The rule of the company is to communicate with the subsidiaries all the implementations. No single person or department has the mandate to provide overall supervision and leadership. After defining key points and developing an action plan we can implement chosen option.

Key points to share when communicating the decision are what is really needed for improving performance. In this concrete case these key points are: oral communication, including listening, speaking, interaction with migrants, presenting information.

The way how the decision will be communicated can be different in different situations. Taking into account that during the training every employee should get knowledge that he lacks we use a special technique TNA (Training need analysis) based on personal interviewing for every staff member. That way we identified the training needs which are required for employees in the hotel. Based on this information we developed an action plan and scheduled such employees for specific training.
As a result the following trainings are required for migrants:

- Human rights and obligations when working abroad;

- Communication with local citizens;

- Grooming and Etiquettes such as talking on phone or talking in person with a guest.

Checking for understanding makes sure that people who are responsible for implementing the decision have gotten the idea and understand it. So the chosen option was discussed with Human Resources manager, Training manager and agreed by General manager.

The second stage when all planned activities should be put into action is implementation. Implementing the option should be well planned according to the SMART principles. That means that it should be:

Specific: clear about what, when and how the options will be realized;

Measurable: able to quantify the tasks and the results;

Achievable: able to attain the objectives;

Realistic: able to obtain the level of change relatively to objectives;

Time bound: stating the deadlines.

All steps in the implementation process were fixed in action plan. Action plan should meet internationally agreed priorities which can be found in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, recommendations from the Global Forum on Migration and Development, the Abu Dhabi Declaration, or the World Health Assembly Resolution on the Health of Migrants.

The main aim of implementing the decision is to provide induction training to migrants, to organize an “on-the-job” training, brush up the knowledge and skills of the existing staff, to help to increase their efficiency.

Hotel’s Human Resources Department had in its staff a Training manager who was responsible for all kinds of trainings. According to the training system in the Hotel, trainings are mostly held by trainer and supervisors from each Department whose employee is trained.

Hotel management should be encouraged to implement all relevant international instruments and eliminate all discrimination against migrants with regard to working conditions and wages and with regard to fundamental economic, social and cultural rights.

Describe which monitoring and review techniques could be used to evaluate outcomes

Monitoring

Monitoring is important to ensure that option was implemented as it was planned. It is a systematic effort to compare performance with laid-down objectives and standards in order to determine whether progress is in line with them. Performance must be measured so that the hotel management will know if the decision objective is confirmed and realized and whether the solution chosen should be maintained, altered or replaced. The function of monitoring is all-pervasive - in other words, everyone involved in the project has a duty to fulfill in the process of monitoring.

There is a range of approaches and tools that may be applied to monitoring training process. The author used observation as a main method of monitoring and regular reviews and meetings as additional methods.

Actually there are some questions that, when answered, will give hotel’s management the information about effectiveness of implemented option. For example, monitoring questions might include:

- Does it address the needs of the intended beneficiaries?

- Does it fall within company’s capacities and strategic focus?

- Is it in line with company’s priorities and funding mechanisms?

- Does it take into account the priorities, strategies and policies of key stakeholders?

- Does everything go according to the plan?

Everything went according to the settled plan. Firstly, training manger provide general training for all employees, than kept short duration of “on-the-job” special trainings. As a good practice a trainer gave specific hours of training to each employee who lacked concrete knowledge or skills.

- Will stated outcomes be achieved?

Stated outcomes should be achieved. All migrant workers receive information and use new skills on practice. So up to the end of training they will have all communicating, interpersonal and practical skills which are needed for effective work process and adaptation in destination country.

- What progress toward the outcomes has been made by that time?

Current progress toward the outcomes we have been analyzing while interviewing the employees during the training process. Employees agreed that they had already received or improved their skills.

- Do the responsible persons have enough resources for achieving settled goals?

Absolutely all possible resources needed for training were provided by Human Resources Manager and Training Manager: participation of responsible persons, financial resources (audio and video units, handouts, pencils, notebooks, case study journals, etc). General manager also needs to be aware of and receive regular reports from HR Department regarding their participation in migrant workers adaptation.

- Do the employees give feedback?

Most of employees gave a positive feedback of the training and noticed that it was a human rights-based dialogue and cooperation with the company.

When you are satisfied that the project idea meets these criteria, you can conclude that the project idea has the potential for success.

Summarizing information received during monitoring process the author came to the conclusion that chosen option was properly implemented because training increased the motivation and efficiency of the personnel as personnel competence increased. Training process was under the motto: “Enjoy and achieve – develop the capacity to enjoy learning and succeeded in it. Be able to enjoy positive challenges”.

Evaluation

An evaluation of the project has been conducted and the information gathered during the evaluation led to the identification of new or follow-up project ideas.

Evaluation is the systematic process of collecting and analyzing information in order to determine whether and to what degree settled objectives have been achieved.

Performance indicators are measures of inputs, processes, outputs, outcomes, and impacts. When supported with data collection, involving surveys, analysis and reporting, indicators enable general manager to track progress, get results and take corrective action to improve performance.

Method 1: Impact evaluation.

One of the used methods of evaluation was impact evaluation. It is the systematic identification of the effects caused by a given development activity such as action plan. This method helped us to measure outcomes and impacts of implemented option and to clarify whether costs and resources spent were justified. Impact evaluation relied on a small-scale rapid assessment where estimates of impact were obtained from comparing migrants’ interviews and survey results before and after development.

After the training had been ended, we offered to the employees the same questionnaire that was at the beginning of our experiment. During one month about 50 international employees were asked to answer some short questions about their job and the level of satisfaction while staying abroad.

90% of respondents found their job and life abroad rather satisfying and marked especially some options that were implemented during the development:

1. - All migrant workers had known what was human rights and rights of migrants.

2. - All migrant workers had showed good communication skills.

3. – All migrant workers had known how to behave with locals and quickly assimilate.

Method 2: Rapid appraisal.

Another evaluation method is rapid appraisal method which is quick and low-cost. It helps to gather the views and feedback of departmental supervisors.

Rapid appraisal method includes different a key informant interview—a series of questions posed to managers and supervisors. They were unanimous in their estimation of personnel performance and mentioned that the settled aims were achieved. Maintaining achieved results will do just as much and probably more - to advocate with respect to migrants and migration under the corporate policy.

Summarizing findings from this research the author would like to quote one famous hotelier’s words: "A business succeeds not because it is long established or because it is big, but because there are men and women in it who live it, sleep it, dream it, and build great future plans for it."