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Expert advice for leading across cultures Demographics, cultures, and local laws and regulations are among the challenges that firms can expect to face when navigating an expansion abroad.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
values and policies across the different regions. HR staff members must educate employees from a mana- gerial level to leverage those cultural differences while solving disagreements. They also have to be able to identify desired skills on a local level from within a pool of candidates. 4)Maintain local laws and regulations. Last but not least, it’s important to keep up-to-date with various la- bor laws in the different regions and ensure that, while doing all of the above, employees are treated legally. “If you wish to engage and integrate a global workforce in your company, be sure to blend corporate and local cultures and enhance your diversity and risk-management practices.” TAKE THE GLOBAL MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE. Heather Zynczak, chief marketing officer at Domo Inc., a company that provides a business intelligence platform to compa- nies, says that she has been faced with major chal- lenges when managing global or virtual teams. Here, she provides some challenges and solutions. Challenge #1: Lack of clarity. When working with team members who have different native tongues, it’s common for key messages to get lost in translation. Add poor phone connections and multitasking team members (i.e. checking email) while on conference calls, and you start to realize why communication doesn’t always sink in the first time around. Solution: Put action items and key decisions in writ- ing. Follow up conference calls with clear, written communication of the outcomes of the meeting. This ensures everyone walks away from the meeting with the same key takeaways. Challenge #2: Slow decision making. When there are only a few hours a day of common “awake” time, it can take weeks to get a meeting scheduled that works for everyone’s calendar. Add the lack of clarity mentioned above, and decision-making can happen at a snail’s pace. Solution: Communicate strategy and direction face-to- face whenever possible. Video conferencing is a great tool for helping teams feel more “present” in meetings, giving participants the ability to sense each other’s
A s the AEC industry becomes more global, firms are expanding their presence domestically and internationally. Sizable building projects now require collaboration among experts located around the globe working in offices, from home, or on the road. So, how do you keep it all together? REPORT SAYS ‘BLEND AND DIVERSIFY.’ If you wish to engage and integrate a global workforce in your company, be sure to blend corporate and local cultures and en- hance your diversity and risk-management practices. That was a key takeaway from new research released in “Engaging and Integrating a Global Workforce,” by The Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management Founda- tion on how to successfully manage global employees. Here are a few other takeaways: 1)Deal with changing demographics. HR leaders need to look at overcoming the skill shortages presented by a decreasing youth population in developed countries and identify the right roles, incentives, and retraining opportunities for older workers. In order to do that, it is crucial that HR professionals make full use of HR analytics, further expanding them to incorporate gen- der and other diversity metrics to better understand their candidate pool and provide relevant incentives. In addition, the HR department also must incorporate the use of social media into its recruitment strategies and be able to accurately assess employees’ skills and create programs to fill skill gaps. 2)Understand local cultures. HR leaders must be able to guide corporate strategic decisions by understanding the local environment and business practices in each region in which the firm operates. With that, the HR department must customize the various company pro- tocols in each region and communicate it effectively to those employees. While doing so, leaders should keep in mind that, while there are policies that can be modi- fied to fit local cultures, there are also those that cannot be compromised, such as human rights policies. Ad- ditionally, the HR department has to develop programs to assist employees to adapt to the cultural norms when moving between different regions. 3)Build global leaders. The HR department should prepare for the future by building a pipeline of globally prepared leaders. In order to do so, it is essential that HR leaders develop workplace practices that promote collaboration among diverse workers and communicate
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