By Nancy Painter

Paradoxically, as our world becomes more complex, it also becomes, in practical terms, smaller.

Advances in communication and travel technology have enabled businesses to expand markets and operate across the globe, and Human Resources has helped to lead the way.

From dealing with different time zones to identifying potential leaders in sites around the world, the global economy has forced HR to re-examine and expand its role.

Dealing with Long-Distance Details
Because globalization is no longer new, says Christine Deputy, executive vice-president and chief HR officer at Nordstrom, Inc., HR has already learned how to handle the logistics of serving an international workforce, “understanding local labour laws and employee environment, the payroll and benefits laws.”

Jeff Ryan, chief human resources officer for GoPro, adds that, “You have to be very conscious that you are thinking of the employees in that area—what is motivational for them. For example, retirement benefits are an expectation in the Netherlands.”

Based in San Mateo, California, GoPro has 1,600 employees in 10 countries in Asia, Europe and North America, covering widely disparate time zones. “We have to ensure that the teams on the ground have a certain degree of autonomy,” Ryan adds. “It can be debilitating if all the decisions have to be run through the U.S.”

Developing a talent site strategy requires analyzing whether certain locations are better to leverage than others vis-a-vis the business needs, he says. “Talent really is global these days. We look at the availability of talent in certain areas. For example, over the past year, we acquired three companies in France. There are rich, deep engineering capabilities in France. There are good customer support and service capabilities in the Philippines—there are lots of call centres there, and a capable English-speaking workforce.”

Bridging the Gap with Technology
On the flip-side, global opportunities bring local challenges. Distance and different time zones can make it difficult for team members to get to know colleagues in other regions. Something as simple as including each person’s photo in every email can help bridge the distance gap, Ryan says.

Technology enables quarterly company-wide audio and video meetings, as well as monthly audio-only townhall meetings, he adds. Meetings are cached so they’re available to those unable to participate because of time differences.

Deputy, who worked at several international organizations before joining Nordstrom, recalls Barclays of London holding video conferences with four or five teams from around the world. At another employer, her colleague tested an “open window” concept, where a live video feed from a common area such as a cafeteria allowed employees to connect as needed with colleagues in other countries.

Connecting with Local Culture…
Understanding local culture is key to building a successful global business. “There are certainly differences in how groups of people work,” Ryan says. “Compare the engineering teams in India to those in Bucharest, Romania—how they work with their local leader is often different according to cultural norms.”

Culture can dictate the hours people work, when they break for meals, and many less visible characteristics. Canada’s norm is seen as collective while the U.S. is more individualistic, Deputy says. People in the United Kingdom can be less direct in their communications, while in Hong Kong it is the norm to have dinner or lunch with someone multiple times to build a relationship before doing business with them.

“But we have to be careful not to regard those cultural norms as stereotypes,” Deputy adds.

. . . While Maintaining Your Corporate Culture
Regardless of location, it can be a tricky balancing act to respect local culture while maintaining corporate culture and using it to build teamwork and consistency,

“You have to clearly define your corporate culture and how it supports the strategy of the business,” Deputy says. Only then can you decide what you’re willing to modify, and what your consistent core culture will be.

She cites the UK global financial services company Aviva, which rolled out the same leadership program globally to ensure all leaders understood the core values and culture that drove its business.

Sometimes company culture is stronger than the most established local norms. In Japan, a number of years ago, smoking was acceptable in most shops and restaurants, Deputy says. But when entering the market, Starbucks decided to buck local expectations by banning smoking in their locations. The Starbucks experience, complete with the distinctive coffee aroma, was judged too important to sacrifice.

Maintaining corporate culture across GoPro begins with hiring, Ryan says, ensuring that they’re bringing in people with the right fit to maintain the company culture while celebrating local practices.

Because GoPro often has business processes and teams that work across boundaries, they enforce the corporate culture with standard onboarding and orientation. They also use the same office designs around the globe for consistency.

Creating a Centralized Culture
The degree to which an organization creates a pervasive corporate culture is based on different factors such as the country’s labour law, market entry approach etc. Oil and gas exploration giant PETRONAS, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, operates in more than 30 countries with 50,000 employees.

Until moving back to Malaysia this summer, Munir Faiz was the advisor to the HR director for the Pacific Northwest LNG Project in B.C. A 17-year PETRONAS employee, he moved into HR five years ago after working in other areas of the business.

“We recognize there is no one size fits all – we must be able to translate and communicate corporate policies and philosophies, and allow them to be localized. We recognize that there are nuances to practice in Sudan or the UK or other countries.”

That said, employees being considered for leadership opportunities must be able to share PETRONAS’ corporate policies and principles. “We are very selective of those we bring to the head office for development before they go back to their (or other) countries,” Faiz says. “They must assimilate the PETRONAS culture and values.” Head office employees are 95 per cent Malaysian.

PETRONAS promotes its corporate culture through its own leadership center, PETRONAS Leadership Center, as well as through its strong talent development program that begets strong loyalty. Many of the company executives have been with PETRONAS for 30 years or more. “We have always believed in building our own timber,” Faiz explains.

Equal Opportunities for Growth Are Imperative
GoPro has 15 different assignments that allow employees to work for the company in another part of the world for periods of three months to a full year. “That flow of talent around the globe really helps us transfer our culture, and gives employees development opportunities,” Ryan explains.

They use local talent for most leadership roles, he adds. “We talk a lot about the people function—having the most passionate, capable people working together to fuel the company’s growth, while ensuring a good understanding of local markets, business practices and capabilities. Their knowledge around recruitment helps us retain the best people in different areas.”

Conversely, PETRONAS tends to send its leaders out from head office to new sites or acquisitions, but hires local talent for specific functions and skill-sets, including HR. The composition of front-line management depends on the availability of local talents, Faiz says.

Matching Methods to Situations
There are two ways for a company to grow and expand, Faiz says – organically, or through mergers and acquisitions.
When expansion is organic, the mothership needs to find local HR talent to help establish its footing. With strong foundational policies from the head office, the local HR talent can articulate them and adapt as required.

Mergers and acquisitions present a more challenging situation, since the existing company already has its own policies and procedures in place.

It is HR’s role to resolve any challenges and align existing culture with the corporate culture, Faiz says, and it can be pretty overwhelming managing it.

“Where do you draw the line and say ‘No, you must align with our corporate policies and key principles’? For the first couple of years, you give them some autonomy. Gradually, you integrate them with the parent company.”

It can take up to five years for companies to become completely aligned, although it can happen more quickly, he adds.

Share the Passion
At GoPro, there is a deliberate effort to build unified culture among employees by encouraging shared passion for their products. New employees, regardless of their role, get half a day to play with the products to become familiar with them. Moreover, all employees get a two-hour break every week when they can go surfing, go to their child’s school, do whatever they want—so long as they capture it on GoPro equipment and share the experience, providing feedback to the company.

Regardless of location, Ryan says, “The closer you get employees to your products and services, the happier you’re going to be as a company. We’re really proud of that.”

Bringing Customized Learning to Employees Everywhere
Another way to share passion is through easily available, localized and personalized training. LearnKit employs 80 people in Canada, Scotland and Albania to develop e-learning that recognizes local nuances while instilling corporate values in employees.

For example, LearnKit developed online training for lululemon so that store staff everywhere received consistent training.

All programs are asynchronous—self-led, without an instructor. LearnKit’s director of education partnerships, Kristian Gaetano, explains that their programs are also adaptive. If a learner has trouble with one section, the program will re-introduce the content in a different way, solidifying the learning before moving on.

When developing programs, they consider localization before they get the content translated, he adds. For example, North American HR emphasizes employee recognition, but in Asian cultures, leaders are seen as weak if they go out of their way to recognize someone who works directly under them.

“We have to understand what’s going to resonate in a particular region, what’s going to be important to these people,” says Gaetano.” It’s important for the training to be globally aligned, but there has to be room for it to be locally relevant, too.”

Learning Ahead of the Curve
Another arm of LearnKit develops certificate programs to address emerging industry skill gaps that aren’t yet addressed in traditional centres of learning. For example, LearnKit partnered with Hootsuite and Newhouse College, the top communications university in the U.S., to offer an advanced social media strategy program.

With St. Elizabeth Health Care, they developed education for personal support workers in the health care field. They’re also exploring a program with Lift to educate cannabis dispensary owners and staff, and with Pride at Work Canada, they’re developing diversity and inclusiveness training.

All programs are developed based on feedback from industry contacts, backed by extensive research. Advisory boards, traditionally a combination of high-level academics and business leaders with a passion for education, are “shaping the future of what non-degree education looks like,” Gaetano says.

Workers around the world are looking for ways to learn marketable skills, whether it’s for their next job, a promotion or a change in their roles, he adds.

Finding Tomorrow’s Leaders, Wherever They Are
As businesses become more widespread, the challenge of identifying potential leaders among employees becomes more complicated. PETRONAS’s  Faiz points out that employee performance management must be consistent across all locations so that the company is able to identify ready talents that can be mobilized anywhere when the need arises. Similarly, the recruitment criteria must be clearly understood and applied to ensure we attain the right talent with the right skill-sets and attributes to be located anywhere where PETRONAS has business operations.

Moving people from centre-to-centre helps prepare them for leadership, Nordstrom’s Deputy adds. “You have to keep some parts of the experience consistent so no matter where they go, it still feels like the same company. But by moving, leaders can acquire critical experiences and learn how to lead the company.”

Before they get moved around, however, employees need to feel that they have opportunities for growth in their local centres. Incorporating local leadership accomplishes that, Deputy explains.

Committing to Global Development
“When we bring PETRONAS’ non-Malaysian talent to head office, it will always be costlier compared to capitalizing on our local talent,” Faiz says. “But we have to look beyond the dollars and cents and see it as a longer term investment. In other words, if we truly believe in developing our non-Malaysian talent, we must not be duly concerned about the short-term manpower cost spike. This is our commitment to global talent development and we have to do it.”

A robust talent-selection and development process must be consistent everywhere in the world, he adds.

What It Means for HR Professionals
Global HR requires many of the same skills HR has always needed: knowledge of how the business works, the ability to analyze increasingly complex data and identify trends, how to communicate both to and with employees.

However, globalization also requires more.

Ambrosia Vertesi, formerly with Hootsuite, now the VP of people at Duo Security, brings a unique perspective to the equation.

“When I was at Hootsuite, we grew from 20 to 1,000 employees in four years across nine countries. That is hyper-growth on a global scale; there was a huge need for support from our function,” says Vertesi. “And while some of the same needs remain, there is absolutely both a mind shift and operating practice adjustment needed from the HR function.”

“Leadership development, internal mobility, workforce planning, employee engagement, and culture connectedness all take a different shape. Managing teams across 16-hour time zones is a completely different competency at scale, and one that many HR functions don’t prepare for in their leader training as the company grows,” she explains. “One of the things we invested in for leaders to address this was around growth mindset and change management training, and providing them early.”

An Expanded Point of View
Minding the mindsets is integral, and that begins with HR professionals examining their own.

“You need to be a flexible thinker, open to different ways to achieve outcomes,” Deputy says. “You need to be educated, open, and curious around cultural norms, and able to build relationships with people in any culture.”

“I would say it requires evolving your leadership skills and your mindset,” Vertesi adds. “Skills that might not show up on competency lists anywhere, but that I have seen modeled by exceptional HR leaders, include a keen eye for designing an employee experience, and strong empathetic leadership.”

“I’ve been lucky to have lived in various countries as both a headquarters and remote employee. Not every leader is going to have that shared experience to draw from to relate to their employees in the countries they support, but the HR leaders with these qualities, in my experience, have drawn a more collaborative and intuitive relationship with their people and business,” says Vertesi.

HR leaders must demonstrate humility and it must be part of their DNA, adds  Faiz. “Coming from the head office, we must be open enough to understand why things can’t be done the same everywhere. The head office must be open to hearing concerns and having conversations with other international operations, rather than merely pushing through the corporate agenda.”

Moving Forward from Here
A common theme from HR leaders is the sharing of knowledge among peers. Vertesi co-founded HR Open Source, a volunteer initiative driven by more than 1,000 practitioners from around the world who share their best practices openly with others and support their development.

“Our goal is to help expedite our learnings as a community, so we can start to tackle together some of what we face and what is headed our way,” Vertesi explains.

LearnKit’s Gaetano has taken another approach to the same end, establishing the Vancouver and San Francisco chapters of DisruptHR. The quarterly meetings offer a unique information exchange in the form of several presentations, each 20 slides long with only 15 seconds per slide. “It’s very succinct, well-rehearsed, and gets right to the point,” he says. “Speakers and audiences really like it, because they get lots of information in a short time.”

It’s an information exchange that encourages participants to go and learn more on their own about the issues that concern them. Topics cover “anything that’s disruptive to how people usually think of people issues, or how to approach a people problem,” Gaetano says.

Presenters have included lawyers, doctors, even a futurist, as well as HR professionals.

Learning to Adapt
In short, the future will require HR to listen and to adapt. At PETRONAS, 65 per cent of employees are younger than 35 years of age. Twenty per cent of them are women, with a growing number of women in the engineering fields.

The headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, built in the late 1990s, had a smoking room on each floor. Now they’re being converted to mothers’ rooms, where young mothers can express breast milk during the work day for their babies at home.

It’s an example of what Ryan describes as a “necessary, deep sensitivity for employee experience, ensuring that what we’re doing at all levels of the organization has as positive an effect on them as it can.”

The world over, such HR touches are changing the big picture and bottom line for employers and employees alike.

Nancy Painter is a freelance business writer and a member of the International Association of Business Communicators.

(PeopleTalk Summer 2016)

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