According to an ADP survey of more than 32,000 workers in 17 countries, 43 percent of workers have considered relocating overseas, with 16 percent having made the move. Additionally, seven in 10 remote workers say they are paid fairly for their skills and role, compared to less than half of those in the office.
While many large organizations may already have experience with culturally diverse global teams, the increasing frequency of remote work for all types of organizations allows for more global talent on each team. The pool of available talent is broader and more global than ever, and this change will require more agile leaders to reap the benefits of a global workforce.
Breaking the norms
Sivaram Jambunathan, director of learning and development at General Mills, has led teams from around the world. As a former global head of executive and leadership development and global manager for Cargill, Jambunathan experienced working on teams from Singapore to Minneapolis and back. After focusing on regional leadership development of managers across Asia, Jambunathan led a global team delivering executive leadership programs. In that role, he worked with team members from Germany, Iran, Singapore and Latin America.
Originally studying to be an engineer, Jumbunathan made the leap into HR and eventually L&D because of his passion for improving others. “This is the only job where you get up every day wanting to make life better for others,” says Jambunathan. More than quantitative data, he likes it because the people around him will know if he’s impacted their performance gap and the team’s growth: “It’s like an intellectual puzzle.”
After first moving from India to Singapore nearly 20 years ago, Jambunathan had an employee from the US moving to Singapore whom he was trying to support by asking questions like, “What time are you leaving? Do you have your passport? Do you have this?” Eventually, the new employee stopped Jambunathan and asked him if he could stop micromanaging them like he was their father. It was one of his first culture shocks working on a global team. “What I thought it was helpful was actually being an interventionist,” he says.
In Singapore, if he ignored how his team members were doing their jobs, the assumption would be that he didn’t care. For a German colleague, it was a brutal direct reaction; in Minnesota, he had to learn how to read signals. In Vietnam, if you wanted to give a presentation on faith, it would help immensely to have an authority figure give the talk, but in the Netherlands, the social concept of hierarchy has been flattened.
“I’ve grown up a lot with such different teams,” he says. “You bring programs to the audience based on social culture, social norms and what exists in that group.”
One trick Jambunathan picked up along the way is finding culture translators within new companies to translate the context of their culture, global or otherwise. “Your interpreter helps you understand what happened before, why it’s a big deal or not,” says Jambunathan. “Think of them as a guide to a new country you’re visiting.” He says that meeting every few months for candid conversations with two or three interpreters and building relationships of trust is crucial to his success.
Beyond international cultures, there are all kinds of cultures and communities within organizations that influence how employees work and what they value. Employees who come from aggressively competitive company cultures will add a different perspective than those who come from a non-profit organization. But at the end of the day, we are all looking to make our world a better place, says Jambunathan. “It is a diversity in life experiences that creates great value.”
Going global
For HR in general, core rules still exist, especially globally. “People are different, they need different things,” says Heather Beckstead, head of people at Axle. “You can’t just say, ‘Okay, this is how we’re going to do it and this is how it’s going to work here.’ It’s about how you bend into that?”
A lot of HR is about embracing people and making sure everyone is getting what they need to do their best work, “It’s not very black and white. A lot of it is in gray,” says Beckstead. She says talent leaders need to “think with a very humanistic perspective about what’s best in this situation, as opposed to covering things up.”
Beckstead previously worked with a US-based organization with the majority of employees in Spain and has experience working with groups from Taiwan, Uruguay and Australia. In those roles, she says specific approaches around diversity and inclusion required a lot of stepping back and considering strategies with different perspectives on big-picture ideas.
With many companies increasingly co-located or with a mix of head offices, remote workers and hybrid workspaces, many organizations are already struggling to balance different work cultures, adds Beckstead. She says the future of work will be about flexibility. “It’s listening to people and allowing them the flexibility to decide what’s best for them,” she says.
About 47 percent of employees consider the opportunity to choose where they work an important factor when considering a change in the work environment. In the 20 years Beckstead has spent conducting engagement surveys, she’s never seen engagement as high as her remote team, often at 94 percent. “People love being here. They love what they’re doing and that just lights me up,” says Beckstead.
Beckstead is moving himself to work globally — from San Francisco to Portugal — all thanks to the fact that Axle offers the flexibility to work remotely, an option that wouldn’t have been an option five years ago.
Ask her why she’s going to Portugal, her answer is usually, “Why not?” The opportunity to live in another country full-time and embrace the culture was just what she and her family needed. One of the first things she did was book a ticket to the Lisbon Web Summit to connect with leaders like her to see how they think.
“The United States can be very short-sighted. We don’t always consider outside perspectives,” says Beckstead. “Considering different approaches and perspectives will be a great asset.”
And because Axle is a completely remote company, there won’t be much change for Beckstead or her team. Working east coast hours will give her more time to support morning employees. And with quarterly company-wide offsites to foster culture and connection, she sees it as a perfect balance with few interruptions. For her team of people who already had one member relocated to Hawaii, it’s all part of the new workplace.
As he prepares to move overseas, Beckstead knows that for a company that’s growing so fast and so far, it’s vital to keep a strong organizational culture intact. This year, she helped launch individual development plans to prepare employees for growth and be ready for the next opportunity.
Open attitude
As the skills gap persists, expanding the talent pool globally is an obvious solution. And the further remote work pushes the workforce into the future of work, the greater the opportunity for talent leaders to think globally and connect with people from different communities and cultures. Global teams increasingly require leaders who are agile and capable enough to meet each employee as an individual with their own values and approaches.
Best advice for a talent leader stepping into a global role? Be open and admit mistakes. “I would say the most important thing is vulnerability,” says Jambunathan. “The second thing that really helped me is knowing that there’s nothing wrong with me that needs to be fixed. There’s just something not effective at this point in time.”
