We find out how one medium-sized company has integrated its employees into an international management scheme which also helps them present a united business front to the client.

Cross-organisation helps to support customer demands.

International companies have always faced the growing pains of spanning several continents. Companies run the risk of degrading communication and inter-company relations as international managers strain to oversee across oceans without leaving someone out.

Waters Corporation, a mid-sized medical technology company that has operations in the Americas, Europe and Asia, says its matrix HR management structure is all-inclusive across both geographical and hierarchical borders.

"We have a very strong and healthy corporate culture," said Paul Warner, global vice president for HR at the company's headquarters in Milford, Mass. "It's a culture of mutual trust, of openness and communication, and ultimately it does a superb job of maintaining its people, as our turnover rates are surprisingly low," Warner said.

Waters' seemingly ideal international organisation was a long time in coming, he admits. Though the company has been in operation over two decades, Warner said they began to view themselves on a global scale just three or four years ago.
 
"We needed to think about a future in which we had cross-fertilisation and cross-organisation to support customer demands," he said. "In order to drive our company to that state, we needed to create a worldwide HR structure that would pull the company along with it."

Though Waters became a wholly-owned company in 1994, it continued the geographically-based HR organisation of its former parent company well into this decade. But as the company grew and its product portfolio became more diversified, it was no longer viable to keep their overseas operations autonomous from their headquarter-counterparts, Warner said.

This marked a large departure from the HR structures of many international companies.

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