We look at how the development of relationships among HR professionals in each country outside the US headquarters can improve a multinational's use of US-based HR initiatives.

The use of United States-based human resource initiatives by multinational organisations can create unnecessary intercultural problems that negatively influence efficiency in the global workplace.

Different perspectives are magnified overseas

An unknown Italian author once wrote, “History is our recording. That recording is our memory. Memory constructs our culture. Culture influences our behaviour. Not all the people on this planet have the same memories. For this reason, our main social problem is historical.”

Clearly, one’s experiences influence his or her perspective, and that perspective certainly influences his or her human interaction in and out of the workplace. However, the trouble with perspective is that it is subjective. Understanding the perspectives of others involves being open to the possibility that one’s own perspective may not be the best explanation or the only possibility—a challenging quality to apply even in domestic venues. Thus, it should not be surprising that when perspectives of people in different cultures converge in the global workplace, unpredictable issues will arise.

Cultural sensitivities influence how people interact—or fail to interact—with one another, and can translate into counterpart managers working together effectively, or ineffectively, in their attempt to achieve results across multiple international locations.

Although there is an extensive body of research examining the overall influence of globalisation and technology on human resources, the impact of global corporate reorganisation on HR practices may be affecting HR professionals across different countries in ways that have not been anticipated, for instance, a European human resource manager may perceive the same issue very differently from an HR colleague in the US.

Real life

Last fall, I participated in a small focus meeting near Brussels, Belgium, that included HR professionals from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. During the meeting, one UK HR manager had this to say about a mobility situation involving his US HR counterpart, “I dread working with corporate [headquarters] because of the way they recruit people from my organisation.”

Looking across the conference table to a German colleague, he continued, “Would you do this? By the time I found out that one of my employees was being moved to the US, the hiring manager and HR already had contacted the fellow directly to sell him on the upwardly promising career prospects associated with moving to the US. You and I would get on the phone and talk about what moving the chap might mean to the organisation, employee, and so on. Why don’t they do that? The decision already had been made; the employee was needed in the US. Period.”

The US HR manager’s perspective was probably very different, likely landing someplace between being supportive to a line manager’s request—presuming that manager recognised a growth opportunity for the employee overseas—and moving another task forward in an increasingly demanding workplace. Yet, true to the polarising power of experiential perspectives built over time, neither HR manager seemed to make an effort to develop a relationship with the other. Instead, they focused on their own fast-paced, ongoing local issues.

“Demands that are piling up every day in response to more work and fewer resources,” the UK HR manager said in a tone that invited other ideas on how to manage inter-country manager relations.

As I reflected on his sincerity, others in the room chimed in with experiences involving their differing perspectives in comparison to their US counterparts. These included frustrating situations involving trying to find ways to fit US HR practices into local processes. It left me with the sense that, to this group of European HR managers, their US counterparts neither understood, nor wanted to understand, the context of their local issues. And because email is their primary means of communication, much of the context is probably lost in translation.

A side-by-side comparison

In general, cross-country manager relationships do not develop as easily as they do domestically because employees interfacing across global locations seldom meet in-person, and virtual teams and/or counterpart positions (such as HR managers) in different countries may never meet face-to-face.

As the meeting continued, someone raised the topic: what makes a company global, versus multinational? A global company, they agreed, must prioritise overall company goals without regard to location to make things work wherever and whenever they need to work. In contrast, a multinational structure likely would retain locally developed points of view because interface activities with other locations would occur less frequently, for example, to periodically manage specific situations relevant to multiple areas and, thus, normal processes would not interweave with either workplace. Unfortunately, while technology facilitates immediate communication, diversity-influenced perspectives quickly can transform into emotional reactions, which is what I observed in the meeting.

European HR managers feel misunderstood by their US counterparts

“Many companies tend to take HR initiatives used in the US and overlay them on to other parts of their organisations abroad—essentially trying to do it abroad like it is done in the United States,” said G. Roland Ransom, vice president, human resources, World Learning/School for International Training, Brattleboro, VT, an organisation of more than 1,000 people that supports 169 world learning programs and projects in more than 100 countries.

“In fact, most companies write documents in English and they are expressed from a US perspective [for instance, using American idioms]. This is a normal US multinational company approach. Thus, we should not be shocked that HR people overseas feel ambivalent about working with US HR managers.

“My previous employment background was with a large, multinational chemical company. When we would visit facilities and introduce ourselves, ‘Hi, I’m from corporate [headquarters] and am here to help you,’ the locals would joke, ‘You don’t get us. You are trying to overlay your corporate stuff on us here and it does not fit here.’

In this post-9/11 world, I think we are learning that people around the world do not like us for a variety of reasons, and we do not understand how we are coming across. In other countries, due to natural proximity and historical needs, it is generally part of one’s culture to try to understand others’ cultures. Yet, things we say and do without any problem in the US can offend people in other, much less-open cultures [for instance, generally, employees from other countries don’t interrupt people or finish their sentences, and are much less direct in communication style].

“Personnel actions that are normal in the US also have entirely different results abroad. For example, the way performance appraisals are conducted in the US does not produce the same results in other places. HR managers regularly confront this challenge because of employee mobility.

I was at a local [Society for Human Resource Management] meeting last month and an Asian manager who was temporarily working in the US was talking about performance appraisals. When a US HR manager communicated an unsatisfactory performance appraisal to a female employee, she came to work the next day with her head shaved because she shamed her husband by receiving a poor performance review, the manager explained.

There are so many workplace issues influenced by culture [e.g., concept of time, purpose of performance review, importance of saving face, team interaction, and many others]. In the US, much depends on the industry and corporate culture. Abroad, to communicate respect and other cultural requirements, many such interactions must be mitigated in accordance with local needs. It is important to recognise the effect these types of experiences have on relationships between international and US HR managers.

“One difficulty we are encountering now is that, because of costs, companies are not training employees before they go overseas. But when the problems occur, then they will invest in the training. I think that is a mistake. What type of picture does that paint of the US? I think we are still very insensitive to intercultural differences and what that means to business value and growth. We have some work to do on this.

"One factor that is still causing problems is language: the lack of functional business proficiency of American employees continues to be a setback. This also translates into inter-HR employee relations. A non-US HR person is most comfortable in their native language, but the American HR manager generally does not understand any other language—making International English (which contains no American idioms) an essential communication tool for both parties.

To communicate effectively, US HR managers need to acquire the ability to speak English without using American idioms because those cultural shortcuts are meaningless to non-US employees—often changing the intended message and leading to miscommunication.

“Partly because of communication challenges, I believe global companies are moving away from the interchange of US expatriates in management positions abroad to a next phase of truly using the local talent and moving them up through the organisation. Actually, employees may be from the applicable country, another country, or the US.

"The difference has to do with global companies choosing employees based on their skills and know-how, international experience, intercultural knowledge, and communication capabilities, rather than just placing someone who does well in the US into a position abroad. This trend also should encourage HR managers to learn to work together more effectively by developing functional relationships with their HR counterparts outside their home countries. One policy for all locations, which happens to work fine in the US, may be unrealistic in a world of multiple histories, cultural values, and perspectives—sometimes on the same issues.

“Ultimately, we have to be able to show the value of whatever we bring to our organisations. Of course, we cannot always expect to make big changes—working with an HR counterpart located in another country can be an opportunity to start out small, run a pilot, and try it out. Then, after some success, it can be publicised in the organisation and possibly rolled out to another part of the company.

"Together, HR managers working across different countries could evaluate what it would mean to the organisation to do it or not to do it. Naturally, one would have to be able to articulate the effort in terms of ROI-projected results. If one cannot do that, management will not buy into it. This brings me back to the importance of HR. If we are not looking around and scoping for potentially negative situations that are being caused by cultural and communication issues we can be our own worst enemy. What could be a better way to achieve that than building cross-cultural relationships with our overseas counterparts?

" And, if one cannot succeed in building relationships with one’s own colleagues in HR positions abroad, then shame on that HR person for not doing so. Unfortunately, although the challenges for building relationships can be similar domestically, because of the influences that different perspectives and intercultural communication have on moving things forward effectively, they are magnified overseas.”

This is part I of a two part series on the role of perspective in global HR.

Lorelei Carobolante, SCRP, GMS, is a global management consultant, and a member of the Mobility Global Editorial Advisory Committee. She can be reached by email  at lorelei@carobolante.com.

Reprinted with permission of Worldwide ERC® from the April 2005 issue of MOBILITY

Subject: Global HR management