Friday, November 13, 2015

Going global or not?

What does it takes for company from non English speaking area to go global? Open minded employees, simply as that. The biggest thing that can push one company not to go global are actually it's employees in headquarters.

The management has open its mind towards new markets, they open mind towards new employees in new markets, they are doing everything right but it still doesn't feel right. Why is that? 

The most important thing for an employee in new company is to feel welcome and to feel part of the team. On first day of work everyone should feel welcome and that they have their place in the office or in the team. If company doesn't provide that on first day or during the first week it is quite hard to feel accepted later. 

As part of management team you need to lead your team in accepting different people from different culture, you need to engage more into team building, to talk more to ask more. The issue with most companies in Asia is that they go boom, they go global and they end up staying exactly where they are when it comes to their employees. They believe that practice they are doing at home base  is applicable in other offices too and that employees should follow blindly. Most of local employees in countries don't understand that concept. They don't understand the ways of the country that company is coming from. They don't understand customs, religious believes, language and many other things. If company is going global, employees in base office should see that too. 

Companies are usually sending experienced employees from base office to other offices to handle work. Those employees can outnumber locals and they end up grouping and not having any interaction with local employees. Even once in a while when they decide to socialize, the spirit is gone and those socializing events turn out to be dull and boring for locals. Of course, base employees are having heaps of fun since they are still speaking in their own local language and the food on the table is usually from their country since they are not willing to try any other food. 

The older employees are different. They are willing to socialize, to try new things and to help with work, but younger generations are quite closed and not willing to team up. It is quite lethal for the company because old one's will be gone and young ones will stay. 
Until now I believe you guessed I'm talking from personal experience. It has been a while since we had lunch all together in a meeting room. When we're going to meeting room, base employees go to another room to have lunch. They share their food, chit chat, laugh, ... the worst thing is that they make older employees feel ashamed. We already got used to it and we're living with it. 
Still it's quite down feeling when group of them (when I say group it's usually 10+) goes out to lunch together and they don't even bother to invite us. Not even for a sake of good manners. 

In their minds they are going global with the projects and new markets. In our minds they didn't move from the place they came from.