Whether your business remains local or is looking to expand internationally, a business owner nevertheless needs to be aware of the global market. While the global market might provide new competition, it can also be a source of new opportunities and benefits.
But before you can expect great success, you’ll have to adapt your company culture and workforce to operate effectively in a global environment. To that end, your HR department will play an integral role in leveraging cross-cultural employees and setting up your business for success on the international stage. Here are the top three ways that HR can support your strategic goals and help your company remain competitive in the global market.
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Hiring the Best Talent
Arguably the most important function of HR is talent acquisition: finding qualified and talented employees to fill vacancies in your organization, shore up skill deficiencies, and keep it running at peak performance.
Companies are increasingly turning outside of their own borders to source the best talent – the remote workplace services market was valued at $20 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to over $58 billion by 2027.
With remote work and globalization on the rise, your HR department can use virtual workplaces to source skilled workers without borders from the global talent pool, ensuring that your company is staffed only by the most competent employees in the world. This helps your business’s operations run on a higher level than they would’ve with only local talent and stay competitive against the droves of companies who do the same.
As an additional bonus, if HR sources talent from places with a lower cost of living than your home country, your company could also save money on labor costs. Having employees working from different time zones also means that your business will have longer operating hours overall, decreasing latency time and increasing efficiency.
Maintaining Legal Compliance
But as your company hires new employees from around the world, it will be liable for remaining compliant with laws from that employee’s home country – Twitter, run by Elon Musk, is experiencing this firsthand as it faces lawsuits from UK Twitter employees over mass layoffs without completing the necessary redundancy procedures.
When it comes to international employees, a company can’t take action without being sure of that employee’s home HR laws. Thus, in the course of employing the best international talent to stay competitive, your HR department will also have to do research into transnational employment, compensation, and labor policies to ensure your business remains in good legal standing abroad.
Similarly, if your company plans to set up branch offices in a new country, HR will be the ones hiring and managing your parent-company national expatriates or finding and training host-country national or third-country national employees. Regardless of which one you choose, your company will have to contend with cross-country wage, compensation, tax, and labor laws to maintain that employee.
Hiring and training employees globally can already be a struggle – international payroll laws can be even more complex! If your HR department struggles with balancing payroll at home and abroad, modern technology has graced us with third-party payroll providers who do all the heavy lifting for you and ensure that your payroll procedures comply with workers’ home countries. Head over to humanresource.com to compare payroll service providers and find the one that best suits your company.
Supporting Cultural Sensitivity
Finally, HR can help support your globally competitive workplace by implementing learning and development (L&D) programs that support cross-cultural synergy.
According to Hofstede’s dimensions of culture, working societies in different countries can be classified by traits such as power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long- and short-term orientation, and indulgence vs. restraint. In short, employees from two different working cultures are unlikely to cooperate naturally.
By implementing learning modules and training courses to make workers aware of each other’s working styles, HR can broaden employees’ mindsets and improve team synergy, diminishing cultural misunderstandings and boosting overall employee productivity.
Again, if you set up branch offices in another country or send employees on international assignments, having an employee body preemptively prepared to manage cross-cultural interactions boosts your chances of quickly integrating with the local environment and getting straight to work – without having to hire a local consultant or guide.
Likewise, foreign businesses will be more willing to invest in and cooperate with companies that display sensitivity to cultural differences and accordingly accommodate. This boosts goodwill between your companies and helps you get the most mileage out of your international partnerships.
Conclusion
Even if your business stays local, having a global mindset can only benefit your business by making you competitive with other companies also utilizing globalization. An HR department aligned with your company’s globally competitive strategies can support these goals by opening your doors to the best workers, maintaining international legal compliance, and raising the diplomatic and inclusive capabilities of your workforce. With proper implementation, these activities can reduce working costs, minimize your chances of lawsuits, and boost the success rates of your business opportunities abroad.
