Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Required Competencies to solve Global Challenges for Economic Growth and Sustainability

As we sailed into the Year 2012, we are sustaining new Outlooks, new opportunities through various partnerships and cooperations. We are in progress in re-assessing our efforts and revising our Plans of Action to become current, competitive and successful.

From the last quarter of 2011, we implemented a continuous global research, discussions from many of our valued clients, business colleagues and various leaders of global organizations, it brought us the opportunity to examine the challenges that we need to pay attention in 2012. At that time frame, other researches with similar focus were being conducted, thus cross-validated our findings.

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Below are some of the highlights and few insights of how to overcome these challenges. In order to be successful in this year, one must have strong global strategic techniques, analytical attention and professional competence in these areas.

1. Cross Culture as Essential Element of Globalization:
It is not merely a recognition of diverse employees and headcount, it is an integration of multi-cultural backgrounds of people, society and community. Learning the nuances and depth of cultural practices and traditions are effective techniques to achieve success in the global economy.

2. Surging Social Media across Cultures:
Globally, there are universal concerns about the role of social media towards advancement of organization. There are also inherent disadvantages towards 'privacy', 'access to technical information', 'utilization of employer's resources', 'use of personal time by the employee', 'social media's role for growth', 'utilization of social media as a tool for discrimination' and many more.

Organizations are challenged about the way they manage social media platforms and its integration in their workplace. Employees enjoy the convenience and flexibility of social media at their fingertips. However, employers see these as factors against productivity of employees. Employment laws are evolving along with the social media phenomenon and each country policy differ across cultures. HR organizations struggle in coping up with the enormity and scope of social media's impact to their workforce.

"The benefits of social media are becoming increasingly obvious to many SMEs, but the medium comes with its own array of risks - unless you develop a robust media policy and thorough staff training, experts say. “It's also critical to have an open culture in the business, so that if something does go wrong, or if a staff member makes a mistake using social media, staff feel comfortable volunteering this information so something isn't left to fester on social media that the business doesn't know about or staff are too scared to tell management about,” says Franklin Adam Franklin, Bluewire Media - Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Managing Small Business.

"HR professionals have to be [technologically] aware. They don't have to be gurus, but they can't ignore it, employees and potential hires use social media to communicate. That includes tweeting or Twitter and posting on Facebook about their jobs and employers". - Josh Bersin, Source: SHRM, Staffing Management

3. Competent Global Consultants Play a Big Role: 
Globalization brings additional tide of flexibility. There are many organizations that are expanding at new locations internationally. Oftentimes, it's their first time to do business at that particular country. For smart organizations, they tap the help or guidance of globally experienced consultants. These consultants demonstrate strong capabilities that inexperienced organizations at a given location cannot ignore.

The convenience is the ability to perform functions with quality deliverables at due time. They strategically approach every item that they contract and perform. That convenience is not available when you hire FTE employees without considering the learning curve to do the job. Although experienced hires can do the jobs, it was found that they were not experienced enough to execute the consultative techniques that professional consultants can do. However, it is not a matter of having a consultant, it is equally important to examine the responsibilities between both parties involved particularly where Employment laws and business regulations might come into play. In that way, your organization will avoid citations, penalties or big legal fees due to violations.

"Using a professional means that the results will be processed effectively and thus, the subsequent recommendations will carry more weight and be more useful. A professional will have the experience to deal with problems throughout the project and therefore, deliver the findings on time." - Source: DJS Research

4. Hiring Top Talents across Cultures:
A tendency of organization when opening at new country was to hire one of their top employees and become an expat. The assumption was that the top employee can play great impact and business opportunities in the new country because he/she was a topnotch employee at the home country. In many instances, this assumption was proven to be wrong based on experiences of many organizations and senior executives.

Today, organizations that are operating at multi-cultural locations are challenged with many facets of host country operations. Unforeseen realities prior to the expatriate assignment surfaced and issues came one after the other. As a consequence of their neglect, they end up losing their investments of time, money, and top notch employee. The inexperienced HR organizations faced tax issues, expatriate management, compliance requirements about local and international laws, host country's culturally based business practices and community traditions. It is important to approach a global expansion with a strategy that demonstrates all areas that will require attention. Working with HR professionals or Human Capital consultants that have worked in multiple countries is very important and not an option, 100 percent of the executives we have spoken agreed.

In a recent Global CEO Survey (1,201 have participated), identified the major challenges in the next three years, they are as follows;
66% - limited supply of candidates with the right skills
54% - recruiting and integrating younger employees into the workforce
52% - losing people to competitors
50% - providing attractive career paths

Identified strategies to meet these challenges are:
65% - using more non-financial rewards as motivation
59% - deploying more staff on international assignments
54% - working with government and academia to improve skills
Source: PriceWaterhouseCoopers Report

The world's borderless workforce, the migration of talent across and within national boundaries, is growing rapidly in size. Employers who take a sophisticated approach to managing their talent supply and demand challenges by including a talent mobility strategy in their overall plan to combat skills shortages will position themselves to win the escalating war for talents. - Source: StaffingIndustry.com

5. People Management across Cultures:
Many speculate that hiring and managing people regardless of location is universal. Our experienced global leaders disagreed with that assumption. Each one identified that one among the failures of organization was the utilization of universal template in regards to hiring people internationally. The practice of hiring talents in the United States cannot be used as a template when hiring talents in Asia, Australia, Canada, and European countries. Each country is different and their people. The executives stressed the demonstration of respect to people at new location. Show respect to the culture and traditions that they are living and integrate your business to them and not the other way around. When hiring individuals for management positions, our executives say they will pick the ones with demonstrable competencies in leadership and cultural sensitivity.

In North America (Canada and USA), 71 percent of the surveyed hiring managers say that "they would put leadership skills as top priority when hiring executives", according to the survey conducted by Right Management. Source: Canadian HR Reporter

6. Becoming the High Performing Organization:
1. Refocusing towards human capital and value their competencies and strengths
2. Reinvigorating leadership, coaching and empowerment
3. Become an executive partner at the table and demonstrate acumen in ROI and competencies in business
4. Competence in analytics and strategic approaches are required - Not only metrics and processes oriented
5. Use pragmatic and practical business practices that are people oriented
6. Transform from traditional and outdated procedures to strategic techniques that integrate culture, competencies, leadership and workforce adaptability

In 2010, an article was published "Competitiveness and Strategic Competence - Differentiator of New HR and Business Partner"

7. Needed Competencies of Human Capital and Resource Management Professional
1. Demonstrate business acumen and practices
2. Integrate values, ethical practices and accountability
3. Execute consultative competencies, strategic organization, critical thinking and solutions
4. Competence in Analytics, R.O.I. driven activities and business decision making
5. Expertise and sensitivity in global and cross cultural effectiveness
6. Develop leadership and communication competence
7. Invest on people as an asset to avoid talent drain
8. Philosophical Competence in Experiential Learning, Relational Partnerships, Collaboration and Evidence-based Management
9. Acquire global competencies if you don't have them through coaching and professional development
10. Continuous learning of the current techniques and practices around the globe

"Today, 40% of HR Directors make it to the boardroom table but up to 50% admit to not knowing the contribution their role makes to other functions and executives across the business" - Source: HR Review, Strategy and Practice

What do these mean to you?
There are lots of strategic actions that need to be done in order to achieve success. Transforming your organizational approach from traditional to strategically enabled (if not happening yet) is essential. Integrating results and R.O.I. driven performance are necessary. Growth, development and sustainability of human capital as assets in the organization are equally important.

The following graph validates readiness of our firm in responding to all of the identified challenges of organizations in the globalized 21st Century. Let us know how we  can bring you, your teams and organization to become the 'High Performing Organization'.
©JNTConsulting
Comments:
We like to hear about your insights and experience. You can email your comments to: info@jntconsulting.com or send through the provided message field at the end of this article.

About JNT Consulting
JNT Consulting Global Resources offers professional consulting and resources management, provides workforce solutions that achieve the "High Performing Organization" regardless of size and location.

JNT Consulting has its headquarters in San Jose, California and is "Your Partner for Growth & Development”, “Your Professional Coach”, and “Your Provider of Global Resources”. You can contact us by calling +1 650 241-3207 or visit our website.

Source References:
1 JNTC Articles - http://jntcarticles.blogspot.com
2 Sydney Morning Herald - http://www.smh.com.au
3 The Nation - www.nationmultimedia.com
4 SHRM - http://www.shrm.org
5 DJS Research - http://www.djsresearch.co.uk/
6 PriceWaterhouseCoopers - www.pwc.com/ceosurvey
7 Staffing Industry - http://www.staffingindustry.com
8 Canadian HR Reporter - http://www.hrreporter.com
9 HR Review - http://www.hrreview.co.uk
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