Ambitious professionals are chasing their dream overseas role
Your passport might be gathering dust in the kitchen drawer, your GCSE Spanish hasn’t been required in more than 20 years and your holiday ambitions may extend no further than Bognor, but take heart: you’re a global HR operator. As the world gets smaller and the number of companies with international staff, customers and suppliers proliferates, seeing yourself as a primarily domestic manager – even if you never leave your local office – is no longer a viable option.
“It’s hard to see who wouldn’t have to operate within a cross-cultural context these days,” says Michael Dickmann, professor of international HR management at Cranfield University. Coping with day-to-day working life requires a broad understanding of cultural differences in behaviour and an ability to challenge your own cultural norms, he says.
But globalisation affects HR practices too: whether it’s training and development, compensation and benefits or recruitment and retention, UK-based HR practitioners can no longer afford to think parochially. Even traditionally international aspects of their work, like global mobility, have changed. Sadly, many HR teams haven’t kept up.
“Traditional expatriate assignments, where people would go abroad for many years, taking their families with them, are increasingly rare,” says Dickmann, who adds that for cost and developmental reasons assignments now tend to be shorter term, often project-based and increasingly self-initiated.
There is arguably a much greater overlap today between global mobility and talent management. One of the biggest shifts of the past 10 years has been to think in terms of global rather than home-grown talent: executives from one country are hired to work in another in roles that may never be filled by a home-country national. The rise in ‘global nomads’ – who move from international assignment to international assignment and never return home – means that managing foreigners keen to get UK experience may be a bigger feature of an HR professional’s role than expatriating and repatriating UK nationals.
Inevitably, HR professionals’ international ambitions have grown alongside those of other functions, and an increasing array of recruitment specialists are catering to their needs. Anecdotal evidence from recruiters suggests the number of international HR moves has never been higher, and it’s younger professionals who are inevitably keenest to ditch dreary Blighty for cooler climes.
Ben Bengougam, vice-president HR Europe for hotel group Hilton Worldwide, says that almost every candidate he interviews for fast-track HR graduate schemes wants to travel. “And they see a job as a way to do that in a meaningful way and become truly international people.”
A graduate with three or four years’ experience, who has developed expertise in a field such as compensation and benefits, or learning and development, adds value in a different country and learns from the experience, says Bengougam, who regularly sends high-potential employees on project-linked overseas assignments.
Hilton Worldwide uses predominantly local talent in its hotels around the world, but overlays it with a cadre of mobile support staff in functions such as HR. It also deploys global talent to promote international growth and diversity, he adds. “For example, we have an Italian woman, based in France, looking after Eastern Europe.”
But Bengougam admits repatriation is ‘opportunity-driven’. He says: “There is an element of structure to what we do – we send people overseas advisedly and believe it increases their competence, so it is in our interests to keep them. But you can’t guarantee someone a job five years from now. Moves are driven by the vacancies available.”
Mike Haffenden, director of HR research and consultancy firm the Corporate Research Forum (CRF), says HR professionals don’t need to go overseas to gain the international experience many businesses crave.
“Just because you’ve worked abroad doesn’t mean you’re any good at it, and experience in one country makes you an expert only in that particular country,” he says. Far more important, he believes, is an ‘international mindset’, which can be developed from a home base, albeit augmented by regular travel.
This new way of thinking will help any HR professional deal with the growing number of cross-border issues most companies are now engaged with, from mergers and acquisitions and partnerships, to procurement relationships and share ownership. HR professionals are also increasingly likely to work as part of cross-border teams.
Katie Sloggett, head of Profession Map at CIPD, says linguistic ability and basic cultural knowledge are important aspects of an international mindset. “And intellectual horsepower is a given, because you need to jump between different sets of rules and skills depending on which country you’re dealing with,” she adds.
The CIPD’s Profession Map is currently being redrawn to reflect the increasingly global context in which HR now operates, and August will see the launch of a crowd-sourcing platform to garner opinion on the kind of support and guidance practitioners need for international work. The CIPD is starting to establish a more significant presence overseas, particularly the Middle East and Asia, in order to provide more comprehensive support for the growing number of HR people operating outside the UK.
An overseas assignment shouldn’t be seen as a golden ticket to a life idling in the sun, however. Haffenden says: “You’re typically doing less sophisticated work, you’re away from the action and the decision-making centre, and re-entry is difficult. The lifestyle may be good, but you’re not necessarily building knowledge or climbing the ladder.” Gaining experience in the US or a highly sought-after emerging economy such as China will clearly be a career fillip, he adds, but many expat roles are located in countries where it’s proved difficult to recruit locals with sufficient expertise. And Dickmann’s research suggests nine per cent of those returning to the UK from an overseas posting come back in a lesser role.
The best foreign opportunities, says Haffenden, are often found in rapidly growing entrepreneurial businesses and will involve developing local talent. Bernard Ward, regional managing director EMEA at Reed Specialist Recruitment, says a typical assignment in a fast-growing country in Asia or the Middle East would involve working closely with nationals on projects of up to three years, emphasising knowledge transfer and skills, particularly in the areas of recruitment, compensation and benefits and employee relations.
“Everyone in the world wants a piece of emerging markets and there’s a huge demand for very senior HR professionals who can build something from A to Z quickly,” he says. It’s a requirement that’s not likely to disappear any time soon. What’s keeping you here?
Discover how to network with other mobility practitioners and reward professionals with a one-day short course cipd.co.uk/cipd-training/global-mobility