EMPLOYING THE RIGHT PEOPLE IS CRITICAL WHEN SHIFTING YOUR BUSINESS TO A GLOBAL MODEL:
1. FINDING GREAT LOCAL WORKERS
2. FINDING GREAT EX-PATRIOT MANAGERS
Recruitment is one of the things that Australian businesses most often get wrong when setting up an offshore team.
Easy Offshore has the tools, methodologies and experience to help you succeed. These systems are the result of over ten years of development, trial, and refining.
FINDING GREAT LOCAL EMPLOYEES
This is achieved by attending one of our seminars, and learning the system that we use. It’s a set of processes which you just need to follow in order to hire great people.
You STILL need to do these processes even if you are using a third-party staffing facility or a recruitment firm. The quality you want will NOT be provided to you if you just let these providers do things their own way.
Easy Offshore is NOT a recruitment firm – we give you the tools to succeed at doing recruitment yourself or through a provider.
FINDING A LOCAL “WESTERN” EX-PAT MANAGER
Obtaining the best productivity from your offshore team requires ensuring there is a westernised culture of productivity within the team.
The default level of productivity within Asia is not up to the standard of the default level of productivity expected from an Australian team.
When the offshore team size is small (less than 10), this can be fairly easily managed through techniques which we teach all clients within our seminars or consulting.
Techniques include:
– Cultivating loyal relationships with the team members,
– Careful and thorough job descriptions and setting of performance expectations
– Immediate course corrections for individuals who are not performing at the required level
– Regular performance appraisals
– Rapid termination of non-performers to set an example benchmark.
However, when the team grows to the size of needing a local manager or supervisor, there is a very high danger that a localised low culture will develop with a more ‘relaxed’ style to it.
Over time, this can deteriorate into an offshore team with poor productivity and poor discipline. Sometimes, hiring local managers can exacerbate the problem, since they often become more concerned with their team’s opinion of them, than their employer’s opinion of their effectiveness at creating a good work culture. In the worst case scenarios we have seen, the offshore team runs like an entirely different organisation, with different values, low productivity, an arse-covering mentality, and staffed by the friends and family of the local manager.
The broadly accepted solution is to hire an ex-patriot manager to live the same country as the offshore team, and to deliver local management. This person does not necessarily need to be Australian, they just need to understand your company culture and be capable of driving that through the offshore team. So essentially they need a “westernised” view of the business world.
Easy Offshore now provides an Executive Recruitment service to help Australian businesses find an ex-pat to manage their team.
These ex-pats can come from several sources:
– People already living in the same city as your team, who are looking for a new opportunity.
– People living in Australia who are looking for an international opportunity.
– People living outside of either location, but who are keen to move to the same city as your team and take on a new role.
Often you need to be a bit more flexible to find such a person, than you would be if hiring an Australian for an Australian-based role. There is a very limited number of highly experienced and qualified ex-pat managers.
However, by focusing on the key aspects of the role, it is apparent that most clients don’t need this anyway.
The most important qualities for an ex-pat manager are:
A thorough understanding of, and alignment with your company culture. They will make constant small adjustments to make your offshore team as close as possible to your Australian team.
This starts with simply noticing the differences, which are mostly fairly obvious for anyone over 30 years old who has worked in a variety of ‘Westernised” businesses, and had some team leadership experience.
They will definitely benefit from visiting your Australian office regularly, to realign themselves with the way your local people behave, and what they expect.
A knowledge of the local culture, or the ability to learn quickly. This means having some emotional intelligence and being good with the details of interacting with people.
We can help give people a rapid induction into the culture and typical management styles, by having them join an Easy Offshore tour. We can also provide a briefing on the most significant cultural differences in the workplace.
Some level of experience in your industry, or in the tasks performed by the offshore team.
The ability to confront performance issues, discuss openly, and resolve. Particularly in Asia, this must NOT be an abrasive style – it must be a gentle but firm style.
It also helps to have patience. This role ends up acting somewhat like an interpreter, and patience helps when multiple explanations are required to get the right result.
HOW WE CAN HELP:
We already provide education and tools to thousands of Australian businesses to help them make their offshore teams successful. Naturally we know the sorts of skills and qualities they will need in an ex-patriot manager.
We are constantly scouting for good ex-pat managers in the Philippines, and our business partner in Manila can screen and interview potential candidates.
We provide this as an additional service for our clients to help them amplify their results, and thus we are not focused on extracting every possible dollar.
We charge a simple flat fee for the time and IP we use to help match ex-pat managers to employers. Our process is as follows:
– You engage us to find you a manager. There is an upfront engagement fee of $1000, which is refundable if we do not locate you someone suitable within 6 months.
On average we find a good match within 3 months.
– We do initial screening of all candidates.
– We conduct psychometric profiling to identify their soft-skill suitability and management weaknesses.
– We STRONGLY recommend Psychometric profiling on whoever will be the immediate manager of the new manager. This identifies potential conflict areas or communication gaps in advance.
– We provide you with suitable candidates as they come to hand.
– You conduct a remote (Goto Meeting) or face to face interview.
– On confirming your selection, we charge you the balance of $3500
– If you are not happy with the performance of your manager, you can elect to have us do the recruitment again at no charge, within a 2 month window.
Contact us today to get started on your recruitment.