A thriving global HR strategy depends on how well you involve and engage everyone in the organisation to achieve business goals. This is dependent on how well communications and relations are managed with everyone in the process.
Everybody in your company is to be considered a stakeholder in your global HR strategy. All employees are impacted by HR processes in their working lives and should be able to have a say. But when you embark on executing a global HR strategy, you will need to initially include clusters of stakeholders, representative of all members of the workforce. This needs to be done before rolling out the plan to the whole organisation. Especially if the organisation is large.
It is in the interest of HR leaders to engage with each group of stakeholders that have different interests and points of view. This is the only way for HR to design and implement a global strategy that employees can feel is relevant to them.
You will find the stakeholders will be aligned to either a global or local focus, depending on the nature of their position within the organisation. Ideally, all these viewpoints should be incorporated into the global HR strategy.
Countless international businesses have implemented a global model, where the corporate department centralizes and establishes policies, procedures and tools to ensure business interests are accomplished across the organisation.
However, success may depend more on addressing local cultures and business needs.
In these situations, global HR practices, driven by headquarters, may not always be suitable.
Your global HR strategy needs to be flexible to integrate differences comfortably to satisfy everyone.
Additionally, legal and compliance requirements need to be addressed as mandated by the country and the parent company.
Key Stakeholder groups
As different groups of participants will have divergent views and needs, your goal is to bring out the collective knowledge and skills, to achieve the best alignment with the strategic plan. Encourage the stakeholders to voice their views, listen, give feedback and incorporate what makes sense for local and global practices.
Local HR departments
Get them to help you with best practices and engage with taking on responsibilities.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Find out what knowledge and best practices are already available across different markets and geographies. They may be suitable to be used for the strategy and shared with other regions and countries. By sharing responsibilities with the local departments and embracing input and feedback, it helps them to own the global HR strategy.
CEOs and senior executives
The goal is to secure their backing.
The top managers are the ones who drive the initiative and authorise decisions to go ahead. They have a vested interest to better manage the company strategically and financially. If they see the benefits for the company, they will support you. Organise dynamic pitches at the high-level and high-impact meetings to get them onboard.
Employees
The experience to create is about positivity and collaboration. The employee pool is the largest group of users of the global HR system and should be involved from the start.
By showing how HR can support and help them will encourage engagement. This is the best way to build a healthy organisation culture of openness, trust and transparency, which benefits the business. Take a collaborative approach with communication where it is visible and proactive.
Managers
The aim is to make it easy for them to manage their people. You need to secure their support. They are the ones who possess decision making powers that affect the daily lives of the teams and employees. Securing their endorsement and support is half the battle. They will be your innovative change managers leading their teams.
Open communication is crucial, particularly when the managers don’t work at headquarters. It is in your interest to start conversations in both formal and informal settings. Address their people management needs and help them develop their teams.
By involving all the stakeholders in your global HR strategy, you are more likely to find success in achieving the organisation’s goals. It requires superior and diligent communication and relationship building to ensure that everyone is on board and feeling recognised during the process.
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