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Feature Working trends 33% The proportion of some 36,000 firms globally, polled by ManpowerGroup, that are struggling to fill positions due to local skills shortages. Preparing a new human age Françoise Gri is President of ManpowerGroup Southern Europe and has been named as one of Fortune’s Global 50 Most Powerful Women in Business for eight consecutive years. She talks to T Magazine about key trends in the world of work. Interview by Fergal Byrne T Magazine: In today’s increasingly global business environment, how important is it for managers to have international experience? Françoise Gri: Over the past decade or so, businesses have become more global. But what has changed more recently is the way in which we think about different markets. In the past, we assumed that the world was flat and we wanted managers who dealt with different markets in a similar way. Today, we no longer believe that the world is flat. We want business leaders who have an international perspective and who can respond to local differences. Although we still need managers with international experience, we view this experience in a slightly different way than we did in the past. It’s no longer desirable to have a manager who has lived in five different countries for two years each because, although they have some experience of different cultures, they do not have a deep enough knowledge of any. Today, we need managers who are totally connected with the local culture but who can also build a bridge with the culture of the company. This will be a critical dimension of tomorrow’s leadership style. ManpowerGroup has recently published research on the Human Age. Can you tell us what this is? We believe that we are entering what we call a 20 T Magazine Issue 07 Ernst & Young
Credit: Philippe Schlienger Human Age. This is a complex new era in which companies will have to embrace new work models, people practices and talent sources to ensure future success. In order to unleash their potential, companies will need to engage with their people on a deeper, human level. Individual needs will determine recruitment and development strategies. Companies will need to provide an environment suitable for collaboration and to anticipate more precisely the skills that they’ll need. When we first discussed these ideas at the 2011 World Economic Forum in Davos, many felt that they were interesting. Since then, there has been continued social, political and economic turbulence. This year in Davos, we noticed that more and more companies are seeing the impact of these changes. Business leaders realize, for example, that there is a shortage of good people, that they don’t have the right people to develop the right strategy and that there is skill mismatch in key markets. What does the future hold for expatriate managers? We see fewer and fewer companies today looking for expatriate managers. They are not sufficiently or deeply connected to the markets in which they operate. The old idea where managers from developed countries go in and show the locals what to do is finished. Increasingly, we see what we call the “reverse expat” phenomenon. This approach rotates a local manager, based in the emerging market, through functions outside the home market. The manager can then adapt the experiences gained from this to the local market upon their return. The reverse expat approach is also a particularly powerful way to enhance retention of local talent because it allows employees in emerging markets to see that the company is truly global. If you are sitting in a business in Asia, for example, and you can see some Asian counterparts who have been promoted and are now running pieces of the business, it makes a big difference to the overall level of employee retention, particularly when it comes to key talent. Seeing that the top echelons of management are not just dominated by the parent country management team provides reassurance for ambitious local managers in these markets. How can companies balance local responsiveness with global economies of scale? I think many companies struggle to get a balance between being aligned globally but also being sensitive to appropriate local interpretation. Companies need to have global collaboration but they also need to be anchored in the local market. Some company programs will be applied systematically in all markets; others can be adapted to the needs of the local environment. There is a lot of complexity here, and managers Rise of the reverse expatriate One of the trends that Manpower’s Françoise Gri is seeing in the market is the rise of the “reverse expat”, in which a local manager from an emerging market is rotated through functions outside of their home market. have a new level of responsibility to implement this quickly, efficiently and in the right way. At ManpowerGroup, we have developed frameworks to help the company find a balance between local and global. The framework has two major components to it: one fixed and one flexible. The fixed part consists of processes that are non-negotiable, whether you are in Istanbul or Buenos Aires. In those instances, the local company needs to operate according to this fixed template, no matter what. Then there’s a flexible component, where managers can localize the program to the needs of the local market. Creating those frameworks has increased our speed tremendously because it has taken a lot of the mystery out of who’s accountable for what. Is technology changing the nature of work? It is difficult to understate the likely impact of technology on the workforce. Technological developments allow new ways of getting work done, which increase the importance of co-ordination and collaboration. Rapid communication via online networks, for example, is changing organizations’ choice of where, when and how work is performed. Social networks are pervasive, but research suggests that only 30 of executives understand the implications of this new, data-intensive, social network-intensive world. This is a big challenge. We have had waves of technology before, but I think the impact today is much more subtle, while no less important. It has therefore become crucial to understand the human dimension, to adapt and respond to this changing technology. How important is diversity? I am a strong believer in diversity. It isn’t just about hiring on the basis of gender, religious persuasion or culture. Without genuine diversity of thought and representation, you’re not going to come up with the right answers. It’s just too complex to have a purely British team, for example, running a global company. As part of that drive for diversity, we need to have more women involved in business, particularly given the talent supply challenges and talent mismatch problems we see. The female talent pool is still largely untapped. I think involving women more in the labor market and, in particular, at senior leadership level, will help companies to access the right talent to succeed. In addition, female executives can bring new and valuable perspectives to the leadership team. This kind of change does not come about on its own, however. You have to fight for it. I think companies are slowly making progress on this front, but not enough. Much more still needs to be done. Looking to the future, I think the companies that will do best in the new and evolving workplace of tomorrow are those that have dealt with diversity for a long time and that have embedded it into their values and culture. Ernst & Young Issue 07 T Magazine 21
Page 1 and 2: T Magazine 07 Magazine Tax insight
Page 3 and 4: Stephan Kuhn Your feedback We work
Page 5 and 6: Global tax news A roundup of recent
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