As your company grows and moves into new markets, so might your recruitment efforts. Top candidates from across the world bring well-needed diversity and local representation to your business, but attracting and sourcing talent from other cultures can be tricky. A good HR localisation strategy, which includes cultural and language training, can help you find the right people, with aligned values and skills, and boost employee retention and integration across your global teams. Not sure where to start? Read on for some things to consider when planning.
Employer value proposition and branding:
It’s important to stay authentic and keep your employer branding consistent if you want to attract and retain the right candidates for your business. While globally, the principles of your EVP should stay the same, it is important to recognise cultural differences across different regions and divisions that could be adapted without straying away from your core values. By understanding what different cultures expect or value in a workplace, you can tailor your recruitment materials to target these values.
Some examples:
Compensation: different pay expectations and evaluations depending on the market and local laws.
Working hours: some cultures value clear working hours, whereas others may prefer flexible working
Time off: consider that it’s the norm in some cultures to take longer periods of leave once a year, rather than several shorter breaks.
Benefits: think about things like childcare norms, eating habits, expected retirement age, and healthcare entitlement before communicating the benefits – to ensure that they really are beneficial to a different culture of employees.
Compliance and legal: international and local laws will often require hiring paperwork, employee handbooks, safety documentation, contracts, and confidentiality agreements to be translated into all native languages, not just the company language. Not only will this compliance keep your employees safe, but having all official documentation in their native languages will reinforce workers’ responsibilities and empower them to understand their role and rights.
Feedback: people best express themselves in their native language, meaning you’re more likely to receive valuable, constructive feedback if you allow employees to answer surveys and give feedback in their native language (if it differs from the company’s working language). Multilingual feedback can then be translated by professional translators specialising in HR, to give you an accurate picture of your employees’ shared thoughts and feelings.
Language and cultural training: this can help you empower, unite, and support your team and break down cultural barriers. From business etiquette and communication and management styles to cultural norms that affect work and home life, having an understanding of your local team’s cultural habits and taboos is essential for a smooth integration of global teams.
The little extras make a big difference…
Think about all the content (e.g. careers landing site, recruitment newsletters, and social media posts) you’re putting out there to find and retain the best people for the job. It’s been well documented that people prefer to buy from websites in their native language, so it stands to reason that the same could be said for employer branding as well. While it’s important to mention any language requirements in these materials, adapting your recruitment-related copy and strategies to local audiences might just make the difference between them sitting up and noticing you, as opposed to seeing content in another language and immediately switching off, without realising it is designed ‘for them’.
All these considerations add up. By staying authentic and tailoring your HR localisation strategy to local teams’ needs and requirements, you’re more likely to attract, and more importantly, keep the best people for the job within your teams, in a positive working atmosphere.