Deloitte builds global skills

Although Fabian Gomez works in León, a mid-sized city in northwestern Mexico, he spends most of his time dealing with clients who do not understand Spanish. He is an auditor partner in Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu's Mexico division, which has 700 offices in 140 countries. "A lot of our business is serving the Mexican branches of multinational companies, and their managers are usually from elsewhere," he said. "For example, I have a meeting tomorrow, where six managers of one company are American, and the other Ten managers in the company are Japanese."

To provide the best service to clients, Gomez had to bring Mexican-style accounting documents and materials to U.S. or Japanese standards, as well as address business nuances that Often different from his Mexican cultural roots. "For example, when meeting with clients in Mexico, it's better to spend some time talking about their family, about what their grandpa and kids are doing. It's very important to have a good relationship with them. On the contrary, Americans like to go straight to the point, you Great care must be taken to value the client's time."

Gomez was well prepared for the challenge. He participated in the Deloitte Global Development Program (GDP) training and worked in New York for 18 months. GDP is a human resources course that places employees from all over the world to work in other countries with promising futures and mid-career careers. Participants further improve their foreign language skills, learn business practices and cultures of other countries, strengthen contacts with people from other countries, and broaden their business prospects.

CEO James E. Copeland Jr. said, "We are extremely proud of our ability to train our employees to help our clients achieve excellence in a market without borders." The global development program not only improves Company pride, which management sees as key to the organization's strategic goals of expanding and integrating its global business operations. Lynda Spielman, deputy director of deployment, said: "The Global Development Program not only teaches employees to learn accounting practices in another country, but also draws in all promising managers from each country and strengthens their global organization concept." The program's value for international companies Seems fairly obvious.

But in the late 1990s, when Deloitte management decided to focus more on developing international capabilities, it found itself in a strange dilemma. Graduates of the programme not only help their national operations acquire new clients and satisfy existing clients, but also boost their confidence and career prospects.

Despite the obvious advantages, employees are reluctant to participate in global development programs. For example, in 1997 the company managed to attract only 128 participants, barely reaching 1% of its huge global workforce, and only 25 of the company's 140 international branches sent personnel or accepted participants. Staff come from a disproportionate number of countries, such as the UK.

Deloitte's Human Resources team sees the need for a global development program to be successfully implemented in more countries and for employees and managers to appreciate the value of participating. They started by developing human resources and redesigning the program to make it more attractive. Next, launch an ambitious internal multimedia marketing campaign. The core element is a cleverly designed self-assessment tool to help employees of all cultures determine whether they are the right candidates for the program.

Modifying the plan for global needs

In 1998, Deloitte's corporate human resources group began to think about how to promote the international development of the organization. They gradually realized that in order to achieve effective marketing, it should first understand the audience, further improve the product, and serve them well.

Spielman said the Global Development Program was known at the time as the Strategic Career Development Program. Internal promotions highlight how international experience can help participants move up the career ladder. The company's human resources team sought feedback from the company's operations around the world and found that this approach was not working. What attracts potential candidates to the program is often the opportunity to live in a country. They failed to grasp the strategic mission of the program and its impact on Deloitte operations in their home countries.

To make matters worse, the manager in charge of the branch of the overseas organization did not encourage employees to participate. They don't know how their own operations will benefit from allowing competent employees to work in other countries for several years. Also, they are always reluctant to accept employees from other countries, or to hand over important clients to him just to give him experience -- especially when he has to be paid.

So the company decided to make some small but crucial changes. Rename the program, choose it carefully, and focus on the true mission of helping Deloitte to improve its global capabilities. Rather than simply letting employees choose the country that appeals to them, HR coordinators work with applicants to identify locations where applicants can gain work-related experience in their home country. For example, an accountant working at the Mexican branch of General Motors might be sent to Michigan to service General Motors headquarters.

"Roughly 25 percent of participants now serve the same global customer in another location," Spielman said. If that doesn't work, the HR coordinator looks for a country where employees can serve clients in the same industry as the big domestic clients. Establishing this tangible link between the assignment and the needs of the home country would be more helpful in implementing the program. In addition, Deloitte encourages operating agencies in receiving countries to agree to accept employees and pay their wages. The company has also established flexible working terms.

To ensure that these improvements are effective for decision makers across Deloitte's global operations, the Human Resources team has gone to great lengths to promote the program to managers and potential candidates. "A project like this requires the full engagement of business leaders," Spielman said. "Many things can stop them -- for example, if they had an unpleasant experience of uprooting four years ago, that needs to be eliminated."

To address this, the HR team designed video and print materials to emphasize the value the program brings to managers.

Spielman said, "We find it important for Deloitte clients to talk about international knowledge and skills, and our leaders find those conversations very engaging."

Marketing programs to employees of diverse backgrounds

The company's human resources team knew that another problem was that the right people for the program were sometimes blocked because of concerns about leaving family behind and dealing with unfamiliar living conditions.

Spielman said: "In many other parts of the world, life is becoming more collectivized and people tend to do things together, or to divide responsibilities. An expert from another country may have a level of excellence at work, but may never have opened a furnace. Or bought daily necessities. There is a 40-year-old Brazilian expert who is still in the country. Despite her high accounting skills, she never really manages her money because she gives her wages to her parents. "Leave this environment , it might be difficult to keep her alone in a suite in New York.

A US employee on an international assignment may have to make a big change in his living habits. "If you're used to watching football on Monday nights, when you come to Malaysia, you have to face the fact that there is no football," Spielman said. A 1997 study by the company's Employee Resettlement Committee showed that 58 percent of international assignments failed because employees were unable to adjust to life in another country. Therefore, carefully design marketing materials so that employees feel better about the idea of international development delegation. For example, the "Experience the World" booklet profiles participants from Chile, South Africa, Belgium, China, and the United States. "We're also trying to balance the ratio of male to female, married and unmarried," Spielman said. "We wanted to send a message that resonates with everyone, no matter what country or background they come from."

Spielman feels less uncertain about potential candidates The key is to develop self-assessment tools to help potential participants assess their readiness to work elsewhere in the world. This is not easy. "We need tools that work for everyone, while at the same time digging deeper into the causes. We need to get people to think introspective and make them more culturally aware of themselves to identify factors that may affect their acceptance of international assignments."

Spielman hired an external consultant to redesign existing tools to ensure they were culturally neutral. The finished product includes a case study of a fictional Deloitte employee, Mark Peterson, and his wife, Linda.

Candidates assess Peterson's strengths and weaknesses, a test that gives them an insight into their own reality in comparison. Questionnaires and checklists help candidates focus on what matters most to them. "They took the questions home and had their spouses participate in the answers, and they tested independently and compared the answers." The results were scored numerically, allowing employees to get more precise answers about whether they were the right fit for the program.

The program yielded significant results

The results of the program changes and marketing battles were impressive. Since 1997, the number of participating countries in the Deloitte Global Development Program has increased from 25 to 50, and the number of participating employees has more than doubled to 288. Deloitte executives believe that one of the factors that contributed to the company's 11 percent increase in global revenue in fiscal 2001 to $12.4 billion was the economic impact of the improvement. The greatest benefits of successfully promoting a global development program can extend over several years. "Having more employees with international training and international experience for the company could mean an increase in revenue from one client from $20 million to $23 million because we can also do business with the client's Mexican branch. "Spielman said. In addition, he believes that maintaining relationships with large customers is more important than increasing revenue. "If you don't handle a $50,000 contract in Brazil, you could lose millions of dollars in revenue from the company's U.S. parent."

In León, Mexico, the program was successful, Management is eager to have more players. "We now have three people in our office with international experience, and we hope to add one every year, and people are very excited about that because they know that with international experience, they and the company will be successful," Gomez said.

Original article from Workforce Magazine with permission. Copyright Crain Communications Inc. Registered June 2002. Translated by Huang Xi.