Global smiles of native faces

In order to meet the development needs of enterprises around the world, multinational companies will make extensive use of local human resources in order to quickly integrate into the local area and be recognized by the local society. However, multinational companies will select local employees from a global perspective, while developing the global skills of local employees. In short, both local experience and global skills are essential for employees.

Following China's accession to the WTO, developing employees' global skills has become a top priority for more and more Chinese companies. In addition to introducing Deloitte's experience (see page 40), the editors of this magazine visited Chinese companies of Cisco and Sony, hoping that the experiences of these multinational companies can inspire Chinese companies.

Cisco and Sony, which are headquartered in the United States and Japan respectively, have not set up a "globalization skills training course" for their employees, and their related skills training for employees has been integrated with the company's overall culture. This enables employees to have a global smile on their local faces.

Cisco: Emphasis on comprehensive training and dispatching according to needs It fully combines the characteristics of local Chinese culture and can be regarded as a model of the combination of global skills and local experience. According to Du Jiabin, Cisco's basic philosophy is to create an equal and trusting working atmosphere within the company, emphasizing full authorization and open communication at work. Cisco attaches great importance to the training of various basic skills of employees, and each employee participates in an average of 6 training courses every year; in the first quarter of fiscal year 2003, Cisco China employee training funds have exceeded 1 million US dollars.

Cisco's training is generally divided into management training, E-learning, sales training, and common skills training. Management training is divided into several levels according to the management level of employees; sales training courses involve professional sales knowledge, and common skills training teaches employees how to make presentations, learn legal knowledge, master communication skills, and so on. Cisco is a company that lives on the web, and it has a huge E-learning system. Through E-learning, the company has changed the way it educates and trains its employees, channel partners and customers. Each new employee first undergoes a training called New Hire Orientation, which lasts for 30 days. Of all the specialized trainings above, closely related to Global Skills is that, within the first 90 days of starting the job, new employees also attend an Asia-Pacific corporate culture training. Du Jiabin believes that all Cisco employees need some common skills, such as time management, planning, financial reporting, quality requirements, etc. These are globally consistent skills.

According to Du Jiabin's understanding, "globalization skills" can be simply described as "no matter where the company is sent, you can live in peace". Therefore the most important global skills are language skills and the ability to adapt to different cultures. Du Jiabin himself spends 1/4 of the year on business trips, and often goes to the US headquarters and other countries for meetings and work. According to his understanding, there is no big difference between Cisco in other countries and Cisco in China. The philosophy of 100% customer satisfaction is the same everywhere, but in different countries, the specific methods of doing things will be different.

Du Jiabin said that every year Cisco China dispatches some employees to work abroad according to the specific needs of the work, the purpose is to increase their experience, and the expatriate employees are mainly engineers and managers. Some of them will stay abroad, and some will return to work at Cisco in China. For example, engineers from Cisco China are often dispatched to the technical support center in Australia. Cisco's "customer support centers" around the world take a rotating duty system (Cisco has four customer support centers in Sydney, Stockholm, New York, and Silicon Valley). For example, a customer support engineer in Australia receives a call from a Thai customer before leaving work and needs to solve a technical problem. He will immediately transfer the problem to an engineer working in the customer support center in Stockholm to solve it, so as to ensure the service provided by Cisco to customers. You can "run with the sun" and never stop.

Sony: Supporting Global Mobility and Inspiring Self-Learning

In contrast, Sony's global skills development for employees is more purposeful. From the very beginning, Sony has tried to appear as a "global company". Since Idei Nobuyuki took charge of Sony in 1995, Sony has continued to strengthen its globalization features in organizational structure and personnel system, supporting the global mobility of employees.

Zhang Yanmei, Director of Human Resources Development Department of Sony (China) Co., Ltd., said that Sony's global awareness and skill development of employees are manifested in various details, which is why Sony has long insisted on distinguishing itself from others Japanese company. For young Japanese, working at Sony after graduation means being able to be dispatched overseas soon. Whether it is in the common language or in the name of the management department, Sony hopes to try its best to reflect the global management thinking and corporate culture, and never emphasizes that it is a "Japanese company". The common language within Sony is English, and the proportion of foreigners is quite high all over the world, even in Tokyo, Japan. In 2001, Sony carried out a drastic reform of the personnel system. The company selects about 500 candidates for the next generation of executives from about 180,000 group employees around the world, mainly those in their 30s and 40s, and designates 100 important positions around the world. Mainly at the top of the company, important subsidiaries within the group and foreign subsidiaries, each position corresponds to 4-5 candidates for the next leadership, including foreigners. Taking into account the emotions of the unselected staff, the company released the list of these candidates to the minimum extent. It is said that only a few people have the full list of candidates, including the company's top management and personnel department heads. After that, Sony established a human resources management committee composed of the above-mentioned members. The committee meets twice a year and decides to transfer any position based on the candidate's professional resume, performance and adaptability. For example, transfer candidates with outstanding business performance but little financial experience to positions where they can learn financial literacy.

Currently, the above job transfers and targeted training are not limited to just 100 key positions. Zhang Yanmei said that at present, Sony Global has implemented a competitive appointment system for various positions. For example, Sony advertises relevant vacancies at various companies around the world, and if a Sony employee in the United States feels he is a good fit for a position in Tokyo, Japan, he can apply for the position without his superiors knowing. After various evaluations and assessments, the higher-level supervisor of the position believes that the person is indeed suitable for the position, and he can go to Tokyo to work. Due to the impartiality of information disclosure channels, Sony employees have many choices. In Sony China, the flow of employees is mainly based on the positioning of employees themselves for their own development.

Zhang Yanmei said that Sony attaches great importance to the training of employees. However, because Sony's internal organizational structure and business types are changing very fast, it is more important for employees to learn by doing. Here, employees are given more responsibilities and give play to their respective advantages, outstanding talents are recognized and respected, and each team constantly challenges new goals. She often said: "It's not the most important country that a person is from. What matters is that he or she has an international professional standard and can really take on that responsibility." In addition, she believes that the skills and professionalism of employees And the improvement of management thinking and other aspects is not mainly trained by the personnel department, but is continuously learned in an open and dynamic working atmosphere.

At Sony China, the proportion of foreign employees is about 10-15%. Zhang Yanmei said that language is often the main job barrier for foreign employees when they first arrive in China. However, Sony has long had a policy of not assigning special translators to any management staff, including the current chairman of Sony China, Tatsuya Masada. Under such a policy, Sony has become one of the companies with probably the most linguistic geniuses in the world. Japanese top executives learned Chinese quickly in China, they couldn't understand it a few months ago, and a few months later they were seen as Chinese. This may be where Sony's competitiveness lies.