Two Chaps - Many Cultures
Global Business Excellence Through Cultural and Emotional Intelligence (ICE-Q)
Welcome to ๐๐ฌ๐ค ๐พ๐๐๐ฅ๐จ โ ๐๐๐ฃ๐ฎ ๐พ๐ช๐ก๐ฉ๐ช๐ง๐๐จ. We help you navigate the business of culture and the culture of business. Christian Hรถferle and Brett Parry ponder many topics related to culture through a combination of short bursts and deep dives.
We feature guests from the world of business and personal development, speaking about their experiences developing a combination of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) and Emotional Intelligence (EQ), as well as it's vital importance to successful global organizations.
It's not only about culture. There are also tips and strategies for creating abundance in your professional and personal life.
Level up your ICE-Q by hitting the SUBSCRIBE button. Add your questions and comments related to culture, business, and personal growth.
Two Chaps - Many Cultures
Do You Really Get it? Where People Want To Go and What They Want To Get There New Study!
Ever wondered what drives professionals to pack up their lives and move across the globe for work? Discover the motivations, fears, and preferences of global talent in this episode of "Two Chaps Many Cultures." We unravel the factors that make certain cities and countries magnets for expats, such as financial perks, the thrill of adventure, personal growth opportunities, and a welcoming, inclusive environment. Learn why international assignments are seen as a key professional stepping stone, and how employers can play a pivotal role in easing the transition by providing vital support and information.
We'll also highlight the strategic advantages of fostering a culturally aware workplace. Explore how implementing initiatives like a "buddy system" or appointing a "chief culture officer" can greatly benefit organizations. With insights from a Boston Consulting study, we underscore the necessity of a structured approach to global mobility to attract and retain top talent. Tune in for practical strategies and firsthand experiences that will inspire your organization's approach to international assignments. Whether you're an employer or an aspiring global professional, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways to navigate the world of global talent mobility.
๐๐ฌ๐ค ๐พ๐๐๐ฅ๐จ โ ๐๐๐ฃ๐ฎ ๐พ๐ช๐ก๐ฉ๐ช๐ง๐๐จ is the worldโs #1 show on the business of culture and the culture of business. Christian Hรถferle and Brett Parry ponder culture in short bursts and deep dives, featuring your questions and comments related to culture, business, and personal growth.
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more great content: https://www.youtube.com/@TwoChapsManyCultures
Visit https://theculturemastery.com/ for more information about the skills for working in a global context.
The music on this episode is provided courtesy of Sepalot.
โDuum Diipโ - Artist: Sepalot - Label: Eskapaden - Copyright control
What motivates people to relocate for work, which destinations do they favor and what makes cities and countries attractive to expats? You've heard us talk about these lists of best countries for expats or happiest places in the world. Now let's look at what's really important for global professionals to move, what makes them move, what makes them stay at home, and what is it you're missing as an employer when you want to attract global talent. Let's dig into that.
Speaker 2:Welcome to 2Chap's Many.
Speaker 1:Cultures.
Speaker 2:In an increasingly globally connected world, it is vital to possess the essential skills of cultural intelligence.
Speaker 1:Listen along as we present the topics, tips and strategies you can use to develop the power of cultural understanding in your personal and professional life.
Speaker 2:Here are your hosts, christian Huffala and Brett Parry. Welcome back to Two Chaps Many Cultures, the only number one show on the planet that comes to talking about cultures, where too much culture is barely enough. It's good to see you again for another week, mate. How are you Bloody well? How are you? I'm bloody well, too, bloody well.
Speaker 1:Bloody well, right, there's a song about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, by the way, about a quarter of your employees want to move internationally. How about that? Did you know that? Do you care you should. And if you do have the opportunity to offer these folks the chance to move overseas, to develop not only their career but also to widen the perspective of your company in those new locations, you better believe, you better learn what they want and how they want it delivered, and that's what we're here to talk about today.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a quarter of your employees is actively willing to move abroad for work. Move abroad for work, that means that's an expectation your talent has. This is a career development step that seems, or has become, almost mandatory for especially younger professionals in the workforce. Millennials, gen Zs, enter the workforce expecting to be put to work in a country outside of the one that they grew up in or outside the one that they were hired in. So if you're a company offering the opportunity for your team members to go abroad, are you doing the homework? Do you do what's necessary to make your people be successful abroad?
Speaker 1:And we looked at a recent study that came out by the Boston Consulting Group, and they looked at some interesting factors. They, of course, look at which countries are the most sought after and how are these trends changing over years. And that's all fine and dandy that one country becomes more attractive over the course of time than another, and this usually evens out over a decade or two. But I think what was really interesting is the fact that global professionals who do expect to be deployed overseas have a suite and a set of expectations that employers should be aware of and should be prepared for. So what are some of those that stood out to you, brett.
Speaker 2:Well, we partner with organizations that supply all these suite of goods. There are companies that do it in-house. There are also companies that provide this as an outsource service. They're where they kind of bring together a whole bunch of vendors like us. When we do the cultural training we're calling to do that, the cultural training part of it.
Speaker 2:I was interested actually to read that financial considerations is sometimes a motivator and it's actually one of the biggest motivators.
Speaker 2:It's actually not what I tend to see in terms of when people you're asking people what their motivations were for moving, these things did come to the top of the list the excitement, obviously, adventure, the experience of broadening the perspective of themselves and their families, the opportunities for their development as a talent development part of it.
Speaker 2:Of course, maybe having it on your resume is one thing, but also the personal development that comes with living in or operating in the margins of pushing your envelope when it comes to leadership and people skills and those kind of things. And then, of course, there's maybe considerations around immigration, about education levels and all of those kind of things. And then, of course, there's maybe considerations around immigration, about education levels and all of those kind of things, and you know what kind of how are you going to be seen in that culture? What is the environment of inclusivity, which is something that, hopefully, a company is embedded with already and has already messaged to their employees that, no matter where you go in the world, there is an atmosphere of inclusiveness, and that can be expected to be seen at the other side of the assignment as well?
Speaker 1:I found it interesting that a whole number of respondents to the study said that personal growth and the cultural experience is one of the main reasons that they would want to go abroad, and this was a reason that was among the top 10 reasons to go.
Speaker 1:And then there were a few reasons among the top 10 why they would stay at home. What would be a detractor or an inhibitor of going abroad? And it was lack of knowledge about what it means to work abroad, and it was, in fact, the cultural differences that would make people stay at home. So if you are an employer and it is important to you to move talent across borders, because you have the top people in certain locations and you want to deploy them elsewhere, and cultural differences is something that would make them say no to the assignment, well, wouldn't it be smart of you to alleviate those concerns early on and say OK, we understand that this might be something you're concerned about, but here's what we can do for you and here's how we can make this problem go away or minimize it. So you have one less reason to say no to the assignment, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:And keep in mind this is something that you may actually discover that if you've got 25% of the people in your organization that actually want to go on an overseas assignment, if, given the chance, maybe they're not speaking up because they are not aware of what is actually the situation in these potential countries that you may be able to send them to, so, just by osmosis, if you're messaging this internally as an organization, informing people, lowering we call this kind of a lowering the fear level, right, it is taking away the mystique of what's unknown in a new culture. So it may be part of your business operations to connect, from a team and work perspective, the people that are in different locations. But there's a wider benefit from this is because they get to engage with people that are in those countries. They get to ask them questions and they get to have more of an informal interaction with people from there, perhaps even other expats that have gone before, and they hear the stories.
Speaker 2:Because one thing in this report and I think this image brings it up I saw how the evolution of what the perception was before you left and what you saw afterwards was something was impactful for me. One of them was that inclusivity. It is like what is the inclusivity atmosphere like in this country? And often that was quite low, not knowing what that was like beforehand, and then it actually, after they arrived, they actually got there and went. You know, this culture is actually pretty welcoming for me and I can see myself here with my family and as a professional.
Speaker 1:And I mean I want to contextualize this even a little bit bigger. Very often this could be viewed as the topic that we discussed could be viewed as well. This only applies to global companies that are moving people around, and this is a only a snapshot of the overall global economy. And in this very study that BCG published a couple of weeks ago, they mentioned that throughout 30 countries, the top economies in the world, they found that the above average labor shortages are costing these economies more than $1 trillion a year, that's trillion with a capital T. $1 trillion a year is the cost of these above-average labor shortages. And, specifically, countries like the United States or Germany are currently facing severe labor shortages in certain industries, labor shortages in certain industries.
Speaker 1:So migration becomes almost the go-to avenue to alleviate that issue. So this is not just expatriate programs we're talking about. We're also talking about migration due to natural disasters, to war zones or any other reasons why people would leave their home country, not just because they are sent by an employer. No, they also go somewhere else for a better opportunity or for a development chance, so to say. And if you're a receiving economy, say and if you're a receiving economy, you want to be able to attract the best of these people.
Speaker 1:Right, and most senior executives in global organizations see that cross-border migration is a way to solve this demographic issue or this demographic challenge. And employing foreign workers isn't just a fill the gap kind of solution, it's also an innovation and success driver because, as we know from various studies that we've seen over the recent years that diverse organizations generate better results, right, and that doesn't happen automatically. You have to lay the foundational work in a company. You have to be able to incorporate foreign talent, foreign-born talent, with all their linguistic challenges maybe at the beginning, with the cultural adjustment, with all the logistics that go around relocating people. And, as Brett mentioned earlier, we've partnered with service providers that do just that, the logistical support. And as you dig through this BCG study, you will find that's not the whole piece of the pie, is it, brett?
Speaker 2:No, and this image here, which comes out of the study courtesy of BCG, of course, our friends there shows a little bit of a graph on what are the things that people want. One of the things that's interesting is they would like to have the support of a cultural buddy, somebody they can partner with. Of course we encourage that too can partner with. Of course we encourage that too. We say that when you go into a new place, there's nothing better than having a local mentor that can help build on what we might prepare them for initially when we talk about cultural observations and cultural connections and cultural differences.
Speaker 2:But of course, that buddy may be a local person, and it's also really important to understand that a local person from a culture may actually not be the best person to partner up with someone like that.
Speaker 2:Because they are in their culture, they've grown up there, they've been educated there and many times they can absolutely tell you what you can do when it comes to protocols and the do's and don'ts and things like that.
Speaker 2:But what drives that, what is the cultural driver of those things, becomes much more complicated and, as I've always said, you know, I've learned so much about my country since I've left it than I probably ever knew when I was living there, and I probably wasn't the best person back then to perhaps receive an overseas expat, because I now know that it's really important to understand the cultural nuances, that kind of flow under the river, on, you know, just close to the riverbed, which we are not visible on the surface. So, in collaboration with yes, a support person, support person on the other end, also having internally not just externally like the things that Christian and I provide, but also internally in your company a constant education of people around cultural differences and how important and how you can leverage them, as Christian says, for this greater success, that's possible with the innovation that comes with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think when surveys or studies like this talk about this buddy system, this is a language that is probably easiest to relate to survey respondents, because they probably don't have an idea of what is a culture code. Right, the buddy metaphor works just fine for the purposes of the survey, but what this boils down to is actually giving people who transfer globally for work, giving them a coach, a support system to help them understand what's going on where I'm working now. How am I supposed to interpret these behaviors? And internally, I think, especially if you're a bigger organization with a constant in and out flow of talent, I think it's critically important that you have people embedded in your organizational structure that understand the needs of your global talent flow, and I'm not talking about a global mobility expert in your HR team. You want that probably as well, and I hope you have that, but it goes beyond that.
Speaker 1:You want somebody we, brett and I, we would call it a chief culture officer somebody in your organization whose main objective is to realize and understand that we're a team that consists of a diverse group of people with diverse backgrounds and different cultural predispositions to work behavior and work styles. And how do we, as an organization strategically harness these people diverse elements and how do we bring them together? And ideally, you don't do. You don't let this happen accidentally. You do this strategically and that's where this network of buddies needs coordination, needs intentionality. Right, and that's essentially one of the core recommendations from this Boston Consulting study for global employers is you got to have a system in place that handles this. So if you don't have that, you're missing out on the best talent that's available, on the 25% in your organization that are willing to move, to move, and if you as an employer don't provide that, maybe another employer will, and they're willing to not just move locations, they're also willing to move employers in order to get that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, so we're going to link to this very, very interesting report. There's a lot to dig into and if you're a global mobility professional, you'd probably geek out on something like this, as we do. We love to dig into these reports because we work with these people all the time. This is one of our jobs. Whether they're moving countries or not, the people that are in organizations are really hungry. Once you give them a taste of this, they're really hungry for understanding this stuff and it gives them even more support in your organization. So listen to your uncle christian and uncle brett. You know we're trying to help you out here uncle.
Speaker 1:Yes, call me uncle, call me anything, and make sure you not only call us uncle, you also ring that bell or subscribe to our channel. Whatever you need to do on your screen, whether it's on your computer, your tablet, your phone, wherever you're watching this, make sure you subscribe to the two chaps many cultures youtube channel and make sure you listen to us on the various podcast outlets that we're available at. If you don't want to look at the uncles and just want to listen to their very convincing voices, you can do so on iHeartRadio, on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on what am I missing, brett?
Speaker 2:On all the other ones, wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1:That's where you'll find us, wherever good podcast listening services are sold, and all the other wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 2:That's where you'll find us wherever, wherever good podcast listing services are sold. That's how they used to convince people with books, right you? You only get the very best services, uh, the information from the very best services, and that's what we're about. So, yes, subscribe, follow us and, um, please, most of all, engage with us. Send us a comment, uh, let us know if you're in the global mobility space and what do you hear from your employees about what they want, what they expect in support when they're moving, because this is something that it is an evolving moving target from one time to the other.
Speaker 2:So it's important that we constantly stay involved and informed about that, because the world is a busy place and it's moving at rapid pace and we need to keep up with that, and that's what we all should do. So thanks again for joining us. Another episode of Two Chaps, many Cultures in the Can. Again, if you're listening to us on podcast or you're watching us on YouTube, we are very grateful for your attention and we look forward to the next episode. See you later, see y'all.