How to Create a Global HR Strategy

With economic signs pointing to stable global growth and easing inflation, the world is your company’s oyster, but how should you prepare for global human resource management?

A successful global strategy will mean juggling multiple countries, cultures, and markets while embracing an inclusive, adaptable approach. And HR pros are the orchestra conductor, harmonizing everything from talent to compliance—and the reward is a business that doesn’t just survive but thrives on the global scene.

Read on to learn how you can implement a global HR strategy into your existing approach for overseas success.

Why You Need a Global HR Strategy

Best Buy, Walmart, and Starbucks—all hugely successful US businesses, but they all also failed to expand in a foreign market because they didn’t adapt to the new culture and people, explains Dr. Joshua Conrad Jackson in his Harvard Business Review analysis.

Instead, companies looking to be “more trustworthy abroad, more appealing to foreign consumers, and ultimately more sustainable,” he says, should use a REACH strategy:

• Re lationships with local partners
• A dapting a brand to local culture
• C ommitting to diversity and inclusion
• H armonizing with local governance

In other words, while you should stay true to your core company’s values and mission, the way you represent those values and how you go about achieving that mission will need to change. Succeeding on the global scene will require empathizing and understanding your new audiences, both customers and employees.

Top Challenges Your Global HR Strategy Needs to Address

International Compliance

Overseas business ventures come with a whole new set of legal and ethical compliance rules you’ll need to follow.

Here are the top country-specific legal and regulatory factors to consider in your global HR practices:

• Data protection regulations: Each country you operate in will have different data protection laws. For example, under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you’ll need to get candidate consent to collect and process their personal information as part of the hiring process.
• Immigration laws: Will you be sending any current employees to your new global locations or bring some of your new overseas hires to the US? Check the IRS’s tax rules, understand your duty of care to US workers overseas, and check if you’ll need visas for your foreign employees. You’ll also need to check with the countries you work in for their visa and work requirements.
• Labor laws: Regulations around employee contracts, layoff procedures, compensation, salaries, and working hours vary by country. For example, the EU tends to have stronger worker protections, specifically around terminations, time off, and non-full-time roles.

Candidate Recruitment

As you look to hire in new countries, you’ll need to understand how to adapt your recruitment strategies. Not only might people not know who you are as an employer, they might also not know your business, so part of your focus will need to be on recruitment marketing.

Here are some tips to get you started:

• Promote your employer brand through marketing campaigns. Time to think like a marketer and get ads out in front of your target audience. You won’t win talent if they don’t know who you are and why they should work for you.
• Monitor the candidate experience and understand your competition. Conduct surveys to understand why candidates drop out of your recruiting pipeline and why they go elsewhere.
• Get ingrained in the local culture. The best way for you to know what’s driving candidates’ search (and win them over) is to understand the local job market, employee expectations, and cultural norms. Depending on your budget and staffing needs, that could look like sending landing teams to your new locations or working with a local agency.

5 Tips on Implementing a Global HR Strategy

Companies that prioritize talent in their business strategy see higher total shareholder returns than their competitors, McKinsey finds, so HR needs to be part of the conversation for your company to be successful in achieving its expansion goals.

So what should your HR team be prepared to do as part of a global HR strategy?

• Develop global recruitment strategies: Unless you already have an international presence as an employer, you’ll need to build a strong employer brand and review your current hiring processes to ensure a positive candidate experience as you move into new markets. How will you balance standardized processes (so your team remains efficient and consistent) and localization (to accommodate regional differences)?
• Build a diverse and inclusive culture: Promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to create a welcoming environment for all employees. This includes providing training on unconscious bias, cultural sensitivity, and inclusive leadership.
• Develop global leadership skills: Start identifying and developing high-potential employees for international leadership roles. Provide training and coaching to build global leadership competencies.
• Support collaboration and connection: Put tools and processes in place that make it easier for people to work across different time zones and languages. If you’re not already doing so, you’ll need to lean into remote and virtual work modes. Additionally, you’ll need to set standards for what’s acceptable and appropriate communication at your organization.
• Get extra comfortable with data and analytics: With even more compliance, performance, and compensation complexity on your plate, HR analytics need to become your best friend. You’ll want to be able to consistently monitor your key HR metrics to support the company's global expansion efforts.