In this Jeitocast Karen Beaman interviews Sandee Pierce on the cultural differences around the world that impact effective working relationships on a global project. Sandee shares her experiences and learnings developed over many years of managing large global teams and provides some helpful tips and recommendations to ensure effective global collaboration.

 What are some of the cultural differences that affect working on a global project? Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this Jeitocast Karen Beaman interviews Mike Kent on change management, why it’s important, and why people should care about managing change. Mike talks about the key components of a change management program, who should be involved in the change management process, and who should manage the overall effort.

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In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Alsen Hsein, Senior China Advisor with Jeitosa Group based in Shanghai. Alsen has been working in China for the last 40 years, and seen the legal and regulatory environment change significantly. The biggest challenge that China will be facing for the coming four to five years is in acquiring and retaining talented and experienced managers. Current projections are that China needs 75,000 manager level individuals just to fill their current open positions. Alsen talks about some of the strategies that Chinese companies are implementing to help meet their talent challenges.

 What is changing in the HR landscape in China? Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this month’s Jeitocast Karen Beaman interviews Steve Parker on how HR Shared Services can help achieve greater efficiencies and effectiveness.  Steve talks about how it’s important to realize that not every high-volume, transaction-based activity is necessarily a good candidate to move into a shared services group.  The most effective use of the HR Shared Services balances three components together to determine what should be transitioned:

1. move non-strategic, non-business unit critical activities that will scale appropriately to Shared Services while making sure the business units can still operate effectively,
2. make sure expertise exists within your Shared Services staff to handle the activities in a cost-effective manner with improved quality,
3. re-engineer or streamline processes before moving them to Shared Services to take advantage of process improvement and standardization.

 How can HR achieve efficiency and effectiveness through shared services? Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews John Macy, Senior Global Advisor for Jeitosa Group in Asia Pacific and founder of Competitive Edge Technology, on the subject of SOA and services / component architectures. John is also the founder of Human Resource Component Software Application Standard (HR-CSAS) which defines the component structure for Human Resource Management Systems. As we know, no one system can ever meet all of a customer’s needs, so the issue becomes integration. SOA or Service Oriented Architecture allows what the technologists call a “loose coupling” between components or services.

 What is a component architecture? Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Dr. Jac Fitz-Enz, President and Founder of Human Capital Source on the subject of using human resource metrics to determine business value. Dr. Jac is working on the next generation of workforce analytics by investigating what effects investing in people have on the business because, as Jac says, “it’s people who make the difference.” His Workforce Intelligence Report (published twice a year) surveyed 750 companies, supported with data from 70 research institutions, to discuss how, when, where, and in which way investments in people are making a difference. The report provides many examples of business value being created through investments in human capital.

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In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Michael Novak, CEO of Tertia Corporation, U.S. representative for China’s International Software Services Fair — the Comdex of China — and past president of Clark Consulting Group, the largest intercultural communications company in the U.S. with a focus on U.S.-Asia business communications. The jeito Karen and Michael discuss is: What do companies need to know about doing business in China?

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In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Kelvin Gray from Workday, to discuss the question: What is the best technology for HR? Kelvin talks about three key characteristics that are key to building and deploying effective HR applications today: Flexible – applications need to be easily modifiable to meet ever changing business demands.Object technology allows organizations to define “loosely coupled” business processes and that are easy to change and move around as business needs dictate. Accessible – systems should not be islands of information, rather data needs to be accessible and easily shared across applications… Web services is a group of technologies that facilitate application integration because they are built on de facto standards. Secure – we live in an era of heightened security concerns, hence the privacy and the protection of personal information is paramount – Data Encryption must be in the underlying architecture of the data base to ensure the greatest possible security for the HR system.

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In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Christian Adlung on the subject of what’s changing in the HR landscape in Europe. The top three trends that Christian sees occurring across Europe are: (1) harmonization of talent management practices and policies both on an European regional level and on a global level; (2) movement towards shared services, particularly placing shared service centers in Eastern Europe in countries such as Hungary and the Czech Republic; and (3) development of more strategic talent management capabilities, such as performance management, recruiting, and staffing. Christian also talks about the challenges multinational companies face when expanding their business in Europe: (1) the highly regulated and diverse legislative situation making it difficult to standardize practices across countries; (2) the strong cultural differences throughout the 27 different countries of the European Union, confounding the difficulties in harmonization; and (3) the uneven population size of companies in the different countries making it difficult to provide the same high levels of service to everyone.

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In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Lynne Morton on the subject of building an integrated competency-based approach in an organization. Lynne talks about the key competencies needed for working in a global environment by citing Morgan McCall, Developing Global Executives, who articulates the competencies of the global executive as falling into six buckets: (1) open-minded and flexible in thought and tactics, (2) having cultural interests and sensitivity, (3) being able to deal with complexity, (4) resilience, resourceful, optimistic, and energetic, (5) honesty and integrity (building on Jim Collins work on humility), and (6) value-added technical/business skills. Along with these competencies, it is also important for the successful global executive to have a stable family life

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