5 Tips to Maintain Employee Culture Across International Offices
Culture plays such a significant role in everything that makes a company tick. It’s no secret that keeping your company culture intact when it expands beyond its home country is no easy feat.
Having an employee culture that’s consistent and aligned from branch to branch is imperative if you want to ensure that employees are happy and motivated to continue working for your company.
Keeping an employee culture intact when it expands beyond its home country is no easy feat. However, if you’re ready to learn how to maintain employee culture across international offices, here are five simple tips to help you do just that.
Be consistent in your approach
One of the best ways to keep your company culture intact when expanding internationally is to be consistent in your approach. This will involve mapping out what you expect from each branch and standardizing those expectations across international offices.
This can include everything from how employees dress, how they are expected to behave in meetings, what kind of projects they take on, etc. This is easier said than done but well worth the effort.
It’s easier for employees to maintain their culture when all branches are operating under the same rules and guidelines. That way, employees don’t have to worry about different regulations depending on where they work or their time zone.
Make sure your values are clear
The first thing you can do to maintain employee culture across international offices is to make sure your values are clear. Often, it’s hard for employees to understand their company values if they don’t know what those values are in the first place.
If there’s one thing, you should do when expanding internationally, make sure that your workforce knows your company’s values and how they align with its mission.
Allow flexibility regarding different cultures
It’s much easier to maintain an employee culture when you have a set of cultural norms that everyone adheres to. However, what happens when you have employees in vastly different cultures?
You can allow your employees to maintain their own cultures while making sure that those cultures are aligned with the overall corporate culture. This includes keeping aspects like dress codes and holidays unique to certain countries.
Invest in tools and technology for a better working environment
It’s essential to invest in tools and technology to help you create a better working environment for your employees. That might be anything from investing in a video conferencing service like Skype for Business to investing in office space that provides more amenities.
The easier it is to hire the right employees and make sure they are happy with the company, your international operations will be successful. It can be beneficial to outsource certain aspects, especially the hiring process. An employer of record can be helpful for HR when setting up international offices, as can using managed IT services to improve security and reduce downtime.
Employee culture across international offices: encourage frequent communication
The first thing you need to do is encourage frequent communication. This means that when you can connect with employees from other branches, don’t hesitate to do so. As a result, you’ll be able to have more face-to-face time with your employees and get a feel for their culture and their personal needs and requests.
You’ll also have an opportunity to ask them about how they like working for your company and share stories about the culture back home or what it was like when they started at the company.
