A global perspective is necessary for today’s HR professionals, who may work for businesses with operations, employees, customers, and supply chain partners around the world.
What is the Global mindset?
A global mindset is the ability to take an international, multidimensional perspective that is inclusive of other cultures, perspectives, and views.
Developing & promoting the Global mindset
To develop a global mindset, or to really achieve any change in behavior, three elements must be in place:
- Appropriate knowledge, skills, and understanding
- Desire and motivation on the part of the employee to change
- Support from systems and management
Once these requirements are in place, employees can increase their global business knowledge and enhance development of a global mindset in different ways.
The 4 Ts
HR has four powerful tools at its disposal that can be valuable strategies for creating a global mindset and enhancing the multicultural awareness of leaders and senior managers: the 4 Ts (travel, teams, training, and transfers).
| 4 Ts | Characteristics |
|---|---|
| Travel | Can help managers and employees gain experience Can help expand awareness and appreciation of different places and cultures Can increase managers’ and employees’ visibility within organization Can result in culture shock Can be time-consuming |
| Teams | Can be a highly effective way to help employees develop cross-cultural management skills when they work on culturally diverse or international teams |
| Training | Can broaden employees’ global and cultural awareness Can challenge ethnocentric definitions and cultural norms Can present challenges: must be relevant, must focus on cultural congruence and differentiation, must take into consideration participants’ diversity profiles |
| Transfers | Can have a strong and lasting impact on individuals’ relationship development and cross-cultural management skills Can help develop new, transferable skills and competencies through cultural immersion |
HR in Global organizations
