Summary:

Glen Loveland, the leader of the People Team at United Integrated Services, shares his expertise in building elite teams across geographical boundaries, borders, and cultures. With his extensive experience in expatriate management, Glenn provides valuable insights on effective communication strategies for diverse teams. He emphasizes the importance of keeping communication simple, using multiple channels, and over-communicating to bridge cultural and generational gaps. Glen also highlights the need for HR professionals to continuously update their skills and stay relevant in the rapidly changing landscape of HR.

Key Takeaways:

• Keep communication simple and clear, avoiding complex jargon.
• Utilize multiple communication channels to cater to different preferences and cultural norms.
• Over-communicate to ensure messages are understood and received by all team members.
• Adapt communication strategies to bridge generational gaps and accommodate diverse workforce needs.
• Continuously update HR skills and stay informed about new laws and regulations.

Chapters:

Timestamp

0:02:20 Glenn's experience in Beijing and working with expats

0:05:14 Importance of keeping communication simple and using multiple channels

0:07:07 Bridging the gap between different communication preferences and cultures

0:09:13 Formal and informal modes of communication in cross-cultural teams

0:12:16 Universal communication strategies in international and American companies

0:14:03 Pitching new ideas as pilots and the importance of onboarding

0:16:48 Applying global workforce management lessons to local companies

0:18:26 Continuous learning and staying relevant in HR

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In fact, he's actually lived in Beijing for 13 years. So it's a great privilege for me to welcome Glenn to the show. Hey Glenn, thanks for joining us today.

Glen Loveland: Hi CT. Thank you so much for having me. I love the HR impact podcast. I always learn so much by just hearing from different HR leaders about what their companies are doing.

And I think that so much is changing in HR these days that we really need to stay on top of it. So I look forward to discussing these issues with you.

Glen Loveland: So I've had an interesting career. My career actually started in public relations. I went from working at a Starbucks to being a congressional staffer. I was a press secretary in Washington, D. C. for seven years. And there's a lot of correlation, I think, with communications and HR.

You need to figure out how to frame messages. You need to figure out how to explain complicated things. It doesn't matter if you're a recruiter trying to explain to a candidate. About your industry, or if you're trying to explain complex leave policies like FMLA to an employee so I really started my HR journey working for Pearson in Beijing at that time.

I was there for seven years and then I was contacted by a recruiter to join the project that I'm with now, which [00:03:00] is called UIS. It is in Phoenix, Arizona, and U. I. S. Has been a partner with T. S. M. C. In Taiwan for more than 30 years building the semiconductor fabs there. This is T. S. M. C. And U. I. S. 's 1st project together in the United States. T. S. M. C. did build a factory in Washington state a while ago, but this is their 1st time cooperating. It is a 40 billion dollar semiconductor plant that's being constructed here in Phoenix, under huge scrutiny. President Biden has come it's in the newspapers every single day.

So it's been an interesting journey.

CheeTung Leong: Right now at UIS you're managing expats the other way. So from coming in from Taiwan or other places into the United States, is that correct?

Glen Loveland: That's correct. The bulk of our expatriate hires are from Taiwan, but we also have people from mainland China, from Singapore, from Malaysia, from the UK, because this is just a project that really requires a lot of expertise. Building the semiconductor fabs is not easy. One of the main buyers of the chips made in Arizona will be Apple.

And so it really requires the best and the brightest.

What have you found that has helped you to cross these borders and to pull teams of different people from different backgrounds together and function effectively.

Glen Loveland: I think there's a couple of things. There's no, quick fix solutions to this.

It can be complicated, but a couple of things that crop to mind. One is the acronym K I S, which stands for keep it simple, stupid. I think that sometimes companies feel like when they need to communicate new initiatives or they're, rolling out a new health insurance policy or something like that.

CheeTung Leong: I love how you've become so sensitized to different channels of communication beyond just the traditional email or Microsoft Teams or Slack. And have you found that it has been difficult for people in different cultures who have grown up familiar with one channel, but are now in a team with [00:07:00] people who are familiar with other channels.

Do you find that bridging that gap has been a challenge in your experience?

Glen Loveland: 100%. And I would say, beyond even being the cultural, sometimes there's the generation gap. A lot of millennials and Gen Z, they love using messaging apps where they can get immediate feedback, whereas, Gen X baby boomers they might prefer the traditional way that, business used to be communicated at work via email and those methods.

I think it's really important if you're recruiting someone, say, an expat to come work in a company that has a more foreign or non American culture to explain those things at the beginning Hey, at this company, this is one of the main tools that they use. You will be expected to download it.

And also, after the pandemic, a lot of people were proclaiming globalization is dead. Three years later, we're seeing the opposite of that is true. More and more companies are doing trade with each other. And I really think as HR professionals, we owe it to ourselves and the teams that we're working with to keep introducing and integrating and pushing these different tools.

Do you find that still to be true even when working with cross cultural teams?

Glen Loveland: It's interesting when I worked at the Walt Disney Company in Beijing, something that Disney is quite well known for across all their global locations is doing all hands town hall meetings where you get some executives up on a stage, the employees are in the audience and they can ask pretty much anything that they want to and that kind of format especially with some of our local managers in Beijing, that was really different and a little bit intimidating for them.

And we knew that we needed to communicate that in a really clear and sensitive way. And I explained to the management, I don't think this is something we can do. This needs to be a mandatory meeting where we've got a PPT, we're explaining what's going on, we're letting people ask questions, because I think especially when it comes, to people's pocketbook, their salary, you have to be extra, extra sensitive there.

CheeTung Leong: And how did that go? In the end, what was the mode of communication that was preferred? How was the message received? Did you find that you needed to have different breakout groups?

CheeTung Leong: Who bought a brunt of being responsible for this communications?

Glen Loveland: I think HR sometimes we're the bad guys.

We're the fall guys for some of those things, but I also think employees ultimately realize that, there's a lot of decisions that are made at much higher levels and, that decision truly was not a decision of. CCTV executive management. That was something happening at, much higher levels.

CheeTung Leong: Did you find that there was any difference at all being in an international company versus if you're in a purely American company, would there be any difference in communication strategy at all?

And I said, can we just try this for 90 days? We'll look at those employee survey results to see if we get better results. There was a monetary impact. There was a bottom line impact for the company, but. After 90 days, what we saw, employees were rating that onboarding process better, and we were also seeing less turnover in those first 90 days, because honestly, if you mess up that onboarding part, it's just, it's so hard to correct with employees later, I know Engage Rocket, this is what [00:15:00] you all are really specialist in, is that engagement part on boarding is so critical.

CheeTung Leong: The communication strategy level it almost doesn't matter. Whether you're dealing with an international workforce or an American first workforce, but it comes, when it comes to the block and tackling of the communication tactics and channels, that's where you need to be a little bit more flexible or open to different communication styles, how different messages are going to be received.

And how you should be communicating certain messages across channels. Would that kind of resonate with your experience so far?

Glen Loveland: Absolutely. And, the other thing that I would say is. Undoubtedly, there's a lot of people listening to this thinking, Oh this doesn't really apply to my company because we're very local.

And so even if your company doesn't have expats right now, think about these things from the lens of generation gap. Americans are highly mobile. My sister grew up in New Mexico when she moved and took a job in Minnesota. She discovered it was a very different culture. So you need to adapt these things, even if you're just a purely local company,

And this could be even location based, whether you're East Coast, West Coast, somewhere in the Midwest, whatever it may be people would still communicate in different ways. And. Using some of these core insights and principles, we stand a better chance of getting people on board with the changes that we're trying to make.

If I could get you to break everything you've said down into a framework or a checklist for how you would communicate across cultures, I've gotten three key things. The KISS principle, making sure that you over communicate and making sure that if you have big changes, pilot them in small ways first.

Is there any other way you would break it down if you were to advise a chief people officer on communicating across cultures?

You're going to be working with some people that have a G. E. D. Versus someone that has a P. H. D. Using multiple channels, one channel does not work for just, for communicating for one audience. And then truly the last thing that I would say. We need to keep brushing up on our skills.

H. R. Is changing so fast. There's new laws, there's new regulations coming out all the time. Listening to shows like H. R. Impact and others gaining different perspectives, I think, are so important for us to keep brushing up and being relevant because especially post covid remote work, hybrid roles, all of this stuff, it's new and we have to figure it out together.

Glen Loveland: I know on HR Impact, everyone says LinkedIn. So I think that's the best way. It's Glen with 1N Loveland, and I'm always happy to connect with others and answer their questions and learn from you too.

CheeTung Leong: Thank you so much for hanging out with us today, Glenn. And for those of you who are listening, I hope you really enjoyed the show and learned a thing or two about managing across cultures. Make sure you drop us a review and tune in the next time on the HR Impact show, where we'll have more leadership insights for you from HR. I'm CT and it's been a pleasure having you. Thanks so much for listening.