So my wife has been on a homemade donut kick lately. \u00a0That\u2019s right, every weekend I get to sample another dozen donuts. \u00a0Those of you who read often know that my constant struggle to stay fit must work really well when there is a new batch of donuts sitting around the house every Saturday morning. \u00a0We\u2019ve got the chocolate dipped, the glazed, the orange glazed. \u00a0She says she is going to try a custard filled next. \u00a0I\u2019ve sampled a quite a few dough recipes so far. \u00a0It started pretty poorly. \u00a0She tried to source a recipe off of some random website that sounded reasonable. \u00a0The dough turned out to be a bit too firm and chewy. \u00a0Therefore, the next go was from an authoritative cookbook by a guy who is a famous executive pastry chef and happens to have a cookbook exclusively about donuts. \u00a0This went a bit too far, and the dough was possibly too airy. \u00a0Not to be too Goldilocks, but my wife then blended the recipes until she found just the right combination of (turns out it was milk content). \u00a0She went from kinda random, to expert driven, and finally figured out somewhere in the middle was going to actually work out.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been experimenting with the idea of standardization for decades, but more so in the last 15 years as our organizations have gotten more global and those global populations have kept increasing. \u00a0The evolution started with zero standardization. \u00a0it was really step one as global organizations just did whatever they wanted to. \u00a0There were shadow HR systems everywhere, country specific processes, and inconsistent delivery to the business. \u00a0Local HR organizations provided generally adequate service to the business, but corporate HR organizations couldn\u2019t get simple head counts let alone anything that was actually useful.<\/p>\n
Many organizations have moved to the next stage of evolution, the corporate mandate. \u00a0Corporate HR organizations tried to make some sense of this mayhem by implementing core HR systems and mandating that all countries around the globe had to have their employees entered into the common HR system. \u00a0This did nothing except ensure that country HR double entered employee data but kept their own individual way of processing transactions. \u00a0In almost all cases, the shadow systems (usually spreadsheets) still existed. \u00a0The problem is that most organizations think that there is a way to make the corporate mandate work, when really this is as much a failure as the mayhem that existed before.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve also gone down the road of \u201cthe only modifications to standard processes will be for local compliance needs.\u201d \u00a0Basically, we\u2019ve told the local HR organizations that the local practice is not acceptable and we\u2019re not going to cater to them unless there is a law involved. \u00a0Personally, I can\u2019t think of much that less engaging. \u00a0Some things make sense, like if we\u2019re transferring an employee, it should not be that different across the world. \u00a0Especially if transfers are across country borders, we really do want some consistency. \u00a0But when we get to things like how managers work with employee performance or the allocation of spot bonuses, there will often be some local flair that could be important.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019ve found is that the corporate HR mandate is just as dysfunctional as the mayhem of no standardization. \u00a0This is because the corporate mandate does not solution for local needs in any way, or even admit that local needs might be different. \u00a0It\u2019s a totally selfish view by corporate HR organizations that the need of central authority, consistency, governance and data override everything else. \u00a0If we treated our personal relationships this way, we\u2019d have no friends. \u00a0Luckily, we seem to have some sons socially in our personal lives. \u00a0Not so much in business though.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s my solution. \u00a0At the end of the day, it\u2019s about the business. \u00a0We need to let the in-country businesses decide that they can standardize and want to standardize. \u00a0This actually means de-standardizing for them. \u00a0In some cases, it\u2019s as simple as providing them with the localizations they need (and that we promised them for compliance reasons, but for some reason we never came through on that promise). \u00a0In other cases, it\u2019s giving in on the one extra level of approvals they want for the salary increase process. \u00a0In simple terms though, you almost never get what you want by mandate, you get it by partnership.<\/p>\n
These days, the new HR systems all pretty much come with packaged localizations, so it\u2019s not like the old days when you had to purchase the country pack and install the thing. \u00a0I\u2019ll admit I\u2019m not a fan of massive process customizations for every country – this becomes impossible to manage. \u00a0I\u2019m really not a fan of anything other than the minor token tweak. \u00a0What we\u2019ve found over time however, is giving in on one or two battles that are genuinely important to the local business will leave you from ten other battles that could have happened. \u00a0At the end of the day, it\u2019s about finding that middle ground that gets you the desired results for both corporate HR and the local business at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So my wife has been on a homemade donut kick lately. \u00a0That\u2019s right, every weekend I get to sample another dozen donuts. \u00a0Those of you who read often know that my constant struggle to stay fit must work really well…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,45,28,47,48,8,2,34,11],"tags":[406,438,422],"class_list":["post-2568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-change-management","category-collaboration","category-communications","category-governance","category-hr-service-delivery","category-strategies","category-hr-technology","category-implementation","category-service-delivery","tag-global","tag-service-delivery","tag-standardization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2568"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2570,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2568\/revisions\/2570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}