Seeking Advice on Building a Global HR System for a Diverse Workforce Across 20+ Countries

Dear all,

I'm glad to visit this wonderful site for the global HR community. It is my first time writing here. My company, which has over 5,000 employees in more than 20 countries, hopes to build a global HR system in-house with virtually full HR functions, including employee and manager self-services on eRecruitment, eLearning, ePerformance Management, eJob Management, eOrganization Management, eReporting, etc. Does anyone have similar experience? I look forward to some experience sharing on how to cater to unique requirements from various countries, such as statutory, cultural, and market concerns, as well as requirements on processes, UI design, data structure, data fields, and the associated syntax and business rules handling. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could share further insights with me.

Best regards,
WC

Dear Colleagues,

Building a Global HR System

In as much as building a global HR system is a lofty idea for your company, WC, one serious consideration to be made would include culture/diversity, distance, local business environment, legislations, regulatory authorities, national/local holidays, et al.

Local Harmonization of HR Functions

What I may suggest for a start would be the local harmonization of the HR functions in the 20 countries. The thinking and perception of the different workforce should be brought to the level of a globalized reasoning with the view that cross-border transfer should be enticing. Then gradually, a proper global mix of the company's workforce would be attained.

It should be noted that this could take a period of 3-5 years of consistent work. Then the next stage would be that the different HR heads in the 20 countries report to a central Ombudsman at the headquarters who has all the data supplied from the branches, with which he can now work.

Well, we know of some multinationals who try to have a kind of harmonized HR, but the constraints mentioned above keep on drawing them back. You could give your idea a trial or understudy companies such as Shell, Mobil, et al.

Thanks