Culture Fusion for Successful Global Unification

My entire career has been working with fast-growing start-ups that have expanded globally. So I often get asked how to build Culture Fusion for Global Unification successfully. I have cultivated global cultures in many growing start-ups over the past 16 years. All the companies I represented had their HQ in either Seattle or SF with offices all over the US, Asia, EMEA, South America, Canada, and now with fully remote employees. Each leadership team recognized a need to develop a welcoming and unified global culture to have happy, productive employees. With this becoming a more widespread topic, I am sharing what I have learned works over the years.

Bridging the gaps and creating a unified global culture is about five key things:

Being connected to and employees hearing from the LT directly and regularly.

This can be during regular all-hands, monthly updates to the LT, newsletters, etc., and essential in-person visits. Having the LT rotate visits to the other offices once a quarter and creating a program or budget for employees to visit different offices. Nothing beats in-person connections, even in this remote work world we live in today. There are some great ways to develop and nurture these programs.

Communicating clearly and often, and being transparent.

Employees outside of HQ, regardless of whether they are in another country or another city, want to feel connected and regularly crave an understanding of what is happening at the company.

Listening to the employees and taking action.

Each person has different needs to keep them happy and successful. What may have worked for one company or employee may not work for another. Take the time to understand what is essential to your employees and take steps for change. Stay true to your culture but remember you have a global population filled with talented, diverse humans.

Respecting cultural (diversity) differences.

You will communicate and celebrate together. It’s also important to recognize the cultural differences and stay true to those while keeping the global company culture consistent throughout all the offices and remote teams. Something as simple as identifying some of these differences in a fun and accessible forum like Slack will go a long way in connecting the employees, educating them, and being inclusive. For example, Kings Day is a big holiday in the Netherlands. How easy would it be to have two or three local employees share how they celebrate, what the family traditions are, what special foods are served, and their favorite memory of the holiday? Small gestures feel significant to the global population.

Embracing company values and leading by example.

Having values that every employee can relate to and feel connected to helps foster global culture and is key to unification. You want to have these values in your job descriptions, website, and everything you do. You will hire and promote against them and have conversations that include them. For example, if one of your values is “Respect is the only way we treat our employees and clients,” then the employees will feel comfortable course-correcting someone who is acting disrespectfully. Everyone, from interns to the LT, should be on the same page and share the same “company language.”

There is much to uncover on this evolving topic, and we can learn from one another as we discover how to develop global unification in this new normal. Please, share what has worked for you!

~Cynthia

The UpGroup is a sustainable, female-owned boutique recruiting firm that offers Retained Executive Searches, Exclusive Contingent Recruiting, and the Container Model. For detailed info - www.theupgrp.com.

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For inquiries please reach out to directly to Cynthia Mason - cynthia@theupgrp.com