Intercultural differences and global diversity pose growing leadership and organizational questions for international companies. How can teams be successfully led across cultures, time zones and regional characteristics? A values-based corporate culture creates the framework to strengthen belonging and at the same time make global structures locally compatible. Holm Braun, Senior Director HR at ADP, shows how global companies can productively use cultural differences and make international leadership scalable.
Executive Summary
Values-based leadership in global companies
- The challenge: International companies are faced with the task of organizing global collaboration across different cultures, time zones and regional work realities. Uniform leadership approaches quickly reach their limits. A lack of cultural understanding, a lack of belonging and rigid global guidelines can have a lasting impact on collaboration, employee retention and trust.
- The solution: Holm Braun shows why value-based leadership is becoming a central success factor for global companies. What is crucial is a common cultural framework that creates global orientation and at the same time leaves enough room for local interpretation – for example through regionally budgeted business resource groups that make diversity tangible from the bottom up. This approach is complemented by leadership development, intercultural training, global learning platforms and digital HR tools that structurally support international collaboration.
- Your benefit: Companies create stronger belonging in international teams, improve collaboration across cultural boundaries and increase the scalability of global leadership and organizational structures. At the same time, value-based leadership and suitable digital systems help to make international cooperation more stable, effective and sustainable in the long term.
- Focus: Values-based leadership in global companies, international teams, intercultural leadership, global corporate culture, leadership development, digital HR tools, global organizational structures.
When companies expand globally, they are often confronted with intercultural differences. The corporate culture that works in your own culture reaches its limits, is rejected or, in the worst case, is perceived as an insult. The result: dissatisfaction, employees who feel misunderstood or even discriminated against, and increasing termination rates.
Employee retention becomes both more important and more difficult as the company grows. You cannot manage employees from different cultures in the same way. Action-oriented guidelines cannot therefore be enforced globally. In some cultures, success is defined and celebrated individually, while in others, the focus is on the success of the team and thus the community. ADP, a leading provider of payroll services and HR solutions with over 67,000 employees worldwide, therefore relies on values-based leadership.
Values-based leadership: The key to greater cohesion
Shared values create an umbrella across the entire organization. The trick is to formulate these in a generally valid way so that people, regardless of their cultural background, can identify with them. They promote a sense of belonging to the company and define global operations.
At the same time, the values must be defined in such a way that they allow local interpretation. Because only values that are lived find their way into everyday work and shape the corporate culture. Individual countries and regions are thus able to set their own priorities, interpret the values locally and translate them into actions.
Managers play a central role in this values-oriented world because they live the values in their daily actions.
A proven approach to fostering belonging is to create spaces for like-minded people to interact. In so-called business resource groups, employees come together on a wide variety of subject areas. For example, ADP offers groups for women in leadership positions and for the LGBTQIA+ community, there are environmental initiatives for ecological sustainability, measures for people with disabilities and other groups that deal with social responsibility. In doing so, companies also underline their commitment to diversity.
Although these groups are organized globally, they always have local leadership teams. Ideally, these groups are also supported with budgets and working time at the local level and with visibility to management. While each group has a global organization, it can plan and implement local initiatives that best reflect the culture at each location. In this way, companies create a global framework for belonging and a local platform that can incorporate regional differences.
In summary, the groups complement a proactive human resources policy within the company. They also involve employees in discussions and ideas in a bottom-up manner, rather than enforcing them through top-down management policies.
Many global companies try to scale down “culture” until there is a small residue that everyone can agree on. It is important to celebrate cultures loudly and proudly. This includes creating a space for religious festivals, holidays and events. To be globally inclusive, it’s a good idea to offer different times for events to best represent time zones.
Managers as role models
However, a values-based corporate culture only takes hold if it is modeled and supported from above. On the one hand, managers must be able to embody and live these values, but on the other hand they must also be sensitive to other cultures in which their employees are rooted.
Approachability is the first step. Regardless of geographical distance, managers must find ways to remain close to their team both professionally and personally, to accept feedback openly and to show presence. Through regular conversations, managers build trust and can therefore act as advocates for their team.
But this understanding does not come by itself. Regular training, intercultural training and the development of leadership skills need to be learned. Through global training platforms, companies have the opportunity to offer local, regional and global training. Employees are thus able to specifically develop these skills.
A mix of mandatory courses and personal preferences promises the greatest success. This allows managers to define mandatory training courses for their team and assign them accordingly.
Raising awareness of intercultural issues usually comes directly from people from the respective region. The challenge for companies is to take these people seriously, to offer them a platform and to provide them with all the internal resources they need to feel comfortable. In addition to training, this also includes internal communication channels, the intranet, where the responsible contact persons can be found, and close feedback and development discussions.
Choose the right tool
Large corporations are usually well positioned when it comes to training platforms and digital tools for personnel management and development. However, medium-sized companies that are just starting to expand are faced with the question of which solutions are really necessary.
- Payroll and time recording:
A payroll and time tracking tool is a must for every business. Those who rely on providers with strong global coverage or local presence in the desired market ensure that local laws are adhered to. - Global training platform:
Intercultural training and awareness training can be easily rolled out to the entire workforce via a global learning platform. It also offers the opportunity to set up regionally specific courses and reflect individual preferences, skills and interests. - Performance Management:
Although intercultural differences have little impact on development goals, they do influence how the achievement of these goals can be promoted. Companies should clearly show career paths, but also allow for branches and alternative paths. The current results of the ADP study “People at Work” show that a lack of development opportunities is the most common reason for job dissatisfaction and job changes worldwide. Powerful performance management tools help define goals and focus areas and initiate regular check-ins with managers.
It is also a good idea to invest in survey tools to carry out regular pulse measurements among the workforce. A leadership navigator can help leaders at any level develop and receive support.
What works in a specific company and where gaps in coverage and needs arise can often only be recognized in practice. However, it is important that companies use their digital solutions to collect data, derive insights from it and initiate changes.
Live diversity successfully
Anyone who wants to lead across national borders needs a values-based framework that provides the basis for action and at the same time leaves room for interpretation. “One size fits all” as a leadership style does not work in intercultural areas. Dedicated training is needed for every country, every region and every level in the company to raise awareness of differences, actively live and celebrate cultures and create visibility for them. Digital tools can help navigate this environment while not losing sight of employees and their development.
Ultimately, diversity is a central issue in every company – but what matters is how consistently and credibly it is practiced in everyday work.
HR Beyond Borders: Bridges between markets, cultures and HR realities
This article by Holm Braun is part of our ongoing series Global HR Leadership at Scale, which appears under the editorial umbrella HR Beyond Borders. The series highlights how international organizations are globally shaping and scaling HR, talent management, leadership, governance, resilience and workforce transformation in increasingly complex geopolitical, economic and technological environments.
The series has so far included strategic insights and international leadership perspectives from Kameshwari Rao (Publicis Sapient), Rahul Oza and Simone Puddu (Rödl & Partner, Pune/Bangalore), David Heffernan (Cognizant), Gabriele Fanta (Körber), Thomas Wolf, Ingo Todesco and Kelly Stolz (KPMG), Mirabela Ionescu and Milan Battisti (Nagarro), Rupert d’Mello (Cognizant), Michael Baier (PageGroup Germany & Austria), Bernhard Muhler and Kaan Bludau (BludauPartners), Alexander Wilhelm (InterSearch), Apoorva Singh (Rödl & Partner, Pune), Yuri Akahira (Staffbase Tokyo), Barbara Matthews (Remote), Martin Bitzinger (Mitel), Harald Smolak (Atreus), Nils Haupt (Hapag-Lloyd) and Sindhu Gangadharan (SAP Labs India / Indo-German Chamber of Commerce).
Thematically, the spectrum ranges from global capability centers, AI competency building, executive search, international labor relations and global workforce models to geopolitical resilience, leadership in volatile conditions, cross-border operating models and the changing role of HR in globally networked organizations.
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