Staying put
For EMC Corporation, being part of the globalised company also means staying put in your home country. And no, it’s not a contradiction. By Lisa Cheong.
If you were an employee based in Singapore and were headhunted for a global position, chances are you would probably have to relocate to the headquarters in order to do your job.
But for a globalised company such as EMC Corporation, boundaries or the notion of “corporate headquarters” do not play a significant role for the company in making its decisions of where global heads are hired or reside in.
And in fact, Paul Sexton, human resources director for South Asia and India says the Asian region has been growing in significance in recent years for EMC Corporation. And as a result, ideas and priorities of Asia Pacific and Japan region are now commanding a larger say in the company’s overall strategies. “The voice of Asia is a lot louder than what it was a number of years ago,” he says.
One example Sexton cites is EMC’s recent investment in the first ever E-Lab to be built outside North America. Serving the Asia Pacific region, this 15,000 square foot facility in Changi will conduct the IT industry’s rigorous, end-to-end interoperability and integration testing.
But while EMC prides itself as a global company, it is very much a “local” company when it comes to its recruitment process. Sexton describes the company’s resourcing process as one which starts in the country of operation and only then working its way out if necessary.
“If there is a shortage and we need to cast our net further, we do it on a gradual scale. We will look one step further within the region, then within the Asia Pacific and Japan geography and then if necessary within the other geographies.”
And in the case of EMC’s E-Lab, the company hired Steven Say, an IT veteran and former customer, as the top person responsible for leading EMC’s R&D efforts. The company also hired 100 Singaporean research and development engineers for the local facility as well. “We didn’t fly someone to from the US to head it up,” Sexton says.
When asked if there were any roles or skills that the local market lacks, Sexton says most roles are “pretty easy” to fill. This is because countries such as Singapore have seen a rise in number of people who worked and lived overseas due to educational or aspirational career options. “As they come back into the market here, we are really able to fulfill most roles.”
For instance, EMC’s global head of the its residency business unit is a Singaporean based in Singapore who started in the local operations and moved into a regional role before he was tapped to lead the global business.
But don’t worry about whether productivity would be hampered, says Sexton. In global roles such as this, regardless of where the leader is based, he or she would still have to manage a diverse and geographically-scattered team and still face the challenge of managing people on different time zones. So what does it matter if a person is based in New Delhi, New York or Singapore?
Furthermore, as a technology-driven company, EMC uses a range of communication tools such as video-conferencing, conference calls, email dialogue and blogs to faciliate the transfer of knowledge between employees who are not situated in the same office.
But for certain training programmes which is conducted face-to-face, companies would historically send their employees to the headquarters. EMC now sends its employees to the areas where the knowledge base resides. This means EMC employees are now travelling to Beijing for their pre-sales conference or to Singapore to get schooled on technical competencies. “It [is] dictated by where the knowledge is,” Sexton says.
Telecommunication tools now allow employees to interact with each other without having to relocate. While the company is not adversed to relocating employees if necessary, Sexton says he does not see talent mobility to be of an increase within the company. This is also a testament to how the Asian region has been able to accomodate the company’s talent needs.
“We’re of a size and of a mindset where you don’t need to move a person in order for the person to be successful,” he concludes.
