Integrating Jobs in a Global Architecture: An Essential Ingredient to Being a Global Business

By Carol Edelstein and Sydney Robertson, ORC Worldwide

In discussions of how organizations must adapt to changing global structures, it has almost become a cliché to mention Thomas Friedman's recent blockbuster The World is Flat. Of course, the reason that Friedman is evoked in so many discussions of global enterprises is that his primary thesis, namely, that the global landscape of business has been irreversibly altered by economic and technological advances in developing countries and global integration of business models, is absolutely correct!

Because workforces have changed drastically as the world has flattened and integrated, human resource functions are among those that have been most affected by the globalization of previously relatively localized organizations. In many ways, HR is the key to success or lack thereof as an organization positions itself within this new world—one that often encompasses the whole world. The successful global organization must:

These goals put tremendous pressure on HR divisions, which must enable global resource management that integrates talent into a seamless workforce across "hard" national, political, and cultural boundaries, and do so in a way that allows global teams to overcome sometimes large displacements in time and space.

In this article, we identify and address one of the most critical HR frameworks that must respond to globalization, namely the way in which designing global job structures has impact on global resource management. The issues discussed are relevant to all industries, but are perhaps especially critical in global pharma and other R&D-intensive organizations. Those organizations face particular challenges in producing a flexible and responsive team that is built from different parts of the world and must operate in an integrated manner.

The real-life case study of how a Fortune 500 biotechnology firm modified its HR procedures and guidelines in order to stimulate greater success in the global marketplace provides a framework for this discussion. The case study illustrates some of the processes this company implemented in global job integration and addresses key challenges for HR professionals when implementing such strategies. For the purposes of this article, we will refer to the subject of our case study as Subject Company.

Not surprisingly, many of the usual processes used in HR divisions need only small modification and optimization to serve an organization's global challenges very effectively. On the other hand, some HR processes need to be drastically modified or completely redesigned to ensure global success. We believe that global job structures clearly fit into this second category. Until an organization (and its HR professionals) is willing to change these structures to fit global rather than national demands and constraints, that organization will not have the framework that is required to optimize the global competitiveness of its workforce.

What is a "Global Job Structure"?

Before we determine the steps necessary to achieve an effective global job structure, we need to address a key question: What exactly do we mean by a global job structure? In essence, organizations need to think beyond the usual boundaries in defining and describing the ways in which work is structured and distributed. Thus, many companies will have very different HR functions and structures in the US than in emerging countries such as China and India. It is our thesis that the effective organization of the future will have more commonalities than differences as they look at the structure of their work functions in different parts of the world.

By "global job structure," we refer to common language used to describe job categories, job level differences, career ladders, and job family descriptions among various multinational locations. By so doing, an organization will achieve transparency of job descriptions and functions, and more effectively engage its workforce in toto in the corporate mission. In the case of the biotech/ pharmaceutical industry, there are several key drivers that make it advantageous to produce a transparent global job structure, largely due to the primacy of R&D and basic science in achieving business objectives. An effective global job structure will be the integrating framework and architecture that allows workforce management to respond to the accelerated globalization of biotech and pharma. Primary drivers of this change are:

In particular, companies are increasingly aware of the competition for key talent on a global basis, particularly in scientific areas, and of the need to plan, utilize, and deploy key resources effectively on a global basis.

Subject Company has achieved a global job structure by changing—and in many places flattening—its career framework. Potential employees of Subject Company are presented with clearly laid-out career paths along several different managerial and technical channels. For example, a prospective new hire in the scientific and technical professional channel is presented with seven distinct career steps from Associate to Vice President. These steps are presented to all prospective employees around the globe in the same manner. This approach has allowed Subject Company to recruit the best talent regardless of origin, and, as it develops, will move that talent as needed within the organization regardless of location. The global job structure provides a transparent framework for the employee, and lowers the barriers to optimizing the organization by moving the right people to the right locations as well as the moving the right work to the right people.

What Steps Might You Want to Take?

Is your organization positioned the way you want in order to maximize its impact in the flattening world? Is it worth your investment to improve your global job structure in order to enhance your transparency and outreach globally? What must your HR department do to enable a more flexible and globally relevant job structure? These questions are at the heart of your decision about next steps with respect to your current and future job structure.

In considering changes to your current job structure, the process used to construct a new global job structure is arguably the most important factor. Our conversations with principals at Subject Company indicate some general steps that will help to ensure success:

Subject Company's Process: The Start

We will use Subject Company as a case study for change in global job structure. As is the case in most major changes, there was a singular event that served as a catalyst for change. In the case of Subject Company, the implementation of SAP's enterprise-wide IT system served that role—in essence, it provided the opportunity for a "spring cleaning" of many of the long-standing processes. The sequence of events was driven by existing structures that needed reexamination in light of the changes stimulated by the new IT system. The following summarizes the confluence of events that converged to cause change:

This situation led to a broad-based desire to implement a job-based system (versus a person-based system) as long as certain parameters were maintained: The new system couldn't be too narrowly defined, and needed to incorporate flexibility.

Subject Company was in the right place at the right time to embrace a compelling case for change. The organization was becoming increasingly global and more complex. Line managers were heavily involved in creating parity across the organization through a common use of levels.

Subject Company's Process: The Building Blocks

Once Subject Company achieved an organizational will for change, they had to build and implement a process for the integration of jobs into a global architecture. We can describe their process in the context of the five necessary steps described earlier.

Conceptualize

A Steering Committee of senior leaders (direct-reports to the CEO) was established, making certain that it had both broad functional and geographic representation. The main decision-making to resolve and remove roadblocks came from the Steering Committee—they established the vision and generated the big ideas.

As one of the leaders said: "It starts with a vision." This person's particular role in the process was leading the training and implementation and the communications workstreams, and facilitating the merging of ideas. "We envisioned a conversation—a career and development placement discussion." A positive outcome of having a global job architecture was a "turbo-charged" and upgraded career discussion.

The Steering Committee had passion for this project. As a group, they quickly became comfortable with challenging, constructive discussion.

Design

Once a vision and a big picture had been agreed upon, Subject Company needed to functionalize the desired change by establishing design principles. The design project encompassed teamwork among subject matter experts on the technical side of the organization, and HR experts who spanned the functional and geographic breadth of the organization.

Like a lot of organizations, Subject Company had developed a large number of organizational silos based on both technical and geographic "walls." One goal of the design project was to break down these silos organizationally in order to break down the barriers to global mobility. In order to effect the necessary changes and have them broadly accepted, the Steering Committee and the HR team established a strong partnership. The Steering Committee attended meetings, made decisions, and served as advocates of the process and the design. Their participation in the process and design lent the necessary gravitas, in concert with the expertise on the HR side, for success to be achieved.

This strategy of combining executive leadership with HR expertise led to a design that was very purposeful and compelling. There was wide acceptance from constituents that it was objective and on target. The process at these early stages led to much of the buy-in needed within the organization.

Manage Change

In the case of Subject Company, the process of managing change was greatly enabled by the design concept and development. The key features that were now in place included the following:

As was described previously, the establishment of a powerful Steering Committee was perhaps the most important step in making the changes happen. The Steering Committee provided leadership and communication skills, and managed the change process by making both strategic and tactical decisions.

Credit for success also was given to the senior HR team for their project management and relationship skills. According to Steering Committee members, they did an excellent job clarifying issues and culling out salient points. They worked through job mapping—and the associated "heated discussions"—where different roles came into play. They prepared discussion guides and points along the way, clearly showing where decisions needed to be made. In this and myriad other ways, the Steering Committee was heavily supported by functional HR and the HR design team. Each step built upon the others, allowing the organization to bootstrap its way to the new plan.

One final point needs to be made about how Subject Company managed change: A major factor in assuring success was that the new architecture was established as a business initiative, not an HR initiative. The "selling" of the change as something that is good for business, and not a mandate by HR, was critical in getting cross-organization acceptance, especially from technical management.

Build

To move into the piloting/build phase, Subject Company engaged subject matter experts (SMEs) who worked with the Steering Committee. More than six hundred participants (from the HR community as well as functional management) were involved in job mapping and job rationalization.

Not surprisingly, Subject Company reported having many "ah-ha" moments at cross-group HR meetings as jobs that were previously siloed found their way mapped into the flatter new structure. Because of the way the process was managed, groups did not feel threatened by the new mappings—groups cooperated rather than feeling that one group was advantaged over another. The careful attention to design and rollout was rewarded with a great sense of confidence that the process was the right one for the company.

Part of the process of building the new structure involved a robust training program for HR professionals across the organization. The company, of course, provided training materials for HR, but augmented that with extensive e-learning and face-to-face training opportunities. The latter culminated with a summit meeting involving both HR and Business partners. The summit was global in nature, and emphasized the interrelationship between the new HR structure and business success. It included 2.5 days of hardcore training on new roles within the global architecture, including how to push the new architecture out into the business. It was a pinnacle event—the coming-out party for the new architecture.

By the time the build plan and associated training were completed in advance of roll-out, more than 70% of managers participated in e-learning, case studies, and/or classroom-based learning. The workforce and the plan were now ready to go live.

Implement

The system was ready to implement in November 2006, roughly 18 months after the establishment of the Steering Committee. As one HR manager noted: "We were hard on ourselves, but it worked."

Managers were responsible for job slotting and communications. Managers were given ownership of the process and had one-on-one conversations with everyone involved.

The team was appropriately cautious about aspects of the plan that would not roll out smoothly and about possible unintended consequences. But they had done their homework and had done it well. The implementation was remarkably uncontentious and is, by all measures, a success.

Subject Company's Process: The Timeline

To give a better sense of how Subject Company started from scratch to a successful implementation, let's look at their timeline. Over the 18-month period from conception to rollout, the project timeline contained these milestones:

Workstream Timeline Chart

Lessons Learned

In any massive undertaking like this, particularly when it hasn't been done before, there are significant lessons learned. This section notes key lessons with the hope that they will be useful to others.

  1. Selection of the Steering Committee was critical to project success. Credit goes to the individuals on the Steering Committee for leading this change effort. They made good decisions on behalf of the company. There was a high-level governance that created opportunistic convergence on other changes, such as how to administer incentive levels on a global basis. As a steering committee they:
    • Met once a month.
    • Asked big questions
    • Provided leadership, influence, understanding of business
    • "Played it straight"
    • Challenged each other
    • Acted as a collective
  2. HR leads were assigned to the major functional areas, which linked back to the Steering Committee.
  3. There needs to be a value proposition for all staff members. For example, it was important to state up front that the company would not spend less on advancement (i.e., promotional increases, special increases). All potential takeaways (e.g., titles) were addressed.
  4. It was important to give some tangible marketing to the project, throughout the process and on an ongoing basis.
  5. HR and Communications needed to work very closely together. The two functions communicated the business rationale in a way that was understood by all constituents.
  6. There was "angst" among employees in terms of "what does this mean to me?" The CEO did lots of "walk-arounds." The two things that people wanted to know were: "my title and my level."
  7. This was not an HR program; the Steering Committee came from the business. HR was the driver and facilitator, but business needed to own it.

What's Next?

Putting this global framework in place enables a wealth of opportunities for an organization, including talent management and technical talent development. The next level of work for Subject Company is career pathing, leveling and leadership programs. There will be an increased focus on career development, including a better framework for high potentials to have the right experiences as well as multiple experiences within level. An HR "Excellence Academy" is being established to develop talent. And, there will be continued work with the global architecture and ongoing communications.

Possibilities for other companies to develop a global job architecture rely on passionate internal people with a support structure and the desire for change. In Subject Company's case, integrating jobs in a global structure led to increased efficiencies in a streamlined approach to identifying and classifying jobs around the world. It allowed the company to break down silos and establish global reward systems and career development plans. It created a true partnership between HR and the businesses in this growing global enterprise.

About the Authors

Carol M. Edelstein is a Vice President of Global Consulting at ORC Worldwide, a global management consulting firm delivering knowledge and practical insights to clients on contemporary workforce management and compensation issues. She has more than 25 years of consulting experience in the fields of executive compensation, leadership, organizational effectiveness, and qualitative and quantitative techniques for use in job evaluation and total compensation administration. In her work, she consults with senior executives and advises compensation committees on the full range of HR and compensation issues, including cash and equity incentives, supplemental benefits and perquisites, corporate governance, executive contracts, retention, change-in-control arrangements, market data (including board compensation), succession planning, and global talent management.

Sydney R. Robertson is Executive Vice President at ORC Worldwide. Mr. Robertson's practice has included international and domestic human resources strategy, HR process reengineering, HR benchmarking, compensation, global talent management, succession and development planning, and organization analysis and development.

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