The U.S. Playbook
How to Manage an International Workforce
Frontline Library » The US Playbook » Managing Across Borders
CONTENTS
How to create and maintain company culture overseas
Invest in creating a strong onboarding schedule
The first introduction for new people to your company culture and values will be through the interview process. The next important milestone is your onboarding process. This is important for every new employee but particularly for new people outside of HQ, where there are limited opportunities for water cooler chats and learning from observing.
The aim of your onboarding schedule should be to provide an initial overview of the company and its functions and an intro to who’s who:
- Company introduction; history, vision & mission, values and key objectives
- Training on company tools and systems
- Introduction to company ways of working and specific lingo
- Introduction to your product and all functions
- Senior leaders should meet other leaders 1:1
- Team specific training that enables a quick ramp
- Ideally pair with a buddy
Establish an effective cadence for travel between offices
The rise of remote working, combined with a focus on sustainable growth and greener ways of operating, means that you may want to limit employee travel. But there still will be times when it is worth it:
- Have your first US employees come to HQ to meet people in person and see the culture firsthand. This will help in future recruitment efforts and for them to feel they know people, making it easier for them to ask for help when they get back to their location
- If you have a hub in the US but also hire remotely, then consider having the remote employees go to the hub for onboarding, and plan regular (monthly or quarterly) travel to the hub thereafter
- Ensure there is HQ leadership presence in your US hub on at least a quarterly basis, ideally more for the CEO (if they haven’t relocated)
- If you have a leadership member in the US, ensure they travel to HQ once a quarter
- If you have more junior employees who are alone in their function in the US, consider sending them to HQ once or twice a year
- For any type of company (remote-first, hybrid or office-first with multiple offices) consider organising an annual company-wide offsite that combines a strong agenda on company mission, vision and strategy with opportunities for socialising
Make sure you and your employees make the most of being in another city to avoid unnecessarily frequent trips, and help save your money and the planet e.g. combine a trade conference, customer meetings, investor meetings, and team/office visit into one trip.
Learnerbly
How to manage Internal Communications
Having a strong internal comms calendar is essential as you scale and grow internationally, and is something you cannot overinvest in. Spend time on creating a structure that is considerate of all locations and make it fit for purpose, creating awareness and understanding for the different parts of the business.
Think about the cadence of communications – when do you use Slack versus email, how often will you have team meetings and All Hands? If you don’t have an internal comms person, then delegate this to a specific group (to the people team or chief of staff, usually) and enlist your marketing team to ensure you’re on brand.
Establish effective decision-making workflows early on
Your time zone difference between US and European teams could be anywhere between five hours (fairly straightforward to manage) and nine hours (very difficult to manage). Make sure that you establish a workflow for communications and project sign off early on in your expansion.
Here’s a list of things to consider, straight from Frontline Growth Partners Brennan O’Donnell and Stephen McIntyre, who are seasoned experts in transatlantic communication, having launched the European offices and led go-to-market operations for Google, Twitter, Airtable, Yammer, and SurveyMonkey.
- Clearly define how different types of decisions are made and who plays what roles. Establish which responsibilities are fully delegated to the regional team and where boundaries are.
- Find a balance between global consistency and local empowerment. Decisions with greater customer impact should generally be influenced more heavily by those closest to the customer.
- Identify synchronous and asynchronous decisions — some things must be done together in real time but many smaller decisions can be asynchronous.
- Junior team members should ideally have a manager in the same time zone. More experienced employees can often operate with greater autonomy.
- Consider implementing a daily stand up for highly-collaborative functions.
- Consider holding ‘protected periods’ in manager’s calendars for international team members to book time when there is limited overlap in the working day.
- Prioritise decisions at HQ that create a dependency for your US team. Many questions require some back and forth, and if Europe leaves it until the end of their day it creates avoidable time pressure.
- Centralise key documentation, from meeting notes to key processes and training material, to minimise unnecessary back and forth.
- Regularly assess when to invest in local functions to optimise for speed and decision-making.
Brennan O'Donnell
Partner
Frontline Growth
Partner
Frontline Growth
Create shared understanding through an engaging All Hands Agenda
All Hands meetings are an opportunity to create a shared understanding of opportunities and challenges (company-wide and team specific), boost morale, and keep everyone working towards the same shared goal. They must be frequent (no less than once every two weeks) and a priority for your leadership team.
Consider how you will give exposure to as many teams as possible (using a rota, for example) and encourage a broad range of presenters. Create an agenda with a combination of topics such as financial results, client wins, product releases, new starters and anniversaries. An All Hands is a perfect forum for creating understanding for a new market; what’s the difference in how you sell in the US vs Europe? Is the product used in a different way in the US? Who are the key clients? After the meeting, actively encourage those who couldn’t attend to watch a recording so they don’t miss out on any key updates.
Optimise important meetings for multiple time zones
if your All Hands are currently held in the morning in Europe, you’ll need to make them later in the day to suit employees in the US. If they’re currently held on a Friday then consider moving them earlier in the week — whilst the US folks will be preparing for the last day of the working week, the European folks are preparing for their weekends, which can add to a sense of disconnect between locations.
Make it clear if you expect occasional flexibility when it comes to joining meetings at different times to suit different geography’s needs.
Make hybrid meetings as inclusive as possible
Educate your team on cultural differences and communication styles
Europeans may find Americans too direct, whilst Americans may struggle with the relative indirectness of Europeans. We recommend that managers read The Culture Map by Erin Meyer for an insight into how the culture you are born and operate in influences your communication style, in terms of how we persuade, build trust, and critique each other.
Be proactive about your approach to societal and political events that impact your workforce
Candidates and employees are highly aware, likely to ask questions, and will have expectations about how you handle large societal events as a firm. This is happening globally, but given the high-profile and far-reaching events in US society, it’s very much on the agenda there.
It’s of course up to each company to create and apply their culture and values and make decisions about if and how they choose to communicate internally. However, to avoid being taken by surprise, our suggestion is that you proactively think about your approach and understand that it could change over time.
How to Hire Top Talent
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