Archives for Biggest Employers

If you want to work in - or build - a multiculturally savvy organization, it’s a good idea to look closely at HSBC bank.

The bank, which operates in 82 countries, expects its “high-potential” people to work in at least several diverse cultural environments, according to the authors of a June Harvard Business Review article called “Make Your Company a Talent Factory.”  

A Talent Factory implements “rigorous talent processes that support strategic and cultural objectives.” The good news for global careerists is that these objectives won’t simply mirror your career goals they might pave the way for you. For instance at HSBC, a Brazilian manager is currently on loan to China and an Armenian citizen is in India, the article states.

The “World’s Local Bank,” as HSBC would like us to know it, has established company-wide processes for assessing and recruiting tomorrow’s leaders. The authors, Douglas Ready and Jay Conger, say HSBC has a system of talent pools to “track and manage the careers of high potential’s in their firm.”

The system of nurturing and developing talent is important, the authors argue, because global companies generally have an “insufficient pipeline of high-potential employees to fill strategic management roles.”

Still, no one can guarantee you a career-long boost in your market value just because you launched your career at a Talent Factory rather than at, say, a startup or even midsize company where you might take on broader responsibilities more quickly.

Procter & Gamble, for example, prefers to hire graduates and train them rather than import mid-career managers (nine out of 10 new hires). No one doubts that P&G managers are much sought after by other corporations, too.  Meanwhile, P&G is “building what amounts to a global-talent supply-chain management process, coordinated worldwide but managed locally.”

The metaphor of factory work doesn’t sound as appealing as it once was to previous generations, but when then the output of that factory is a boost your career development, the downside is a lot less apparent.