In any organisation, people should be at the heart of HR and having a ‘Human’ approach is key. This might sound obvious, but prioritising the employee experience is, sadly, not always the norm. Here are my top five tips for championing human-centered HR in the international setting.

Culture 

HR Professionals have a unique position to nurture the company culture and ensure that the company values are at the core of every interaction with colleagues and business leaders. HR Professionals should ensure they are:

• Familiar with the company guiding principles 
• Able to put culture into action to demonstrate values alignment, while dealing with HR related dilemmas. 

Think of these as the ‘moments that matter’.

Well-being 

In the fast-paced world of international business where everyone is connected 24/7, it’s important to prioritise employee wellbeing and support. I would strongly recommend:

• Introducing Flexible Policies

This is an effective solution to support the diverse wellbeing needs of employees. This could include providing options such as flexibility in work timings, as well as hybrid and remote working.

• Establishing Support Systems 

This can include an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) and Mental Health First Aiders as well as access to other wellbeing resources. You may also consider partnering with third party providers or platforms; some examples are Quan Wellbeing and Kaido Wellbeing.

Talent Development and Career Mobility 

In annual employee engagement surveys, the topic of career development always comes up, but this has been more prevalent in recent years. It is a priority for HR Professionals to:

• Equip employees with knowledge about the learning, development and career options available
• Provide transparency on promotion opportunities & the internal mobility policy in the company

Diversity and Inclusion 

International organisations are a melting point of diversity. HR teams should invest time in learning about different cultures and communities, so that they can champion inclusion and design policies that respect these differences. HR should always practice ‘Conscious Inclusion’ so that all employees can thrive. In my experience this consists of things such as:

• Educating employees and managers on unconscious bias through learning programmes, cases studies and internal communications
• Actively working to build diverse teams. For example, through having a well-defined recruitment process, with diverse interview panels
• Providing mentoring and coaching programmes

You could go one step further and create a reverse mentoring scheme, where senior leaders are mentored by junior colleagues. This is a valuable way to foster conversations between generations, genders, people of different races, disabilities/conditions and backgrounds. 

HR Governance 

Working within HR you can’t get away from governance and compliance, while it may sound dull, it’s a fundamental and critical part of the role.  At its core, HR governance refers to the set of policies, processes and practices that guide the management of People within the organization. HR Professionals play an important role in:

• Overseeing compliance to these policies
• Advocating an ethical and fair approach
• Using these frameworks to guide informed and reasonable decisions 

The skill in HR is to consider both the set of policies and the needs of the situation to provide a customised recommendation.