– Prevention is better than intervention – they said while planning their workforce in a new, shared service center to be based in northern Poland. Scandinavian countries are recognized for their intercultural awareness and this company was the proof of that good reputation. The employees were to support the company’s departments throughout Europe in areas like customer service, finance, procurement and IT. We were happy to take part in setting up a completely new shared service center, the second largest site for this company in Europe, right after the headquarters in Helsinki. All new employees received not only induction trainings, but a full intercultural training preparing them for functioning effectively in the cross-cultural setting. The process took a few quarters.
Now, nearly 25% of the people employed at the site come from outside of Poland and they work fully internationally Recently, the company president and CEO have congratulated local management team on the quick development of the center and building such a strong team. Referring to his own experience, he talked about the enormous value of creating an international working environment – and this is what they did right from the start! For cross-cultural consultants like us, this is a pure best practice: prevention is indeed better than intervention and equipping people for their international activities at work saves a lot of unnecessary trouble, frustration, and costly employee turnover.