3 Tips for Managing Overseas employees

Managing remotely based employees in general requires a different approach and set of skills to managing an office-based team, but when those employees are based overseas, the word ‘remote’ takes on a whole new meaning and requires even greater management skill. I’ve managed international teams of less than 10 employees, based individually in various countries around the world, to global teams of over 2,000 and in every situation, there have been 3 key fundamentals that have made the difference between success and failure.

Communicate

This one may seem obvious as nearly every book on management talks about the importance of communication. But when you’re based overseas on behalf of a company, working as the sole employee, or leading a small local team, your opportunities for informal interaction with your peers and your manager can be limited. Some managers will set up a weekly one to one ‘check-in’ call to review activity and results or maybe schedule a bi-weekly or ‘monthly international team’ conference call. And while these have their place, they are not a replacement for an informal conversation, similar to what you would have if you bumped into one of your team in the office kitchen or stopped by their desk to have a quick chat on your way to a meeting.

It’s just as important to have these types of informal ‘catch-ups’ with your overseas employees to help them feel like they are a valued part of the company and of your team. These ‘catch-ups’ don’t need to be long or regularly scheduled (in fact, they’re better if they’re not otherwise they start to take on the feeling of a more formal meeting) but they do need to be frequent. Essentially, you need to try to create those multiple ‘touch points’ that you would ordinarily have with a member of your team if they worked in the same office as you.

Keep the conversation light so it doesn’t start to seem like yet another business review meeting as if you’re trying to micromanage them. Talk about the general mood in the company, latest news etc. It also helps if you keep up to date on the news in whatever country or region they are based in so that you can talk about current events and other things they are experiencing where they are. Not only will this help you understand more about them, their interests and what makes them tick, but it will also give you a better sense of the environment in which they’re working. You may not be able to ‘walk a mile in their shoes’ to truly understand their situation, but even taking a few steps will be appreciated and will make you a more effective manager. While frequent visits to spend time with them in their market is the best way to build this kind of rapport, it’s obviously not feasible to do this on a frequent basis, but technology can be your friend in this regard and a good mix of video chats, phone calls and even emails with an article you think they might find interesting, can be a great way to keep up the frequency of touch points.  

accommodate

The second tip to keep in mind is to be accommodating of their situation. It’s likely they are working on a different time zone to you, possibly with only a few hours a day, if any, that overlap with your regular workday. They will likely have different public holidays throughout the year and may even have a different work week (many Muslim countries observe a Friday/Saturday weekend). Whatever the situation, it’s important that you make an effort to accommodate the differences. If you have regularly scheduled review calls or team meetings, try not to schedule them in their out of office hours. Working with these challenges, there will inevitably be times when they will have to be on calls outside of normal working hours – that goes with the territory. But try not to make that the norm, especially when it can be avoided. As well as showing cultural awareness, it’s also a sign that you respect them enough not to assume you can call them at 9pm their time or on their weekend just because it’s convenient for you and that you’re willing to make the effort to make or take calls in your evenings or on holidays to try to balance things out. After all, that also goes with the territory of being an ‘international manager’.

Connect

Finally, as important as it is for you to communicate with your overseas employees, it’s just as important to keep them connected to the rest of the team and the company. Creating a shared culture is difficult at the best of times, but even more so when the team is geographically dispersed.  If the employee was hired overseas, they will likely not have had the opportunity to be immersed in the company culture as someone would working in the head office. Yet they need to get ‘plugged in’ to the culture to truly be part of the company and to represent it to the best of their ability. Likewise, expats who are sent overseas will, at some point, need to return home and re-integrating into the company after an overseas assignment can be much more difficult if they have been ‘out of the loop’ during their time overseas.

To the extent possible, it’s always beneficial to bring overseas employees back to the head office on a regular basis for quarterly, bi-annual or annual meetings as nothing can truly beat the benefits of in-person interaction with the rest of the team. But in between these meetings, there are ample opportunities to foster team communication. If you have regularly scheduled team calls, try to make part of the call more ‘social’ and not all about the business. Use that platform to discuss general company news as well as general news in the overseas markets. A U.S. based team member may gain a whole new appreciation of their teammate in another country if they learnt how they were working in a country where the power goes out regularly on a daily basis for several hours a day!

However, as much as its your responsibility to foster more communication with your overseas employees, it doesn’t always have to revolve around you or even involve you. Encourage the team to have their own calls together to discuss various issues. Suggest to HR or Finance that they occasionally pick up the phone to chat with overseas employees about things instead of doing everything through email. A true team effort in this regard will have an amazing multiplier effect that even the best international manager could never dream of achieving by themselves.