When it comes to resources for helping international workers and their families, companies in Eastern Jutland are either all the way in, or all the way out.

That is the conclusion of International Community’s study, in which 38 percent of HR managers and personnel directors answered that they have no personnel dedicated to managing international workers. The second largest group, 31 percent, were companies with more than one – and sometimes several – HR employees focusing solely on the issues like recruitment, tax and visa rules and ensuring practical matters fall into place.

No matter the organisational or HR structure, one of the most important things is that the immediate colleagues, those who are nearest in the daily work, learn what is important and how to help, says Henrik Andersen, who works with strategic and change management and is a partner at consulting firm Hildebrandt & Brandi.

“Like so many other things creating that culture is ultimately a leadership issue,” he says. “It has to be clear what’s in it for the colleagues and even though they may understand it on a rational level, it has to really speak to their feelings in order to get them to change.”

Measurement is also an area where Andersen sees a need for greater focus. Companies are willing to spend large amounts of money on recruiting, but fail to follow up by looking at how much value for money they get out of the recruitment.

“If companies don’t know how often contracts fail or why they fail then they should really think about why they are spending the money on it in the first place,” he says.

Size is not everything
With around 47 billion in annual revenue and over 16,000 worldwide employees, the dairy giant Arla is indisputably one of the regions biggest companies. Michael Bjerrum, Senior Director for Corporate HR at Arla Foods, is responsible for making sure his company has the right structures in place to support international staff, which include members of Arla’s top leadership.

“It is a challenge in a company as big as ours,“ he says. “Just to put it into perspective, Arla’s Swedish division is larger than all of Lego. Companies like Grundfos and Danfoss are the same size as a single Arla business unit.”

Arla, Bjerrum says, has just two full-time employees dedicated to helping international workers across the 30 countries in which Arla operates. He adds though, that as is often the case with companies like Arla, not all resources are based in a single HR department. ”I would say we are somewhere near the middle in terms of resources,” he adds.

”Sheer size is not the only factor in building the right kind of HR organisation and it is really more about culture than about how many people are there to support it,” Bjerrum says. ”If the management of the company is internationally diverse and there is a focus in each department on making it work from day-to-day those are probably better measures. That is, at least, the challenge for us at Arla.”

Activating all employees
One of the concrete things Arla is working with is getting its Danish employees in each department to make a habit of speaking English conversationally in the workplace.

Bjerrum says that Arla is testing out a new e-learning program called EnglishTown, which gives 24-hour, online access to advanced English courses to those employees who have internationals in their department.

“Another of the things we have to continually work with is keeping the mindset that we have to adapt to the society that Arla is a part of and not vice versa. And that society is international.”

Group Senior Vice President for People and Strategy at Grundfos, Lisbet Thyge Frandsen immigrated to Aarhus 14 years ago. All the way from Copenhagen. And that, she admits, ”was very strange.”

”The Danish culture is very open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” says Frandsen, ”but when people drive home they forget all about their colleagues. That’s why I still feel like a foreigner in Aarhus, and it is one of the less flattering things in the Danish culture. We simply have to be better at this if we are going to be more innovative and get the most from our international resources.”

At Grundfos, Frandsen says, the value of a diverse workforce is that it means improved innovation. And so there is an aspect that goes beyond just finding specialists with specific expertise. Diversity equals innovation. For many years, diversity has been about achieving a gender balance or sometimes an age balance, she says, but today it also includes managing a global workforce.

”Actually, it requires the same kind of leadership skills,” Frandsen says. ”I don’t think one is more difficult than another. If we want to do it the right way, managing the gender issue is the same as managing for internationals. Gender is one aspect of diversity and culture is another and that is what we are talking about here.”

“Companies don’t need to be life managers, but I think they should make sure there are openings and activities, things put in place, to make sure people get a good start in the environment around the job.”

And sometimes, she notes, the best initiatives don’t come from management at all. ”It is about supporting and enabling as much as controlling. We had an employee several years ago who recognised this problem amongst his fellow employees and did something about it. He started the Rød Grød med Fløde Club, which exists to this day as a social network for expats in Grundfos, and I do believe this kind of informal, but supported, network is making a difference.”