International Law

China Staff Stuff

By Stan

From Dan at CLB:

Interesting article by James Hudson over at China Success Stories. Article is entitled, "Want Committed Employees? Learn to Trust Them." Its thesis is that if you want your Chinese employee to work hard for the company, like the company, and do what he or she can for the company, you, as the company, must show real faith in your employee. And this faith includes trusting your employee to handle responsibilities and to give them the freedom they need to succeed. In the US law firm context, I 100% agree. This totally encapsulates my management philosophy, which is essentially that the key is hiring good people and then letting them go. The employee I have to monitor is an employee I do not want. Just get the job done. But, is this the right employer philosophy for China? For all businesses in China? For some businesses in China? I do not know the answers to these questions because the closest I have come to managing Chinese employees is managing Chinese lawyers whom I hire to work with me on China legal matters. What do you think?

Generalizations are always wrong, and this generalization is VERY wrong for China, in my humble opinion. I’m not someone who treats junior associates like children (although to my old guy’s eyes, they do look pretty damn young these days), but on the other hand, if you let your staff run around with no supervision, you are looking for trouble.

Is this a China thing? Yes, to some extent. Does it have anything to do with Chinese people? Not at all.

Here’s the issue, and my point just relates to foreign investors. If you have foreign management (either on site or from HQ) and a local staff, there are bound to be communication issues. This is not a language problem, but an overall communications/cultural issue. Once in a while, the foreigners and the local staff will not be on the same page. It is inevitable. Without supervision, there is no way to find out if there has been miscommunication until way down the road (when a lot of damage has already been done).

So. Monitor your employees, supervise as necessary. If someone demonstrates that they "get it," then you can let them off the leash.  If persistent communication problems arise, then you better either find new local staff or fire the expat manager.

At the same time, this is not an excuse to patronize local staff and treat them with anything but the highest respect. These are two separate issues, and unfortunately a lot of expat managers fail to make this distinction.

Enough said. If I draw fire for this post, so be it. Flame away.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on November 27, 2008 (boomark / email).