The Future of Latin American Business, as Seen by HR

By Kirsten Allegri Williams

One of my core beliefs that has served me well in my career in sales and marketing is that you do your best selling when you act as an advisor to your clients by focusing on their business needs.

You have the choice to come into every meeting with either a list of products to push or a sense of curiosity about the challenges your client may be facing. SAP SuccessFactors is fortunate to have an amazing team of business leaders who take the latter approach and put the customer at the center of every conversation.

Last month in Miami, I had the chance to learn from some of them at a meeting for our team in Latin America. Here’s what they told me about the challenges and opportunities businesses in the region are experiencing, as seen by HR.

Reskill to Grow

Every new technology requires new skills to unlock its potential. The global digitalization of business is a story we all know, but it is playing out differently region by region.

Globally, about 67% of workers are willing to learn new skills for any reason. But in Latin America more than anywhere else, people in companies (87% of them to be precise) want to learn new skills so they can grow into new types of jobs. Latin American HR departments are working overtime to fulfill and channel that desire. The pressure is on to deliver reskilling opportunities, because Latin American companies recognize that talent is the key to their expansion, especially talent that embraces self-directed learning.

SAP SuccessFactors customer Mercado Libre has an unforgettable term for this type of talent, “knowledge nomads.” At the company, Latin America’s most popular e-commerce site, HR has built the framework for employees to learn from each other and in turn help the company expand. Since 2004, Mercado Libre’s workforce has grown over 9000%, from 80 employees to about 7,300. This success speaks to the company’s focus on and ability to retain skills and knowledge by promoting from within.

Inclusive Growth is the Next Frontier

The private sector across Latin America knows that creating a bigger middle class will mean more demand for goods and services—in a word, more customers.

Gentera, a financial services firm (an SAP customer), has made inclusive growth its mission and its core business model. By providing microloans to people outside the traditional customer base of banking, especially women, Gentera has created positive change in underserved communities in Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala where the firm serves three million customers, and counting.

Gentera’s workforce is just as diverse and inclusive as their customer base. For HR, that has meant providing an employee experience that is as seamless and mobile-first as the customer experience.

It has also meant keeping employees and customers connected to the mission—the better life that access to banking makes possible. Both customers and employees are encouraged to keep a “sue?o metro,” or dream meter—a place to write down what greater financial freedom will help them achieve.

Looking for AI’s Frontline? Start at the US-Mexico Border and Go South

Big, multinational companies (and their marketers) are increasingly looking to their Latin American operations to test out new AI-enabled goods and services, expecting AI to be the major way the region unlocks new value in the coming years.

What does that mean for HR? It means that Latin American workers on the frontline, those who conduct business across registers, over the phone, and in retail spaces, may find themselves interacting with customers in new ways before the rest of the world does. Think augmented reality in retail environments, the home, or remote places where customers don’t have access to physical stores.

To make all this possible, HR must find ways to upskill and reskill workforces quickly. Gentera has a great (SAP-enabled) method they call “micro-learning,” where their busy customer service reps can consume via mobile in short bursts of time, the same way we interact with our social media feeds.

AI’s southward expansion is also something for marketers to keep in mind. If you want to know how your customers will be encountering your brand in the future, emerging markets like Mexico and Brazil are one place to look.

The impression I got in Miami last month is that it’s a tough but exciting time to be an HR leader in Latin America. Both our customers and the countries where they operate are facing big challenges and opportunities which will give them the chance to deploy ambitious solutions.

Have any thoughts about the future of work in Latin America? Let me know in the comments.

Kirsten Allegri Williams serves as Chief Marketing Officer, brand storyteller, and digital innovator at SAP SuccessFactors. She oversees the company’s end-to-end marketing strategy and corporate positioning across the globe for HXM, the next evolution of human capital management.