The Value and Values of Building A Truly International Work Force

“It was a life-changing experience…” We might have heard those words from a friend or colleague returning from an extended visit to a foreign country. For those of us who’ve taken the next step by actually moving abroad, it can be an experience that literally changes the course of our lives.

For me, it’s not an overstatement to say all of which is most important in my adult life has arrived after that one simple (though not necessarily easy!) decision to pursue an opportunity for a posting in Poland at the age of 23. Leaving my native France would eventually lead me to meeting my future wife in the Czech Republic, followed by our two bi-national kids as well as all the friends and interesting people the four of us have met in and from different places around the world. Of course, alongside these Very Important People, I can also thank my foreign experience with helping to build a rewarding career that has grown in new and surprising ways.

I have had the good fortune to work for a company that very much values the crossing of cultures and expanding horizons and opportunities for its associates. Encouraging people to work in different countries and different roles are considered inherent values throughout the Mars Group, where it is also always clear that everyone — no matter their race, gender or country of origin — is promoted and compensated on the basis of their performance alone. You get the job; you get the pay. I can say that the experience of being abroad and the experience of being in the business world are very much one in the same for me. Keep an open mind and learn from others; humility and pragmatism; the immeasurable power of diversity.

Keep an open mind and learn from others; humility and pragmatism; the immeasurable power of diversity.

Still, today, the globalization of the business world is under fire, and sometimes for quite legitimate reasons: from the outsourcing of production to labor market forces that lead to illegal immigration, to the more recent reality of a health pandemic that spread so quickly around the world. We shouldn’t underestimate the economic and social uncertainty that it has prompted among our citizens, customers and business partners.

Nonetheless, from both the subjective observations of my own personal experiences and after crunching the numbers and analyzing the performance of the professional teams I’ve led, I believe more than ever that globalization is an overall net gain for the human race and bound to enrich companies in ways that go far beyond the bottom line.

Of course, COVID-19 has reminded us that we need to be smart about how goods and people cross borders and challenges all of us to glean the right lessons about how we do business at home and around the world. The respective national shutdowns and international travel closures have prompted us to already implement new ways of working for a global company like ours.

Still, there is no turning back on our connected world, and we should be wary of new rules and restrictions (completely unrelated to the pandemic) that are making it more difficult for companies to have an internationally mobile and diverse workforce. The last thing we’d want to imagine is a multinational company in which everyone is limited to their native country, without the cross-pollination and experience-sharing that comes with teams that are diverse in every way, including geographically.

Here in Europe, where our global company is based, I believe there is a true opportunity to create a model for building teams across borders that can be both good policy and good for business. It starts with streamlining and fully integrating standards within the European Union over such issues as pension benefits and taxation, which should be fundamental to the goal of a single market and truly united Europe. But the commitment should go further, creating policies that can help EU countries attract and export talent to and from around the world. 

Even though I’m now back to my native France, here at Royal Canin headquarters we have 25 nationalities represented. That means not just potentially life-changing opportunities for all our foreign colleagues, but the chance for all of us to learn from each other’s experiences.