In the light of what you know about IHRM, how easy do you think it is to manage a global employer brand? What issues would an IHRM professional expect to have to manage? To answer this, analyse the HRM activities of an organisation (yours, perhaps) across a series of countries, and answer the following questions:
• How important is it that the performance management and development processes are made the same across all the countries? What sorts of adjustments to these processes will inevitably have to be made for local cultural and legal reasons?
• How much does the organisation’s international operations vary in terms of adherence to standards and procedures in the area of recruitment? Is there a need to set minimum standards for the conduct of HRM before you can create a consistent brand?
• What input is needed from in-country HRM partners to a branding strategy intended to work across countries, and what central supervision is necessary?
• Does pay strategy in different countries define the calibre of applicants that can be attracted? If you attract a different calibre of manager across countries because of this,
does it matter? Does it impact on the way that employees will ‘experience’ the brand?
• Do you have similar ‘employee engagement’ data across the organisation’s operations?
If scores differ, does this reflect different national values, or different business models being applied, or different levels of professional line management?