Q & A session with Dulip Wijetilleke- Asst. Vice President - Human Resources - Citibank, N.A. Sri Lanka

 

Q: How challenging has it been to bring in the international culture into the local context for multinational organizations? 

A:In my view there is nothing called an "international culture". Culture is something that comes into effect based on the believes of people who lead a business. Certain multinational organizations have been in the business long years now. This shows the amount of efforts that it has put in to maintain a culture of people around the world . Integration of strong mechanisms, culture of all time, the employer brand ,strict adherence and behaviour of the leaders have secured a strong  base to maintain the existing culture of such multinationals. 

Among all ,the employer brand that has been developed and sustained over long  years has made it positive for employees to takeover and accept the organizational culture even before they joined that company.

Strict internal regulations and zero tolerance on non adherence , re-validate and reinstate one's  organizational culture. 

Q: Are the local staffs capable of matching the global standards? What kind of training program do you do to match their standards? 

A: I believe that multinational organizations have their own training brands targeted at various levels of employees and functions. Training curriculum has been developed taking into considerations the timely needs of the organization and majority of such training programmes are mandatory and made available online in an extremely powerful and effective manner. Massive amounts of money is invested by multinationals on people development and to bring them up to the standards set by the subject matter experts. Moreover the level of dynamism embedded in management decisions and the respect given to the employee feedback strengthen one's global standards.

 

Q: As an HR professional what kind of HR activities do you think would benefit the staffs in order to increase their performance?

A:In my opinion it is not right to state that compensation and benefits will eternally support employee performance. In my opinion what matters for an employee is a great deal of work life balance. A situation where an employee is over paid doesn't mean that employee would contribute and perform at high levels all the time. 

Employee engagement is another aspect that needs to be considered to boost employee performance. On the other hand equality and the ability to maintain a great culture help employee performance. I strongly believe that we are in a juncture where we need to deeply look at  digitizing processes instead of digitizing people.

Q: Does the local staff demand salaries of international standards? How do you strike a balance there? 

A:I do not make that assumption. Employees of multinational companies are aware that they are bench-marked with the local compactors. Hence there is no question around this. One of the key challenges would be  to map employees to the correct market position to ensure accurate bench marking. It is not as easy as it is said to accurately bench-mark. This is where the importance of identifying critical employees becomes of utmost important to retain the right talent .

 

Q: What is the most challenging part in equally managing the employees at multinational organizations?

A:Employee communication needs to be well managed to ensure that it doesn't leave any room for employees to deviate from the philosophy of the leaders.  Inaccurate and untimely communication always create a gap between what is intended and what is delivered via such communications. Hence I believe that communication which is not simple, concise, healthy and timely may lead to enormous problems in organizations.

Session Conducted by - Hasfan Jailan on 22nd of December 2017