When global technology company Lenovo sponsored the Beijing Olympics this year it launched a major advertising campaign to support it - designed to increase awareness of the company amongst not just consumers but current and future employees as well. "It's a fantastic and rare opportunity for our employees to be torch bearers around Australia. The best press is our employees telling their family and friends about us," enthuses Andrew Dahms, HR director, Lenovo Australia New Zealand.

Since the acquisition by the Lenovo Group of the IBM Personal Computing Division in May 2005, Lenovo has become the leading PC vendor in Asia-Pacific and among the largest in the world with more than 24,000 employees and a sales presence in 160 countries.

Dahms has been with Lenovo since August 2006 and in his time with the company he has seen it grow in leaps and bounds - and the HR function with it. However, his HR career came about not as a result of any grand plan but rather a nagging suspicion that his real interest lay in the HR arena. "I've been working in HR for about 11 years. I started out in financial services and I studied economics at university but I also studied a range of HR subjects and I knew that side of things interested me. About 11 years ago I was offered an HR position with British Telecom in their Asia-Pac strategic market. I'd worked with an HR consulting firm during my graduate recruitment activities and they recalled meeting me. I was referred to British Telecom by them and I was lucky enough to get that position," he recalls.

Dahms remained with the Asia-Pac team for a year until he was transferred to Tokyo for two years when BT acquired a controlling interest in the country's largest internet service provider. Fast forward to 2006 and Dahms was working for Tyco International in Florida when he was snapped up by Lenovo for the newly created Australia-New Zealand HR director role.

"HR is a global function at Lenovo and it reports functionally throughout the organisation so I report into the executive director of HR for Asia-Pac. I'm responsible for all HR activity in Australia and New Zealand including learning and development, compensation and benefits, HR operations, recruitment and talent acquisition," Dahms says.

Worldsourcing
Indeed HR is a global function at Lenovo - and prime evidence of that exists in a concept the company has developed called Worldsourcing, which aims to harness ideas and innovations from fast-growing emerging markets across the globe. As a company with no single corporate HQ, Lenovo aims to merge engineering, cultural and marketing expertise from around the world into one fluid, borderless enterprise organised around hubs that serve as centres of excellence for different functions.

As an example, the company may develop products in China, Japan and the US, develop marketing strategies in the Indian marketing hub, and then execute sales strategies throughout every location the company operates in.

"We base our operations wherever we can source the best material, innovation and talent - wherever it sits our organisation will target those locations. Unlike an organisation where the centre of gravity lies where the corporate HQ is located, we've got hubs and centres of excellence," says Dahms.

The approach has had wide-ranging impact on the Lenovo workforce. Not only has the company embraced technology such as Skype as a way of operating cross-border teams, "more so than any other company I've worked in before", says Dahms, but it's also developed best practice approach to holding collaborative meetings and ensuring feedback is obtained and acted upon. Extensive cross-culture L&D initiatives have also been launched to foster a "commonsense approach where we're courteous to different timezones and cultures", Dahms adds.

"We've set up a worldwide L&D initiative so that our employees are savvy about working with colleagues from the East and West, North and South. In Western cultures we're more likely to speak first and understand and listen last, whereas what we've found anecdotally was that our Asian colleagues would listen first and digest it and speak afterwards. If the Westerners have done all their speaking and are looking to wrap up their meeting before their Asian colleagues have even had a chance to speak you're going to miss out on a lot of ideas and a lot of innovation.

"We've taken a commonsense approach. I've worked in organisations where, although it was commonsense, it never quite happened. Certainly, Lenovo is the first organisation I've worked in where I've never been asked to dial in on a meeting with the US at 2am just because that's the time they want to have the meeting," he says.

Dahms does not believe anything will ever replace face-to-face meetings - primarily due to the cultural differences that can only be picked up on by being across the table from someone - but he recognises the benefits teleconferencing can bring. "When you have an organisation that is truly operating across the globe you can't wait to make decisions until you get everyone together - so teleconferencing and so on are just part of the every day here," he says.

Global opportunities
Worldsourcing also encourages global mobility. Dahms cites colleagues who have worked in China, Singapore, the UK, China and India. Dahms himself was acting HR director in Japan for three months earlier this year. "I hadn't been to Japan for 10 years so it gave me a chance to reacquaint myself with practices there. I was amazed how much I could share from our Australia-New Zealand business model with our Japanese colleagues. I started having joint team meetings where we would share the programs we were running in different countries," he says.

The opportunity that working in a global organisation presents to potential candidates is also an important selling point, especially with skilled unemployment almost non-existent. "I think every employer at the moment is finding it difficult to get skilled employees onboard. You've really got to put forward your value proposition as a way to convince candidates that you'll be an employer where they'll be happy and satisfied. To be honest, a lot of candidates indicate to us that they intend to work for a global organisation that has a presence in most of the economies of the world - and that's why they approach Lenovo," Dahms says.

Of course, Dahms is also aware of the needs and demands of the burgeoning Gen Y workforce - and their love of overseas experiences. He believes that organisations failing to tap into the enthusiasm and ambitions of Gen Y workers will struggle. Dahms notes Gen Y's interest in CSR as a key area to concentrate on. Again, Worldsourcing provides some valuable pointers. Lenovo has launched CSR initiatives whereby Australian employees spend time in India to observe and help implement CSR initiatives. "In a way that's the ultimate in Worldsourcing," he says. "It's Australians heading to India to demonstrate how we do CSR in Australia but also to see if there is anything they can bring back to Australia. It's just one example of Worldsourcing in our company, and feedback from our employees has been fantastic."

In his own words...
What has been the biggest challenge you've faced in your career?
Keeping up with the pace of change in all of the organisations I've worked in. More often than not, in each of the jobs I've taken on, I've immediately had to establish relationships with various leaders in the business, quickly gain respect for the HR organisation and get it up and running. That's part of life - it's a challenge but also exciting.

What do you consider to be your biggest career achievement?
Definitely the opportunity to be HR director for Australia and New Zealand has been a fantastic experience, and being acting HR director for Japan where we have 600 employees was fantastic. I'd have to say working in the US and Japan were definite highlights in my career. I worked in Japan initially, which is the world's number two economy, and when I had the opportunity to go to the US I couldn't say no because I wanted to see what was number one.

Where do you see HR as a profession heading?
In nearly every organisation I've worked in HR has been an integral part of the management team so I think that battle has been fought and won. Certainly in Lenovo HR is in all of the senior management and leadership discussions around business strategy, driving productivity and creating a high performing culture. I think from the Aust/NZ perspective it's about obtaining and retaining talent in a very tight market and at the same time meeting the expectations of management around the cost of labour.
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