Changing the world workforce

UNDERSTANDING a worker’s needs is key to retaining them.

Akamai Asia Pacific and Japan HR chief Rachael Fitzpatrick.

HUMAN resources manager Rachael Fitzpatrick wants to change the world’s workforce one worker at a time, by understanding how each person operates and thinks, and by finding out what their job needs really are.

Fitzpatrick, who heads the Asia Pacific and Japan HR department for US-owned cloud computing company Akamai, has spent her adult working life living in cultures completely different to her Australian upbringing, and observing how others operate.

“There are themes that run through particular countries and, say I understand the bell curve — am I dealing with a person on one side of it or the other? Every person will be different and it’s understanding that, that’s important,” Fitzpatrick says.

In what is being touted as the Asian Century, Fitzpatrick is well-placed to understand how international companies operate, what their staffing and cultural needs are, and how Australian businesses can expand into Asia.

Fitzpatrick grew up in Sydney, but after finishing high school she headed to Japan for a six-week trip while her stepfather was working for JP Morgan.

It was the 1980s and Japan was in the middle of an economic bubble. Companies were booming. Fitzpatrick accepted a job working for a securities company — where she was the only blonde, green-eyed worker among 2000 locals — and stayed there for two years.

“They needed someone to write a lot of their English letters because they were doing a lot of work with US venture capitalists,” she says. “It was Christmas Day 1986. They don’t celebrate Christmas and I thought that was the first sign that things were a ­little weird.”

Enjoying the lifestyle, Fitzpatrick moved to PricewaterhouseCoopers. She stayed for five years, working predominantly in its international tax department dealing with business partners in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia.

“It was very different learning the culture, learning the language, the international exposure, working for this securities company and PwC,” she says.

“It was that constant ability to see a global environment and I didn’t want to give that up. But I also saw a whole bunch of (HR and management) processes and policies that were put in place that I looked at with raised eyebrows and thought there was a better way of doing things. I thought the world needed to change and HR was the way to do it.”

Fitzpatrick moved to London to study before Singapore, where she has been based for the past eight years. She moved to Akamai 2½ years ago and now oversees 270 workers in eight Asia Pacific countries.

Since starting at Akamai, she has witnessed rapid expansion. Across the eight countries staff have grown from 94 — including growth from five to 37 in Australia, and from 15 to 40 in Singapore.

Fitzpatrick has been instrumental in employing each new staff member, ensuring she works closely with local recruiters who speak the regional language.

With workers speaking myriad languages and English as their second language, Fitzpatrick says it is important not to get hung up on grammatical specifics when a person’s skills may be more proficient.

“Getting into the skills and competencies of their jobs is more important,” she says.

“The jobs aren’t just for the English speakers. I’ve had people hired for high language skills but they don’t have the HR skills. That’s when we need to have an open and upfront conversation with the candidate about who they are.”

With diversity a buzz word in Australian companies keen to ensure their workers are representative of the gender balance, age and multiculturalism, Fitzpatrick is not shy in questioning what ­diversity is.

Her workforce is spread throughout the Asia Pacific, which means that it is diverse by Australian standards. But Fitzpatrick says if a company is committed to diversity, it needs to also look at personalities and how people think. “We have what you’d consider a diverse management team with representatives from each country in terms of culture,” she says.

“We’ve undertaken personality profiling and we’re all pretty similar, which raises the question about what’s your definition of diversity. We need to have a conversation about diversity in Australia and what personalities are driven towards Australia.”

Fitzpatrick talks about “neural diversity” and understanding what goes on in people’s brains. She says that if companies want to retain talent, they have to know what people really want and what motivates them.

By understanding people and their unique situations, companies will have more chance of retaining staff. “I’m married with no children and I sit in a different economic cycle than someone who is the same age as me and has four children,” she says. “ If you want to retain both of us you’ve got to look at us differently.”

She says managing a workforce across multiple Asian countries means acknowledging cultural nuances, allowing flexibility and accepting that it works better in some countries than others, and acknowledging that workers in some regions do not like being directly told what to do.

Fitzpatrick says workers are committed to long hours in countries such as Japan. Trying to tell them they need a greater work- life balance does not always work. And that’s where her neural diversity strategy works well.

“You can’t tell them to work fewer hours and that they need a better balance, that’s pulling the rug out from under them.

“It’s about saying, ‘Do you want to go and get a hobby? It’s good to turn your phone off and to turn your PC off, and the world won’t collapse.’ ”

Fitzpatrick says that could also mean discussing the merits of sleep and even holidays with staff and how it affects mindfulness and stress release.