In this episode, Springworks’ Head of Marketing - Abhash Kumar talks to Atma Godara, Production HR Generalist- APAC at Netflix about the challenges of working with people across geographies, and how it is important to deal with the nuances. Atma talks about the importance of communication within the team and shares some hacks to motivate employees.
At Netflix, Atma oversees the APAC region in creating respectful and safe environments for production of Netflix originals with a special emphasis on mental wellness and well-being, anti harassment and end-to-end support for key people issues for studios across APAC.
Prior to this, Atma was associated with OYO as Lead Digital Transformation and Change Management. He had led the end-to-end creation and execution of HR technology for APAC and Middle East regions, and had also been responsible for Europe, LATAM, and North America geographies with respect to Performance and Talent roll-out.
An alumnus of Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh and Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, previously, Atma has led compensation and HR business partnering at GreyOrange, before working with RIL and BHEL.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
One format doesn’t fit all
The challenging part of working across different geographies is different cultures. While working at GreyOrange, Atma worked with people from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America. His role was the implementation of core HR along with talent and performance.
People from different countries have different temperaments and influences. It becomes a challenge when you try to use the same communication format across all the geographies.
Atma supports his statement with an example-
“If I’m talking to someone from the Japan team, and then in the next video call, if I'm interacting with someone from the Vietnam or North American team, communicating things in the same way to everyone always becomes trickier. “
He gives a very specific example this time-
“When I was in Oyo, I was implementing a talent performance technology platform across different countries. One of our team members from the Middle East team was quick in providing the information to me because he had already implemented the platform before. Since the team in the Philippines and Vietnam were new to the entire HR technology, I had to reduce my pace by 10 times.
If I go at the same pace across geographies, it will be said that the platform was successfully implemented in the Middle East, but in Vietnam, Thailand, or the Philippines."
Therefore, it is the HR Leader’s role to explain the importance of going at different paces in different countries to the concerned. If this is not ensured, digital transformation initiatives can turn out to be a failure.
Connect with Atma Godara on LinkedIn and Twitter
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Abhash Kumar