Benson Sim

Regional director of learning and development

Bunge Asia

Working within the region can throw up interesting challenges.

When I travel to China, I learn a lot from working with people there - from their way of communicating, their styles, and the barriers to effective communication to the little idiosyncrasies they prefer. My experiences travelling to Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia to conduct training is also different for each country because they have different cultures.

For example, Vietnam is an emerging country and they largely speak Vietnamese. In order to engage the workforce there, you need to be able to articulate what you need. Depending on which workforce you're training, talking to the management and talking to the employees requires different styles. That's why the engagement with HR (in other parts of Asia) is critical because they are your bridge, your platform and your vehicle if you have a vision to translate across.

Let's say I want to roll out a communication process across Asia or perhaps I want to communicate our corporate values to the entire region. Without that engagement (with local HR), you will run into problems when you go into the local side because they will be the ones to best tell you how to effectively engage their workforce. They can help address any questions you face when it comes to training the local workforce such as "Should communication be done one-on-one or done through the leaders or should it be done in a workshop or in a big seminar?"

It also helps make your job easier when they share with you the operational issues they may be encountering or scheduling issues they may have.