The Benefits of International Teams

Having a global team can bring a lot of value to a business. Want to find out how exactly? That’s the theme of our latest #AskTheHub video! Check out the talk David had with Yannick from Jobbatical - our relocation expert partners. Do you have a topic you want for our next #AskTheHub videos? Leave us a comment below! #AskTheHub is the series where we take questions from the community about #business and #technology topics and talk to one of our partner companies who specializes in the topic.

Interview Transcription

David: Welcome to another edition of AskTheHub. In this series, we take questions on business technology and product development and talk with experts in the field from the Amplifyre Hub. Today, We have Yannick Kwik, the head of growth of Jobbatical and the topic is managing International Teams. Hi Yannick, how are you doing?

Yannick: Hi, David, I'm very good. Thanks. How are you?

David: I'm doing great as well. Thank you for taking the time. Yannick: Thank you for inviting me

David: My pleasure. Cool. So let's start off. The first question would be, what is Jobbatical about? Tell me a little bit about the company.

Yannick: In Jobbatical, we help companies to hire the best talent, regardless of where they're from. Basically, we make immigration and relocation easy through technology, but also through our Immigration and Global Mobility experts. So on the one hand we offer tech-enabled services. And on the other hand, the Standalone software really helps companies and agencies around the world and saves a lot of time by automating the immigration process.

David: What would you say are the benefits of having an international team?

Yannick: I think the benefits are so big and in so many ways. The first thing, I would say, to be honest, is just the possibility of having the best team members In your team. So the best talent, regardless of what stamp they have in their passport, in most of the occasions, you don't have the best talent just around the corner and so you can either just get what you have locally and be okay with it in might work for you, or you can have a possibility of really bringing the best talent and form a international team. And I think it's really good also in terms of diversity, that having people that have different cultural backgrounds who think in different ways can bring a lot of positive things to the table and that can take us to creative thinking and Innovation, which I think is crucial for management and for decision taking and for being on top of the game.

David: Yeah, I mean, when it comes to the diversity aspect, this is definitely something that I can also relate to. At Amplifyre We have more nationalities than people in the company, because, you know, several people have even several nationalities. They, you know, have been born in one country, have been living in another country, then living again in another country, and it really makes a difference. You know, it really makes a difference in the way of thinking and the way of dealing with different topics. So on one side, we have all these benefits that people talk about. Do you also see challenges when somebody is hired in the national team? Might there also be difficulties that somebody can encounter?

Yannick: Correct? Yeah, The same way in an international team can bring diversity and can bring different ways of thinking for creativity. These different ways of thinking can become a challenge if we don't do some work to help our players understand that we have different cultures involved, that they may think differently, they may act differently. It happens the same. That's just an example when you say, how are you to someone from the north? I work a lot with people from Estonia. They are going to tell you really how they're feeling. So as a Spanish person, you might get the impression that they're very straight. And I actually didn't really want to know how bad you were today. I just wanted to ask a soft opening question. In Spain we’d say, yeah, we're super good. Thank you. And maybe you are just crying inside. So what's a very little anecdotal difference? But really, that can bring challenges on ways to ask for things on ways to get feedback, so that there's some work that needs to be done on that. But other than that, I think in general, the balance has a much more positive side of things.

David: Nowadays, many companies are also working remotely. At Amplifyre it is something that we are doing a lot right now. Very few people are at the office and in other situations where one is better or the other is better. What do you say for companies that are thinking about different options here? What should they do?

Yannick: Think what really needs to be considered is what works best for your business and what works best for your employees. Some employees are extremely happy with being remote and have that Accessibility. Some others really would love to be relocated because they get a visa, and perhaps they're living in some country, and they have the possibility of getting a visa to live in a different country that is really appealing to them and to their lifestyle. So that is a benefit, you bring into the talent. Some companies actually have a hybrid setup where they have some people that are physically in the office. Some of them relocated, some of them are local hires. And some people that work remotely even in the same country are remotely somewhere else. And you need to consider time differences as well. Do you really want to have people working in different time differences or not? If you have a town hall meeting with all the companies, What time do you do it? If you have people working in India and Australia in LA or Mexico or in Germany? So what is the best time to make it somehow reasonable for everyone to be online? So there are several things you need to consider, but I wouldn't be afraid of different setups and seeing what works best for you for the business and for your employees.

David: Yeah. Thanks a lot for your insights. And thank you for the interview.

Yannick: Thank you, David, it was my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me was very nice chatting with you

David: Yeah and for me as well. And for the viewers out there, if you have other questions when it comes to managing international Teams or to Jobbatical, please leave them down here in the comments, and we are happy to answer them. See you next time.