José Rodríguez

▶0:01HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. So I want to welcome José Rodríguez, Global Senior HR Director at Mobilium, to the Built by People podcast today. Jose, thanks so much for joining. I'm excited to dive in. And just as a starting question, I'd love for you to talk to the community about your career journey and some of the pivotal moments or experiences that have shaped you into who and where you are today. Sure.

▶1:16GuestIt's a pleasure to be here with you and thank you very much for the invitation. Yeah, so It's the career journey. It's been really adventurous. So when I decided to work on HR, it's 20 years ago. I never thought that I would be here today. So when I started, so I started working for healthcare universities, then I moved to a different kind of job doing some political advisor to a councilman in Lisbon. So I think it's, uh, one of the topics that, uh, that, uh, marked my career is that I'm not the typical HR guy. So, and because I don't have this like a typical HR career, so I, I have been working in several different industries, uh, different kind of business and, but also different kind of functions. So, uh, as I mentioned, I started in HR, then I moved to political advisor. Then I moved to board member of the university, uh, managing the, the all admin stuff and all facilities and, uh, everything like that. And so the journey has been like this. So HR, not HR, HR, not HR. Then, uh, one very important topic, uh, for me, not just professional, but also in per— about personal development. I moved, uh, to Angola. Uh, so, uh, country in Africa, as you know., in 2009, and I'd been there for 8 years. So it was, it was great. So, uh, in terms of, well, I learned a lot, as you can imagine, because it's, uh, you are working in a different culture, different environment, uh, different problems that you have in, in Europe. Uh, so it was, uh, 8 years of my life where I grown up a lot in terms of, uh, my career. So I used to work for there for different international organizations. And in the last organization that it was DHL, I had 9 countries on my scope. And, well, you know, that's a very different, again, background and cultures and mindsets. After that, I moved again to Portugal. Oh, but in Angola, I met my wife. Of course, it was She's Portuguese. She was working there as well. And it was, uh, also game-changing in my life. And then we decided to come back, to return to Portugal. And, uh, it was not, uh, an easy move, uh, because after you spend so many years in a different region and country, when you are back to your country, it's always, uh, quite hard, uh, personally and professionally speaking. And then it was a very important moment in my career as well. So, because when I returned to Portugal, I, again, I didn't work for HR, my first job. So I supported some Portuguese investors to create the biggest coworking facilities here in Portugal. And it was a huge learning experience because I never worked in a coworking industry. And then we had to build everything from the concept, hire the people, build the systems, processes, get the tenants for the buildings. So it was a huge challenge. And it was the moment that I started to get contact with the tech, with the tech scene, the tech environment here in Portugal. Because in 2016, it was the first time that Wave Summit was organized here in Portugal. So the ecosystem grown a lot since that time. And then when I was to, when I used to work in this coworking space, I met several companies and this changed completely my professional life from that moment because I want to, I decide, okay, no, I want to work in the tech scene. And then I moved from this coworking company to a tech company and then I moved some other moments as well. But as I used to say that there is before Angola, Angola and after Angola. And now I'm working for HR again since 3 or 4 years ago. And I'm happy. I love HR. I love people. So, and huge challenges ahead.

▶5:43HostYeah, José, thank you for that introduction. And one thing that really stood out to me was the breadth of your international experiences and how that has shaped you into who you are today. I've been an expat myself, but 5 different countries and certainly see the value of multicultural experiences and teams. And I was hoping that you could elaborate on how you lead and manage diverse teams effectively in your work and, you know, some of the strategies that you use to foster collaboration, innovation, and a sense of belonging among team members of cultural backgrounds, because that's That's an important topic, especially today.

▶6:29GuestAbsolutely. Uh, well, when you are working with the multicultural teams and you need to understand them, you need to understand where they are coming from or where they are. So, uh, not just if they are in different locations, not just the time zones, but everything that it's around them. So their culture, how do they value their job? How do they value their personal life? How they spend their time, their free time. So it's very important to understand them. If you want to have an effective leadership of this kind of multicultural teams, you need to understand them and respect, of course, these different cultures and different way of working, different, some cultures are more focused on the detail, but other ones are more focused on the task or on the execution. So you need to understand them and then to get the best of them. So I would say that in this experience in working with Africa or Asia Pacific or Europe, Americas, so it's really, really important to understand them, understand that culture. And adapt, adapt and adopt. So adapt to who they are and try to understand them as best as we can.

▶8:00HostJosé, obviously there are challenges that come in trying to overcome the cultural barriers that exist in those types of work environments. Can You speak to some of the challenges that you've seen as you've worked with those multicultural teams and elaborate on a way that you've, or a method that you've used to overcome them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

▶8:29GuestSo one of them, one of the challenges is how do they express themselves? Because most of us are not using our mother language. So, and the way that we speak, that we speak, uh, and for English is used to be the, of course, the official language of, uh, any company in the world, at least ones that I worked with. So, and when you are working with a lot of people, different countries, different regions, and English is not the, the mother language, then you, you need to, to make sure that, uh, people understand what you are saying and and you need to make sure that you understand them. But also speaking, it's not very problematic because we can read our body expression or our face expression. But the thing is about reading emails or messages on Teams or any other tool, because sometimes there are cultures that are quite straight, quite direct on when they write something. And there are cultures that they need to have some, everything that they write is very kind or very nice. And sometimes this conflict seems very basic, but it's not because this can create a huge conflict because when they are used to work on a very kind environment, And if they read something very direct, this doesn't mean that the one that writes direct is not kind. It's just their way of, they express themselves. So we need to be tolerant to different cultures and different realities. I would say that tolerance is one of the keywords that you need to use in our, in your daily job. Also, other challenges is about their basic stuff again, so In Middle East, for example, they do the weekends on Fridays and Saturdays. In the other countries, in other regions, it's Saturday and Sunday. So you need to respect the days that they are not working. And also the time zones. If I'm working in a certain time zone, I should not expect that they will reply to me in my time zone. I need to respect their time zones as well. So. And there are some basic steps that you need to, to put in place to overcome these kind of challenges and to anticipate challenges as well. So again, I said tolerance is one of the keywords. Another one is anticipation. So try to anticipate what you will face when you are working with multicultural teams and different regions of the world. Uh, in Africa, for example, you have much other different challenges. You have, you have to work with, uh, for example, when I have Nigeria in my scope, not just, I have different tribes on the same office. Uh, so, and, and then you also need to understand their feelings. What, how do they work together and, and if they can work together in it. So, because again, it's sometimes, uh, uh, different people, they are not able to work together. So you need to building teams, it's critical and building teams is fundamental to, so you can have an effective delivery of the work that you need to do for the business. Because as HR, of course, you need to be very close to business and deliver in a daily basis, a lot of information, a lot of inputs.

▶12:11HostJose, building on that, I, I wanna switch gears a little bit and talk about the employee experience, especially through this multicultural lens. And my question to you would be, how can organizations leverage employee experience in a multicultural environment to engage and retain their talent?

▶12:35GuestAbsolutely. So when, when you talk about the employee experience, it's important to, to understand what is that. This, since It's just, it's the whole employee lifecycle in the company before he joins, when he joins, when he's working in the company, and if he leaves the company. So you need to, to, to work in all of these topics. And the onboarding, it's, it's fundamental. So if you work, if you invest in, if you work well on the onboarding, so you have everyone, everybody depends of the culture or of the region that is coming from. He can perform since day one. But then the onboarding should be, of course, there is the global onboarding process, if you can say that, but then you need to adapt to each culture, each region. So then after, you need to have a good design of compensation and benefits. If compensation, if you talk about salary or bonus or variable or commissions or whatever you want to say, But about the benefits, what is really important? So I'm personally, I am a big defender of flex benefits. So what we do in some countries that we give a certain amount in a flex benefits platform and then the person can invest that money or can use that money wherever they want. Because what is important for me, maybe it's not important for you. So, and then there is, this is the best way to respect different people and different cultures. It's to give them the ownership of how do they use their money or their benefits, how, which benefits they want to use. And this is an important part of their experience. Of course, now we are talking about the front-lace V,, or you can talk about remote or hybrid or 100% in the office. Obviously, each one has their own idea or the one that decides that it's the best for them. But of course, in my personal opinion, I think the hybrid situation, it's the best one because can provide to the employee time to work from home and to handle some personal topics at the same time that he's working. But at the same time is going to the office and collaborates together with the other folks and creates the culture of the company. Obviously, when you are managing and when you are leading remote teams, you are most of the time remote, so you need to find ways to work with them. And not just about having meetings, but being quite creative in those meetings. So having catch-ups, not just feedbacks or not just tech technical meetings, but, but try to understand as well, try to, to organize some kind of events, online events. And when you are not there, one interesting thing that I did in my previous company was because we had quite a multicultural team and to improve their experience in a different country and so they can be more integrated where they, they were. We did, for example, we did some special events connected to the countries where they were coming from. So like, for example, I had one colleague from Morocco. We did a Morocco day and with Morocco food, music, we created the environment in the office so they can feel at home. And this, even if it's just very few employees in a big company, they will feel proud of themselves because they will feel proud about the culture where they are coming from. And, but they will, they will feel happy and they will be really engaged with the company because they understand, okay, my company and my colleagues are taking care of me and respecting my culture and try to learn more about, about myself. And this is one example that's, uh, simple with low budget that any, anyone can, can do in any, in any company.

▶16:45HostYeah. What a great example of celebrating another's culture and, and helping to create an organization that is inclusive.

▶16:55GuestEdward, absolutely.

▶16:56HostI'd love to ask you to give me any parting advice that you'd like to share with your fellow HR executives. What would you like to tell them?

▶17:08GuestThanks. I think a good advice would be we have two ears and one mouth. So it's an old proverb that we need to listen much more, need to pay attention to details. Today, leading people or being in HR, it's quite tough. The world is moving very fast, technology is moving very fast, priorities of people are completely, is completely different. So, uh, I would say that, uh, HR executives today should, uh, listen, should pay attention, uh, to detail and anticipate, uh, um, because if you anticipate, you will solve most of the problem that you're having after that.

▶18:01HostJosé, thank you so much for joining me on the Built by People podcast. It was great having you on the show.

▶18:07GuestThank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here with you.