Chief Learning Officer - June 2008 - (Page 35) Tonolini, director of TenarisUniversity, the learning center for Tenaris, a leading industrial pipe supplier. Due to the sheer vastness of the region, Latin American employees are highly dispersed, and global enterprises managing operations in Latin America face the challenge of bringing enough people together to fill a classroom. This logistical obstacle means trying to produce customized training programs for individual offices within Latin America essentially is a pipe dream. Most organizations simply implement U.S.-created programs but amend or supplement them as needed by partnering with local affiliates. “It pays sometimes to go out and study what’s available and then leverage the local associate you will find,” Tonolini said. “It’s very important to have a local partner that understands the community, what’s available, what’s not available, what you need to bring in from outside, what you can do locally.” Local partnerships are extremely important when it comes to soft-skills training, since those courses tend to be instructor-led and therefore require more finessing. When the need for sales training arises at Sun Latin America, for example, the company hires local facilitators to run the classes. “It’s cheaper for us: [The local facilitator] doesn’t have a travel burden, he speaks the language, talks to the cultural things and delivers the courses cheaper, quicker, in a more adapted fashion,” Cabral said. “We really detect local leads.” Toni Marana, director of human resources for Microsoft Latin America, said the company takes the local partnerships even further when it comes to leadership development, working closely with Latin American universities to offer tailored programs. Partnering with local schools also offers another benefit: You can tap into a substantial pool of young workers early on, Leon said. “That is what we leverage a lot, and we have very good knowledge about the potential market that we will have in the future,” he explained. Another important aspect of logistics is the law. Whenever you’re dealing with global business, you’re bound to run into some conflicting red tape. Compliance training mandated by a U.S. corporate office might not align with a foreign nation’s laws or culture. Latin America is no exception. Cabral said confusion, for example, can arise from anticorruption and sexual harassment training. The best technique in these situations, he said, is to deliver the mandated training effectively, give examples of why it’s important and explain exactly what is expected of employees. Cultural Challenges Perhaps the greatest challenge — and also the greatest opportunity — associated with operating offices in Latin America involves straddling the cultural differences. The Latin culture is social and interactive, with emphasis placed on face-to-face time. “One of the things that is just so wonderful about working in Latin America is that we have a very, very passionate and very, very joyous audience to work Chief Learning Officer • June 2008 • www.clomedia.com 35 http://www.clomedia.com
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