The speed is essential because the business environment is moving in a pace we haven’t seen in Sweden for centuries.
So you are in the process of setting up your business and the lawyers and the establishment bureaus are helping you with the legal structures, hard facts, tax procedures and audits.
The thing now is to fill your company with people. That is; you stand for the challenge of finding the right people.
You think – What? That cant be too hard in a country with 1.3 billion people!
But the vast amount of people and extreme pace of growth instead provides its own unique challenges.
We at MPS China often use the Chinese proverb “An army of thousand is easy to find, but, ah, how difficult to find a general”. The meaning is that, yes, there are a lot of people, but how to find the right one in this vast sea is the problem.
How to find the Chinese that will suit and enjoy working in a Nordic company? We maybe sometimes believe ourselves very desirable and easy to work for, but not all Chinese people are comfortable with the Swedish or European management style and our different approaches to organization structures etc.
Another common first obstacle you need to overcome is that you don’t have your own net of contacts and ways of communicate.
- Whom to contact?
- Who to talk with when figuring out how to fill your company with the right people?
- Or answering questions that you for sure will encounter like; What does the pool of available employees look like?
- What about salary levels?
- what is a HongBao?
- which if you don’t have sorted out, you most likely will have a lot of angry staff around Chinese New Year?
Motivation, will your Chinese staff be motivated by the same things as your Swedish or European employees? What kind of expectations will you have from your employees as a manager?
To find the right people in China, firstly, ask and use somebody that understands both the Chinese and the Nordic aspect. There are some very big basic differences in our culture and its not always easy to predict what consequences it will give on your company.
And remember that it’s not without reason the Chinese market has grown from almost nonexistent to one of the worlds largest in thirty years.
Things are going ahead in an unbelievable pace, and its up to you to keep up, or you will get run by. It’s an exciting new market, with huge differences in culture and naturally its own way of reasoning around leadership and employment.
Don’t underestimate the difference and take precautions to get around this and you will tap into an extremely prosperous market with huge opportunities.