There are many issues involved in hiring people locally overseas. It is hard to hire highly skilled people since local companies are competing to do the same. In some cultures, changing jobs is normal in order to advance one's career. There may also be a shortage of trainers, and language barriers may complicate training. In order to minimize such human resource issues as much as possible, it is important to re-evaluate current operations and seek a mechanism that helps you to run your business with fewer personnel.
America
Needs Resolving chronic shortages of human resources at overseas locations
Faster routine work, so you can focus on your core business
As human resource shortages become increasingly severe in Japan, there are significant impacts on overseas locations as it has become difficult to dispatch personnel from Japan.
Meanwhile, hiring local personnel overseas can also be difficult, as it is challenging to secure highly skilled people or train people, and their retention rate is low. Initiatives are needed to address issues related to such human resource shortages.
Maintaining overseas business with a small number of employees
Who will perform routine work and menial work?
Business always includes a certain amount of routine work and menial work. There are often large amounts of such work in management divisions, such as general affairs, human resources, and accounting. If you automate these operations using tools, outsource them to external vendors, or consolidate them at your headquarters, you will be able to transfer your human resources to higher-value operations and bolster representatives' motivation.
3 concrete issues associated with human resource shortages
Issue1
Difficult to hire people with the essential skill set or train them
Issue2
Management of IT assets requires manpower and makes it difficult to optimize investment
Issue3
Routine work consumes human resources
Issue1
Difficult to hire people with the essential skill set or train them
- It is hard to hire local personnel who have the essential skill set. Even if we could hire them, there are still issues such as training, and few of them stay. Instead of hiring everyone we need, we want to solve the workforce shortage issue by outsourcing and consigning work to keep business going.
For example:
We are looking for personnel who can manage all the IT infrastructure at our overseas locations, but the people who have submitted applications are network engineers or come from a general affairs background, not the kind of people we are looking for, which slows down the hiring process.
Our recommended solutions
Outsource the work associated with hiring personnel in order to secure personnel with the essential skill set, which will enable you to eliminate the cost of training and education as well as to maintain a steady number of personnel. This approach also enables you to ramp up the number of personnel quickly.
IT outsourcing
Outsource IT staffing and have an external specialist take care of hiring personnel with the essential skill set as well as the associated IT work.
By outsourcing IT work for your business such as network management and inquiry response, you can focus your resources on your main business.
Recommended products and services from KDDI
Case Study
SHOWA DENKO K.K
KDDI Corporation and KDDI Deutschland provided close support at Japanese quality standards to help Showa Denko achieve an IT infrastructure that offers advanced security and scalability at a reasonable cost.
Issue2
Management of IT assets requires manpower and makes it difficult to optimize investment
- We have so many personnel coming and going, which complicates IT asset management, including that for software. We want to have the headquarters manage everything in order to reduce the workload at overseas locations, flexibly responding to changes in personnel and optimizing our IT investment.
For example:
We signed an infrastructure service agreement assuming that we would be hiring multiple local people. However, many of them left, which has resulted in us incurring excessive costs.
Our recommended solutions
When you manage assets and have an unstable number of personnel, you may incur unnecessary costs, including for software. By not owning assets and instead signing up for pay-by-use assets according to the number of users, you can ensure a more flexible response and reduce the management workload.
Cloud Services
Introduce infrastructure services for email and file sharing that can be ramped up or down according to the number of users.
An integrated environment will be created on the Internet to provide email, scheduling, spreadsheets, and document production software. It also supports online meetings.
Recommended products and services from KDDI
Microsoft 365
Office 365 provides a convenient and secure way for you to share your emails, schedules, and files with your colleagues.
Google Workspace
Google Workspace is Google's productivity-increasing cloud office suite that integrates large-capacity Gmail and storage as well as tools necessary for video meetings, document creation, and spreadsheets in a single package.
Issue3
Routine work consumes human resources
- As it is difficult to acquire people with the right skill set, we want to transfer our human resources to core operations, but we also need to allocate a certain number of people to management division operations that have lots of routine work. When people leave these divisions, it takes time for successors to learn the job, too.
For example:
We want to spend time on new business overseas, but routine work consumes half the day, such as checking inventory and ordering enough stock.
Our recommended solutions
Automate routine work with robots and have them do the tasks your personnel have been doing. This will solve the workforce shortage problem as well as serve as a way to respond to unexpected situations that may occur when your personnel are unable to come to the office.
RPA（Robotic Process Automation）
Routine work is automated, and monthly routine work is performed. This structure is no longer dependent on personnel.
Robots can automate repetitive routine work, no coding required. Routine work can be conducted properly even when personnel are absent.
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Case Study
Japan Tobacco (Hong Kong) Limited
More efficient inventory management and import/export data entry are achieved with RPA solution "UiPath".
See other challenges
Create a flexible IT platform that utilizes data centers and the cloud
Needs
We provide ICT support for companies doing business on a global scale.
What is the best solution for your problem?
Please consult a KDDI consultant.