Oh! The Places We've Been *
Eighteen Months in Kabul
Recently, our four month consulting contract ended up as an eighteen month assignment on the ground in Kabul, Afghanistan working for the country’s leading wireless provider. The first night in Kabul confirmed some of our expectations when a rocket exploded three houses away from our client’s employee and consultant housing!
We were retained to develop and implement all HR practices and policies for 400 local employees and 75 expatriates. Our work included on-site management as the head of human resources and also remote support on compensation, benefits and performance management program design. It was a great opportunity to test our theory that the HR infrastructure of a new company can be built fastest using a combination of local and remote experts with the local resource leading deployment and implementation.
We contracted to create our own replacements by mentoring the new local human resource team. With few labor laws, human resources as we think of it, does not exist in Afghanistan. The local team had no prior experience in HR or understanding of employee relations, but were bright, inquisitive and had a great desire to learn. As human resource professionals we had a chance to contribute to creating the future HR leaders of Afghani business.
After 18 months working in this war torn environment, we transitioned the HR operations to the local team and one expatriate managed the international workers. With HR businesses processes in place, policies and practices formalized, working compensation, benefits, performance management, employee development and succession and staffing programs, our on-site consulting work drew to a close. Follow-up found that Human Resource practices continue to support the client’s position as market leader.
Returning to Jakarta
Ten years after first working in Indonesia, we were contracted to return for a 7 month assignment with a high tech company creating a business unit in Jakarta. GHRO was engaged to hire up to 80 local and international IT professionals. Our role expanded as our ability to add additional value was recognized by the client. Some of the work we did in the Indonesia business unit was also used regionally by the client. While in Java, we experienced a volcano, earthquakes and a tsunami, but our Jakarta location minimized the direct impacts to us.
* GHRO has country experience in:
Afghanistan, Dubai, Turkey, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, The Philippines, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, The United States, France, Spain, Belgium, The Netherlands, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, The Czech Republic, Russia, The United Kingdom, Germany, China and Iraq.
