The Human Resources Challenge In Latin America

The Companies in Latin America that have expanded throughout the region and into the global scene have been analyzed and celebrated in regional press for long time by now. Think of Telmex, the Mexican giant of communications, Falabella the Chilean retailer, Cemex the massive cement producer of Mexico or even Embraer, the world known Brazilian aircraft manufacturer.

Behind the expansion of this so called “multilatin” corporations there is more than a solid cash flow, a healthy bottom line and a good eye for business. There is also a vision on how to manage their employee’s skills and talents through their expansion momentum.

So understandably the management of human resources has become of vital importance in this process. Unfortunately, not all corporations understand this fact. And this could prove to be a fatal mistake. For example, 15% to 30% of the executives sent abroad by Latin-American corporations do not achieve their goals. And also 30% of the managers that return to their original countries leave the company within two years.

There is ferocious competition today in the Latin-American continent. This is why the corporations cannot afford the luxury of relegating their human resources management to a second place. Talent is quickly identified by rival corporations and they will not hesitate in dragging it to their camp.

The study on Management of Human Resources by Latin-American corporations performed by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, showed that companies has shredded their old practices and that what was believed of the regions methods is not longer applicable. There are three main aspects where the change in method is most noticeable: Recruiting, Compensation and Benefits and repatriation policies.

Recruiting

According to the study , close to 80% of the “multilatin” corporations sustain a workforce abroad and 45% anticipate their foreign workforce will be growing in the near future. This new form of making business has forced changes in the profile of their recruits and of the people they promote. The profile of a successful executive in 2008 is much different from the one in the 90s.

Traditional recruiting was based on technical knowledge of the candidate and his post graduate studies. Also the fame and prestige of the candidate’s university was also considered.

Today this is not enough. For a successful career, most candidates need a post graduate degree in Business, they also must have excellent handling of the English language and wishfully they must have had experience abroad.