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Employee Communications in China

Posted By Dana Clifford On 25 January 2012 @ 10:00 am

This blog is part of our Building a Global Mindset series [1]to help communicators increase their own cultural awareness and global perspective.

As the world’s most populous country, fastest growing economy, and stereotypically hard working culture, it’s no wonder that so many companies are focused on expanding their footprint within China. That said, it can be a great challenge for multinational companies to effectively recruit top Chinese talent and build engagement with their current employees.  This is due to paradoxes in the Chinese culture including values of traditionalist versus advanced practices, material success versus relationship-driven business exchanges, and socialism versus capitalism.

This environment leads communicators to ask questions like “will our internal social media investments be effective with our Chinese employees?” “How should we prepare leaders and managers to drive dialogue in an environment where employees may naturally be inclined to let their boss do the talking?” “What values matter most to potential employees in this market?”

We would love to hear your experience with employee communications in China and thoughts on these questions (comment below.)

In the meantime, based on conversations with numerous MNCs and working closely with our peers in the HR space, we’re tracking some of the key trends in employee communication specific to working in China, including:

3 Trends about Employee Communications in China:

1. Chinese Employees Increasingly Choose Chinese Firms over MNCs:
While a higher number of Chinese work for multi-national corporations, in the past 4 years there has been a 19% increase in employees’ preferences to work for Chinese firms. For many, this stems from a fear that recession-hit Western companies lack growth opportunities and have a glass ceiling.

2. Compensation, and the opportunity for increases in future compensation, matter most:
The average Chinese employee rates compensation as the number 1 attribute in the EVP—nearly double any other attribute. Development opportunities and future career opportunities are critical retention drivers for Chinese employees.

3. Top-Down Is Not Dead:
In general, hierarchical business relationships are expected and accepted. Employees look to senior leaders for direction and are accustomed to certain levels of formality.

Implications for Communications:

  • Emphasize your companies’ stability and long-term commitment to expanding in China
  • Promote local development opportunities and career paths (limit requirements to be relocated abroad to advance)
  • Deploy senior staff members to make general announcements to employees in China, but emphasize team dialogue and the ability to speak up to drive employee ownership of strategy

CEC Members: Check out A Communicator’s Guide to China [2] for additional recommendations on how to manage your employee communications, as well as PR, CSR, and consumer communications in China.


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