The HR Community Podcast
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Civitas Talent is excited to bring you a series of podcasts dedicated to the HR community. This is a space where you can learn best-practice solutions from HR community leaders, with host Shane O'Neill.
Whether you’re a CEO, HR executive or operating across the wider HR sector - this podcast is for you!
The HR Community Podcast
Beyond Borders: How to Build Effective Global Talent Teams with Tosh Onishi from Okta
What does talent acquisition look like when you're recruiting across six countries with vastly different cultures, languages, and candidate behaviors? Tosh Onishi pulls back the curtain on the fascinating challenges of global recruitment in this enlightening conversation.
After a decade at Visa and now heading talent acquisition for APJ at Okta, Tosh brings unparalleled insights into how successful organizations navigate international hiring. His journey from Australia to Singapore to Japan has given him a unique perspective on what works—and what doesn't—when building teams across borders.
The conversation reveals startling contrasts between recruitment markets. In Japan, where less than 2% of the population speaks fluent English, the competition for bilingual talent is fierce. Tosh shares a brilliant strategy of critically examining each role's true language needs rather than applying blanket requirements. One particularly innovative approach? Deliberately hiring non-Japanese speakers for certain roles to force sales teams to improve their English skills.
Meanwhile, India presents completely different challenges. There, candidates routinely accept job offers only to disappear or renege weeks later—a behavior almost unheard of in other markets. Tosh explains how the sheer size of the Indian market and longer notice periods create this dynamic, offering practical advice for recruiters facing these situations.
Perhaps most valuable is Tosh's balanced perspective on cultural sensitivity. While acknowledging regional differences, he cautions against becoming so focused on cultural nuances that you lose effectiveness. His refreshingly human approach reminds us that people fundamentally want the same things—respect, recognition, and support—regardless of where they're from. The difference lies not in what you communicate, but how you communicate it.
Whether you're managing global teams or simply curious about international business dynamics, this episode offers rare, practical wisdom from someone who's mastered the art of cross-cultural talent acquisition. Subscribe now and join the conversation about building world-class teams across borders.
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Welcome to the HR Community Podcast. My name is Shane O'Neill, founder of Sila Talestallan, the HR and HSE recruitment community. Each episode, we will host HR leaders and discuss their journey and discover best practice HR solutions across the HR industry. Whether you're a CEO, HR executive or operating across the wider HR space, this podcast is for you. Please like and subscribe, and don't forget to comment and share your views. Enjoy the episode. Hi everyone, Welcome back to another episode of the HR Community Podcast. Today I'm joined with Tosh Onishi. Tosh is the Head of Talent Acquisition for APJ at Okta. Good afternoon, Tosh. Hi Shane, nice to be with you. Nice to be with you too. Thanks for your time. We caught up a couple of months ago while I was visiting Singapore, and this episode has been a couple of months in the making. So thanks for your time and very keen for all our listeners to hear a bit more about your story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:Very good, Very good. Well over to you again, Tosh. Tell us a little bit about, I guess, you, your role, your organization. For those that are listening that don't know who Okta are, Tell us a little bit about all that, yeah so I currently lead the talent acquisition function at Okta in the Asia-Pacific and Japan region.
Speaker 2:We cover hiring in six different countries across Asia-Pacific and we cover the full spectrum of hires, from engineering and other technology hires through to sort of more business functions related to our go-to-market teams sales and pre-sales, for example all the way through to our corporate function. So, to summarize it, anyone that joins Okta anywhere in Asia Pacific in any function will be hired through my team.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Before we get into the current, tell us a little bit about the past, because you've obviously grown up here in Australia and then you've traveled with work and found yourself in different locations around the world. But tell us where it all. Where did your talent acquisition journey begin, Tosh?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, so I am half Japanese, half Australian. I was born and raised in Australia and started my career in Sydney. I actually worked for an internet company and in a couple of other different industries before getting into the recruitment space by accident, as I suppose most people do get into the recruitment space by accident, as I suppose most people do get into the recruitment space. But I started my career doing IT recruitment in a local boutique recruitment agency, placing IT staff into banking and financial services clients. That was back in 2007. And then, I guess my career sort of grew from there.
Speaker 2:My wife and I moved to Singapore in 2012. My career sort of grew from there. My wife and I moved to Singapore in 2012. And then I first went in-house, so to speak, as a recruiter in 2013. I was working for Resource Solutions at the time, which is the RPO arm of the Robert Walters Group.
Speaker 2:And then it was back in 2014 that I joined Visa for the very first time in Singapore as a tech recruiter supporting their technology hiring for their Singapore tech site that they had. Over the years, I gradually expanded my TA portfolio into supporting different business and more commercial functions. In 2017, we moved to Japan, settled first in Tokyo with visa, did four and a half years with visa in Japan through the pandemic as well, and then, as the pandemic was ending, I got the call up to come back to the regional headquarters in Singapore. So my wife and I and family moved back to Singapore in 2022. And after 10 and a half years of Visa and an incredibly difficult decision to leave a place that I'd been at for such a big part of my career, I left at the end of last year and joined Okta back in January.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, what a journey. Some amazing brands there as well. I mean, you know, I'm sure everyone listening knows who Visa are and what they do. But yeah, wow, in that decade you must have seen a lot of change and transformation in the wider fintech space.
Speaker 2:Hey, yeah, absolutely. I mean, fintech is one of the fastest evolving and changing industries. There are always new players entering the market. Particularly over the last I would say seven to eight years, there's been a huge explosion of players in the market Across Southeast Asia, where I live. We've seen the rise of mobile payment solutions and digital wallets. We've seen a huge acceleration of QR-based payments and a shift away from traditional card payments that we're all used to. So, yeah, it was a tremendously fast-paced industry, but also one that was incredibly rewarding to be a part of and, I think, for us in a TA capacity. It had a shine to it, and so we naturally attracted a lot of people into the fintech space, not just out of banking, but also from other industries. We could see the pace of change in payments and in fintech more broadly, and it certainly helped to attract a lot of great people to the industry and to Visa, where I was.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, yeah, funny story. Actually. Quite recently I experienced, and maybe I looked like a bit of a dinosaur, but I lost my wallet recently. I left it in an Uber. Luckily I did retrieve it, but had to, you know, just purely out of fear I canceled my cards and had to order new cards and stuff like that. So I said to my partner the next day hey, while I'm waiting for all these, like, do you mind if I can borrow some cash off you? And she was like what do you mean cash? Like do you, can you not pay for stuff on your, on your phone? I was like, oh, I don't have any of that set up. And she was like what? So don't have it set up on my phone? Well, I didn't have it set up on my phone or my, my smart watch, but I have it all now. But yeah, it did feel like I was a few years behind with the whole using the cards and even having cash in my wallet thing, but I've sort of been forced into the more modern paying on your device situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's actually interesting, so we're connected to that story. Earlier on in my career at Visa, I was the lead recruiter to build up the Innovation Center in Singapore, and this was sort of back in 2016. And shortly after the Innovation Center launched, there was one of the big four banks in Australia was one of the first sort of big clients of Visa in Asia-Pacific to come through the Innovation Centre, and we launched actually some really groundbreaking solutions to banking customers in Australia, one of them being the ability for you to go into your mobile banking app, immediately cancel a card to the experience that you just had immediately request for a new one. Now, for anyone who's had to go through replacing a card, you know the pain of sitting there waiting a week or more for your card to turn up in the mail.
Speaker 2:What we were able to do with this organization was to digitally provision credit cards immediately into Apple Pay and to their digital wallet solution. So, yeah, we've seen some amazing innovations in the payment space and particularly things that make lives for consumers particularly those that have been through a similar experience for you, a lot more easier. So if that had been around when you lost your card, then you would have been able to go into your banking app, cancel your card, request a new one, and you could have walked into a coffee shop the very next minute and bought a coffee with Apple Pay. So yeah, we've seen some tremendous leaps and bounds.
Speaker 1:It's pretty amazing and I know we'll get into it. But I find your journey quite fascinating as well, where you've gone through that fintech side and now more on the cyber and security side as well, which I think is obviously the I guess the other side of it, where you know our information and details and payments are now all online, so obviously you need to have that kind of security and backing behind you in order for it to be safe, which is pretty cool. But tell us a little bit about the I guess the journey then because I know you touched on it a little bit there Tosh with, I guess, regards to relocating and obviously managing talent acquisition and being involved in talent acquisition across different regions, and you mentioned a lot around the tech side of things Like what does that look like? I mean, is it quite challenging to hire in certain regions and why would that be? Because you know I know there's a lot of people listening here who may be only recruited in Sydney or Australia. So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think across the Asia-Pacific region, every market has its own unique challenges and different challenges. So I think it's fair to say that recruiters and organisations face challenges hiring, no matter which market or country you're operating across the region. If I had to pick two of the most difficult and challenging markets to hire in Asia Pacific, number one would be Japan and number two would be India, but for very different reasons. Japan is a market where it's incredibly difficult to really tap into the broader talent pool, particularly if you're a foreign organization looking for bilingual talent. The talent pool is incredibly small. There's a lot of social norms and candidate behavior that you would never see in any other country in Asia Pacific, and you only realize how different it is once you actually get yourself immersed and involved in hiring in Japan, for example. So that is probably the hardest and most challenging market I faced in my career in Asia Pacific.
Speaker 2:India is challenging for different reasons. I think the competition for talent in India is insane, to put it that way, and so you've really got to be very careful about how you stand out as an employer of choice. You've got to be so careful about the experience you create and keeping people engaged. But I think where a lot of challenges we face in India is post-offer and the amount of people that renege or go AWOL and go missing after you've made them an offer. I've never seen that behavior anywhere else in the region. So different markets have different challenges, but India and Japan have stood out to me as some of the tougher places to recruit in my experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Wow, I mean the offer thing is really interesting because obviously I think we all go through it. I mean, because I recruit in HR it doesn't happen a lot and I think maybe that's just because I operate in an industry where the luxury is they're sort of on the other side of it, so much. So there is a bit more of an open communication line throughout that whole process. But what does that sort of, I guess, look like then when you talk about the offer stage and you know, people sort of go missing. Is that maybe like a cultural thing, or is it maybe more role specific or just, as you said earlier, the competition of everything?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's quite a common thing in India in general. I think there's a couple of things that contribute to it. Number one is there is just so much opportunity and hiring demand in India that your average candidate will be sitting on at least four or five different interview processes and potentially three or four offers by the time they get to that stage of any process. The next thing that ends up happening is this. Next factor I would say that contributes to that is that India has two to three month notice periods as standard in the market, and so, compared to markets like Australia, for example, where four weeks or a month is still quite common, japan, a month notice is still quite common.
Speaker 2:Candidates in India have more time to keep shopping around for more offers, and so once they receive an offer, they will continue to interview. I've seen that they use that offer to then negotiate a better offer with the other companies that they're selling process with. They then come back to us and say I've received a higher offer somewhere. Can you match it? So they have the ability to continue to shop around. And one of it irks me a little bit from a moral standpoint is that candidates will accept an offer and then very freely renege even after they've accepted, whereas in other markets what I've seen is a candidate will tell me I appreciate your offer, but I can't accept it for a period of time because I'd like to see out these other processes and I'd like to see if I get other offers and then make a decision that I'm completely okay with. And in fact, when I was in Japan, we waited up to two, three weeks for candidates to give us an answer on an offer because we knew that there were other interviews that they were going for and other offers they were waiting for. The same situation. What I've observed in India is that the candidate will accept your offer on the spot and then tell you three weeks later that they've got a better offer.
Speaker 2:I think the other factor in India and this speaks to the amount of opportunity and how much hiring is going on in India and how much investment the country and different industries are getting in general the market is so big that reneging on a company two or three times doesn't affect your reputation in the market. So no matter whether you renege on one company, you can still get a job with their competitor. The competitor doesn't care. The market's big enough that it doesn't damage your reputation. There are certain countries in the region where, if you did, that word would very quickly spread, a lot of organizations just wouldn't talk to you. I think the way that employers are set up and the way that we, the volumes and the sheer size of the market just allows people to continue to get away with it it's really interesting.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you something around. I guess that that that offer piece as well. So I think there's a couple of things I took out of that. Like I know, in in my world especially, it's very much about communication and it's also like you, you'd much prefer someone to tell you hey, appreciate the offer. Well, I've got all this stuff that's bubbling. Can you give me a week? Because I mean I'm sort of telling you stuff you already know.
Speaker 1:But I'd imagine, like when somebody accepts an offer, that then you then go through that process of rejecting the other candidates and there are other candidates that would have taken you up on that offer. So it's probably not the best approach. But I guess I understand that the market is quite different too. I mean, in terms of Japan, what sort of stood out as some of the, I guess, differentiators there? I mean, you've got experience there, you've recruited there, you've lived there, you've probably got a lot of IP that you can sort of share on recruiting for that space. But I guess for an organization maybe that's listening and looking to break into that market, like what are the sort of you know do's and don'ts that you would maybe advise them on?
Speaker 2:Assuming that the majority of your listener audience are foreign companies looking to set up operations in Japan. The vast majority of these organizations are going to be looking for bilingual talent. I think the first thing you've got to realize is that, according to a recent survey, less than 2% of the entire Japanese population are considered fluent in English, and despite English being a mandatory subject in Japanese schools, according to the 2024 English Proficiency Index, Japan ranked 92nd out of 116 countries, placing it in the low proficiency category. So the talent pool for bilingual talent in Japan is incredibly small and therefore incredibly competitive. I'll give you another statistic the Japanese population is currently somewhere around 125 million people. The last time I looked at government survey statistics on the active workforce in Japan, it suggested there were about 66 million people in the active workforce as of 2025,. Linkedin has 5 million members.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 2:So you are fishing in an incredibly small talent pool. Um, a couple of the things that I found effective, particularly when I was at visa, in improving the way that we hired in japan. The first thing I think the first and the most impactful thing that made a difference for us is to rethink language capability and so, looking at each and every specific role very critically and very carefully, to determine what is the actual level of both Japanese and English proficiency required. When I first got to Japan with Visa in late 2017, there was a standard bar of entry for both Japanese and English, regardless of what role you were in, regardless of what level that you were at, and that was creating a lot of challenges and causing us to have really long lead times on hiring. So, on both sides of that spectrum, we did things such as look at, for example, individual contributor level sales roles. We realized that 95% of that person's life was spent talking to Japanese colleagues in Japanese, japanese customers in Japanese and basically living their work life entirely in Japanese. There was very little need for them to actually interact with anyone in English and, in fact, the only need for them to understand English was to be able to read documentation or emails that were coming from the regional or global HQ, watch recordings or attend regional or global town hall meetings that were obviously conducted in English and just sort of understand what's going on in the company outside of Japan, because all of that communication happens in English. Communication happens in English so, as long as they had a degree of comprehension for both listening and reading, they didn't actually need to be able to speak Japanese because they weren't really talking to anyone outside of Japan.
Speaker 2:On the other end of that spectrum, we looked very critically at roles that were internal only, internal facing only, and had no interaction with the external market. And probably one of the best hires I made and the best example of that was I was recruiting for the head of sales and he said to me one day okay, tosh, we're going to hire for a sales strategy and sales operations role and this person is going to work with all of the sales leaders and support them in preparing their deals and their proposals, taking those deals to a approval committee that sits in Singapore, where, of course, english is a requirement. And we need this person to sort of help them, sort of construct their deals and get faster and more approvals for our deal proposals and just sort of elevate the capability of the sales organization in Japan. And he said to me there's an employee in the US who's a Taiwan national who doesn't speak a word of Japanese and I really want to bring her across and I do not need Japanese language capability in this role. And I almost fell off my chair and I thought how is someone in a sales role going to survive without speaking Japanese? And as I dug into the role, that's where I realised this was an internal-facing role only. There was a lot of interaction with people in the Singapore regional HQ, which, of course, everything is in English, presentations need to be written in English, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2:And then the next thing he said to me was what really blew my mind. He said I deliberately want a non-japanese speaker in this role because every one of my sales leaders is going to have to interact with this person and I want them to have to practice speaking and communicating in english so that they raise their bar in english. He said if I put a japanese speaker into this role like a bilingual person who can work with the Singapore team, my team will just continue to converse with this person in Japanese and they will respond in Japanese. So I said not just because the role needs that English capability to interact with the regional HQ. I actually want someone who's going to force my team to speak more English and practice their English. And I was like that is the most brilliant thing I've ever heard. Yeah, totally. I made a great internal mobility hire off the back of that and for anyone who's in an internal TA role, you know how great internal mobility is, so it was a win-win.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. What a story. Very ballsy as well, but yeah, it's obviously worked out. Tell us a little bit about the I guess, the employer branding side of things. I'm kind of putting you a bit on the spot with octa here, because I know you've only been there five months so you can talk maybe a little bit about that. But you know, I think that the key example as well would maybe come out of visa, where you spend 10 years. But I guess, what does employer branding look like when you're a business and you're trying to create that brand of choice employer of choice for a competitive Indian workforce, a more reserved Japanese workforce you know what I mean? It's like you're trying to touch so many different elements of culture and value. What does that sort of look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think and this is something that I did at Visa and is definitely on my mind at Okta as well I think the fundamental approach is there needs to be a globally consistent message, but that message has to be very, very high level. And where I see a lot of employer branding campaigns or organizations fail is an employer brand message, or an EVP gets developed in the HQ location and then gets sent out to the world as a. This is our message in a one size fits all fashion. What we've got to realize and remember is that in a region that is as diverse as Asia Pacific and, as you sort of referenced there, shane what's important to the Indian job seeker is very different to what's important to the Japanese job seeker and to the Australian job seeker. What's important to a software engineer is very different to what's important to an account executive in sales or a recruiter in talent acquisition. What's important to someone who's early in their career is very different to what's important to the next executive that you're going to bring into the organization. So when you realize that, it becomes very clear that you need to take a globally consistent framework and messaging but be able to customize that to your specific talent audience and to figure out what is the talent audience that you're going after Doing some research and there's organizations in our region that can help do surveys and help you understand what do people prioritize and look for when they're looking for a new job and then you need to tailor your message to that audience.
Speaker 2:So we did this project at Visa, where Visa had a global headline and sort of three pillars of their employee value proposition, and so what we did is, under those three pillars and for eight separate talent personas, which were basically okay for the salesperson in Japan or for the software engineer in India, so we had eight different personas For each persona.
Speaker 2:For each of the three main messaging pillars that were the global EVP, we developed unique and specific messages per market, per persona, so that those recruiters and those teams had a very specific and relevant message to go to the market.
Speaker 2:To say, as an example, if one of the big tenants of Visa's EVP is your opportunity to make an impact on the world, but what does impact actually mean to the software engineer in Bangalore versus the sales executive in Tokyo? And so we were able to tailor those messages. So I think that's really the key part about the EVP and I think for anyone who's working in a global organization in Asia Pacific, we all face the struggle of getting permission from global HQ and global leaders to do things. I think you've just got to advocate, to say we understand that there is a need to have a globally consistent message, but you need to give us the freedom to tailor that message so it resonates with our unique talent audience. And I'm sure the EMEA region is much the same as Asia Pacific because countries across Europe are equally as diverse as they are here in our region 100%.
Speaker 1:And it must be interesting as well. I mean, you broke it down really good there, because, as I was asking the first question, I was also thinking I too broad either, where, um, you know, you're trying to tap into every, every single emotion, it just becomes a shit fight. Basically, talk to us a little bit about I guess you know your structure and and the way your, your team works. Um, particularly the fact that I think we spoke about this when I was in Singapore at Visa. You'd been part of the team where the business, the talent business unit, ended up reporting directly into the ELT thing from memory, or being part of the ELT. Tell us a little bit about I guess that and I guess what really worked there. About I guess that and I guess what really worked there Because I think in my world, a lot of the HR functions people in culture functions that I would recruit for, and a lot of the CPOs that I place, often talent reports into them, so I thought that structure was quite unique.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the main thing that I would say is there's no one structure or philosophy on org design that fits most organizations well. Every organization is different in terms of its priorities as a business, its level of maturity and the size and scale that it is at any given point in time. And I guess the best example of that was the 10 and a half years that I spent at Visa, because when I first joined, the TA function reported globally and functionally up to a global head of TA, and that was when Visa was an organization of around 13,000 to 14,000 people globally. When I left, visa was at 30,000 people globally, so it doubled in size just from a headcount standpoint. Over time.
Speaker 2:There was a CEO transition a few years after I joined and the new CEO had a very unique and different take on global versus regional accountability. Now most organizations, particularly US organizations, have this structure where or this philosophy where all the key strategic decisions are made in the global HQ and then are disseminated throughout the world and the regional teams are asked to go and localize and implement decisions and things that have been decided globally. The Visa CEO at the time flipped that model on its head and his whole narrative was we win and lose business in the local markets. So people in San Francisco HQ don't really influence whether we win a huge RFP for a given bank in Australia or in Tokyo or in Singapore. The local teams do. So he said we are now a regionally driven business. The regions need to make the decisions about what is required to win business in their markets, even things like what are the products that they need, what are the support that they need. And he said, if you are in a regional or global HQ role in Singapore or in San Francisco, your job is not to tell the markets what they should be doing and what products they should be implementing. It's for them to tell you and you to give them what they need. So he implemented this idea of regional accountability and that even flipped the HR model on its head.
Speaker 2:So by the time I left, I was no longer reporting up through to a global head of TA, I was reporting to a regional head of HR, and that regional head of HR had ultimate accountability, as did her peers on that regional leadership team running their markets and businesses, to make decisions that were in the best interest of the Asia-Pacific business and then be able to feed back to the global HQ. This is the support we need, these are the products that we need, these are the solutions that we need. And so, you know, visa went through that transition and, for the level of maturity and the size and the scale of the organization that it was when that change happened and the five or six years or so that I lived under that sort of structure at Visa, it made sense and it was the right thing to do. Now, interestingly, coming into Okta, I'm back to the global model.
Speaker 2:So, as a regional head of TA, I report to a global head of TA, but Okta is an organization of 7,000 people. So now we're back to a scale that's more similar to where Visa was 10 years ago than where it is today. So it's just taught me that there's no right or wrong answer. Whether you have functions aligning and reporting globally, or whether you have regional accountability and regional heads of X, y, z, it's whatever is the best fit for that business in terms of its scale and its maturity at that point in time and, to be honest, I don't think that there is any best practice that exists in that regard anywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good, I mean, and sort of to add to that, it sounds like as well, there's no sort of one size fits all, because every organization is different and their goals are different. It sort of goes back to what we're saying earlier with having your values aligned to specific regions or types of people and roles that you actually want to engage with, and your team as well, both current and previous Tosh, like I mean having them sort of dispersed globally. You know how. How does that work? I mean, I'm sure you've you've developed and got better at it over the years, so you probably have some good tips to share. But how does that work, I guess, in terms of managing that remote team where people are on different timelines and time zones, different communication, different languages? How do you sort of keep everything moving in terms of engagement and performance and stuff?
Speaker 2:yeah. So I think that there's a couple of things um. Number one, as a as a direct reporting line manager of someone that sits in another location, it's so important to keep in touch regularly and check in. You know, making sure that you have those weekly or biweekly one-on-ones and not cancelling them for trivial reasons like sticking to them and respecting that. That is a very important time for you to check in on your team, but it's a very important time that your team needs to get guidance from you or to get approval from you or direction or whatever the case may be. And then I think it's really important that you then have regular forums where the entire team comes together on a call and that those forums are not always about business updates or the leader talking at the team for 45 minutes or an hour saying here's the update, here's a new initiative, here's what you need to know, and you know all that kind of stuff, and they get very bored of your voice after a while. It's giving the team an opportunity to talk about what's going on. It's giving people an opportunity to create, maybe, a space where we have five to ten minutes of fun and we do some kind of activity that just takes people's minds off, works for five to ten minutes. Those are two things that I found were really valuable.
Speaker 2:The other thing and there's a lot of talk and there's a huge topic around cultural sensitivity and how do you do business across the region and this might sound controversial to some of the listeners of your podcast, but I don't believe that you need to be ultra sensitive to cultural differences across the region. And then let me sort of explain what I mean by that. I think the danger that people get into when you read too much material around cultural sensitivity and cultural nuances let's just say between india and and Japan as an example it's very easy to get caught up in just trying to be someone that you're not, yeah and trying to be something that someone, somewhere or a piece of literature is telling you that you should be. Fundamentally, human beings generally want the same thing they want to be respected, they want to be heard, you know that kind of stuff. And that doesn't change whether you're Japanese or Indian, australian or Singaporean. And so I think if you realize and you treat people fundamentally as human beings and not as an Indian person, a Japanese person, an Australian person, et cetera, then you very quickly realize that you give people the same thing that they want.
Speaker 2:Where the cultural and the regional nuances come into play is the way that you have those conversations. There's that old saying you can say whatever you want, as long as you say it in the right way. And I still think that is very true. And what I realized is that I didn't need to shy away from delivering the same message to my team, no matter where they were. The way that I delivered that message was yeah, there was some cultural nuances that you take into account, but fundamentally we're all human beings. We all generally want the same things out of life. We all want that respect, we all want to be valued, we all want our bosses to have our back and defend us when things go pear-shaped. So I just think that it's so easy to over-index on trying to be overly culturally sensitive that you end up not really being very effective at all. If you just fundamentally treat everyone with the same level of basic human decency and respect, you'll figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that, it's great. I'm going to throw one last question at you. It is a little bit of a curveball. Bear in mind, I'm the guy who's just admitted I still use physical cards and cash, so there may well be a product or it may well be in the market already. I don't know. But you talked about a couple of things. I took some notes in regards to language barriers and different cultural nuances and I mean, you've invested so much time and years of your career in learning a lot about this stuff and you've got the experience. I mean, do you see a future where there are tools, within AI, for example, that can help or enable to combat some of these things? You know from a I don't know a language perspective or whatever the case may be? Like I know there are multiple chatbots and stuff like that now that can sort of translate, but you know, do you see AI as a bit of an enabler there to kind of support people through that journey?
Speaker 2:potentially, um. I've not seen any tools as yet, uh, that speak to what you're talking about, um, but I do definitely see potential where ai models, who learn cultural norms and other things, can give someone pointers or advice on how to position a certain message in a certain cultural context. You know, there are definite cultural nuances across the region where some cultures and some people can communicate with each other very directly, be very matter-of-fact and frank in what they say to each other, whereas in other cultures you need to be very careful about how you position things. And again, this comes back to what I said is you can deliver the same message. You've just got to be careful about how you deliver it, but you should never shy away from delivering the core message that you need to deliver. So, yes, I can see a world where AI would certainly help you with that and learns. You know the cultural nuances of communicating to people in the Philippines versus communicating to people in China, as an example. Again, so, yeah, I could see it, I just haven't seen anything tangible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, same. Because I guess in my world, especially like over the years, I've started to learn more and more about what organizations and leaders in HR and talent are doing from a data and tech and AI perspective, and I know that there are talent, intelligence and AI tools now that businesses are looking at and implementing to support them with different predictions around talent management and retention and stuff. So I think, yeah, maybe it does evolve over time and, speaking of time, I've got way over, so I will let you get back to your busy day. So I think, yeah, maybe it does evolve over time and, speaking of time, I've got way over, so I will let you get back to your busy day, but I really appreciate you jumping on Tash. It was really great to meet you in Singapore and no doubt we'll meet you there again at the next workshop. But, yeah, thank you for joining us and I'm sure all of our listeners got a little bit of an insight, if they've never been, into the mad world of global recruitment across different countries and continents and time zones.
Speaker 2:It's been my pleasure, Shane, and thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to the HR Community Podcast. Remember to like and subscribe and share your views and comments below. This podcast was brought to you by Civitas Talent, the HR and HSC recruitment community. Whether you're a candidate looking for a new role or organization looking to secure brand new talent for your team, please get in touch with us today. Thank you.
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