Relocating a Business to London

HR Scenario Mr. CEO, President IT Services H.M. Abode, Strategic HR Administrator RE: Hiring for London Office I am responding to your request for an analysis regarding IT Services planned expansion to London, England. As I understand it, we have purchased a facility and now need to be staffed with Human Resources personnel within six-month, who will then work on hiring 70 Full Time and 50 Part Time IT professionals within the office in a 24-month window. These IT individuals will then work exclusively with UK-based firms.

First, this choice is a good one and should result in a number of important oppo9rtunities for IT Services.: Globalization has changed the world of marketing and consumerism. No longer are markets just local, and with the advances in telecommunication and the Internet, customers may be a few miles from the vendor, or a few thousand miles.

Social media now takes word-of-mouth marketing and makes it viral in nature; consumers can interact with millions of people over the Internet and a negative or positive review can make or break a 21st century organization. One would think that this aspect of the 21st century -- choice and globalism -- countries working together to improve the lives of people would mean that the world was also coming together in terms of equality and social justice (Center for Global Development, 2012).

Second, the move to London is significant, for many consider London to be one of the major centers of operation for the EU. As their financial center, London offers political and social stability that has remained firm even under the recent EU recession., moreover, London has become a real knowledge center for IT, programming and knowledge management (4Business.com,. 2013). That being said, one of the concerns you had focused on the staffing of HR for the London office.

Based on research, it appears that a two-pronged approach will be the most expediant for our company. First, of the HR professionals staffing the London office, we will assume at least 2-3 executive level employees. Of those, and let us assume three, two should be experienced members of our own staff; at least one senior manager and another someone we have identified as being on the managerial path.

In both cases, these individuals should be quite strong in understanding our company culture and hiring process, and have corporate training and coaching experience. The other could be someone who has worked in both the United States and Britain, perferably for an IT company. This individual would be the focal point to merging the cultural aspects of the procedure, and smoothing the transition. For all other HR personnel, we would suggest hiring from the UK market, either expatriates living in the area or host nationals.

Of these, we would suggest that at least a few have experience with other EU nations, and perhaps the divergent population of the UK as well (See: Sparrow, ed., 2009).

This strategic and tactical implementation of a diversity plan would accomplish several things for our organization: 1) Provide the expertise and stability of individuals who understand our organizational needs and goals; 2) Allow for a managerial or executive level with British or EU experience; 3) Focus most of the hiring staff on individuals familiar with the UK and EU culture, and thus be able to understand specific staffing needs, and 4) Portray a company culture that is fair and open to diversity and multi-cultural experiences as we staff up to 120 new IT employees.