AsureSpace Vice President of Marketing, Jen Roth, has put together a three part series on emerging trends in the workforce. Below is part 1, focusing on Globalization. Be sure to check back for parts 2 and 3!Learn more about Jen

The Three Trends Changing Our Workforce

If the words Globalization, Mobilization and Technology aren’t on the tip of your tongue when talking about today’s workforce, you and your organization have some catching up to do.These three important words reside at the apex of our changing workforce. This blog, and the upcoming series of three blog posts, will help remove some of the mystery from these emerging trends. And along the way, I’ll provide some recommendations you might find useful as your organization adapts to the ever-changing workforce dynamic.I hope this blog series helps you better understand the changing workforce and how you can embrace the trends. Your personal experiences and comments are always welcome. Globalization – Our Changing WorldJust a decade ago, it was a rare occurrence to conduct staff meetings via conference call. Back then, most organizations had weekly meetings with their employees and teams all present in a single conference room. My, how staff meetings have changed!Today, 94 percent of the world’s workforce live outside of the United States and more than 82,000 companies describe themselves as multinational organizations. This means to remain a viable business concern, organizations must think globally – looking outside of previous boundaries for top talent and expanding marketing strategies to include high-growth regions like Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe.This trend in globalization goes all the way to the C-suite as well. A study in the March 2014 issue of Harvard Business Review shows that today’s makeup of senior executives at Fortune 100 U.S. companies includes leaders who are more diverse in both gender and country of origin than ever before.As many organizations quickly discover, there are a variety of benefits to globalization as long as leaders are able to identify their goals and capitalize on the movement.

• First, a well-constructed workforce globalization strategy can help companies tap into the most highly skilled labor sources available in key geographies. This means your organization gains access to the best and brightest talent for the types of positions you have at your organization. Need an engineer to design new product? Have an opening for a production manager? Why not look outside of the normal hiring landscape to find the best person for the job. It doesn’t matter if the new hire lives in India, Mexico or Taiwan anymore. Go where the best labor pool can be optimized for your business.

• Being global can reduce the cost of labor and increase revenue. This is viable today because organizations can more easily move jobs to where skilled people live. When there is an abundant labor supply of skilled people, organizations can reduce costs by locating jobs to particular regions of the world where it makes sense to do business.

• Globalization means more diversity within your organization. Diversity means having access to talent with unique skills and new and interesting ideas to solve today’s problems. The collaboration created in a diverse setting also helps leaders better understand the implications of decision making. As world markets keep growing, labor diversification in these regions will also result in a deeper understanding of these new markets.

• Globalization enhances how you innovate – leading to improved products and services. One size does not fit all. As organizations strive to enter new markets, they often discover that a product that works well in the United States doesn’t “translate” in other parts of the world. Through globalization, you’ll be able to rely on in-region experts to adjust products and services to better fit customers in the regions of the world where you want to do business.

As you can see, adapting to the world’s changing needs only benefits your organization in the long run. But to fully optimize globalization opportunities, your systems must also adapt to effectively manage a global workforce.At Asure Software, our customers are adopting cloud-based, Software as a Service workspace management solutions as well as mobile time tracking applications. With these tools in place, any organization can track and manage its global workforce with ease and efficiency because they are always on and available to employees no matter what part of the globe they happen to be in.

About Jen

 Jennifer Roth, Vice President of MarketingJennifer Roth joined Asure Software in 2012 and provides the company with 20 years of marketing, communications, branding, product marketing, product management and executive communication and leadership expertise. Previously, Jennifer served as founder of JKR Consulting Inc., where she specialized in creating end-to-end marketing strategies for global companies. She also held marketing roles at Ceridian, CIGNA Behavioral Health and United Health Group. Jennifer has an MBA from St. Thomas University, St. Paul, Minn., and a BA from the College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, Minn. She is a member of the American Marketing Association.