Reference no: EM1340452

HRM: Diversity in building effective global sales teams for Ace Consulting

You are one of four regional Human Resources Managers employed by Ace Consulting, an international consulting firm. You have been assigned to the International Sales division. Currently, one HR Manager is assigned to each of the four global regions: the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America. You report to the Corporate HR Director.

It has become apparent to management that their global customers are critical to their future growth. If there is a need to serve any locations of a customer in another region, there is no good contact point or process to handle it. This gets confusing and is not effective for the larger customers. There is a desire to greatly improve the communication and coordination across regions. Top Ace management has decided that the sales force needs to be organized in teams across regions to better serve these critical global customers.

The HR Director has given you and the other three HR managers the task of developing and implementing a new global-team-based sales force. You will need to design the appropriate team make-up, determine the best way to staff these teams, provide guidance on developing a consistent global approach, design the team-building tools needed to establish these teams, and conduct the necessary training. You also need to design a compensation program that will support the team concept, give incentive to the best performers, and maintain a stable workforce.

Task needing assistance - The laws of the United States protect the rights of individuals based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. In an expanded view of diversity, what other aspects of diversity would you want to include on the new global sales teams to enhance their ability to have a wide range of insight? For example, would you want to have some people at different levels and areas of technical experience or from a diversity of cultural backgrounds, to look at issues from different perspectives?

Identify and discuss three other diverse elements that you would want to have on your team. Write a brief description of each skill or trait and explain why you think it would be important for your team to have someone with this talent on the team.

Now you will discuss these things with the other HR managers. Include in your responses whether you think including the suggested aspect of diversity will add significant value to the team.

Diversity in these categories for example:

1 - Informational diversity such as work experiences, education, training, functional expertise.
2 - Value diversity - differences in work values or goals.