FedEE Blog

Editorial

Although it should not have any impact on short-term business travel, the wide-scale exodus of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa is undoubtedly leading to the tightening of visa controls for business visitors and to an increase

EDITORIAL

Asking an employee to work beyond their normal hours has never seemed much of a risky proposition, especially if they are salaried and not entitled to overtime. But in the USA the situation is changing and an increasing number

I am constantly amused at how everyone seems to want to confuse and complicate existence. This would not be necessary, for instance, if we adopted a simple law encapsulated in a single sentence.

This sounds like I am about to

Albi, France

It has now been 23 years since I headed up the process automation practice at CCL a major R&D facility on the UK’s Cambridge Science Park. Then the state of robotics was fairly rudimentary, but we still managed

Today I heard the harrowing tale of a man who refused to leave his native Syrian village as it was being invaded by ISIS fighters. They found him sitting in his home and dragged him out to be executed.

What

Back in 2004 countries in Western Europe wasted a big chance to benefit from the immense talent available from the new EU states in Eastern Europe. A stream of Polish, Czech and Hungarian workers did migrate west, but so many

Albi, France

I happened to share a flight the other day with the Group HR Director of a Korean manufacturing company. He was on his way to the UK for a meeting with colleagues from subsidiary companies around the world.

Hunan, China

As I visit countries around the world I am constantly confronted by different cultural practices and standards of conduct – with the constant expectation that “when in Rome do as the Roman’s do”. But is that how a

Hunan, China

It’s all a lost opportunity. The beautifully designed buildings – made to look like porcelain bowls in the ceramics centre of Li Ling in China’s Hunan Province.  Then inside them the unimaginative rows of fine bone China in

Hunan, China

Here in SE Asia the growth of trade unions is faster than anywhere else on the planet. Even in China, where such initiatives are independent and not state-controlled or instigated, unions are flourishing. Industrial action is also quite

Hunan, China

Is it poverty – or the traces of it through upbringing by once poor parents – that causes people to grab things and not appear to consider others? Here in China there is a sometimes tedious decorum of

So the people of Greece have voted to reject the terms of their latest bail out. A situation akin to the trades union that blockades the company making some of its members redundant – thus compounding the problem that that

I promised to reveal in my last blog what mostly differentiates a mulinational business from a nationally-bound one. The answer is that  everything hinges on the nature, volume and quality of data they need to call upon to make even

When a company decides to turn into a multinational a huge transformation is required in the way that HR management is organized and the demands made upon it.

A multinational differs fundamentally from companies that operate in a single country

A friend once proudly told me he had six jobs. He sustained such a life-style for several years long after the need for extra money disappeared. I never knew how he did it – as he was also a long-distance