China Recruiting Blog

Engaging Chinese Employees

Great company cultures take two things. Great hiring and great leadership. With 72% of candidates lying to get onto your leadership team, you have a big challenge. 

Great Western or Chinese leadership can be found  in China, but the bad news is fully 80% of the ones with good resumes are lying to make the resumes look good. Yes, lying ability rises with seniority.  

When you hire leadership who lied to get in, then their skills are there, and they will use the skills to protect themselves instead of creating a great culture. Be sure they will not be hiring any A players that could be a threat to them. 

Inc Magazine said in an interesting article that:  

The lessons here are clear: a great work culture isn’t just about throwing perks or money at people. If you offer them recognition, freedom and a strong sense of purpose, it makes the potluck dinners – and the ice cream – taste even sweeter.

Engaging Chinese Employees Can Be Done

My company thrives on these three things: recognition, freedom and strong sense of purpose. You might get email anytime of the day night or even weekend from us, because we make our kids recitals.  You will see our hearts are in the work as everyone knows their value to the team. Our purpose is to provide managers who are honest and have real resumes with good jobs. Our purpose is further to place leaders in Western companies in China who will make all the workers smile and not just the owner. That feels good to my team. That my team gets rewarded for being transparent and killing off the candidates our clients liked the most also inspires! I mean they can say no to the liars among these. Our clients then sadly find out and turn from these. We can then say yes to the real gems who no one else noticed.  We find they are gems.  Can you give your workers these three things? That will help. However, if you hire the wrong managers, it will never make you wealthy or really slow down turnover.  That is because the leaders you hired will use everyone below them or hire the dregs and that takes away all their smiles or yours. The sad faces will come even if you give ice cream. We know from experience that ice cream never hurts though.  Get more on engagement here and here.