Running Naked in Dubai: Secrets to Becoming a Better Business Partner

By Jeffery Welter

In the past 30 or so years, there's been a seismic shift in the HR world. It's brought us terms like "work/life balance" and "employee engagement." It's created a bold new way to manage a workforce. It set a higher bar for HR practitioners and ushered in a fleet of new leaders committed to innovation and, of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bowker
• Release date: Sep 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986662329

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Before I tell you why I wrote this book, let me give you some background on the title.

It hails from my days as vice president of human resources for a defense contractor, a global government services provider. I was responsible for the employees and 170 HR support personnel of a large multi-national defense contractor that was spread across multiple logistics and life support projects in the United States and five countries in the Middle East and Asia. Over the span of this time frame, we mobilized and deployed over 17,000 employees.

On this particular day, I happened to be working out of a deployment center we had established in Dubai. I’d been there for weeks, spearheading a team that hired people from 70 countries and deployed them in jobs scattered over three continents. A big part of that training involved acclimating candidates to ways of working in the West.

We put the new hires up at a hotel where we rented two floors in Dubai. Most of them had lived their entire lives in parts of the world that do not have running water and indoor plumbing. For people who didn’t think twice about emptying their bowels in the corner of a training room packed with coworkers, it was a culture shock to learn how to use a Western bathroom.

On top of diverse cultural habits, there was a language barrier to deal with. Sure, we had high-level interpreters skilled in each new hire’s dialect. But the training wasn’t always easy, and we were trying to cram in a pretty large bundle of learning in a ridiculously short span of time. What can I say? We hoped for the best. But sometimes, the right message just didn’t get through, and we ended up with cultural faux pas.

That’s basically what caused the scene I walked into one day as I was leading a tour of our hotel. I stepped into the lobby, and there he was—an employee of ours, snug as a bug in a cozy lounge chair, boozed up, probably seeing double, and absolutely naked. I mean, bare-skinned, totally in the buff.

He was from Eastern Europe, a part of the world where employers didn’t enforce—hell, they probably didn’t even have policies that prohibited alcohol consumption on company time. But the defense contractor is an American employer. And if you’re working for this defense contractor, you’re expected to follow American workplace standards. In other words, no drinking on the job, and make sure that when you're at work or simply on the company's premises, you're wearing more than your birthday suit. Clearly, this guy didn’t get that memo.

On the flight back to the States, I joked with Janis, one of my HR managers, One of these days, I’m gonna write a how-to guide on how to become a Better Business Partner, and it’s gonna open with that guy in the chair, who essentially ran naked in Dubai.

I tell this story to make a point. Every corporation, mid-size business, small company, or start-up needs to have policies and standards and an effective way to communicate them to the workforce.

In Dubai, I thought we had a detailed enough plan. But, oops! If an employee is juiced or if he’s out and about and totally without a stitch, well then, our dress and behavior codes weren’t communicated well enough. Workplace standards are built by step-by-step HR methods, proven over time, and founded on precisely defined principles. There simply is no substitute for measured HR processes. There simply is no other way for any enterprise, massive or small, to execute business objectives, operate efficiently, produce goods and services, and grow.

All of which brings me to this book. It’s been three decades now that I’ve been doing HR. I still remember how it was done in the past. I’m talking about the days when HR specialists took new hires door-to-door, passed out benefits forms during orientation, and filled their days by keeping track of timesheets and approving requests for days off. In case you hadn’t noticed, that HR department no longer exists.

In the past 30 or so years, there’s been a seismic shift in the HR world. It’s brought us terms like work/life balance and employee engagement. It’s created a bold new way to manage a workforce. It set a higher bar for HR practitioners and ushered in a fleet of new leaders committed to innovation and, of course, real change.

Among the new ways of working is the requirement that HR professionals adopt a results-driven mentality. In theory, that can sound impossibly abstract. But in practice, it boils down to knowing how to look at a process, figure out why it works or doesn’t, and then find a way to do it better.

In a nutshell, that’s the core message driving this book.

I’m addressing you, the reader, whether you’re a seasoned HR practitioner, project manager or simply someone, anyone, responsible for supporting employees and leaders with strategies for success—someone who wants to get it right. There is a way you can deliver results that will have your workforce connected, committed, and perhaps even humming.

This I know for a fact.

I’ve devoted my professional life to the ideas and tools that can make it happen, the same ideas and tools that I’m about to share. Many of the tools/methods I introduce in this book would require an investment of your time and effort to explore in a deeper way. They consist of a handful of principles and methods that put humans at the center of your design. If you follow them, you will become known as a go-to Business Partner, a leader who embodies the new normal, a forward-thinking pro exquisitely poised to engage employees across any enterprise. With these principles and methods, you’ll forge a labor force totally in sync and as committed to the company as the company is to them.

If that sounds like a tall order, that’s because it is. But to become a Better Business Partner, it’s the only one that matters.

1

PRINCIPLES

I

once read that if you’re going to explain the what and the how of anything, you should start with the why.

So why should anyone want to become a Better Business Partner?

Before I answer that, I’m going to ask you to imagine the following scenario:

You’ve just been appointed vice president of HR at a global organization. You’re about 15 minutes into new hire orientation—your new hire orientation—and the CEO stands up and addresses you directly.

Jeffery, the COVID-19 pandemic is winding down, and the enterprise needs to shift to a new hybrid work model—something we’ve tried in the past but couldn’t maintain for the long term. But we’re committed to it now.

"We need you to come up with a plan that engages employees, fosters innovation, increases collaboration, and promotes relationship-building, and—this is key—make sure the plan brings us new and exciting ways of serving our customers and maintaining our market leadership.

"I’ll give