my boss wanted me to head to china for 2 weeks early march. it is to settle a staff into the country. its the company's first time sending someone there and thus i must go there to settle the new staff in, help to set up the office, and at the same time recruit people to help this staff. and whilst i was there, i should visit our vendors to introduce them to this new staff, and at the same time, conduct training for them. sounds easy right?
thing is - i have just inherited this task of liaising with the local vendors from my colleague just because "i know a little bit of the language". other than that, i don't know the local vendors, i know nuts about the local authority's procedures, i have my own language limitations and to top it all off, i was told to just go there and do service training at very short notice. and this training bit was thrown in last minute to further justify the need for me to be there. but of cos, i could sense from my boss's perspective that my presence there is to help the department score political brownie points in being proactive in helping to set up the office). seen from that perspective, i am nothing more than a pawn.
but on the bright side, it sounds like a good time to learn more about the system there and, more importantly, have a break from people in singapore.
hahaha...
Hi Jeffrey,
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year.
Glad to hear you had a good trip.
I would think that people (lawyers, operations management, purchasing, accounting) have been working on issues leading up to opening an office in a new country: especially a highly regulated one. Who will this office report to? They should have a project team working on this initiative. Someone selected local vendors, and are approving invoices on purchase orders (issued by purchasing) and being paid by accounting (who would have had to work through currency control regulations). Someone needed to identify and specify job descriptions and requests. I can not imagine an operations site being selected without heavy input from operations management. I hope you just need to identify the involved players and where things stand and how they would like you to contribute.
If no one has already identified the relevant in country work and wage regulations than the corporation's lawyers should be able to identify knowledgeable resources (you might want to have direct access to resources since it sounds like this is a very regulated environment: hiring and firing, especially who can legally work where; residence restrictions).
Is a visa required to enter the country for work purposes?
Is anyone still around who was involved in opening an office in the last new country?
Best wishes, Edwin