If your organisation has a presence or is considering ventures into Asia, you may face some uncertain times ahead. If the HR Tech landscape isn't hard enough in your home country, imagine adding the complexities of languages, cultural differences and differing levels of organisational maturity to the mix. Susan Chen will be joining us at HR Tech Fest, 27-29 November 2016 to help navigate the multifaceted HR Tech landscape in Asia. We spoke to her about her session to find out what unique barriers are faced in this region.

The biggest difference I see is the pace of change. In the emerging markets there is a need to make much faster and higher impact decisions in order to catch up with the rapid market development. But many emerging markets do not have the track record that allows executives to make decisions based on past analytics so there are more risks involved in making decisions. HR professionals in these emerging markets need to be much more agile in their decision making than their mature counterparts.

I think there are more cultural complexities in Asia that may not be captured in the more mature European and Australian markets. Within Asia, you have emerging giants like China and India, with a mix of highly regulated emerging markets like Indonesia and matured Singapore, as well as untapped territories like Myanmar. These very diverse environments each have unique relationship between HR, technology and innovation.

Disruption is a term we've heard a lot recently and the way I like to define it is “innovation with enabling executionâ€'. It's what a lot of organisations are striving for and some area doing really innovative things in the HR space. The other side of the coin is ‘interruption' which we see all too often unfortunately – it's an attempt at HR transformation but lacks the agility needed to execute these innovative ideas.

The idea that there is one Asian solution that fits all Asian countries. It's simply not true. There are so many cultural complexities in Asia and each country is at its own level of HR maturity. You have emerging giants like China and India, with a mix of highly regulated emerging markets like Indonesia and matured Singapore, as well as untapped territories like Myanmar. Many people think we should apply a European best practice solution to an Asian problem. It is too simplistic and not effective.

• First of all the talent pool is much smaller for the kind of HR transformation you want to achieve. You're going to need experienced leadership to act as change agents to drive your HR transformation, but few organisations have the history of HR transformation projects to enable people with the depth of experience you may need. So your talent pool is going to be a lot smaller than you're used to in the Australian market.
• Secondly, the perception of HR's ability to truly drive and deliver values to the business is very different in Asia – while the HR function in Australia is on track to getting a seat at the board room table, organisations in Asia have a way to go in this respect. Be prepared to earn your seat!
• Of course language is an obvious language barrier that exists in most Asian countries, but more importantly you need a deep understanding of the cultural sensitivities and practices that underpin cultures and workplaces.
• To add a further layer of complexity, the highly regulated and pro employee laws, evident in countries like Indonesia, undermine HR's ability to drive high impact changes such as fostering a performance based culture.

Best practices are mediocre at best. Asia is a complex market so you need to understand the market and tailor your solutions instead of thinking a blanket solution will work. Do not underestimate the challenges that this unassuming continent will present!

Susan will be presenting at HR Tech Fest Melbourne 2016 on “Balancing HR Disruptions and Interruptions: Comparing the ‘Mature Singapore' and the ‘Emerging Indonesia' HR Tech Marketsâ€'.

After holding senior HR roles for AIG and Visa in Singapore, Susan Chen now looks after HR, Organisational Development and Compliance for Viva Generik, Indonesia's integrated healthcare service provider. She works closely with the executive leadership team to deliver on target growth and regional expansion through scalable end-to-end HR practices.