Navigating the global workforce with Cory McGonigle Rose

Strategies for people ops teams working across borders.

New World of Work logo alongisde Cory McGonigle Rose's headshot

Welcome to New World of Work: a podcast exploring the new frontier of the modern workforce. In each episode, we’ll hear from some of the world’s best and brightest people and culture experts on the cutting-edge topics HR professionals are most interested in today, explored through a global lens.

Episode description

Navigating a leadership role in people operations can be challenging, regardless of where you’re located. Add to the mix a global team operating from 100 different countries with a variety of different cultural norms, languages and customs, and things can get even trickier.  In this episode, we hear from Cory McGonigle Rose, the Senior Director of People Operations, Total Rewards, and HRIS at Chime. Cory’s career has taken her from Vegas, where she currently resides, to San Francisco, all the way to Berlin, so she understands the challenges that can crop up when operating on an international scale. During the episode, she reflects on her time working in Berlin at Delivery Hero’s headquarters, where she describes herself as a fish out of water. She explains how this experience helped her gain a first-hand understanding of the tough issues that can come up when managing a team from a global perspective, and offers her advice for people operations professionals hoping to improve their leadership skills.

Episode transcript

Rhys: Welcome to New World of Work, a podcast exploring the new frontier of the modern workforce. I'm Rhys Black, head of remote here at Oyster, a global people operations platform, making it easier than ever to build a brilliant team on an international scale. On New World of Work, we'll hear from some of the world's best and brightest people and culture experts on cutting edge topics that people operations professionals need to hear today all through a global lens. Join us as we navigate this new world of work together and learn more about each other along the way. Navigating a leadership role in people operations can be challenging regardless of where you're located. Add to the mix a global team operating from 100 different countries with a variety of different cultural norms, languages and customs and things can get even trickier. No one knows this better than today's guests, Cory McGonigle Rose, the senior director of People Operations, Total Rewards and HRIS at Chime. Her career has taken her from Vegas, where she currently resides, to San Francisco all the way to Berlin, so she understands the challenges that can crop up when operating on an international scale. In this episode, she reflects on her time living and working in Berlin a delivery hero's headquarters where she describes herself as a fish out of water. As an American abroad, navigating the familiar world of people operations with a new cultural backdrop, she gained firsthand experience on the tough issues that come up when managing a team from a global perspective. I'm sure this is something many people operations professionals can relate to today as we continue to navigate this new world of work, so I hope you'll take away some valuable insights from this episode. To kick off the episode, Cory walked us through her career background so far, discussing the roles that have been most pivotal in her understanding of people operations on an international scale. 

Cory: So I started my career right out of college, so first I'll be back up, I went to college and I studied people. So what I mean by that is I was a liberal arts major. My parents were very big and go to college, study whatever you want to study because you're going to end up in business, everybody somehow ends up in some sort of business. So I went to college, I graduated from Virginia Tech and then I actually started my career in recruiting. I was an associate agent with Randstad and I lived in Savannah, Georgia, for that role. I moved there, didn't know so, which you kind of see is a is a ongoing theme with myself. I'm pretty good at moving, even though I hate moving. And so I started my career in recruiting. And then after recruiting, I got to thinking about what is it like on the other side. I was doing this job where I was bringing all these great people into a company but what I really wanted to understand is what happens once they get into the company. Like, How do you grow? How do you become, you know, how do you get to that next level? How do you get promoted? How do you continue to move up through the corporate ladder? All of those things. So I actually ended up going and working for the federal government for a little bit. And then I actually worked for Deloitte, where I went internally and I would say really cut my teeth on my good H.R. experience from like a people business partnering perspective understand just like the inner workings of true H.R. employee relations, that sort of thing. And then from there jumped into the tech world as a business partner, worked for a company called Opower. And then obviously, I've been a few different places since then. I was at Hortonworks, where I was also the nature business partner. I did a short stint at a medical company, which was very interesting. ApolloMD out at Atlanta then I moved to Berlin and then I came back to the U.S. and I have been the senior director of either people or people partners, basically spanning all facets of H.R., pretty much for the last five or six years. So I started recruiting and somehow have made my way to where I am now. How I ended up in Berlin is actually a very interesting story, so as I mentioned, I had gone to Deloitte and really cut my teeth on good H.R. Deloitte. I was there for about two and a half years. And while I was working there, my boss for the entire time was a woman by the name of Jeri Doris. She and I stayed very close. Her career took her, I believe she was at Groupon in Chicago, then at MuleSoft, out in San Francisco and then went on to Rakuten and then got recruited over to Berlin to be the chief people officer of Delivery Hero. As I said, she and I are quite close. She called me, said, Hey, I need a strong number two. I'm taking this role in Berlin. Are you interested? And for me, it was really right place, right time. I had recently just gotten married to my husband Austin and we didn't have any kids. We had dogs but those were easy to put on a plate and move. I wouldn't say easy but that's how I ended up there. So it was actually a previous boss of mine, had known and trusted the work that I could do. I, of course, had a few apprehensions. I was like, Jeri, I don't speak a lick of German. How is this going to work out? And she assured me, you know, the company does business in English. The one thing, though, is they don't operate in, you know, they don't operate in the U.S. So, you know, all of the things that you do from an H.R. perspective, you're going to have to relearn. And also, obviously, as you hear me talk, I'm a bit of a fast talker. You're going to have to slow down because you speak really fast. So that's a bit about how we ended up in Berlin. I think she asked me around the January timeframe of 2018 and by I think it was March 18th or March 25th, 2018, we were on a plane on her way to live in Berlin, Germany. 

Rhys: Relocating to a new continent where you don't speak the language would be a high stress situation for anyone. For Cory this scenario was made even more challenging by the new role she landed at Delivery Hero, where she was tasked with managing upwards of a thousand employees across 100 different nationalities. Using the term culture shock to describe Cory's experiences would be a vast understatement. All at once, she was thrown into a new working environment, company, culture and leadership team. In addition to coping with the confusion that often comes with managing an international move. She describes the details of the situation, as well as the overall company structure she walked into upon joining Delivery Hero. 

Cory: Some of the new things that I went through starting obviously a new job and a new city with a new language customs norms. It started actually before we got there, so it was an experience trying to find housing. So luckily I was very fortunate in that Delivery Hero had tagged me with a Immigration Customs, you know, moving support person who is helping me from that perspective. So we found an apartment, a furnished apartment online. You know, the the first hurdle was figuring out what does square meters equate to from a square footage perspective? What are the cultural norm things there when you're just looking at apartments? So things like does it have a washer dryer. Dryers are a very western thing. So it was doesn't have a washer dryer combo, you know, is it pet friendly? Because obviously, like I mentioned, we were moving our two or two dogs over there. Also looking at things of doesn't have a place where we can work, because at the time when we moved, my husband did not have a job yet but he would be looking for a job and we wanted to make sure that he would have a comfortable setup. Now we knew the apartment we were going to be moving into, we wanted it to be walkable to the office. So Delivery Hero is located in Midtown, which is the center, the center of Berlin. So we moved into an apartment. I think that was about a fourth of a mile from the actual office. So that was helpful and it actually ended up being the exact same apartment complex that Jeri was living in, though I did not know that at the time until we got there. And she's like, I lived at the exact same building as you, so that was helpful. But from a job perspective, I think the one thing that made that a little bit easier for me was the fact that I was going to work for somebody I already knew and I already trusted. And so, you know, starting out on my first day, I already knew, OK, these are the things that we're going to want to tackle in the first few months. These are some of the nuances that she's run into, but you know, good core H.R. You can do this. So from the actual work perspective, I wasn't that nervous about it. It was more the nuanced things around language and customs and norms. So on that side, like I had mentioned, I did not speak any German. I just feel like I'm missing the part of my brain that allows me to figure out new languages. I had lived abroad in college in Switzerland and they spoke Italian. I also did not, I could not pick up Italian to save my life and arguably it's a much easier language to learn. But the you know, the thing that's interesting or at least that I find interesting about German is what you how I would phonetically pronounce something on paper is absolutely not the is actually is absolutely not the same thing. It does not sound the same from that perspective. However, like I mentioned, Delivery Hero did do business in English, which again, which I think we'll get to. And that ends up being a little bit of a challenge when different native speakers English is not their first language, and so you have to navigate the interesting things of being in a room and two people saying yes, but yes, meeting something different to two different people. The only other thing I would say was intimidating is the grocery store. Anybody that has been to a German grocery store can attest to the fact that it is like, when you check out, it is like speed hungry, hungry hippos, those the cashier checkout folks want to get you out of there as soon as possible. They scan the food so fast and throw it down the way that like if you're not packing it up and you're not ready to go, people are going to be looking at you tapping their foot. So I would say that's the one thing I remember at least being the first, like, jarring experience we had. I think there could be a few different things that could be described as a culture shock, the definitely the speed of the checkout folks at the grocery store is something you're not necessarily prepared for but other things that were just different than what you're used to from, you know, a being in the US type of perspective is that most stores are closed on Sunday which in the US stores are still open. They have shorter hours but you can go to the grocery store. You don't have to go to the train station to find a grocery store that's open. The other interesting thing is Berlin in general still operates very much in cash. And I, you know, being in the U.S., I have a debit card. I don't carry cash on me pretty much ever. And so having to visit the ATM and get cash out was also an interesting just change. I don't think I would say I was shocked by anything because I knew going into it that it was going to be different and I wanted to keep an open mind about my experience going there and really suck it all in from a sponge perspective. The only thing I would say, maybe from a culture shock perspective, was actually the nudity. And maybe that's an inappropriate thing to say on a podcast around the world of work for H.R. but, you know, the European lifestyle is much more, much more open to nudity than I would say the U.S. is. And so on a Sunday, you'd be on the train and you'd be riding to a park and you're along the street, which is the river that runs through Berlin. And you're like naked person, naked person versus a naked person. So if anything was shocking, maybe it was that. But just from the sense of you're just not used to seeing that, otherwise, it still felt like I'm in a city. I understand how business works. I still get paid. You know, I'm still paying taxes. I go to the grocery store. I come home, I walk my dogs. All of those things were the same. You're just doing it in a different language. So how Delivery Hero was structured when I got there, it was actually a very interesting time. So for those that don't know, Delivery Hero is basically similar to like a DoorDash but for the rest of the world. I want to say they operate in maybe 48 different countries and they own several different entities. So what that means is Delivery Hero SE is the holding company for all these different food delivery brands all across the world, except for the US. They operate in Latin America, they operate in Canada. I'm not sure if they still operate in Canada though today but they operate in Southeast Asia. They operate in the Middle East very heavily and so they have all these different brands. And in Germany at the time, they did have Delivery Hero Germany but that was also something that had dissipated while I was there. However, the other interesting piece is right before we had gotten their, Delivery Hero had bought out Foodpanda. Foodpanda was a rival brand in the Berlin market and so we were actually integrating both brands from a corporate perspective at the same time. So while I got there and we were trying to build out all of these corporate structures at the same time, it was taking 700 corporate Delivery Hero employees and 300 Foodpanda employees and trying to integrate them into one structure that actually made sense. So that was just very interesting from the perspective. In places you would notice, we would have two people doing the exact same job. And so you're trying to figure out who fits where. So I would say Delivery Hero was also going through a little bit of a corporate renaissance trying to figure out who are we, what do we want to be? So from a size perspective, says about a thousand employees at that time, I would say, and obviously with 100 different nationalities across a thousand employees, you have several different languages as well. So again, English being the commonality between all of us. But again, everybody's coming from a different place and having a different experience. And so from an H.R. perspective, you're really trying to navigate what does that mean from, you know, X, Y and Z perspective? And how do we make sure that whatever we're building is easy, simple to understand? And also reshuffling a culture and putting values first that actually feel like this new morphed brand? 

Rhys: One of the word's Cory values that stood out to me was integration, a big component of the challenges she was faced with in her new role was integrating a massive company with employees spread across a number of different countries, cultures and languages. As many of us are aware, this is a challenge similar to what many people operations professionals are faced with today as we navigate this new world of work. If you're in a similar position, you'll likely relate to what Cory had to say next. 

Cory: So from an integration perspective, the things that we wanted to make sure we held on to and that was important. And I think that this is actually the case for any sort of company who's really trying to figure out what's her culture, what's her mission, what's her values is you have to first and foremost understand, where are we as a business going and what's that north star? Right? And once you have the north star, then regardless of where somebody is from or their background experience, everybody has at least a common theme to rally around. For us, it was a certain amount of orders delivered globally in a certain amount of time. But from a cultural perspective, I think Delivery Hero did a really good idea, a really good job of making sure that people felt like they could bring themselves to work. Meaning that there wasn't there wasn't this idea of, Oh, because you're not from a certain country, you are less and you never had that you also felt like, you know, you could come to a town hall, you could talk to the executives, you could feel like you were building something really cool. What was interesting from the H.R. side for me was relearning all the things that you think about from, you know, from like a benefits perspective. I'm used to OK, I need to create a benefits policy that's inclusive of things like medical, dental, vision. When you move to a different country, most countries around the world that have, you know, socialized health care, you don't even have to think about it. It just comes out. So it's taking it's taking that frame of reference for me too and remembering, OK, I don't have to focus so much energy on these things that automatically happen and that I really want to focus my energy on creating, you know, creating a process around, you know, what job level the people come in and how do we pay people? How do we make sure that they understand where they're going and where they're growing? And again, I talked a lot, at least in my last statement, about simplicity. So that's the one thing that I think you really need to be cognizant of was the idea that whatever we were building, whatever we were doing any time we were resolving conflict is making sure that we were communicating, communicating clearly, making sure that everybody understood what that quote unquote yes meant or what the end goal was going to be and how that impacted them. Because I think regardless of wherever you're from, regardless of whatever language you speak, change is always going to be hard but if you communicate and you communicate well and often, hopefully you can navigate that. So I know that's not necessarily how do we manage the cultures, right, but I don't think we were trying to undo any cultural norms, right? We wanted folks to feel like they could bring themselves to work. But we did so in a way that that still allowed for healthy discussion and healthy debate but in a respectful way. And I think that's really what we were really prided ourselves on was this idea of doesn't matter where you're from but you're still going to be respectful to those that you're working with. I absolutely think there were some complexities that I faced on my side in my in my role at the beginning. So now looking back, of course, I mentioned things like communicating often and communicating clearly and understanding what yes meant in the room at the time. And I would say on the first project I worked on, which was a leveling titling compensation process, which was important because it was creating the foundation for every single role we brought in. And for growth, we made the mistake of just assuming that people had worked before and understood what it meant to be a certain level. There were also challenges around certain words that we picked from a performance management cycle. So a few examples of this is when we were reviewing the titles. We took away the junior title like junior manager because from our perspective, junior manager just doesn't sound good. And we turned it into team lead thinking, Oh, we're doing a good thing. But what we didn't understand is that people felt like they were losing something or we were taking pieces of their identity away by giving them team lead, which arguably sounds a little bit more senior from our perspective, you know, but didn't make them feel good at the same time. It's similar to this idea of head up. I think when we got there, there might have been 50 different heads up. Everybody was ahead of something and we had to find a place of where do you park head up? And you find that actually across a lot of startups as everybody comes in as a head of and then the company grows and it's really hard to break that cycle of was the head of a director is the head of a senior director, is the head of a VP. So we had settled with that as a senior manager. And so there was a lot of lot of discussion around, OK, well, I'm a head of. It's either you can be a head of and be a senior manager or we actually what we'll do is the senior director and you got to get a senior director title. So there were some of these things that I think we probably could have nuanced in a little bit of a better way or massaged in a better way because what we were building is that what I mentioned at the beginning Delivery Hero is the holding company to all these other brands. We basically tried to implement everything at corporate and then rolled it down. So it was basically, you know, A/B testing at the corporate level, does this work here? What are the challenges we're running into perfected here? Continue to join hands for change and then roll it out once we felt like we got it to a place that made sense but with simplicity in mind, that's not saying we weren't without our own challenges, though. The one thing that's interesting about Germany and I'm somewhat paraphrasing here are overly simplifying it, you can't actually change somebody's title without having them sign that they're OK with it or giving them something in return. So that was something from a culturally nuanced perspective that we didn't necessarily realize from the beginning. Now, through this entire project, we were obviously looking at compensation and how do we pay people and making sure that we're paying fairly. A lot of folks came out on the other side with very healthy raises but at the same time, even how different cultures think about money and think about, you know, they they don't necessarily live to work, which I think is a very kind of U.S. model, right? Like we're oh, you know, you know, I live for my paycheck and I, you know, and I do my job for my paycheck and that's my livelihood and a lot of other countries. Yes, people have jobs, but it doesn't define them. I think in the same way that it does somewhat what here. And so we thought, OK, well, people are going to get a raise. It's going to change, you know, their even their economic profile but they didn't necessarily see that that way. So I think those were maybe more of the cultural sensitivities or things that we just didn't know walking in. But I also think from like an entire project management and I didn't I didn't understand this until I read the culture map, which if you haven't read it, I absolutely recommend it to anybody that is either going to manage people from another culture or going to live in a different culture. But one thing that I found that was particularly interesting is there's actually a there's actually a section of that book that focuses on American leaders with German teams. And so I had a mostly German team working underneath me. Now that I had a gal from the Netherlands and then I eventually had a gal that was there from Colombia. But from an actual work perspective, what's very common is that they want to know exactly what the plan is. When you lay out to do a project plan, they want to know, OK, this is the end goal and this is how we're going to get there and you're committing. These are the steps and this is the direction we're going. Whereas from my perspective, I'm like, Yeah, that's where we're going at least for now but if we have to zig and zag to get there, that's OK. But that's actually very uncomfortable for them from a cultural work perspective. It's just not the way that folks are used to working in that country. And so I didn't understand if I was like, No, well, actually, now we're going to run 15 miles or, I'm sorry, 50 meters this direction and we've got to change course. I didn't realize that there would be a need to overly communicate why we're doing that, what that could impact and what that change could be. So it's just these different things that you run into from a cultural perspective that you don't necessarily know until you're in there and you're just going to drive it. And then you're like, Wait, I've completely turned right. Nobody turned right with me. And what happened? 

Rhys: Anyone who works in people ops knows that much of the role involves learning on the job and understanding how to roll with the punches as they come. Staying adaptable is an essential skill in any role. But Cory had a unique opportunity to refine this ability during her time at Delivery Hero. Although people ops leaders may often feel like therapists, teachers, marketers and business leaders all at once. The role plays a few non-negotiable functions within the corporate structure. To Cory, being a great people leader means understanding the business needs any given time and making intentional choices based on those insights. 

Cory: I think the high level role of people ops is is a few different things, right? So and I'm going to use people ops interchangeably from the perspective of people operations, people partnering and zoom out and just say people teams. It's a few things, right? It's helping leaders see around corners and maybe seeing blind spots that they might not be aware of. It's also being a part of the business and creating programs at scale based on what the business needs. And so any great H.R. people leader that has a seat at the table isn't going to create something just to create something. They're going to create a program or a policy or a structure or a system because it makes sense for the business at that time. And so the example that I'm using it made sense for us as the business at the time because we had gone through an acquisition we were merging. We needed to really get everybody on the same page in the same boat, rowing the same direction so that we could hit our goals. But at the same time, you know, H.R., I also think and people teams, sometimes your therapist, right? Folks are having whether it be an internal personal issue or an issue with their manager. It's also serving the purpose of being there and being able to listen and being able to figure out where are we going? Why are we going? Why do you feel this way? How can I help you fix this issue? Sometimes they just want you to listen, but you basically become kind of that all encompassing, all encompassing role. You know, where I think historically, at least from an American perspective, H.R. Just used to be a team. We push paper, we got people in the door. We paid people. That was it. Now it has gone through this entire renaissance where we're a member of the business. We're at the table, we're asking the questions, we're creating programs at scale. And I can't remember where I was, but somebody said this once and it really resonated with me that like the paycheck that you provide employees is the most essential benefit you offer them and your people are your greatest asset because nothing else can exist unless you have people. And so we're there to make sure that the people are happy. We're paying people on time. Yes, that's still something that sometimes falls under H.R., but that the people that are your greatest asset, the people that you're working to serve are really be well taken care of and they feel well enough and you're removing roadblocks so they can focus on that or start. I think when building strategies from a people perspective to help move a culture and a business forward, what's really important, first and foremost, is that and I think a lot of companies sometimes get this wrong is they have this idea that H.R. owns the culture because they're so integral to maintaining it. And where that I can see falling short is that I need my leadership team, I need my peers, I need the other managers to be stewards of that culture. And that's why I think it's so important that a company sits down from a leadership perspective and figures out who do we want to be and why? And what's our north star and how do we make those visions values in our missions and our goals of where we're going, something that's very clear that we continue to talk about. And then what H.R. does is H.R. helps rally people around that and it's making sure that we're being good stewards of the culture from the perspective of not allowing those that fall off course, meaning that might underperform or somebody who continues to be negative or pushes back. But at the same time, that's also a very fine line because you want to create a culture where folks feel safe to speak up if there's something that they don't agree with. And I think there's a lot of forums where you can have ask me any things in a very respectful way but at the same time, this is where we're going and here's why. And this is where we're all in this boat and the boats going this direction. But if you don't want to be in the boat, that's also OK. Or if you're in the boat and you're still unsure, let's make sure you're on track. And so H.R. really builds those programs in that strategy to keep the boat moving forward but also keep all of the members of the boat focused on that north star by either removing conflict or removing issues or if somebody is upset about compensation, making sure that they feel safe and secure. And it basically I like it to just the idea of like H.R. just removes the noise so that people can do their jobs well. I think how people ops leaders can really adjust their frame of mind to focus on the future of work. It goes back to basically what we're responsible for and that's seeing around corners and helping our leaders see blind spots but also at the same time being that open door that open us communicator where people feel safe to come and tell you about the things that they don't necessarily agree with or things that they're they're having trouble with. So in today's world, I would say a lot of that is around remote work. Right, for so long, I think corporate culture globally has been focused on this idea of if I can't see a person A sitting at their desk and I know what time they came in and what time they left, they're not being productive. And I think COVID has forced us all to be like that's not the way people work anymore. We have to build more trust in our employees. And so, you know, I so I for one, I might add myself, I'm a remote worker. I never plan on being somebody who goes to an office every day outside of my home office. That's just not something that I'm interested in doing. But I also know that I have to make sure that I'm performing up to a certain standard to be able to earn that right. So I think it's just, I think what's just very interested, interesting from this perspective is that trust is really the key here, regardless of where people work, how people work. But you have to be open and allow people to show up in the way that they're most comfortable and you are helping your leaders and helping them through that more than you're helping employees with that. You're helping your leaders understand that are they still getting their work done? Can we be more flexible if they if they're not online till five o'clock, does that mean they didn't get done what they were doing? So you want to you want to shift your idea from being, I would say, a deadline focus to your results focused.

Rhys: To wrap up our discussion. Cory, let us in on what she's most excited about and the world of people operations today. And of course, our favorite question here on New World of Work, what's the best mistake you've ever made? 

Cory: I would say through my my most recent career journeys that I'm interested in is really the world of total rewards. Meaning how you pay people, how you treat people, how people show up to work. I find that to be very interesting. But at the same time, I also I like global cultures and working in a company that has that global ability because I think that that's something very unique that I can bring to the table that not a lot of folks, at least from a U.S. perspective, can say, Hey, I've lived and worked abroad in a company that did not do any business in the U.S. So I constantly sometimes find myself, you know, in some of the groups that I'm a part of giving feedback of, like, Hey, well, we can't actually capture racial demographics because that's a very United States way of thinking of it. We want to think about it from a nationalities perspective. So, you know, it's basically taking a combination of all of my experiences and using it for good, you know, whether it be here in Chime or somewhere else. But me personally, I really I found myself most recently, just super excited about the total reward space. The best mistake I have ever made is assuming that, yes, means the same thing to two people in the same room talking about the same topic, and again, I drone on about this leveling titling project but in reality I felt like I sat in so many rooms where we explained what we were doing. We made sure people, at least from our perspective, understood the outcome of this is going to be you in X level. Yes, I understand. Yes, you got it. And then it comes time to rolling it out. And they're like, No, I don't understand what you mean. I'm not this level. And so I think that can be applied to just so many situations that you've got to make sure when you're working in an international experience or across multi cultures that you understand what yes means. I've even had those issues in the U.S. you're in a room and you agree to something and people leave the room and then they go, do something else and you're like, had an agreement like I don't understand how we didn't end up in the same place. So I don't know if that is the best example but I think that's a very good, high level example of making sure you know what that handshake agreement is that everybody understands their clear responsibilities walking out of a room. 

Rhys: An experience like working and living abroad can be truly life changing. For Cory, the experience of moving to Germany to join the team at Delivery Hero was transformative for her career and her personal development albeit somewhat chaotic at the time. Here are a few of my key takeaways from Cory's story. When operating a large company across multiple countries, nationalities and languages, having a key theme or common goal to rally around is essential. Cory calls this a north star, and she believes it helps to unite a large team despite cultural differences so they can work together more efficiently. While the role of a people operations professional can be many things, it really comes down to acting as a steward of the company's culture. Cory noted that the greatest asset of any company is always the people. And it's the role of people teams to ensure that everybody stays satisfied, efficient and focused on the organization's overarching mission. It all comes down to clear communication. The importance of communication can never be stressed enough in the world of people operations. As Cory mentioned, communication breakdowns are all too common, so making sure everybody in the room is aligned and on the same page is a crucial step in avoiding mishaps. Thank you for listening to New World of Work, the podcast exploring the new frontier of the modern workforce through an international lens. We hope this episode serves to expand your horizons and open your mind to a new perspective. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast so that we can reach more listeners. I'm your host, Rhys Black. See you next time. 

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