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United Kingdom
inDrive, the world’s second-most-downloaded ride-hailing app, is a truly global business, operating across more than 1,200 cities in 48 emerging and frontier markets worldwide.
But what does it take to successfully build and manage a global workforce? How can such businesses hire safely and successfully, but at speed? And what balance is correct when introducing the structure and consistency needed to scale, without losing local cultures, energy, and entrepreneurship?
Vera Solomatina, CHRO at inDrive, is steering the company through these challenges – but with a clear focus on the amazing opportunities that being a global employer brings, from accessing untapped talent markets to the strength of empowered regional teams.
Solomatina shares her best practices, first-hand guidance, and pitfalls to avoid when scaling culture across a multinational workforce.
Host: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the HR Grapevine Podcast. I'm your host, Benjamin Broomfield, head of content at HR Grapevine, and I'm joined today by Vera Solomatina, Chief Human resources Officer at inDrive, the world's second most downloaded ride hailing app and fourth most downloaded app globally. Vera has over twenty years in tech and scale up environments across EMEA and APAC, and she's passionate about building data driven, inclusive cultures that accelerate business growth and boast a proven record in people, tech, innovation, people analytics, and total rewards transformation. There is also a trusted advisor to boards on CEOs on leadership, culture, and governance. InDrive operates across over one thousand two hundred cities in forty eight emerging and frontier markets worldwide. So today we're going to be looking at the challenges and opportunities of being a global company of this scale, from empowering regional teams to innovate to establishing a shared global culture and mission. So a really lovely episode lined up, but first and foremost, a warm welcome. And thank you for joining us.
Guest: Benjamin, thank you so much. Hi to everybody.
Host: Excellent. Well, as I set out in the introduction in drive is a global company operating across forty eight markets. Take us through some of the challenges and opportunities that that presents to you as an HR and talent leader.
Guest: Yeah. Benjamin, thank you so much. So yeah, you're right in driver periods right now on forty eight emerging markets and the majority of challenges are the following. So we have, uh, different cultures, uh, inside the, our company. So we have a lot of countries of market of operations in Latin America. We have Mena, we have Asia Pacific. And, uh, you know, the cultural context is so different. We have high context cultures where meaning lives, uh, or people are thinking what I said versus low context cultures that expect everything explicit and written down. So different. Understanding of performance. Different. Understanding of personal touch during the conversation. Etc., etc... Decision making norms differ too. So some of them consensus driven. Some of them are not. So we drive a lot of specific cultural trainings to give people the opportunity to understand each other. The other very huge challenge from a chart perspective. This is fragmented compliance and labor requirements across the globe. So from European directives to specific labor laws in Latin America or in many countries, and even maturity on talent markets, tax complexity, etc.. So I can talk about the challenges that we are facing as drive for a lot of a lot of a lot of minutes, but maybe we can stick to some opportunities, you know, of the market. Yeah. Because you know, the opportunities also are as much significant as challenges. So right now I have very deep, very deep access on underrated talent pools in emerging markets where competitors are not looking. I won't share any specific locations, you know, but in many cases, just trust me. We have very interesting hiring strategies inside these emerging markets. So we have the ability to hire globally twenty four over seven to cover the majority of the the geographical zones. And also we have this resilience of geographical diversification. And what's important about it drives mission. So we are hiring locally to find and to cover the cultural diversity. And we have cultural diversity in the company is not only a challenge but as the opportunity. So it's an asset for the company, not only the complexity to manage. So local teams, they understand the markets and they're bringing value to the company in case we are increasing. We are growing so much. So they are giving so much value to growing the business in these specific markets. So a lot of challenges, a lot of opportunities. This is the start of the discussion.
Host: Yeah. Fantastic. Well absolutely. We're going to be diving in definitely to the opportunities and the upsides as well as some of the, the practical challenges. And I know obviously we yeah, we can perhaps begin with some of the steps taken to really enter some of these markets and really being able to hire safely and successfully. That's one of the biggest challenges when it comes to being a global employer. Obviously, there's, there's that legal complexity, there's the cultural considerations. So without having to divulge, again, some of those specific markets that you've entered to, to really tap into those secret pools of talent, what are some of the steps that you take to, to, to scale safely and successfully when you've been entering new markets and new countries?
Guest: Yeah. Good question. Thank you so much. So I'm moving in two directions at the same time. So from one hand I'm establishing the proper processes, procedures, etc. and I will give, uh, more context about this from the other hand, and which is very important. We are investing a lot in local talent acquisition capabilities. So we're hiring local talent acquisition specialists. We use the opportunity to speak the local languages. We are increasing the people force in these specific countries. But what's most important. So first of all, we need to bring and to build the operational model to understand how we're hiring in this country. Are we opening legal entity? We are going into employee of records or something like this. You know, so we are building the global talent strategy based on our strategic importance and also hiring value. The second very important thing we need to build the compliance foundation, local employment laws, payroll, taxation, data protection, GDPR, etc., Whatever to cover and to give safety to our employees and our contractors. Then we are standardizing the core hiring processes because we need to understand that the values interview, culture, interview, performance, interview, you know, whatever we are doing that the offer templates, you know, the compensation framework, the total rewards, the Esop that we are granting to our employees, everything is equal across the globe. So we standardize assessment, calibration, employment, branding, things, you know, and giving the opportunities to local talent acquisition teams to bring local flavor to our global processes and procedures. So these two parts are very important. So these are we're hiring safely and successfully in different markets.
Host: Fantastic. Will you touch on I think really the essence of this challenge, which is again, is a really exciting one to, to be dealing with, which I suppose, is this balancing act, right, between introducing that structure that you need to scale and obviously be compliant and do things the right way and, and have that sort of global consistency across the organization, but you also don't want to lose that culture and that entrepreneurial energy speeds local relevance. So how do you get that balancing act, right? How do you ensure that that structure is there to scale without losing some of those, those really great points of flexibility and speed on the ground?
Guest: You know, Ben, that's interesting that for this question, I will have the same maybe answer so we can standardize as much as we can with giving the responsibility for the local, for the country's team as much as we can. So the same principle. So we are standardizing governance values, core processes, data, whatever. We can send the ties on the company level, and we are granting the benefits and the opportunities to the local team. So the execution people decisions, way of working. So what we are defining on the global level how we are giving the opportunity to decide to the local team. Do you know our values? Our company values is supporting this a lot because we are talking about such values like one team. Despite the fact that we are geographically splitted, we are working together as one team on the value level of the company. We have very strong level on IT ownership. We are empowering and we are rewarding ownership inside the company that people can say, that's my responsibility. I'm doing this, I'm keen for this. And you know, all this ownership thing, we are rewarding people for results. So one of the values is results. So we are transmitting this cultural messages to the teams. But also we are asking them to keep this, you know, framework working. And we are giving them a lot of local opportunities to show their entrepreneurial energy. So I hope I answered your question.
Host: Definitely really love that point with that consistency of the what, But that fluidity around the how I think is, is, is a perfect way of selling things up there. I really like that. And again, you touched on where we sort of are going to cover next, which is looking at how you go about empowering some of those regional teams you just mentioned as sort of the reward or incentive that might be there in place, but how do you really encourage those regional teams on the ground to have that confidence to innovate? You know, it's easy to sort of to say maybe a bit more challenging to do. So. Any examples of how you've been able to do that and maybe areas where it's worked really well and what the impact was for, for those regional teams?
Guest: Yeah, that's amazing to have this question. You know, every half a year we are measuring the employee engagement survey metrics, and we have engagement as a core metric of the company. And we see that local engagement indexes, they are increasing and what we are doing. So we are telling to people, we are giving them those results and saying, guys, listen. You have, for example, I do not know, seventy five percent. What do you think we can do together on the local level that your engagement, your ownership, your orientation to result can increase. And we are listening to people. So every half a year we're asking people, what can we do for you, what you can do for yourself? They are bringing some ideas and we are asking, and we're empowering local team to work together with the local employees to bring some ideas, to bring some perspective, to bring some, you know, good projects. And I see that during last three years, a lot of great initiatives are popping up in different, uh, in the different regions. So we have very interesting projects type of vocation in Peru and vocation in Colombia, for example. So we are inviting people across the globe to visit countries to do some interesting job together with local employees, to visit local places of interest, to work as one team, to participate in different events. So we are encouraging this, you know, cross geographical collaboration. So also not only listening to people and not only bringing people together, but also we have this very good idea with our internal communication team. So we are opening the mailbox for great ideas, and we're allowing people to vote for their ideas. And the idea, which is receiving the majority of the votes will be implemented. So we are doing a lot of such, such things. So that's the little example of what we are doing across the globe. You know, honestly saying I see that in our countries, huge majority of very talented and passionate people are working and the mission of the company and values of the company attract such people and allow them to bring something to fulfill the mission, you know? So that's, that's an interesting story. Yeah, I hope I answered.
Host: Yeah, definitely. And on, I suppose that that position of engaging those people, right. You've gone through, obviously that that process of hiring them through those local talent acquisition experts. You've tapped into those markets. Once you've got them, you know you want to keep them and have them really engaged and see that obviously, that they're bought into, you know, what is some of those really important central missions and values. But again, there still has to be that acknowledgement of some of the different cultural contexts in which they operate as well. So again, what does that look like in practice in terms of how do you find that balance to be able to really engage teams in a uniform way, but also embrace and really tap into, take advantage of those unique cultural contexts in each of the markets?
Guest: Yeah. You know, you touched maybe the most complex thing of the global organization. You know, that we have talked a couple of minutes before about the standardization versus, uh, localization. You know, the interesting thing that first of all, the first thing that we are asking all our people to use English language during the discussions, you know, to unify the communications, because we have a lot of teams that are communicating in their own languages and the ones are the people start to, you know, to, to join into this working conversation. They're a little bit, oh my gosh, what's that? Is it Spanish or which language? The language is this? You know, that's an interesting story. So we are asking to standardize the language of communication across the teams. That's good. But at the same time, we are doing a lot of things that people can talk about their culture. They can share what they are doing in the countries, what good practices they are doing, what cultural aspects do they have? So last year we had a couple of these sessions, you know, uh, countries were talking about what they are doing. They are sharing their culture, etc. the experience was interesting, I would say, but we missed something very important into these conversations. And this year we added ways of working into this discussion. So people were not just telling about their culture. But they were telling. They are telling right now how they are working in this country. So how they are using some of the tools of the company, how they are using AI. Oh my gosh. First, we say the word AI first in our today's conversation. So what business cases do they have? How they are solving some issues, you know, so this brings the discussion into this working mode a little bit. But through this it's a really good opportunity to know another culture, how people are dealing with some complexities, challenges, how they are working together. Uh, that's, that's the interesting story because, uh, we can learn the culture through working cases. That is, that is really good. So we celebrate a lot of holidays across the company. So we are always mentioning all the, all the good holidays across the globe. The important thing also is that we are supporting our people. Once something goes wrong in their countries, and we are sharing with the company that we are supporting people, we are supporting communities, we are taking care about our employees across the globe. In case there are some, you know, different situations, some difficult situation or something. So this gives also our employees the feeling that they are united, even if there are a lot of different countries and cultures across the globe. Yeah, I hope I answered. Yeah.
Host: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've, we've gone through, I suppose, sort of a few, obviously of the, some of the considerations that you've had to make, you've certainly made it sound maybe a little bit easier than I'm sure it would have been in practice. It sounds like obviously you're doing a great job. I appreciate there's been some lessons that you've learned along the way. Are there any other sort of major challenges that you've learned or had to overcome when it comes to not just being sort of a global employer, but really a global employer who turns that footprint into a real competitive advantage for the organization as well. It's obviously something that really drives that culture of innovation you have in your workplace. So any other sort of challenges that have been very, very exciting learning opportunities for you? Or equally, any best practices that you've picked up along the way?
Guest: Yeah. You know, that that's a really good question because not only the culture and not only the cross geographical context, context is driving is driving us. So first of all, where as a company thinking about achieving of the business goals, you know, so we are paying and I am as a leader of people and culture, I'm paying huge amount of attention to managing the performance of the company, the goal setting of the company. So I need to understand that the strategy and the goal setting are transmitted into every single division, every single region, in a proper way. People clearly understand what they need to do, what are their goals, what are their tools, what are their performance indicators, etc.. And then during the year. I'm encouraging managers to drive performance inside the team. Sometimes it's not so easy because the performance understanding for every single culture is different. And so one of my biggest challenges is to manage the performance across this geographical diversity. So sometimes we need to replace people. And that's also a challenge, you know, that, uh, we're trying to do a lot that people are learning. They are receiving huge amount of information, huge amount of support. But once the company is growing so fast. So we need to admit that some people are not growing as fast as a company. So we have some replacements during this journey. And that's our reality, you know, so the other thing that we need to assure that our people are receiving the same level of service across the globe, and we are consolidating all HR data across the globe into multiple jurisdictions in a, in a proper way. You know, the last thing maybe that I want to say here is, you know, the difference between the fast growing startup and the difference between the corporate big corporate is in speed of how we are dealing with the result. Vice versa. Compliance, you know, so for example, we need to do it properly or we need to do it fast because it's our business and we can achieve some business results, you know, and the, the magic of our work and the magic of our expertise is to balance this and to make the proper frameworks for our managers not to speed down a little bit the, the growth of the company, but in the same time to stay in the in a very good shape and very good frameworks. So they are the challenges that I'm facing. You know, every single day in my in my life, you know, what are the best practice? I would say that, first of all, think about culture. We started to think about culture in the beginning of the company thirteen years ago, and we're continuously maintaining our culture because we do believe that the culture is the major thing that help us to achieve the business results. So after twelve years, we renovated all our values and we see how many energy this brings to people. So values that can unify all the countries across the globe. That's the powerful instrument, the powerful tool that I can share as a best practice to everybody. The second thing that I wanted to share is best practice for me. Look at your local talent markets, really. They contain huge amount of talent that are maybe sometimes underrated, and you will have huge amount of opportunities to speed up, uh, speed up your growth once you are making this opportunities to local talents. So what else I am a data driven person, you know. And all the time I'm asking my people to collect as much data as we can. Data on not only about existing employees, about the markets, about the competition, the data about total rewards Comp. & Ben. How many people do we have available on the market, etc., etc.. So this is one of our best practices. So we are fully data driven HR team. And I'm really proud of this. Yeah, I hope I answered.
Host: Yeah. And I would imagine those last two points tied together really neatly as well. Because I think that's perhaps partly the overwhelming thing when you're looking at all of these potential different talent marketplaces across the globe, all these different countries that you could enter different markets within those countries, that's an overwhelming thing. But if you have all of the data to be able to look at that and determine where it makes sense to hire, you know, where maybe in the future, then that's, that's a really useful sort of way to tie those two things together. We've spoken a lot about the things that you've learned, the journey that you've been on so far. But I would imagine as an organization, everything I hear about your culture is that you're going to be looking forwards and, you know, continuing that journey of growth. So let's wrap up with a question doing the same thing as you're looking forward now, what are some of the areas that are on that agenda for you in terms of improving that employee experience? Other plans for sort of expanding or whatever it might be? What's on what's on your agenda at the minute? Looking forward to sort of the next few months, next few years?
Guest: It would be interesting to mention one more time, AI. So I'm connecting employee experience with AI a lot because we are building right now a lot of AI tools, you know, chatbots, uh, internal instruments to support our, our people. You know, my vision on employee experience is the following. So I do not have only just employee experience. I have experience of different people across the company. So I have management experience as a separate part because they need speed, they need transparency. They need, uh, access to specific data. At the same time, I have recruiter experience, for example. So the person who is doing the talent acquisition, he has his own experience of communicating with candidates, hiring managers, etc. so I'm trying to combine this different types of experiences into one, one big framework. The major thing, the major concept in which I'm moving right now is the following less manual operation. That's obvious using of modern tools. I would like to say not only AI, but the complex of modern tools, the transparency and very fast access to data, meaningful work so that people are not obsessed, that they are doing some, you know, sometimes monkey job. People are complaining, you know. So these type of employee experience, from my point of view, is very relevant for the company. Once people are going to their working places to communicate, to make decisions, to influence other people, to make some very important, meaningful job, to fulfill the mission of the company and not just doing, you know, the copy pasting from one table to another. So that's important. And this is one of my biggest, you know, challenges and opportunities during the next couple of, I would say years. Yeah. I hope I answered.
Host: Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful. Well, I think that's a great place for us to, to wrap up with the episode and best of luck for the plans as you continue to, to grow. But be wonderful to hear about all of that insights and just get an insight into what is truly a global business. And I think we managed to make it through the whole episode without you accidentally revealing any of those top secret markets where you're, uh, tapping into talent. So good stuff. Well, thank you so much again for taking the time to join us on the HR Grapevine podcast.
Guest: It's been a pleasure, Benjamin. Thank you so much.
