Above: Paula Moffatt of Bosideng's UK subsidiary says she can help make decisions in the company. Left: Moon Ali-Choudhrey of TP-Link's UK subsidiary says he blends well with team members. Photos by Cecily Liu / China Daily

 

Chinese companies make a mark in Europe by building trust and confidence among employees

Moon Ali-Choudhrey, a 25-year-old graduate from Plymouth University in the UK, is one of lucky young professionals in Europe who can boast of having lunch with his managing director daily and playing golf with him on Sundays.

But it is not the food and entertainment options that prompted Ali-Choudhrey to join Chinese telecommunications equipment maker TP-Link, but rather the respect and appreciation provided by the company to individual talent.

"I've blended well with other team members, including the managing director. I can simply knock on his door and say 'Hi, how are you doing'. In normal corporate culture, you'd have to make an appointment via email," he says.

Ali-Choudhrey is one of several local hires at TP-Link's UK subsidiary established in 2010 with more than 20 employees. But his experiences are common to a wider group of local employees at the overseas offices of many Chinese businesses.

Fighting at the forefront of a new wave of Chinese investment in mature Western markets, these companies are often industry leaders in China. Determined to succeed in foreign waters by adapting international management practices, they often treat local employees with respect, hands-on support and family-like care above and beyond the practices in China.

These Chinese companies' unprecedented pace of overseas expansion has also created abundant opportunities for local employees to showcase and develop their skills.

In turn, the local employees' first-hand experiences of helping a Chinese company grow from a new entrant in a mature Western market to a competitive player also helps foster a loyalty and sense of belonging.

One achievement Ali-Choudhrey feels proud of is the marketing campaign he led for a TP-Link wireless nano router, which boosted monthly sales from about 10-20 units to more than 1,000 units in a few months.

With multiple functions including transferring wired Internet access to wireless and reinforcing the existing wireless signal, the TP-Link router is different from most other routers available on the British market. But its convenience was not well understood by most British customers when it was launched.

"Coming from a British background, I realized the problem. So I took the router home and did a few tests to see how it would work in an average British person's life," Ali-Choudhrey recalls.

One thing he noticed is that most British users of high definition television did not understand how to connect their television to the Internet. He then realized that the TP-Link router could achieve this by connecting to the HD television boxes through an Ethernet core and act as an adapter to receive wireless signals.

"We came up with a new marketing strategy based on the concept of 'five in one solution' to make the router more relevant to our target customers' daily lives, and we re-launched the product," he says.