S03E14: HR Best Practices for Language Service Companies

Diego Cresceri

Thank you. Thank you for having me today.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who know you in the industry and there are some who probably haven’t heard of you. Give them a brief introduction of who you are.

 

Diego Cresceri

Yeah, sure. So, my name is Diego and the founder of company called Creative Words, we’re basically a translation company based in Italy, Genoa. This is where I’m in at the moment. I was also, created another company last year, busy in the data for artificial intelligence industry. The company is called Creative AI. Well, that’s going to say, I’m the president of the European Language Industry Association. Since last year, we will see what will happen next. If I be elected, we have a board meeting soon in October, in September and of September. So we will see what happens. So yeah, this is me being the CEO of both companies at the moment.

 

In the company, I take care of this strategy, you know, growth and anything related to, you know, growth in the company and creating this sustainable growth, actually. So yeah, this is what I do. I joined the industry in 2005, right, before graduating in interpreting. So I did interpretation studies. I was lucky enough to find a job even before graduating. I was about to end up, actually. And I found this job as a translator in a local company, but I soon realized that I didn’t like to actually translate. So I jumped into project management, which is probably the best job I’ve ever done in my life. I love project management. After some years, I became a partner in that company and I stayed there for another eight years and then in 2016, this is when I left that company and founded Creative Words.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

My next question was about how long you’ve been in this industry and how did you join, but you answered that question now. Tell me, you know, like when you joined this industry, was it more by choice or is it because you had education as an interpreter and you just wanted to stay in this industry? Because obviously everyone has many choices at that stage, right?

 

Diego Cresceri

Yeah, well, when I was studying interpreting, I had no clue about the industry, actually. So what I had in mind was the dream job where you would travel a lot and you know, you would get paid for it. So I just wanted to travel. I actually decided that I liked translation when I was 14, you know, with the first English classes. And I chose language school when I was 14 and this is what I wanted to do on my life, basically the world, and I was lucky enough, I guess, to have a clear mind of what I wanted to do. Of course, I didn’t know anything about the industry. I just liked the English and that was it.

 

Of course, after university, it was then that I really understood what the industry was about. When I joined this company that I was mentioning, I had no clue. So actually my first interview was really bad, I would say, to insist a little bit to get hired by them because they had no clue. So I got the interview and I heard very big names, so they were working for very big companies and there was, wow, this is how it works. You can really get to translate for these companies and this wire state, actually. So I had no clue. So it was not by, it didn’t happen like that. I had an idea that I wanted to be in this industry, but I had no idea what the industry was about.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And speaking of your experience here, please share what you have observed in this industry since you have joined. I mean, since the time that you came to this space, it has transformed in so many ways, I mean, technology, processes and so what has stood out to you?

 

Diego Cresceri

Well, probably the biggest thing and this is where I focused in the last 10 years, it’s machine translation. So this is the biggest change. I remember it was 2010 when I got the first project with machine translation and the most kind of shocked back then. I didn’t see like many, many disruptions actually. What I can think of is the automatic, synthetic voices, for instance, this is very interesting in my opinion or automated subtitling. I think this is more disruptive than machine translation by itself. And what I see lately is that constant search for saving time. So automation, software, integrations, there are many companies offering that as a service or as a product as well. So, but if I have to tell you anything, we did disruptive, the best change will change our industry in short terms, I cannot think of anything. I mean, we’re probably, again, newer machine translation, but it’s, we’re getting used to it probably, that’s why I don’t perceive it as a big one at the moment. Other than that, I cannot think of any other big, big one.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Okay, well, Diego, let’s focus. I have invited you to speak about human resources and language services companies. This is a topic that is not much talked about. People assume it’s there. Yet it has an existential importance for every LSP. Please give us a very high level view of the state of HR in the language industry. How is it going?

 

Diego Cresceri

Yeah, first, thank you for talking about this. I mean, as you said, this is not something that is much talked about. I think it’s in our industry particularly, well, that’s the only industry I really know about probably. It’s a complex one. I mean, there are recruiting agencies, global payroll. It’s a very complex one. It’s international one. Many companies would externalize their workforce, while many others would have the beacon house department, even LSP is our right element. There are LSP’s with peak in our teams and others, which basically have so-so everything. So it’s a complex setup. There are many big differences as well from country to country, for instance, in Italy, because it’s so high that it’s not common to see companies with big teams, big in-house teams, while in other countries, the teams are usually bigger. And now with COVID, there are many different things related to HR like what working, virtual should well-sourced, bring teams in our office as well. So it’s really complex one, I think. And in Italy, very specific as well.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And I know we will talk about this in detail later in the conversation, but every jurisdiction has a different set of requirements, different set of regulations when it comes to HR. Walk me through what’s going on in your region in Italy. How do you have to comply and stay in good terms with regulation in order to implement a proper HR policy and system?

 

Diego Cresceri

Well, it’s really complicated. In our company, in our company, our size, we have a team right now of fifteen, is still simple, but it can get really complicated to comply with everything. You need to get to get to the unions, there are clear processes that you need to follow. You need to hire people with particular disabilities after you get to a given number, so there are many, many different things. This is something we usually outsource. We have a consultant for that because it’s really difficult to keep the pace of new regulations and new things that the Italian government will do every year. So it’s quite complicated and the cost, the labor cost is really, really high. It’s really high. So in our industry, for instance, in Italy, a team of fifteen is not a small team. It doesn’t matter, I mean, it’s getting quite big because many companies just outsource different roles. It’s not common to have, for instance, you know, in-house linguists because this is something you can probably easily outsource and it would cost probably less to us also than you now. So I think the biggest challenge is really the cost. The cost was not so high or probably ever the team doubled the size of the one I have now.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So let’s actually make something clear off the bat. Just talk about outsourcing, some of these roles. So given the very nature of our businesses and our reliance on the independent contractors or freelancers, we typically confuse vendor management or supply chain management with the human resource management. Now please tell me what is the difference between the two for some of the LSPs that confuse these two different concepts.

 

Diego Cresceri

So let me start by saying that at least again companies my size and companies in Italy, it’s not common to have a dedicated HR person. In fact, we don’t have one. So that’s the first thing that I wanted to mention about this. Of course, in my mind, when I think of HR, I think of someone taking care of employees. When I talk about vendor management, I think of someone taking care of external suppliers. So that’s the biggest difference, of course, in terms of role. I would say that HR, however, needs to have more in depth knowledge of labor laws, for instance. And this will probably be the biggest differentiator between the two roles. While the vendor manager cannot actually ignore many of them, I mean, we would just talk with the consultant and the freelancers will their own setup and everything.

 

And another thing I want to mention is that in terms of studies, for instance, while I’m looking to have an HR role, a dedicated one, I’m pretty sure that we’d not look for one person that has completed for instance translation studies. I would really look elsewhere. While for vendor manager, so for someone in charge of managing my freelancers, and we do that in a very strategic way, I did look for someone that was, that had the knowledge of our industry already. So I think there are some challenges that are going to be intrinsic to our industry, which is to say that the best PM for me has either been a translator before or has completed translation studies. Of course, my opinion, someone might not agree to this. But I like to think of vendor manager not as a mere purchase department. I mean, the more you understand the challenges of translators, the more you’re able to manage them and to understand them. Of course, the two roles have overlapping skills, I would also say, I would also say, I mean, if you have to deal with people, there are some skills that they have in common.

 

The two roles, I think of ethics, emotional intelligence, because there will be conflicts that you need to manage at some point. Again, focused conflict management. In both cases, probably more of the vendor manager is important to be able to negotiate. So the soft skills set, I think, is more or less the same. But how you get there, that role, I think, is different. I mean, I would look for someone with psychology studies or specific HR studies for the HR person, while for vendor manager, I look for someone with specific industry knowledge. Because otherwise, you get to the point where you just negotiate their ways and you really don’t understand each other. So that’s my thought.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

When it comes to vendor management or resource management, as you say, we’re still dealing with people, albeit, at a different capacity and on a needs basis. Do you see a human resource specialist, a good fit for vendor management? Can you interchangeably move them to different roles?

 

Diego Cresceri

I think you can definitely, for instance, in terms of learning and development, our vendor manager, recently took over that part for our team, in-house team as well. So there are things that tasks that you can complete as a vendor manager, even for the in-house staff and vice versa. So my, for instance, where they’re all called knowledge manager in the past. And that person would also take care of the training needs for the external team. So in terms of learning and development, I think these are very interchangeable roles. As I said, the soft skills we did the same. So I think that a good vendor manager can turn into a good HR manager and vice versa. In our case, our vendor manager is taking care of learning and development for the in-house team as well.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s circle back to HR, the human resources concept. What are the core and preferable business functions that rely on HR? And when is HR function invoked in your business?

 

Diego Cresceri

So as I said, it’s not that we do have a specific person at the moment taking care of HR. I wish I had them looking for that. I think really everyone has to rely on HR from the start to the end. From the moment when you open the job position, the moment where collaboration comes to an end, it might happen as well. So we do rely on at least HR tasks if not a person because they don’t have that at the moment for everyone in the company, even for interns, the last steps. The person taking care of HR management is both on for every different role. From the language to the project manager to the marketing, the sales person and everything.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So most companies don’t have a dedicated HR organization. I think it’s very common in our industry. Even the size and structure of LSPs. So who else in a translation company, for example, is most suited to take on this responsibility?

 

Diego Cresceri

Well, talking about roles, I would say in the tech my company again as an example. It’s either me or a my operations manager taking care of HR decisions, I would say. My operations manager would set the objectives for the team, for instance, which is of course something the HR should take care about. Or the vendor manager. This is what happens in my company. But I was stressed that if I was in a lot of company and I didn’t have this very good team, these very good operations and vendor managers, I would choose someone based on the skills. So rather than on the role that this person is, as at the moment, so the skills that I mentioned before, you need to be someone with very strong emotional intelligence, for instance. And it’s not something that everybody has unfortunately, at least I would prove for someone who can be trained, trained and can learn that skill, which is again, not something everybody has. So I was just repeating myself in my case, it’s the operations and myself.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So Diego, I get it now for someone like that and that role, what type of skills they must have in order to effectively perform the human resource duties and what type of personality traits you’re looking for because you’re dealing with people, right? It’s a lot of social skills I’m assuming.

 

Diego Cresceri

Yeah, social skills, absolutely. Well, as I said, you need to have strong ethics and emotional intelligence to have to deal with people. It’s not easy to deal with people, even as a bartender I remember there were times when I didn’t want to deal with people anymore and was really, I didn’t want to see any clients getting in the door at the bar. Conflict management, you need to be able and willing to manage conflicts because this happens, of course, and into management cannot just ignore that conflict is happening. It’s not easy to deal with people. So I would say again, strong emotional intelligence, conflict management and ethics. I think probably ethics is the most important one. You really need to care about the people. So I like to say that we have a vendor management strategy company. Even if I don’t really like the strategy 100% because strategy usually implies you do something to get something back. I think HR should really be the, not the need to get to somewhere, right? You really need to care about the people.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And we talked about this earlier. Labor laws are different in the country in jurisdiction and they dictate different requirements for every jurisdiction. Now you talked about Italy, but what should the HR person and your organization know about that? For example, the idea is that a lot of, in our industry specifically when globalization is happening at such a rapid speed, we tend to have teams around the world. But can you have an HR person in Europe while your company is running the US? What does that person need to know about the US laws? Or is that even a good idea to have an HR person outside the country?

 

Diego Cresceri

Well, I think it depends, it depends, which is not a good answer probably, let me explain. So in Creative Words, we have not been in that situation still to find employees abroad, but it’s something that I was in a similar situation a couple of years ago when I was in discussion to acquire a company about, and I think that the first thing you need to do when you go that direction is you need to talk with the consultant in that country because otherwise it gets messy probably. From small company, I would say that’s the best way to go and wouldn’t go any further.

 

I mean, if you open an office there, of course, you get to the point where you have local consultants as well, but I would really not consider hiring someone abroad unless you get to an even size. For instance, I would never ask my HR manager if I had one to learn everything about another country because depending on the country it can get really really different. I mean, UK and Italy are completely different. While for instance, Italy and France are not that different, but knowing everything about every country, I don’t think it’s possible. So in that case, I would relate to consultants. Of course, there are other ways to pay and get employees abroad like the global pay or companies and so on, but if we do that, we’d go to consultants. Otherwise, it gets really messy.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I agree with you. Now, we talked about the concept of HR and how the role of HR is. Now let’s shift focus and talk about hiring people for an LSP. I mean, It’s not as easy, although it sounds easy, it’s not as easy to find the right people. Our core functions and our companies are sales, project management and vendor management. That’s essentially what we do in our organizations, right? Everything else is peripheral. Now where do we source people for these roles and what are some of the best practices you would like to share to find the best people to fit into these roles?

 

Diego Cresceri

Well, I’ve taken different approaches based on the role. When starting, my first hire was an intern in project management. She started from scratch. She’s now PM team lead. So she’s really great in what she does. So she has now a team of seven. So in that case, I started with an internship with university. Sales, different story. I tried the same with universities. I was not very lucky with that. So in that case, I would suggest doing something different. I get to get there. Vendor manager, again similar to sales, I would go probably online search, like opening a job position on LinkedIn, would do best results or get in touch with recruiting agencies. I did that as well. For vendor management, I was just contacted on LinkedIn by Jada, who is the current manager. That’s how we met and now we talked and we started a conversation.

 

We went to employment centers as well for other roles. But for these particular ones, I would say project managers, university and training, we organized bootcamps, very intense trainings for project managers. So that’s how we resource these role. Sales, you could look into their recruiting agencies or online, opening a job position online. Vendor manager, I believe the same. But I tend to say that being online gives the best visibility. And the other thing that I want to say is that we really should start working when the same way I say, as it speaks, on our employer branding. I mean, I like that you have been able to attract the people, rather than having to move for it. In our case, it’s working pretty good for some roles. For linguists, we have many, many applications every day for project management as well. So we are working on our employer branding as well. By doing stuff, it’s not just marketing. We are doing things that are targeting people to come and join the company. I also want to say that for sales, we try different approaches. And I still have to find the one that works best for us. At the moment we don’t have any sales team.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Speaking of which Diego, before we jump into other questions, let me ask you this. It’s a company of our size. My company is similar to your size. And there’s a lot of us in our industry. Do we need an HR policy manual that has to be written and followed? And if so, who’s writing it? What goes into that policy manual?

 

Diego Cresceri

So I’m all for documenting things generally and processes. So my short answer to this is yes. Depending on what you mean by policy manuals. I like to think of the HR as more probably as I don’t like HR manager as a role, calling someone I believe in a different name. I don’t like the word resources, by the way, but that’s my opinion again. I would call it like people management or something like that. We don’t have with an HR procedure. But we do have like a code of conduct where we summarize our values. And what is accepted in our company or not in terms of, you know, attitude or retaliation or bullies and for instance. So we have some, we have collected this stuff in a code of conduct, which is not an HR policy manual, but it gives the people that are joining the company an idea of our values. What is accepted or not in the company?

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Sultan Ghaznawi

I was referring more to things like, for example, defining the roles and responsibilities and job descriptions and basically telling people what do you offer? Like how many sick days do you have in a year? When can you go on vacation? What time do you start the work? What time you end the work? Who are your support person is? Basically create some sort of a structure. I know that it may not be necessary, but do you think if we were to document that, that would help us, you know, run the machine a lot more smoothly?

 

Diego Cresceri

I think that would be a very good idea. Yeah. We do have part of that as well. So we do have responsibilities that we put down. The other things you mentioned like the office opening hours or working hours, those are documented in the collective agreements for our industry in Italy. So that’s part of the counter agreements that we have. We have other separate documents in terms of having a flexible hours, for instance. So what is not covered in our general agreements, on a country level, we covered that in separate documents. And we have that documented because we need to have that. Anything that goes, that is a variation of this collective agreement that we have in place needs to be documented. So we’re getting there. There’s more that we can document. But I think it helps a lot. Is that also in terms of expectations when you are someone new for instance.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Diego wants people are brought into an organization, meaning that you have agreed to hire them. They undergo some sort of orientation and training. Companies of our size obviously cannot afford to have full-fledged, you know, HR training programs, although we must have something. Does this role also fall on the HR organization? And I would like to know your thoughts on building a robust onboarding program where these people have all the tools, knowledge and skills and all your questions are answered before they start the jobs.

 

Diego Cresceri

I would, again, short answer would be yes, this is a very good idea, something we should have didn’t not withstand the size. I mean, if it was more, you probably get the biggest benefit out of having very structured onboarding and induction program for instance. So we kind of have that, we have a quite long presentation with different roles, different touch points in the company, different responsibilities and training materials as well. And those contents would be created by the person who knows the role best for instance, the teammates, the PM, the linguist, the team leader and so on. The HR person, again, if I had one, would be in charge of making sure that the program is delivered and completed. So that would be my answer. We are currently in fact, we consider our induction program, we want to centralize it in on a single platform because I think you get that big benefit in terms of hours that the tutor or whatever, the team leader needs to invest in in training and you don’t lose the benefit. I mean, even if it’s on a platform, if it’s a video, if it even if it’s a synchronous, for some context, you don’t lose the benefit of the training. If it’s not live, of course there are meetings, ones and so on. We started that when we had many, many interest joining the company and we are extending that to long-term or so the moment. I think it’s a very good idea to have one and it’s not depending on the size.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let me actually interrupt there and ask you this. HR must also address things such as compensation, which is why people work for us. And then things like continuous performance monitoring and to make sure that people are doing what they’re asked to do or they improve over time if there’s an issue, how do you build these activities into your HR role? For a company like ours, where we have very limited number of resources, where does this responsibility fall?

 

Diego Cresceri

The moment in Creative Words, it’s basically myself and the operations manager. So we have this kind of discussion about compensation, how to monitor performances. This is part of the HR role in our company, depending on the role. It’s either on me, the operations manager or the team lead, for instance. So the PM team lead would take care of the performances of the PMs, for instance. It’s a definitly part of the HR. When it’s not me directly, the idea of it, I do have meetings with the team leads, for instance. But whatever is baseline, like basic compensation, is dealt with by the consultant. Of course, the external consultant, labor laws and everything. When you’re talking about compensation, like policies or objectives, performance monitoring this is done in-house, by where the team leads, by myself or by the operations.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s talk about the subject of the difficult subject of letting people go. Unfortunately, we all have to deal with firing people or parting ways with employees at times during our tenure. What are your thoughts on having properly documented processes, ensuring that the least amount of discomfort for the employees that are let go, and to avoid any potential legal issues down the road? How do you structure your processes that way?

 

Diego Cresceri

Well, that’s a very complicated topic. So let me say that I just had to fire someone once, due to COVID. It was really the beginning of the first wave of COVID. I was lucky enough not to be in this situation too often. But whenever it happens that I have the idea of at least understanding what can I do to have someone to let someone go, because it happened. I mean, I didn’t have to in the end, but it happened to me that I wanted to. I basically talk with the consultant. I think, again, having something really well documented is good, but in Italy the labor laws are so complicated and they’re changing that I do want to have a conversation with the consultant every time. And every time it happens, something has changed. So everything that I could have documented would have changed in that case. So that’s my to-go person for this thing. In undocumented, I would document some procedures like whatever happens to our collaboration, I can always write a reference letter for you, or I can actually, when someone left the company back in March, we even prepared a gift for him. Because it’s not that you need to fight when you take different directions. So I would more document these kind of things rather than anything related to labor laws, because that’s really complicated.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

How does HR fit into the overall general picture of an organization that delivers language services? How do you reflect the leadership vision and mission into the HR practice? I mean, you have certain goals to grow to the company to a certain direction, to a certain level, and HR or the people who actually do the work, they’re the ones who are actually running this machine, right? And if you have the right people, then they do the right thing. Now, how do you make sure that you bring in the right people? How does HR reflect that vision?

 

Diego Cresceri

Well, as I said, HR is very important in this respect. It affects the organization as well. If I had an HR person, I think that would be the person that I would be talking more often with, because I think that that’s really important. I think the ability for a company to grow, which is one of my objectives for my company, is really interconnected with HR, without the HR function, it would never work, and I am thinking of sustainable growth as well. I mean, I’ve seen companies are having so many people in a very short time, and then having to let go thousands of them after some months. So having a constant conversation between the HR and the management of the company, I think is really important. It’s like from, again, from long-boarding on. But this is something given the size of my company, and the fact that I like having to be with people, I really want to be a bold thing. I mean, it’s not. I even delegate everything more or less, but decisions about HR still part of my job at the moment.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And can this function of HR be outsourced? We talked about outsourcing earlier. If we cannot outsource it or hire an external organization or a consultant to help us with that, what type of organizations are there that would take on the full HR function and provide a full professional service that meets our industry standards?

 

Diego Cresceri

I talked before about strategic HR management. I don’t think this can be outsourced. I mean, what can be outsourced is the knowledge of the labor laws, again, a generic payroll can be outsourced when we do that. But when you think about strategic HR management, I think that’s really, that’s really important to be outsourced. So we do have partners in relation to HR. For instance, we talk with the different organizations when we need to create those agreements that I was mentioning before, anything that is not forcing in collective contracts. But I don’t think that HR can be completely outsourced. Absolutely. I mean, we can outsource the search and selection part of that, at least to the given point. We can outsource that, but we cannot outsource the day-to-day management, strategic management of the people. I would never do that.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

At what point in your organization, Diego, do you need to build an HR organization? Where you have a fully dedicated person or team of people that look after hiring people and maintaining them while they’re working there. And at some point, when they’re parting ways to look after that, when do you think an LSP reaches that point where they must have a dedicated HR team?

 

Diego Cresceri

Well, I think this depends on the country where you’re in. And again, how strategic do you want it to be? For us, I think we are fifteen again, and we have some interns as well. So we are going to say 20. For us, the moment has come. And I want that moment to be now, because I want to invest in training. I want to have someone taking care of that part, which is important. So if you want to manage your HR resources like that, like investing in them and grow them. If you want to believe in them and make them grow, I think the moment can come, even if you are like ten in the company, or fifteen. If you are company, we’re running doors when people come and go, and then you don’t care about turnover, for instance, I think that can come later. But for me, again, HR is so strategic that I do want a person dedicated to that right now. We have many conversations going on about how to make the team happier. And there are many things going on in relation to remote work. And many, many, many things that we need to take care of that. I do want to have a person taking care of that, because otherwise I’m not able to myself to take care of that and deliver that I want to take care of that.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s talk about inclusivity and equity in the HR practice. You mentioned earlier that in Italy, there are strict requirements as to how many minorities you must have on your team and so forth. And this is all good. Where do you start and who is responsible to make sure diversity, inclusion and support for underprivileged people to stay at the forefront of HR?

 

Diego Cresceri

Well, again, this is something that I’ve been covered in and I do want to be involved in. We are a small company in general. Well, I would say the language in Italy is not so diverse. Right. Okay, so I mean, I don’t have many many choices. I mean, but apart from gender, that there are a lot of women, for instance, and I understand that. I mean, that’s the only thing I can think of in terms of diversity. Of course, all our jobs are open to anyone. But I think what can I say, I don’t get many diverse people in the company. But this is something what we need to take care of, of course. I mean, again, in Italy, we don’t have people belonging to different demographics, different, you know. So I think you need to have clear procedures that should not be just like smoke or mirrors, like something you do for marketing. I think you need to take care to ensure that nobody’s left behind. But this is not, this has not been a big concern for us for what I was saying before. I mean, it’s not something that we need to address every day in Italy at least.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Please share a few words about HR record keeping because when it comes to having people, you know, documentation is very important. What shouldn’t be registered in your organization’s file system? How do you make sure that you safeguard this personal information and have, you know, what’s your process for destroying them when you’re done with that information?

 

Diego Cresceri

Well, in terms of, you know, stuff, we have requirements. We need to keep the data for some years, now records and our books. So it’s not that I can store those data when someone leaves the company. So we do have some, many checks in place to make sure that we manage the data and this is valid, of course, for freelancers and customers as well according to GDPR. We have some customers and actually it’s mostly US customers asking us to do background checks as well on our own on the team taking care of, you know, particular job or project. But we tend to collect as least data as we can. Usually it’s basically demographic data in order to be compliant. The government is hiring people and letting them go, but that’s it. So for instance, where I was mentioning protected categories before, we are not, for instance, entitled to ask the reason why they are including those categories and why you are in those categories is not something we can ask and we don’t ask, of course. And we don’t document. We usually, again, collect these data, you know, to be compliant and that’s it.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Diego, is it common practice to offer incentives in our industry such as health insurance and so forth? You know, labor is become a very competitive issue today globally. How do you motivate people to outperform themselves and develop that loyalty to stick with your company?

 

Diego Cresceri

So this is a big question. This is a big one. I don’t think it’s common practice, honestly. Let me start by saying that in Italy, we do have a public assistance, which works pretty well. So the employees are quoted when they are sick, for instance, or got injured and accident or whatever happened at the workplace. So they are covered for that. There are some flaws in the system where LSP’s, where companies in general can help and can bring more than what is offered to everyone. For instance, in Creative Words, we have an injury insurance that will cover the team members for anything happening even outside of the office or not doing work in this. And it is something we need, you know, on a volunteer basis, something additional. And those are, I think, good benefits that you can offer to the team because when my team is pretty young, when you’re twenties, you don’t think that something bad can happen. But, you know, it happens every now and then. So the insurance, I think, is a good idea.

 

I was said by the bank when I subscribed to this insurance, that was the only one in general and that still is the only company in general offering that. So when I say it’s not common, I say, it’s really not common. So this is not something that is usually through the, we don’t have many companies offering welfare programs. Having said that I think the best motivator for my team has nothing to do with these benefits. I mean, these are important, but I think the best way I motivate my team is by offering ongoing opportunities. When I say, grow I mean, personal goals, we do a lot of trainings, a lot of coaching. And the other thing is that I usually send them to conferences or I give them opportunities to do, to go, like, 26 degrees, that they can do many, many different things than just sitting at the office and do the job. I mean, that’s the best motivator. We’re traveling, given their age as well is the best motivator ever for them.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

As we reach the end of this interview, Diego, can you please share a few words of advice for the LSP executives listening about HR best practices? What would you like to tell them? What should they actually pay attention to when it comes to managing their teams?

 

Diego Cresceri

Again, big one. Well, I still see, as we discussed, I still see many companies that just treat their team as resources. As I said, I don’t like the word resources. Of course, the people is a big resource for the company. But I think the company is now in the situation really within the way they treat their team members. Hiring is not easy. I think it’s best to take care of the people you have, whether they’re having to hire new people all the time. So investing in keeping them more than for new ones, every now and then. We’ve been through COVID. We’ve been through what is called greater resignation. I think that’s the word. And these have shown that people really care about their own well-being more than anything else. Probably more than the money as well. I mean, that’s not the best motivator at the moment. In my experience at least. For new generation, of course, this is even more true. I mean, millennials or Gen Z would not be care about the money if they are not happy to just leave you.

 

So I think the sooner we get to understand this, and we change our mindset as entrepreneurs, I think the better would be for all of us, that’s my few words about it. And the other thing that I want to add to close, again, strategic HR management is not something I like. I don’t like these words. I don’t like the word resources. It can have a negative connotation. But as I mentioned, the more you care about the people and the more this is your objective, the more you can get back. Maybe I will want to, but this is how I manage the company and it works pretty good. And I like it, I’ve taught many times of changing my role, my name, my role name, to something else, to do with people because if you do care about the people, the rest would come as a very nice and good side effect. But I think that managing the people and having care about the people should be really the first aim of any entrepreneur.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I agree with you, Diego, because without people, without our colleagues, without our staff, our companies will not exist. They drive our organizations and their happiness must be top of mind for all of us. And with that, we have reached the end of this interview, but certainly the conversation will go on in the future. We will have additional talks about this topic. I really enjoyed speaking with you, Diego, and I hope we can do this again at some point. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas with the industry.

 

Diego Cresceri

Thank you very much for having me again. Bye, everybody.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

HR is an important function in every LSP and regardless of who manages this department, it forms the backbone of the company’s labor structure. Every employee must be properly qualified, on boarded, trained, coached, and when it is time to part ways laws and regulations must be observed. In the US, our industry is continuously fighting the regulatory battle of independent contractors classified as employees by different levels of government. I must give credit to Bill Rivers and the entire team at the Association of Language Companies for spearheading that challenge. We must also consider the needs and wishes of our staff. I’m a component of investing into people and strongly believe that loyalty creates success in organizations. Treat your people nice so the company can be treated nice by customers and everyone else. At the end of the day, without our staff, our companies won’t exist. Thank you to my team for every moment they put into help us succeed.

 

There you have it. Our episode covering HR for LSPs is reaching its end. I had a great time speaking with Diego on this specific topic that is not covered most of the time in our industry. We have many other interesting topics related to the translation industry that we will cover in future episodes. I hope you found this episode useful and were able to take away a few action items to improve your business.

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Translation Company Top Podcast on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify and other platforms and give a five star rating for this episode.

 

Until next time!

 

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