This is a large global international Chinese company rather than a true global multinational enterprise and there is very little appetite for change.
The environment is uncompromisingly Chinese, HQ centric and there is little support provided to non Chinese employees to enable them to carry out their roles effectively. I have worked for global MNE's for 20 years as a professional subject matter expert but was completely unprepared and unsuited for the working environment at Huawei.
The internal language is Chinese and the standard of business English, both written and spoken, is very poor making it difficult for non Chinese speaking employees to understand what is required from them or to engage meaningfully with Chinese colleagues on technical issues. The lack of Chinese language skills meant I was unable to carry out my role effectively despite having the requisite technical knowledge and experience.
Huawei boasts that 70% of its UK employees are locally hired, which may be the case, but predominantly this is from the local Chinese community for all roles except those which require specific professional skills or expertise.
In my opinion it does not provide a suitable work environment for non Chinese employees unless they are prepared to accept a very heirarchical business culture and way of working where everyone is expected to follow globally defined processes to the letter and accept that compliance with these processes will be assessed, measured, audited, scored and ultimately rewarded or punished. There is no trust between HQ and internationally based employees.
There is a total lack of autonomy for locally hired staff no matter how senior or expert they are. Subject matter experts are regarded as internal consultants rather than business decision makers. All business decisions are made between Chinese local management and HQ in China and all discussions and meetings are conducted in Chinese with little or no opportunity for the non Chinese staff to participate.
I am used to a significant amount of autonomy when carrying out my specialist role coupled with the ability to contribute opinions, ideas and experience to influence ways of working in my functional organisation both locally and globally. I was told that this was one of the main reasons I was being hired but ultimately this did not come to fruition. It was clear that I was to have no opportunity to contribute or influence global processes beyond an initial "knowledge dump" of the ways of working of my previous employer who was a competitor of Huawei. I was there to be harvested of the knowledge I had in my head and once this had occurred I was "put out in the field" to work. Huawei are happy to buy a stable of racehorses and put them to work pulling ploughs every day.
