Its two-year-old "Global Shapers" program selects 100 young professionals from across the firm to work virtually on a knowledge-sharing project and then directly with company executives to "create a ripple effect" internally, according to a program brochure.

Firms emphasize the value of direct employee involvement in developing training.

"Many of Cardno University's courses are designed by Cardno employees for Cardno employees," says Hanson. "This ensures Cardno's language and fiber is deeply embedded."

Sundberg notes contributions from other sources. "Our current graduate development program—which includes mentoring, classroom and virtual training, self-study, networking and social events—was largely influenced by a program that existed at a company we acquired," she says.

Even so, companies still struggle to reach all employees. "Because we have projects in remote locations all over the world, coordinating logistics and scheduling across time zones becomes a significant challenge," says Melinda Lee, global learning manager for Burlingame, Calif.-based contractor ECC.

Culture Gaps

In a 2012 survey of 300 business and organizational training executives by the American Society for Training and Development, 32% reported that global training programs were highly successful, up from 29% four years before.

But ASTD noted a number of remaining challenges, including "communicating the nuances of corporate culture" to a global audience and ensuring that training incorporates local mores.

Industry firms agree. "Having had the majority of our projects in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past several years, particular attention to their language and culture and how to incorporate these factors into our training was important," says ECC's Lee. "By carefully crafting our communication and training, we can avoid or minimize resistance."

Adds firm CEO Manjiv Vohra, "In some cultures, training is seen as required only for 'junior' people, and we have had to work on these preconceived notions to ensure that senior people in our international partner firms attend training with ECC senior managers in ethics and compliance."

Madia says, "We know that e-learning modules are not the most effective training tools with certain geographic-based cultures, such as China and other areas of Asia—instructor-led courses are."

It's difficult "to create a one-size-fits-all training," adds Horn of MWH. The firm uses facilitators from outside a region being trained "to both leverage and counteract cultural factors," she says.

But Horn notes global "mixed responses" to online innovations. "Our Latin America employees prefer face-to-face, formal training rather than training delivered through technology because they value the interaction more than other cultures," she says.

PCL has addressed diversity issues by hiring course designers and trainers from different global locations as well as "a full-time cultural anthropologist," says Glasgow. "This team works closely with local subject-matter experts to ensure we're embracing the values of each and every culture and geography we work in."

Conveying anti-harassment messages across workplace borders also appears problematic in business, says a study last year by the Society for Human Resource Management.

"The radically different harassment landscape outside the U.S. seriously complicates global anti-harassment rules and training," says study author Donald C. Dowling, a New York City international employment attorney.

He cautions firms seeking to drive home a strong anti-harassment message globally to include the right kind of training.

"In some pockets of the Arab world, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, a workforce may openly scoff at training that is seen as too awkward, too politically correct and too insensitive to the local environment," he says. "Show how harassment rules can work locally to improve local conditions."

Hierarchy

Leadership development is emerging as one of the most challenging training subsets across borders.

"Asking someone to become a manager can disrupt roles for workers used to having a defined place in the country's status quo," says Donald P. Rodgers, a management professor at Rollins College, Winter Park, Fla. "In some firms, workers expect guarantees that they won't get hurt by making a corporate change. This is a problem if firms can't give guarantees."

ENVIRON International Corp., a 1,500-person resource management consultant with 90 offices in 22 countries, launched its global leadership program in 2012 to "develop talent with a global mind-set," says Scott A. Wilson, director of global human resources.

The 16-month program graduated its first class of 21 last year, but Wilson notes difficulty in finding good candidates quickly.

"There's a different idea of leadership in China than in Chile," he says. Those differences also had an impacton how learning was delivered. In Asian cultures, instructors are viewed as experts, not facilitators, says Wilson.

ENVIRON is among many industry firms developing more explicit ethics rules, compliance systems and training for global workforces in the wake of recent well-publicized incidents of bribery linked to project awards that brought enforcement actions against some companies.

ENVIRON exposes employees to ethical dilemmas, an approach that generates less "pushback" than cut-and-dried legal tutorials, says Wilson. "Ethics is still a gray area. How one person from Russia views the world is different from someone in Brazil. Changing mind-sets is tough, but we have codified this training."

Safety and health training "can't be just a box-checking exercise," says Wilson. "Management must reinforce that employees understand what was learned."

ECC says its online system notifies employees when their training needs to be updated in ethics, anti-kickback rules and harassment awareness.

Kim Myers, director of PB University, points to technology- enabled innovations that have personalized the firm's code-of-conduct training, which also covers thousands of employees in the firm's parent company, U.K.-based Balfour Beatty.

"A world-class training organization is a sight to behold," says training guru Bersin. "This is a predictor of business confidence and future economic growth."

Research support by Erin Richey