What do you think makes a global team?
International locations? Yes.
Different nationalities of team members? Yes.
Mobility of individual staff? Yes.

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Overall, what is the essential element that makes a global team a truly “One team” instead of several groups that work for the same company in the same department?
Well in the RB Information Service function, this essential element is trust. IS people sitting in one site trust that their team members sitting in another continent can fully understand and help resolve their problems, trust the team members sitting across the ocean and can upgrade their local servers and promote their programs.
That is what’s happening in today’s IS.

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So, how do you build this kind of trust? High quality of delivery, accurate and effective communication and well-known expertise and efficiency. These are all important factors that need to be built in multiple dimensions.
Every day we are facing our objectives, our customers, our team members and we need to deliver the project or service in a constantly improving and measurable level of performance.

The accuracy and effectiveness of communication can be a challenge to all the international enterprises and organizations, it is especially important in a function that needs to get full alignment across all levels, all countries, from global to each local site. Working in RB IS you will not only learn the technical expertise but soft skills like the different types of communication skills such as - presentation skills, how to make a winning demonstration in conference, how to be convincing in front of business team and how to manage team from 3rd party.

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To those who are considering seeking job opportunities in RB, I want to share with you a little bit more on this.
What is RB looking for when they recruit new people? Through my personal experience, the most important attribute RB is looking for is – Leadership.
This is also what will be continually enhanced when working for RB.

Being trustworthy and the ability to earn other’s trust is the key part of your leadership.

So, you want to join RB? You want to be one of the best in RB?

Learn how to build trust from today onwards.

In previous posts here on the blog we have discussed broadly about our company values and how well they express the RB culture.

We’ve asked whether you can be an entrepreneur in a corporate environment.
We’ve  revealed the 6 traits you need to be a high flier at RB.
Even our CEO Bart Becht has written a post on here revealing how RB built a company of global entrepreneurs through a culture of global mobility.

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Achievement, Ownership, Entrepreneurship and Teamspirit represent the spinal cord of RB thinking and are the basis of its success (and it’s people’s success too).

But in my opinion, this is not all: being entrepreneurial, taking the initiative, being responsible for your position, exploiting every situation is the best way to gain value and reach your goals with your team, can all be seen as the seeds of leadership.
Of course, it depends on the ground they are seeded into. But if the ground is fertile, the fruits come up very quickly: to succeed in a dynamic, complex and competitive environment such as FMCG industry, you need to develop your leadership skills from the very beginning.

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As soon as you make your first steps in RB’s corridors, you understand how important is to interpret situations, find opportunities and turn every non-ordinary situation into a successful experience.

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When you work in a flat organization, you live within a few hierarchical levels: it means you really need to be assertive and learn how to achieve common goals with your team, listening to everybody’s opinion and sharing your ideas. Since you are exposed to the top management from the first days, I think this is a very good “gym” where you can practice your leadership skills.

The pace is fast, projects and deadlines are challenging, the people you work with are very skilled and the scenario you work in is global … starting a career at RB definitely makes you more solid, building the basis of leadership attitude and teaching how to work with people.

I’ve been following the fortunes of the Junior Apprentices on the new BBC show featuring Lord Alan Sugar and his search for the brightest business minds in the UK.

Last week’s show saw the end of Hannah Cherry, a 17 year old who scored 100% in her business AS level.
So why was she fired? And would she have what it takes to work in RB?

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Hannah claims to be an inventor, with a fantastic invention which she is keeping top secret.
She used her expertise to lead the task in week 2, a product design task. Unfortunately she lacked all creative steam and was very much dragged along by her team, something that wouldn’t be accepted within Reckitt Benckiser.
Here at RB, we have a driving atmosphere that keeps work moving forward, but no one member of the team can just be dragged along. Hannah managed to survive week 2 thanks to her team’s creativity.
Come week 4, and Hannah is part of a three-man team trying to sell art. Throughout the whole task Hannah took on the role of following her team mates around. Meeting artists, setting up the exhibition, and selling to customers, Hannah managed to coast along through the whole task making almost no little impact.

Coasting along in work is always noticed by your team members, and Hannah paid for it. And when faced with Lord Sugar in the boardroom, he admitted that although she had potential, she lacked ‘practical application’ and so became the fourth candidate to be fired.

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RB’s core values provide us with an atmosphere that encourages teamwork; this is one of the reasons why the company is so successful.
One of our core values is Team Spirit which is defined as: “We drive success by pulling together. As individuals we like to win and are high achievers. We rapidly bring our international strengths together when needed to work as one, united by common principles and attitudes. We treat each other and our differences with a high degree of respect, sharing ideas, failures and successes”.

So are you a team player, a leader or a coaster?
There are places within RB for the first two, and those who can motivate. What we can learn from Hannah is to keep participating and have an impact in the work we do.

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This week’s show looks like an interesting one: The candidates are heading to Amsterdam, to design a new product to break into the UK market. The teams must select which products they think they can sell, then take them to two department stores set up by Lord Sugar, as well as selling to as many retailers as possible.