How to Lead Across Different Cultures
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Helene Hasselskog, Chief Human Resources Officer at Sweco, to explore how leadership alignment, cultural awareness, and talent scarcity are shaping the future of engineering organizations.
Helene shares Sweco's journey toward a joint leadership philosophy, the challenges of balancing performance with care, and how the company is navigating one of the toughest hiring markets in Europe.
🎓 In this episode, Helene discusses:
Addressing the talent shortage in engineering
Balancing performance with empathy in leadership
Aligning leadership around shared values and purpose
Cultural differences and leadership styles across borders
Upskilling, acquisitions, and internal development strategies
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Helene Hasselskog 0:00
The process in the executive team to get to this point where we have this a joint leadership statement. That was interesting. Journey. Was a little bit of a rocky road as well, because at some point we realized we don't share, maybe the same values exactly the way we thought. I mean, they're very close. In essence, the leadership statement is basically being super performance driven, but also to care about our people. So it's that mix, right? And then then the question is, if you put them up in a scale, which performance oriented on one side and caring on the other side, how much caring can you be and how much performance can you drive? And that differs between the countries, which is also cultural. But of course, it goes back to the country manager. So this was an exercise that was super good for us to do together to get to this point. So this is what we stand for. You.
Chris Rainey 1:05
Again. Are you ready to jump in? Yeah, sure, yeah. Hello. Welcome to the show. How are you?
Helene Hasselskog 1:10
I'm fine. Thank you, brilliant. Thank you and you. I'm okay.
Chris Rainey 1:13
Nice to see you. We were just both saying, how quick the year's gone, all right. It's like disappeared right behind us, and now it's spring again. I know it's spring again as well, and that means summer is not that far away, although we don't really get much of a summer in the UK. How about you? Is it pretty, pretty good summers? I mean,
Helene Hasselskog 1:33
you could be lucky or you could be unlucky. I mean, you never know when, oh,
Chris Rainey 1:36
it's the same as the UK. Then you just don't know, basically, when it's
Helene Hasselskog 1:41
nice, then it's super nice, then you don't want to be anywhere else. But when it's bad, then you'd like to be like, little bit
Chris Rainey 1:47
more soft. Yeah, before we jump in, tell everyone a little bit more about you personally, sort of your background and the journey to where we are. Now, you know, did HR choose you, or did you choose it along the way, very good question.
Helene Hasselskog 2:03
Well, I think it's a combination. I think that I kind of really, rather early on, had a big interest in leadership and how you can make people perform, I mean, kind of beyond what they believe is possible. And that that very much took me to the choice of HR, and that is still something I'm really kind of interested in, and wouldn't say passionate about, but I'm very much still exploring it, how we can make it happen in the organization that we're working for, and currently that's for me, Sweco, and I'm sure we'll get back to that later on. But I think it was I chose it due to the connection to leadership and performance. I think that's the short story of it.
Chris Rainey 2:53
Did you start out in this space, or did you work in other parts of the business or organizations, and then you slowly, kind of came into HR,
Helene Hasselskog 3:01
when I went to to the university I choose to study. HR, Oh,
Chris Rainey 3:05
really. So you're one of a very, very few. Thank you, because most you know, I've done one, one and a half 1000, nearly, episodes, and you know 99% none of those leaders chose to study HR, yeah, but I did. So okay, you're one of maybe like 20 out of 1000 that actually chose Yeah, and what led you down that route? Because typically what we find is, if someone studies HR, it's because maybe someone in their family or their network or their friend was in it for you. What drew you to it?
Helene Hasselskog 3:41
So I think it was, I mean, in my family, there was a person who was basically psychologist, and she was working as HR director, and when she talked about what she was doing, I thought it was really interesting. So I think that kind of triggered something in me, and then I realized that this might be the route for me to take amazing. So that's, that's how it all started, right? Yeah.
Chris Rainey 4:01
And that's typically what happens. It's very rare, like, it's always like, there's someone in the family or a friend or, yeah, because otherwise people don't grow up being like, oh, I want to work in HR. Like, you know, it's not like, and I don't mean that there's a disrespect to the profession, but it's just most kids aren't growing up being like, I can't wait to work. It
Helene Hasselskog 4:18
was a rather conscious decision. I need to say, yeah, it was, and I still, I still like it a lot.
Chris Rainey 4:24
Yeah, what would you say has kept you in the profession for so long? I think
Helene Hasselskog 4:29
it's basically the same as we started off with. How can you make organizations be successful by kind of leading and steering, I mean, basically the people within the organization in the right way. How do you secure empowerment? How do you secure that people know what to do, feel at ease going to work, contribute with whatever they can contribute with. So I think that's something that still is kind of fascinating me. I think we will talk about that. But I think the way that SWE was structured, very much kind of. Releases the full power of all our MPs, and also they got a very good opportunity to contribute with their competencies. So I think that's, I think that's still the case. Yeah, I'm still learning
Chris Rainey 5:12
it's still always a never ending learning curve. It goes on, right? Yeah, you know, especially from when I started 20 years ago, it's almost unrecognizable to function now, and the role of what it means to be a HR leader when I started 20 years ago, versus now. Yes, you still have the people at the heart like you're saying that doesn't change, but so much has changed,
Helene Hasselskog 5:34
and it's constantly evolving, constantly, right?
Chris Rainey 5:37
It's, I feel like it's never it's, it's evolving faster than ever before. It feels like that. In the last couple it feels like we have had 10 years of change in two years.
Helene Hasselskog 5:51
Yeah, I totally agree to that. But at the same time, we're still human beings, right? Yes,
Chris Rainey 5:55
that hasn't changed. No, that you said earlier, that hasn't changed. No,
Helene Hasselskog 5:59
no. So the needs that we have, the beliefs that we have, the values that we bring on, they may have changed, but we as human beings are basically the same as we were before. So that's why it's both very triggering to be into this field, but also a little bit comforting to know that at some point you kind of start to understand how this is all kind of functioning together. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 6:22
tell everyone a little bit about the business who aren't aware of the organization. So Sweco
Helene Hasselskog 6:27
is a consultancy business, so we are within engineering and architecture. So we have 22,000 employees in Europe, wow. Basically Northern Europe, if you would consider Belgium as Northern Europe. But still, we're not going further down than that. So we are list stock listed in Sweden, in Stockholm, and that's where it basically all started. So we're working within all fields when it comes to the green transformation, electricity, security and defense, everything, where you basically can kind of try to transform society in different ways. But so, I mean, you can say that the business is growing, the business is growing with us, and we're making a lot of acquisitions, but it's also so that the, I mean, the sentiment in the market right now is there's a super big potential for us in terms of growth, and there's just what, what's basically little bit blockering us, or kind of making the growth a little bit slower than we would like to see, is the the scarcity of competencies, because, you know how many engineers? Yeah, so then the number of engineers are, the number is too low compared to what we would need to do, not at least to combat the climate change, but also for us to grow as a business. So it's so interlinked. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 7:49
I was having that same conversation with the Chief People Officer of Langan engineering. Not sure if you know Langan engineering? Very large, similar, similar to yourselves, very large, 10,000 plus engineering company in the US is same industry, and they were saying exactly the same thing, they're struggling. There's not there's a very small pool of talent. And they're talking we, a lot of our podcast was around how they're now basically hiring very early on and in developing those skills internally, or for a lot more apprenticeship programs and stuff like that as well, because they're like, there just isn't enough talent out. No, it
Helene Hasselskog 8:32
isn't, yeah, so it's, it's a lot, right? I mean, it's about upskilling and re skilling, and it's also about recruiting people. We acquire a lot of companies. I mean, as we go along and try to find competencies in other companies so we can kind of grow by them, and then looking to, what can we do cross border, what can we source from other countries? I mean, there's a lot to it to kind of make sure that we have the right competencies at every given moment. But, I mean, there's a limit to that as well.
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Helene Hasselskog, CHRO at Sweco.