Tiny Maerschalk hopes to build a strong international community in Ã…rhus

6 quick with Tiny

“Symbolically, it makes damn good sense I’d find her here,” I thought as I walked through the doors of Toldboden, the old customs house in Aarhus Harbor, earlier this week. “The taxman is always sitting at the front of the welcome wagon.”

No taxman here, though. My target was Tiny Maerschalk, a Belgian who followed her heart to Denmark nearly a dozen years ago and decided to stay.  Tiny has now taken the reigns of an interesting project called International Community a long overdue initiative backed and funded by a consortium of equally interesting bedfellows.

This is a huge international communications undertaking, and one that is only going to get bigger - in spite of the ups and downs of the financial markets. I spent some time talking with Tiny, and here are her 6 shots

What is this all about? Who is behind it and where does the money come from?

There is essentially a three-pronged constellation, and that is one of the things that makes this unique. The municipality is involved, as is Erhverv Århus (a regional business council) and The University of Aarhus and especially, Vestas was one of those that wanted to make this happen.  In addition, we have now got other big firms like Terma and Danisco on board.  This is quite important because we have public life, the private sector and the larger council represented within the network.
The companies have contributed with both money and resources and we have also applied for funds from RegionMidt (the county) and the European Social fund, which we are waiting to hear from. We definitely have enough money for the next three years and it is without doubt that it will continue after that, of course, once people see how much value this gives.

Is there really a need for this? How do you know? How many foreign workers are we talking about in Ã…rhus?

The problem is that companies and the higher education institution are not good at registering these workers and there has been no single place they can meet.  So the scope is difficult.  We have an estimate that there are 1000 employees and we are forcasting an increase of 60 percent in the coming three years,  These are employees at companies, PhD students and professors teaching at the universities.
Add to that the need for people like you and me who have come here to Denmark without being recruited, but have a higher education and ambitions of contributing and building a good life here. This means our target group has broadened and it is tough to get an idea of exactly how many

Why has it taken so long to get something like International Community in place?

It is tough to say why, but in general, there has been a big demand for workers in Denmark and more and more businesses are working with foreigners. We know that.  A study from Global Relocation Trends in 2005 showed that 67 percent of failed international employments are the result of their spouse not feeling welcome. That is not just in Denmark, but everywhere in the world. This is costly for a company who hires employees and then they leave after a year when they were expecting a 3 year commitment.
The thing that is quite striking here is that companies like Vestas and Terma, who normally competitors for qualified engineers, have found out that it is necessary to recruit to welcome and maintain these workers together.  So they work together to attract people to the region and then compete to attract them to their workplace.

What do you want to do in the first year?

There are 3 concrete things.
First we have to gather information about what it means to be a foreign worker in Denmark. What are the Practical matters and in which order do you take care of them and make the chaos level as low as possible.
We will focus on ensuring better integration at work - meaning that every foreign employee from the day they arrive should have a mentor.  We are putting together courses about what the Danish workplace is like and trying to make sure people understand the intricacies of Danish work life - which are significantly different from other places in the world.
Finally, and probably most challenging is integration in local society.  When you look at the number of hours someone sleeps, works and does the practical things in life - it means there are, roughly speaking, only 3 hours left in the day.  These three hours mean a lot, and are crucial for feeling you are part of society. When you get part of that you understand a big part of Danish social life. Danes are very social network oriented, almost tribal, whereas in a lot of other countries socializing happens at a barbeque or at the pub, but that is not the fact in DK.  You are colleagues between 8 and 4 and everyone goes home to their own life and that makes it quite difficult.
A big part of the last point is making sure spouses are also taken care of.   In the best case, even getting those spouses to help fill the holes in the workforce. Companies usually attract and employ one person, but without knowing they attract 2 potential employees so why not use that second person?

Do you have a role model? Or are there other initiatives you look to as models elsewhere in the world?

I might agree to say this is an experiment but it is a very qualified experiment and it is based on the needs that are out there, but we do not have a lot of best practice or how to do this as such. I have experience from working for International Student Centre, where the target group for integration was exchange students.

Some groups like Invest in Denmark, Work in Denmark have provided best practices for things on how to attract employees as so on, but there is not a very big guidebook about creating a network of this kind.

What is going to be your biggest challenge in all of this?

That is an easy one! I have experienced that there is huge interest in this project - from the media, the business, Erhverv Århus and the Mayors office.  So the challenge in the short term is actually to prioritize all of the many needs and that is ultimately a question of defining and managing expectations.

That is 80 percent communication.

Give Tiny a call or an email to learn more about the project:

tm@internationalcommunity.dk

+45 3035 1735

Their website is here: www.internationalcommunity.dk

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Lets face it, Facebook’s policies and PR blunders might even make the most enthusiastic Facebooker agree with Kristian Levring Madsen and the Politiken crowd that the service “just has to be run by the CIA” (is that healthy Orwellianism or just good old skeptical Lutheranism, Kristian?)

Whatever it is, these blunders just may kill it. And just when I am about to buy a ticket for that train, along comes a product like workbook that makes me think, “well, ok, I think I will keep my facebook profile a little longer after all.”

My British colleague Andrew Foote wrote about the workbook product in this recent blog. Basically, Workbook allows companies to set an “overlay” on top of Facebook that converts it into an internal social network - in this way users can hide a part of their profile and activities behind the firewall. The best thing is that the users can still use the external Facebook - now there is just an added layer of “privacy”.

The inability to network in one place both publicly and privately is something that, in my experience, makes people more uncomfortable with Facebook than all of the conspiracy theories, discussions about porting data or who owns what combined. “What if my boss or customers see it?” is usually the first reaction I get from people when talking about social networking services.

Programs like Workbook (and these are surely like it more on the way) will make it possible to put up curtains within the external social network and give the possibility of screening the private from the public.

But what then will become of the concept of the “social network” - which is supposed to open, free of secrets and transparent? For social networking theorists and purists, this could be a death sentence. For companies, it could be a powerful internal communications possibility.

For users it may or may not be the future of semi-social networking. ..

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