S2 Ep3 - Cynthia Myrnes

Bianca Cenan (00:01.73)
Welcome to the Expert Equation, the podcast where we explore the human side of working abroad.

Julian (00:29.077)
and we're your hosts, I'm Julian Johns.

Bianca Cenan (00:31.372)
and I'm Bianca Cenan. We're both experts and inclusion professionals and through our work at Candidate Aid and Culture Flow, we help companies and international professionals grow together.

Julian (00:42.911)
In each episode, we talk to people shaping the global workforce, whether it's internationals navigating their careers abroad or the business leaders creating space for them.

Bianca Cenan (00:53.134)
Today's guest is Cynthia Myrnes, the CEO at Relocation AS in Stavanger, Norway. where We'll explore their approach to supporting and relocating internationals, what inclusion looks like inside their company and to their customers, and the lessons they've learned along the way.

Julian (01:13.613)
So if you're an HR leadership or just care about building better workplaces, this episode is for you.

Bianca Cenan (01:20.886)
If you enjoyed today's conversation, follow us and share it with the colleagues who shaping their team.

Julian (01:26.782)
Let's dive in. Welcome, Cynthia, to the podcast.

Cynthia Myrnes (01:30.198)
Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here.

Bianca Cenan (01:31.362)
Welcome.

To start, would like to ask you, if you could share a little bit about your background and maybe we can start with where you're from because you're an international yourself.

Cynthia Myrnes (01:46.645)
Yes, that's right. So I'm originally from Singapore, born and raised in Singapore and lived there pretty much up until I went to university in Perth, Australia. And then I met Norwegian men and that's what brought me here to Norway 18 years ago. So I've lived here for 18 years now.

Bianca Cenan (02:09.614)
Oh, that's great. Can you please tell us also a little bit about your journey into leadership and into actually leading a relocation company and how this working across cultures with internationals has shaped your perspective?

Cynthia Myrnes (02:28.019)
All right, do we have three hours? yeah, no. So, basically I met my husband, well, boyfriend at the time when we were both university students in Perth, in Australia. And, you know, after some back and forth and long distance relationship, we decided that I would make the move to Stavanger.

Cynthia Myrnes (02:51.594)
So moving here in 2008, I moved in February, which was not a good time to move at all because it was cold, it was dark and from Singapore, you know, it's a tropical island. We have sun every day, it's 30 degrees every day. And then moving here and coming to the cold and the darkness, was quite a shock to the system. Even though I had come to visit twice before, but still, actually moving here was quite different.

Cynthia Myrnes (03:21.001)
And so he had a job when I moved here and I moved in with him, but I didn't have a job. I didn't have friends. I didn't have a network. even though he had really good friends, who were still friends, took very good care of me. I felt lost and annoyed. And, you know, I couldn't speak the language.

And I had to wait, right? Because when you first come here, you don't get everything in place. You have to first wait for your personal number. You have to open a bank account. All of these little things that Norwegians take for granted, we have to wait as internationals. Because without those, you are basically an alien in Norway. You can't do anything. moving here, was a bit of a difficult time. However, my husband was really nice and he said, OK, just try. Just try for a few months. And if you really don't like it here, then he will move to Singapore with me. So I was like, okay, I got to give it my all. And I'm originally a physiotherapist by profession. So I used to work in a hospital in Singapore as a physiotherapist and I moved here and I got my credentials authorized so I could work here in Norway as well. But of course nobody wanted to hire me because I couldn't speak Norwegian. So I started learning the language and went for classes twice a week, four hours each time.

Cynthia Myrnes (04:44.775)
I found a job, thankfully, in a cafe in town after being here for one month. Thank goodness. I mean, was, you know, that was really, that really saved me. So even though it wasn't a job that I wanted, it wasn't a job that, you know, I felt, I felt overqualified for the job because here, you know, I used to work as a professional, as a physiotherapist, and here I am working in a cafe like I'm 19 again. So that wasn't very nice, but

Cynthia Myrnes (05:14.47)
but you do what you have to do, right? I needed to earn money, I needed to learn the language, and that was a great place to start. However, being here in Stavanger, this was again 18 years ago, so there was not a lot of information about moving to Stavanger, there was not a lot of information about living in Stavanger. So when I started to make friends and started to build my network, I met like-minded women who were also internationals and who had moved to Stavanger to be with their Norwegian boyfriends.

Cynthia Myrnes (05:43.27)
And we decided to start a blog 18 years ago. So it was blog that was all the rage back then. Yeah. And we started a blog called Stavanger Expats. We wrote about how it is to move to Stavanger. How is it to exchange your driver's license? How is it to get a Norwegian driver's license? How is it to find a property? All of this information. We organize pub nights. We organize coffee mornings. We organize hikes and walks.

Cynthia Myrnes (06:12.569)
so that people could have an avenue to meet other people, to meet other expats and internationals. We also started a Facebook group back then called Stavanger Expats and that group is still available right now and now we have over 25,000 members in the Stavanger Expats group. So it's grown to be a very good community where people can go in and ask questions and you get questions in that group.

Cynthia Myrnes (06:41.796)
everything from where do I find a particular brand of tea all the way to okay I have I have some issues with my spouse where do I go to get help right so, and even other Norwegians that moved to Stavanger from other parts of Norway join the group so that they can get more information and make friends as well so yeah so

Cynthia Myrnes (07:11.4)
Going back to how I ended up in Relocation was that we were running the blog for three years and organizing events and then Relocation came to us and offered to buy the blog and offered me a job as part of that. And that's how I started working in Relocation 14 years ago.

Julian (07:30.763)
Amazing. That's quite the journey that essentially you translated your own experiences as a way then to help others which then became your avenue to building a company and a business.

Cynthia Myrnes (07:44.225)
Yeah, exactly. And so I didn't start relocation. I didn't build this business, but I just kind of stumbled upon it. Walked in through the back door, as I say, because and I didn't have this as an ambition either. So I was just doing something to, you know, trying to meet a niche or to meet a need in the community. And then I ended up getting a job in relocation. I started working as the web coordinator. So I put out information about how it is to live.

Cynthia Myrnes (08:14.325)
in Norway to move here on the website. And then gradually I started working with immigration, started working with home finding, and then I started working with global alliance, working with our global partners. And then I started working in business development. And in 2020, I was asked to take over as CEO.

Julian (08:34.178)
That's an incredible journey. From 18 years ago when you were working in a cafe,

I mean, it's not a journey that happens overnight either, though. When you then realized actually this is something you're going to be doing and relocation became your everyday, you've clearly no longer focusing on just Stavanger. It looks across all of Norway, does it?

Cynthia Myrnes (09:09.505)
Correct, so we have our headquarters in Stavanger, but we have an office in Oslo and an office in Bergen as well. So out from these three offices, so I have colleagues in all three offices, but the most in Stavanger of course, and then from these offices we assist our clients who are moving to Norway. So most of the time we help them, we help those who are moving to Stavanger, Oslo and Bergen, but we also have people moving to Trondheim and all over the place.

Julian (09:32.544)
Yeah. Yeah.

One last question is this clearly is something that's super useful for local governments, the kommune etc. etc. How has that relationship been? Because clearly you're providing an incredible resource for companies hiring internationals internally. But also there are clearly initiatives or potentially programmes offered by the kommune. How do you work with the local communa and local government in relocation?

Cynthia Myrnes (10:07.136)
So we do try to. I am quite active with, for example, the StavangerChamber of Commerce here. I give talks about how it is to move to Norway, how it is to rent in Norway. I offer talks to HR people about how it is to hire internationals, what you should do. However, not everybody sees the importance of integrating internationals or people don't really see the importance of why this is important. People can figure it out themselves. And because we know

Cynthia Myrnes (10:36.703)
Norwegians are very independent. So when they go overseas, a lot of times they figure things out themselves. They're very tech savvy, you know, so they can do this, but it's not the same for everyone.

Julian (10:50.021)
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you for that great introduction, by the way. That's absolutely fantastic.

Bianca (12:25.037)
Okay, I very much appreciate your answer Cynthia and I would like to continue by asking you what is your approach on hiring internationals? I know you have a quite international team yourself.

Cynthia Myrnes (13:36.407)
Yes, I do. So we are a team of 15 people working in relocation.

And we are all women. didn't set out to be that way. It just happened. And we have 10 nationalities out of 15 people working here in relocation. So, well, I myself had problems finding a job as an international person. And after getting into a position where I could make a difference for other people, I decided to focus on where...

Cynthia Myrnes (14:10.926)
besides hiring for the company, but also where I can help other internationals as well. So it ended up with us having 10 nationalities here in the workforce. And it's been really good because it's been a learning process for all of us as well. We do have Norwegians, of course, but also learning from every single person. There is something to learn every day.

Cynthia Myrnes (14:38.51)
And even though I've been working in relocation for 14 years and relocation has been on the market for 30 years, this year we celebrate 30 years, our 30 year anniversary, thank you. There's still so much to learn depending on who you are helping, who you are dealing with and where they come from, what kind of culture they have. So with hiring people from so many different corners of the world, it's about understanding one another.

Julian (14:41.091)
Congratulations.

Cynthia Myrnes (15:08.549)
understanding how we all communicate, understanding what our cultural background is, because we look at something and we assume something based on our own cultural background, right? But here, what I try to do is whenever anybody new comes, starts with us, we do a personality test and analysis so that we can understand one another and we know where everyone comes from, what kind of culture they come from, and what other

Cynthia Myrnes (15:37.573)
personality traits so that we can work better together.

Bianca Cenan (15:41.361)
That's great. I haven't heard that before. So definitely a nice new approach to consider. You're also working with a lot of external customers or other companies that are approaching and working with a location. In your opinion, what do you think that it works seeing what's happening on the market in terms of hiring talent and what still needs to be worked out?

Cynthia Myrnes (16:10.717)
Yeah, so we have over 125 different companies as clients and we are helping their internationals. So it's very different because we have companies that are as small as four people where they are hiring a technical expert and they need assistance with immigration. So we only assist with the immigration part all the way to companies that have thousands of employees.

Cynthia Myrnes (16:33.225)
and we are assisting them from the pre-hiring to the immigration to the home finding to the cultural training to settling in. So it's very different what we assist with. And I see that the ones that are so-called most successful would be those who, number one, have a positive attitude towards moving to and living in Norway.

Cynthia Myrnes (16:57.746)
those who come with curiosity, but also the support that they get, the support that they get already from the start. So when I talk about pre-hiring assessments, some of our clients, have us do these pre-hiring assessments before their employees even sign the contract. They speak to us first to learn how it is to live here, how it is to move here, what is important for them. Maybe they have kids and then schooling is important. Maybe they have a spouse, a training spouse, and then is he or she going to be able to find work? So these things, they

Cynthia Myrnes (17:27.554)
They get their questions answered by us first. Instead of talking to random people or maybe Googling, because sometimes when you Google, you don't get accurate information. Or you get colleagues that have moved here during COVID and they can rent an apartment for 10,000 kroner a month. But that's not possible today.

Cynthia Myrnes (17:49.661)
No, so it's things like that that's important. So we are really set, we give them information so that they can work with before they come here. And then when we assist them with the immigration, they don't have to worry about anything. All they need to do is we just tell them what we need from them. They provide us those documents and then we can assist them. Same with home finding. It's sometimes it's a very competitive market now and it's very difficult for internationals to even be invited to viewings.

Cynthia Myrnes (18:18.496)
much less renting properties, just to be invited to the viewings takes a lot. Depending on where you come from, depending on how many people there are in your family, depending on the budget that you have. So we assist with that. We explain to them based on your budget what you can expect to get. Do you need to move further away from the city center? Can you live closer to the city? What are the options?

A lot of people when they move here, know, they all, it's very natural. mean, we've done it ourselves. Every time we move to a new place or we go to visit a new place, we always compare it with what we know. Right. Yeah. And so that's important. think giving, giving the information and providing context that, okay, this is what you know, but it's not like that in Norway.

Bianca Cenan (19:08.721)
And how open are the companies to offer these services to their international hires? Are they open to do that or are they just consider that this is something that people should just figure out?

Cynthia Myrnes (19:24.733)
Yes, so we have mixed reviews, well, we have mixed feedback on that as well. Some people feel like this is something that people should be able to figure out themselves because moving to Norway is very easy. know, Norway is a very well-functioning, efficient country. And it is if you are in the system. Yeah, but if you are not in the system or if you don't understand the language or if you don't understand the culture, it can be quite difficult to navigate. And we see that the ones that really...

Cynthia Myrnes (19:53.961)
that really champion for the services that we do are people that have moved themselves either to Norway or they have been expats in other countries and they've come back to Norway. So Norwegians that have lived elsewhere and come back to Norway and they really understand the struggles of how it is to move to a different country.

Bianca Cenan (20:14.225)
Indeed, it's a quite big struggle to move and if you don't experience it yourself, then it's very hard to imagine.

Cynthia Myrnes (20:21.392)
Absolutely. And I see it with Relocation as well. We can tell our customers that we understand because we have been through all the challenges that you are going through. And even the Norwegians that are working in Relocation, have all lived abroad before.

Julian (20:40.648)
After the hiring and you have the onboarding phase and hopefully that first three, six months goes really well, a report came out think at the beginning of the year, talked about the single most important factor that helps people kind of adapt and become happy in the workplace is actually their manager. There are other things as well, for example, there is culture shock that happens that you have to learn how to deal with that. That's a lot of stress. But when I read that report, I was thinking, there's not much support given to a manager in the workplace, if they're hiring internationals. When I read it, I thought, not only does the manager have to deal with their day job and then the new hire, and then do all the performance work.

Julian (21:27.951)
Is this something that on your side, you said you interviewed the people, the candidates coming in, do you take time to work with the managers as well to make sure they have the bandwidth to...

Cynthia Myrnes (21:44.548)
Right. So it is a service that we provide as well. So intercultural understanding, intercultural training for leaders, intercultural managers. But yeah, so it's dependent on whether people see the value of it.

Cynthia Myrnes (22:22.287)
Yeah, I can share a very small example with you. So we have a client and they've hired quite a lot of internationals. And you know, in Norway, we have this dugnad spirit. When you are in the office and it's the kitchen, everybody chips in to clean the kitchen, right? You unload the dishwasher, you load the dishwasher. But when you hire internationals from other countries, sometimes this, if nobody tells them, they don't understand that this is expected of them.

Cynthia Myrnes (22:50.67)
So then they just leave their cups, their coffee cups or their plates in the sink or around the sink and they don't chip in with unloading and loading the dishwasher. So it's just small things like this that really annoy some people and some people just have no clue. I didn't know I was expected to do that. Yeah. Because in their country, if they were to do this work, then they would be taking a job away from the cleaners. Yeah.

Julian (23:14.381)
Exactly, and I think there's an understanding there that sometimes there's tiny nuances. Are they part of the team or not? Right. And that becomes really the crucial factor about working in Norway, which is are they part of the team or not?

Bianca Cenan (23:42.131)
I want to ask a bit about onboarding, especially in what Cynthia noticed that companies are doing when it comes to onboarding. Do you have some experience with that, Cynthia? Is that okay? Perfect.

Bianca Cenan (24:12.268)
Yeah, you mentioned that you have a very nice and very thoughtful onboarding process at Relocation. But do you have the chance to see how the onboarding goes to your customers? Do they do something special for internationals or do they make sure that they actually support and integrate the internationals after they joined?

Cynthia Myrnes (24:36.722)
Yeah, so like I mentioned, we have clients from very...

many different companies. So the ones that do, I would call the full package, would be the ones that first start with a look and see trip. So they will pay for their employees and the families to come to Norway to have a look, to visit the schools, to visit some properties, to understand, to visit the city center, know, to see how it is to live in Norway, to experience Norway. And then that already sets the pace, that already sets the expectations that, okay, you are

Cynthia Myrnes (25:11.061)
you will be going to somewhere that you know. But we have the vast majority of our customers, they come here without ever having visited Norway before. So it's quite daunting to move to somewhere that you have never visited before. So the clients of us, ours that do that, they give them, they feel supported, you know, already from the start. then when they finally decide to sign,

Cynthia Myrnes (25:40.577)
the employment contract, then we help them with their immigration, we help them with the home finding. And some of our clients, they actually provide temporary housing for their employees when they first moved to Norway. So that is anywhere from 30 days, 45 days or 90 days, so that the employees can find their own property once they have arrived here. Some of our clients don't do that at all.

They don't provide any temporary accommodation. All of that is to be paid by the employees themselves. So it's a very big difference in what we see in how internationals are supported. We also have some clients where we support them throughout their stay, meaning that we are here for them and they can reach out to us throughout their entire stay, whether it's two years, three years or four years. But most of the time, again, vast majority of our clients.

Cynthia Myrnes (26:33.609)
We help them when they first move here and then they're on their own.

Bianca Cenan (26:37.688)
Okay, so it's not necessarily a service that it's appreciated well enough on the market.

Cynthia Myrnes (26:47.859)
No, not for everyone. Not everyone understands. And of course, not all clients have the resources as well to support this process too. Because like I said, some of our clients are very small companies or they're startups, right? And they don't have the kind of resources that, for example, the oil and gas companies might have. And that makes a difference, yes.

Bianca Cenan (27:09.038)
Exactly. And that makes sense.

Bianca Cenan (27:14.812)
Thank you.

Julian (28:12.44)
Okay, So we're now going to have a quick fire round. What's the first thing you do when onboarding a new team member at Relocation AS?

Cynthia Myrnes (28:23.538)
We have lunch together. Yeah, that's most important basically to just get to know the person and having the person shadow an experienced colleague.

Julian (28:37.205)
Perfect.

Bianca Cenan (28:39.022)
One culture you've learned a lot.

Cynthia Myrnes (28:43.204)
One culture that I've learned a lot from. that's a difficult one to answer. I have learned a lot from all kinds of cultures. I mean, I come from, I'm from Singapore and we are a very multicultural country. I've grown up, I'm ethnically Chinese, but I've grown up with the Malays and Indians and, you know, all nationalities, all ethnicities. So I pick and choose. And it's the same as well with the Norwegian culture, raising my kids, you know, I pick and choose.

Julian (29:09.605)
It's great that you can pick and choose. Office work, in-person, hybrid or remote.

Cynthia Myrnes (29:24.913)
So we do hybrid. We've continued with hybrid in relocation even after COVID. And the reason for that is because I see that people prefer it. when they're working from home, they are more focused. And when we come to the office, it's more social. So I think it's good to have a bit of both. And I really like it that we can have a hybrid version of it.

Julian (29:48.033)
Great.

Bianca Cenan (29:48.636)
leadership advice you live by.

Cynthia Myrnes (29:52.016)
Do to others what you want others to do to you. I think with my leadership style, I think back on my managers and how I didn't like to be treated and I try to not do that to my colleagues.

Julian (30:10.463)
That's very powerful advice. End of day ritual. Is it a hot drink, a cold drink, or a total digital detox?

Cynthia Myrnes (30:18.764)
it's a nice hot cup of jasmine green tea.

Julian (30:25.197)
Sounds delicious.

Cynthia Myrnes (30:26.169)
Yeah, and I see my 13 year old daughter has started copying that as well because me and her will sit together with our hot teeth.

Julian (30:35.917)
Beautiful. Great rituals.

Bianca Cenan (30:38.309)

Cynthia, last question from the Fire Round. What's your superpower?

Cynthia Myrnes (30:50.735)
seeing the positives in people and in situations.

Bianca Cenan (30:59.889)
Great. Thank you.

Julian (30:59.97)
Good, that's a good super power. Actually, yeah, we...

Cynthia Myrnes (31:02.126)
Yeah, my kids say I'm annoyingly positive.

Julian (31:09.142)
Yeah, it's good to be positive, I think. Yeah, to see the positive outcomes. Why couldn't it work? Great. Next set of questions before we close is three questions. Essentially, the idea behind these are actionable insights, tips, tricks, you can, advice you could give to somebody in similar roles or things like that. So.

Bianca Cenan (31:11.505)
Yes.

Cynthia Myrnes (31:15.33)
Yeah.

Julian (31:37.868)
So before we close off the podcast, in terms of tips and tricks and insights you can give others, what advice would you give to someone leading a multicultural team for the first time?

Cynthia Myrnes (31:50.017)
Be curious about your team. Learn about them. Learn about where they're from. Learn about their culture. What are they used to? What does know mean to them? What do things mean to them? Because you know what rules and guidelines mean to you, but what does it mean to them? So learn and try and see things from their perspective. I think that's very important.

Bianca Cenan (32:14.035)
What does a truly inclusive workplace mean to you?

Cynthia Myrnes (32:20.275)
I think it means that everyone has the opportunity to express what they're thinking and what they're feeling without fear of any repercussions. So, you know, they're not worried about not being promoted or not being valued, but, you know, that they actually can share what they feel. I think that's important.

Julian (32:21.152)
If you could redesign the hiring process from scratch with internationals in mind, where would you start?

Cynthia Myrnes (32:51.212)
I would certainly start with adding in pre-hiring assessment.

Cynthia Myrnes (33:01.209)
but also giving them the option to have a pre-hiring assessment so that you can understand if they are ready to move and if their family is ready to move. Yeah.

Julian (33:53.096)
Great. Thank you. Thanks, Cynthia. Thank you so much for joining the podcast today. It's been a pleasure to learn more about your journey, but also how you're helping other people on similar journeys, navigating new cultures. Thank you so much.

Cynthia Myrnes (34:05.548)
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to be here.

Julian (34:08.158)
Yeah, so that was Cynthia giving us a behind the scenes look at what it really takes to create inclusive global workplaces.

Bianca Cenan (34:15.057)
We hope you are leaving this episode with a new idea, a fresh perspective, or maybe a little inspiration to try something different.

Julian (34:22.706)
And if you're an international professional looking for support or a company wanting to improve how you hire and support global talent,

Bianca Cenan (34:28.659)
You'll find links to candidate aid and culture flow in the show notes. We'd love to support your journey.

Julian (34:36.545)
Don't forget to subscribe and share this with anyone working in HR or living the international experience.

Bianca Cenan (34:42.705)
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Julian (34:47.389)
See you next time.

Bianca Cenan (34:48.339)
See you next time.