As globalization boosts international companies and organization movements, a significant number of multicultural startups are structured globally. With most startups employing foreigners, the diversity among startups is increasing rapidly. Brankas, as one of growing multicultural startups, is built on diversity. Hence, their challenges to manage the people are laid on the hand of the People Operations team. Sharing the similar function with HR, People Operations focus on people well-fare, engagement and culture. The aim of this study was to identify the intercultural communication challenges the people operations are facing and to identify possible solutions for the people operations team itself. These findings show that Brankas’ People Operations’ team runs on intercultural theories when it comes to communication. The challenges the team faces are in fact aligned with the theories and context in intercultural communication, including high and low context cultures, language and accent barriers, as well as different attitudes towards conflict among the team and the company. Although based on the informants the people operations team and the employees have adapted to Brankas’ founders’ origin cultures, they still bump into intercultural communication challenges often. This study also proposes the possible solutions for the intercultural communication challenges discussed.

Keywords: people operations, intercultural communication, multicultural, startup