A recent report about worker productivity around the globe puts the United States at or near the top. But for U.S. employees themselves, the achievement is somewhat empty.

In early September, the International Labour Organization said the United States led all nations with $63,885 of “value added” per person employed in 2006. Ireland was a distant second at $55,986, followed by Luxembourg ($55,641), Belgium ($ 55,235) and France ($ 54,609).

The ILO, a United Nations agency, said Norway ranked first in terms of value added per hour worked, at $37.99. But the United States was second at $35.63, followed by France at $35.08.

Productivity has a lot to do with the tools businesses provide workers, including computers and related technology. But it also reflects workers’ skills, knowledge and effort. Unfortunately for average U.S. workers, it seems their contributions to world-class productivity haven’t gone rewarded with world-class compensation of late. Real average weekly earnings of U.S. production workers rose just 0.7 percent between August 2002 and August 2007, despite an expanding economy.

Perhaps the miniscule movement in real earnings helps explain another U.S. productivity statistic—one that’s less glowing. U.S. manufacturing productivity grew 2.4 percent last year, a rise that was exceeded by several nations, according to the U.S. Labor Department. In Taiwan, Germany and Sweden, labor productivity grew by over 6 percent, and in Korea by nearly 11 percent.

Could that less-than-stellar productivity growth in the United States be a sign that American workers are fed up with seeing so few fruits of their labor?

Look out for leapfrogging Malaysian HR professionals.

That is to say, HR officials in Malaysia appear to be embracing cutting-edge ideas about people management. And thanks to a fast-growing economy and related talent tussles, their expertise in fields like recruiting and succession planning may eclipse the chops of many HR pros in the West.

At least that’s the impression I get looking at the announcement of an HR conference planned for next month in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. The backdrop to the four-day Malaysia HR Congress 2007 event is an economy that grew more than 5 percent each of the past two years and is forecast to rise at a 6 percent clip this year.

“With Malaysian companies expanding to global markets and entering a knowledge-based competitive marketplace, the pressure is on to identify the right people, develop and motivate, and lastly to retain them,” the organizer of the conference, All Events Group, said in a statement.

Among the topics to be covered at the Kuala Lumpur confab include succession planning, talent management, “HR Shared Services & Outsourcing” and “Strategic Human Capital.”

Malaysian government officials are expected to be there, as are heavy-hitting global companies, including General Electric Malaysia, MasterCard and Oracle.

Earlier this year, I saw firsthand how a crucible-like business climate in China is pushing HR leaders there to learn fast. In some cases, HR programs with roots in China are being used elsewhere on the globe. A similar steep learning curve appears to be under way in nearby Malaysia.

I wouldn’t be surprised if next month’s conference is full of smart people and conversations.

Much of the talk about multicultural sensitivity in the work world can seem soft. Yes, we all agree it makes sense to know something about the country we’re about to expand into, and managers headed to foreign lands benefit from a bit of training on the business etiquette there.

But a lot of the services and tools surrounding international work assignments speak in generalities. They lack hard numbers or the ability to predict whether John Doe from Dubuque, in particular, will work out well in Dubai.

That’s what makes a new consultancy intriguing. Magna Leadership Solutions is made up of three former Intel employees, and one of its central products is a leadership assessment tool grounded in data. The Cross-Cultural Leadership Inventory is designed to link leadership behaviors and characteristics to organizational performance and business results across 70 nations.

The CCLI is based on the work of Ali Lakhani, who examined the leadership performance and business results of some 200 Intel managers in creating the tool. Although originally a semiconductor engineer at Intel, Lakhani took an interest in leadership development and earned a doctorate in management from the University of Phoenix.

 His mentor there was Kevin Gazzara, currently the university’s research chair for organizational development and another co-founder of Magna.

During an 18-year career at Intel, Gazzara designed and ran training programs for managers to increase cross-cultural smarts. He says the CCLI is the only product out there to provide a tailored view of how well a particular exec will fare around the globe.

 “It’ll say, ‘He’ll do better if you send him to Israel. But by the way, if you send him to China, they’re going to eat him for lunch,’ ” Gazzara says.

Gazzara and Lakhani formed Magna this year along with Marleen Lundy, another veteran of Intel’s management leadership development group. Besides the CCLI, the firm offers a broader set of technologies and consulting services, including a system designed to improve leadership capacity and business results.

Lakhani says today’s cosmopolitan workplaces in the U.S. can benefit from his tool through the creation of optimal cross-cultural teams. “CCLI will provide value not just going abroad but even staying within our borders,” he says.

So far, Magna has few clients. And it is up against many vendors in the global leadership development arena. Some of the competitors, such as consulting firm Personnel Decisions International, also bring research rigor to their work.

Still, Magna might make a dent with its hard-data approach to an often fuzzy field.

A funny thing about globalization is the way it is propelling the rise of new economic powers in the developing world even as it entrenches a language of the developed world.

English, if anything, is growing more prominent on the world business stage. Yes, the lands of Hindi and Mandarin Chinese are racing ahead economically. But with their expansion comes a greater need for executives and other employees in India and China to develop English-language skills so they can work with colleagues and partners across the globe.

Earlier this year, Newsweek pegged the English-learning industry in India as a $100 million-per-year business, and said there are more Chinese children studying English—about 100 million—than there are Britons. Newsweek said that within a decade, 2 billion people will be studying English and about half the world—some 3 billion people—will speak it. (The magazine was citing a report from the British Council, which works to increase international appreciation of the U.K.’s creative ideas and achievements.)

Another sign that English is waxing rather than waning is the success of an online language instruction firm, GlobalEnglish. The Brisbane, California-based company has seen its revenue grow more than 50 percent over the past two years, thanks to clients including Hewlett-Packard, Procter & Gamble and Unilever.

With an exclusive focus on teaching English, GlobalEnglish aims to provide a better alternative to the networks of classroom-based English-language academies scattered around the globe. Although critics say online learning can leave a lot to be desired when it comes to language instruction, GlobalEnglish officials respond by pointing to some intriguing features. These include the ability of users to hear a variety of accents and dialects, such as English as it is spoken in Massachusetts, South Korea and Poland.

“It’s not just focused on helping them understand the U.S. dialects,” says Danielle Busack Miguez, director of marketing at GlobalEnglish. The idea, she says, is to aid employees of multinationals as they work with counterparts who also are not native speakers of English.

Then there’s the option to log on to the system at any time and take part in “Talk With the Teacher” classes. These audio chats include an instructor and up to eight GlobalEnglish students from around the world.

As GlobalEnglish and its students suggest, English isn’t being left behind by globalization. It is leading the way.