I have my figure in a crouching pose, which utilises a pitch forward of the hip joint. I'm trying to make him face a different direction now, but when I try to turn him to the side, he rotates on a local axis, and ends up tilted at a strange angle.

with frustrating effort, I can eventually manipulate him to the correct heading, but it feels needlessly hard and unintuitive. Is there any way to rotate a figure, or individual joints, on a world relative axis, rather than relative to the figure ?