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Q2 2016 « CONTENTS

COVER STORY 12 Q&A

Haroon Bhatti, CHRO of Digi Telecommunications, reveals why digitising HR is more than just creating mobile apps, and what really works in rolling out a new employer brand.

Features 16 The Futurist The scope of HR is changing, but are we ready to face the challenges and opportunities in 2016 and beyond? HR leaders from AirAsiaX, L’Oréal Malaysia and DBS reveal their predictions and insights.

22 Keeping up with HR tech HR leaders from ABR Holdings, Philips Electronics, and AECOM speak to Jerene Ang with case studies on applying HR technology across the function’s value chain.

26 Leading the way into the future

Akankasha Dewan explores the top skills leaders need to survive in a challenging VUCA world, and how to optimise the leadership development process.

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Opinion 36 Upwardly mobile

Chella Pandian, sub-region HR director at Merck Sharp & Dohme, analyses if the generation gap really exists, and finds out if it can be resolved.

40 Last Word Let’s face it, no one likes the management jargon HR is constantly guilty of using. Aditi Sharma Kalra finds out the five things HR leaders need to stop saying.

Regulars 3 Ed’s note 4 In the news 6 Suite talk 7 Spacial Awareness

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8 HR by numbers 9 Snapshot 38 Personal growth 39 Shelf life

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Any suggestions or tip-offs for Human Resources?

Email aditis@humanresourcesonline.net Q2 2016 « HumanResources Malaysia «

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EDITOR’S NOTE

regional editor senior journalist journalist editor, Hong Kong sub editor contributor regional art director senior designer web designer circulation executive regional head of advertising & sponsorship regional directors

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regional producers

regional head of event services regional finance director group editorial director group managing director

Aditi Sharma Kalra Akankasha Dewan Jerene Ang Anthony Wong James Foster Chella Pandian Shahrom Kamarulzaman Fauzie Rasid Sherlyn Yap Deborah Quek Naomi Cranswick

Karen Boh Yogesh Chandiramani Jaclyn Chua Keiko Ko Zoe Lau Isabel Ho Jenilyn Rabino Sarah Kee Sammi Zhang Sharissa Chan Nikita Erpini Shivon Aaria Gunalan Sanna Lun Kenneth Neo Evon Yew Gabriella Yu Yeo Wei Qi Evelyn Wong Tony Kelly Justin Randles

Human Resources is published 12 times per year by Lighthouse Independent Media Pte Ltd. Printed in Malaysia on CTP process by Percetakan Skyline Sdn Bhd No. 35 & 37 Jalan 12/32B, TSI Business Industrial Park, Batu 61/2 Off Jalan Kepong, 52100 Kuala Lumpur Tel: 03-6257 4846. Subscription rates are available on request, contact the Circulation Manager by telephone: (65) 6423 0329 or by email to: subscriptions@humanresourcesonline.net

Pushing the boundaries One of the huge HR themes this past quarter was around the future of the function itself – what skills HR professionals require to remain competitive; how deeply HR services need to be embedded within the line; and the way these developments impact the products and frameworks that in-house HR teams develop.

One of the pioneers of that HR transformation effort in Malaysia is Digi Telecommunications, led

by CHRO Haroon Bhatti. Under his leadership, Digi’s HR team has adapted an attitude of pure agility and adaptability to business requirements, having been part of the launch of a refreshed mother brand last year.

Driven by the “freedom” that the brand values, Digi has a number of innovative HR campaigns to its credit – such as mobile applications to boost workforce productivity; the digitisation of the goods and services consumed by employees; and a pilot underway to develop a recruitment algorithm by linking internal selection data to assessment data and testing.

Head to page 12 for that idea-packed conversation.

We’ve also managed to pack in a special annual feature in this edition, called The Futurist, that brings you interviews with eight senior HR leaders across the region with their prediction on what the future holds for the HR function.

From this special collection of HR’s finest minds at work, the biggest thing that stuck out for us was a call to sense opportunities early and respond swiftly.

This call for agility resonated in responses by the HR directors, who sought to “outsource traditional HR services”, “rethink end-to-end candidate and employee journeys”, and say goodbye to HR generalists, among some of the fascinating ideas.

Another interesting observation was made

by Jesper Petersen, senior director and head HR Asia Pacific at LEGO Group, who pointed out we in the industry are probably not going to see a talent surplus anytime soon.

“We need to get used to not being able to retain people for as long as we had until now,” he said, pointing to a dramatic change in hiring strategies and models.

Turn to page 16 to read the full feature on this year’s HR predictions.

But that’s not all we’ve packed into this special edition. Our team also scoured the list of winners at the Asia Recruitment Awards 2016 (which you’ll find on page 32), as well as put together the highlights of our recent two-day conference, Talent Management Asia 2016.

From here, the Human Resources team dives straight into our annual C&B conference, Employee Benefits Asia, hosted across six days in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. We would love to meet you at the conference, but if you can’t make it follow all the action live on Twitter at #EBA2016.

What’s the next boundary HR leaders will try to cross? Let us know your thoughts on Twitter @mag_HR. Enjoy the issue.

Photography: Stefanus Elliot Lee using Nikon D810 – www.elliotly.com; Makeup & Hair: Michmakeover using Make Up For Ever & hair using Sebastian Professional – www.michmakeover.com

HumanResources

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Aditi Sharma Kalra Regional editor Q2 2016 « HumanResources Malaysia «

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hrbulletin

News from humanresourcesonline.net

WHY EMPLOYEES IN MALAYSIA OFTEN DON’T FILE THEIR EXPENSE CLAIMS

You may feel like your employees are claiming too many expenses. However, the truth is most employees in APAC are claiming less than they should.

According to a study by Unit4, at least half of the 600 middle and senior managers surveyed found their employer’s expense claim process timeconsuming, and 20% were outright unsatisfied with the process.

As a result of such dissatisfaction, they sometimes refrain from submitting expense claims altogether.

In Singapore, employees refrain from submitting an average of $414 annually, while those in Malaysia give up an average of $246 a year.

As a result, about 25% of employees felt their bosses were gaining a financial advantage through their expense claim process. Additionally, in many instances, 20% of Singaporean employees, and 40% of Malaysian employees have claimed to have been short-changed by their employers.

MALAYSIA TO IMPLEMENT NEW MINIMUM WAGE IN JULY

Malaysia’s human resources minister Datuk Seri Richard Riot has announced the nation’s Minimum Wages Order 2016 (MWO 2016).

The new wages will come into effect 1 July this year.

Posting the order on the ministry of human resources’ website, Riot revealed the minimum wages set were according to region, namely RM1,000 per month or RM4.81 per hour for Peninsular Malaysia, and RM920 per month or RM4.42 per hour for Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan.

As for the daily minimum wage rate, it is subject to a maximum of 48 hours per week, which means in the peninsula, for a six-day working week (48 hours), the daily minimum wage rate is RM38.46, five days/week at RM46.15, and four days/week at RM57.69.

In Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan, for a six-day working week the daily minimum wage rate is RM35.38, five days/week at RM42.46, and four days/ week at RM53.08, the MWO stated. “The government has reviewed all recommendations submitted by the National Wages Consultative Council and has taken a balanced approach and considered the interests of both employers and employees (before issuing the order),” the minister said.

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MALAYSIA’S 10 MOST ATTRACTIVE EMPLOYERS

Shell Malaysia emerged as the most attractive employer in Malaysia in Randstad’s new survey of more than 4,500 employees and job seekers between the ages of 18-65.

Oil and gas competitor Petroliam Nasional (PETRONAS) followed in second position, with the sector performing strongly despite continuing challenges around the world.

Nestlé and Sime Darby were ranked third and fourth, while fifth spot was taken by AirAsia. Here are this year’s top employers: 1. Shell Malaysia 2. PETRONAS 3. Nestlé 4. Sime Darby 5. AirAsia 6. Hewlett-Packard 7. SapuraKencana Petroleum 8. Genting Malaysia 9. Maybank 10. Public Bank

MALAYSIA LIFTS BAN ON FOREIGN WORKERS ACROSS FOUR SECTORS

The Malaysian Cabinet is lifting the ban on foreign workers it imposed in February this year for four sectors that have appealed for the ban to be lifted, in light of major staff shortages.

Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said the decision would benefit the manufacturing, construction, plantation and furniture-making sectors, as reported by The Straits Times.

“In view of the acute shortage, we have to lift the suspension to allow these sectors to bring in foreign workers,” the minister said.

For other sectors, he said the decision would be considered on “a case-by-case basis”, as the government looks to create a more “foolproof, transparent and accountable system”, after which it would gradually lift the hiring freeze in other sectors too.

The government will engage with various industries to better understand their situations, even as Minister Liow emphasised the importance of it regulating the hiring of foreign workers in Malaysia.

The decision comes just three months after all recruitment of foreign workers was suspended, including those from Bangladesh, when the government was reviewing its new two-tier programme for charging levies on foreign workers, as reported by The Star Online.

At the time, there were estimated to be 2.1 million registered foreign workers in Malaysia, along with 1.7 million illegal foreign workers, as documented by The Straits Times, most of whom are from Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal and Bangladesh.

» HumanResources Malaysia » Q2 2016

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INTEL TO LAY OFF 12,000 EMPLOYEES OYEES WORLDWIDE

A THESE THE WORST TIMES ARE IIN THE DAY TO CONDUCT IINTERVIEWS?

ONLY 33% OF FINANCIAL SECTOR STAFF IN MALAYSIA ARE HIGHLY ENGAGED

IF YOU THOUGHT MILLENNIALS ARE TOUGH TO WORK WITH, MEET GEN Z

Intel Corporation has announced ed it will axe 12,000 positions globally as part of a restructuring initiative.

The restructuring aims to accelerate the company’s evolution from a PC company to one that powers the cloud and billions of smart computing devices.

“Intel will intensify its focus in high-growth areas where it is positioned for long-term leadership, customer value and growth, while making the company more efficient and profitable,” the leading PC-chip maker said in a statement.

While increasing efficiency, the company plans to up investments in products and technologies that will fuel revenue growth and drive more profitable mobile and PC businesses.

The above changes are expected to result in up to 12,000 redundancies globally – about 11% of Intel’s employees – by mid-2017 via site consolidations, departures (voluntary and involuntary), as well as a re-evaluation of programmes.

The company revealed that a majority of these actions would be communicated to affected staff over the next two months with some actions spanning into 2017.

Outlining the restructuring initiative to employees in an email, Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich wrote: “These are not changes I take lightly. We are saying goodbye to colleagues who have played an important role in Intel’s success.

We are deeply committed to helping our employees through this transition and will do so with the utmost dignity and respect.”

With factors driving employee engagement and job satisfaction becoming more complex in today’s rapidly changing workplace, your employees may not be as engaged as you think they are.

A report by the Asian Institute of Finance (AIF), surveying over 3,000 finance professionals in Malaysia, found that only 33% were “highly engaged” at work. This means only about a third of staff see a long-term future with their current employer and are strong advocates for their organisation.

The survey found that 16% were “partially disengaged” – unmotivated, outwardly negative and feeling unvalued by their organisation, while 6% were “highly disengaged”, making them potential major disruptors in the firm as they are not only negative, but can also be hostile to the organisation.

Thankfully, the majority (45%) were “moderately engaged”, however, the report pointed out organisations still have a lot of work to do to ensure employees are fully engaged.

Dr Raymond Madden, chief executive officer of AIF, stated in the report: “The 3Es (engagement, enrichment and empowerment) can provide a metric for understanding how effective an organisation is in managing its employees and creating an environmental culture that keeps employees motivated as well as productive.

“As the talent challenge intensifies, organisations need to rethink their approach beyond the traditional ethos of focusing all efforts and resources on employee satisfaction. The chances are that work itself is not the main driver of dissatisfaction.”

C Candidates may prefer hiring managers to interview them after 5pm, but is th that time really the best for bosses to be conducting interviews?

Apparently not, according to new research by Accountemps, which su surveyed more than 2,200 chief financial officers (CFOs) on the best and worst times for conducting interviews.

The study found only 2% of respondents chose 5pm and beyond as the most productive time for meeting job candidates.

The period between 3pm and 5pm was also seen as unfavourable by those polled, with only 5% saying they view it as an optimal window to interview job seekers.

The best time identified for hiring managers to interview candidates was found to be between 9am and 11am as highlighted by 61% of respondents.

“Mid-morning is an ideal time for a job interview because it gives the interviewer time to set daily priorities and settle into his or her day before the meeting,” said Bill Driscoll, district president for Accountemps.

“Avoid scheduling an interview late in the afternoon when fatigue sets in. Late afternoon is also the time when interviewers may start shifting their focus to personal priorities.”

Employers haven’t had it easy with Millennials, with many complaining about their sense of entitlement or their easy inclination to quit.

However, it looks like employers could have an even harder job on the horizon with Generation Z – especially in one key area: work that is meaningful.

A study by ADP Research Institute revealed these 18 year olds are searching for meaning beyond lucrative salaries to feel fulfilled. Almost all (89%) of respondents choose to work on personal interests/things that impact society and 82% define their own work schedule.

“Today, the younger generation of Millennials places more of an emphasis on a search for meaning within their jobs than previous generations, who tended to look for meaning outside of work,” said the study, which surveyed 2,400 employees in different age groups, including Millennials, working at companies with more than 250 people.

Adecco surveyed 1,000 students last year and found that 41% of Millennials wanted jobs that provided scope for growth, while only 30% of Generation Z respondents asked for the same.

Being in a dream job is the greatest aspiration for more members of Gen Z than Millennials (32% versus 24%), while more Millennials opt for financial security (34%) over Gen Z (29%).

Q2 2016 « HumanResources Malaysia «

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WORK LIFE » People GET INTO THE BOSS’S HEAD

Tim Kelsall CEO, chief client officer, Kantar APAC and CEO Kantar Consumer Insights, Malaysia

How did you get to where you are today with Kantar Malaysia?

I started my career as many people do, straight from university and joining the graduate programme at Millward Brown. I quickly rose up the ranks of client management, leading some of our top client relationships around the globe. Then I moved into a Kantar HQ role to head up our client strategy team, managing relationships across all the 12 operating brands for our top clients and then more recently leading our Malaysia businesses.

The main lesson I have learnt is to seize the opportunities that you can, as well as having a clear vision of what you want to achieve in your career and making sure those opportunities and experiences help to get you where you are heading.

How would you define your leadership style?

Purpose, determination and passion. I think having clarity and vision for where we need to head and

what we need to achieve is critical for business as well as personal success. This then has to be backed up by practical and tangible strategies for achieving goals to enable us to make it happen.

Most of all, though, I think having passion for what we do is most important. It creates energy that I think is infectious and helps galvanise everyone behind our common goal.

Having worked across the different continents, did you have to tweak your leadership style to fit each continent? If so, how did you adapt your leadership style?

Absolutely! I think the main adaptation has been to truly understand the culture and people that you are working with, which is true wherever you are in the world. This takes time and I don’t think there are short cuts. I think the best way to do this is by immersing oneself with our people and our clients in a market and invest the time.

I think it’s also really important to not only respect local ways of working, but also share new perspectives from other parts of the world.

What is the toughest decision you’ve had to make as a boss?

Decisions are tough if you don’t have a clear idea about the options and the rationale.

I learnt a long time ago the need to weigh up the options and have a clear point of view. Having clarity and purpose is key.

When you’re struggling with stress or a bad day, how do you unwind and re-energise yourself?

In my spare time I love sport and I race in triathlons, Ironman, marathons, etc, and I learn a lot from the people I train and race with.

It’s about setting goals, developing a plan, training hard, getting the right balance with work and having fun.

How do you engage and motivate staff when they are struggling with work?

I am a big believer in having a “stop and think” and getting an outside perspective from the team. I apply the same learning to myself.

If I am struggling with a business issue or problem there is no better way to solve it than by getting perspectives and energy from other people.

Do you have any advice for employees on keeping a good work-life balance?

You have to make some time for yourself – even if it’s just a short amount of time each day. It’s important that you recharge and re-energise to keep a healthy mind and body.

It’s so easy to become burnt out or run down without the balance.

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What is your view of human resources as a business function, and does it vary across various continents?

In our business, our people really are our most important asset.

Our people make the magic happen for our clients. They are our competitive advantage, especially in our business where our clients are looking for expertise to help them solve their business issues be it strategists, cultural insight specialists or marketing scientists.

People with specialist talents work best and contribute more when recruited, trained and inspired in specialist teams and companies. They can really focus and flourish and harness their talents. I see this the world over.

How can HR contribute better to organisational goals?

The world continues to change and evolve at such a rapid rate through the changing consumer power.

People are growing in affluence, have access to more technology and have overwhelming choices of brands and products.

Here in Asia we have witnessed amazing growth, but all businesses from the global giants to the small local companies are facing one common challenge – formidable competition and the key to survival is retaining and growing the right talent.

The young people who join our businesses today, and are our future, are motivated and have a different set of values, goals and ways of working.

We need to figure out how to ensure we can really understand and adapt our organisation to this generation and the generation that will follow.

This means embracing new technology to transform job content, new reward mechanisms in tune with their aspirations and values; putting in place greater flexibility in terms of ways of working and finally ensuring we provide people with choice of opportunities to grow and develop. We need to make this happen fast.

Could many HR leaders make it to a CEO level?

Why/why not?

I believe they should and it’s certainly possible. I think one of the reasons they typically don’t is that they are seen as specialists in just one area of the business.

However, they have such a strategic oversight of the business and touch every aspect, their knowledge and understanding is unique and under leveraged.

Therefore, I think gaining hands-on experiences outside of the function is crucial to developing those critical learning experiences in other commercial functions that can demonstrate their potential and ability to make it all the way to the top.

» HumanResources Malaysia » Q2 2016

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»

People WORK LIFE

SpacialAwareness NESTLÉ MALAYSIA’S ‘LITTLE NEST’ – WHERE EMPLOYEES CAN WORK, REST AND PLAY

“As one of the world’s leading nutrition companies, Nestlé in Malaysia believes that creating a contemporary and healthy work environment is conducive to its culture,” says Alois Hofbauer, MD of Nestlé (Malaysia).

Nestlé is German for “little nest”, representative of warmth, security, nourishment, togetherness and caring values – the office design in Kuala Lumpur was inspired by the concept of “the nest”.

This message is conveyed to all visitors, who encounter an egg-shaped reception area to welcome them. Meeting areas and open spaces, inspired by

the nest logo, are set in combinations of natural wood flooring and raw wood branches. The office space is both practical and functional. For example, the pantry and resting areas signify homely areas to “chill-out”.

“Our staff are able to enjoy a meaningful break-out area that will encourage them to sit together and communicate more with each other,” Hofbauer says.

“We respect diversity of all staff, and provide special facilities to meet their needs, such as special parking access for the disabled.

“We also provide facilities to create a conducive environment for working mothers to manage their roles as a working professional, together with their family needs, such as designated car parks for expectant mothers, and dedicated rooms for nursing mothers.”

He adds the innovative space helps to drive productivity and encourage a more creative, collaborative mindset.

“By providing an engaging office space, we also signal to our people they are deeply valued and the company is more than willing to invest in their comfort and well-being.”

As a believer in the office design reflecting the company’s heritage and culture, he recommends others who are taking up redesign projects to think beyond the latest trends in designing a space.

“More importantly, it must be comfortable, functional and reflect the company’s values. It’s the face of the company to its own people, as well as to the outside world. It is very important.”

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WORK LIFE » HR by numbers

More Malaysians lying on resumes Here’s a wake-up call for bosses in Malaysia – a higher number of your candidates are lying to you.

According to the First Advantage 2016 Background Screening Trends Report for Asia Pacific, the overall screening discrepancy of local candidates totalled 16.64% in 2015.

This was higher than the percentage identified in 2014 (13.50%), and in 2013 (10.24%).

Discrepancy rates in Australia continue to be the highest in the Asia Pacific region at 24.72% followed by Hong Kong at 18.04%.

25%

of discrepancies in local resumes were related to education.

24%

of resume misalignments were database-related.

10%

of errors in resumes were financial in nature.

41%

of firms in Malaysia requested employment verification checks in 2015.

Source: First Advantage 2016 Background Screening Trends Report, Asia Pacific.

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» HumanResources Malaysia » Q2 2016

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People « WORK LIFE

snapshot

15 minutes with ...

Balan Krishnan

Asia HR director, PSG Intel Corporation WHERE WAS YOUR FIRST JOB AND WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THERE? My first job was at Intel Penang in 1997. I started out as a production superintendent (sounds far more important than production supervisor).

In this role I learned the basics of managing people and the importance of key performance indicators. I also learned about how powerful inspirational leadership can be.

WAS YOUR ENTRY INTO THE HR PROFESSION BY DESIGN OR ACCIDENT? It was by design. After working in production for three years as part of my career development, I was asked to become an HR business partner for operations. The plan then was to have me rotate back into operations as a more well-rounded manager.

I did not return to operations until a good five years later.

WHAT IS THE NUMBER ONE HR ISSUE THAT YOU’RE GRAPPLING WITH CURRENTLY? Talent acquisition and talent management. With the right talent, there is so much we can undertake in our operations in Malaysia.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE A REGULAR WORKDAY AT YOUR COMPANY? A regular workday for me comprises morning meetings with my counterparts in the US followed by meetings with business leaders in Malaysia, China, Japan, etc. I also regularly huddle with my team in Asia to align on weekly priorities.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE HR FUNCTION WILL EVOLVE IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? HR will evolve into a function that will have more science coupled with arts. What I mean is, with the rise in analytics, HR will evolve into a more analytical profession. We will evolve into professionals who will be able to read, analyse and synthesise data and trends.

BASED ON YOUR EXPERIENCE IN HR, WHAT CAN BE DONE TO ENABLE HR TO CONTRIBUTE BETTER TO ORGANISATIONAL SUCCESS? I know this sounds corny, but honestly I would say HR practitioners will need to be more curious about the organisations we support.

“Picture the fantasy football league which allows any user to choose their dream team within a specified budget to accomplish a goal of winning the league.”

WHICH HR FUNCTION DO YOU LIKE BEST AND WHY? I would have to say talent acquisition just because I love the thrill of the chase. Maybe due to my personality.

WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT YOUR WORK? The ability to quantify and qualify the value of HR strategies to the business.

HAVING WORKED ACROSS MALAYSIA AND VIETNAM, WHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT HR IN THE ASIA REGION? Actually in my current role, my team and I provide support in 13 different countries across Asia. The uniqueness about the HR role in Asia is that the common denominators remain: talent management, leadership development and employee development.

WHAT IS YOUR VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF HR, SAY, 10 YEARS FROM NOW? My vision for the future of HR is the function would be equipped with talent and organisational diagnostic tools which would use talent data and business imperatives and allow for preventive care to be administered, such as enabling the selection of the best C&B components that bring out the best in employees, yet does not blow the operational budget.

Additional preventive care examples would be the ability to administer internal talent rotation by creating an ecosystem within the company whereby employees pursue internal job opportunities with equal zeal as external job opportunities.

The future prediction for HR also includes talent acquisition made easy with companies offering software that scans across resume banks, job boards and other channels with a rating system based on experience, past accolades, peer feedback, manager’s feedback as well as performance on the job. Picture the fantasy football league which allows any user to choose their dream team within a specified budget to accomplish a goal of winning the league.

Compensation and benefits will be customisable based on employee preferences and demographics.

Perks such as post-employment health benefits would be mainstream already. Bonuses will also have faster turnaround cycles.

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WHITE PAPER » Leadership

MALAYSIAN GRADS VOTE FOR BANK NEGARA MALAYSIA AND PETRONAS AS THE TOP EMPLOYERS

Malaysia – In a study of 16,500 students from Malaysia’s leading universities, Bank Negara Malaysia was voted as the number one employer for the second year in a row by business students.

Among those studying engineering, PETRONAS was selected as the most aspirational employer of the future talent pool, in Universum’s new Malaysia Top 100 IDEAL Employers student survey.

From the findings, the banking sector seems to have remained stable in Malaysia, since only two banks saw their ranking decline from the year before, in stark contrast to other financial hubs such as Singapore.

Universum noted the once-strong public sector has been on a steady decline for the past three years, and is now the 11th ranked industry among all student groups, and the industry of choice for only 10% of students.

Kit Foong, country manager of Malaysia at

Universum, noted it was encouraging to see talent still highly attracted to the local champions such as Bank Negara Malaysia and PETRONAS. “Despite the issues the energy sector has been having, and ongoing pessimism around oil prices, we still see that oil and gas players are remaining attractive among engineering students in Malaysia.”

However, he sounded a note of caution. “These domestic employers need to be mindful, as this year’s survey shows that the international employers are gaining ground, especially among Malaysia’s engineering talent.”

Dato’ Raiha Azni Abd Rahman, senior vicepresident of group HRM at PETRONAS, said: “We will continue to build a sustainable and effective talent pool and pipeline through our PETRONAS Group learning institutions.”

She cited PETRONAS’ leadership centre for transforming leaders’ expertise; the Institut

Teknologi Petroleum PETRONAS for technical excellence; Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS for R&D; and Akademi Laut Malaysia as a centre of excellence for maritime education and training.

When asked about their most important career goal upon graduation, nearly two thirds (62%) of students cited “work-life balance” as one of their top priorities for the third year in a row.

Being “secure or stable in my job” was the second most valued career goal.

Regionally, only undergraduates in Singapore (66%) covet work/life balance more than Malaysians. At the same time, work-life balance doesn’t rate as highly in Indonesia (53%), Thailand (43%) and Vietnam (46%).

With the top two career goals of Malaysian talent the same regardless of the field of study, the third highest career aspiration sees a difference – business graduates want “to be entrepreneurial or creative”, while engineering graduates want “to be a functional or technical expert”.

Jokha Al Busaidi, Middle East and Asia recruitment manager at Schlumberger (ranked fourth among engineering students in Malaysia, for their top 10 employers) said: “Because we believe in promotion from within, based on merit, it’s really rewarding to know students are enthusiastic about interesting and diverse challenges.

“These diverse challenges are demonstrated by our campus recruiters, all of whom joined us as engineers and scientists so they understand the needs of the students.”

Joyce Wong, Southeast Asia HR manager at Schlumberger, added: “What we contribute our improved ranking to is our close collaboration with the universities and relevant student bodies.”

Top 10 ideal employers among Malaysia’s business students 1. Bank Negara Malaysia 2. PETRONAS 3. Google 4. AirAsia 5. Sime Darby 6. Lembaga Tabung Haji 7. Maybank 8. Malaysia Airlines 9. Bursa Malaysia 10. EY (Ernst and Young) Source: Universum’s Malaysia Top 100 IDEAL employers student survey.

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Leadership « WHITE PAPER

HOW MALAYSIA IS DEALING WITH GENDER DIVERSITY ISSUES Asia – In Asia, there is a lot to be proud of such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” growth strategy in Japan which has a goal of having women in 30% of leadership positions by 2020.

And in Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Razak launched the 30% club to help achieve the country’s target of tripling the percentage of women on companies’ boards to 30% this year.

But there is some way to go, as Hays’ Global Gender Diversity Report 2016 shows.

Where three in five women in Asia (62%) aspire to reach a top leadership position in their career, 39% feel they don’t have the opportunity to communicate this ambition and sufficiently promote themselves in their current roles.

Female respondents in Malaysia demonstrated the highest ambition to reach the MD/CEO level globally in order to feel successful in their careers (28%).

Colombia (22%), UAE (18%) and Japan (17%) also had high percentages of female respondents stating success meant reaching the

MD/CEO level, while Germany (7%), the US (7%), and Belgium (5%) had some of the lowest.

Less than half (47%) of women globally felt they have the opportunity to self-promote and communicate their ambitions in the workplace compared with 53% of men – suggesting this is an area regarded as difficult for both men and women globally.

In Malaysia, 42% of women felt they could promote their achievements in the office on a list led by Brazil (66%), Poland (65%), and Colombia 65%) – whereas Singapore pegged at just 36%.

Interestingly, the perceived ability to selfpromote differed by sectors, where women in professional services felt most comfortable doing so (56%), while those in the public or not-

for-profit sectors admitted difficulty in promoting their achievements.

Employees working in companies that have policies for gender diversity have more positive perceptions in three areas – self-promotion of achievements, equal pay among genders and career opportunities.

Flexible working practices (33%) and education across the organisation to change workplace culture (23%) were nominated as the most effective gender diversity policies to have in place.

Gaining backing from the board around gender diversity issues (21%) and positive action for women applying for management roles or above (21%) were also regarded as effective.

Which gender diversity polices are most popular?

Flexible working policies

33%

Education across organisations to change workplace culture

23%

Gaining backing from the board around gender diversity issues

21%

Positive action for women applying for management roles or above

21%

Source: Hays’ Global Gender Diversity Report 2016 Q2 2016 « HumanResources Malaysia « 11

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PROFILE » Haroon Bhatti

Haroon Bhatti Chief human resources officer Digi Telecommunications The freedom to innovate

By ADITI SHARMA KALRA

Q Having been with Telenor for more than a decade, how did the HR challenges vary across the countries you’ve worked?

Like a business S-curve, there is also an organisational S-curve. When you start out at the bottom, everything is growing – you are recruiting in large volumes, building the culture. For mature companies in the middle of the curve, the challenges are slightly different because what made them successful may not be the same dynamic that will take them forward. There are usually calls for changing the pace, as they may find new, nimble competitors in the market. So how you respond to that and continue to be successful are the core challenges.

Coming to the end of the S-curve, where one cycle of the industry is maturing, requires an entirely different transformation than just reinventing – because you’re now not in the core industry you used to be, you’re moving in a different direction which has different demands on competence, leadership and cultural aspects, and how you manage the transition.

Knowing where your organisation happens to be on that S-curve is important because then you can deploy the right kind of HR strategies.

Q Is your role with Digi somewhat towards the end of the S-curve?

Certainly, and we have been fortunate to have not waited until the very end of this journey. We have anticipated and started preparing ourselves. We know that times are a lot faster these days than 10 years

ago, so it’s partly a race against time as well as with ourselves.

Q What helps you to anticipate business needs during this transition?

For me, HR can never be viewed in a way that is detached from the business. First and foremost, one has to understand where the business is headed, and then deeply embed HR strategies within the overall company strategies.

Since I am part of the management team, I know exactly what is happening with the business strategy and the competition. I rely on alternative sources as well, not just stable benchmarks or standards, but potential challenges that may disrupt our business in the months or quarters to come.

But every organisation has its core DNA which typically should not change.

For us that has been what we call the “Telenor way” – our values, leadership attitudes, customer approach, ethics and code of conduct. This collection of principles is how we do business and engage with business partners. Apart from our DNA, everything is up for fresh insight.

On a personal note, I enjoy reading and my interests happen to be diverse.

There are so many data points one has to pick out, that deep down inside, you know that half the knowledge may be in knowing what you don’t know. The sooner you realise that, the faster you can move to learning it.

Q What model do you use for your HR team?

Previously we had a classic HR business

VITAL STATS Haroon Bhatti has been with the Telenor Group in HR leadership roles across Pakistan, Thailand, Bangladesh and Malaysia, since May 2005, having started as a budget and process co-ordinator. He took up the role of CHRO at Digi in July 2013, having previously been the senior vice-president of people development at Telenor Asia.

partner (HRBP) model, with the business partners reporting into me, and partnering with other divisions such as marketing and IT to look after their needs.

We also had the centre of expertise (CoE) where HR products were created based on the needs of the client divisions, and the HR shared service centre (HRSS).

We had been evolving the HRSS for quite some time, digitising our employee experiences, and we landed at a stage where we felt the product designers in CoE and the service providers in HRSS needed to work much tighter together in a world that has gone digital. So we merged the two in January this year.

The net result of this is when the BPs and their clients in different divisions and line managers have a need for a product, it gets designed in a very integrated way, where we don’t just look at the product, but whether it will have some associated services, and how it will be collectively maintained over time.

We are experimenting with the classic HRBP model to push the boundaries for the future.

Q Can you share with us the context of your recent revamp of the employer brand?

In January 2015, we rolled out a refreshed mother brand, having given a lot of thought to who our customers are today and tomorrow, and how we can attract and retain the talent to serve those customers.

We put together a lot of research – based on conversations with current employees, interns, boomerangs – and

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PROFILE » Haroon Bhatti allow employees to push their innovative ideas through, and use their freedom to create impact, be it to create the “next” innovation, the “next” service for customers or the “next” “Digizen”, what we call our employees.

The rollout started with an internal launch which was very well-received by the employees, after which we went external on social media. Since then, our LinkedIn followership has doubled, between August 2015 and the end of the year, but we still have a lot of room to catch up there.

We also continued to launch very exciting talent products, such as CXO Apprentice for fresh graduates, and the Women Inspiration Network for aspiring leaders. We believe getting women into leadership positions is genuinely good for business, and we are really trying to advance our composition of female employees.

Q Do you have a gender diversity target in mind?

Generally we don’t set hard targets because two things happen – once you meet them, you think your job is done; and sometimes you are driven by the target more than the reason you are doing it.

Having said that, we do have ambitions. Currently our workforce split is 44% female. At the board level we are at 43%, which is higher than the ambitions set by the Malaysian government. When it comes to management, we have made progress, but there is room for improvement. The extended management, i.e, the CEO minus two levels, is where we have made the most inroads by exposing talented female employees to opportunities earlier in their career. We are currently at 39% female leaders, but this is a journey for us. a pattern started to emerge hovering around a few key themes.

A few workshops and management discussions later, we landed on what we consider a very compelling value proposition – “freedom to inspire the next”.

Simply put, we will give employees the freedom of a start-up with the stability of a blue-chip company.

Innovate, let your ideas do the magic, without worrying if the company is going to be here tomorrow. The other part of this story is that this freedom is

not just a part of the refreshed brand, it is in Digi’s core DNA. Freedom has come in many forms, but we never used the word “freedom” to describe it.

For instance, we have an open office, no fixed desk even for the CEO. We have the freedom for feedback – we actively encourage people to challenge their bosses, especially when they feel closer to the reality. Freedom also comes in the form of striking a conversation without regard for hierarchy, without going through secretaries and appointments.

These different shapes of freedom

Q As positively as the new employer brand was accepted, what did you learn along the way?

We have been deliberate and conservative on this one project, using the last year to build some foundation, and 2016 to take that momentum forward.

One thing we could do a lot more going forward is to start leveraging our outreach through social media channels.

Digi historically has relied on traditional channels for brand building such as job fairs and university campuses – but our mix going forward, in terms of

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Haroon Bhatti « PROFILE time, energy and resources, is likely to shift heavily towards social media because this is where our future audience is.

Q What progress have you made in your employer branding journey in the past six months?

We plan to do a structured review in a due period of time. In the meantime, one way we measure progress is when we explain to the candidates we want to hire what we stand for – and if telling them the Digi story of who we are and what we plan to give them to create magic gets them really excited.

The second core segment is our own talented employees and how they see their future with us. Is this the kind of brand that excites them to stay put and start the next chapter of their professional life with us? And that has come true as well. We have not been in a losing situation when it comes to talent for key positions. In fact, in some ways we have been a net-net exporter as well!

If the last six months were a pilot, I am very happy with the results and how they resonate with the key talent segments we want to acquire. Now I think the conversation is going to shift to using all the channels at our disposal, primarily social media, and let the world know.

There’s one key talent segment we are going to chase in due time, which is Malaysians working around the world, who for whatever reason want to come back.

This is a very deliberate attempt at what we call globalising local leaders, and this initiative has two streams. First, when these Malaysians want to come back home, we want to be their first-choice brand, be it leaders, specialists or others.

The second stream is with Digi being part of Telenor. We are very happy to export our people to different Telenor companies, so they learn and grow there, and come back. As we speak, there are 26 individuals floating out in the Telenor world, a magic number that has gone up from zero in the last two to three years.

With our industry competing with global players, why shouldn’t our leaders have the thinking to compete globally?

Q There is also the piece about digital HR you’re invested in, tell us about that.

We are going through a fairly sizeable transformation around digital HR – which to us is about digitising employees’ and

potential employees’ experiences end-toend. It is not about converting everything into apps as automation could have been done 10 years ago. Digital HR is about looking holistically at the experience that employees go through, and making sure it’s a fantastic experience in line with our brand. It makes them say, “wow” – this is the company I want to be with. And for us, that means changing the way we work, and killing things that don’t make sense.

We have split it into a few pillars.

One series of applications are simply there to boost productivity. As a use case, we have converted all our expenses – payroll reporting to employees, travel authorisations, expense claims – into an application.

The traditional process was where people would travel and come back to office and affix their receipts on A4 paper.

Now, with their phone, they need literally 30 seconds to fill up a few things, take a picture of their receipts, and file their claims by the time they sit in their cabs.

The biggest beneficiaries of this have been our field force, our sales people, who instead of selling and fixing towers, had to earlier worry about filing expenses.

Giving employees the ability to self-service queries on overtime and pay has really reduced the load on our query management team. Besides, it serves the employees’ very human need to know where things are and at which level their expense authorisation currently is in the approval cycle.

We also discovered through our audit, that because the old process was so cumbersome and you had to click through so many screens, some managers would simply approve the receipts without seeing them. Now, it takes them literally one click to see what it is.

In terms of productivity, this has really liberated people, not just to be more focused in what they need to do, but also reduce the cash flow burden on heavilytravelling teams.

The second pillar of digital HR has been the digitisation of the goods and services our employees consume. One quick example on that is the physical vouchers we used to give our employees every two years, which they could redeem for a mobile phone at a retail shop by topping up what they needed – that was a very analogue experience. Now, they get an electronic promotion code through which they can go to our mobile or online

store and buy any device they like. Not only is it a much bigger inventory, but that mobile code acts as a discount, and the device is then delivered to your house.

Finally, we have a lot of things around analytics. When it comes to digital, we’re really pushing the boundaries.

For example, we’re taking on the classic way of recruiting. We’re running a pilot now on interviewing, assessing and evaluating people in a digital world, and that means doing two things. First, using data analytics to understand who is a better fit with us. And second, creating an experience which allows us more assessing ability in less time.

We are piloting video interviews, where candidates answer five to six questions in the first go, in the form of short videos, which the assessors, whether they happen to be from line or HR, can evaluate on their mobiles, and upload their ratings. Instead of waiting to bring everyone together because of their scheduling conflicts, we can get immediate feedback on the candidate.

At the same time, we are collecting a lot of insight which we make a point to analyse – see what kind of profiles, backgrounds and competencies have been successful. This part is much harder, and we are piloting this in our retail stores, where we are trying to link our assessments (driven by this logic) to things like situation judgement tests.

The idea is to construct an algorithm, and then use a feedback loop to evaluate that with every batch coming in. We are very curious to see the results of this pilot.

Q What kind of metrics do you have to measure the success of this initiative?

Just like the employer branding, we don’t want to get swayed by too-positive early results. The results on penetration have been fantastic.

The month of the launch, our applications hit about a 60% uptake rate, and within the first four months it jumped to 75%. We have an ambition to drive it to 100% within the next 12 months.

From a change management perspective, we are not killing the analogue channel entirely yet, although we have killed many aspects of it.

We are confident the digital experiences are much superior and better, and we will convince our colleagues who have not evolved to them yet.

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T H E F U T U R I S T « SPECIAL FEATURE GR A C E Y I P C H I E F OP E R AT I N G O F F I CER, GRO UP HR, DB S B A N K

NO RA M AH B O B HR DIRECTOR, L’ORÉAL MALAYSIA I see the role of HR as a strategic function to unleash human potential to meet the organisation’s vision and goals.

And this will not change even 10 years from now, but we’ll see a change in how it’s managed as we see the rise of the HR strategic partner – a generalist developing an integrated HR strategy within business lines and working with executives to deliver tangible results.

This means the HR professional’s role will not be limited to HR practitioners, but open to people from strong business or consulting backgrounds with an understanding of the pulse of the business, making them better equipped to formulate and deploy HR strategies.

With this trend on the rise, there will be a need to outsource for traditional HR services. Outsourcing will contribute towards cost-savings and increasing the efficiency of the HR department.

In 2026, the role of HR becomes more critical as we help our workforce be effective in the digital age. HR teams must become more digital to effectively partner with the business.

Digitally enabled organisations will massively leverage automation to eliminate administrative and transactional activities. As such, we need to rethink our engagement strategies, how we should deliver our services, and reskill to play a bigger part in the strategic HR agenda.

Adopting employee-centric and value-creation mindsets are essential, and there are some key skills the HR practitioner of the future must acquire.

The fi rst are change management and marketing skills. It is not sufficient to just push out new programmes as too often they are overlooked or misunderstood. Effective change management and marketing of these programmes is needed to drive adoption and satisfaction.

The second skill is making data-driven decisions. Th is is no longer optional as business leaders want to know there is sound judgment and analysis. The use of human capital analytics will be a big differentiator, enabling both specialist teams and business partners to obtain deep insights from the data we collect on our employees to optimise productivity.

The third is to adopt a journey thinking approach. Really putting ourselves in the shoes of candidates and employees – and understanding their experiences as we acquire, develop and engage with them – will be game changing. HR should rethink the end-to-end candidate and employee journeys, focusing on the moments that matter and making the entire employee experience a focal point of re-engineering efforts.

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SPECIAL FEATURE »

THE FUTURIST F RED D I E CHO W CHI EF TA LENT O F F I CER, A PA C, SANOFI

Jesper Petersen’s photo: Art Direction: Elliot Lee, Nikon Ambassador (Singapore) – www.elliotly.com

The future of the HR model will be focused on centres of expertise/ excellence (COE), business HR, and shared services.

The COE will have experts in talent management, total rewards, and talent acquisition, which will drive the process, and develop tools to help managers manage their human capital.

Business HR will be a partner to the business leader to drive HR strategies aligned to the business strategies.

Shared services will manage all transactional workloads through cloud-based systems. Each cluster will require the right capabilities and competencies. Gone are the days of an HR generalist – a Jack of all trades. Such HR talent is limited and in demand, and coupled with tight headcount control, the need to attract and hire the right talent becomes mandatory to achieve success. Organisations will need to decide what areas to manage in-house and what areas to outsource to professional outsourcing vendors.

J ES PER PET ERS EN SENIOR DIRECTOR AND HEAD H R ASI A PACI FI C , L EG O G RO U P The future of HR starts with understanding a few things as an HR professional – level of globalisation, and business scenarios (growth, decline or stable) – because that determines which part of the HR toolbox you use.

As we are probably not going to see a talent surplus anytime soon, we need to get used to not being able to retain people for as long as we had until now. Not only will the HR profession, as a result, change dramatically, but the processes will look very different.

I also see a bigger contingent workforce, people with specialised competencies you will need for a project of, say, six months.

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T H E F U T U R I S T « SPECIAL FEATURE GE R A L DI N E F R A S ER HR DIRECTOR, F R I E S L A N DC A M P INA A S I A

B EAT RI CE S NG DIRECTOR HUMAN RESOURCES, APAC, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

A typical day in the future might involve reviewing big data trends and insights; discussing and executing change initiatives as change will be more constant; and contributing to, or determining, the business case for partnering with outsource or service suppliers. However, even in 10 years time, I believe there will still be a strong need for people interaction and engagement – being the eyes and ears of the organisation – but our methodologies will be different.

The majority of HR functions as we know them will likely become automated in some way. We are already seeing this with self-service platforms such as recruitment, payroll, benefits administration and performance management.

On the back of technology that will give us insights into human behaviour and how we can better enhance the performance of our teams, HR’s position as a function and solutions gateway, will add context to how a business future-proofs itself.

For an organisation to succeed 10 years from now, it will require a dramatic change in HR strategies as product life cycles will be shorter, fi nancial markets more volatile, and thanks to technology, some jobs will become obsolete more quickly. We need to be able to keep pace with technology, change our HR processes, and build a culture to include multiple generations of employees.

Ten years from now, it would be fantastic to see more HR professionals on boards in recognition of our strategic role to both investors and employees. In preparation, HR professionals must know the business and its SWOT analysis to enable us to make sound people decisions.

As a HR professional working in a technology company, I anticipate we will have many talent challenges.

These include talent scarcity, as well as building a company culture to include leaders from Generation X and Generation Y. Such younger leaders have a very different management style and are more receptive to suggestions and new ways of doing things.

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SPECIAL FEATURE »

THE FUTURIST YEO H S A I YEW HEA D , PEO PLE D EPA RTM ENT, A I RA S I A X

BI ANCA W O NG G RO U P H U M AN RE S OU R C E S A N D C OR P OR AT E COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, J EBS EN & CO I think 10 years from now the leadership and people management agenda is going to be drastically different from today.

The change will include employer branding and promotion, use of gamification, communication channels and approaches, performance management approaches, learning and development formats, and data analytics.

Besides becoming more adaptive to technology, HR must evolve to become (employer) brand specialists, data analysts, as well as customer (employee) experience experts – that is, following the development of the marketing field.

With a geographically dispersed workforce, we are also expecting much more advanced technology to manage performance, give feedback, provide bite-size training solutions with unconventional instructional design, as well as to manage the workforce, and provide real-time performance results tracking, as well as recognition to drive engagement.

I see data analytics as an area that is still quite untapped at the moment, due to both the lack of skills as well as the data readiness. With more organisations recognising its importance, data is now being set up with future analytics use and I think within the near future, there will be significant developments in this field.

My prediction on the future of HR will be more focus on culture, as it’s the only thing that cannot be easily copied.

Even though a company might not be able to attract the “best” talent with its culture, it will be able to attract the “right” talent. HR analytics will also get more important in the future. It will no longer involve the churning of routine reports such as payroll costs, but focus more on how to integrate all these together. As such, more sophisticated software will enable all data from HR, finance, sales, etc, to link up easily.

The top challenge we will face is that of retaining our talent. It is not that difficult to hire an employee, but it is an art to keep staff motivated and ensure they stay on with the company for the long-term. Despite the challenges present in doing so, managers need to be able to keep employees engaged since, as the phrase goes, “people join because of the company, but leave because of the manager”.

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SPONSORED RECRUIT ADVICE HOW TO THIS ARTICLE WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY ORACLE

WORK-LIFE BALANCE – DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS In China, 75% of workers claim their stress levels have risen over the past year, says a recent Regus survey, compared with just 48% of workers in the rest of the world, according to The Wall Street Journal. Workers in Hong Kong are at the top of the list in Asia Pacific for availability around the clock: with 77% of them feeling they must take work calls while on holiday. Hongkongers are followed closely by China, India and Singapore, where 49% or more feel compelled by the digital office tether, according to the Randstad Q2 Workmonitor report.

No rest for the wicked Employees who felt they had to take work calls when on holiday (%) 77

Hong Kong 67 63

China India

49

Singapore Japan

40

Australia

40

New Zealand

don’t hear “what do you do” as a conversation starter as is so often the case in Singapore, New York or Mumbai.

“Try me again in four weeks. I am off on holiday.” This is a normal announcement in Sweden, but unheard of in Hong Kong or San Francisco. Go to Paris in August and you will find a ghost town – they certainly aren’t dialling into conference calls from the Riviera.

But in regions where this phenomenon is less common, some governments are trying to convince companies of the merits of better work-life balance.

Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower (MOM) is focused on “strategies for worklife harmony” that provide a “win-win situation for both employers and employees”.

They have defined work-life strategies into three categories: flexible work arrangements, enhanced leave benefits and employee support schemes, and offer funding of up to SG$120,000 for companies who want to develop flexible work options for their employees.

Singapore’s MOM backs up its rationale with a study conducted by Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) that found that for every $1 invested in worklife programmes the companies reaped a return of $1.68. But perhaps the best proof of the business value is the fact that in a service-driven economy, “happy employees make happy customers”.

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Source: Randstad Q2 Workmonitor, SCMP

“Work-life balance” is a catch-all term for measuring work hours, accessibility and leave policies. But in reality, its definition varies by region and generation. In Asia Pacific, work-life is often a euphemism for balancing work with family time.

But in contrast to many parts of the western world, family is not always limited to married couples caring for children. In Asian societies where larger joint families are more common, Millennial workers are often coming home to grandparents or elderly relatives. Fulfilling familial obligations may have equal or greater importance to social activities.

In a Universum study that asked Millennials around the world to prioritise their lives, nearly all respondents ranked time with family as number one, followed by personal growth and learning, while wealth and income fell toward the bottom of the list.

The highest number of Google searches for the phrase “work-life balance” come from Singapore and Hong Kong. But Europeans take a very different approach and they certainly don’t search or discuss the topic with the same frequency.

Instead there is a continental recognition that life outside of the office is sacrosanct. This is most often evinced in the European sense of self: you certainly

This article is contributed by Yazad Dalal, senior director – HCM strategy and transformation, Oracle

Oracle offers a comprehensive and fully integrated stack of cloud applications, platform services, and engineered systems. With more than 400,000 customers, including 100 of the Fortune 100, in more than 145 countries, Oracle provides a complete technology stack both in the cloud and in the data centre. Oracle’s industry-leading cloud-based and on-premises solutions give customers complete deployment flexibility and unmatched benefits, including application integration, advanced security, high availability, scalability, energy efficiency, powerful performance, and low total cost of ownership.

For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), visit www.oracle.com

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FEATURE » HR Technology

In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, it is crucial for HR leaders to keep up with the latest technology as an enabler of their processes for their companies to run smoothly.

Jerene Ang examines real-life examples from ABR Holdings, Philips and more to explore how the HR function can keep up with the latest technology.

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HR Technology « FEATURE oday, technology has infi ltrated every aspect of our lives, including our workplace.

For this new way of working to run smoothly, it is essential HR can leverage on technology for its various processes such as compensation and benefits, talent acquisition, performance management and more.

However, the HR function is well-known for lagging behind in technology adoption.

In fact, according to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2016 report, despite there being more than seven billion mobile devices in the world which drive more than 40% of all internet traffic, less than 20% of companies deploy their HR and employee productivity solutions on mobile apps today.

Nevertheless, there are always opportunities for improvement, and the report highlights that in 2016 digital HR is likely to be an area of major focus with 74% of executives identifying digital HR as a top priority. Hence, in this feature, we analyse the different ways in which HR can make use of technology to enable its processes through success stories from various organisations, as well as tips on how to use technology as an enabler.er in your processes.

Case one: ABR Holdings As the manager and operator of some of the most successful F&B brands in Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and China, and with an expanding headcount of about 1,500 staff in the HR department, it was crucial for ABR Holdings to improve its HRIS system in order to increase productivity and accessibility to the system.

Hence, in February 2016, the company upgraded its existing HRIS system.

James Foo, head of group human resources at ABR Holdings, explained: “Typically, HRIS systems will be installed in the respective desktops and laptops, but with the new web version, you can access it from anywhere as long as you are using internet explorer.

“As part of our HR initiative, I felt it was the right time to invest in a better HRIS system due to the expansion and manpower increase. It was also part of the human capital strategy to tap on better technology to increase productivity and have better process efficiencies.”

“We’re not only planning for what we need now, but we’re also planning for what we need in the future – the next five to 10 years,” he said.

“For example, if the company expands

overseas, the system has to support multiple languages. As of now, the system is only using English, but it is able to enable the use of other languages such as simplified Mandarin.

“We also look at the number of headcount and amount of data we can accommodate with this new system as well as its efficiency.”

The one main challenge ABR faced was in the area of user training.

“Despite the fact that our staff had to go through four steps to get a job done with the old system and only a click is needed in the newly-implemented system, our staff were so used to the old system that they were somewhat stumped by the new system.”

To overcome this challenge, ABR launched a user training programme where managerial level staff were trained by the system provider. Thereafter, the managerial staff trained their respective teams. As there were different modules, the staff were divided into three teams for the training programme.

After the implementation of the new HRIS system, ABR noticed its staff were able to work more efficiently and easily due to faster system processes as well as customised reports.

“The greatest impact we have seen is the decrease in data entry errors.

“The reduction of time spent on multiple checks also allows our HR team to focus more on their daily priorities and on their competencies.”

Case two: Philips Electronics Operating in dynamic industries such as health technology, as well as lighting, requires Philips to attract different types of candidates into the business – those from non-traditional backgrounds as well as those who might not have considered the company as an employer five years ago or even last year.

Hence, it is necessary for the employer branding team to leverage on technology to defi ne Philips’ messaging to candidates as well as communicate it in the most relevant way.

Chris Major, head of recruitment marketing at Philips Electronics Singapore, pointed out that technology has allowed the fi rm to speak with external candidates and current employees to help assess the perception of Philips’ employer brand, use video to bring its employment promise to life and engage its talent through an online talent community.

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FEATURE » HR Technology

Clicking to success: Digitalising processes isn’t easy, but HR needs to adapt to new technology to boost efficiency.

Its most recent example was the localisation of Philips’ global employment brand.

“Philips has a single global message for all candidates called an employer value proposition.

Th is is developed out of our head office in the Netherlands and is designed to appeal in some way to all candidates, wherever they may be,” Major explains.

“The challenge we face is taking that global message and tailoring it to suit local audiences.

The start of that process is gathering the information we need on internal employment experiences and external perceptions of Philips as an employer.”

To do this, the employer branding team spoke with employees and external candidates in 22 key countries in order to understand their experiences and various perceptions of Philips as an employer.

The whole process was owned by the employer branding team, in close collaboration with talent acquisition and human resources.

“To ensure we had the necessary buy-in from our HR partners around the world, we included them in every significant step in the process.

From helping defi ne the types of candidate we should be speaking to, to work-shopping messaging, and ultimately, approving the fi nal versions before activating and taking to market.”

As a result of the localisation, Philips now has a series of tailored messages for each key market worldwide to suit local requirements which is linked directly to its single, global EVP.

The messages were then activated locally through a series of assets and toolkits for the company’s talent acquisition consultants to use, as well as advertising and campaign content to help promote various careers at Philips to external candidates.

Commenting on the results of the process, Major said: “We have seen a positive move in all our key talent acquisition metrics.

“Time-to-fi ll and cost-per-hire have been reduced, and (perhaps most importantly) our quality of applicant has steadily increased.

“Our messaging is designed to help candidates ‘self-select’ out of the recruitment process, and so we are seeing ever-more relevant and suitable candidates applying to open roles.”

Employee referrals through Philips’ referral programme also increased by about 30% and career site visits increased by about 20%.

Case three: AECOM With more than 90,000 employees in the company, AECOM needed a better way to manage its compensation planning process as it continued to expand.

Hence, in September 2015, AECOM introduced the SumTotal system to manage its rewards planning process across the entire organisation. The system was fi rst introduced to the APAC market in 2014, excluding China, as that part of the organisation was still evolving at the time.

However, this implementation did not come without challenges.

Wilfred Chan, director of compensation and benefits for Asia Pacific at AECOM, said: “The compensation planning managers were so used to having it in a nice spreadsheet which their HR business partners were fi lling up for them, but now they have to log in when they’re free to complete the transactions themselves.

“It’s a change management about owning the process – it’s a shift from the HR over to the employee of the manager.”

Chan added they also had to have a change in mindset.

“On paper or Excel fi le, the managers could send it back to HR to customise the report if they didn’t like how it was grouped or looked.

“Now it is somewhat of a cookie cutter approach. For the process to be scalable, things have to be run and look a certain way as leaders won’t want 10 different versions to look at when

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HR Technology « FEATURE they approve fi les, they want everything to tally in a very systematic way.”

One benefit of this, however, is it helps the turnaround time for approvals to be faster.

To overcome these challenges, the HR and compensation team worked to sell the benefits of the new system, such as its accessibility as well as the ease of locating fi les as the system allows them to see who has approved the fi le and which stage the fi le is at.

Additionally, AECOM held various workshops to train the managers on the new programme via webexes, calls, classroom and online training.

After the implementation, AECOM did a post survey and saw positive engagement in terms of employee reaction where the employees felt they owned the process and did not have to rely on anyone to get it done.

Case four: Cisco As a technology leader, it is necessary for Cisco to use various technologies to manage its 70,000-plus employees worldwide such as “connected recognition”, the company’s internal system that allows employees to suggest gift cards to be given to co-workers.

Most recently, the fi rm rolled out Team Space – a tool designed to support its mission to serve teams and team leaders, to unlock the power of its teams and, ultimately, accelerate team performance.

Ashley Goodall, SVP of leadership and team intelligence at Cisco, explained: “Starting with HR in September, we have begun to roll out team space in phases. We currently have 8,000 employees from various global functions across the company on the platform, and we’ll have the entire company on by the fall of 2016.”

Cisco rolled out the new system when its employees pointed out its review system was causing more harm than good.

“For instance, our people told us that annual reviews were not working. Th is was because these were mandatory, infrequent and backward-looking conversations not at all relevant to what we’re currently working on.

“What we’ve discovered is the best teams have frequent, future-focused conversations about the work that better mirrors the pace and reality of our work. So, team space includes a check-in tool that complements this necessary human touch.”

When implementing team space, the biggest

challenge was taking a step back and deciding what the company really wanted the technology to achieve.

“That meant stopping the use of a system that no longer worked for us and feeling comfortable without a technology in place until we found the best fit.”

Once the technology was selected, implementing a new system for 70,000plus people was in itself a challenge, so was encouraging engagement with the new system.

To work past the barriers, Goodall explained the team pushed itself to look at the bigger HR goals instead of rushing through the system.

“We learned that we needed to solve for something bigger than just a new system for performance management. We’re actually solving for teams – and how to fi nd and make more of the best teams. Finding the technology that would help us achieve those goals was a bigger priority than having something in place in the short term.”

Trends in HR technology After having a look at the case studies above, we spoke to Timothy Darton, GM of Workday SEA, on the 3 key upcoming trends in HR technology.

Mobile recruiting: Firms are turning to mobile recruiting technologies. These enable managers, recruiters and team members to collaborate anywhere and anytime to quickly share feedback and ensure talent is not lost.

Onboarding: It is important to have the right technology in place to help turn new hires into productive, contributing employees as quickly as possible. A simple-to-use (no training required), highly engaging, yet completely configurable on-boarding process – accessible from multiple device types – will not only onboard people more efficiently, it will engage that new employee more effectively, improving loyalty and retention.

Business process flexibility: Enterprise systems are hard to configure and change. Th is tends to result in organisations changing the way they’d prefer to run their operations to ways that the system can easily accommodate. All business processes should be fully configurable to meet different needs without having to re-code any part of the system or placing any operational cost or overhead on the business.

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FEATURE » Leadership Development

Akankasha Dewan explores the top skills leaders need to survive in a challenging VUCA world, and how to optimise the leadership development process.

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Leadership Development « FEATURE espite the economical, political and cultural differences between developing and developed countries, the greatest challenges of companies, whether private, public or non-profit organisations, in all countries are the same.

All these businesses face and have to function in nebulous, constantly evolving conditions – in fact, the social, political, economic and cultural environment is constantly in flux. In the face of these changes, organisations and societies need to adjust and respond competitively, collaboratively and sustainably in today’s world.

It is, therefore, of little surprise that industries and companies are facing critical challenges that are hampering their growth amid this climate of change.

“The banking industry landscape itself is going through a challenging era,” says Li-Ki Khaw, head of HR for ANZ Banking Group.

“These challenges are mainly driven by increasingly stringent compliance requirements, as well as changing business models in banking as we move into the digital environment.

“Couple that with the geopolitical, natural disasters, and global economic uncertainties – we get ‘chaos’. One can sum it up with the acronym ‘VUCA’, which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.”

But what is perhaps one of the most disastrous consequences of a changing working climate is the implications it has on talent supply and demand.

“Asia is still home to the fastest growing populations and economies and a very important place for us to invest,” says Ilja Rijnen, regional HR director for Asia Pacific and India at Edrington.

“From a talent point of view we are facing the same challenges as any other industry in Asia.

There is a big talent gap in Asia, in particular around senior local commercial leaders and key specialists in supply chain and fi nance.

“And it’s not unheard of that our talent gets offered 30% to 40% more in some of our markets by start-up companies that don’t have to comply with the many rules we have to deal with as an international player.

“At the same time, the rise of the Millennial generation results in people expecting more flexibility and showing less loyalty.”

Clearly, organisations are not easy to run

today. In order to make the best use of capital, human and material resources, they require sound systems, policies and procedures. In essence, they need to be not only managed, but importantly, led.

Leaders of these companies have to make sense of information and knowledge delivered to them in different forms and by different means 24 hours a day. They have to listen, reflect and act in the present in a rhythm and pace and in ways that consider the past to shape the future.

“The said environment translates into talent beyond technical capabilities. We look for talent with broader capability – people who can lead through thought leadership, change leadership and people leadership, therefore, creating followership to bring a positive outcome for the business,” Khaw explains.

The need for leadership development Indeed, it is precisely to deal with such a chaotic corporate climate that leadership development is becoming more and more important today.

In fact, investing in talent management programmes to help develop leaders has become the primary focus for human resources professionals over the past few years.

According to the Talent Management: Accelerating Business Performance survey by Right Management, 47% of HR professionals in Singapore stated 2014 was a year of growth marked by increased spending on talent management initiatives to help develop leaders and build talent pipelines.

Th is focus on enhancing talent management strategies was a trend observed worldwide, with HR leaders in China/Hong Kong (88%), India (77%), Brazil (75%) and the United Kingdom (45%) also planning to increase investments in talent management programmes.

The greatest skills leaders need today However, a big unresolved issue remains – what sort of leadership behaviour should organisations encourage via such developmental programmes. Th is is mainly because of the fact that the very defi nition and core responsibility of a leader is a contentious issue.

According to a survey by The Alternative Board, 46% of respondents thought accomplishing goals is the most important function of running a company.

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FEATURE » Leadership Development The survey – which included 336 entrepreneurs from New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States – found 38% of bosses placed more importance on providing a vision for their business.

Nearly one in 10 (9%) respondents selected establishing rules and structure in the organisation as important.

Only 7% selected setting an example for their employees.

The survey found North American companies placed more emphasis on providing a business vision and communicating that to staff, compared with New Zealand and UK businesses which placed the greatest weight on getting things done.

No matter which task one might choose as the most important responsibility of a leader, it is arguable that leadership has almost become so contextual that it defies standard defi nitions or development approaches.

Instead, companies are now concentrating their efforts on priorities such as role modelling, making decisions quickly, defi ning visions and shaping leaders who are good at adapting.

“Every organisation is different and leaders need specific skills depending on the business objectives of the organisation,” observes Vidisha Mehta, principal and talent strategy practice leader for Mercer Asia.

“However, being able to operate in a complex global environment is becoming increasingly critical; and aspects such as an entrepreneurial spirit, catalytic learning, cultural literacy and sophisticated networking are a few factors that drive success.”

For Khaw, however, one of the key skills leaders need today is learning agility.

“I mentioned earlier we are operating in a disruptive environment. A learning agile leader, according to research by Korn Ferry, demonstrates the ability to use his/her experiences and translates that into a new and/ or untested situation, which often is complex.

The good news is learning agility can be developed,” she says.

She elaborates on critical thinking skills – being able to exercise sound judgment and decision-making is a big component in being agile in learning.

“Giving leaders more opportunities to learn and exercise judgment earlier on in the leadership ladder and giving them critical experiences in learning through failures helps

position leaders for greater success when they assume bigger responsibilities,” she says.

“However, in my view, possessing learning agility alone is only half the journey. In most global organisations, we run the risks of operating ‘silos’ in a matrix environment. To ensure it all comes together, leaders need to think ‘enterprise’.

“It’s about thinking and acting for the enterprise fi rst, then the business units, followed by department/function. That includes the talent agenda which is as important as business outcomes.”

Rijnen reminds leaders, however, that it is also integral for them to have “enough functional depth in at least one area”.

In addition, he explains, it is key for them to have “transformational skills, understanding of end-to-end business processes and how to impact effectively”.

Being able to “translate strategic objectives in one’s own role and function” is a last component he identifies, adding it is helpful for leaders to understand “how they can impact business performance effectively and how to inspire and enrol their teams in it”.

Why leadership development programmes are failing Unfortunately, merely being able to identify the types of skills needed to become an excellent leader in today’s workplace isn’t proving enough for companies to develop leaders effectively.

In fact, for the third year in a row, leadership soared to become one of the most pressing talent challenges faced by global organisations.

Despite a rise in leadership spending, nearly nine out of 10 global HR and business leaders (86%) in a Deloitte survey have cited leadership as a top issue. A full 50% of respondents in the survey rated their leadership shortfalls as “very important”. Yet, only 6% of organisations believe their leadership pipeline is “very ready” – pointing to a staggering capability gap.

To make matters worse, this problem seems to be especially prevalent for companies in the Asia Pacific region.

Mercer’s Leadership Practices Study found only 15% of businesses in Asia Pacific are identifying who is ready for the next move or position within their leadership pipeline.

Th is was 5% lower when compared with fi rms in Latin America, which was leading the way among the 1,000 companies studied across

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Leadership Development « FEATURE Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East on the overall development of leaders in the organisation.

Nearly three-quarters of organisations in the region had a defi ned leadership development strategy – significantly higher than companies in Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

Rijnen highlights several reasons why leadership development programmes are failing today.

These range from not having “long-term, multi-year talent development plans” that are in place within businesses to “cultural clashes at senior level” when it come to leadership.

Explaining the latter point, he says that in his opinion, many western MNCs would like to have local senior leadership in place, but struggle to build a good rapport between their global board and local leaders.

“Th is is causing a cognitive bias which should be addressed both at a corporate and local level,” he says.

He also highlights the danger of treating talent as entities with “a static trait instead of something that develops and changes over time”, just like the needs of the organisation.

Adding to the possible causes of why leadership development programmes fail, Mehta adds that organisations rarely reach into their talent pipeline soon enough.

“In a recent Mercer study on global leadership, we found that almost two-thirds of the organisations did not conduct leadership pipeline projections regularly.

“Succession planning efforts are often focused on the senior leadership levels, hence, talent is identified and developed when people have already spent a lot of time in their roles and careers. Identifying talent earlier on ensures that organisations have a longer ‘runway’ to develop this talent.”

She explains another key issue is around sustainability of the process.

“Often organisations carry out a oneoff ‘talent identification’ exercise, with not enough follow up on how this talent will be developed beyond an immediate set of training interventions. Th is fragmented process delivers sub-optimal results due to a lack of continuous monitoring of where people are in their development journey.”

Getting past the hurdles To overcome such problems, Khaw adds that

Wading through deep waters: Only 6% of organisations believe their leadership pipeline is “very ready” – pointing to a staggering capability gap.

an organisation must be committed in their leadership programme through both the good and bad times.

“Often at times, costs (versus being seen as an investment) become a common reason to pull back programmes, resulting in a disrupted and inconsistent experience, as well as messaging from the organisation,” she says.

Underpinning the above, she adds a robust HR infrastructure, that is, recruitment, promotion, pay/rewards in driving the same purpose and outcome will be crucial in ensuring the success of a leadership development programme in the long-term.

“We take great pride in the fact that we have a structured learning pathway for the development of our leaders at every level of the organisation.

“From fi rst-time fi rst-level line managers to leadership at the enterprise level, our courses aim at providing all the necessary knowledge and tools for our managers to perform their roles well,” Khaw explains. “ I am pleased to share there has been an overall significant increase in the employee engagement survey (MyVoice) results over the last five years. In addition, we have also seen our attrition rates decline in a big way. I believe our leaders play a large part in making our organisation a great place to work.”

In essence, fi rms need to remember constantly that the nature of work is changing, and this is impacting where and how people work together.

As such, bosses need to better understand how to lead in this environment – and properly structured, sustainable and flexible leadership development programmes are key in helping them do this.

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Highlights from Talent Management Asia 2016, Malaysia Two jam-packed days of learning, case studies and networking – here’s your guide to all the action from the conference by Aditi Sharma Kalra.

Fresh on the heels of organising the region’s leading HR strategy conference in Hong Kong, the Human Resources team hosted Talent Management Asia 2016 in Malaysia on March 15-16.

The event featured a solid mix of keynote speakers setting the mandate for talent and HR leaders; case studies on engagement and learning from organisations such as Digi and Maxis; tremendous opportunities for networking; and powered by a host of sponsors and partners.

Day one featured an opening keynote by Shahzad Umar, executive director of group HR at Nestlé Malaysia, who unveiled the transformation the company had undergone in recent years.

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He said: “We were able to get close to 50,000 suggestions from employees on how things could be done differently. We combined most of those ideas in a framework called FIT – ‘fuel’ to grow, ‘innovate’ to grow, and ‘transform’ to grow.”

He was followed by Willis Towers Watson’s director of health and corporate wellness in APAC, Dr Rajeshree Parekh, who shared the firm’s latest report findings: “Company culture is underrated by employers – it was ranked eighth in the list of employer priorities, but third in employee priorities.”

Post a morning networking session, Yazad Dalal, senior director of HCM strategy and transformation at Oracle, took centre stage for a panel discussion on building change management – featuring panellists from BT Malaysia, Feruni Ceramiche, ManpowerGroup and USG Boral.

CC Ngei, managing director of Feruni Ceramiche, was one of the day’s most popular

speakers, with a story on how a SMB can compete with MNCs, from a business leader’s perspective.

“In the past six years, I spent most of my time with the people – something I am very passionate about. It is always my first priority in running the company. If we only keep looking for ROI, things can get really short-term,” he said.

The post-lunch session on day one saw the introduction of parallel streams – where delegates could opt to attend sessions on either recruitment and retention or talent development and training.

Day two saw an equally exciting line-up of speakers from business heads such as Sharma KSK Lachu, CEO of Cut-e Malaysia and John Deschner, CEO of Ogilvy Malaysia; as well as HR leaders such as June Beh, director of partner resources and compliance at Starbucks Coffee Malaysia and Brunei, and Debra Ovinis, country head of HR at BT Malaysia.

Oracle’s Dalal, who opened the conference’s second day, had delegates pondering with analogies between marketing and HR. “In the future, the CMO will be obsessed with one thing – life cycle management. Doesn’t that sound exactly like what we’re supposed to be doing in HR?” Following him, Alex Butt, co-founder and managing partner of Glides Consulting, explored how HR leaders could keep employees focused on the right things.

“There are three tracks to creating greater accountability – the self track, which is about taking personal accountability; the culture track, which is about building an accountable culture; and holding others to the accountable track,” he said.

The conference closed after two insightful panel discussions, one on the ways to engage top management, and the other on trends around performance measurements, as well as case studies from the CPO of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, Jacob Jacob, and Ogilvy’s Deschner.

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Meet the winners: Asia Recruitment Awards 2016, Malaysia Maybank took the Grand Winner’s prize among in-house recruiting teams, while ManpowerGroup excelled among the recruitment agencies.

Aditi Sharma Kalra reports.

With a total of eight trophy wins in the bag, Maybank won the Grand Winner’s prize for Excellence By An In-House Recruitment Team, at the Asia Recruitment Awards 2016, hosted at Aloft Kuala Lumpur Sentral, Malaysia.

Leading up to this first prize, the Maybank team won trophies across categories such as gold for Best Employer Brand Development, gold for Best Recruitment Advertising Strategy and silver for Best Regional Recruitment Programme.

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Among the recruitment agencies, the Grand Winner’s prize was swept up by ManpowerGroup, with seven trophy wins in total, such as gold for Best Client Service and Best Candidate Experience; silver for Best Recruitment Innovation; and bronze

for Best Recruitment Consultant (Manpreet Kaur), among others.

The Asia Recruitment Awards, held for the second consecutive year, are the region’s premier awards for recognising and rewarding excellence in recruitment, across in-house recruitment teams as well as recruitment agencies, held in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.

Among the in-house recruitment teams, notable performances were put in by British American Tobacco, IHS Global and GroupM, who triumphed in a number of categories, such as gold for Best Graduate Recruitment Programme; gold for Best Career Website; and gold for Best Use of Recruitment Technology, respectively.

Noteworthy mentions also go to EPS, JobStreet.com, and Accendo among the recruitment agencies, who took victory across a number of categories, such as gold for Best Recruitment Consultant (Priscilla Chong Chia Chin), gold for Best Recruitment Innovation, and bronze for Best Client Service, respectively.

Gold was also awarded to Great Eastern Life (Best Candidate Experience), HSBC (Best Recruitment Evaluation Technique), and Intel (Best In-House Recruitment Team, followed by Felda Global Ventures for silver).

Silver was handed out to SAP (Best Employer Brand Development and Best Career Website), and to FOREFRONT International (Best Recruitment Advertising Strategy) – the latter also won gold for Best Use Of Digital Media.

Majlis Amanah Rakyat, Mah Sing Group, Alliance Bank, Nestlé, Ambition, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and Media Prima also proved their mettle with bronze wins.

Other recruitment teams (both in-house and agencies) that were strong contenders included Monroe Consulting Group, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Reckitt Benckiser, and Randstad.

Human Resources thanks all sponsors and partners for this event: • Silver sponsor – Accendo.

• Media partner – The Top 10 of Asia.

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Full list of winners: Asia Recruitment Awards 2016, Malaysia In-house corporate recruitment teams ASIA RECRUITMENT GRAND WINNER 2016 – IN-HOUSE

Maybank

GOLD

SILVER

BRONZE

BEST RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING STRATEGY

Maybank

FOREFRONT International

Nil

BEST USE OF DIGITAL MEDIA

FOREFRONT International

Maybank

- Ambition - Hewlett-Packard Enterprise

BEST CAREER WEBSITE BY A CORPORATE HR TEAM

IHS Global

SAP

Media Prima

SAP

- Mah Sing Group - ManpowerGroup

BEST EMPLOYER BRAND DEVELOPMENT Maybank

BEST ON-BOARDING EXPERIENCE

Great Eastern Life

Media Prima

Merck Sharp & Dohme

BEST GRADUATE RECRUITMENT PROGRAMME

British American Tobacco

Maybank

- Alliance Bank - Nestlé

BEST STAFF REFERRAL PROGRAMME

HSBC

British American Tobacco

Nil

BEST USE OF RECRUITMENT TECHNOLOGY

GroupM

British American Tobacco

IHS Global

BEST DIVERSITY & INCLUSION STRATEGY

Intel

SAP

Maybank

BEST REGIONAL RECRUITMENT PROGRAMME

GroupM

Maybank

Reckitt Benckiser

BEST CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE BY A CORPORATE HR TEAM

Great Eastern Life

Maybank

British American Tobacco

BEST RECRUITMENT INNOVATION BY A CORPORATE HR TEAM

SAP

HSBC

Maybank

BEST RECRUITMENT EVALUATION TECHNIQUE

HSBC

GroupM

Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA)

Intel

Felda Global Ventures

HSBC

BEST IN-HOUSE RECRUITMENT TEAM

Recruitment agencies ASIA RECRUITMENT GRAND WINNER 2016 – RECRUITMENT AGENCY

ManpowerGroup

BEST CAREER WEBSITE BY A RECRUITMENT AGENCY

JobStreet.com

Michael Page

Nil

BEST CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE BY A RECRUITMENT AGENCY

ManpowerGroup

EPS

Nil

BEST CLIENT SERVICE

ManpowerGroup

EPS

Accendo

BEST RECRUITMENT INNOVATION BY A RECRUITMENT AGENCY

JobStreet.com

ManpowerGroup

Accendo

BEST NEW RECRUITMENT AGENCY

Monroe Consulting Group

Nil

Nil

BEST RECRUITMENT CONSULTANT

Priscilla Chong Chia Chin – EPS

Rajive Kathiresan – ManpowerGroup

Manpreet Kaur – ManpowerGroup

BEST RECRUITMENT AGENCY

ManpowerGroup

EPS

Randstad

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SPONSORED RECRUIT ADVICE HOW TO THIS ARTICLE WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY CROWN WORLD MOBILITY

WHAT’S NEW IN GLOBAL MOBILITY TRENDS? It is an exciting time to be a mobility professional, particularly if you are able to embrace and lead change.

Technology is pivotal, leading to the “überisation” of just about everything, including our growing desire for real-time data and mobile services. Another industry changer stems from large demographic shifts and a growing corporate focus on recruiting and retaining talent. We see the impact of this on corporate benefits such as expanding maternity and paternity leave, flexibility in the workplace environment and shifts in mobility programme design. Where does this leave us in mobility in 2016?

address employee mobility more strategically. Mobility programmes with more sophisticated data analytical capabilities can see details such as regions where female assignees are or aren’t on the rise and where key emerging markets are.

5. Flexibility and employee choices Flexibility for the company may mean different levels of benefits for different assignment types. Flexibility for employees may include a cash allowance in place of some services, such as choosing a furniture allowance in place of shipping household goods.

6. Permanent transfers Applying a permanent relocation policy in lieu of a temporary assignment policy has cost advantages. Unfortunately, this may also open up a company to tax and immigration liabilities. Companies that are seeking a lower cost alternative to temporary assignments would be better served by developing a local-plus temporary assignment policy, instead of a permanent relocation policy.

7. Self-initiated moves Millennials want international experiences – and many are willing to do it without extensive support or expectation of repatriation. Companies want employees to have international experiences without the full cost of a typical expatriate assignment.

Self-initiated moves serve both interests, with basic policies primarily emphasising compliance-related support and limited assistance.

Here are some of the latest trends in global mobility that will help you plan for your next steps and strategies.

8. Family considerations Addressing the needs of dual-career families, split-families, single or divorced employees with child custody, and same-sex couples – as well as providing support for employees’ parents who are recognised as dependents.

1. Recruiting talent Businesses are more often finding that their next growth location is in a new country.

This means that many of the skills needed to successfully launch the initiative may come from international assignments or transfers, and require a strong relationship between mobility and recruiting. We anticipate that mobility consultants will work more directly with recruiters and potential hires to establish the high-value candidates require.

2. Über mobility In the age of Über, mobility apps and technology are a leading development in the world of employee mobility and in finding the right combination for smart mobility.

Companies that ran with self-help approaches now require more of a balance – such as an upfront programme orientation to identify needs and respond to employee and family questions.

3. Cost control We will see a cost-management focus on matching the right programme with the assignment need, with greater interest in low-cost mobility policies. They are better value and more companies are adapting their approach to take advantage of the savings when you marry the tax-efficient direct service approach with the flexibility of a lump sum.

4. Data analytics Smarter mobility programmes capture a range of assignee data that can help

Crown World Mobility’s Perspectives series is a reflection of Crown’s in-depth knowledge.

Topics include trends, latest happenings in the mobility industry and any related interesting challenges that professionals are facing.

For more information please visit our website www.crownworldmobility.com or contact us on info@crownworldmobility.com

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OPINION » Upwardly Mobile

Minding the generation gap Can this gap be resolved through an intense focus on training leaders to manage across generations? co-existing in the workplace. Generation Y is 70 million-strong – roughly double the size of Gen X. The combination of Gen Y advancing up the ranks and Baby Boomers often refusing to retire has, over years, dramatically shifted the composition of the workforce. More importantly, Boomers and Gen Ys are together redefining what constitutes a great place to work.

CHELLA PANDIAN Sub-region HR director, Merck Sharp & Dohme

A bridge too far? Managers need to stop using the same old approach.

There’s been much discussion around Gen Y’s working style and behaviours, and strategies to manage them, most of which is raised by Gen X leaders. On the other hand, Gen Y has been complaining Gen X being old timers, very conventional and clueless about technology.

Where does the root of the problem lie – the Millennials’ expectations or the leadership style of Gen X? It’s worthwhile to analyse this from yesteryears’ perspective.

Born in the post World War II era, Baby Boomers are frequently respected as the “workaholic generation” because they were willing to work long hours to secure career advancement.

Generation X was the first to see fast-emerging technology, grew up taking care of themselves, and watching their parents lose their jobs. This shaped their willingness to work hard, but they yearned to spend more time with their family. They were good examples of ‘calculated risk and moderate returns’.

The general perception about Millennials is they have a short attention span, are job hoppers, and live by the motto, “you only live once”. At the workplace, they advocate a work-life balance. They appreciate flexible working hours, but are willing to sacrifice leisure time to complete their responsibilities. They have understood the meaning of ‘high risks and high returns’.

Respect is a value that has been highly instilled in Baby Boomers and Gen X – taught to respect those more knowledgeable than them. Alternately, Gen Y proposes that respect does not succumb to age, knowledge, status or position.

Statistics to put things in perspective According to the 2015 Millennial Majority Workforce, a joint study by Elance-oDesk and Millennial Branding, 28% of the current population of Millennials (aged 16-36) is already in managerial roles. This represents four generational groups (Veterans, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y)

What’s the generation gap about?

It has been increasingly challenging for managers to lead employees from different generations because they haven’t learnt the art of customising the leadership style to suit the generations. The problem arises when leaders try to use the same approach for all generations.

Are leaders nowadays trained to embrace the generational differences and utilise the full potential of the employees? Are they willing to learn from someone younger than them? Are leaders ready to manage the upcoming leadership transition?

Where do we go next?

To untangle this mystery, we have to go back to the fundamental question – where are we learning leadership practices from?

Not everyone gets to learn from schools or colleges – it is not part of the curriculum! Leaders are made over time through real-world experience, challenges and self-reflection.

John F. Kennedy famously said: “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” It is natural for people to learn from others surrounding them, especially their superiors – so we can assume that Gen X learnt its leadership skills from Baby Boomers while Gen Y learnt from Gen X. So the need of the hour is not to focus on Gen Y, instead both Gen X and Gen Y should come together to unlearn and re-learn leadership practices to manage Gen Z. Can schools and universities help future leaders by incorporating leadership as a part of their curriculum in all disciplines of graduation?

My experience with generations Being a Gen Xer and having learnt my leadership skills from a combination of Baby Boomers and Gen X leaders, I have been fortunate to mentor people across generations. All generations have their strengths, but it is up to each one to leverage on them, rather than focus on the problems of other generations.

Great organisations, developed countries, broad-minded families and top class universities have learnt the art of working past generation gaps by appreciating the strengths of each other. This is where success lies.

The views expressed are those of the author and not of Merck Sharp & Dohme.

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CAREERS » Personal development

uptheranks Tracking HR’s industry moves Who: Cilia Rasasegram From: Tune Protect To: iCar Asia Effective February 2016, Cilia Rasasegram was appointed iCar Asia’s general manager of people and culture.

In this role, she is based in Kuala Lumpur and will manage iCar Asia’s people and culture strategies, including organisational development, employee relations and internal communications.

She was most recently the head of people and culture for Tune Protect where she grew the company from 11 employees to 500 in just over four years. Speaking to Human Resources, she said: “I’m very grateful to have joined a young company that is open and transparent, driven and energising, as well as welcoming of change and naturally fluid.

“All HR people out there will recognise these traits in an organisation’s culture enables and accelerates any people initiatives and strategies. What might take some organisations months to accomplish, would take us less than half the time.”

Who: Shahzad Umar From: Nestlé Pakistan To: Nestlé Malaysia As of March 2016, Shahzad Umar’s new designation is executive director of group human resources for Nestlé Malaysia.

Previously the head of human resources for Nestlé Pakistan, he reports to the managing director of Nestlé (Malaysia), Alois Hofbauer.

Umar told Human Resources his “key responsibility is to oversee various training and leadership programmes to nurture and strengthen the capabilities of employees”.

“In my current role, it is also pertinent to provide support to our leaders to create the conditions for success in their teams, and in turn, the company itself.” He added that Nestlé prioritised hiring talent with the right cultural fit.

“It is imperative that we hire the right people for the right job as our talent pool is the backbone of Nestlé, encouraging bigger achievements and p y to ggreater heights.” g propellingg the company

personalgrowth THREE WAYS TO TELL IF YOUR STAR EMPLOYEE IS SET TO QUIT Don’t be fooled that your top talent won’t quit just because they’re performing and earning well, says Akankasha Dewan.

They’re performing well. Their colleagues love them. They’re being paid well. Yet, they leave their jobs.

Such a situation is bound to shock even the best of managers, more so because managers have been so taken aback from these resignations, that some have described it as the equivalent to a “kick in the guts”.

So, how do you know if your best employee is thinking about moving on?

1. They’re constantly performing well Sure, excellent results and a solid track record prove the employee in question is doing well, is a good cultural fit and is highly engaged in his or her role. But it is dangerous to assume this is a guarantee the star performer will always stay in his or her current job. Top performers are unique in that they will begin considering a new job simply if they feel “underused”.

Almost all top performers want to be continually challenged. As a result, managers need to be aware that once a top employee feels their skills are either eroding or that their talents are being underused, they will likely begin considering leaving.

2. Talk to their colleagues And here’s how you can tell if they feel they aren’t being challenged enough – their colleagues. Criminals frequently leave behind a string of hints – angry emails, threatening phone calls, etc – before they commit their crime. Similarly, dissatisfied employees drop hints that they’re looking to make a change – and the easiest ways to drop these hints is through the grapevine.

Talk to other members of your team to check how he or she feels about the current role, and what their future career plans are. Chances are, you’re bound to pick up on subtle hints of their impending departure – or at least feedback on how their colleagues perceive them.

3. Conduct “stay interviews” Many firms use exit interviews to find out why an individual is leaving their job.

A superior approach is to be proactive and to use what is known as “a stay interview,” which helps you understand why someone stays in their job by simply asking them this in an informal one-on-one meeting.

This meeting doesn’t have to be as detailed as an appraisal. Rather, by just casually asking your employees why they love their job can allow you to judge their level of enthusiasm about the job and predict in advance whether they are happy in their role.

Be it having casual stay interviews, or asking other members of a team how a top talent feels about their job, it is important to always trust your employees to tell you the truth regarding how they’re feeling about their job. Resorting frantically to scrutiny and paranoia that your top talent will leave will perhaps push them to hand in the pink slip.

38 » HumanResources Malaysia » Q2 2016

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16/6/2016 9:51:16 AM

Good Go o reads to improve your business life

shelflife

The Politics of Promotion: How HighAchieving Women Get Ahead and Stay Ahead Pick of the month

Your Trajectory Code: How to Change Your Decisions, Actions, and Directions, to Become Part of the Top 1% High Achievers Jeffrey Magee Wiley S$36

Most of us want to be part of that club of the top 1% of high achievers – but we frequently don’t realise how much of an impact our decisions, actions and directions have on our ability to achieve this.

The difference between those who make it and those who don’t lies in the Trajectory Code, and author Jeffrey Magee explains how starting at birth, numerous factors have been imprinted upon our lives influencing our

conscious and unconscious behaviours, which are constantly defining our path in life.

Across 15 chapters, Magee identifies ways we can move from good to great through a daily recalibration of just 1% of how we act and how we respond to others. At the end of each chapter, he provides simple questions for us to consider and how to apply these ideas into our lives for trajectory implementation and success.

Bookmark this!

Freely asking for critical behaviour-based feedback is essential. Looking at a specific task you are undertaking and asking whoever assigned it to you – or the person to whom you’re delivering it – for a comprehensive relevant matrix to measure your performance, along your trajectory, to ensure you are both on track and excelling is also essential. This allows you to continuously raise the performance bar and recalibrate the matrix as appropriate for even great effectiveness – page 64.

Bonnie Marcus Wiley S$21

The scenario is all too familiar: an experienced and qualified female professional is overlooked for a coveted promotion after years of investing time and energy into the company.

What happened? Bonnie Marcus has the answer: Politics.

The rules of the workplace game are not simple. Although hard work and performance are important, these are not the only criteria considered for one’s career advancement. Often promotions are based on personality, on the ability to engage in the organisation’s politics and to promote oneself by networking and building relationships.

Marcus’ book aims to help female leaders navigate the potential landmines that lead to gender biases in organisations.

Through her personal experience, she teaches readers ways to get savvy about workplace politics.

Bookmark this!

The “mirror” helps you to see your value proposition: how the unique way you deliver the work contributes to specific business outcomes. It’s an important tool in the political toolkit because of our tendency to be externally rather than internally focused.

We have a fascination with what everyone else is doing. We are constantly distracted by the activities and accomplishments of others and have little, if any, focus on our true gifts and talent – page 40.

Book photography: Fauzie Rasid

YES, we recruit there.

Your single point of contact for all of your hiring needs globally

www.npaworldwideworks.com Q2 2016 « HumanResources Malaysia « 39

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16/6/2016 9:58:27 AM

LAST WORD

Aditi Sharma Kalra’s list of HR jargon to do away with.

It’s no wonder everyone hates

management jargon, typically reflective of deeprooted thinking styles. So to get HR professionals to start speaking a little left of the norm, we put together a list of phrases we need to do away with.

1. Thing to stop saying: “You can’t do that.”

“Too often, HR sees itself as a policing function – one that makes sure everyone behaves and follows the rules,” says Dr Peter Allen, VP of people and organisation development at Agoda.com.

“Unless something is actually illegal, that’s not the best way to go.”

Try this instead: “What’s your goal here? Let me see if I can share some ideas/information/new approaches.” You’d be surprised how much of a difference this can make. Getting on the same side of the issue as your client will give you far greater influence, explains Allen.

“And encouraging both managers and employees to own policies, rather than just implement them, creates a far more productive environment than just trying to compel everyone to follow the rules.”

2. Thing to stop saying: “There isn’t enough talent in the market.”

Bear with me before you bring out the torches.

There is no doubt that some technical skills are lacking in Asia, owing to slower industry life cycles.

There is also no denying that leadership skills are hard to find, especially people experienced in remote working or across Asia’s complex landscape.

But in my view, there is a fair bit of scope for us to rewrite our people processes to accommodate a more diverse pool of candidates – be it part-timers, new mothers or mature workers.

Try this instead: “Let’s recreate some of these job descriptions to attract more candidates.”

3. Thing to stop saying: “This is the problem we face.”

“Instead of focusing on ‘problems’ which are naturally present, and the reason why we are hired, we should pay more attention to ‘solutions’,” says Wendy Koo, head of HR and corporate partnerships at Hong Kong-based charity, AIDS Concern. That’s

not to “avoid” the issue, she says, rather, it’s a way to move forward.

Try this instead: Once the immediate issue is addressed, HR in partnership with the management team, must think about how to tackle the issue to change its unsatisfactory status for the long-term, suggests Koo. 4. Thing to stop saying: “We need to find ways to motivate and engage our people.”

“It’s a widely held assumption that engagement is something that happens to people at work – as if companies need to do something to people to cause them to be engaged,” points out Lewis Garrad, MD of Sirota Asia Pacific. “But a lot of science shows the vast majority of people are naturally motivated – they want to contribute to the best of their ability.”

He cites that when new employees are asked about this, more than 90% say they are motivated to go above and beyond to help their organisation succeed. “The remaining 5% to 10% probably shouldn’t have been hired in the first place.”

Following the first 30 days, motivation of new hires often diminishes very quickly. Adds Garrad: “The challenge then is not raising the motivation of people in the workplace, but rather to find a way to maintain the natural enthusiasm that people bring to work. Rather than trying to motivate them, we need to stop demotivating them.”

Try this instead: “What are we doing that gets in the way of engagement and performance?”

5. Thing to stop saying: “Time for training.”

This is a pet peeve of Agoda’s Allen. “Training is good when you want someone to do something automatically, without thinking. It’s necessary for soldiers, pilots, dogs.” But most of the time at work, we should not be “training” people – instead, we should be helping them learn, he points out. “Using the word ‘learning’ puts the emphasis not on the trainer, but on the learner; it helps employees become autonomous, curious, empowered.”

Try this instead: Turn your focus around: change your language, and see how it changes your attitude and makes L&D more effective. aditis@humanresourcesonline.net

Photography: Stefanus Elliot Lee using Nikon D810 – www.elliotly.com; Makeup & Hair: Michmakeover using Make Up For Ever & hair using Sebastian Professional – www.michmakeover.com

5 things HR should stop saying (and what we can try instead)

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