Human Resources Singapore, April 2016

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Inspiring others in times of change One of the simplest ways to inspire employees successfully is to lead by example. After all, actions speak louder than words.

This becomes even more crucial when the workplace undergoes change; when uncertainty about new processes triggers anxiety levels.

In fact, dealing with unclear expectations from supervisors during times of change was listed as one of the top triggers of stress that employees are facing in 2016.

And that is why LEGO Group believes that being the enablers of change, leaders should be extensively involved in helping employees adjust to a new climate in the workplace. In our cover interview, Jesper Petersen, the firm’s senior director for HR in Asia Pacific, talks about some of the major changes LEGO has recently undergone, and the ways employees were supported through this time.

Driven by plans for expansion, in the Asia region, LEGO has been working hard to ensure all processes and systems are standardised.

Petersen told us: “My first task here is to nurture and protect the culture. If I succeed at that, I will succeed with many other things. If I succeed with recruitment, but not with culture, then I would have failed.”

So when LEGO recently moved to activity based working, the team ensured it drove the right cultural behaviours.

“When we made this decision as a leadership team, the first thing we decided was no exceptions, regardless of seniority.

So all our offices that had these nice meeting rooms don’t have that anymore. No one has their own office or desk,” Petersen said.

As a result, the firm’s leaders actively lived out the behaviours the culture demanded – more collaboration, and less rigid hierarchical boundaries. That interview is on page 14.

Inspiring others by showing them how to deal with change has become a key trait for effective leadership today, especially as more employees are telling us that much of the disequilibrium around change comes from managers.

These challenges have resulted in courses such as “coping with change” and “resiliency” being the most popular professional development modules among leaders.

Their effectiveness, however, remains yet to be proven. In our feature on further education, we discuss the value of professional development courses in the tumultuous economic landscape But not all aspects of change can be dealt with through developmental courses. Take for example, HR technology. The HR function has lagged in technology adoption for some time now, and continues to do so despite 74% of executives worldwide identifying digital HR as a top priority in 2016. That is why our feature on HR technology explores real-time success stories from companies such as Philips and AECOM, in keeping pace with HR technology.

Change is never easy, but by taking it on ourselves to inspire others we can take the first step towards overcoming its obstacles.

Enjoy the issue.

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

HumanResources

Aditi Sharma Kalra Regional editor April 2016 « Human Resources «

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GOOGLE LOOKS TO HIRE ENGINEERS IN SINGAPORE

YAHOO TERMINAT TERMINATES T ES EMPLOYEES IN SINGAPORE

Yahoo laid off employees from its Singapore office in February. This was in line with its plan to revamp its core internet business, which includes streamlining its workforce.

Commenting on the layoffs, a Yahoo spokesperson said: “In early February, Yahoo shared a plan for the future, with this new plan came some very difficult decisions and changes to our business. As a result of these changes, some jobs have been eliminated.

“We thank those employees for their outstanding service to Yahoo and will treat these employees with the respect and fairness they deserve.”

Nevertheless, Yahoo’s operations in Singapore will continue as “it remains an important market for Yahoo,” the spokesperson added. While the company declined to disclose specifics related to the separation agreements, the spokesperson confirmed “those eligible for their annual bonus will remain eligible to receive the bonus”.

Uncertain economic times have caused several large companies to restructure their businesses. Earlier this month, Japanese online retailer Rakuten announced it would shut its operations in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, reported Marketing magazine, in a move expected to affect under 150 employees.

TEN INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR REMOTEE WORKING CANDIDATES S

With more companies recognising the benefits a skilled remote employee bringss to the business, it is becoming increasingly important for hiring managers to be able to effectively interview a remote candidate.

Things such as what interview rview questions to ask, what qualities to look for and how to onboard these workers are always at the top of the mind.

Hubstaff put together a helpful piece, which includes the 10 interview questions you should be asking your remote candidate. These questions are: • What is your remote working experience?

• What tools have you used to complete and manage remote projects?

• What is your home office like?

• How comfortable are you with discussing remote work-related concerns or conflicts?

• How do you stay focused and on deadline when working remotely?

• Have you ever had a tight deadline, and how did you manage it while working remotely?

• What kind of hours do you work?

• How do you troubleshoot problems on your own?

• Are you comfortable with using time tracking software?

• As a remote worker, do you keep up with industry news?

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In line with its aim to bring fast and affordable access to more people worldwide, Google has decided to build a new engineering team in Singapore to get closer to the next billion users set to go online.

Caesar Sengupta, vice-president of the next billion users team at Google, explained in a blog post his vision for fixing the computing experiences for most of the 300 million people who went online for the first time last year – from places such as India, Indonesia and the Philippines – referring to issues such as patchy connectivity and language-specific content.

Google plans to kick-start the new team by: • Bringing in the team from Pie.co e co – a SSingapore-based gapo e based sta start-up t up recently ece t y acquired acqu ed by he new local engineering team.

Google – to help kick-start the • Actively hiring engineers – both oth new grads and experienced engineers – in Singapore.

• Implementing a 12-week internship ernship programme which will take place in Australia ralia for talented students from Singapore.

• Welcoming engineers from across the world apore, want who “have deep ties to Singapore, to come back home, or wouldd like to start calling Singapore their eir home”.

IBM DITCHES TRADITIONAL ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

IBM has gone the way of Accenture, Gap and others, with its 10-year-old performance management system called “personal business commitments” replaced with an approach that includes more frequent feedback, and more opportunity to shift employee goals tthroughout the year. Diane Gherson, IBM’s CHRO, spoke to Fortune magazine, saying a big impetus for the change was IBM’s employees “were already doing work differently than the i system assumed”. s Fortune magazine reported that last year, Gherson and her team decided to change IBM’s performance review system, as part of a larger series of changes, as the Big Blue I transitions away from hardware to higher growth areas such as mobile, data analytics and cloudbased services.

IBM turned to its 380,000 employees to crowdsource the process through its internal social media platform, garnering 75,000 views and 2,000 comments from employees.

The new app-based performance review system called checkpoint went live in February 2016, helping employees set shorter term goals, with managers providing feedback on their progress at least every quarter. At the end of the year, employees will be judged across five criteria – business results, impact on client success, innovation, personal responsibility to others, and skills.

» Human Resources » April 2016

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THE TOP 10 ROLES SINGAPOREANS ARE SHUNNING

Job vacancies in Singapore may have been at a six-year high last year, but the number declined over the year to 60,000 in September 2015 amid softer economic conditions. When seasonally adjusted, the ratio between the job vacancies and unemployed also declined from 121 in June and 143 in March 2015 to 116 openings per 100 job seekers in September 2015.

This was according to the latest job vacancy report released by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). While non-PMET job vacancies were generally harder to fill (55%), hiring managers also faced difficulty in filling up PMET openings with 20% of PMET openings being unfilled for extended periods.

The top 10 PMET occupations with the highest number of vacancies unfilled for at least six months were: • Enrolled/assistant nurses (excluding registered nurses) (420).

• Commercial and marketing sales (240).

• Executive registered nurses and other nursing professionals (210).

• Chefs (160).

• Restaurant managers (150).

• Software, web and multimedia developers (140).

• Management executives (130).

• Operations officers (except transport operations) (120).

• Financial/investment advisors (110).

• Sales and marketing managers (100).

HP TO LAY OFF 3,000 WORKERS THIS YEAR

Last year, HP announced the termination of about 1,200 jobs in 2016, as the company split into two.

Now, reports have emerged it is accelerating its restructuring programme and, as such, nearly 3,000 workers will leave the company by the end of this year.

The restructuring will result in charges and associated cash payments of about US$300 million in the current year, the firm said.

Fortune magazine reported that in a conference call with analysts, HP executives said the tough market had altered HP’s plans.

“The recently spun-off maker of printers and PCs said that its fiscal first quarter revenue fell 12% year over year to $12.2 billion because of weak sales,” it stated. The magazine added that according to HP’s chief financial officer Catherine Lesjak, the layoffs should save the company roughly $300 million by the beginning of 2017.

“We have a clear strategy that leverages our strengths, and we are focused on execution, taking cost out of the business and delivering innovations that will amaze our customers and partners,” said Dion Weisler, HP’s president and CEO in a press release issued by the company.

HR’S BIGGEST SKILL GAPS

YELP EMPLOYEE FIRED AFTER OPEN LETTER TO CEO

“Your employee for your food delivery app that you spent $300 million to buy can’t afford to buy food. That’s gotta be a little ironic, right?” wrote Talia Jane in an open letter to Yelp’s CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman in February. A couple of hours later, she was fired.

Jane wrote that she spent $1,245 a month on rent while making $1466; and had no money left to buy food or turn on the heater, adding she hadn’t bought groceries since starting her job, living on free office snacks.

Stoppelman was quick to distance himself from the saga, writing on Twitter: “I’ve not been personally involved in Talia being let go and it was not because she posted a Medium letter directed at me.”

Without addressing Jane’s comments on her low salary, a Yelp representative wrote: “We agree with her comments about the high costs of living in San Francisco, which is why we announced in December that we are expanding our Eat24 customer support team into our Phoenix office where we will pay the same wage.”

HR’s skill gaps have become apparent in a new report by DDI, where HR leaders are compared with their peers from other functions using two reference points: a behavioural simulation of leadership skills and a personality test. HR’s biggest weaknesses unveiled included financial acumen, business savvy, entrepreneurship and global acumen.

The surprise was when the report found that other than being weak in the core business concepts, HR is also underperforming in most other functions in terms of customer focus.

For example, the function is about 12% weaker than engineering, sales, marketing and IT when it comes to being attentive to internal and external customers and end users.

Thankfully, HR still has its strengths, being the strongest when it comes to building organisational talent. It is about 24% stronger than engineering, operations and finance and about 28% stronger than the marketing function.

Additionally, the report found that HR excelled in leading teams – where it is stronger than both engineering and finance. HR leaders were also strong in interpersonal sensitivity, but weaker in ambition and inquisitiveness.

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April 2016 « Human Resources «

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WORK LIFE » People GET INTO THE BOSS’S HEAD

Matej Kranjc Managing director, ASEAN/ANZ National Instruments You’ve been with National Instruments (NI) since 1999. How has your journey been?

My journey with NI has been a very diverse (geographically speaking), stimulating and satisfying one. In fact, my history with National Instruments goes back a lot further than 1999.

My first exposure to NI was as a customer and partner, using NI technologies to provide solutions to customers in Slovenia, as an NI Alliance Partner, a business that I started early in my career. After developing this business, based on NI technologies, I opened the NI branch in Slovenia, and later expanded to take over responsibilities for South Eastern Europe.

In 2015, I took up the opportunity to become managing director of NI ASEAN and ANZ. It is a very exciting time within Southeast Asia with a lot of activity in the semiconductor industry, wireless research and the industrial internet of things.

Throughout my journey we have ensured NI continues to grow and provide all employees with continued opportunities, by empowering our customers around the world to do really incredible things with our solutions.

What is the best part of working at NI? As a truly emerging market, I had many wonderful opportunities to work with leading educators, researchers and entrepreneurial engineers on educational and business-focused projects in countries such as Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Kenya.

With no one industry representing more than 15% of our business, the diversity of challenges our solutions are able to address is very inspiring and incredibly rewarding as an engineer, from controlling the world’s largest particle accelerator at CERN to designing and testing cutting-edge medical devices.

And I have had the opportunity to experience the NI culture, and the consistency of the NI culture, across many countries and continents.

the need for change such as restructuring and increased specialisation. For the most part, the challenges are short term, with the long-term picture normally a great thing for people involved.

Sometimes change can be taken as a bit of a negative at first, when an employee was very happy with the way things were, but the long-term benefit and sustainability of a satisfying career for each employee is always the intent, and usually the outcome. NI has a great track record of retaining our employees and providing ongoing opportunity for growth.

How would you define your leadership style?

At NI, we are like one big family and I always do my best to help my team members develop as individuals and professionals, and empower them to make their own decisions with confidence. I guide them to help them realise the answers to their questions are from within, by coaching them through their own thought and learning processes.

I definitely have an open door policy for all employees, encourage discussion, always try to recognise employee efforts (regardless of the outcome) and give constructive feedback.

It is my hope that every employee has the opportunity to have a lifelong, successful and satisfying career at NI, so I always look for opportunities to ensure we enable and cultivate leaders across all functions of the organisation.

We are very focused on attracting and retaining the best and the brightest, being a great place to work, while maintaining an acute focus on delivering results.

Our HR division provides us with the know-how to make our cultural objectives ongoing realities.

How can HR contribute better to organisational goals?

I think HR already does a fantastic job of contributing to organisational goals, as our employees are at the core of our values, and key to our customer, partner and shareholder success.

More and more, I am seeing HR becoming more efficient at communicating to all employees with the right level of frequency, and I look forward to seeing this continue.

Many of our leaders manage responsibilities over large geographies, and as NI continues to grow in revenue and headcount, we rely on HR to ensure all employees are well communicated with, and we also rely on them to bring any potential issues or projects requiring our attention to the table at the right moment.

Do you think HR leaders have what it takes to become CEOs? Absolutely. HR leaders have incredible people skills, an understanding of organisational behaviour and an ability to communicate and relate with all layers of management and the employee.

They also have an extremely strong ethical grounding, and the success of our employees is at the core of their values, along with the knowledge of what it takes to compete in the employment marketplace.

What is your view on the HR function?

What role does it play for you?

Our HR division plays an absolutely critical role in providing the infrastructure and expertise to ensure we have the means to developp and maintain the organisational culturee we pride ourselves on, and ensure all managers and employees are aligned to their roles in this.

Helping to attractt and retain the best and the brightest is crucial to our culture and our success. ow, we rely on HR to educate As we continue to grow, s, make recommendations, us on our talent needs, mployees continue to be and ensure that all employees fforts and have every recognised for their efforts opportunity to discusss any questions or concerns they may have at any point in time.

What are some of the biggest people challenges you faced while scaling up?

With the scaling of operations, often comes 6

» Human Resources » April 2016

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People « WORK LIFE

snapshot

15 minutes with ...

Anita Bingwa

HR director for Southeast Asia EMC WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST HR JOB, AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE HR AS A PROFESSION? My career in HR began as an HR manager for a fashion retailer. Personally, I’ve always been interested in understanding people and the human psyche, especially in the context of organisations, and this is where I focused my studies and the reason behind why I embarked on a career in HR. I am particularly interested in the development of company culture.

Most of us spend the majority of our day at the workplace during the week, much more than with our family or friends.

A positive workplace culture does not just make coming to work more enjoyable, it also drives innovation and productivity within the business.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE A REGULAR WORKDAY AT YOUR COMPANY? Every day brings a brand new challenge and more often than not, my day turns out very different from what I had originally planned.

While it is easy at times to get caught up in some of the more operational tasks, I do like to block out time in my diary each week to work on long-term initiatives that ultimately help give EMC a strategic advantage in the future.

The business landscape today is volatile so our ability to adapt and redefine is of critical importance. One of the longer term objectives that we had set for ourselves was around creating an agile workforce capable of transforming to the ever-changing needs of our customers.

This is why we place a lot of emphasis on embracing diversity within the organisation. We welcome employees from different backgrounds as they share new perspectives and ways of thinking.

We also encourage our employees to have a voice and be creative.

Innovation is at the heart of all that we do at EMC; the results from our recent staff survey suggest that our employees value this culture.

WHAT IS THE BEST CAREER ADVICE YOU HAVE RECEIVED? One of my previous managers once said to me, “like a good bottle of wine, you will get better with age”.

It is not about rushing through the process; rather, it is about taking the time and being dedicated to mastering your craft.

Confidence and skills are nurtured through experience and it is important to believe in that process.

When I think about my own team and their development, the one piece

“HR must continue to look towards innovation – in terms of policy and practice, stay close to the business through active stakeholder engagement and maintain an active voice within the organisation to foster the best workplace culture.” of advice I’d pass on to them is that it is OK not to have all the answers.

Every day should be viewed as a learning experience and this is where collaboration and camaraderie among peers becomes so important, in helping each other learn and develop as a team.

Our employees, for example, are given a variety of forums to collaborate, even across different business functions, including through CSR activities and social functions.

The aim is to bring employees closer together and give them a chance to get to know and learn from other EMCers outside of their direct teams.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE HR FUNCTION WILL EVOLVE IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? My sense is the HR function will become more intimate with key business stakeholders, acquire a deeper understanding of the wider business issues and will ultimately play a greater role in addressing business challenges.

With the growing sophistication and importance of data analytics, HR teams will also be significantly better positioned to provide insights for critical decision making.

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU FEEL HR CAN DO BETTER TO PLAY A BIGGER ROLE IN ORGANISATIONS? Businesses today need to be agile and willing to transform to remain relevant in their respective markets. I believe it is critical for the HR function to follow a similar path.

What worked yesterday, will not necessarily work tomorrow. Clearly, HR must continue to look towards innovation – in terms of policy and practice, stay close to the business through active stakeholder engagement and maintain an active voice within the organisation to foster the best workplace culture.

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www.npaworldwideworks.com April 2016 « Human Resources «

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WORK LIFE » People

SpacialAwareness

COOL BLUES DOMINATE ACRONIS’ SINGAPORE HEADQUARTERS Established in Singapore in 2003, Acronis is led by CEO Serguei Beloussov.

A Singaporean national for the past 20 years, he moved to the Lion City in 1995 after graduating from university.

This data protection organisation has 18 offices worldwide and an R&D centre in Singapore. But what is the company’s secret to success in one of the most competitive IT sector segments? Germaine Chow, senior HR business partner at Acronis, sheds some light on the company’s culture and how its 700 employees, who are scattered worldwide, feel like one family.

“It is consistent branding, a culture of innovation, strong leadership, and a sense of purpose, that we are part of something big.”

She describes the workplace: “Our offices have an ‘Acronis blue’ colour scheme, strong branding and a life-size cardboard cut-out figure of our CEO Serguei Beloussov greeting people as they enter the office. Obviously Serguei can’t be present in person everywhere at the same time, but this cardboard figure creates a fun environment and reminds us of the company’s goals.”

What’s more, his cut-out has proven to be a popular photo spot with visitors, which helps with the brand promotion.

Acronis encourages dialogue by complementing an open plan workspace with cosy hideouts for formal meetings or informal coffee breaks. There is also a spacious kitchen to keep hungry stomachs at bay and a never-ending flow of refreshments to help people get through their day. Wide glass panels, plenty of natural light, and the level-30 view create a peaceful and productive environment to improve employee satisfaction.

This approach has also been applied to Acronis’ R&D centre, which is moving towards becoming one of the largest software research facilities in the region, looking to host 120 to 150 engineers. The centre’s environment has been designed to promote innovation and communication among software engineers, who are working on environmentally friendly data centre solutions.

For the centre, Acronis welcomes local engineers and university interns, with a view to nurture them to become senior engineers and managers.

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Chow goes on to cite the impact of this open workspace on culture. “An innovative and interactive workplace allows staff to switch on their creativity, generate ideas and share suggestions with one another and with management.

The combined intellect of the company’s people manifests through special charisma, which flows into a positive cycle – the more ideas the management implements, the more ideas employees are willing to contribute.”

For companies planning on decorating their offices, Chow says: “Keep it simple, in-line with the company colours, and with elements of surprise.

“A cut-out figure of our CEO at the entrance, a gigantic letter ‘A’ (Acronis logo) for the boardroom table, wide isles, chill out spaces, and natural lighting has created a vibrant environment in the Acronis HQ. Have a recreational area where staff can engage in fun activities during free time. Your workplace is your second family. Making your staff comfortable benefits the entire company.”

» Human Resources » April 2016

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WORK LIFE » HR by numbers

The highest paying sectors When it comes to being the highest paid, Singapore’s banking and financial services industry takes the cake with front office MDs in investment banking, M&A and equity capital markets being paid up to $750,000 per annum.

The second highest is anticipated to be the sales and marketing industry, with regional heads of marketing in banking and financial services commanding salaries in the range of $350,000 to $600,000 a year.

This was according to the latest salary guide released by Morgan McKinley.

Regional CHROs with 15 years of experience can earn more than $315,000, while IT experts could receive between $350,000 to $500,000 per year. (All figures in S$)

$125,000

$235,000 and upwards is what regional heads of compensation and benefits, with more than 15 years of experience, can anticipate per annum in 2016.

is the minimum amount that country HR directors with 10 to 15 years of experience can expect to be paid this year.

Heads of shared services with 10 to 15 years of experience can demand up to

$180,000 .

Source: Morgan McKinley 2016 Salary Guide

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I M P ROV I N G S K I L L S T H AT M AT T E R As the training division of Human Resources, HR Academy takes a proactive role in organising a regional series of public and in-house training courses across Asia. Together with our conferences and awards shows, these courses form part of a complete suite of events specifically tailored for senior HR professionals.

Courses are conducted in a personalised and interactive workshop setting with practical case studies and examples from our expert trainers. Delegates will take away global best practices, fresh ideas and customised solutions for implementation back in their organisations.

HR Academy is committed to being a trusted learning partner of HR practitioners throughout Asia.

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WHITE PAPER » Leadership

THE TOP SIX CHALLENGES HR IS LIKELY TO FACE IN 2016

6 1 0 2 Global – In today’s “always on” talent economy, where the trends of individualism and integration shape the way of doing business, it is up to HR to keep up with the pace of transformation and understand the various trends in the workforce.

But according to a new report by SilkRoad, keeping up with the trends is easier said than done – especially when it comes to engaging and retaining the workforce.

The report found that employee engagement is one of the top challenges HR leaders are expected to face this year.

It highlighted that as Baby Boomers retire and more job-hopping Millennials enter the workforce, there is a need for HR to re-look at its tactical, one-off engagement activities and explore nextgeneration tools that garner employees’ direct feedback and participation.

According to the survey, with the fierce talent

competition shifting the balance of power to candidates, 55% of respondents are concerned with properly engaging and retaining employees.

Fittingly, creating the right organisational culture was another challenge for HR professionals highlighted in the report.

It stated that with the strong link between recruiting and company culture, it has become crucial for HR to be able to create a culture that attracts potential employees while retaining current ones.

Worryingly, the survey found that 48% of respondents were not confident about creating an attractive organisational culture.

Not having a solid employer branding strategy in place was identified as a third challenge.

While many firms in the report admitted having a healthy employer brand is the secret weapon to talent acquisition, the survey found

The six challenges HR is likely to face this year Employee engagement

55% of respondents are concerned with properly engaging and retaining employees.

Creating an attractive company culture

48% of respondents were not confident about creating an attractive organisational culture.

Employer branding

73% of HR professionals don’t have a proper employer branding programme in place.

Leadership development

58% of Millennials want more opportunities for professional growth.

Data and analytics

67% of respondents cite a lack of data and analytics skills.

Performance management Almost 50% have no plans for performance projects in 2016.

Source: SilkRoad survey

that 73% of HR professionals don’t have a proper employer branding programme in place.

Fourth, with 62% of Millennials taking on managerial roles, the survey highlighted the need for organisations to equip these employees with the professional skills they need.

In fact, 58% of Millennial staff stated they wanted “rapid advancement/opportunities for professional growth”.

However, the survey found that only 31% of companies offer these opportunities.

Fifth, with more companies expanding globally, it is important for HR to be able to leverage on the benefits of talent management technology to gain an overall view of their organisation’s talent.

Worryingly, 67% of respondents have reported they lack data and analytics capabilities required to do so.

“2016 brings unique challenges for HR professionals in a more competitive than ever job marketplace,” said John Westby, VP of corporate marketing at SilkRoad.

“Data-driven decisions and an increased focus on properly engaging employees will be the keys towards identifying needs and winning the battle for top talent.”

Sixth, with more professionals dissatisfied with their company’s performance management practices, it has become key for HR professionals to re-look at their organisation’s performance management processes.

Disturbingly, almost half of respondents reported having no plans for performance management projects in 2016.

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Leadership « WHITE PAPER

HR IS OVERLOOKING BABY BOOMERS IN FAVOUR OF GROOMING YOUNGER TALENT

Global – With more older professionals wishing to remain in the workforce, it has become crucial for HR leaders to sufficiently address their corporate needs and wants.

But that, perhaps, might not be happening, according to new research by Ashridge.

Titled “Don’t put Baby Boomers in the corner: realising the potential of the over 50s at work”, the report canvassed responses from 2,000-plus over

50s, as well as HR staff working in organisations that employ Baby Boomers.

The report highlighted that older workers want interesting work, a sense of achievement, pride and being able to leave a legacy. They are still ambitious, want challenging jobs and are hungry for continued growth and career development.

Surprisingly, HR professionals, however, together with managers across the wider business, were found to be more focused on developing the younger generations to fulfil their potential.

Older workers were, in fact, found to be often overlooked when it came to training.

“The findings show that HR has a tendency to focus on retirement planning, rather than helping older workers use their skills and expertise for the benefit of the business,” the report stated.

“As a result, older employees – many of whom have up to another 20 years left to work – are effectively being shoved in the corner and are frustrated and demotivated by not being able to develop their careers, contribute to business growth and pass their valuable knowledge and insights onto younger workers.”

The research also highlighted the fact that HR

What older workers want at work Interesting work A sense of achievement Pride Being able to leave a legacy Source: “Don’t put Baby Boomers in the corner: realising the potential of the over 50s at work”.

and older workers see training and development in a very different light.

Only 1% of HR respondents felt older workers needed career development, while Baby Boomers themselves were hungry for development that would help them take up new job opportunities.

The report also delved into the various practical actions organisations could take to help over 50s maximise their contribution and continue to thrive at work.

“These included taking a more individual and informal approach to career discussions, introducing coaching and mentoring initiatives and exploring options for older workers to get involved in advisory roles or special projects.”

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April 2016 « Human Resources « 13

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PROFILE » Jesper Petersen

Jesper Petersen

Senior director, APAC human resources LEGO Group The company that never stops playing

By JERENE ANG

Q You’ve been at LEGO for about seven years. What do you love about working here?

What I love most about the company is really making a difference in the world.

We’re focused on developing children’s ability to learn and imagine, and this is a very fulfilling ambition. The company has been owned by a responsible family in Denmark for four generations now, who don’t measure success by profits, but by the number of children they are able to postively influence.

Art Direction: Shahrom Kamarulzaman; Photography: Stefanus Elliot Lee using Nikon D810 – www.elliotly.com

Q How would you define the firm’s culture?

We believe the company culture is unique, and it is something that we are all very proud of. It’s a fun culture, but it’s based on a couple of values. Firstly, we see children as our role models. They are creative, curious and are able to look at life through play.

That’s what we look at when developing people. We want people who can be a bit child-like, love to explore and experiment, be creative, have fun and go through life playing.

Q In light of this, what is the company’s mission?

Our mission is to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow and the company’s ambition to develop children’s ability to learn. Our product helps children with systematic thinking, complex problemsolving skills, creativity and some of the most important competencies they will need while growing up – staying agile with all the change we’re experiencing.

experience, with an introduction to the LEGO brand framework, which explains our culture, stakeholders and what we do. A four-hour hands-on workshop gets them to experience the brand’s framework.

This is not something HR invented. It’s something from our business of learning from children. We know that if you build something, you will also be mentally engaged with it. So we build different things with our new employees, and this framework helps them get a better understanding of our culture and they get to explore, wonder and reflect on it.

That’s probably also where we take an HR approach to it, as we will need employees who can stay agile, who can develop and be adaptable.

Q What HR strategies do you have in place to support this culture?

My first task here is to nurture and protect the culture. If I succeed at that, I will succeed with many other things. If I succeed with recruitment, but not with culture, then I would have failed.

Embedding the culture starts with hiring people. It’s a cliché in recruitment to say that we hire for a culture fit, but we truly prioritise it. That means, if someone has the functional skills, but not the cultural fit, we won’t hire them. As a growing company, we have the opportunity to grow the workforce quite substantially, so hiring the right people is very important.

Q How do you know if these people have the right cultural fit?

We have psychometric tests, aptitude tests, behaviour-based interviews, and such. Our hiring panel consists of people who are very familiar with the culture.

Sometimes, it can be subjective, and not based on set criteria. If a number of leaders, who have been around for a while, say that they don’t think the person is the right cultural fit, then we wouldn’t hire.

Q Do you have any induction sessions for new hires?

When you have a unique culture and are growing a lot, you need a solid onboarding programme. The two-day induction programme for new hires is a playful

Q Despite the tough economic

VITAL STATS Jesper Petersen joined LEGO Group in 2009 and is the senior director and head of HR for Asia Pacific at LEGO Group.

He is responsible for business partnering, HR operations and recruitment, and has established the 20-member APAC HR team from the ground up.

times, LEGO is expanding rather aggressively globally. How does HR support this expansion?

The top four layers of leadership are supported by HR business partners, who are full members of the leadership teams, rather than invited on an ad hoc basis. That means, we are very close to the business, and we can influence strategies.

While we have scaled up the HR organisation, we also need to make sure we have proximity to the different businesses. So the HR organisation has undergone a journey in the past five years to become much more diverse, being based all around the world and having many more nationalities within it.

What has also helped us is the level of standardisation in our core HR processes, such as those for performance management, talent assessment, and people management and development.

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“We want people who can be a bit child-like, people who love to explore and experiment, be creative and obviously have fun and go through life playing.”

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PROFILE » Jesper Petersen An area where I think HR has excelled is succession planning.

We have identified, developed, and flown talent to different parts of the world for new roles, and that’s where the standardisation gives us an advantage.

We can move a leader from Singapore to Mexico and she’ll still be able to operate within the LEGO context, knowing all the processes.

Q When it comes to recruiting locally, have the recent policy shifts in Singapore impacted LEGO? The policies have not impacted our business. Even before the government policy was implemented, we were hiring locals in the Singapore hub. We have about 22 nationalities, but the majority are Singaporeans so the government policy matches our ambition.

Q Do you have any interesting leadership development policies?

The leadership role is such an enabler of our culture that we are very careful in appointing leaders. We are thorough and try not to appoint the functional specialists who haven’t been able to demonstrate leadership potential. If you really have a passion for people leadership, but also do great in your functional areas, then you would be great for our company.

Q You mentioned lateral moves, how do you get those running?

We are a one-brand company – compared to other firms in the consumer goods industry – and that’s a huge opportunity for us. We are organised around one brand, one value chain, and we’re relying on each other – we can’t do anything in isolation. You need to know the value chain. We do that by lateral moves or cross-functional moves.

It’s not just about fulfilling employee expectations and desires. We also encourage people to move across functions because that integrates the organisation. For example, when someone moves from marketing to sales, then the sales team gets more insights into the marketing function.

Q We understand LEGO Group is consolidating its transactional finance and HR services into a global shared services function. How do you plan to manage the change?

What we’re establishing is a shared services centre – where from HR, we would have things like payroll, training, administration, master data for employees and so on. That gives us the opportunity to excel at both the HR and the services part.

We are establishing three hubs – we call them business service operations (BSO) – in Mexico, Czech Republic and Singapore.

This will give us critical mass, meaning that instead of having small teams spread around the world with few people, now we have big teams. That implies, you’re not the only payroll specialist, you’ll have a team of 10-15 around you, which will give you more career opportunities and functional sparring with domain experts – we believe that will bring great improvement to processes.

Obviously it is a change management challenge because establishing three BSOs means we’re going from more than 10 locations to three. We’ve had some redundancies and also succeeded in redeploying most employees. We’re trying very hard to offer jobs to the remaining employees who are affected by this.

Q What policies do you have to help employees cope with this change?

We have equipped HR and leaders to have the right dialogue around this to support their employees, and external consultants help both the employee and leader cope with the change. We have also put into

place career counselling and outplacement services consultants which help employees significantly in finding new opportunities.

When communicating change, we always do it in an organised and transparent way sharing a lot and very early on.

Q What people challenges do you think this centre might pose?

The natural challenge for a shared services centre is to support the markets without having proximity to them. The Singapore team will support APAC, but it will also be supporting the global hubs. We might run the payroll for Africa and the Middle East from here, and the lack of proximity will be a challenge we have to deal with.

What I would like to emphasise is that many companies have implemented shared services for the common purpose of efficiency and saving costs, but that’s not why we’re doing it. We’re doing it to improve effectiveness, to make sure we have solid processes in place so that it won’t be a bottleneck in our growth strategy. We know we will grow a lot in the next few years and we need to have solid processes to be able to support that.

Q Tell us more about our recently implemented activity based working.

We have a strategic ambition of globalising the LEGO company and the LEGO System in Play, and in that, we have formed a hub strategy. The hub strategy is about

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Jesper Petersen « PROFILE identifying four different hubs around the world, with Singapore being one of them, and the others in London, Shanghai and just outside of Boston. In the hubs we want global functions, regional functions, as well as local functions. We want diversity, not just in sales or production, but in functions, people, levels and leadership and so forth.

It really needs to be a lively and vibrant environment, so that as an employee, you get the feeling you are representing the entire company.

We put in place activity based working to support this. It started out with the leadership team calling out the behaviours we wanted to embed. From that, we worked backwards to say that if these are the behaviours we want, how are we going to instil those? Then we tapped into the research on activity based working.

What we wanted to achieve is more collaboration, coherence and simplicity across the organisation, and all of that is to deliver scalability and adaptability. We came up with eight zones in the office that will give all employees an opportunity to work in a zone that fits the task or the activity they are doing, and their individual preference. We believe that it’s part of

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building a lively environment, and people are more productive and have more freedom in this environment.

When we made this decision as a leadership team, the first thing we decided was no exceptions, regardless of seniority.

Now, no one has their own office or desk.

You choose a desk that fits the activity or the mood you’re in today. At LEGO, we have the necessary levels of hierarchy, but we never use hierarchy in differentiating between employees and teams.

Q Have you seen any changes in engagement rates or communication?

Our old office was a classic office with teams sitting together. We realised that the physical layout was not an enabler of collaboration, but more of an enabler of silo thinking. We realised that using a different approach would be an enabler of collaboration. Four-and-a-half months into this, and our annual employee engagement survey has reflected a solid increase. We also know from frequent staff dialogues that it has had a positive impact.

Q How did you manage this behavioural shift?

The change programme started about a year ago, and the communication started six to seven months before we moved in. We decided to communicate it early because we thought it was a significant change, and not just a facility or a structural change. This is a change that would disrupt their behaviours, common patterns and habits. We were met with excitement and resistance, which was not a surprise to us. We did some workshops where we role modelled the behaviours.

From a leadership point of view we shared our own stories. In a transparent way, we shared our concerns about this.

We also had games using a mock-up of the office, with scenarios such as “now you need to call an employee in Japan, where should you be” and got them to move the pieces into the various zones. From the resistance phase, we moved to somewhat of an acceptance with people starting to be proud of what we were doing – being frontrunners in this concept.

What is important in managing behavourial change is that it needs to be sustained. If we don’t sustain it through regular interventions, people will just move back to their old habits.

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FEATURE » HR Technology 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.

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 workshopping 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.

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FEATURE » HR Technology

“To ensure we had the buy-in from our HR partners, we included them in every significant step. From helping define the types of candidate we should be speaking to, to work-shopping messaging, and ultimately, approving the final versions before activating.”

– Chris Major, head of recruitment marketing at Philips Electronics Singapore

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 5 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: After spending a considerable amount of time and money to hire the right candidate, it is important to have the right technology in place to help turn that person into a productive, contributing employee 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: Often, enterprise systems are hard to configure and even harder to 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.

Enabling a more data-driven business: The costs and delays associated with third party business intelligence (BI) tools and data warehouses should, largely, be a thing of the past. BI must be easily accessible and integrated to HR processes, which requires an HR system with built-in, real-time analytics and reporting.

Support for business change: Companies are always re-organising and modern HR technology must be flexible enough to support this type of business change without breaking business-specific processes; analytics and reporting, or; role and security profi les – efficient companies are to constrained by the systems in these regards.

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

DIGITAL HR – THE NEW-AGE ‘OPTIMUS PRIME’ OF EVERY ORGANISATION The world has witnessed many disruptions – from the commercial and industrial revolutions to the renaissance. However, the digital revolution takes the top spot for ushering in one of the most seemingly unobtrusive, yet disruptive changes of all times, as it continues to transform every aspect of human life in perpetuity. With people seeking comfort and ease of access more than ever before, business organisations are also transforming the way they work in the wake of the digital explosion.

Many digital disruptions have redefined “work” in terms of flexibility, virtual access from anywhere, anytime, and perennially evolving, scalable and integrated work environments. Organisations, especially HR functions, are moving into the ondemand era of “Uberisation”. The need for immediate resolutions, assessments and data is constantly pushing all boundaries of HR’s responsibilities from recruitment to employee engagement, paving the way for digital HR. What are the attributes of digital HR? Here are a few examples: 1. Mobility: With organisational functions enabling anytime, anywhere access to employees, HR systems are also embracing mobile-enabled technologies.

Many organisations are encouraging a BYOD culture; hence, most HR operations now incorporate multiple mobile-based functionalities (for example, leave application from smartphones and mobile-based employee induction).

Mobility is indeed becoming the brand ambassador of digital HR. 2. Context-aware automation: Cognitive, context-aware automated interactions with employees is an exciting futuristic digital HR scenario that opens up imagery of robotics. However, the level of cognitive automation facilitated by digital HR aims at tasks as granular as:

5. Cloud-based HR: With an increasingly diverse workforce creating boundaryless workplaces across the world, the HR IT landscape gains immensely from cloud-based solutions. Unlike legacy systems, end-to-end cloud-based HR systems are easily scalable, well integrated and easy to use, seamlessly linking multiple HR functions such as workforce planning, payroll, talent strategy, contingent workforce management and performance management.

The list goes on, but the bottom line is the customer is the heart of an organisation, driving every transformation from outside, but HR is the circulatory system of the organisation, ensuring that every employee is empowered to provide a delightful customer experience. Digitally enabling this core function of the organisation will exponentially augment its ability to inspire the global workforce to ride any wave of disruption with confidence. Welcome to the world of digital HR!

This article is contributed by Ranjan Tayal chief executive officer – HCM business

• Automation of routine activities (for example, personal employee-level document access).

• Usage patterns to suggest useful options.

• Map training requirement, and even support in talent strategy.

Apart from these examples, digital HR can even navigate tasks as complex as context-aware software studying, among other routine activities.

3. Data analytics: Do you know when your best employee is planning to leave the company? Finding good employees is tough. Retaining them is even tougher.

New generation HR data analytics aid you with employee insights that are unlike legacy systems. This information is key for making strategic and wellinformed decisions.

4. Globalisation of workplaces: Work environments are undergoing immense transformations owing to geographically distributed workforces and a changing work culture such as self-inspired teams, passion-driven team players and the buddy culture. These are the driving forces behind the multi-generation, multi-cultural, multi-national workforce in any organisation. Digital HR aims to account for this contemporary shift in work culture with a common platform of easy-to-access HR systems so that every employee from across the globe feels a sense of equal belonging with the organisation.

Ramco Systems, part of the US$1 billion Ramco Group of companies, is one of the fastest growing enterprise software players disrupting the market with its multi-tenanted cloud and mobile-based enterprise software for HR and global payroll (compliant across 40+ countries).

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FEATURE » Further Education

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In today’s excessively tumultuous economic climate, sending employees for further development has become a rising trend among corporations worldwide. But as firms struggle with rising costs, and as leaders struggle between spending time on such courses and managing heavy workloads, it remains yet to be seen if investing in such programmes is worthwhile.

Akankasha Dewan examines the true value of professional development in the current corporate landscape.

he HR leader looking for providing his executives with further education programmes for their professional development today faces something of a dilemma.

On the one hand, pushing leaders to enhance their professional skills is key because managing can be particularly difficult in an uncertain recovery, especially as global businesses prove more vulnerable to all sorts of political and economic setbacks.

“Our new-age leaders, senior managers and high potentials face many new challenges and ever-changing scenarios in this interconnected and fast-paced world,” says Hari Menon, vicepresident of HR for Asia Pacific at Alstom Transport.

Apart from aligning oneself with the values of the company and being ethical in business dealings, he explains a new key skill to have today is the “ability/skill to adapt to change”.

“In this competitive world, we also need leaders with innovative

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FEATURE » Further Education ideas, we need leaders who are willing to take risks, and at the same time, inspire, motivate and drive action.

“New-age leaders have to build new strategic partnerships to address global challenges and grow organically and inorganically. Therefore, in my opinion, new-age leaders need to incorporate skills in business that are more in the realm of psychology and cognitive science.”

On the other hand, many companies are still in a budget-cutting mood, and every extra dollar spent for such training has to be justified.

With budgets being slashed from one quarter to the next, executives must consider more strongly than ever the potential value of not only further education courses, but also professional development sessions.

Will such opportunities for technical and/ or behavioural development make employees better leaders?

Dealing with the tides of change The answer, perhaps, is less complex than it appears, according to senior practitioners of the learning industry – such as Cindy Dermawan, head of talent and learning management, diversity and inclusion, at Citi Singapore.

“Professional development courses will always be important, as they are quite relevant for us and will always be for any professional in the corporate environment.”

Her views seem to resonate with many professionals in Singapore, who have repeatedly

shown they are willing to enhance their professional skills.

According to a 2013 report by JobsCentral, 82.7% of 8,367 respondents said they were keen on pursuing further education – up from 71.5% in 2012. Th is is also the highest percentage since the survey began in 2009.

A majority (86.5%) of those who intend to return to school said they wanted to do it to advance their careers.

Menon adds the issue isn’t simply a question of being handed a new toolkit or method for making decisions.

Instead, the fi rm must also consider the long-term effect of its employees’ capabilities to lead the company in the right direction.

“Professional development is a life-long process. They are defi nitely a way to develop employees as long as they offer a blended learning and are not limited to classroom/ theoretical inputs,” Menon says “It is indeed worthwhile for organisations to send/sponsor employees for such a course based on the return on investment expected and considering the performance and potential of the employee.”

For Cynthia Lee Mai, head of APJ talent management at HP Inc, enhancing professional skills – be they academic or behavioural – are important because they help in dealing with the only constant element in the corporate landscape today – change.

“I think we all agree the economy is today moving really fast, and that things are changing really fast.

“In a volatile, complex and uncertain world, we fi nd that leaders need to do much more than what they had to do. So the learning agility to meet the pace of change needs to be there.”

Providing an external perspective

Painting a vision for growth: Professional development courses help leaders to take charge of their careers.

In such a situation, professional development courses become key in helping leaders, and by extension, their employees, deal with the tsunami caused by the tides of change.

But Laszlo Reisch, head of people and leadership, Asia Pacific at Siemens Healthcare, warns, however, that such courses are “worth it” only “if there is a chance to apply the learning in a particular business and industry context”.

“The benefit of utilising external professional courses is that they help to bring in the outside perspective and allow our employees to form

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Further Education « FEATURE networks outside of our own organisation,” he adds.

Dermawan reiterates the value of external professional development courses providing different viewpoints, especially for leaders.

“We believe that our senior managers are already quite technically proficient in their jobs. We don’t normally send them for technical skills development, but more for honing their leadership skills,” she says.

“Sending these leaders on external courses helps in expanding their perspectives because they will be sitting in an interactive learning environment with CEOs of other industries. We believe this will give them more opportunities for cultivating their leadership styles and connecting with other senior thought leaders.

It is good for them to gain insights into what the other industries are doing.”

Dermawan adds the company provides internal programmes for leadership skills for everyone – ranging from an invidual contributor to someone of a CEO level.

“All our training programmes are aligned to Citi’s leadership standards and for C-level executives, we have our internal global leadership programmes which area vailableacross the globe.

She explains that in terms of professional development, her fi rm sends “employees for courses on skills such as project management, communication skills. Those are available for everyone at Citi, based on individual employee’s development needs”.

Additionally, the company partners with universities such as NUS, SMU, where it sends senior leaders for leadership courses that are fully sponsored by Citi.

“On top of this, we also ask employees to own their career and take charge of their professional aspirations, to know their personal strengths and identify their learning gaps, and have a conversation with their managers.

During the conversation, managers and employees will have to align the development needs of the employees with the agreed succession plan as well as the company’s business goals.”

Similarly, Mai explains how HP also has a mix of internal and external programmes to offer employees.

“Internally, we have always had a degree assistance programme – which is actually more of a benefit than a L&D initiative. We encourage

staff to further studies in topics of areas that will help them in their job scope. The company will support and sponsor them as they get an external degree,” she says.

“At the same time we also have a developmental programme where we partner with universities to execute programmes.

“There is a well-acclaimed programme by HP called building innovative leaders. Th is is a talent development programme, which we conduct in partnership with Stanford University. The curriculum for this programme is around helping leaders to build innovative cultures within their teams. Th is obviously is a very prestigious and popular programme within our company.”

She explains the fi rm selects high-potential leaders to be part of this global programme, adding neither of the courses are mandatory, “as at the end of the day, you want to train someone who actually wants to be developed”.

Providing employees with the ability to manage their own careers Mai’s point emphasises on the important basis on which the entire concept of professional development rests – which is the innate desire to develop and learn further.

In fact, attending courses for further development allows employees to take more ownership of their own careers.

“Leaders need to manage their own careers and in order to manage their own careers they need to know what they want from their career, and how they are going to get it.

“Self-awareness helps leaders to not only go where they want to go in terms of their career, but also to help them in their day-day interactions to influence their key stakeholders.

I fi nd that more successful leaders are the ones who have the self-awareness of what they can do better.”

And this self-awareness and drive to take charge of one’s own career through active professional development is also brought into light when leaders have to manage their learning schedules along with their daily corporate tasks and responsibilities.

When asked what tips bosses should give staff who are studying/learning and working simultaneously, Menon says “the magic wand of career growth is fi rst in their own hands”.

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FEATURE » Further Education personal leave, there are many ways to balance work schedules and professional development.

“People managers should sit with their employees periodically and discuss professional growth and development in a personal and business context.”

Once leaders have the employee buy-in, results locked and business needs established, he explains HR should then let the employee come up with their own proposal on how to best manage the work schedule during this period.

“A periodic check on how the employee is progressing on his executive education and feedback on how the team’s coping with work could be worthwhile,” he says.

“Self-awareness helps leaders to not only go where they want to go in terms of their career, but also in their day-day interactions to influence their key stakeholders.”

– Cynthia Lee Mai, head of APJ talent management at HP Inc

While concurring with Menon, Dermawan states that for employees who are fulfi lling corporate responsibilities and spending time on learning programmes – managing internal communication becomes key.

“Even without training, at Citi, our employees are already juggling many portfolios. So whenever our leaders are attending external development programmes – and they have to travel or be out for 2 days in one country and 2 days in another – we focus on good employee-manager communication and support systems.

“Typically, these leaders are quite senior and are already at the top of their game so they would be able to manage their work and training commitments well. But what we do is to ensure that we have a conversation with all the key stakeholders involved in the process as well as the employees who will actually be attending the course. We talk about the expectations of the training sessions and how they are going to juggle all their portfolios while they are away.”

“Along the way, we have continuous conversations between the employees who are away and their team members. We check in with them to ensure that they are coping well

and that their performance during the affected period will not be impacted. So it is all about proper communication.”

Providing a collaborative environment Menon’s and Dermawan’s views point to perhaps one of the most far-reaching consequences of further development today – which is the impact it has on not only the employees who attend such courses, but also their team.

“Let the employee participate in the education course fully. See this as an opportunity to learn about trends and activities outside your own organisation,” Reisch says.

These benefits can also be seen via how HR leaders track the effectiveness of their professional development programmes.

“For all the courses we have, we have several levels of assessments which track not only how well it has impacted the individual, but also how the learnings have benefited the rest of the team,” Dermawan explains.

“Some examples of how we measure ROI for our training courses include employee engagement, retention, and the performance of the attendee and the team.”

Enabling such collaboration is something which Menon feels is useful because facilitating collaboration is, ultimately, a key trait of the entire learning and development function.

“A key challenge with proving the ROI of a professional development course is the lack of interaction between learning and development staff, the HR business partners and business leaders, which should be remedied on all sides.

“Progressive fi rms engage in a people to business conversation between the L&D managers and the business leaders during need identification, selection of curriculum, enrolment of employees, and after attendance to such a course, with a follow up discussion after the course ends.

“The measures should be agreed with the business well before the programme starts and can involve HR, L&D, line managers and business leaders.”

With their ability to have teams collaborate together, provide employees with selfawareness of their own career growth, and leverage their potential in the current climate of change, it can be concluded the value of professional development courses has only, essentially, increased over time.

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Exclusive highlights and photos of Workforce Mobility Interactive 2016, Singapore Held at Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore’s leading conference on talent mobility and expatriation featured insightful keynotes, dynamic panels, and exciting interactive sessions, reports Jerene Ang.

With more companies

leveraging on global mobility to fill skill gaps and develop talent, it has become increasingly challenging for the mobility function to meet candidates’ demands while keeping costs low.

That was why Workforce Mobility Interactive 2016, organised by Human Resources, invited HR and mobility experts to discuss the latest challenges in mobility as well as share possible

solutions to overcome these challenges, held on the 26th of February at Shangri-La, Singapore.

Inaugurating the conference was Richard Willeter, director of corporate services for Asia at Crown World Mobility, with his take on disruption in the mobility function, and ideas on how organisations can prime themselves for success.

“If we are moving into a more strategic place, we’ve got a problem, mobility managers are

already having problems analysing all their data,” he said.

“With the function getting more strategic, there’s only going to be more data and we’ll get lost in a fog of data.”

He went on to provide tips for navigating this fog of data.

One of the key challenges for mobility professionals – facilitating cost reduction

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in mobility programmes while dealing with increasing employee demands – was addressed in a panel discussion. This was moderated by Ian Johnson, SVP of client development at Brookfield Global Relocation Services.

Joining him on the panel were Rita Chye, global lead for policy and administration of global mobility at General Motors Company; Tarun Gulrajani, head of HR for Asia Pacific at REHAU; and Peng Yang Long, the client solution manager for Asia at AIRINC. Long pointed out: “No longer is the discussion about how much money assignees are going to make from this assignment. They are now asking about how this will affect their career.”

Another key challenge for mobility practitioners is convincing employees with schooling children to relocate for an assignment.

To address this challenge was Dr Margaret Alvarez, head of school at ISS International School, who gave a keynote presentation on how mobility managers can convince these parents by helping them in finding the right schooling options for their children when moving to Singapore.

“Globally, mobile students are perpetual outsiders, most of them were born in one nation, raised in others, and flung into global jet streams.

Having said that, being an expat gives them opportunities to learn different languages and make connections.”

While relocating these employees, it is crucial for organisations to maintain compliance with global immigration law changes. With inspections and immigration audits on the rise, Stephen Park, head of global mobility at Fonterra, took the stage with his recommendations on how to keep up to date with these law changes.

Park reminded the delegates: “Immigration generally involves a government department, which creates a reputational risk in terms of your organisation’s relationship with the government.”

Another issue which the conference addressed was on developing local candidates through corporate mobility.

While it is good to relocate employees to fill certain skill gaps in the local workforce, it is also essential that organisations develop these skills locally and build up their local leadership pipeline.

This is increasingly important in the current economic times when more governments are taking a “local first” approach.

This issue was addressed in a panel discussion moderated by Human Resources’ Aditi Sharma Kalra. On the panel were Tarun Gulrajani, head of HR for Asia Pacific at REHAU; Raghu Ram,

global head of HR for the specialities business at Shell; and Makarand Tare, regional talent director for APAC at McCann Health.

Setting the context, Gulrajani pointed out: “There are two aspects to this discussion, one is the skills gap and the other is the development of talent. A lot of companies are looking more at the skills gap. But we have to look at the development and how we can bridge the skills gap using local talent.”

Ram, and the panelists, provided one solution to the skills transfer issue.

“Any expat who comes in must have a goalsetting process as part of which, at the end of the assignment, they have to train a local. To make this a reality, it is necessary for companies to hire graduates and local pipeline leaders.”

Additionally, Tare pointed out a challenge mobility professionals were facing: “Who is going to take the responsibility to integrate the expat into the host team? There has to be someone to take responsibility of this, track results and to give reviews.”

Apart from the action on stage, delegates were involved in five interactive sessions where they exchanged ideas and shared insights on various aspects of mobility strategies. A rapid fire session was held to wrap up the event as a host from each table presented to delegates the major points they had summed up throughout the day.

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OPINION » Learning & development

Why this firm has an average employee tenure of 10 years CHONG SWEE LIAN HR head Tollyjoy Baby Products

Treating employees with respect, and working around their needs was the secret to boosting happiness of staff.

We see the importance of having flexible HR management to achieve a happy workforce and believe in the saying “a happy worker is a more productive worker”. This can be seen in the way employees and managers manage their working time with the flexible work hours.

When any of our staff have a genuine request to take a leave of absence at any point in time of the day to attend to matters relating to their family, we allow them to do so.

The option to work from home is another HR tool that we use to keep our employees continually engaged.

Keeping up with the times: Over time, firms have to let go and alter old work practices to fulfill needs of the present workforce.

Competent and diligent employees form the very foundation of any enterprise. They not only help define and shape the organisation, but also help to mould its character and personality.

Every individual in the firm from a janitor to the CEO must have mutual respect. It’s a simple theory based on the golden rule: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.”

If you embrace this philosophy, the HR policies you craft for a firm are more likely to be attractive and well-thought through.

Signs of true loyalty At Tollyjoy, we have about 200 people working with us across our organisation regionally. The reality is that we’ve had very little staff movement over the years.

Our longest serving staff have worked with us for well over 40 years now and there are 15% of 25-year stayers, 18% of 20-year stayers and 25% of 15-year stayers. On an average, employees have stayed more than 10 years.

Apart from the government’s mandatory HR policies that form the basis of our HR practices, we have over the years had a gradual inclusion of best practices based on employees’ feedback and how society in general has evolved over time.

Implementing flexible and from-home working The additional HR practices include flexible work hours and work from home options.

Challenges in the implementation The implementation of the above policies was welcomed, but took some time for everyone to get used to. First, we had to overcome the age-old idea that an employee has to be physically present in order to do their work effectively. Then the notion that employees are always finding ways to do less for more. Finally, embracing technology as an enabler rather than an obstacle.

Essentially, these challenges had to do with management rather than the employees. The company must first be able to overcome any existing bias towards such work practices in order to allow such programmes to be offered to their employees.

As for embracing technology, fortunately for Tollyjoy, it is now a widespread phenomenon as compared with decades ago.

The concept of employees having to be physically present in order to accomplish their work is also no longer valid in this day and age where technology has now given us the tools to bridge time and space.

As long as given assignments/objectives are accomplished in the time frame given, our company is more than willing to accommodate employees’ requests in order to have a pro-family approach by HR management towards employees.

We had to overcome the age-old idea that an employee has to be physically present in order to do their work effectively.

Over the years we have seen just about 3% of our staff leaving the organisation and returning to work at Tollyjoy after a few years.

This is a clear testament to our organisation’s pro-family culture and inclusive working environment.

We are grateful to have such wonderful and loyal employees who have been through thick and thin together, and we couldn’t ask for more.

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»

People issues OPINION

Crossing the performance checkpoint IBM reveals how it plans to roll out a new performance management system based on staff input.

GEORGE AVERY Director of people operations and culture IBM Asia Pacific, global business services

In February 2016, IBM showed the door to our 10-year-old performance management system, which asked employees to set their goals for the year in January, schedule a mid-year check-in, and then receive a single performance score in December.

To revamp the performance review system, we turned to our 380,000 employees to crowdsource the process, garnering 75,000 views and 2,000 comments. The new appbased performance review system called Checkpoint went live on 8 February, 2016 helping employees set shorter term goals, and managers providing feedback at least every quarter.

Immediate impact of the launch The unique thing about this system is it was crowdsourced which was really different from how we have done things in the past. Most other companies would do something at a global level and then go out and say – this is what it is.

Our different approach was a very positive signal.

We had a basic construct and ideas in mind, and we put these up online for everyone to share their views on the process, ratings, frequency, etc.

What the launch meant for us was that we were coming out of 2015 under an old system, and everyone knew this new system was coming. We are doing a lot of manager training, materials are being sent out, and our business leaders are drawing a significant amount of awareness to this because they see the benefits in two ways.

One is we are going to have more frequent discussions.

In the past, one of the main issues was, in our industry, setting goals at the beginning of the year – and many of those things may have changed by May-June because the business changes so quickly.

The first thing is we are going to have a shorter window of 90 days or so for having a discussion. That enables us to be very nimble and agile in terms of goal-setting.

Another thing, from an employee’s standpoint, is they can understand shorter, more tangible goals – what steps they need to take in the next 30-90 days to achieve what they have to.

The second benefit the leaders see is in broadening the areas in which people will be assessed to five – business results, impact on client success, innovation, personal responsibility to others, and skills. So in a year where the business is going through a transition, people are going to continue to be very engaged with clients – which enables us to drive the right behaviours.

Support for line managers With any global roll out, there is a decent amount of

Laying it all out on the table: A more frequent, and transparent review process is what IBM believes will help staff in performing better.

communication. In early February, managers started receiving specific notes highlighting the launch, and asking them to understand more about it through training sessions. A section of our intranet can be viewed through one’s personal computer or mobile device, and that hosts a large number of materials.

Second, in a lot of our locations, we are getting folks to gather and discuss a broader view about the launch.

Third, within the consulting practice here, until about March, we set up broader intensive face-to-face training. Because it is such an important thing, we want to reinforce it. People will be able to read a little bit on their own, and can interact with different professionals to get more input. Then they will engage their employees in more frequent discussions.

In this first cycle, we are all going to learn a lot and be supportive, and collect feedback on what we need to do in the next round. For the managers, the five categories we are calling out are already covered in most cases, but this system makes sure people know exactly what is expected.

As this evolves to a more informal and frequent process, the key thing is for everyone to speak the same language.

With the new mechanism we have started, although we’re bringing down the 12-month cycle to a minimum quarterly cycle – we expect to see roles that are project-based or involve client meetings, and there may be a conversation after every project.

It is really up to the role to adapt.

The other thing is this used to be a manager-driven activity, and what we’re seeing is that it will now be an employee-driven activity as well. So that’s a huge culture shift.

It represents a significant shift away from the old, and hopefully everyone feels like it’s a shift for the better.

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OPINION » Unconventional wisdom

How Sanofi is empowering women in the workplace JULIE ZHOU HR vice-president, Sanofi Asia

Initiatives such as the CATALYST programme encourage female staff to be more self-aware of their potential, boosting confidence.

Rising up the ranks: Sanofi’s women initiative led to 24% of females being promoted.

Women leadership development makes Sanofi a better place by

promoting gender balance and driving a culture of diversity.

We are aware companies with a higher proportion of women in their management perform better.

The war for talent is of particular concern in Asia, where a failure to recruit and retain able women can only exacerbate the acute talent shortage that many companies operating there face.

Currently, a need for such development is definitely present, as seen both from tangible and intangible types of data. For example, our total population is very evenly allocated between male and female. Same when we look at the managerial level.

However, this figure changes dramatically as we go higher up the hierarchy: less than 15% of our senior vice-presidents and general managers are women in Sanofi APAC. The root causes of this, at least in Asia, are that I feel women between the ages of 35-45 do not get the right amount of social, corporate and spousal support to work. This is mainly because a majority of women are the busiest during this period – with their children in school and old parents to support.

The second root cause of this is there’s no trustworthy community for them to get such support from, or role models for them to look up to. This includes a coach or mentor who can give you insights on how to manage your personal and professional life simultaneously.

The last root cause is around women’s own self-awareness and education. We find women often limit their career aspirations due to several reasons – be it self-inflicted or socially induced.

Women today cannot overcome these root causes by themselves. They need to – at a corporate level – have a team who believes in and has a sincere interest in developing more successful women.

This is why Sanofi’s programme to support women involves leading them on a journey of self and career development, building greater self-knowledge, identifying their personal leadership brand, enhancing their professional presence, and including world-class assessments and tools.

Our mission is to create a Sanofi with an excellent gender balance, and inculcate an environment and culture which can support our women employees to help them and our business to grow.

Initiatives to do these things are led by a regional women leadership council, comprising of 16 passionate men and women. These members represent the different countries and business activities of Sanofi Asia Pacific and they sponsor initiatives that are deployed locally – depending on each country’s economical/historical/sociological situation.

Because we have very diverse issues to tackle in each geographical location, a local network has also been set up to roll out local initiatives with more efficiency.

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»

Unconventional wisdom OPINION

At a regional level, the main initiatives we have introduced are the catalyst programme, a work-life flexibility system, and mentoring opportunities.

The catalyst programme is a three-day women leadership programme targeting high potential women. Set up by the women leadership council, the programme was launched in March 2015 with sponsorship by Jean-Luc Lowinski and in partnership with Korn Ferry Institute.

Over the next three years, 200 women will be invited to attend this three-day immersion programme.

The programme aims to help women overcome the barriers to their careers and helps in building self awareness and confidence. It also helps in enhancing their influence, enabling them to become politically savvy and aiding them in building their executive presence.

Additionally, the programme also trains women on how to navigate organisational cultures and dynamics, and how to communicate effectively for high impact. As a result, through the programme, the company is able to enrich and strengthen its talent pipeline.

The programme works through a train-the-trainer approach.

Certified Sanofi business leaders function as in-house facilitators and help in building internal mentorship capabilities. The programme also allows participants to have open dialogue sessions with male and female leaders, along with helping to create role models.

Interestingly, the catalyst programme does not constitute solely of classroom training. The first day of the programme is about exploring yourself and who you are. Regardless of the challenges they’re facing, we teach our women leaders that they need to know how to manage various types of barriers. There’s a lot of storytelling and sharing of personal experiences and about embarking on a self-journey.

On the second day of the programme, we focus more on the corporate culture we provide in the company, and whether it is suited to our staff’s potential. Through a self-development tool, we analyse participants and explore three different dimensions of their confidence.

The first type of confidence is called technical career domain confidence, which mainly explores their technical competencies. For example, if a participant is in the HR division, how well does he or she think they are performing in the function. The second type of confidence we assess is called relationship and networking confidence, and the third one is how politically savvy our women leaders are.

Interestingly, we have observed women will assess themselves very strongly on the technical confidence and professional area. However, they are less confident in being politically savvy.

To overcome this, we share with our participants videos of the most successful women in the world, and through these, demonstrate real-life case studies on how to leverage on their position and power in the organisation. We also discuss with these women on how they can create a stronger impact in a matrix organisation.

On the last day, we discuss with participants what they are

“Sanofi’s programme to support women involves leading them on a journey of self and career development, building greater self-knowledge, identifying their personal leadership brand, enhancing their professional presence, and including world-class assessments and tools.” planning to do after this training, and the key takeaways they’ve learnt. We explore what is the next step in their career, and how they plan to get there. We also share with them more about Sanofi’s performance management process.

The feedback we have gained about this programme has been phenomenal. Sixty women have already attended this programme in 2015, and 100% stated they would recommend this programme to their colleagues. The overall satisfaction rate is 4.9/5.

Additionally, since their participation in the catalyst programme, 24% of women have been promoted.

We also have in place flexible work arrangements for staff to support their needs.

Flexible work arrangements refer to work arrangements which provide greater flexibility in the workplace, the scheduling of hours worked and the number of hours worked. These flexible work arrangements aim to give employees control over where and when work gets done, as well as the time they choose to work.

There is a lot of misconception around work-life flexibility, as business leaders traditionally find that they want staff to be physically working in front of them. We need to get them to be aware of the fact that productivity has nothing to do with worklife balance or flexible working.

If you have highly motivated employees, they will find a way to deliver the result – and this might not necessarily be done by staying in the office. At the end of the day, it’s about the outcome and results you have achieved, and not about the number of hours you have spent in the office.

Employers need to be realistic – you cannot have everyone walking in at 11 am and going home at 4 pm. You need to empower business leaders to make their own decisions and rules regarding workplace flexibility.

HR’s role in this is to provide boundaries as well as clear guidelines. But instead of providing them rigid instructions, we work together through open dialogue and education sessions.

We have sessions with line managers where we give them successful examples of flexible working and ask them to give it a try.

Diversity in Sanofi, essentially, isn’t just an HR agenda, it is a business agenda.

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OPINION » Upwardly mobile

The C&B policy which led to a 87% satisfaction rate GEORGE KHANG HR director ABWIN

Intense job evaluations and competitive salary benchmarking surveys were just a few tools ABWIN utilised to prepare a competitive pay package for its staff.

As a one-stop service provider in the pre-owned

automotive industry, one of ABWIN’s key challenges is establishing a balanced compensation structure and incentive plan to motivate our sales force to achieve their goals in an increasingly tough business environment.

To support ABWIN’s growth strategy, our senior management recently made a conscious decision to review the HR strategy and build our human capital capability, including establishing a dedicated HR team.

Our HR team’s goal is to serve as a strategic partner supporting ABWIN as an employer of choice by attracting, cultivating and enhancing great people with great passion, working for a great purpose.

To achieve these goals, we implemented various programmes such as a market competitive compensation benefits structure, flexi-work arrangements, and a range of staff welfare programmes in 2015.

As part of the new C&B structure, before salary benchmarking, we conducted a job evaluation to identify the relative job sizes and classified the various job titles into key job bands.

Eleven job levels were identified, enabling us to ensure internal equity and develop appropriate career progression pathways for employees.

Thereafter, we decided to peg our salary position at 50th percentile of the industry to balance between maintaining a fixed manpower cost and paying to market, and benchmarked our salary using various sources, including the Ministry of Manpower’s occupational wage survey and the National Wage Council’s guidelines of a 1.5 to 1.7 range spread.

Based on that, we developed a salary structure comprising 14 salary bands, with each band having a salary range, and roles within each band were established based on job requirements.

As part of the implementation of the salary structure, ABWIN conducted a placement exercise and identified individuals whose salaries would be impacted, and conducted a salary adjustment as part of the annual salary review process.

In addition to providing a market competitive basic salary, ABWIN believes in sharing its profits via performance-based bonuses for non-sales staff and commissions for sales staff in addition to the profit-sharing scheme.

Additionally, we reviewed our benefits scheme to include benefits such as an employee referral scheme and flexible work arrangements in an effort to attract more talent.

The employee referral scheme rewards employees with $1,000 and $2,000 for successful recruitment of non-sales and

Presenting the perfect platter: ABWIN's strategy was to provide staff with a mix of attractive pay packages, and conducive flexi-work arrangements.

sales employees respectively. This enables us to source for suitable candidates within a shorter time.

Recognising the importance of work flexibility to staff, last year we introduced our flexi-work arrangements which comprised of flexi-hour, flexi-place,and flexi-timing, which allows employees to allocate their daily working hours as long as they meet an average of 42.5 working hours per week within a month.

As a result of these changes, 92.31% of employees had an increase in job satisfaction and 87.18% were highly satisfied with ABWIN’s C&B package, leading to a decrease in turnover rates from 21% in 2014 to pro rated 7.8% in 2015. The competitive salary structure also enabled us to better attract and recruit quality and experienced candidates.

With the help of the referral scheme, ABWIN experienced a 18% to 27% cost savings as well as reduced the time to fill positions from 40 to 14 days on average.

In the future, due to a diverse workforce, we have to continue making benefits more differentiated to cater to these diverse needs.

Knowing that Millennials value recognition for their efforts and contribution, we plan to constantly review our performance management system to provide greater clarity and transparency of the linkage between the achievement of goals and rewards and recognition.

Additionally, we will work towards balancing tangible and intangible rewards and recognition to engage the workforce.

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Personal development « CAREERS

uptheranks Tracking HR’s industry moves Who: Nicholas Dhillon From: Head of talent acquisition for Malaysia and Singapore; and HR NCE champion, Nestlé To: HR business partner for commercial businesses in Malaysia and Singapore; and HR NCE champion, Nestlé Nestlé has promoted Nicholas Dhillon to the role of HR business partner for commercial businesses in the Malaysia and Singapore market, effective January 2016.

He continues to be based in Malaysia and will report to Uzma Qaiser Butt, the HR director at Nestlé Malaysia and Singapore. He was previously the head of talent acquisition for the market since February 2014, responsible for recruitment, employer branding and graduate and internship programmes.

In the new role, he continues to wear the dual hat of being the HR NCE champion (NCE stands for Nestlé Continuous Excellence), where his mission is to find more efficient ways of work, and plug those practices back to achieve business excellence.

Apart from this, in his new role as HRBP, he is responsible for driving the people agenda by working with the respective heads of the commercial businesses in meeting business goals.

“That is precisely how I look at HR – ways of rewarding people, how to select talent both internally and externally, and how to develop performance,” he told Human Resources.

Who: Valerie Hayden From: Regional head of HR for Asia Pacific, Dentsu Aegis Network To: HR director for Asia, industrial, Coats Valerie Hayden has been appointed HR director for Asia, industrial, at Coats. She will also become a member of the Asia leadership team and the industrial leadership team.

The appointment, effective January 2016, sees Hayden reporting to Ashok Mathur, chief operating officer for Asia Industrial, who is based in Bangalore, India, while Hayden is based in Singapore.

In a conversation with Human Resources, she confirmed she was working on all aspects of HR to help support the growth of Coats’ industrial business in Asia.

“This includes HR leadership and advice on talent management, performance management, engagement, recruitment and rewards,” she said.

Hayden, currently in “learning mode”, says her priority at the moment is “meeting new colleagues as well as gaining a more detailed understanding of the strategy and plans for Coats in Asia”.

personalgrowth LOSING THE BATTLE IN COMMUNICATION Anthony Wong weighs in on recent labour debates with a possible solution spearheaded by HR. One of the biggest news items in global job markets in the past few months was HSBC’s decision to freeze pay for global staff across all rankings.

The announcement made a few days before the Chinese New Year left staff angry and shocked.

Hang Seng Bank, a subsidiary of HSBC, which employs 8,500 people in Hong Kong, was exceptionally offended by the arrangement. Staff were expecting a reward after a positive year, but were instead hit with a pay freeze.

To express their anger, staff started a work-to-rule action which meant leaving work at 5:55 pm. It was unknown how many staff participated in the movement; the more glaring problem is that “leaving the office on time” is no longer a norm for employees across the region.

We can forget about work-life balance, merely getting out of work on time has strangely become a way to punish employers.

Meanwhile, in a survey, employees have complained about a heavy workload keeping them in the office, while bosses blamed the overtime work on employees idling during office hours.

We are not trying to find out who is telling the truth – the pressing issue here is the lack of communication between staff and management. HR, which acts as a bridge between the two, needs to look into the situation by collecting opinions

from both sides to create policies which satisfy the needs of the two parties.

Research has shown time and again that keeping staff in the office for extended periods hurts productivity; many informed bosses understand this and want to prevent staff from working overtime. The role of HR is to effectively communicate the bosses’ thinking to staff and inform bosses on staff’s opinion on overtime work.

With a constant two-way communication going on between the two parties, an ideal compromise will be made.

It is a known fact that in some organisations, there is a sub-culture of staff being considered less committed if they leave earlier than their boss. Well, for these organisations, you need to be looking at how things should be done these days if productivity is truly what you’re looking for.

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Good reads to improve your business life

shelflife

The Politics of Promotion: How HighAchieving Women Get Ahead and Stay Ahead Bonnie Marcus Wiley S$21

Pick of the month

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.

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.

Photography: Fauzie Rasid

Your Trajectory Code: How to Change Your Decisions, Actions, and Directions, to Become Part of the Top 1% High Achievers

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.

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SENIOR APPOINTMENTS

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LAST WORD

Via appraisals, or the grapevine, bad reviews sting. But embracing them as gifts is key for bosses, says Akankasha Dewan.

For better or worse, as a leader, you’re always expected to be cool, and react calmly and professionally to any situation.

This becomes tough, especially when bosses have to deal with receiving negative feedback from their subordinates.

A key reason for this is that these negative comments are from juniors, which makes it even more tempting for leaders to dismiss such feedback as irrelevant or useless.

And when leaders give in to such temptations, the end result often leads to damaged relations between bosses and staff, bruised egos and bouts of insecurity.

So what can leaders do to make sure staff aren’t afraid of providing negative reviews to their bosses? And if they do – how can bosses take the sting out of them and use them to their advantage?

Suspend notions of hierarchy Just like how you’d like your employee to ask questions when explaining something to him or her, do the same when they are providing feedback for your performance.

At this point, it is important to dismiss the notion that you know more about the topic/issue/ task the employee is talking about simply because you are senior.

Feedback is how the person viewed your ability to perform a task or deal with a situation – and no one knows more about that judgment than the person himself.

When it’s time for you to talk, your response should elicit more explanation. Get to the root of the complaint and try to find out more.

When you respond with curiosity and compassion, you also learn things about the people that are providing you with the feedback.

Remember, feedback is a two-way street, and as you are hearing what your subordinates like or didn’t like, you are getting to know more about their priorities and style of thinking as well. This will essentially aid you in working with them better.

As social animals, people need to work collaboratively, and feedback helps sustain the flow of our interactions.

Focus on the things that matter Sure, your employee might have sounded whiny, scared, ungrateful or even inexperienced when delivering criticism to you.

But this shouldn’t mean that you ignore the underlying reason of their complaint and use their form and tone of delivery to dismiss it.

Instead, by viewing feedback as valuable data for self-improvement, you will seek it out, and endure it – even if it’s delivered in a harsh manner.

In such a case, it is useful to have what is commonly referred to as a “thick skin”. Leaders who can use criticism to their advantage tend not to take these reviews personally, and almost have a mental shield. They compartmentalise the feedback they get, take what’s useful and move on.

After all, think about what would happen if your staff never gave you feedback: You’d stagnate in your job instead of growing professionally, and you’d be less likely to get better and better at what you do.

Don’t react right away Too often, people’s first instinct when hearing critical feedback is to defend themselves – to explain why the criticism they are hearing is wrong or why there were extenuating circumstances, or simply to disagree.

However, it’s not helpful to leap straight there, and defend yourself immediately. If you do, you’ll make it harder for yourself to truly hear and process the feedback, and you’re more likely to come across as defensive rather than open to input. Instead, focus at first on just listening.

Worse, you might just discourage your subordinate to give constructive feedback in the future.

Instead, think about the feedback you have received calmly and then decide if it held weight.

Giving yourself time to think about things will help in you being more objective about what you have heard and actually use the feedback to your advantage.

Receiving feedback is a gift – be it from a boss or an employee – and only those professionals who unwrap its full potential can truly enjoy the benefits of receiving it. akankashad@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

Dealing with negative feedback from staff

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