HRDMAG.COM.SG ISSUE 4.01
HOT LIST HR’s innovators, game changers and thought leaders
START WITH THE END IN MIND Why design thinking is transforming HR operations
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ENHANCING MIND, BODY AND SPIRIT Hilton’s mission for healthy employees
2018 L&D SPECIAL REPORT From mentoring and e-learning to MBAs
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ISSUE 4.01
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CONTENTS
UPFRONT 02 Editorial
Human-centred design is finally sweeping into the HR realm – and it’s not before time
04 Statistics
Skills, technology and the uncertain future of workplaces
06 News analysis
Cisco, Atlassian and Aurecon are just a few of the organisations that are using a design thinking mindset for everything HR does
08 Technology update
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SPECIAL REPORT
LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
HRD’s annual L&D Special Report covers the gamut of latest trends in mentoring, MBAs and e-learning
Demand for data analysts is set to explode over the next few years. Are you ready for the boom?
10 Employment law update
New guidelines are set to help employers resolve workplace issues before they escalate into full-blown disputes
12 Head to head
Should the CIO role fall under HR’s jurisdiction?
13 Expert insight
Rising to the challenge of managing millennials
PEOPLE
46 FEATURES
EXAMINING THE UX IN HR TECH
User experience is a key consideration for technology vendors, but is HR ready to embrace the latest trends?
54 Career path
Lisa Christy has found throughout her career that ‘outside your comfort zone is where life begins’
56 Other life
When she’s not leading an HR department, there’s nowhere Georgina Boyd would rather be than summiting a peak
50 FEATURES
HRDMAG.COM.SG CHECK IT OUT ONLINE
HOT LIST
18 COVER STORY
HOT LIST 2018
In a year marked by relentless change and disruption, the HR professionals featured in HRD’s annual Hot List demonstrate resilience, innovation and a can-do attitude
PEOPLE
HR AS CHANGE AGENT
Supporting a major business transformation and helping to launch a new innovation centre are just two of the items on Fauzi Wahab’s agenda
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THE HEART OF HILTON
Health and wellbeing lies at the heart of Hilton’s mission to be the most hospitable company in the world
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UPFRONT
EDITORIAL
Putting humans first
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f there was one overarching theme that emerged in 2017, it was the rise and rise of design thinking principles being applied to the HR sphere. As a discipline, it has proven to be extremely effective for disrupting internal processes and enabling businesses to innovate and remain relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace. In a nutshell, design thinking is a problem-solving approach focused on understanding customer needs using empathy, alongside rapid prototyping and testing. The approach is ideal for solving complex challenges that require simple customer-centred solutions. Professor Bill Barnett, a strategy expert at Stanford University, says ‘leading by design’ means that the role of leaders is not to predict the future but rather to design it for adaption. So, not only does HR need to
A ‘perfect storm’ has shepherded in this focus on design thinking be more dynamic in its response to strategic shifts but it also has a role to play in increasing the organisation’s ability to scan for and adapt to new opportunities. As Jennifer Pangas, an experienced HR professional who has moved into OD and design thinking consulting via her company HRHack, explained to HRD, a “perfect storm” has shepherded in this focus on design thinking in HR. Firstly, it’s the acknowledgement that many of the Silicon Valley success stories (LinkedIn, Google, Airbnb and others) focus as much on the employee experience as they do on the customer experience. HR teams are now refocusing on how they can create exceptional employee experiences to in turn drive exceptional customer experiences. Secondly, just as the business environment gets more complex, so does HR – business needs are more diverse, strategy can shift quickly, and there is a move towards personalisation of benefits for employees. HR needs to move more quickly, and the problems it is solving are more complex; this calls for a more structured and rapid approach to finding solutions. Finally, HR is being exposed to the innovation techniques and mindsets of other business functions. When HR has a practical understanding of innovation tools like design thinking, it is better equipped to understand and drive the cultural traits that support greater innovation and agility across the business. Looking to shake up your internal operations and perhaps even reshape your business model? It might be time to focus on human-centred design. Iain Hopkins, editor
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www.hrdmag.com.sg ISSUE 4.01 EDITORIAL
SALES & MARKETING
Editor Iain Hopkins
Marketing & Communications Manager Michelle Lam
Journalists Hannah Go Paolo Taruc Production Editor Roslyn Meredith
ART & PRODUCTION Designer Marla Morelos Traffic Coordinator Freya Demegilio
Marketing Executive Emma Kemmery Commercial Manager - Asia Gareth Scott Business Development Manager Sarah Haviland
CORPORATE Chief Executive Officer Mike Shipley Chief Operating Officer George Walmsley Managing Director Justin Kennedy Chief Information Officer Colin Chan Human Resources Manager Julia Bookallil
EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES iain.hopkins@keymedia.com
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Human Resources Director is part of an international family of B2B publications and websites for the human resources industry HRD ASIA hrdmag.com.sg HRD AUSTRALIA hcamag.com HRD CANADA www.hrmonline.ca HRD NEW ZEALAND hrmonline.co.nz Copyright is reserved throughout. No part of this publication can be reproduced in whole or part without the express permission of the editor. Contributions are invited, but copies of work should be kept, as HRD Magazine can accept no responsibility for loss
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UPFRONT
STATISTICS
The future of work
Canada 47.0%
The world of work is in transition, and the pace of change will most likely only gather speed TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION – which has already dramatically changed the way we do things in just a few years – and, crucially, the manner in which humans decide to use it will be the driving factors that determine what the future working world will look like. For example, even using the technology currently available, some countries could see up to 55% of full-time positions eliminated.
73%
think technology can never replace the human mind
74%
are ready to upskill or retrain to ensure future employability
Worldwide this translates to over a billion full-time-equivalent jobs. A world in flux is likely to make qualities such as adaptability more valuable as the nature of work becomes more fluid and constant evolution requires people to contribute in ways that make the best use of their talents. The only thing that remains a certainty in the world of the future is likely to be change.
65%
think technology will improve their future job prospects
74%
believe upskilling is their responsibility, not the employer’s
United States 45.8%
Mexico 51.8% A NEW (POSTAUTOMATION) WORLD According to one study, the equivalent of 1.2 billion full-time positions accounting for US$14.6trn in wages could be automated by adapting current technology across the globe, with the potential impact varying widely between nations. The statistics here show the percentage of time spent on activities with the technical potential for automation by adapting currently demonstrated technology. Japan leads the way.
Source: Workforce of the Future: The Competing Forces Shaping 2030, PwC, 2017
TALENT SUPPLY FORECAST
NEW REALITY OF WORK
The leadership shortfall evident in forward-looking assessments of talent supply is likely to be felt more acutely by executives than by HR, making it the most pressing skill gap for them.
The one constant in the future world of work is likely to be change, as nearly all aspects of work continue to experience transformation and organisations rapidly evolve to keep pace.
SUFFICIENT/OVERSUPPLY
Administration Finance Legal UNDERSUPPLY
IT/Technology Core operations/Service delivery Leadership Marketing Sales Source: Mercer Global Talent Trends Study: Empowerment in a Disrupted World, 2017
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Constant change Change will come to characterise nearly all aspects of work
Fluid work The changing nature of work will require people to adapt their talents to suit
Collaboration Creating value in a complex world will entail working closely with others
Keeping ahead of machines Enhancements to machines will shift focus to things that only humans can do
Diversity Diverse ways of thinking are necessary to keep ahead
Working with machines Collaboration between people and machines will lead the future of work
Source: The Commonwealth Bank Jobs and Skills of the Future Report, 2017
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Russia 50.3%
Germany 47.9%
UK 42.8% Czech Republic 52.2% China 51.2%
Italy 50.3%
France 43.1%
Egypt 48.7%
Japan 55.7%
UAE 47.3%
Qatar 52.0%
Thailand 54.6% India 51.8%
Kenya 51.9%
Brazil 50.1%
South Africa 41.0%
Indonesia 51.8%
Singapore 44.2% Australia 44.9%
Peru 53.2%
Source: A Future That Works: Automation, Employment, and Productivity, McKinsey Global Institute, January 2017
ASSISTED, AUGMENTED, AUTONOMOUS
SKILLS OF TOMORROW
A look ahead sees a paradigm shift from a world in which the STEM skills required for building new tech are in demand, to one in which uniquely human traits assume greater value, to finally, humans at work being questionable.
Employees are keenly aware of the need to be able to adjust rapidly to a changing environment. More than eight in 10 respondents agreed or strongly agreed that this was an attribute they possessed. Adaptability
86% 85% 81% 76% 74%
Problem-solving
Autonomous intelligence
Assisted intelligence Today: Automating tasks and providing assisted intelligence; increased demand for STEM skills to build new tech
Augmented intelligence
Future:
Emerging:
Adaptive systems take over decision-making; the future of humans at work is questioned
Humans and machines collaborate to make decisions; uniquely human traits become more valuable
Collaboration skills Emotional intelligence Creativity and innovation Leadership skills
69% 69%
Digital skills Risk management skills STEM skills
53%
Entrepreneurial skills Source: Workforce of the Future: The Competing Forces Shaping 2030, PwC, 2017
60% 50%
Source: Workforce of the Future: The Competing Forces Shaping 2030, PwC, 2017
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UPFRONT
NEWS ANALYSIS
Start with the end in mind Design thinking has been heralded as a way to transform how businesses operate – and finally it’s seeping into the HR arena DESIGN THINKING is an innovation tool that Stanford University’s d-school has formalised and taught to engineering students since 2006. While it is not a new approach, what is new is its application outside of product development where it originated. In 2018 it is tipped to make serious inroads into the HR space. In short, design thinking – also called human-centred design – is a problem-solving process focused on solving the needs of a
sound ‘soft’, but it’s a very scientific discipline with clear steps to understand needs, seek broad inputs to solve those needs, and then test those potential solutions to ensure they work. “Keeping the end customer at the heart of each stage is critical,” she tells HRD. “Applied to HR, design thinking puts employee needs and emotions at the centre of the design of processes and solutions.” Pangas says design thinking tools can be applied to any challenge where you
“Applied to HR, design thinking puts employee needs and emotions at the centre of the design of processes and solutions” Jennifer Pangas, HRHack specific group of people, such as customers or employees. It aims to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into value and market opportunity. Jennifer Pangas, an experienced HR professional who has recently moved into OD and design thinking consulting via her company HRHack, says design thinking may
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are solving something for a human – in other words, everything that HR does. She has seen HR teams apply it to reward, performance management, L&D, HR services and career management. Examples include Cisco, which has used design thinking to develop its HR strategy, and tech company Atlassian, which has used it for its performance management approach.
Liam Hayes, chief people officer at engineering firm Aurecon, says his focus in 2018 will be on redesigning the firm’s employee experience. To this end, he recently recruited an industrial designer with an innovation background to join his leadership team in order to embed design thinking into the employee experience. “If we had to do it as an HR team, with our HR knowledge, the danger is we’d end up with a similar outcome to what we have today,” he says. “We’re challenging ourselves to do something different, and really working with our senior leaders to look at this from a holistic point of view. We’re not looking at employee experience just from the HR point of view but at all elements that impact the employee experience, and making sure it aligns with and supports the type of client experience we want to deliver as a business.” The goal, Hayes adds, is to challenge how HR engages with the end users of its services, and work backwards from there. “That human-centric approach is taking us
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MAKING A START Starting small – perhaps around a key challenge like a redesign of performance management – and expanding from there is key to successful adoption of design thinking. However, Jennifer Pangas recommends that, when selecting a challenge, it helps if the answer is ‘yes’ to these three questions:
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Does the challenge have people at the centre (eg employees, leaders, high performers)?
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Is the challenge big enough to have a number of different possible solutions?
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Do we have a stakeholder environment in which we can experiment with new innovations?
“The last question is potentially the most difficult one to meet but in my experience is critical so you can really use design thinking to its full benefit,” she says. For further tips, visit HRhack.com.au. down a very different path to anything we’ve done before,” he says. Pangas emphasises that design thinking is not only about engaging employees; it can also involve bringing in leaders or experts from other fields to solve the problem.
seminars on how design thinking can be used – nowhere more so than in law firms that are so overinvested in their original model that they miss and even ignore the changing needs and desires of their clients. “The key to long-term law firm success is balancing the
“Design thinking law firms are firms that continually reassess if they’re moving in the right direction by truly empathising with clients” Mitch Kowalski, author “I encourage my clients to engage people who will bring completely different thinking, particularly when ideating potential solutions,” she says. The repercussions can be massive. In the legal profession, for example, design thinking is completely revamping traditional business models. Canadian NewLaw thought leader and author Mitch Kowalski has spoken at
need to fully exploit what currently works with the need to explore new ideas,” he says. “Design thinking law firms are those that achieve that balance; these are firms that continually reassess if they’re moving in the right direction by truly empathising with clients.” Echoing this, Karen Cariss, CEO and co-founder of PageUp, says traditional
hierarchical organisational structures will soon be a thing of the past, replaced by new organisational designs that better facilitate teamwork, agility and collaboration. “As more and more companies hire employees across different time zones, working on multiple projects and using various media, organisational design will evolve to accommodate a more fluid work stream.” She cites design thinking as one of six workforce management trends to be aware of in 2018. Regardless of how the methodology is used, what’s common among design thinkers is a set of traits that include a beginner’s mindset whereby technical expertise is replaced with curiosity and exploration; a willingness to take risks, managing the risk by finding ways to test cheaply and efficiently and viewing failures as critical learnings; and being employee advocates – HR must believe that listening to employees will open up new ways to truly motivate and engage them. “Not all HR leaders are necessarily looking for disruptive solutions, but they are always looking for impactful ones,” says Pangas.
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UPFRONT
TECHNOLOGY UPDATE NEWS BRIEFS Robots to replace jobs by 2030 As many as 700 million workers will have to find new jobs or adopt new skills by 2030 as robots and AI alter the job market, according to consultancy McKinsey.Workers who analyse data or perform routine tasks – eg consultants and paralegals – may find their careers threatened. Those who interact with people, like managers and teachers, may be harder to replace. Analysts say fewer than 5% of jobs are entirely automatable, but most jobs have a substantial element that could be done by machines. And while demand for workers will remain, the type of jobs available will change as machines become more intelligent.
Improving workplace health and safety with tech Eye-tracking tech could be the latest advancement to improve workplace health and safety after a new study proved it has the potential to help, particularly in industrial settings. For the study, aluminium foundry H&H Castings teamed up with eye-tracking research specialists Tobii Pro to find out where workers focused their attention while completing high-risk tasks. Among other things, the study found that some employees were completely unaware of their surroundings. With the information, H&H was able to identify best practice processes that mitigate risk. As well as improving health and safety for current staff, the study has also been invaluable in terms of training new employees.
VR a solution for workplace harassment Todd Maddox, an industry analyst who applies behavioural and neuroscience research to improve training outcomes, says virtual reality may be more effective than most common methods when it comes
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to eliminating sexual harassment from the workplace. While traditional computer-based training shouldn’t be discarded, it could be complemented by a VR experience in which workers can ‘feel’ experiences themselves. “There is no better way for a middleaged, Caucasian male to ‘feel’ the prejudice that a young, female AfricanAmerican might experience … than to put that man in a first-person VR environment where they are that other individual,” Maddox says.
Automated applications frustrating jobseekers Employers may need to tweak their automated application process because 54% of jobseekers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia say they are frustrated by it. HR consultancy Randstad found that the frustration stems from the impersonal feel of the job-search technology (49%) and the absence of response from the employer (42%). “These latest research findings are a timely reminder that organisations must take great care in the implementation of new innovative technologies in their recruitment processes,” said Michael Smith, MD at Randstad.
How will AI change the workplace? Pairing humans alongside machine intelligence will create a more effective, engaged and meritocratic workforce, according to research from Pegasystems. The study involved 845 global senior executives surveyed across key industry sectors on the increased role AI and robotic automation will play in the workplace of the future. It found that seven out of 10 respondents (69%) believed the term ‘workforce’ would evolve to encapsulate both humans and machine intelligence. Leaders expect AI-augmented workers to generate tangible outcomes such as more efficiency and better customer service.
Data analysts like gold dust to HR Demand for data analysts is set to explode over the next few years. Are you ready for the boom? Demand for data analysts is set to skyrocket over the next few years as organisations increasingly rely on technology to make decisions. However, one industry expert says employers remain woefully unprepared for the impending boom, and most face a debilitating talent gap. “Technology has really exploded over the past few years, especially technology that allows a lot more tracking of what we do as people,” says Aleetza Senn, CEO of business analytics firm Sparkline. “However, the challenge has been for people to keep up and to develop the skills necessary to interpret that information and make sense of it in a way that helps companies make strategic decisions.” According to a recent study by PwC, half of businesses already struggle to find analysts with the right skills, and 40% rely on the expertise of just one employee to analyse and interpret data. “If you’re relying on one person to give you this very rich information, they can potentially be the individual who increases and gets the right talent in the room – but if they leave, that skill is completely gone,” Senn warns. “Also, companies invest very heavily in technology, but if you have one person using that technology then you’re not going to get the best ROI.” Instead, Senn says employers shouldn’t be focusing on the newest and most exciting tools; rather, they should be investing in their people in order to upskill talent from different
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departments within the organisation. “If they all know how to use that information, then everybody will be able to help the business become smarter about decision-making,” she says. Senn, who has previously worked for the likes of Google and YouTube, says organisations also have to look at upskilling their current analysts, many of whom lack critical soft skills.
One industry expert says employers remain woefully unprepared for the impending boom “Employers need to be thinking about not only the technical and programming skills these people need but also the critical thinking skills and the skills needed to merge business needs with the information they’re seeing,” she tells HRD. According to Senn, many companies that do have someone to interpret the vast amounts of information being gathered are still not using that person’s skills to their full advantage. “These people are too often sat in some back room pulling reports when they should be sitting next to executives, helping them make decisions based on this information,” she says.
Q&A
Alison Sibree SVP, HR, APAC ORACLE
Fast fact According to research from the International Customer Management Institute and Oracle, 41% of contact centre professionals expect their contact centres’ use of bots/AI to increase in the next 12–18 months.
HR in the age of AI The rise of AI-led talent management systems has led to a growing fear of the decline in the human factor synonymous with HR. What can HR do to ensure that the employee experience is not devoid of the human factor? Previously, HR primarily supported the transactional side of workforce management. Today, HR can proactively deliver quality information for analysis before changes are made so organisations benefit from consistently better talent decisions. HR will continue to remain relevant even with the rise of AI-led talent management systems. In fact, they will then be able to focus on the individual employee, make strategic business decisions and ‘leave it to the machines’. To quote Reggie Bradford, senior vice president of product development at Oracle, “ironically, machines will help human resources feel more human and personalised – from recruitment to employee engagement and education”. As organisations join the trend and automate talent management processes, how can HR ensure that the company experience remains differentiated? HR departments today have a wealth of information at their fingertips: data on employee performance, onboarding, recruiting campaigns, and much more. Such knowledge can be translated to understand HR performance, validate decisions and create a differentiated employee hiring experience. Current insights from analysis can also help HR to strategise and organise a range of suitable courses and training that will help employees strengthen their career paths, keeping an engaged workforce. HR tech is also set to change the dynamics of the workplace. How can HR adapt its talent strategy and succession planning and retain top talent? The rapidly accelerating growth of the gig economy represents one of the most significant and all-encompassing challenges faced by HR. The most important question for HR will be how to demonstrate agility in leading the change in culture, HR policies and processes originally designed for full-time employees to a new era of the talent portfolio increasingly being represented by contingent workers. How an organisation adapts to this new era will heavily depend upon the successful execution of the HR policies supporting an entire talent portfolio. HR will need to play a critical role in changing the mindset of the organisation and developing managers who will fundamentally change the way they manage talent. It will also mean a shift in career development for internal employees. Organisations will need to look at existing skill sets and what is required for the future, upskilling those who can go beyond their existing role. HR will need to ascertain how to integrate contract terms and conditions into a cohesive, seamless whole, considering many factors such as risk management, governance, and legislative requirements around minimum wage. It is an entire paradigm shift from commandand-control to collaboration and partnership.
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UPFRONT
EMPLOYMENT LAW UPDATE
New scheme helps HR handle grievances New guidelines will help employers resolve workplace issues before they escalate into full-blown disputes
discrimination in a hiring or promotion exercise, or a case of sexual harassment. While the scheme isn’t compulsory, companies that adopt the standards will be recognised as fair and progressive employers. They will also be given permission to use the ‘Tripartite Standards’ logo in their job advertisements and marketing material. To be eligible, supervisors must also be trained to manage employee feedback and unhappiness. They will also be required to work with the union if the company is unionised.
The Tripartite Standard does not act as a resolution or settlement of the grievance Handling workplace disputes can be a complicated affair for HR professionals; however, it may be about to get a little easier thanks to a brand-new government scheme. Launched by Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say, the Tripartite Standard on Grievance Handling specifies a set of good practices that employers can publicly commit to if they choose. The standard includes a recommendation for companies to set up proper channels for staff to raise grievances. It also lays out guidelines for investigations, encouraging firms to specify who will hear appeals, as well as how long the process will take.
NEWS BRIEFS
The recommendations are outlined in the Grievance Handling Handbook produced by the Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices. The book defines a grievance as any discontent or feeling of unfairness in the workplace. It is more deep-seated than a complaint and pushes the employee to take remedial action, which could potentially lead to costly litigation for the organisation. The grievances listed include issues such as terms of employment, a strain in interpersonal relations, a wage cut or retrenchment exercise, as well as more serious matters such as
MOM reviews the Employment Act
The Ministry of Manpower is reviewing the Employment Act (EA) in order to streamline resolution services concerning dismissal-related claims, and look at areas specific to various employee groups. MOM is reviewing whether core provisions such as leave entitlements, timely salary payments and allowable deductions should be extended to all employees, including high-earning PMETs who are currently excluded in the EA. It will also decide whether the salary thresholds of lower-paid “vulnerable employees” should be at an “appropriate level”.
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The scheme aims to encourage the collective effort of the organisation, rather than relying on HR, to create a conducive work environment. The Tripartite Standard does not act as a resolution or settlement of the grievance. It aims instead to achieve “the maintenance of industrial harmony between employee and employer”. The Tripartite Standard on Grievance Handling is the third standard to be launched as part of efforts to encourage firms to adopt progressive employment practices. According to Lim, other standards are being developed that will cover areas such as retrenchment processes and age-friendly practices. So far, over 220 employers have adopted the grievance handling standard.
Discrimination will not be tolerated Employers do not and will not be allowed to discriminate against workers with medical conditions, the Ministry of Manpower has assured Singapore’s Parliament. Minister Sam Tan said that out of 2,100 complaints on unfair employment practices examined in the past four years, just three were cases of discrimination against employees on medical grounds. Further investigations found that no actual discrimination had happened. Tan said that if discrimination was found, MOM would take “strong actions” to ensure proper practices are followed.
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Q&A
Goh Seow Hui Partner BIRD & BIRD ATMD
Managing sexual harassment at work The #MeToo movement has been gaining ground globally. What steps should HR take if an employee is accused of sexual harassment?
Fast fact On Twitter, #MeToo was used more than 500,000 times by 16 October 2018. On Facebook, it was used in 12 million posts during the first 24 hours.
It is imperative to first conduct a fair investigation on a confidential basis. Such allegations are highly sensitive and could be highly damaging to both the complainant and respondent if the process is not properly managed. In cases where the company finds that sexual harassment has occurred, they may consider a range of disciplinary action against the respondent – for example, suspension from work, verbal/written warnings and, in serious cases, summary dismissal. The complainant may also rely on the provisions of the Protection from Harassment Act to seek various personal remedies – for example, damages or a protection order. In appropriate cases, the complainant may also file a police report against the respondent if the actions amount to punishable offences under the Penal Code, such as outrage of modesty.
An employee accuses another employee of sexual harassment via social media. How should HR handle the situation? Would HR be obliged to investigate the case? HR’s response should depend on the nature of the social media post, its contents and a host of other factors – for example, whether the post violates the company’s social media policies. Generally, HR is only required to investigate
Exec salaries remain a mystery
Research has been conducted by studying the financial reports of 609 companies listed on the Singapore Exchange. It was found that 98% have been failing to disclose the remuneration of their top executives – a requirement for MAS’s Code of Corporate Governance – and are thus failing to meet the industry’s standards of best practice. The report found that only one out of three companies disclosed the exact salaries of their chairmen and CEOs. The research found that, generally, the higher the pay the less transparent companies were.
complaints submitted through the proper channels as prescribed in the company’s HR policies. However, if the post explicitly identifies the company and the respondent, and the allegation is sufficiently serious to have an adverse impact on the company’s reputation, the issue should not be ignored. As a preliminary step, HR should ask the complainant to either withdraw or ‘privatise’ the post, pending the company’s investigations.
It has been found that many organisations in Singapore still lack a formal workplace sexual harassment policy. How can HR raise awareness of the issue and define what constitutes harassment in the workplace? Sexual harassment may still be widely considered a taboo subject. It may also be paradoxical in some sense; victims stay silent because they do not know how to go about raising the issue due to the lack of workplace sexual harassment policies. As a result, it is possible that organisations may not even perceive or think of sexual harassment as a serious enough issue to warrant the introduction of formal workplace policies! The first step in raising awareness is to train employees on the standards of acceptable workplace behaviour and conduct. The Tripartite Advisory on Managing Workplace Harassment is a good starting point. It is an important first step for HR to be able to start openly discussing the topic.
Workplace fatalities lowest in 15 years
The workplace fatality rate in Singapore last year was the lowest since 2004, according to joint research findings released by the Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) Council, the WSH Institute and the Ministry of Manpower. There were 42 workplace fatalities last year, down from 66 in 2016, resulting in a fatal-injury rate of 1.2 per 100,000 employed persons. This was a “significant improvement” from the stagnant figures in 2015 and 2016, said the agencies. There were also fewer workplace injuries and dangerous occurrences in 2017.
Hotline resolves labour issues
The Philippines Department of Labor and Employment has resolved roughly 127,000 cases brought to its attention through a dedicated hotline. Hotline 1349 is a 24-hour, seven-day service workers use to raise questions on labour issues and grievances. It was launched in 2016 as part of the administration’s call for agencies to be responsive to people’s needs and ensure labour laws were enforced. The bulk of calls (76%) were inquiries on general labour standards such as termination pay and bonus entitlements.
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PEOPLE
HEAD TO HEAD
GOT AN OPINION THAT COUNTS? Email hrd_editor@keymedia.com.au
Closing the gender gap Are employers doing enough to reduce gender inequality?
Godelieve van Dooren Regional benefits leader Mercer
“Workplace inequality may actually be getting worse due to employer inaction. Women continue to be under-represented at all levels within organisations globally. And despite the rhetoric and sweeping policy changes, current hiring and promotion and retention rates are insufficient. Employers aren’t doing enough to build female talent pipelines to augment their efforts; for example, around providing childcare services. “Employers have access to the data and technology needed to truly leverage workforce analytics as a way of addressing inequality, particularly in the industries and functions which are worst off.”
Butch Clas
HR director ASEAN/ANZ Dow Chemical Pacific “Gender inequality continues to be a challenge in the general industry. The remedies to reduce inequality lie in leadership and HR working together with a clear strategy: gender-friendly policies for work time; childcare/elder care; equitable pay practices and leadership opportunities; and realising employees may want time off to address family issues. “But, most importantly, it means being mindful and unbiased. While HR can play an important role as adviser, leadership needs to be a role model to make it reality. We also need to promote greater gender neutrality in education and break the historical cycle of traditional gender roles.”
Shux Mazur APAC talent lead Airbnb
“Airbnb’s mission to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere is reflected in the company’s talent programs. “Our policies provide mothers with 18 weeks’ maternity leave and support new fathers and adoptive parents with four weeks of Child Bonding Leave. Additionally, the Return to Work program for new parents includes an 80% work week at 100% pay to support their transition back to work. “Forty percent of our APAC Leadership Team consists of women, both internally promoted and hired externally. We believe in building a foundation that encourages employees to be gender-blind and support a fair working environment for all.”
ONE PERCENT CHANGE IN 10 YEARS The gender pay gap is not only alive and well; it is especially tenacious in Singapore, which has seen very little improvement in the disparity between the earning power of men and that of women over the past decade. According to a study that evaluated Ministry of Manpower data, Singaporean men still earn almost 20% more than their female counterparts, although the gap varies considerably depending on the industry. The study by consumer research firm ValuePenguin revealed that, as of 2016, while the median monthly income of Singaporean males sat at $3,991, for Singaporean women it was $3,382 – a gap of 18%. This is only a slight reduction from the disparity that existed 10 years previously, when the median figure for men’s gross monthly income was $2,452, approximately 19% higher than the figure for women, which was reported as $2,053.
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UPFRONT
OPINION
Future-proofing your leadership style An era of changing demographics demands that we rethink our leadership qualities and behaviours, writes Kylie Wright-Ford IN THE new world of work, which some refer to as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, there are major disruptive forces due to the multigenerational nature of the labour market, globalisation and new technology – making some roles and routines in the workplace obsolete. The ability to adapt to such an environment and constantly revisit leadership behaviours with a view to the future (not just the past) will determine the difference between companies that survive and those that thrive, but many leaders are in denial. And others are looking for answers in an age without a rule book. Future-proofing your leadership style will require developing a stellar ability to lead across generations and styles.
Technology as enabler Consider for a moment the demographic shifts we are about to experience. We will soon have four different generations in the workforce. This is certain to cause both conflict and opportunity. The conflict will come from the clashing of communication preferences and differences in motivations. The opportunity will come from being able to assemble teams across different geographies and time zones more seamlessly than ever, thanks to rapidly advancing technologies that make remote work possible; and from the ability to find people for specific tasks on demand, thanks to the large and growing freelance workforce.
In conducting hundreds of interviews with executives and rising leaders to talk about what they see, hear, love and hate about leaders they observe, executive coach Debra Benton and I have identified four behaviours that matter for the future. The behaviours are: dynamic; playful; unblocking; uber-communicative.
Four behaviours to master Dynamic leaders enable change in themselves and others. They produce motion instead of
positive environment. They are approachable and do much more than simply provide free food and ping-pong tables at work. Unblocking refers to a leader’s ability to free their people by, for example, providing them with the tools to succeed; offering support so that their efforts flourish; encouraging risktaking where appropriate; and keeping tabs on progress along the way. They help remove the barriers to progress, including legacy thinking, risk aversion, and tunnel vision based on ‘group think’. People of all ages – but especially the rising generations – want to be empowered, authorised and enabled to fix the inefficiencies their predecessors created. Finally, the uber-communicative approach is potentially the most essential trait needed for the future. Uber-communicative leaders know that good communication requires a leader to both deliver a message and then establish common understanding of the message, and they use many different channels to do so. While essential, in our view this trait still needs a lot of attention, especially from experienced leaders who are often overheard moaning about the way that rising generations don’t use correct grammar or overuse emoticons.
The multigenerational nature of the labour market has leaders looking for answers in an age without a rule book static. They are more than just spirited and magnetic, and much more than charismatic. While an important aspect of leadership used to be about change management, the leader of the future is about enabling change in processes, culture, product development, and more. Playful is perhaps the most controversial of the behaviours because to some it may imply frivolity. In the context of the new world of work it means having fun and trying some new things. The days of a clear line between work and non-work disappeared with the advent of the mobile device; good leaders embrace the mash-up of work and life. Playful leaders are good-humoured and build a creative and
In the new world of work, with the constant distraction of our devices and more diverse constituents than ever, it is not enough to send a message and expect that everyone receives it in the same way. Leaders of the future will meet their teams’ needs and preferences for communicating, whether it is by town hall, instant message, social media, email, carrier pigeon, conference call or text. Kylie Wright-Ford is an Australia-raised and globally travelled operating executive, adviser and board member of growth companies in the US. Her first book is The Leadership Mind Switch.
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PEOPLE
GLOBAL HR LEADER
HR as change agent Supporting a major business transformation and helping to launch a new innovation centre are just two of the items on Fauzi Wahab’s agenda
ALTHOUGH THE name may not be familiar to some, Zuellig Pharma is the largest healthcare services group in Asia. The company provides world-class distribution, digital solutions and commercial services to support the growing healthcare needs in Asia, and although it has a wealth of experience to draw upon – it was founded almost 100 years ago and has grown to become a $10bn business covering 13 markets in Asia – there are plenty of challenges ahead. Heading the HR function is the highly experienced Fauzi Wahab. Following stints at multinational corporations, including British American Tobacco, dairy powerhouse Fonterra and formula milk company Dumex, Wahab started at Zuellig in October 2015. He’s joined at a particularly challenging time. The company is broadening its core offerings, shifting from being a pharmaceuticals distribution company to a healthcare solutions company. “Most of my job over the last 15 years has involved taking care of multiple markets
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within the HR portfolio,” Wahab tells HRD. “It’s been markets in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, or just focusing on Asia alone. The interesting thing about Asia, geographically, culturally and in many other areas, is that it’s quite different. Every country is different. That presents challenges. But being in HR, particularly in an organisation that is transforming, really gives me a lot of exciting areas to work on.” Wahab shares his insights with HRD.
HRD: Can you outline your current responsibilities at Zuellig Pharma? Fauzi Wahab: My role covers the HR spectrum from end to end, from hire to retire, all capabilities across the enterprise. We have around 10,000 employees across the region, and in the past each country has operated quite autonomously; part of my role as a member of the leadership team is to help us become more integrated as we deliver one common objective for Zuellig Pharma: to make healthcare more accessible to everyone, everywhere.
PROFILE Name: Fauzi Wahab Company: Zuellig Pharma Role: VP human resources HR experience: 23 years Qualifications: »»Master of Business Administration, HRM, University of Cardiff, Wales Previous roles: »»HR director – ASEAN/MENA, Fonterra »»Head of HR, British American Tobacco »»HR and corporate relations director, ASEAN, Dumex »»HR manager, Spanco »»Head of HR, Parkson Corporation »»Industrial relations officer, UMBC Bank
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PEOPLE
GLOBAL HR LEADER
GETTING BUY-IN Having held multiple senior regional HR roles during his career, Fauzi Wahab is well placed to provide tips on getting senior stakeholder buy-in. Know the business. “A good HR person
1 knows and understands the business, the commercial back and front. That means as HR professionals we need to spend a lot of time with our business leaders so we can offer a credible thought leadership viewpoint and influence changes in the business. To become credible business partners, to influence business leaders, you must first understand the business.” Become a change agent. “We need to be
2 able to talk business with other business leaders and get out of the administration side of HR; we need to be more like change agents.” Spend time with your CEO. “By spending
3 more time with the CEO they will very
quickly appreciate that identifying, managing and developing talent for future roles is critical. We should look at talent a bit more strategically than just ‘where’s the next promotion?’ We need to be able to create career paths for our talent so we can move them around across the enterprise.”
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HRD: How will you go about that integration process? FW: There are four key strategies I’m focusing on to shape the overall enterprise strategy. One is about creating a more integrated business from a fragmented, autonomous business that we’ve been operating for the last almost 100 years. Another is about bringing in the right people at the right time, filling both the new roles and the evolving roles that we are creating.
different to what we’ve traditionally needed. As we expand our business we must look at talent that comes from pharmaceutical companies or has a science background. It’s difficult to find these people internally; they are excellent at distribution but not so strong in terms of the pharmaceutical marketing and sales operations. It’s a big change for the company, both in terms of the mindset of the distribution employees and getting a new breed of talent
“Being in HR, particularly in an organisation that is transforming, really gives me a lot of exciting areas to work on” Thirdly, we’ll be looking at how we go about ensuring our employees are engaged through our people programs. Fourthly, we’ll be sharpening our talent management and succession planning.
HRD: The company is also repositioning itself and what it does – can you outline this change? FW: We’re midway through a five-year journey to transform the way we make healthcare more accessible in Asia. This change has seen shifts in our structure, our services and, correspondingly, the different types of talent we require to drive this change. At Zuellig Pharma, traditionally our core business has always been in distribution. To a certain extent the mindset – even how clients or partners view Zuellig Pharma – is as a distribution house. We are still a distribution house, but we’re moving beyond distribution and into healthcare solutions. The kind of people and the skills we require will be quite
from healthcare solutions to integrate with the core distribution business.
HRD: How is Zuellig attracting and retaining millennials, especially in a market where competition for this talent is intense? FW: I see millennials as being like butterflies. They like to go from one flower to another flower to gather nectar, and they don’t like to stay too long. They are agile; they want to increase the richness of their experience, and that extends to wealth creation. In our case we’re investing heavily in technology, creating an environment where for our employees, the use of technology will become second nature and will replicate how they use technology in their personal lives. We’re also investing a lot in terms of capability building. We have a young talent program for those who are under age of 30 with a couple of years’ experience. During the program we expose them to various
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parts of the business so they get a good understanding of what we do, from end to end. After completion, we expect they’ll move up one or two levels in the organisational hierarchy. They will be our future leaders in the next three to five years. We’re also building an e-learning program so that our employees can have 24/7 access to either functional modules or leadership modules.
HRD: What’s your philosophy on career progression? FW: We believe in managing careers, not jobs. This mantra underpins our performance development framework that includes Individual Development Plans and 8 Quarter Plans, where selected talent have career development profiles that start with a realistic view of their current capabilities and a road map to realise their aspirations for the future. With changes also come new opportunities for development, and through our Zuellig Pharma Mobility Programme we work with our talent to successfully place them in roles that give them exposure to other countries, functions and business units.
HRD: What impact does HR have on the innovation centre? (See box) FW: The interesting thing is we started from ground zero, so having an innovation strategy is not enough; we need to make sure that we have the capability to deploy those strategies. When we look at our DNA or our core competency it’s still predominantly in the distribution business. We must rely on sourcing talent from the external market. Data scientists, for example, are a different breed of people that must be sourced from Singapore and sometimes outside of Singapore. It’s up to
THE ZUELLIG HEALTH SOLUTIONS INNOVATION CENTRE With rapidly evolving healthcare challenges in Asia, Zuellig knows it must do more if it wants to remain true its purpose of making healthcare more accessible. Eighty percent of deaths in Asia are caused by lifestyle diseases, and Asia also has the fastestgrowing ageing population in the world, so the need for targeted solutions is urgent. These can come in the form of programs to support education and affordability, as well as extending supply chain reach. Zuellig Pharma will invest over $50m in its innovation centre over the next five years to develop data, digital and disease management solutions that will help doctors create more effective treatment plans, support patients managing chronic conditions and help manage healthcare costs. These solutions will also help healthcare companies identify market opportunities and reach more patients and consumers across Asia. The innovation centre has been established with the support of the Singapore Economic Development Board. The Zuellig teams are also making great headway in leveraging big data to inform Zuellig’s own business decisions and those of its clients, on how to optimise marketing investment or achieve greater operational efficiency. “We think with our purpose – making healthcare more accessible – we can be a good conduit between clients and society,” Wahab says.
“Having an innovation strategy is not enough; we need to make sure that we have the capability to deploy those strategies” HR to source the right people and ensure we create a culture in which innovation can thrive.
HRD: You’ve worked in multiple regional roles. Do you find it’s tempting for people to group all Asian nations under the same umbrella? FW: Yes, particularly when you’re dealing with people. Sometimes we take it for granted; we generalise Asia as being Asia as one entity, but Vietnam is very different to Cambodia and certainly very different to Singapore. The north Asia market, which is more sophisticated in some areas like healthcare, is very different to the south. So we are very conscious of it. As a matter of fact, we recently restructured our
organisation geographically. When I joined, headquarters was in Hong Kong, so I was part of the leadership team tasked with relocating HQ from Hong Kong to Singapore. Again, the thinking behind our relocation centres on our strategy to be closer to our clients, as most of our regional clients are here in Singapore. We used that move as an opportunity. The role of the corporate headquarters has evolved from just facilitation to being more strategic, such as identifying opportunities for cross-fertilisation of talent and being much more efficient in terms of how we operate; that might extend from how we handle our global contract negotiations to how we move talent from one business to another business within the enterprise.
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FEATURES
SPECIAL REPORT
HOT LIST
2018
In a year marked by relentless change and disruption, the HR professionals featured in HRD’s annual Hot List demonstrate resilience, innovation and a can-do attitude MANAGING THE people-related needs of major acquisitions. Being D&I advocates for under-represented minority groups. Recruiting literally hundreds of new employees within tight time frames. Relaunching brands while dealing with major industry disruption. These are just a few of the major achievements of this year’s group of stellar HR professionals. HRD’s annual Hot List has become a byword for HR excellence and best practice. The 25 HR professionals profiled here continue to enhance HR’s reputation both
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within their own businesses and in the wider business world. This talent group would no doubt agree that it’s a fascinating, if not slightly daunting, time to be in the profession. After years of struggle to be taken seriously at executive and board level, most HR professionals are today acting as trusted advisers to their businesses. Indeed, it’s remarkable how many people profi led in this year’s Hot List specifically mentioned to HRD the importance of being seen not just as HR professionals – and therefore good at the ‘people stuff ’ –
but also as good at business full stop. HR professionals today must look through a lens that views their role in the context of broader business operations. They must know the key business drivers while also excelling at all items traditionally viewed as HR’s responsibility. From breakthrough strides in D&I to negotiating with unions, through to ensuring their teams keep up with both technology and changing employee expectations, this year’s Hot List is jam-packed with talented, passionate and successful business leaders.
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HOT LIST INDEX
ANURADHA PURBEY People Director, Southeast Asia – Aviva AVIVA
2017 was a year of immense change at insurance firm Aviva. Faced with continuing digital disruption, Anuradha Purbey and the people team are actively working to help employees achieve a dramatic mindset shift that will enable them to reinvent themselves in order to take on emerging roles. “One example is for our actuaries to be data scientists – both roles involve analysing data to make informed predictions about the future,” she tells HRD. Highlights of 2017 for Purbey included achieving the lowest attrition rate in several years and close to a five-year high-engagement rate. Given these promising signs, Purbey is looking forward to stretching Aviva’s people capabilities even further in 2018, in order to stay ahead of the game. “The world is changing at a faster pace than ever, and it is scary and exciting at the same time – scary because we don’t have all the answers, even as we’re driving the agenda. But there’s no better time to be in HR than now, as we transform the organisation to accelerate our growth. My priority is to help our people embrace the changes brought on by the digital, and future-proof them so that they can thrive.”
NAME
COMPANY
PAGE
Alonso, Pablo
Amadeus IT Group
23
Chan, Florence
SingPost
24
Chowdhury, Subhankar Roy
Lenovo
25
Chung, Rachel
Unit4
26
Clas, Butch
Dow Chemical
26
Das, Isaiah
Royal Bank of Scotland
27
Date, Amod
DHL Express
20
Dohmen, Renata Janini
SAP
22
Fiat, Patrick
Royal Plaza on Scotts
28
Guo, Alan
Shell
24
Ho, Jason
OCBC Bank
28
Koh, Sylvia
CrimsonLogic
22
Lam, Isabel
AXA Hong Kong
21
Leung, Michelle
Cigna
22
Marzicola, Nicolina
HP
27
Murphy, Lee
Microsoft
24
Phan Yoke Fei
Gardens by the Bay
28
Phua, Theresa
DBS
20
Purbey, Anuradha
Aviva Singapore
19
Schneeberger, Michael
Medtronic
23
Sibree, Alison
Oracle
27
Sudeep, Kunnumal
Tata Consultancy Services
20
Syriac, Jeethu
Farrer Park Hospital
23
Toomey, Brendan
Hilton Worldwide
29
Wahab, Fauzi
Zuellig Pharma
26
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FEATURES
SPECIAL REPORT KUNNUMAL SUDEEP Director of HR, Asia Pacific TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES
With a belief that talent should be built and not bought, Kunnumal Sudeep considers Tata’s talent development initiatives implemented within Asia-Pacific to be one of his biggest achievements for 2017. To inspire students to take up STEM courses and consider careers in technology, Sudeep and his team are running programs across various education levels – from seeding interest in STEM at primary schools, to providing tutoring in secondary schools and offering internship opportunities to undergraduates and graduates – in the hope of not just benefiting the company but also helping to address the shortage of tech skills in various economies. In line with this, one major challenge in recent times for Sudeep and his team has been coping with the speed of technology change that impacts not just on the workplace but also at broader business and regulatory levels. To sustain the quality of its consulting service, Tata has created an institutionalised framework that enables its associates to regularly collaborate and hone their skills and capabilities.
AMOD DATE Vice president of HR DHL EXPRESS SINGAPORE
2017 was a banner year for Amod Date and his team, as DHL was recognised yet again as a top employer and best employer, and was the only logistics company to be named a Great Workplace in Singapore, ranking sixth on Aon Hewitt’s list. The results of DHL’s annual employee opinion survey have shown that the ‘Active Leadership’ indicator rose to above 90% for the second consecutive year. Date attributes this to the success of the company’s Supervisory Excellence program, which focuses on equipping first-time managers with leadership skills. As the logistics industry faces disruption with the introduction of new technologies such as autonomous cars and drones, and robotics involved in warehousing, Date and his team have been busy upskilling DHL’s employees, offering roadshows and workshops to prepare them for the changes on the horizon. Following their lead, the senior management team is actively engaging the managers next in line to help them embrace an evolving mindset and prepare them to anticipate expectations for the future, on top of handling day-to-day responsibilities.
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THERESA PHUA Head of HR, Singapore DBS
To enable DBS, with its scale and structures, to function as “a 23,000person start-up”, Theresa Phua and her team embarked on a transformation journey that involved recalibrating the whole candidate and employee experience through human-centred design and digital solutions. This led them to move away from traditional hiring methods and venture into gamification, not to mention running hackathons in order to spot and recruit people with entrepreneurial mindsets. A seamless, end-to-end digital experience was also created in order to ensure continuous engagement, from a candidate’s first interactions during job application to the day they join the bank. Knowing that jobs are swiftly changing due to technological disruptions, Phua has aimed to foster a strong culture of learning, in order to bring about changes in people’s mindsets. This year, the DBS team launched a cloud-based LMS that comprises a curriculum for employees across all levels to develop digital literacy. In 2018, the team is also looking at how capabilities such as robotics, AI and cloud solutions can be further integrated into existing processes in order to improve efficiency.
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ISABEL LAM Head of HR AXA HONG KONG
For Isabel Lam and the rest of the HR leadership at AXA, priorities of the past year have focused extensively on growing a flexible work culture in the company in order to further drive home its ultimate value proposition of protecting people and looking after their welfare. “It has truly allowed us to focus on business outcomes and remove artificial measures of success,” Lam says. “Employees are empowered to decide where and
when they can work best. Since our move to Wong Chuk Hang [in the Southern District of Hong Kong Island], staff and managers have successfully adapted to this agile way of working.” At the start of the year, the company also announced a global parenting policy, which provides employees with 16 weeks and four weeks of fully paid maternity and paternity leave respectively, in order to help them achieve a better balance between their work and family life. A key challenge for Lam and her team is the continuing shortage of talent, which is why HR at AXA has chosen to focus on addressing core needs that will effectively engage the company’s talent and allow them to flourish.
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FEATURES
SPECIAL REPORT RENATA JANINI DOHMEN Senior vice president, HR SAP ASIA PACIFIC JAPAN
MICHELLE LEUNG Head of HR CIGNA INTERNATIONAL MARKETS
In 2017, Michelle Leung and the Cigna people team introduced Cigna Day – a day dedicated to global volunteering and fundraising for non-profit partners working on heart-related causes. The initiative brought together employees from 13 countries to take part in a wide range of volunteer activities, and together they clocked up more than 3,000 volunteering hours and raised more than $110,000. For Leung, this has been one of the most notable accomplishments of the team in their work to connect with communities. “I’m sure many would agree that a major challenge in the industry continues to be recruiting the right talent, coupled with staff engagement and retention,” Leung tells HRD. On that note, Leung and her team have also developed other programs that ensure consistent leadership growth, early identification of high-potentials, and continuous development. In 2018, Leung and her team are looking to go live with a new global HCM SaaS technology solution. The team is also working to revamp the career architecture to ensure support for business growth and to attract and retain the best and most diverse multigenerational talent.
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The past year marks a milestone for Renata Janini Dohmen and her team, who have made great strides in solidifying SAP’s position as an Employer of Choice. Under Dohmen’s leadership, the company has been certified by the Top Employers Institute as a Top Employer in Asia Pacific Japan for excellence in employee conditions. One key challenge for Dohmen in 2017 was revamping the performance review process. To enhance the process, the team introduced SAP Talk, moving away from traditional reviews by promoting two-way, continuous conversations between managers and employees to help the latter identify opportunities for growth. The team also simultaneously launched Make SAP Talk Real, an APJ initiative; this involves offering training materials, video testimonials, and group discussions for employees to better understand the benefits of the change and how to maximise it. Dohmen expects 2018 to be dedicated to digital HR initiatives, such as the human capital management solution SAP SuccessFactors, that will be key to maximising people performance not only within SAP but in the broader ecosystem, including customers and partners.
SYLVIA KOH Chief People Officer CRIMSONLOGIC
Sylvia Koh is the chief people officer at CrimsonLogic, a Singapore-based management consulting firm. One key project that Koh has been responsible for is CrimsonLogic’s Graduate Technology Associate Programme, which is designed to attract the best millennial employees by affording an on-the-job experience unlike any other. Participating graduates get to witness cross-border negotiations with senior executives and in some cases even work on live-project implementations in far-flung locations. These programs enable them to play a part in building innovative projects for local governments while setting them up to be key contributors to the nation’s future economy. Another initiative for Koh and her team was the launch of a new group HR ecosystem – ONE@Crimson – as a touchpoint system for employees at each phase of the employee life cycle. The nine touchpoints accessible through the system are linked to various initiatives that cover L&D, leadership training, CSR and volunteerism, and healthy lifestyle. Koh has also ensured that the touchpoints are aligned to the company’s core values, all of which drive engagement with employees and enhance the business.
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MICHAEL SCHNEEBERGER Vice president, HR MEDTRONIC ASIA PACIFIC
2017 was an action-packed year for Mike Schneeberger and his team. In July, Medtronic completed the sale of three businesses to Cardinal Health Inc – a key achievement considering the global scale of the divestiture. For Schneeberger, this meant working closely with employees of both Medtronic Asia Pacific and Cardinal Health to ensure a fair and successful transition. In 2015, the company also acquired Covidien, which was considered the largest deal of its kind in the medical device industry. With the doubling of company size overnight, Schneeberger and his team quickly got on the board to develop an efficient HR model that would effectively serve the now considerably larger organisation. On top of these transition and integration projects, the team also piloted a leadership development curriculum to support leaders at all levels, as well as offering employee experiences that emphasise learning by doing and granting exposure opportunities to learn from others.
JEETHU SYRIAC Head of HR FARRER PARK HOSPITAL
In 2017, Farrer Park Hospital received 17 recognitions for its work in HR and won seven awards, two of which Jeethu Syriac considers most notable for him and his team. The Excellence Award for Talent Development, received at the Asian Hospital Management Awards 2017, recognised the FPH team’s efforts
in staff development that have led to improved retention and better employee engagement, enhanced customer service and nursing excellence. The Recruitment and Selection Award won by FPH at the Singapore HR Awards 2017 acknowledged the team’s efforts to ensure the recruitment of candidates who are ‘culturally fit’ while also possessing the necessary skills. In 2018, Syriac remains focused on culture work in terms of both talent attraction and management. “The organisation’s challenges in fostering a unified culture across a nearly 600-strong workforce is a big task for a new hospital. Despite the challenges, the hospital is striving to specifically foster a learning culture across its ranks, with training consistently at the forefront of its HR strategy,” Syriac says. “Training in healthcare differs vastly from normal customer service, [and] looking forward, we aspire to provide the unique FPH experience to all patients who journey with us.”
PABLO ALONSO Asia Pacific HR director AMADEUS IT GROUP
Pablo Alonso and his team at travel tech company Amadeus managed to successfully grow the local talent pipeline in 2017 for the large markets in Asia-Pacific – Australia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. By leveraging its employee base of nearly 2,000 in the region, the team managed to reach out to candidates in university campuses, on technology forums and at recruitment events, as well as through the new APAC Graduate Talent Program – all of which focused on showcasing the company’s technology and the opportunities it offers those looking to build a fulfilling career that revolves around technology and travel. Being part of a tech-driven company, Alonso sees the need to not just keep up with digital disruption but also to stay well ahead of the game through effective talent attraction. “At Amadeus we are adapting our sourcing efforts to attract more people that are both savvy on the technology and business needs of the travel industry and can help our customers navigate through these challenges,” he says. On top of recruitment, the team has also rolled out programs such as the APAC Knowledge Academy, which allows employees to test their skills and take the coursework needed for them to upskill.
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FEATURES
SPECIAL REPORT FLORENCE CHAN Senior vice president, HR SINGPOST
LEE MURPHY Senior HR director MICROSOFT ASIA PACIFIC
Lee Murphy is responsible for leading the HR function at Microsoft Asia Pacific, working closely with the APAC senior leadership team to drive the people agenda as part of the company’s transformational change and continued growth. For Murphy, the main highlight for 2017 was witnessing the increasing diversity in the leaders at Microsoft and strong engagement with stakeholders, through a systematic approach on the part of the HR and senior leadership teams. Murphy identifies the challenge in 2018 as staying on course in terms of culture work and operational excellence. “We want to ensure that we continue to deepen our customer and partner-centric approach and streamline all that we do. At the same time, we want to accelerate our cultural transformation and ensure that we have the enablers in place to support Microsoft employees throughout this journey.” In 2018, Murphy hopes to strengthen Microsoft’s HR capabilities in the following areas: fostering a growth mindset for employees to develop healthy curiosity and continuous learning; adopting a ‘customerobsessed’ approach to help them achieve more; furthering the D&I agenda and culture; and building a One Microsoft team that exhibits fluid collaboration across geographical and cultural boundaries.
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It has been a challenging two years for Florence Chan and her team at SingPost, with a flurry of changes such as leadership transitions, corporate governance issues, and business pressures brought about by drastically evolving trends in the wider economy. Recognising the need for solid groundwork, Chan worked closely with the new leadership team at SingPost to evaluate the organisation’s strategy and direction and come up with a clear vision and concrete steps to achieve it. In order to get all employees on board and restore their morale and confidence, the team ensured frequent communication through town halls, emails from the CEO and roundtable discussions, as well as regular dialogue between business managers
ALAN GUO HR head for retail in Asia/global network SHELL
For Alan Guo, growth is the name of the game in this region, and it is up to HR to ensure the sustainability of this growth. In the past 12 months the company has been growing the non-fuel retailing business for the whole region from scratch in response to wider business conditions, while also seeing accelerated
and their respective team members. The HR team also launched a new intranet portal in 2017 to help employees become better informed about the existing programs and processes, with dedicated pages for career, development and performance, as well as orientation/onboarding-related information for new hires. “We wanted to get out there and help employees know what our value proposition for them is,” Chan says. “We believe we can succeed only if we have the commitment of every employee.”
expansion of its businesses in India and Indonesia. These major projects have demanded end-to-end HR support, from defining the strategy to identifying capability needs through to setting up structures and resourcing in markets – all of which have stretched the HR team’s capabilities and helped them achieve new milestones. Another achievement for Guo and his team was the Asia region receiving the internal Executive Vice President D&I award for their initiative in placing female employees and staff with handicaps in sites with communities that have traditionally been less open to these opportunities. The push for inclusion does not end there, as Guo sees an ongoing challenge in upskilling the workforce in order to ensure continued relevance in the digital age, all while ensuring that employees are valued regardless of the differences in their talents and capabilities.
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8/03/2018 2:56:53 PM
SUBHANKAR ROY CHOWDHURY Head of HR LENOVO ASIA PACIFIC
2017 has been a year of transformation not just for Lenovo but also for Subhankar Roy Chowdhury, who transitioned from heading the global HR strategy and analytics team to now serving as HR leader for Lenovo Asia Pacific. In his previous role as head of HR analytics, Chowdhury was responsible with his team for identifying global talent hotspots where certain prioritised strategic skills could be sourced – and for which they were able to develop a data-driven location strategy. After becoming head of HR for Asia Pacific, Chowdhury began focusing on strengthening the ‘human’ element, which translated to prioritising work on culture and employee engagement. “Asia-Pacific is a complex region that has significant differences within the countries when it comes to culture, demographics, market and economic growth,” he says. “HR teams’ ability to navigate through the labyrinth of the above complexities and find a common ground for Asia-Pacific as a region will be an important priority.” Thus far, the team has introduced a number of programs focusing on engagement, learning and wellbeing, all of which have contributed to a stronger business performance over the last year, along with a sharp decline in the attrition rate.
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FEATURES
SPECIAL REPORT FAUZI WAHAB VP of HR ZUELLIG PHARMA APAC
RACHEL CHUNG HR director, Asia Pacific UNIT4 ASIA PACIFIC
Since starting at Unit4 following its acquisition in Singapore two years ago, Rachel Chung has had plenty of opportunities to get the balance right between what she refers to as the “art and science” of HR. As is typical in most post-acquisition entities, her journey started with culture, change management and people strategy as she worked to implement solid foundations. Chung is gradually moving on to providing more innovative HR initiatives for employees. Spurred on by HR innovations in other tech companies, Chung aims to give employees a level of personalisation related to flexibility. Unit4 has flexi-work hours and work-from-home policies to allow employees to work where and when they like. In 2018 this self-empowerment will extend to an employee benefits program that lets employees pick benefits of their choice. Unit4 also fast-tracks any employee who has the potential to grow. For example, they may not be an individual who has managed a team before, but if that is what they aspire to be, Unit4 will give them the opportunity and fast-track their development. “It’s an approach that involves some risk, but we believe this is one way to inspire them and help them grow with Unit4,” Chung tells HRD.
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Fauzi Wahab has worked in regional roles for companies as diverse as British American Tobacco and New Zealand dairy company Fonterra. He now finds himself in the healthcare sector with a new set of challenges and opportunities. Chief among these challenges is a significant transformation project: Zuellig Pharma has traditionally been a pharmaceutical distribution house, which it still is; however, the long-term strategy is to move into healthcare solutions. This transformation requires not just a shift in mindset for existing employees but also fresh talent from areas beyond the logistics sector, including experts in data analytics and patient care. Capability-building is therefore a key focus area for Wahab and his team. A young talent program is concentrating on millennial talent – moving them up the corporate ladder and preparing them to become business leaders in the next three to five years. “I see millennials as being like butterflies,” Wahab says. “They like to go from one flower to another flower to gather nectar, and they don’t like to stay too long.” However, all employees benefit from an enterprise-wide e-learning strategy that has the overarching aim of building the capacity of workers to be agile with technology. A range of functional modules and leadership modules further aim to keep employee skills sharp.
BUTCH CLAS HR director, SEA and ANZ DOW CHEMICAL
Dow Chemical won the Gold award in the ‘500-plus employees’ category in HRD’s own Employer of Choice Awards in 2017. Butch Clas, who has been working in Singapore for over 10 years, told HRD the award was the culmination of lots of HR work by the HR team at Dow Chemical. Dow has high-market-growth expectations of Singapore and Southeast Asia, and it will be up to the HR team to support that growth and drive expansion. At the tail end of 2017, Dow Chemical merged with DuPont, and Clas tells HRD about the changes this will entail: some of the business will spin off (agriculture and electronic materials) into new companies, while several new businesses will move across from DuPont. “We’re going to have to manage all of these changes over the next few years while not losing track of our objectives,” Clas says. Clas is also excited about shifting his HR team away from administration and further into strategy with the launch of a self-service HR tech portal, including mobile phone apps to enable 24/7 transactions, called HR Next Generation. “It means new digital technology that we’re all going to have to embrace, and it’ll change the way we work,” Clas says. “Going digital will help our employees and leaders access information 24/7 via cloud-based computing.”
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8/03/2018 3:00:28 PM
ALISON SIBREE VP of HR, APAC and Japan ORACLE
As a 23-year veteran of Oracle, Alison Sibree has witnessed first-hand how rapidly changing the technology sector is. Oracle’s tech offerings are increasingly cloud-based, and this shift has coincided with the change in HR’s status within organisations. The technology used by Oracle’s own HR team is focused not just on making the lives of HR professionals easier but also on making the lives of employees easier – in other words, the focus is on the employee experience. Sibree recognises the unique talent acquisition challenges facing a global company like Oracle, and with her regional perspective she acknowledges that talent challenges differ widely from location to location. “Japan is my most challenging market because finding people with the right skills there, and who have the flexibility to move jobs and organisations, can be a challenge,” she tells HRD, “whereas in India or China I find people are more willing to jump to a new organisation, provided you have an attractive EVP.” She adds that digital transformation means that Oracle requires new employee skill sets, and those skill sets – such as a global mindset, agile thinking, and strong interpersonal skills because they have to deal with new ways of working – can be difficult to find.
NICOLINA MARZICOLA Regional head of HR for Asia Pacific and Japan HP INC.
Over the past two years since Hewlett Packard’s restructuring, HP Inc. has implemented an overarching HR strategy called the Intentional People Strategy. This is a multifaceted talent strategy
focused on cultivating a growth mindset that drives innovation and empowerment. Since joining HP as an HR manager in Canada back in 1997, Nicolina Marzicola has held various roles within the organisation, and since October 2015 she has found herself with regional responsibilities across Asia-Pacific and Japan. She has been fully involved in the rollout of the new talent initiative and is particularly excited by the potential it holds for unlocking innovation within the HP workforce. In December, HP launched a new Smart Manufacturing Applications and Research Centre, which is intended to be an innovation hub in Singapore. HP’s Intentional People Strategy also includes initiatives that promote a strong sales culture and improve regional talent plans, career rotations and hiring. The strategy also includes HP’s diversity and inclusion programs, along with social-impact initiatives that contribute directly to the local community.
ISAIAH DAS Head of HR, capital resolution, APAC ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND
During his six-year career at RBS, Isaiah Das has made significant contributions through challenging times. One example was the implementation of 21 wellbeing events in APAC, with 360 employees participating across five different categories. In addition, he has been instrumental in reviewing the RBS benefits proposition across the region, resulting in both a wider spectrum of benefits offered and cost savings of over 30% for the bank. In his role within people operations, Das implemented a people strategy that saw turnover in the people services team reduce from 29% to 12% in 2016. He also motivated and led the team to significantly improve HR customer satisfaction scores from internal customers. On average, the team received 44 feedback responses every month and the satisfaction scores were maintained at more than 90%. On top of all this, he led the people services team during a significant people change project whereby 240 employees in one business entity were transferred to a buyer entity. This included ensuring all people services-related activities such as final payments, visas, tax filing and employee p-files were smoothly concluded prior to the transferring staff moving to the new business.
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FEATURES
SPECIAL REPORT JASON HO Head of group HR OCBC BANK
PHAN YOKE FEI Director, HR and administration GARDENS BY THE BAY
Despite being established only five years ago, Gardens by the Bay was a worthy recipient of HRD’s Employer of Choice Award (<500 employees) in September 2017. The organisation also picked up three further ‘top performer’ accolades in the work-life balance, health and wellbeing, and communication categories. In a banner year, the company’s HR team also made HRD’s Top HR Teams list. Clearly, Phan Yoke Fei is doing a lot of things right. On the communications front, Fei is particularly proud of the bi-monthly in-house newsletter, Baywatch. It is unique to GB in that the entire editorial, design and production team of the newsletter is made up of the company’s own employees. About one third of staff are involved in front-line support roles spread across 101 hectares, so this newsletter is a useful way to keep in touch with key initiatives. One such initiative has been spearheaded by the CEO, Kiat Tan. He has made the durian season every year a highlight for employees by organising ‘Community Fruit Eating sessions’, inviting all employees across the organisation to enjoy the various in-season tropical fruit. It has since become a key engagement event – a welcome opportunity for employees to mix with executives and keep communication flowing.
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OCBC Bank continues to push the envelope in terms of technology. From mid-2017, employees in Singapore were granted access to HR information and could get instant responses based on their profiles anytime, anywhere, with the use of OCBC’s first-of-its-kind HR mobile app, which comes with a system-integrated chatbot (‘Buddy’). The app and chatbot were developed in-house by OCBC Bank’s mobile developers in collaboration with the HR team. Employees can ask chatbot ‘Buddy’ HR-related questions based on their individual profiles and get accurate responses immediately. Also in 2017, Jason Ho was instrumental in the launch of the bank’s new-look banking internship program, the OCBC FRANKpreneurship. The
PATRICK FIAT General manager and chief experience officer ROYAL PLAZA ON SCOTTS
In 2017, Royal Plaza on Scotts competed among the best employers in the region to be recognised as one of Asia’s Best Small & Medium Workplaces 2017 by Great Place to Work. The hotel, with a staff strength of 355, came in at number seven
program not only introduces students to the world of banking but also features the deliberate inculcating of entrepreneurship skills and knowledge. It is the first bank-wide penultimate-year internship program to bring together the expertise of bank specialists, external technology leaders Google and Adobe, and university subject-matter experts all at once. It attracted more than 500 applications, from which 26 penultimate-year undergraduates from NUS, NTU, SMU and SUSS (formerly UniSIM) were selected in a rigorous one-day selection process called Ideation Day.
on the list of employers based in Asia. The workplace at Scotts is distinguished by its extraordinary levels of trust, pride and camaraderie. It’s these attributes that the always-approachable Patrick Fiat tries to integrate into everything he and his team do. For example, there’s no need for employees to clock in and out, and there’s no need for employees to submit medical certificates. Other benefits include education subsidies for their children and flexible benefits for families. For Fiat, if the hotel wants exceptional customer service, it must start with exceptional people – and that’s where HR comes in. “It is our talents who form the core of Royal Plaza on Scotts’ culture and transmit the values and beliefs to our business partners and guests through their communication and service delivery,” Fiat says. A further accolade from HRD in 2017 as one of Asia’s Top HR Teams indicates that Fiat’s philosophy is paying dividends.
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BRENDAN TOOMEY Vice president, HR, Asia Pacific HILTON WORLDWIDE
From starting out as a busboy in his earliest working days to now serving as the head of HR for all of Hilton’s Asia Pacific operations, Brendan Toomey demonstrates how success results from a combination of patience, hard work and good opportunities. “In my career, I’ve been blessed because I have had opportunities created every step of the way,” he tells HRD. “Someone would tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘We’ve got this job here – are you interested?’ And that does still happen even up to this day.”
For Toomey, the focus on engaging talent at the individual level remains important and applicable, even with the scale of Hilton’s operations, and it’s especially crucial given the talent acquisition challenges in the hospitality industry. The success of Hilton’s employee engagement strategy, which covers everything from benefits to L&D through to CSR and employee volunteerism, has been possible because of the commitment of the leaders to lead by example. As an example, Toomey came up with his own set of goals for the health and wellbeing ‘Thrive’ challenge, which include walking and/or running 50km a week, drinking more water and eating more healthily, and practising mindful listening, spending less time on social media and having more in-depth conversations with people around him.
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Are you part of Asia’s most successful HR team? Entries are currently open for HRD’s third annual Top HR Teams report. Do you believe your team is one of Asia’s best and deserves to be recognized for its impeccable approach to people management strategies and impressive results?
Submit your nomination online by Friday 6 April 2018
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L&D SPECIAL REPORT
32 LEADERSHIP IN ASIA: RIDING THE WAVES OF CHANGE
Lifelong learning will be critical for success as leaders face unprecedented local and global challenges across technology, the financial markets and changing business needs
34 6 STRATEGIES TO CREATE DIGITAL LEARNING SUCCESS
Digital learning is more than a convenient way to share information. With the right planning, it can be a cost-effective strategy to deepen workforce and leadership capabilities, write Samir Mehta and Holly Downs
36 A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO L&D
Looking to enhance business performance? It’s natural to think of your sales team – but, as HRD discovers, offering professional development is just one element that needs to be considered
38 MEASURING A PEER COACHING INTERVENTION
HR professionals may be reluctant to implement initiatives that have an unclear ROI. Ken Senda and Kentaro Iijima provide their insights on peer coaching success at Fujitsu Social Science Laboratory
THE KEYS TO CONTINUOUS LEARNING www.hcamag.com
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L&D SPECIAL REPORT
MBAS
Leadership in Asia: Riding the waves of change Lifelong learning will be critical for success as leaders face unprecedented local and global challenges across technology, the financial markets and changing business needs
CONSTANT CHANGE, agility and adaptability are words that are synonymous with the future of work. Countless research papers have been devoted to predicting what’s in store for the business world and particularly what the workforce of the future will look like. Even the most casual observer of workplace trends would know that almost everything that workers are doing today in their jobs will change significantly over the next 10 years – to the extent that some
quickly as possible,” he tells HRD. While lifelong learning is critical, Frino also urges employers not to discount the experience already present in their workforce, especially in the face of technological change. “Value your older and more experienced staff, because they have already been through enormous technological change in their careers and many will have developed strategies for adapting to change that will
“Education is the key, and companies need their people to buy into the idea of lifelong learning” Professor Alex Frino jobs may cease to exist and brand-new jobs never previously imagined will come into being. The key to riding these waves of change, says Professor Alex Frino, deputy vicechancellor (global strategies) at the University of Wollongong (UOW), is education. “Education is the key, and companies need their people to buy into the idea of lifelong learning – where people stay up to date with technological advances but equally develop an agile mentality that will allow them to utilise new developments as
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prove invaluable for younger staff members to emulate,” he says.
Skills in the wider context Frino is well qualified to comment on the wider forces impacting the business world. Not only does he hold degrees from UOW, Cambridge University and the University of Sydney, but he is also a former Fulbright Scholar and one of the best-published finance academics in the world, with over 100 papers in leading scholarly journals. He has also held positions with leading
financial market organisations, including the Sydney Futures Exchange, Credit Suisse and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the US. He says Singapore is well positioned to lead the way in business and financial innovation and can also provide insights on how to maximise productivity through the workforce. “Singapore’s greatest resource is its human capital,” Frino says. “The island nation has invested heavily in its human resources and is now reaping the rewards of this strategy. It has a highly educated, multilingual workforce that is ideal for providing global services, particularly in the financial services sector.” During Frino’s long association with the Singapore Exchange, he has particularly admired Singapore’s financial services sector for its high levels of innovation and its global outlook. “Most financial markets around the world have traditionally focused on servicing their local investor community, but Singapore’s clients are just as likely to be international,” he says. “This gives Singapore an edge in the global marketplace and means that it is well positioned to capitalise on the trend towards globalisation of capital markets.”
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Other areas to watch
Learning from ASEAN Business leaders will likely glean some critical insights when Singapore chairs ASEAN in 2018. Having just completed its Golden Jubilee, ASEAN has proven itself as the mainstay of economic and political stability in Southeast Asia, Frino says. “Singapore’s chairmanship of ASEAN gives it and its business leaders the opportunity to reinforce Singapore’s position as the leading financial centre in the region and showcase itself as a centre of business innovation,” he says. Frino adds that Singapore has stated that as ASEAN chair it will focus on the themes of resilience and innovation, as well as pushing ahead with regional economic integration to help bridge the development gap between member nations. “These are certainly laudable aims, and as an international economic success story Singapore certainly has the skills and experience to achieve that,” Frino says. “However, there are undoubtedly lessons to be learned from previous unsuccessful attempts to integrate major organisations across the region, such as ASEAN Trading Link – an attempt to connect the Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand Stock Exchanges that was decommissioned after five years.”
What are some of the other emerging areas that may impact on business operations in 2018? Frino says bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies remain a highly volatile environment. “In my opinion businesses in Asia – and all around the world – should tread with great caution in this area. In January this year we saw a Japanese company lose S$675m when its cryptocurrency transaction was hacked, so it appears that there are still significant security issues to be overcome.” Frino is more confident about blockchain technology’s ability to enhance the way Asian businesses operate. For example, one of blockchain’s great advantages is that it makes it possible for large listed companies to run electronic AGMs by providing a secure environment that allows shareholders to participate by attending and voting electronically. Obviously this greatly improves access for shareholders of large Asian businesses who may reside in different countries and otherwise have difficulty attending AGMs. “In my extensive research into what makes better businesses, I’ve found that companies that are better able to engage their shareholders, and take direction from them, generally benefit considerably,” Frino says. “Therefore, I would strongly recommend that companies based in Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia embrace the blockchain technology that enables electronic AGMs.”
MBAs in focus Taking these disparate elements into consideration, what skills do professionals need to take advantage of this environment and serve businesses better? “Professionals who want to take advantage of this new environment need to be multilingual and highly skilled,” says Frino. “But perhaps most importantly, they need to be culturally aware and culturally sensitive in order to maximise the opportunities that will undoubtedly emerge.” One option for those looking to build their
skills is an MBA. The MBA was first offered by the Harvard University Graduate School of Administration in 1908; since then, MBA programs have been advancing the frontiers of skill and character development in their students. With an eye on technological, industrial, societal and ethical changes, the modern-day MBA is aligned with skills that enable graduates to produce tangible industry outcomes; indeed, it is MBA graduates who are our future leaders. UOW’s MBA course has a strong focus on developing agile thinkers who are well trained to participate in a rapidly evolving global business environment dominated by big data. The UOW course is based on three major platforms that MBA candidates immerse themselves in: • Diagnostics, where MBA candidates diagnose issues in real organisations and develop strategies to deal with the challenges; • Exploration, where they study the latest thinking, practices and research, and develop skills in innovation and business transformation; • Integration and application, which develops strategic decision-making skills so that UOW MBA graduates are able to translate their learnings into solving real-world challenges in their organisations. It does not matter how fast businesses change, key skill sets for MBA graduates remain constant and relevant. These skills include complex problem-solving; critical and analytical thinking; being creative; managing; leading and coordinating people; emotional intelligence; judgment and decision-making; and cognitive flexibility. Looking to bolster your success and the success of your organisation in 2018? It might be time to return to study. The University of Wollongong conducts its MBA program in Singapore, in partnership with PSB Academy at its City Campus. Details of the program are available at www.psb-academy.edu.sg/uowmba
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L&D SPECIAL REPORT
E-LEARNING
6 strategies to create digital learning success Digital learning is more than a convenient way to share information. With the right planning, it can be a cost-effective strategy to deepen workforce and leadership capabilities, write Samir Mehta and Holly Downs TECHNOLOGY HAS changed the way corporate learning and leadership development happen across the globe. Organisations increasingly rely on digital learning for a portion of their leadership development and training needs. Whether the delivery method is a massive open online course, a small private online course, virtual instructor-led training, microlearning, blended learning, or other digital tools that allow participants across multiple locations to learn together or independently, it’s critically important to maximise employees’ time and company resources. However, getting a return from digital learning experiences on an ongoing basis requires far more than just providing a library full of innovative content. Before jumping into developing or reinvigorating a digital learning initiative, learning leaders should consider the following six ways to maximise effectiveness.
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Embrace the ‘less is more’ principle for online learning
Many organisations pitch their learning initiatives with the concept of having ‘something for everyone’, and then they offer up thousands of choices. These kinds of broad initiatives often
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lack focus and are rarely successful. Utilisation rates for non-compliance courses, in particular, tend to drop significantly as time passes. To boost utilisation rates and ensure learning efforts are worthwhile, consider employees’ unique needs, and have them set clear goals around challenges they want to address. For instance, what specific leadership skills do they need? What skills do they want based on specific roles
support from upper management. First, learning leaders must make the business case to senior leadership that time spent on digital learning will lead to new skills that will make employees more efficient and effective long-term. Provide specifics related to established business objectives. Then provide ways for senior leaders to publicly support the learning program. Videos are typically better received than email. For instance, if a senior leader comes to address a group of learners participating in a face-to-face learning initiative, make a video and then put it on the company’s primary digital learning platform. That support can do a lot to boost participation rates. CCL leverages its proprietary Learning Platform to capture powerful messages from a C-suite officer in its client organisation. These video messages are often the first message that a digital learner from CCL’s client organisations will see. This makes the learning immediately relevant.
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Use learner-centric design
Would leaders benefit from a monthly online seminar? Or would a virtual lunch-andlearn program be more effective? Talent leaders must find ways to make learning initiatives a part of the technology employees already use. Having ongoing gaming elements embedded into the
Talent leaders must find ways to make learning initiatives a part of the technology employees already use or functions? Limit program content based on these needs and wants. Then provide targeted digital learning offerings that align with them. An example of how the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has effectively done this by leveraging technology is CCL Boost*, a minimalist approach to new leader development.
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Enlist and creatively publicise support from the C-suite
To be effective, digital learning initiatives need
experience, such as recognition and competition incentives, can help keep learners engaged and coming back. For example, promote and focus on one leadership topic each month or quarter; couple that with a means of recognising learners’ achievements around specific content offerings, such as a LinkedIn badge. This type of engagement is more likely to be impactful. CCL’s path-breaking course Frontline Leader Impact* leveraged the design-thinking expertise of IDEO to create a course experience that was learner-centric for the digital age.
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Make leaders into teachers
Leadership concepts and behaviours should be reinforced. Learning leaders should ensure that managers get the tools and support they need to become effective coaches, and that they are encouraged to share what they’re learning with their direct reports. To reinforce learning, ask managers to train additional front-line leaders, and have them provide follow-up training modules for skill refreshment. All learning doesn’t have to be purely digital. CCL’s clients often augment digital learning with leaders leading leaders by leveraging CCL’s Workshop Kits*.
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Tap into the power of learning partnerships
Learning doesn’t happen just once. Takeaways learned from a webinar or in an interactive session must be practised and refined for employees to retain the information. Establishing accountability partners connects peers who learn together so they can share experiences and discuss challenges and goals. In this way, development experiences create a bond between participants, and they foster an interest in helping each other succeed. This bond also promotes accountability. CCL leverages the power of learning partnerships using technology. CCL Compass* is a way for learners and coaches or mentors to stay connected on development and actions taken towards specific goals in a digital way.
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Measure what matters
Remember that what gets measured is what gets done. One of the most difficult but crucial ways to determine an initiative’s success is to perform ongoing evaluation. Measurement provides data that can be used to refine and strengthen ongoing digital learning efforts. Looking at the return on investment and expectations and linking these to top-line business metrics such as sales, retention and promotion rates can be a powerful way to account for program impact beyond participant satisfaction. Further, digital
EVALUATION TIPS Evaluate digital learning initiatives to track and measure success in the following areas: 1. Program objectives: Ensuring program objectives are clear and measurable is critical to exploring both expected and actual outcomes. Instructors in face-to-face environments can overcome weaker content alignment on satisfaction ratings with a charismatic nature and likeable delivery style. The digital environment doesn’t provide the same connection between instructor and participants, so measurable objectives are vital to assessing how well content is received and covered. 2. Previous experience: When collecting data on the learning content and experience, consider the participants’ previous experiences with that learning delivery method and technology platform. If a participant had to first learn the platform before absorbing the content, this might negatively affect their overall experience. 3. Corporate culture: A learning strategy built around metrics must align with the company’s strengths and cultural preferences to succeed. For example, simulation-based e-learning like gamification will work if the culture encourages competition. However, if competition is not part of the corporate culture, there will be a risk in creating an environment in which people are likely to be embarrassed, resulting in people checking out completely. Similarly, setting a goal like ‘complete three e-courses in the first quarter’ on an individual development plan will work if that is a cultural preference within the organisation. If not, it’s likely to become a check-the-box activity that employees click through quickly but don’t necessarily absorb or use on the job. 4. Business objectives: Employees are more likely to commit to a learning initiative that is aligned with the organisation’s business objectives. Learners often need to see the connection between their participation in learning, the work they do on a daily basis, and the company’s big-picture goals.
Digital learning initiatives offer data insights such as participation rates and timing that typical face-to-face experiences don’t learning initiatives offer data insights such as participation rates and timing that typical face-to-face developmental experiences don’t. Linking these pieces to business objectives can also be informative. CCL works with its clients in discussing the insights from all the data it collects through every channel available. These insights then guide CCL’s path forward so every dollar spent on development is targeted and impactful.
Sustainable, ROI-driven learning Technology offers paths for developmental opportunities in real time and across broad
geographic locations, and leadershipfocused digital learning and development is growing rapidly. With proper planning, these initiatives offer a cost-effective way to deepen workforce development to ensure learning is sustained and ROI is delivered. *For further information, visit www.ccl.org/lead-it-yourself-solutions Samir Mehta is a blended learning leader at the Center for Creative Leadership. Holly Downs is a senior evaluation faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership’s Evaluation Center.
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L&D SPECIAL REPORT
STRATEGY
A holistic approach to L&D Looking to enhance business performance? It’s natural to look at your sales team – but as HRD discovers, offering professional development is just one element that needs to be considered ASK JUST about any CEO what their number one priority is for 2018 and the answer will invariably be either sales growth or improving customer satisfaction. Indeed, growth was cited as the number one business priority for 58% of CEOs in a 2017 study by Gartner, which surveyed 388 CEOs globally. This figure was up from 42% in 2016. To achieve these objectives, it’s no surprise to learn that a desire to enhance the performance and productivity of sales and customer service teams has risen to the top of the corporate agenda for many business leaders. The key question is how to go about this.
Training is not enough Where too many leaders fail is when they look to training as a silver bullet. It’s something Martin Sparkes, Managing Director, Miller Heiman Group, has seen time and time again. “You have to be much more aspirational, much more transformational to get those results. Miller Heiman Group understands the importance of effective change management to achieve that transformation,” he says. “Training will always be a component of a transformation project but it will only be a single component.” Examples of the other components might include technology enablement and talent – specifically, having the right talent, having talent appraisals in place, and ensuring that individual, team and company-wide objectives align with compensation plans. Sparkes concedes that his organisation has
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had to evolve to keep up with changing client demands. Therefore, Miller Heiman Group is repositioning itself in the Asia market and globally as not just a training provider but as a sales enablement/transformation specialist firm. “Our vision is to be the key resource for sales and customer service advice and guidance,” Sparkes says. “We want to be seen as the go-to brand for CEOs, sales leaders, and business owners. When you have a challenge in sales
understanding how to move the needle on those metrics that matter.” It helps that three years ago Miller Heiman Group acquired a company called CSO Insights, which specialises in research covering all aspects of sales and customer service. “We now have fantastic benchmarks studies around sales best practice, service best practice, sales and service optimisation and productivity that clients can draw from,” Sparkes says.
“The approach now is to understand metrics that matter within that client organisation. It’s then about understanding how to move the needle on those metrics that matter” Martin Sparkes or customer service we want to be the first organisation you think of.”
Diagnosing problems With this new holistic focus, Miller Heiman Group takes a consultative, diagnostic approach to each client’s unique challenges. Sparkes says the key is to engineer value in terms of how the company can help clients and ensure any interventions tie directly to business results. “The approach now is to understand metrics that matter within that client organisation,” he adds. “It might be close rates, customer satisfaction or NPS. It’s then about
“We can benchmark organisations against those studies and find out where there are gaps in terms of their performance. It brings a lot of credibility to what we’re trying to achieve and makes it easier to measure results.”
Digital learning While Sparkes suggests there are several foundational issues that organisations must get right in order to maximise sales and customer service performance (see box), there’s no denying that L&D still plays a critical role. However, L&D has also had to move with the times. Digital learning, including videos and gamification, is a
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key component of any L&D strategy. “There’s been a huge demand from clients – especially large businesses – to get scalable learning in place,” Sparkes says. “They don’t want people in the classroom and off the road.” Secondly, and more critically, people in general are simply learning in different ways in 2018. Miller Heiman Group made an investment over two years ago to digitalise all of its core content to transform it into ‘bite-size’ learning – thus enabling people to absorb it in different ways. “Learning is evolving. People want to absorb content in bite-size chunks,” says Sparkes. “They want to be able to do it on their device, on the bus, in a taxi, while buying a coffee. And then it’s being able to do a five minute upskill session or even a check-in – to say ‘ok I’m struggling with this situation, is there a module available that can help me?’” For a sales professional, typical examples might be when they are struggling to close a sale or when they experience ‘radio silence’ from a potential or existing client. A five-minute video brainstorming some ideas on how to resolve these challenges could make a key difference in terms of that professional’s performance. However, for all the excitement that digital learning has created, Sparkes says there is definitely still a place for face-to-face learning. “The key to real success is you’ve got to know how to apply that learning,” he says. “You need some ongoing consulting or ongoing mentoring and coaching to apply what you’ve learned in a real-life environment. You can watch a golf video on YouTube 100 times but unless you go out and hit 100 balls it won’t make much difference.” For now, Sparkes says two of Miller Heiman’s most popular training courses are also some of the longest-standing. Strategic Selling, for example, has been around for 30 years but is more critical today than ever as a valuable resource to draw from for complex selling situations. A revamped program will be launched later in 2018. “To this day organisations still struggle with the basics of managing multiple decision-makers and understanding the results of individuals and tying that to the
results of the organisation in order to help close a sale,” says Sparkes. “Customers have so much information available to them; in sales interactions today and tomorrow you’ll need to provide value that the customer can’t find elsewhere. So it’s building that component into strategic selling.” Another popular course, which has recently been revamped, is SPIN Selling Conversations. “We’ve developed a learning solution about how to ask really good questions. It’s the thing sales people struggle with the most – asking questions that provide value, not just finding information out about the customer and being in discovery mode all the time,” Sparkes says. “We have a huge focus on what we call implication questions and payoff questions. It’s a laser focus on those areas because in this day and age in order to move up that value chain or to strategically contribute to the business it comes down to asking the right questions about the business, knowing the business results and then asking, what if my client did nothing about this?”
Business intelligence for better outcomes 2018 promises to be a big year for Miller Heiman Group. Having moved successfully into the sales effectiveness space, the company’s next phase is to move to being a professional services and data company. Sparkes says there are “huge opportunities” to tap into the data that all organisations hold about their sales performance and utilize artificial intelligence and business intelligence to improve results. “We will be in a position where we can actively alert our customers to underperformance or areas where they can perform better,” he says. “For example, if our methodologies are embedded into their CRM, we should be able to send an alert to a salesperson to say, ‘you’ve had an opportunity in your funnel for 90 days and you haven’t identified the key decision-maker, here is a three-minute video you can watch on how to uncover the key decision-maker. They can undertake some digital learning on their phone, to give them an insight on how to do that more effectively.”
TRANSFORMATION TIPS Martin Sparkes identifies the key elements that must be in place to transform sales and customer service operations. The right skills. “For perhaps 90% of our clients, training is a key component – but it’s one component of successful change management program. Providing the skills and capability to assist the change is critical.” Effective leadership. “It’s important there is effective leadership from the top all the way down – and that includes having a clear vision for where you are heading.” Alignment of internal processes. “Whether that’s your CRM or the way you deliver training, everything must be aligned to your vision.” The ‘what’s in it for me’ factor. “Why change? People won’t change unless there’s something in it for themselves. It comes down to how you present that change to them and clearly outline how they’ll benefit from the change.”
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The sales leader, meanwhile, may also receive an alert, suggesting they have an opportunity in the sales team but the decisionmaker hasn’t been identified. “They can be presented with a five-minute video on how to coach their team on how to identify the key decision-maker. And because of our knowledge of benchmarked sales metrics, we can say, for example, ‘did you know when you have a decision-maker identified it results in a 10% increase in your close rates which would result in a $X uptick in sales’. Sparkes says this new initiative, which he expects to launch mid-2018, is a key way to tie together everything Miller Heiman Group offers to clients. “It’s improving not just the knowledge and skills of employees but really improving overall business results for clients,” he says. The Miler Heiman Group is a Sales and Customer Service enablement and transformation specialist organization that has a proud legacy – built on a combination of the most experienced people in the business, and the most trusted solutions in the market. But innovation rules business today, so the Miller Heiman Group has shifted the way it does things and is now best placed to help its clients rethink selling and servicing their customers.
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L&D SPECIAL REPORT
MENTORING
Measuring a peer coaching intervention HR professionals may be reluctant to implement initiatives that have an unclear ROI. Ken Senda and Kentaro Iijima provide their insights on peer coaching success – and its financial return – at Fujitsu Social Science Laboratory PEER COACHING – a key aspect of what is known as social learning – is a fascinating approach to developing leaders. Instead of focusing on pouring knowledge into leaders, it seeks to have them draw lessons from their own and their peers’ experience. At Fujitsu, we used an approach to peer coaching developed by McGill professor Henry Mintzberg. In his book, Managers Not MBAs, Mintzberg was sharply critical of existing approaches to management education, and colleagues challenged him to create something better. That something better was a master’s program based on learning from the managerial practice of its participants. At its heart was peer coaching. Mintzberg’s approach to peer coaching, translated into Japanese as ‘reflective round tables’, is to establish a group of 10 to 12 people who meet for 75 minutes once a week to discuss a topic. The topics we used covered a wide range of issues, including becoming a visionary leader, silos and slabs in organisations, zen and management, and sources of motivation. Each topic had a study guide that structured the group conversation by providing provocative insights and asking thought-provoking questions.
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What makes peer learning such a special means of leadership development is that the conversation is always in the context of the manager’s experience in the organisation; thus, the relevance and the recollection of the conversation is high. This also means that two different groups studying the same topic might have quite different discussions. The structure of this learning intervention is ideal
and IT solutions to large organisations. The pressing business issue was a shift in strategy that required much more intense cooperation between the solutions business and the systems integration business. This ongoing cooperation is driven by a core of middle managers. The peer coaching model not only offered the opportunity to improve the capability of managers, but also provided a venue for building stronger cross-functional understanding as the peer groups, working as a team, reflected on the relevance of each topic to Fujitsu. We launched the peer coaching program in 2007 and have come to believe it is a powerful tool for improving performance.
How we tested to see if peer coaching was working It’s common to ask about the ROI of leadership development, but that’s too narrow a view. We needed to drive profitability, not merely cover the relatively small cost of the peer coaching intervention. The question we wanted to answer was: Is peer coaching effective in helping the business thrive? Luckily, we had a number of different units doing peer coaching, and this created a kind of natural experiment. We could look at how the intensity of peer coaching was related to profitability. Furthermore, the
What makes peer learning such a special means of leadership development is that the conversation is always in the context of the manager’s experience in the organisation for a group of practising managers facing real business issues. And real business issues were the reason we invested in this method.
The business context Fujitsu Social Science Laboratory is headquartered in Kawasaki, Japan, and is one of the central firms of the Fujitsu Group. It has 1,160 employees and posted revenue of ¥26.2bn (approximately US$240m) in 2015. It provides system integration
program had a long duration – leadership development takes some time to have an impact on business results, and we were fortunate to have nine years of data to study. Our first hypothesis was that greater participation in the program would be positively related to greater sales and profits. The data in the graph (on opposite page) shows that departments with higher participation in peer coaching posted higher profits.
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in 2008), it can be seen that where the participation rate exceeded 30%, there was an improvement in sales and profits. If it exceeded 50%, then the employee survey results improved.
Profit growth in 2015, relative to previous year (where 1 = same growth rate)
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARTICIPATION IN PEER COACHING AND SALES/PROFIT 2
General lessons 1.5
1
0.5
0 0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Participation rate in peer coaching
Correlation does not prove causation, but there is a credible causal mechanism in this case. We believed that the business needed cooperation across silos to generate profits; we implemented a program to increase cooperation, and then profits went up. The evidence tilts towards the conclusion that peer coaching was having a positive impact. The weight of evidence strongly suggested to business leaders at Fujitsu SSL that they were much better off with the program than without it. Our second hypothesis was that the peer coaching program was one important cause of the organisation’s success, and the business results could not be fully accounted for by other factors. Was there perhaps something else going on to explain the increase in profit – meaning that, in fact, the social learning was inconsequential? This is a difficult question, but to get some insight on the matter, we interviewed the managers. This led to qualitative evidence in the form of comments such as “I was able to understand and accept the characteristics of the type of manager that I am” (about the servant leadership discussion topic) and “I tried to find the solution by intentionally
letting the others talk and confirming the essence of the problem together” (about the topic of decision-making in groups). Another manager commented, “After participating in peer coaching in 2012, I started to ‘sow seeds’ in the project and finally brought on results in 2014 that made a beneficial change to profit and loss.” In addition to this qualitative data about individual experiences, quantitative data derived from our performance management system showed that participation was correlated with improved individual performance. Our third hypothesis was that the program had a positive impact on employee engagement. The results were clear: the higher the participation rate, the higher the satisfaction rate with management, teamwork and cross-functional communication. However, the subfactors of personal growth, willingness to challenge, and ability to educate/support the next generations didn’t depend on the participation rate. We concluded that the program had an effect on engagement, but only by influencing some of the underlying subfactors. Looking back at the past nine years (participation was measured starting
With respect to peer coaching, the weight of evidence at Fujitsu SSL suggests that it had a large, positive impact on profits and engagement. It played a wide-ranging role in enabling our managers to successfully manage the transition to a more integrated strategy. As a result of this analysis, we are currently expanding the program to early-stage managers (in the second year of their managerial roles), selected female leaders and leaders of particular business sectors. For HR professionals and CLOs interested in applying measurement to learning interventions, we have several pieces of advice. One is to keep in mind that you are seeking to assess the overall weight of evidence, not to provide a scientific proof. You can never prove beyond doubt that a learning intervention is responsible for improved results; however, if you look at an assortment of different analyses and they suggest the intervention is improving business outcomes, then that’s usually all leaders want to know. Also, we didn’t feel the need to go as far as calculating ROI. Such a calculation would have been fraught with guesswork. The cost of the program is small compared to the improvements in profitability, and there was no need to calculate a precise ROI in order to decide to continue the program. Finally, we did our analyses running over nine years of data. You cannot expect leadership development interventions to have an impact overnight. If you are serious about assessing whether a program is working or not, then you have to give it time to show results.
Kentaro Iijima is president of Kentaro Office, a consulting office, and former corporate senior vice president of Fujitsu Social Science Laboratory. Ken Senda is corporate vice president of Fujitsu Social Science Laboratory.
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SECTOR FOCUS
RECRUITMENT
Working smarter, not harder: RPO Insights 2018 In a rapidly evolving field, HRD explores the latest trends in recruitment process outsourcing and managed service provider solutions
RPO, otherwise known as recruitment process outsourcing, has long been a hotbed of innovation, primarily because the pressure of finding good talent requires fresh thinking, but also because of the ongoing need to deliver on the business outcomes expected by clients. With the rise and rise of the contingent workforce, RPO service providers are coming
Singapore, forming 11.3% of the resident workforce. In the US, this figure sits at 34%, and by 2020 it’s expected to be 44%. With such a globalised talent market it’s fair to assume that Singapore and the rest of Asia will follow the lead of the US. It’s no surprise that BPO analysts NelsonHall predict that RPO will be the
“We’ve seen an uptick with small to medium-sized businesses operating across multiple countries that have been combining RPO and MSP services within one provider” David Barr, Resource Solutions up with new and innovative ways to assist with the talent management challenges faced by clients. For one thing, according to the Manpower Ministry’s 2015 Labour Force Report, there were 202,400 contract employees in
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fastest-growing service in the HR arena by 2020. As an international leader in RPO and MSP (managed service provider) solutions, Resource Solutions manages outsourced recruitment for some of the world’s biggest
businesses. As an RPO provider, Resource Solutions acts as an extension of its clients’ HR function, sitting on-site and providing an end-to-end permanent hiring solution. Unlike contingency firms and traditional recruitment agencies, the RPO provider takes full accountability for and ownership of the entire recruitment process. On the other hand, an MSP manages all contingent (temporary) recruitment and takes responsibility for the ongoing management of the contingent workforce. Although MSP models differ depending on clients’ needs, MSP programs will typically include managing all contingent vacancies, from workforce planning to contingent worker offboarding. Resource Solutions covers a broad range of sectors and industries and is expanding its client base rapidly across the AsiaPacific region. Placing upwards of 45,000 candidates for over 50 clients across more than 60 countries, its experience affords a unique insight into the fast-evolving landscape of recruitment outsourcing. Change in the outsourced recruitment space is constant. Resource Solutions has a dedicated innovation team that partners with clients at the most senior level, helping them to stay one step ahead and navigate the changing recruitment landscape in real time. In 2017, the firm saw changes in the recruitment world gathering pace, and these are taking new directions in 2018.
Key trend for 2018: Total Talent Acquisition Resource Solutions first highlighted Total Talent Acquisition (TTA) as an emerging trend in the recruitment space in 2016. Since then it has come a long way and continues to gather pace as a recruitment solution of choice. TTA is a delivery model designed to complement all client programs, including contingent, permanent and consultancy
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Brought to you by
AT A GLANCE: STATEMENT OF WORK (SOW) and Statement of Work (SOW) spend. Managing all forms and levels of recruitment under a TTA solution supports a business’s efforts to expand and can positively impact on critical areas of productivity and workplace efficiencies (see boxout for further information on SOW).
Why do businesses use a TTA model? Resource Solutions’ TTA delivery model is designed to complement an employer’s broader talent programs. Resource Solutions supports the acquisition of talent
A Statement of Work is a temporary contract that focuses on the work activities and deliverables to be supplied by the professional, as opposed to a typical contingent contract, which is billed based on timed work. The project is paid for following successful delivery of the piece of work or completion of the project. “In the Asia-Pacific region, we’ve seen an uptick with small to medium-sized businesses operating across multiple countries that have been combining RPO and MSP services within one provider. There is a definite appetite for moving to simplified supplier relationships,” says David Barr, director, APAC, Resource Solutions.
in all forms of candidate engagement, including permanent, contractor and temporary roles. Managing all forms of recruitment control, consistency and visibility, stakeholder engagement and hiring experience, these TTA solutions
support employers in their ambitions to globalise recruitment programs. The concept of TTA makes a lot of sense – it ensures an organisation’s total workforce is being reported on. This includes the transfer of knowledge, transfer
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SECTOR FOCUS
RECRUITMENT Brought to you by
TO TTA OR NOT TO TTA? To gain some insights into the Total Talent Acquisition (TTA) space, Resource Solutions surveyed over 500 HR decision-makers to reveal the following:
22% are not using TTA at the moment but are planning to in the future
36% admitted to not managing their permanent, temporary and consultancy workforce as one entity with a TTA model
18% currently utilise a TTA model, allowing for greater efficiency when it comes to managing, engaging and retaining their workforce
RESOURCE SOLUTIONS How could your business benefit from recruitment outsourcing? The Resource Solutions Outsourcing Insights Report 2018 explores a range of key trends in the outsourced recruitment industry, and is designed to stimulate new thinking and generate discussion. To find out more and get a copy of the report, visit www.resourcesolutions.com
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of skills, ensuring work is allocated to the right place and managing staff accordingly. By blending RPO and MSP solutions in a TTA model, organisations are redesigning an entire global talent acquisition strategy. So, whether engaging the permanent, temporary, consultant or SOW workforce, hiring managers can benefit from a bigger talent pool, economies of scale, and efficiencies from the technologies that enable a TTA model.
SOW what? SOW budgets differ across organisations because they are typically dependent on the attitude to spending on consultancy. Some will naturally have a policy that limits the
Tools used to plan and report on spend Since 1998, Resource Solutions has provided its own proprietary recruitment technology, talentsource, to place equal emphasis on addressing and meeting permanent and temporary talent acquisition needs. Recently upgraded and constantly improving, the industry-leading support system is modular, web-based and provides end-to-end tracking for clients. talentsource is an award-winning and industry-leading recruitment technology that supports end-to-end recruitment lifecycle tracking. The mobile responsive platform provides users with permanent, temporary and Statement of Work recruitment
By blending RPO and MSP solutions in a TTA model, organisations are redesigning an entire global talent acquisition strategy number of third party consultancies with whom they work, while others will choose to spend more on consultancies. SOW programs can offer employers opportunities for greater transparency to better manage their entire contingent workforce across all requisition types.
Changing attitudes to the temp option in Asia-Pacific In Asia, the recruitment outsourcing market in the last year has evolved rapidly. However, contingent workers offering flexible work options in Asia still remain in the minority. For cultural reasons, employers in Asia choose not to consider flexible or temporary workers, but we are seeing them become more prominent in key markets like Singapore and Hong Kong.
tracking; agency and non-agency source management; a fully branded candidate career portal; contractor management and management information, all in real time. talentsource is included in Resource Solutions’ overall RPO and MSP offer and is trusted by the company’s clients around the world. Managing over US$2bn of recruitment spend annually, talentsource supports over 45,000 weekly users globally. A TTA solution can only be managed by an outsource provider that offers both RPO and MSP services. It’s not an automatic assumption that vendors are able to provide this function. Resource Solutions prides itself on being agile and – most critically – able to offer bespoke TTA solutions for clients.
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VENDOR PROFILE
FRONTIER eHR
Meeting 2018’s HR challenges Technology may help HR resolve some of its most pressing talent management issues CHUA WENG FOO, CEO of Frontier eHR, says there’s a unique mix of local and global forces currently impacting talent management. Top of the list is the need to manage different generations of workers, especially millennials. “The millennials are a different breed,” he says. “They are extremely well informed – they know what a good employer looks like; they know what a fair salary is. This means we need to provide them with the right kind of work conditions. For example, flexibility is so important to this generation, and increasingly for all generations.” Tied into this broad concept of flexibility is the rise and rise of the gig economy. In Singapore, 9% of resident employees participate in the gig economy – a figure that is expected to grow dramatically in the future. In addition to this, a clampdown on foreign workers and a largely stagnant local labour market are exacerbating the talent challenges. HRD chats to Weng Foo about how technology is helping HR.
HRD: How has technology changed the way organisations handle talent management? Chua Weng Foo: A key for HR is to engage millennials, who are known to be the hardest generation to manage. They have high expectations of themselves and their bosses. HR can help engage this group through cloudbased talent management platforms. Through continuous performance feedback and coaching, you can improve employee motivation, reduce undesirable behaviours and reduce turnover.
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We are living in a very dynamic world. Changes are rapid. In the past we could do annual budgets and it would stick for the whole year, but businesses are changing so fast that companies are doing rolling forecasting. From the HR perspective, managers and employees not only need to have meaningful, ongoing performance conversations but employees should be empowered to create personal goals that can be revised and updated along the way. Every organisation sees the need to keep its employees’ goals aligned with the company’s objectives. HR therefore requires a system that allows for rapid adoption of transparent goals that can be frequently updated as the business changes, and transforms performance processes that suit business needs. Systems should allow peers to provide input as part of an appraisal process to achieve a higher level of objectivity and encourage team spirit through 360-degree feedback. An LMS provides an end-to-end solution for managing all training processes. Nurturing talent is an ongoing and automated process, not a one-time activity. HR gets the holistic view into employee performance, and learning needs to deliver a learning plan. Finally, HR analytics can help to provide businesses with the insights to attract the right competencies, recruit people with the right skills, manage talent effectively, as well as pinpoint any issues that adversely impact staff morale, which can then be quickly addressed.
HRD: Can you outline Frontier eHR’s LeapsUP HRMS platform? CWF: Frontier e-HR’s LeapsUp is a cloud-
based, mobile-friendly HR and workforce management solution. Companies with a regional or global presence will see immediate benefit in the LeapsUP suite delivered in the cloud. Through a single deployment, employees are empowered to perform selfservice functions anytime, anywhere. It enhances HRMS user experience through an intuitive, simple and effective user interface. There are four pillars of solutions seamlessly integrated within LeapsUP – covering HRMS, Workforce Management, Talent Management and Overseas Travel Authorisation – to help HR to focus on strategic objectives and realise operational efficiencies with technology. The Frontier eHR entrée suite is a scaleddown version of the enterprise suite, catering to the needs of SMEs. It is affordable, comprehensive and easy to implement.
HRD: Can you touch on user experience? CWF: Our solution suite is designed with a great user experience in mind. Firstly, things are personalised – what fits you might not fit me, so we have personalised widgets. Through that, the users have access to the most common tasks based on drop-and-drag functionality and with one or two clicks can apply for leave, check their leave balance, book meeting rooms, download relevant documents, and so on. Secondly, the HR Analytics and Consolidated reports serve to improve decision-making through actionable analytics and intuitive charts. Thirdly, through an intelligent wizard known as the Guided Steps, new users are guided to efficiently complete the common HR tasks. Fourthly, SmartAlert is personalised to ensure no one misses a critical task pending for action. And lastly, there is ease of integration with external systems, for example the interface with General Ledger. Our goal at Frontier e-HR is to take away the heavy HR administrative workload to create space for HR to focus on higher-valueadded tasks. For further information on Frontier eHR’s suite of talent management solutions, visit www.frontier-ehr.com
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FEATURES
USER EXPERIENCE
Examining the UX in HR technology User experience and design thinking are hot topics in the tech world, but is HR ready to embrace the latest trends? TECHNOLOGY HAS changed almost every aspect of daily life at such a swift rate that consumer expectations are almost unrecognisable from 15 or even 10 years ago. Expectations around the way we work, shop and interact have all been transformed by technology, but it doesn’t end there. Modern consumers now expect the technology that
the same rules apply to HR technology? According to Adam Rogers, chief technology officer at Ultimate Software, the answer is a resounding yes. “Leading human capital management [HCM] solutions resemble consumer technology, with intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces, and the explosion of mobile
“At the heart of great user experience is simplifying people’s lives. The biggest accomplishment is solving a problem before users even realise there’s a problem, and that’s something that today’s HCM solutions are delivering” Adam Rogers, Ultimate Software drives all of these changes to itself keep up with the evolving and increasingly digital environment in which we live. As consumers, we expect our technology to blend seamlessly with our everyday lives. User experience should be intuitive, but can
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availability means users can now access their critical HCM data anytime, anywhere,” Rogers says. “Work isn’t confined to the office any more, and neither is HCM. At the heart of great user experience is simplifying people’s lives. The biggest accomplishment
is solving a problem before users even realise there’s a problem, and that’s something that today’s HCM solutions are delivering.” Committing to a well-thought-out research plan is a crucial first step in the life cycle of a user-friendly HR tech solution. Rogers and his team at Ultimate Software spend a lot of time storyboarding and working with user researchers in order to improve and validate the user experience. The team relies on ethnographers, usability engineers and usability researchers – roles that are entirely focused on studying users and figuring out what they want, even if they can’t verbalise it themselves. “Part of this innovation comes from watching how people navigate the software, keeping track of how many steps it takes to accomplish a goal, or watching for a redundancy that the customer hasn’t identified yet,” Rogers says. “Many features and functionalities of enterprise software are personalised and userdependent, so it’s important to be aware of the flow of the software and how that affects the user. By building instrumentation directly into the architecture of our software, we have visibility into usage patterns that drive usability refinements.” ‘Design thinking’ is a popular buzzword at the moment, but at its core it has a meaning that is pretty straightforward: putting the customer first. It’s an approach that aims to engender empathy for users and incorporates constant testing and retesting along the way, with an emphasis on iteration and prototyping, Rogers explains. “The customer-centric approach enables developers to find unique pain points and brainstorm solutions that may not be obvious from a traditional software-design strategy – accelerating the rate of innovation and increasing value for users,” he says. “At Ultimate, we call it ‘service design thinking’, and it’s more than just our framework for software engineering. It’s also the foundation of our service-based culture that nurtures agile decision-making and reinforces our
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THE EVOLUTION OF HR SYSTEMS Benefits and compensation
Hiring/ recruiting
E-learning/ talent management
Performance/ cloud HRMS
Maturity of cloud vendors
MARKET GROWTH – ADOPTION
Cloud-based HRMS and talent/workforce management
Intergrated talent management
Learning management Recruiting/ sourcing Applicant tracking
Performance management Succession management
Real-time engagement
Social recognition
New recruitment and candidate tools
Analytics tools
Culture and team productivity Work-life balance/ wellness Mobile, anytime learning
Benefits administration
Complete app-based self-service
Compensation 2000
PROGRESSION OVER TIME
HR process automation
Next-gen feedback performance
Network recruiting
Workforce management
Human resource information systems [HRIS]
The new world of HR apps
Integrated talent management
2016
Cloud-based systems of management
Apps that make work-life better
Source: Bersin by Deloitte, 2016
business model of always putting people first.” The goal of service design thinking is equally easy to understand: to develop an experience that’s simple, intuitive and pleasurable for customers. Even if the back end of an application or cloud-based tool is incredibly complex, the user should have no idea that’s the case. Modern users expect to be able to easily navigate new software straight out of the box. By focusing on the user during every stage of development, and observing their behaviour and drawing conclusions about their experience and what they want, Rogers believes that service design thinking helps deliver the types of HR tech solutions that modern users both want and expect. “The process relies on a constant feedback
loop and intimate understanding of the user,” Rogers says. “This ongoing, two-way communication between developer and user is essential to everyone’s success, and it’s a key component of Ultimate’s lifelong partnerships with customers.” By focusing so closely on user experience, software engineers are able to avoid the biases that naturally occur when something is – either consciously or subconsciously – designed with the developer’s experience in mind. One of Rogers’ favourite illustrations of this is to imagine a group of engineers who have been given the task of developing the most comfortable chair possible. “Now, remove the word ‘chair’ and tell another group of people to find the most
comfortable way to keep someone off the ground,” Rogers says. “They’re likely to look at the problem from a different angle and develop a solution that’s much more innovative.” Historically, HR technology solutions have tended to fall into one of two categories, explains David Mennie, VP of product marketing and strategy at Saba Software. Systems have either been easy to administer but not focused on the user experience, or they are completely user-friendly but lack the required depth of functionality or administrative capability required. However, things are starting to change. “Striking a balance between consumergrade usability and something that is really easy to administer is a trend we are starting
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FEATURES
USER EXPERIENCE THE ROLE OF TECH IN PEOPLE MANAGEMENT Automated talent management
Integrated talent management
Engagement/fit/ culture/analytics
Empowerment/ performance/ leadership
People management
Talent management • Integrated processes and systems • Talent as core to HR and business agenda
Focus on: • Culture • Engagement • Environment
• Leadership • Empowerment • Fit
Automate
Integrate
Engage
Empower
1990s–2000s
2004–2012
2012–2015
2016 and beyond Source: Bersin by Deloitte, 2016
“We do have to be very careful in how we apply these technologies ... because we don’t want to automate the human” David Mennie, Saba Software to see in the HR tech space,” Mennie says. Mennie believes emerging technologies that are currently changing the way companies conduct their business have the potential to be used in HR software. Applications like conversational voice interfaces and chatbots give users the ability to interact with software in ways that don’t require a mouse, keyboard or other traditional action related to a device. Voice interface software allows users to have what appear to be normal conversations about tasks and projects with their laptop or mobile phone.
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The implementation of cutting-edge solutions will enable HR leaders to interact with technology like never before, and the way that work happens will also be impacted. Mennie believes the traditional concept of the flow of work will become more integrated into new technologies, which will become trusted advisers to workers rather than systems they are forced to use in order to draw singular pieces of information. “However, we do have to be very careful in how we apply these technologies, specifically to HR, because we don’t want to automate the
human,” he says. “The whole point of HR is the human interaction. Anything we can do to bring important issues to the front and centre for workers and teams will definitely help to boost efficiency. These technologies have the potential to make conversations richer or more meaningful, which is a really awesome application of some of these new tools.” Rogers envisions a future in which service design thinking supports all aspects of HR and HCM technology. As the technology continues to evolve, Rogers believes contacting the services department will become a last resort. “Software designers will aspire to prevent users from needing to take that step,” he says. “Ideally, services departments will be able to focus primarily on providing strategic partnership to customers, bringing increasingly valuable information to the executive table and communicating these insights in the simplest and most intuitive ways.”
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FEATURES
INSIDE HR
A Hilton Haikou Meilan (China) group photo celebrating the Thrive@Hilton initiative
The heart of Hilton Hilton’s mission is to be the most hospitable company in the world. But it’s what – or who – is at the heart of this mission that is the key to its success WHILE IT’S not uncommon for organisations to claim that “our people are our greatest asset”, often these are empty words. Not so at Hilton, which has a refreshing twist on those words. “Our team members are at the core of our success, so we actually call them the ‘Heart of Hilton’,” explains Brendan Toomey, Hilton’s vice president of HR for Asia Pacific. “And in order for our business to be successful, we need our
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team members to have their heads in the right state. So we took a decision to really think: What do we need to do to engage all of our team members? How do we capture their hearts and minds?” He refers in particular to millennials, who are always looking for out-of-the-box benefits and solutions and constantly thinking about how their work can be elevated in
terms of workplace, culture and purpose. “We wanted to create an environment where people thrive, where our team members thrive, our business thrives. And that is now our overarching employee value proposition in the company,” Toomey says. To put this concept of ‘thrive’ in practical terms, Hilton has partnered with Thrive Global, whose mission is “to end the stress and burnout epidemic by offering sustainable, science-based solutions to enhance wellbeing, performance and purpose, and create a healthier relationship with technology”. The belief is that it’s not a zero-sum game. Success does not come only at the price of wellbeing, but it’s in fact the other way around – only by putting wellbeing first can people be properly empowered for success. With this in mind, all of Hilton’s HR strategies and initiatives are now placed under the Thrive umbrella, which is split into three key areas – body, mind, spirit (see boxout).
Back to basics When talking about the body, the first thing that
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often comes to mind is living a healthier lifestyle. But Toomey explains that it goes beyond what happens in the body and also means looking at where the body is situated. He illustrates this point by painting a familiar everyday scenario. “Imagine waking up at six o’clock in the morning and dragging yourself to work. You get to your workplace and it’s very dull and dim, and you’re hardly energetic and motivated to hand the customers a hearty breakfast.” Hilton is keen to overturn this stereotypical image of a dark and dingy behind-the-scenes for hotel staff by ensuring consistency all throughout the hotel in terms of quality of space and service. This can be seen in the Heart of House program, which was designed to provide team members with their own set of basic quality facilities that hotel guests normally have. “If you were to walk behind the scenes in a hotel, and if you were to go dine in one of our team members’ dining rooms, then you would have a similar experience if you were to dine in one of our guest-facing restaurants,” Toomey says. Apart from the healthy meals served, the staff dining rooms are also designed in such a way that’s conducive to learning and leisure, where team members can bring their laptops and connect to Wi-Fi and do their work or unwind – an environment in which they can really thrive. Team members are also encouraged to take a break, go around for a walk when needed, and get enough sleep.
Thrive in 100 days Recognising the influence of the collective in sustaining health and wellness practices, Hilton’s Singapore office introduced a 100-day Thrive Challenge, where team members convene to set goals to ‘Thrive’ together for 100 days. Instead of having a one-size-fits-all program, each department is given the opportunity to create its own set of challenges as a group, to promote better work practices and healthier eating. The idea is to empower the team members to come up with measures that best fit their needs and personalities in line with the Thrive principle, ensuring ownership and sustainability.
THRIVE@HILTON KEY PRINCIPLES Thrive@Hilton is Hilton’s employee value proposition to enable team members to ‘Thrive’ by growing and flourishing in ‘Body, Mind and Spirit’. Body: Building a strong foundation for health and wellbeing »» By encouraging team members to recharge while working, and by sharing tips on simple exercises and mindful eating habits to enable team members to feel more energised »» Hilton also provides team members with a great environment that inspires them and helps them achieve their goals (eg Heart of House) Mind: Seeking lifelong learning and mindful leadership »» By equipping team members with diverse and numerous opportunities for personal and professional growth, while encouraging mindfulness – be it at meetings, in emails, or time spent out of office to recharge Spirit: Daring to dream and connect with purpose »» Hilton launched the new Thrive Sabbatical Program in July to provide the opportunity for team members to enrich the lives of others or accomplish a personal goal, and return to work inspired
“We wanted to create an environment where people thrive, where our team members thrive, our business thrives” Brendan Toomey, Hilton “They are doing things in their own world that make them feel good about themselves and make them feel healthier,” Toomey says. “We don’t mandate anything, we don’t tell anybody they must eat healthily or that they must stop drinking alcohol. We provide guidelines, we give them tips. We help them think about micro steps that they can take to help start their journey.”
Mind over matter Mindful leadership and lifelong learning – these are the two components under the ‘Mind’ pillar, which Toomey considers the most significant component. The first step in mindful leadership is learning to communicate in a mindful way. This can be broken down to the smallest things, such as emails and meetings – when and how they are sent out/set up, the amount of time spent on them – and the flow-on effect from these, especially given a general culture that expects constant
connectivity through technology. Hilton is looking to break away from that tradition and create a new culture with Thrive. “How people use digital, how they use social [media] in such a way that they can pretty much be on all the time – we think that’s very unhealthy. We don’t want that type of behaviour to be the norm,” says Toomey. “We understand that there may be a need for certain roles at certain times to be connected. We’re not saying ‘just disconnect and forget about your job’. What we’re saying to our team members is, ‘At the end of the day, you control when you’re on and when you’re off ’.” The idea of flexible work practices now comes into play. While it might be easy to allow remote work arrangements for certain roles, it’s obviously not feasible for a number of roles within a hotel. So instead of extending the classic work-from-home option, supervisors and managers pay extra attention to the roster and make sure there’s
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FEATURES
INSIDE HR
flexibility, and the staff are given more leeway as to how and when they take time off work. Toomey extends the concept of mindfulness to the area of mental health as well, in terms of how the team members are doing and how the leaders respond in turn. “I think we’re in an environment where you may be working long hours – maybe you’re not eating as well, maybe you’re not getting enough rest; you get tired, therefore you’re not as gregarious and happy and lively as you might have been,” he says. “So we’re working hard to get people to connect the dots between the pillars. They don’t stand alone; they’re all linked.”
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“We encourage our leaders to connect, provide feedback, try and uncover, without prying and getting too personal, but just to understand what’s happening in that person’s life that we can support them more with. Our responsibility as an employer is, if we find that there is some medical concern, then we would provide guidance and support and help point that person in the right direction.”
Engaging millennials in ‘Spirit’ “Hilton believes it has this great opportunity to contribute more broadly to the community and give back where we can. That is the essence of why we are doing what we are doing,” says Toomey about the rationale behind the Thrive
initiative and the ‘Spirit’ pillar in particular, which involves recognising contributions from within and outside of Hilton. The Spirit pillar also ties in with Hilton’s aim to be more intentional in engaging the millennial generation. “We find the millennial generation clearly wants to know about us as a company and what we’re doing to the community and the environment. Millennials are also keen to be fast-tracked and promoted quickly,” Toomey says. The company has in place an internal promotion process, an 18-month management trainee program that fast-tracks employees from graduation through to a first-level supervisory role, and an elevated program
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HEART OF HOUSE Designed to enhance the team member experience and provide an inspiring environment, the Heart of House initiative has set new standards to improve the back-of-house working environment for on-property team members. • Through the initiative, Hilton creates ownable space for team members, where food, lighting, music and even wardrobe are carefully considered, in order to drive home the mission to be the world’s most hospitable company. • At Hilton Singapore, team members enjoy meals prepared by the hotel’s chefs in a team member cafe, which has a pool table and views that overlook the lush greenery on Orchard Road. There are also ‘Snooze Rooms’ for team members to recharge in, as well as a recently revamped staff gym.
“We provide guidelines, we give them tips. We help them think about micro steps that they can take to help start their journey” Brendan Toomey, Hilton
Hilton teams from Singapore, Japan, India, China and Australia celebrate Thrive@Hilton activities
for general management wherein selected millennial employees go through four key aspects of Hilton’s operations within a couple of years and are eventually led to a head of department role – which traditionally takes eight to 10 years. To date, Thrive@Hilton has been a hit with employees. For example, Michael Slaton, VP of finance at Hilton APAC, outlined to HRD how his team has been actively and enthusiastically engaged in the program. “The Thrive@Hilton initiatives have become a rallying point for our finance team members to come together and flourish as one in ‘Body, Mind and Spirit’,” Slaton said. “We’re doing more together as a team than ever
before, from team outings such as BBQ and karaoke, to setting collective stair-climbing targets that we strive for and share photos of, no matter which part of the world any of us may be in – Singapore, Delhi or Tokyo, just to name a few. We’ve had several team members take on new physical challenges as well – from losing weight to learning how to swim, all the while cheering each other on.”
Looking beyond Hilton Having established what happens within, the focus turns outward. To provide the millennial team members with the meaning and purpose they want from work, Hilton has created a corporate responsibility program called ‘Travel with Purpose’, which provides action grants and resources to create initiatives that are properly tailored to local communities and their needs. The program includes a global week of service that allows team members to fully dedicate all their time and efforts to top causes. But it doesn’t stop at an annual event. The company is quick to respond and give to
community needs as they come up at different times and in different geographies – such as with the recent catastrophes in the US. “In the US, with all the floods they’re having, the typhoons, fires – you can imagine what they’re doing around giving back to the community,” Toomey says. “There are donations set up wherein the company matches dollar for dollar what the team members put forward – things of that nature that build our culture and our mission to be the most hospitable company in the world.” From shaping the mission, vision and values to the Thrive initiative as the overall engagement strategy, through to leadership development and corporate social responsibility, Toomey says HR’s role is to make the embedded practices come to life in order to continuously grow the organisation. “When we’re recruiting team members from outside the company and bringing them in, we’re sharing with them our stories about what we’re doing as a company, and why they should come and join us.”
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PEOPLE
CAREER PATH
UP FOR THE CHALLENGE Lisa Christy has found throughout her career that ‘outside your comfort zone is where life begins’
Lisa Christy credits her first job – in a country fish and chip shop, where the teenage golf obsessive earned $3 an hour to buy her own set of clubs – as setting her up for the career to come. “It provided me with a great foundation: I learnt about hard work, customer service excellence and leadership. I found myself managing the shop, training staff and making improvements. The experience gave me early-developed behaviours and values that have been fundamental throughout my career.”
1984
LAYS THE FOUNDATIONS
1995
TAKES FIRST ROLE IN TECH Christy took her first HR role in IT at a pivotal time in tech development, driven by her passion for innovative, fast-paced environments in companies that were changing the status quo. She also, crucially, found two role models whose success she sought to emulate.
“I remember thinking, if I could learn the best of what each mentor displayed, that would be an amazing combination. I also very consciously thought, ‘One day I want that job!’” 2004
GOES INTERNATIONAL A new dimension was added to Christy’s career when she joined Gartner and supplemented her experience across the Asia-Pacific region with a role involving global responsibilities. “This was my first exposure to international HR. I was dealing with issues in countries such as Brazil, Germany, Russia and the US all at once. It was an amazing opportunity to collaborate globally and work across so many diverse cultures.”
2017
FOCUSES ON GOALS
Joining Wolters Kluwer, another successful global company, has given Christy the opportunity to work in what she calls “a 200-year-old company with the heart of a start-up”. “The company has transformed on every level, and it’s amazing to be part of a truly global company. I’m on my next journey at Wolters Kluwer of building our strategy and evolving our organisation and culture. It’s exciting times!” 54
1993
FINDS HUMAN RESOURCES Christy returned from several years working in Europe post-university to a market downturn. She worked seven days a week for almost two years, handling an admin job at Sydney University (her alma mater) during the day while managing the restaurant she had worked in as a student at night. The day job, with its touch of HR, piqued Christy’s interest and inspired her to begin a Master’s in Industrial Relations with her eye on a career in the field.
1997
SWIMS, DOESN’T SINK Christy looks back on her time as the HR person in a tech start-up as a crucible of her development; it helped her learn to address challenges spanning all aspects of the field. “It was sink or swim. I was completely out of my depth, but I was able to learn quickly. Since then I’ve managed professionals across recruiting, organisation development, compensation, business partnering, HR operations, health and safety, etc, and really ‘get’ what they were doing.”
2012
LAUNCHES MANY FIRSTS Christy’s five years at SAP were marked by the introduction of many firsts – the Pride initiative, the Autism@Work program, and gender diversity initiatives that culminated in the achievement of Employer of Choice for Gender Equality status. “SAP is one of my biggest success stories. My previous learnings and experience positioned me well to transform the HR function. Our end-to-end talent strategy and HR delivery were integral to the company’s success over that time – I joke that I built the HR dream team.”
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OTHER LIFE
TELL US ABOUT YOUR OTHER LIFE Email hrdeditor@keymedia.com
Training for a climb consists of at least an hour of aerobic activity a day most days of the week. “Y ou have to really make a point of challenging yourself,” says Boyd.
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Days spent ascending Mount Kilimanjaro (2 days descending)
5,150m
Elevation above sea level of Everest Base Camp, Tibet
25°
Incline of the Sydney street that Boyd trains on
CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN When she’s not leading an HR department, there’s nowhere Georgina Boyd would rather be than summiting a peak FINDING NEW mountains to climb was an annual event for Georgina Boyd, head of HR for Australia and New Zealand at Amadeus IT Pacific, and her husband in the days “pre-children”, ever since the vacation in Africa that included both a safari and a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. The climb was not originally on the trip’s itinerary but seemed a natural fit for the
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couple with a passion for bushwalking. “It was the best holiday I’ve ever had,” Boyd says. “The mountain climbing was like an extension of bushwalking, but more vertical.” Climbing ‘Killy’ gave the couple the bug, and the years following saw them summiting Mount Toubkal in Morocco, the highest peak in the Atlas Mountains, and visiting Everest
Base Camp during the climbing season. It is an interest that brings with it the necessity of travel, due to the lack of significant mountains in Australia, and a past-time that Boyd plans to re-explore as a family affair once the couple’s two small children are old enough. “It’s not easy, but it’s really rewarding,” she says.
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