Thomson Reuters and Lend Lease Host APAC HR Leader Sessions in Sydney

The Chapman Consulting Group (ChapmanCG) has hosted around 60 of Sydney’s highest potential Regional and Country HR Leaders at two separate sessions at Thomson Reuters and Lend Lease, yesterday. The sessions formed part of ChapmanCG’s quarterly Australian and Asia Pacific HR updates.

Michael Vavakis, Group Head of HR, and Alex Christy, Group Head of Rewards, of Lend Lease, hosted the morning session at Lend Lease. The afternoon session, at Thomson Reuters, was hosted by Malcolm Dore, VP HR Global Growth Markets. ChapmanCG was represented by Felicity Gray, Director, and Matthew Chapman, CEO.

Some of the observations from the sessions included:

1) Companies that embrace organisational structures that support roles not physically based in the locations that they are covering and/or flexible positioning of regional roles, stand to access a broader supply of talent than companies who think traditionally about this.

2) There remains a large focus on HR operating model efficiency and more companies are strengthening their shared services structures (several Australian companies had shunned lower cost Asian markets to base their shared services team and instead chosen Australia to keep their control high).

3) More Australian HR talent in multinationals are being pulled into regional and sub-regional roles based in Australia, due to the trend noted above in point 1, and this is an exciting trend.

4) HR team development and retention in emerging markets still remains a major headache forAustralian based regional HR leaders and many are investing significant energy in keeping their teams intact. This is due to buoyant Asian labour markets.

5) Australian HR talent from around the world continues to return home to Australia, after a stampede in the last 3 years on the back of a stronger Aussie dollar and good opportunity to get“back home”. Specialist skills in compensation benefits and talent management remain highly sought after in HR, particularly when coupled with generalist experience, and proactive HR leaders are trying to cross fertilise their teams by encouraging regular movement of talent within.