Successfully Managing Change in the Digital Age

In April, ChapmanCG co-hosted an engaging Talent Management roundtable at Paypal to discuss how to successfully manage change in today’s dynamic business climate. We were delighted to see HR leaders from a wide variety of industries enjoying the interesting and varied presentations by Steven Filby, Director, Learning & Organisational Development, APAC at Paypal; Lawrence Smith, Managing Director HR, Group Head of Learning & Talent Development at DBS Bank; Erin Reiger, Senior Manager Global Talent Management at Redhat and Caroline Palmstedt, APAC Talent Management Lead at Monsanto. The session opened with our host, Steven, sharing Paypal’s Talent Development and Performance Mission, which is to enable talented people through dynamic processes that engage, in order to develop the company’s most valuable asset: its people. Following are some of the key insights that were discussed around how to manage Talent Development effectively:

• HR needs to educate managers about the importance of truly knowing their top talent and what motivates each individual, rather than having a traditional performance management system;
• Segment employees into groups in order to motivate and engage them effectively;
• Movement towards a continuous feedback culture via multiple channels for managing performance. As ratings can be open to subjectivity, we see these getting streamlined or completely abandoned;

Tech is the Only Way Forward

Laurence Smith, Managing Director HR, Group Head of Learning & Talent Development at DBS Bank, shared that the banks see both opportunity and threat in FinTech or Financial Technology. Smith also made it clear that the only growth strategy for banks today is going digital; therefore, getting this right is critical and HR has a very important role in this transformation.

So how can HR get digital? Driven by a desire to foster a more digital mind-set among employees, DBS was the first organisation in Singapore to build ‘hackathons’ into its Talent Development programme, where employees meet to engage in collaborative computer programming to create prototypes. The company also uses gamified learning for mobile platforms, which provide various channels containing snappy and focused content including quizzes, polls and surveys. These games have feedback systems, points and badges to keep the learners engaged and motivated. All participants agreed that in order for companies to be successful today, employees at all levels must understand digital, and there needs to be strong support for this from the top levels of the organisations.

Education Through Simulation

Erin Reiger, Senior Manager Global Talent Management at Redhat, told us that her company uses Virtual Architecture Simulations, which enable Talent Management teams to observe and analyse the behaviour of the employees, providing feedback and on-going learning opportunities. Redhat also use similar simulations for Leadership Development where leaders are observed dealing with certain business scenarios. We are starting to see this as a trend with a lot of companies using similar simulations in Talent Management and Learning & Development, as well as digital gaming in Talent Acquisition to analyse the behaviours of applicants.

Naturally, this digital transformation is creating unique challenges including a shortage of those with the skillset needed, as well as traditional hierarchal management structures, which are often slow to adopt new technologies and practices. With these challenges in mind, it was noted that building capabilities for the leaders in a given market, rather than just focusing on local talent is key for the organisations to attract and retain top talent.

Leading Monsanto Through Global Change

Caroline Palmstedt, APAC Talent Management Lead at Monsanto, shared the company’s Global Integrated Change Management programme with the group. Caroline sees three phases in any successful change management programme, as follows:

1. Preparing the organisation for change: business must lead, manage and embrace the change with strong support from HR;
2. Ensuring engagement during the change: make sure employees feel a part of the change and that they are engaged and clear on what skills and knowledge are needed in the new organisation, and most importantly whether jobs will be safe after the change;
3. Creating the environment and capabilities to sustain the change: the business needs to lead, manage and embrace the change with strong support from HR.

We were very impressed with the quality of the presentations, as well as the contributions from all attendees, and it was interesting to see what companies are doing when it comes to Talent Management, Change Management, digitalisation and Performance Management. We would like to thank our host Steven Filby and his team at Paypal for putting together a very successful Talent Management Leaders roundtable, and we look forward to the next meeting later this year.

Here’s What People are Saying:

“The ChapmanCG Talent Management roundtables are a good opportunity to extend my network with likeminded professionals, and to exchange ideas and best practices. I always leave these meetings with new and valuable insights!” – Caroline Palmstedt, Monsanto

“The APAC Talent Management Roundtables are some of the best events I attend. The latest session on ‘Successfully Managing Change’ had a great selection of relevant topics and interesting speakers, and the format of short presentations that stimulate questions and group discussion works well. I came away with a lot of interesting ideas.” – Steven Filby, Paypal