HR Leaders Gather at the Offices of Accenture in Bangkok to Share Insights and Best Practice

The Chapman Consulting Group (ChapmanCG) continued its APAC HR leaders series with a gathering of around 25 HR Heads in Bangkok, Thailand, co-hosted by Accenture. It was a high energy and engaged group, with a diverse range of companies represented including PepsiCo, American Express, Piaggio, Eli Lilly, Philips, DKSH, Avaya, BASF and HSBC.

Our host, Vipa Pachtrachi, Country HR Manager for Accenture Thailand, opened the session by talking through their on-going challenge to retain the best talent and shared that the number one reason that employees resign was because of a lack of 'work-life balance'. Interesting debate followed with examples of initiatives around flexible benefits, wellness programmes and adding what elements would improve the balance into personal annual reviews. While these initiatives do lead to increasing engagement, the key learning was that any real work/life balance is defined through the individual.

There has to be a change in behaviour and perspective, and this ultimately comes down to the managers to help with prioritising and explaining expectations and timescales. Commonly, problems arise when employees who joined as graduates, and could always dedicate lots of time, suddenly have families and feel guilty about their time constraints. As such, companies have to look out for the relevant signs and support employees through different stages of life. Matthew Grose, Thailand Head of Human Resources and Business Excellence with MSIG then introduced the topic "Making Diversity Policies Relevant to the Local Context". He talked about how the diversity agenda, often driven by corporate, and on a global basis, doesn't have the relevance in Thailand as it might elsewhere.

Consensus was ‘you have to push back and you can win’. This posed the questions; What is important here? Sex, age, ethnicity? Who is really Thai? Does it matter? Discrimination occurs in Thailand, primarily with age, appearance, class, accent, education and where tertiary qualifications were obtained. Inclusion is the key and can happen with cross-cultural training initiatives and so on. Innovation and respect were regarded as the real reason for diversity.

One very interesting case study example was 'diversity of thinking' only. This entails no details on background, education, age, sex etc, only experience. The results were astounding with stronger hires and team dynamics than normal and great success since. David Williams, International Head of Human Resources, Operational Centres with Thomson Reuters then outlined and introduced "Dealing with The Flow of Talent: Turning Theory into Action". He set out to say there are no shortage of talent 'models' but the simple way to look at it is to ask - Who has aspiration, ability and engagement? If you possess all three characteristics then you are a hipo (highpotential).

What all businesses are looking for is to "know your talent, grow your talent and flow your talent" but it’s the 'flow' that is often the most difficult to measure. The key thing to remember is that the company owns the talent, not the team, hence if moves are not supported you may lose employees to the competition. The group then spoke of ways their initiatives and companies have made senior leaders accountable, including compulsory talent forums and setting objectives that are linked to overall performance ratings, which feeds into the reward cycle.

To round things off, Rehan Saghir, Asia Operations Senior Human Resources Director with Eli Lilly, gave an impressive case study on "Accelerating Asian Talent Development Through a Leadership Action Learning Program" which outlined how he had successfully shifted the thinking of the business from the US to Asia, specifically their corporate MBA programme and executive coaching. Did the group know that 50% of the world's GDP is now in Asia? Is the composition of most boards the same? Highly unlikely. Yes, Asians are now running countries, but they should be running more companies too. This will happen as corporate expectations continue to change in terms of traditional values and behaviours, and talent decisions are made locally, which is happening more and more.