In October 2009 Fuji Xerox, City Telecom, Universum and Walt Disney shared insight on HR strategies for building bridges to success.

Tang’s mission as Director of HR has been to implement a line driven HR partnership and to make staff feel valued.

Good Company Concept
At Fuji Xerox they have the “Good Company Concept” which encapsulates their commitment to being a company that is “strong, kind and interesting.” Tang hopes the company will be strong financially, kind to society and the environment and will endeavour to contribute to future generations. She also hopes to provide an interesting workplace for employees. Fuji Xerox use the Yin-Yang model to represent the two key elements of making staff feel valued. On one side is HR strategy and policy, creating the right environment for people to feel valued. On the other side is the culture, which she believes is the more difficult part—trying to make employees feel treasured, respected and important as individuals. As an organisation they want staff to feel informed, listened to, able to grow—professionally and personally, balanced, integrated and recognised. Tang endeavours to ensure staff have a feeling of fun, pride, self-worth and fulfilment. Employees are empowered to achieve these and are encouraged to expand themselves and achieve balance through activities such as community work.

Tang spoke candidly that people within the company may have criticisms, however, when asked what they can do to remedy these criticisms their reply is that it’s none of their business and they believe it is for HR to deal with, viewing themselves like an outsider, ‘a referee’. This is not constructive and all employees are encouraged to feel like a part of the organisation, like a team player.

Communication Framework
Fuji Xerox strives for employees to be informed. They have implemented a ‘Communication Framework’ that facilitates communication to employees at every level and provides different channels for staff to voice their opinions, ideas and concerns, fostering open and honest communication and capturing their opinions. The Framework includes: a notice board, a newsletter, ER corner, opinion box, e-opinion box, functional kickoffs, management gatherings, direct dialogue forums and staff communication meetings.

As a company they provide many channels for employees to voice their opinions and ideas. They have an annual Motivations and Satisfaction Survey to ascertain the temperaments of staff and communication meetings are held every six months at which there is a Q&A session, giving staff an opportunity to ask any questions they may have. Additionally they have a forum set up where small groups of people are invited to discuss topics such as the financial tsunami.

Transparent Career Paths
Tang stressed the importance of making career paths very transparent for employees, thus allowing them to see the different opportunities that are available to them, both vertically and horizontally. Employees are free to look at job descriptions within the company and what the company requirements are for those positions. They are also keen to help people plan their careers vertically and horizontally.

NiQ Lai,

Lai spoke about leveraging staff strengths, and while many talk about retaining staff, he shared how companies must also go about getting “the wrong talent off the bus.”

Spend the Most on People
Lai is CFO and Head of Talent engagement; he explained that this is because as a company they spend the most money on people—notably the amount spent on talent is more than capital expenditure and marketing combined. As Lai explained, “We are a people company, that’s our primary asset. When we say talent is our key asset, it’s more than just a cliché, it’s in our numbers.”

Vertical Model
Many companies are run from the viewpoint of efficiency. Lai argues that this doesn’t work and at City Telecom (CTI) they have taken a different approach—using a vertical model, aimed at improving customer intimacy. In Hong Kong they have five distinct regions, each with its own CEO who is responsible for the entire value chain of the customer experience. Lai believes through this system what they lose in scale they gain in intimacy. Such a system takes smart people and management talent and is therefore very challenging. All CEOs come from different disciplines and bring different skill sets, but must develop fully as executives, to run an integrated operation. Each of the 40 mini CEOs is responsible for P&L and Balance Sheets. They have a lot of autonomy and can spend allocated budget how they want, but there are downsides if they don’t meet their budgets.

Lai cited the Head of Talent Management as an example—with many years experience in HR, who is now spending three months in marketing. Lai explained that if they find that they like marketing and can secure a position at their current pay scale, then they can remain in that post. Alternatively, if they return to HR, then this is also good as it will be with more passion and awareness of the company. Teammates also get the opportunity to show they are capable of future leadership. “It’s clearly a win win situation but you have to be committed...This is not an opportunity—this is a requirement...one talent left the company because they did not want to change their role,” explained Lai.

Talent development is not only found at the high end but is instigated throughout the whole hierarchy. They have put people who did not finish a University degree, through a three or four year programme to achieve a certificate, diploma, higher diploma then a full degree.

Every year, irrespective of good or bad economic times, they have an offsite trip. Last year they went to Japan where they worked hard and had a good time, learning how to ski. HK$2 million was spent on the trip but Lai pointed out that within months the cost savings and innovations easily covered the expenses incurred.

At CTI they intentionally build an intense culture. They have no inflation factor in the company and employees will not get automatic salary reviews. They only offer productivity gain sharing, so the bottom 20% will have no increment while the top 20% will have 20% increment. Lai said there is intentionally a wide divergence and if an employee is an underperformer they will find CTI an extremely unpleasant environment. Conversely, Lai believes if you’re passionate it’s a great place to be.

Johan Ramel,

Ramel started by explaining that Universum looks at tangible ways that companies can save costs. Work is very research focused and fact based—helping to create a brand that is truthful and effective.

Ramel’s strategy is identifying the weaknesses and strengths of a company, working with them to solve any problems and communicating that back to the market. Ramel stresses that research is the way forward. Getting the information from the people that you want to attract: “After all, it is their attitude that you are interested in and that is important.”

Universum conducted a Hong Kong student based survey of 984 students to identify where they would like to work and why. From such a survey businesses are able to identify whether a student would consider working for them and identify their natural competitors. The overall results revealed the most popular company to work for in Hong Kong was The Hong Kong Government, followed by HSBC and Cathay Pacific.

What is very interesting, Ramel was quick to point out, is the lack of uniformity between men and women, for example Goldman Sachs ranks as the third most popular employer amongst men, but twenty first amongst women. This, he has found, is dissimilar to many other countries.

Universum’s survey also takes into account high achievers and how they answered. This point is important from Ramel’s perspective because you may be the most popular company but it may be with individuals you possibly do not want working in your company.

A good reputation is now more attractive than financial strength. Also important to employees are a friendly working environment, people and culture, recreation and involvement opportunities, all coming out above leadership, competitiveness and performance—in stark contrast to findings five years ago.

Jim Lygopolous sees creativity and innovation as the “growth pillars”, the “heart and soul” of Walt Disney’s international expansion. He believes what is important with respect to International expansion is that it remains relevant, that the brand resonates with local cultures, climates and new technologies.

The overarching objective is to build a self-sufficient organisation, and for this well trained employees are essential.

Disney University is essentially their corporate, in-house education institute and is first and foremost to help them attain their aggressive growth plans by accelerating the skills and development of employees. Everything they do that’s learning and development related is branded Disney University and it facilitates local, unique, tailored development, whilst leveraging Disney’s global resources and tools.

Lygopolous shared with us that for Disney, the heritage of connecting with ‘cast members’, as Disney calls its employees, was as important as looking at the future, and that heritage is important in terms of talent attraction and organisational culture. The Disney University run a programme entitled branch stewardship which is compulsory for all new employees and is completed early within their training. It is a half-day programme that focuses on brand promises, values, trust and optimism—what they mean and how they can be developed. This is important because once employees have finished the programmes, they become brand ambassadors.

Disney University is central to communicating an employees overall position and possibilities available to them. Because Disney has a large number of different divisions they concentrate on, teaching new employees about each of these is vital.

Lygopolous shared that Disney has also made more substantial investments, such as the latest streaming technology. This allows them to keep global communication levels high. For example if one of their leaders runs a town hall meeting, that meeting can be seen within 24-48 hours by all cast members around the world. Disney also have an e-learning platform where people may complete development programmes in their own time and receive an electronic newsletter that is sent out to cast members every quarter. This ensures continual development and communication.

In terms of measuring the success of HR programmes, Lygopolous said they have a sophisticated approach and a more informal approach. They run focus groups and get continual anecdotal feedback. Additionally they have an HRIS system which tracks development a little bit more formally, sending a follow up to a leader six months down the line asking if they have seen a change in an employee since their attendance at a training programme.

"to maintain a healthy, engaged, and productive workforce by building awareness and enabling employees to make informed decisions."

Lygopolous explained the holistic approach adopted, “Securing commitment and support at senior and middle management levels to change the culture and the organisation.” When they were visiting other companies to find out what they were doing, they would take management figures with them. Lygopolous identified four quadrants of the community: