Following on from their first event in Asia in 2010, this May the HRO Summit returned to Singapore and assembled HR professionals from around the globe at the Shangri-La Hotel Singapore to help define the future of HR services and technology. HR Magazine attended as official media partner and Paul Arkwright acted as moderator for a panel discussion entitled: Industry in motion—global trends, regional focus, local development.
HR Change Agents
Many of the worldwide cohort of ‘HR Change Agents’ arrived a day prior to the main conference for industry presentations and candid discussions on some of the key challenges HR is currently facing. Among those presenting was Katrina Ritchie, Group HRIS Manager, HR Strategy & Performance, Fonterra Co-operative Group Limited. Fonterra is one of the world’s largest dairy exporters and as New Zealand’s largest employer certainly has to get things right when it comes to recruiting engagement. Richie explained how the organisation had enjoyed strong leadership in its industry, but that the demands of an increasingly global operation had placed increasing pressure on talent planners to develop a more strategic recruiting capability. One of the chief concerns was the need for an enterprise-wide approach to talent acquisition and this required taking the recruitment function out of transactional HR and into a much more strategically aligned operation.
To be successful, Ritchie explained that this required an increase in transparency to provide a clear picture of recruitment throughout the organisation. The approach centered on re-engineering the recruitment process and adopting e-recruitment technology solutions across the whole organisation. Key to the expanded RPO was enhanced reporting and specific metrics on KPIs including: candidate source, volume, speed and related cost.
At the end of the day, delegates relaxed and networked at a cocktail reception held by the pool, which provided a great chance for everyone to let their hair down a bit and meet their peers over a few drinks.
Chameleon HR
It was back to business bright and early the next day and Mano Ramakrishnan from the Human Capital Leadership Institute kicked off proceedings with an overview of the recruitment landscape in Asia. Citing findings from the most recent EIU Business Leader Survey, he pointed out that 52% of CEOs considered Asia Pacific to be an area of potential revenue growth, while only 29% envisaged serious operational risks there. He added that the strong growth in the region was creating a need for companies to develop leadership pipelines not just locally, but that could also be moved to different geographical locations. He added that, as such, HR was increasingly required to behave like a chameleon—able to adapt to suit different global recruitment environments.
Angry Birds
“These days, more 2-5 year-olds know how to play Angry Birds than recite their times tables,” was the opening remark on the early adoption of technology from Anders Soman-Nilsson, Creative Director, Thinque.He gave an engaging presentation that stirred delegates’ grey matter and got them thinking about a host of topics from employer brand to communication trends to innovation trends and generation trends.
With a whirlwind presentation Soman-Nilsson took delegates on a journey that also encompassed digital communication trends, personal leadership branding and thought leadership. As a Swedish-Australian, he poked fun at himself, highlighting nuances that exist between different workforce demographics. He also cautioned HR to be mindful of the ‘digital footprint’ that was being created on behalf of companies, by staff exiting and posting opinions of their former bosses and companies on the web.
He listed a number of websites where HR could check what former employees might be saying about them and the company including: glassdoor.com and ebosswatch.com. He also highlighted the importance of corporate social responsibility and how this too is nowadays being monitored online by prospective hires through sites such as: brandkarma.com.
Outsourcing marriages
Mary Sue Rogers, General Manager, Global HR, Learning & Recruiting, IBM Global Process Services spoke on innovative HR measures her organisation had taken to help them achieve a sustainable outsourcing relationship with one of their global clients. She said, “Outsourcing is a bit like a marriage, and divorce is very expensive. Like all marriages after a while the sparkle goes away and things get a bit stale.”
To cope with this phenomenon that often appears in client-outsourcer relations, IBM launched the Beyond SLAs Programme. Rogers detailed how the programme, which aimed to facilitate more self-service HR transactions to help staff carry out HR-related functions more easily, also helped save costs and free up more time for HR to concentrate their efforts on more strategic functions.
HR glue & Hudson's RPO solution
Michelle Gould, Director Human Resources, Nalco shared a ‘deep dive’ case study into recruiting talent within her organisation. Describing the plight of many in the HR field, she said, “HR is like the glue between everything in the organisation—holding all the different elements together.” She candidly shared the difficulties that Nalco had experienced in the past with outsource recruiters simply not being able to bring in sufficient people. After a global search for solutions, Nalco selected Hudson to provide the answers—who offered a recruitment process outsourcing solution that included a dedicated on-site delivery team to manage the entire life-cycle recruitment process. The RPO solution provided by Hudson facilitated a consistent recruitment process and supporting policies, helped generate a sustainable talent pipeline and helped Nalco tap into a geographically diverse talent pool.
A key element of Hudson’s RPO model involved a multi-level sourcing strategy with an increased focus on direct recruitment. This approach allowed Nalco to significantly increase direct recruitment which previously they had not been able to achieve themselves. Adoption of Hudson's RPO model meant external hires from other agencies were significantly reduced from 32% in 2009 to just 4% in 2010. The RPO model also meant the average time-to-hire was reduced by over 50% across all regions within the first 18 months of the engagement. Moreover, the number of new staff coming on board due to staff referrals shot up to 33%. The RPO model, not only helped drive a consistent, high-quality talent pipeline, but also brought significant cost savings to the organisation to boot.
To ensure they were onboarding the right kind of talent, the company also began implementing rigorous assessments, including behavioural interviewing techniques, for potential hires. This required training for the recruitment team themselves, to ensure they were equipped with the right skills to help them look at candidates’ motivational fit, career fit and better screen for behaviours that infer candidates have high potential. Above all, Gould warned HR, “Try to avoid hiring ‘mini mes’, but instead choose talent based on their technical skills, capability and potential.”
Battle of the brains
Paul Arkwright, Publisher HR Magazine, led a panel discussion entitled: industry in motion—global trends, regional focus, local development. The panel comprised Paula Baskus, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Alexander Mann Solutions; Anthony Raja Devadoss, KellyOCG; Caleb Baker, Managing Director, RPO Asia, Talent2; Neil Jones, President, Adecco; Sue Campbell, Asia Pacific Managing Director of Service Delivery and Operations, Futurestep; and Evelyn Chow, Client Solutions Director, RPO, Asia, Hudson. The panel discussed the different mindsets that existed in HR across different regions, the limited mobility of certain talent pools, HR technology and social media as well as strategies for engaging and retaining talent.
Elliot Clark, CEO, SharedXpertise and Publisher, HRO Today Global wrapped up proceedings for the day with a comparison of the recruitment landscapes in China and India. He argued that India was likely to be the country in Asia that would see the strongest growth in recruitment activity in the near future.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
