Ka Shi Lau took a few moments out of her hectic schedule to share with HR Magazine what HR can do to help enhance and maintain employee wellness. As the Managing Director and CEO of Bank Consortium Trust Company Limited (BCT), Lau is certainly no stranger to enhancing employee wellness within her own organisation. Lau’s work also extends far beyond this as Chairperson of the Hong Kong Retirement Schemes Association and the Retirement Schemes Sub-committee of the Hong Kong Trustees’ Association. Lau also serves on various statutory and advisory bodies including the MPFA, SFC, Community Investment and Inclusion Fund, the Women’s Commission and the board of the Hospital Authority.
Key challenges for HR
According to Lau, one of the major challenges for HR directors at the moment is to ‘manage expectations’ of the staff. In prioritising what HR managers need to do to achieve employee wellness, Lau stressed, “HR managers must make sure staff feel valued and cared for, and not a tool of the company.” She added that in order to achieve employee wellness, HR must not just focus on money but also social, work, mental and family influences on staff members. Key factors that HR must address include:
Financial wellbeing: have packages that ensure staff members feel valued.
Social wellbeing: keep the workplace apolitical, encourage teamwork and healthy competition.
Workload wellbeing: make sure staff are challenged but not overworked, provide sufficient training and career development opportunities.
Mental wellbeing: help staff develop interests outside work such as CSR and recreational activities.
Family wellbeing: ensure a good work life balance, make sure staff are leaving the office at a reasonable time and be flexible with leave requests—particularly for staff who have small children.
Enhancing work-life balance
To help staff achieve a better work-life balance Lau recommends HR directors implement a number of measures. Firstly, HR should create a sustainable working environment for staff where they feel valued. This may include performance related pay incentives, a five-day working week, providing different types of leave including compassionate, marriage, maternity and paternity leave, in addition to provision of unpaid sabbaticals for self-development studies.
In connection with leave requests, Lau also highlighted the importance of considering differing family ties that various staff members have and, for example, giving priority to granting leave to staff who have young children during school holiday periods. HR can also help by organising family days—sometimes linked in with CSR activities—to encourage staff meeting up in informal settings outside the workplace and spending more time together with their families. Staff in the CSR Committee who engage in planning of CSR activities are given two days of extra leave annually, and those who make outstanding contributions in CSR will be rewarded with bonus holiday days issued at annual celebratory events.
BCT also runs ‘open days’ where children and spouses of colleagues are encouraged to visit the workplace to see what goes on in the office, learn about their parents’ working environment and help create a more relaxed atmosphere. Despite a hectic schedule as the CEO, Lau still feels it is vital to maintain open communication with all her staff. She said, “I make a point of making myself available to share ideas with staff in face-to-face meetings at least two to three times per year.” Another simple measure that HR can adopt is encouraging staff to leave the office if they’re still there an hour after office hours. This might seem counterproductive, but tired staff working long hours is never a good precursor of working efficiency. Clearing staff out of the office earlier not only helps reduce stress and facilitates them spending more time with their families, but also ultimately helps lower turnover, sick leave and absenteeism. For Lau, offering a comprehensive medical plan for colleagues is just as important as fostering a culture of work-life balance.
Employee caring programme
A key component of the BCT philosophy of ‘giving from the heart and enjoying life’ has been their employee caring programme. Staff can self-assess themselves using the stress thermometer checklist shown below.
For staff members requiring assistance, the company has commissioned an NGO consultancy to provide professional counselling and consultation services to all staff and their immediate family members. The service provides a 24-hour hotline with access to professional counsellors and clinical psychologists to help staff manage stress and emotional disturbances relating to work, social, financial and other problems encountered in everyday life. Following a phone call, staff are able to arrange face-to-face interviews with the counsellors. To maintain privacy, the identity of callers and content of all conversations are kept strictly confidential.
Broadening staff minds
In addition to the usual work-related compliance and soft-skills training programmes, BCT also provides a range of special interest classes to help de-stress and educate employees. Topics covered are wide ranging, from photography, handicrafts, cooking, knitting and stress management to parenting skills.
Dealing with increased workloads
When staff are on leave for protracted periods, this can create increased workloads for staff remaining in the office. Lau explained that to help mitigate this, temporary staff are hired to help with routine duties and more challenging tasks are redistributed among the remaining staff. Lau also stressed the importance of sitting down for counselling sessions with staff who incur protracted leave, not to blame or put pressure on them, but rather to find out the exact nature of the problem and see if there is anything that can be done to help. Staff in supervisory and management roles within BCT are given soft skills training to help them cope tactfully and effectively in such situations.
Coping with overtime
Work-life balance is all very good in theory, but the reality in many Hong Kong workplaces is that overtime is very much a fact of life, often on a daily basis. Lau shared advice for HR managers on what they could do to help rein in excessive overtime.
Firstly, HR managers should analyse if the overtime is department-specific, this can be easily achieved as Lau explained, “…simply by walking the floor at 7.00pm and asking people what they are working on.” If this is the case then HR may need to talk to the line managers and see if there is an issue with understaffing that needs to be addressed. Alternatively, if it is something more related to office culture, brainstorm what measures could be taken to improve it.
Secondly, Lau advised HR managers to analyse if overtime is individual-specific. In these cases individual counselling can be helpful from line managers to advise individual staff members on more efficient ways of completing work tasks through training on time management and job competence. In cases where this is not effective and there may be a mismatch between the ability of a staff member and his / her role, it may be helpful to reassign the staff member concerned to duties that are more in keeping with their key skill sets.
Sometimes it may just boil down to the fact that it is peak season and overtime is inevitable to cope with a surge in workloads. In such cases, Lau advised HR managers to encourage rotation of staff members who need to stay late to tackle such workloads.
Healthy working environment
To create the best possible working environment for staff, Lau has implemented a number of measures to ensure a clean, safe and tidy working environment. These have included the provision of LCD monitors for all staff to reduce the amount of screen radiation they encounter. Staff are also provided with ergonomically-designed chairs, Lau quipped that she personally tests all new chair designs before purchase, to ensure they provide comfortable back support. A quick look around the spacious BCT office also reveals several pantries that are clean, well lit and equipped with reverse osmosis water filters that provide healthier drinking water than distilled water. Lau pointed out that it is the combination of many of these small considerations for staff that helps them feel valued. She added that these ‘physical’ measures should be combined with ‘mental’ factors such as ensuring a healthy workload, sociable working hours, sufficient family time and a caring management style in order to achieve an all-round healthy working environment.
Two issues that staff are most commonly concerned about are their health and their family. Lau summed up that HR managers who realise this, embrace these concerns and create a positive healthy working environment will be rewarded with loyal staff who work not only effectively, but also happily.
