In a recent survey, CLP Group was named Hong Kong’s most diverse employer. HR Magazine spoke with Priscilla Chau, Human Resources Director, CLP Power to better understand how the Group's Hong Kong subsidiary is championing diversity and empowering women in a traditionally male-dominated world.
CLP Power’s overarching diversity agenda and emphasis on valuing people has extended deep into every aspect of its employees’ experiences. “Diversity is at the core of everything that we do, and we aim to treat all of our people fairly regardless of their attributes,” commenced Chau. “Our goal is to create an environment where everyone feels valued and comfortable and at the same time, is engaged. If we do not have a diverse team, then we will not be able to innovate, and our employees will not feel valued. This is the overarching archetype that defines the long-term sustainable growth of our business. We view diversity as a very real business need, not just a CSR topic.”
Extended Reach
CLP understands the implication that businesses in the twenty-first century need to be responsible for bringing about change for the greater good of society. As Chau explained, a core emphasis of the Group's Hong Kong subsidiary is to emphasise the importance of educating the wider community. “As a business, we have an obligation to invest resources into public education programmes. One of our programmes, POWER YOU Kindergarten Visitation Programme, sees both our male and female engineers engage with local kindergartens to raise awareness. Other programmes also bring greater visibility of women in the power industry. As this sector has traditionally been male-dominated, we have faced the challenge of attracting more female candidates head-on and prioritised initiatives that aim to break down gender biases and stigma within society.”
As more companies seek ways to improve their diversity positioning, CLP Power’s approach extends far beyond its community outreach programmes to a much more macroscopic level. As Chau put it, “When it comes to understanding the perspectives of colleagues from different backgrounds, our approach goes far beyond just gender. We extend diversity right the way down to a macro level, to the front-line operators who are just as equally important to our business. We ensure that every employee has a chance to get their voice heard, express how they feel and advocate for the resources that they need. In the future, we plan to experiment with our engagement approach by enabling self-nominated representatives from different groups of employees to come forward. and propose activities that would make cultural sense to that group.”
We view diversity as a very real business need, not just a CSR topic.
Subtle changes from the top
An obstacle HR professionals might have encountered on their quest for greater diversity is assuring multi-stakeholder buy-in and getting senior business leaders to understand the benefits that diversity can bring to the entire organisation. Chau doubled down, “The biggest obstacle is not assuring their buy-in, rather it is about them understanding the true meaning of diversity and how they understand the value it brings to the whole organisation. Some leaders might already be aware of the importance and have undergone training, but work is still needed on an ongoing basis. That is why we are incorporating unconscious bias training into our leadership curriculum to tackle it from the top down. This includes mandatory annual training that teaches our leaders the importance of diversity as well as an appropriate code of conduct.”
It is not just CLP Power’s leadership team that has been transformed with more subtle approaches rolling out to improve worker visibility. “It is important that different groups of employees feel seen and visible. We found that a number of our plants and manufacturing facilities lacked the adequate infrastructure for women such as female changing rooms or breastfeeding facilities, so we redesigned those spaces. A design thinking approach that we undertook to attract female engineers was to re-examine the way in which their work garments were designed. Rather than the unflattering, traditional one-piece jumpsuit, we created a two-piece garment that is much more practical for female engineers,” Chau explained.
We continue to strive for greater representation to ensure that everyone has balanced and equal opportunities.
Success through metrics
Measuring the success of diversity initiatives is no easy feat. Research from Culture Amp discovered that only 27% of businesses with DEI initiatives know how to measure their success. Chau shared her approach, “DEI is not quite as challenging to track as you would imagine as it can easily be translated through numbers and KPIs. For example, we have an aspirational target through 2030 to increase the ratio of the female workforce and women in leadership and engineering positions. Our dataset enables us to keep track of these metrics and redesign our strategies as needed. Since we began tracking, we have seen the number of women in CLP gradually increase and last year achieved a 30 per cent target of women in leadership roles. This does not mean we are satisfied, and we continue to strive for greater representation of not only women but other fringe groups to ensure that everyone has balanced and equal opportunities.”
Nodding to how business leaders can get started on their diversity journey Chau shared, “Nowadays, leaders need to think of diversity as an important business topic especially those that are wanting to see growth and to capture the younger generations of talent. Business leaders need to be aware of the Gen Z habits of well researching a prospective employer’s value proposition to see if they truly value diversity. In order to achieve greater DEI, there needs to be a firm company commitment toward achieving equality that is empowered from the top down. Leaders should then examine how their company values translate to cultural values in society and find ways to give new meaning to old traditions. Finally, different groups of employees need to be made. visible within the organisation so that their colleagues can celebrate their success.”
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
