In 1837, a candlemaker met a soap maker, and William Procter and James Gamble set in motion a chain of events that was ultimately to touch over 300 million lives, everyday, in over 160 countries. The firm of Procter and Gamble was born.
Now known simply as P&G, the essence of the company‘s philosophy can be summed up as a culture of winning and one that embodies five core values: integrity, trust, ownership, leadership and a passion for winning. This philosophy permeated throughout 135,000 employees in over 80 countries worldwide and has resulted in P&G becoming a giant amongst its competitors and a source of aspiration for university students globally seeking to kick-start their careers.
Build from within
Recognising that staff are their most important asset, P&G offers global training and development programmes designed to maximise the potential of each and every person that attends, rewarding them solely on the basis of performance. This philosophy is the cornerstone of the P&G ‘Build from Within’ policy: a system designed to nurture employees from “seedling to full-fledged tree”. The idea is to grow, develop and promote the best people, whenever possible, from within the organisation.
To steer such a programme, P&G requires individuals who can leverage on the collective strengths developed by such a value-driven and principle-based system, while remaining sensitive to the needs of individual team members. Damia Yang, Senior Manager of Human Resources, P&G is exactly this kind of person, with over eight years experience of successful coaching, development and partnering with staff. As such, she is able to create and sustain competitive advantage within the people, the systems and the culture of the company.
After graduating, Yang was originally ‘borrowed’ from the P&G Greater China operation and posted to Hong Kong. After demonstrating her potential within the HR field, she was then permanently transferred here. Such first-hand experience of change management has equipped Yang with a unique sensitivity to issues raised by employees who express a desire to experience the power of globalisation through P&G’s ‘Build from Within’ policy. In relation to the delicate balancing act required to match company business needs with staffs’ long-term career and aspirational goals, Yang oversees two key processes: the Internal Career Assignment Planning System and the Internal Open Job Posting System.
Internal career assignment planning
Yang drives career planning via line managers, who take the initiative to plan staff careers. Built on a foundation of one-to-one meetings, managers gain an understanding of the needs of staff, and Work & Development Plans (W&DPs) evolve from this.
The process involves mapping out milestones by which individual progress can be monitored and designed to capture whatever is in the individual’s best career interests. W&DPs not only track progress within an individual’s current and next assignment, but also aim to establish destination jobs.
They provide a structured career path and a programme flexible enough to take account of an individual’s requests and present staff with long-term goals. Line managers and leadership teams then use W&DPs as a tool for succession planning, accelerating growth and motivating candidates to excel outside their normal comfort zones.
Internal open job postings
The second system is more traditional and driven by employee initiative, involves posting internal vacancies on a bulletin board where interested parties can browse them.
Yang asserts that practical measures have to be in place to instill corporate values within individuals and highlights two crucial qualities that are key to achieving this: leadership and a passion for winning. Primarily, once overall objectives have been agreed, projects can proceed to execution. Organisational objectives are set, which staff members are made aware of, and line managers get 360-degree feedback on leadership performance and innovative solution thinking. Formal W&DP reviews take place annually, although managers are free to initiate them at any time.
Yang also stresses the importance of goal setting, a crucial part of this strategy. If the company, as a whole, has a revenue target, then every subsidiary within the group will break the target down into specific action plans. A Hong Kong and Greater China Action Plan will thus be broken down further to help individual staff members achieve their own action plans. So every year both company’s and the individuals’ action plans are deployed, with written timelines giving clear levels of expectation. Employees exceeding those expectations are awarded Grade 1, those achieving it - Grade 2 and those missing it - Grade 3. Yang knows that good line managers give constant feedback to their team and so, when someone fails to achieve a level of expectation it should rarely come as a surprise.
At that stage it is then important to find out how they are going to fix it, discuss what needs to be done, and put an appropriate improvement plan into place in order to facilitate performance turnarounds.
P&G University
Within P&G there is a saying, “People join the company, but leave the boss.” As a seasoned HR professional, Yang highlights the fact that unless individuals have a clear expectation of line managers and properly interact with them, staff members may simply walk away. In both Hong Kong and mainland China, P&G is kicking off “Model Boss” - a project providing the fundamentals of how to be a ‘model’ line manager and an overview of key technical skills such as coaching, compensating staff, management, performance rating and W&DP. The project also provides guidance on important soft skills such as being more sensitive to different people and their cultures, especially in the light of more Gen-Y people joining the company. Yang is an enthusiastic advocate of online tools to help make processes more efficient and transparent: deploying in-house software to review W&DPs, performance assessments and leadership assessments. Online questionnaires are sent to internal customers for performance reviews and feedback is sent directly to line managers for discussion with the individuals concerned. Talent management extends beyond the employee adds Yang. Embracing family members within the P&G culture helps individuals maintain their work-life balance, something that becomes increasingly more important as peoples’ value sets change. Having a family tends to shift the focus away from work, and so Yang ensures that P&G supplies a range of more unconventional benefits ranging from holiday bungalows to massage sessions, in order to help staff maintain both their own and P&G’s well-being. In short: attract, train and retain.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
