Getting Hong Kong organisations thriving again
Mercer’s vision for empowering HR to benchmark their success, engage employees and boost workplace wellness.
Billy Wong recently assumed the role of CEO for Mercer in Hong Kong and is already making big waves in terms of maximising workplace wellness, talent engagement and business success. Wong shares his insight on what HR should be doing to best leverage their teams and how the innovative Thrive45 platform can be leveraged to help achieve mission-critical HR and business goals.
Leveraging team feedback
An actuary and certified CFA with almost
two decades of experience in the retirement and benefits space, Wong understands the importance of HR proactively encouraging peer review and establishing a constructive dialogue with talent throughout their organisation to help drive engagement and ultimately business
success. He added, “Maintaining meaningful dialogues is critical, and before having conversations with your team, it’s essential to objectively self-evaluate and identify your own strengths and weaknesses. Everyone in HR should spend time listening to feedback, not just from senior management but also, from their peers and subordinates to help get a holistic overview of the best way forward in terms of future HR strategy.”
Healthy, wealthy & career-wise
To achieve business success, Wong highlighted the need for HR to engage employees in three key business areas—health, wealth and career. On the topic of health, he said, “In Hong Kong, organisations are spending, on average, 1.2% of payroll on employee health which is insufficient,
particularly given the current spiralling healthcare costs. To address this, we are helping employers spend their budget more wisely and in many cases save budget by offering employees much more personalised healthcare and benefit options.” He added, “The physical and mental health of employees is vital for business success, yet in some organisations, staff are working up to 12 hours a day. HR should address this and provide reasonable and more flexible working arrangements for their workforces.”
Regarding better managing employee wealth, Wong expressed, “At Mercer, like most companies, we pay very fairly, but Hong Kong is a hotbed of inflation especially in terms of property prices and so benchmarking total rewards requires careful consideration. As we are SFC licensed, we can give regulated advice on investments to our members. Mercer is the largest investment advisory consultant in the world, and we advised on over USD 10 trillion of investments in 2017 alone.” He added, “Employee investment advice should focus on two key areas. At Mercer, firstly, we aid staff in planning for their retirement with advice on various pension plans such as the MPF and ORSO schemes. Secondly, we also ensure all staff have access to fair and competitive voluntary savings vehicles.”
To help facilitate positive and flexible career development, Mercer guides its employees to help them make their own decisions as to the direction of their development within
the organisation. This choice helps ensure employees receive targeted development opportunities and assistance to self-develop and future-proof their roles. Wong said, “Identifying potential issues within an employee’s career path and finding a workable solution is a win-win for both the company and the employee, enabling both parties to move forward. Different organisations need to adopt different strategies, as the issues
are very specific to individuals and their organisations.” He added, “As consultants, we need to understand the specifics of each case so we can map out the best courses of action in collaboration with their HR team and senior management. The Thrive45 diagnostic tool can also help HR better achieve this goal— providing completely objective assessments of talent policy and business processes which are key to an organisation’s success.”
HR challenges
Numerous external forces are currently driving changes in HR departments across Hong
Kong including the Government’s proposed legislative changes on wages, working hours, MPF offsetting and paternity leave. Wong noted, “HR departments are spending a lot of time containing and balancing the costs these changes would impose.”
Additionally, rapid economic development in China is also impacting HR across the region. Major infrastructure projects such as the Greater Bay Area expansion and greater
trading under the Belt and Road Initiative are creating huge new opportunities, and a few HR headaches, for local business. Wong explained, “Two industries that are being heavily affected by talent shortages are the luxury retail and insurance sectors. Both sectors are finding it increasingly difficult to attract sufficient talent to meet demand, so their HR departments have to be creative to resolve this. For example, they may leverage technology in the form of self-service platforms to offer more personalised choices for employee benefits. Another trend has been the increased use of flexible working environments, affording employees greater choice as to their working hours and locations.” He added, “In terms of employee choice, it’s important for HR to strike the right balance and I would advise companies to create robust policies to facilitate effective implementation and minimise abuse of such policies, ensuring an acceptable work-life balance for all employees.”
Amid such external forces and the challenges they pose to hiring managers, Mercer is working in partnership with HR departments to help monitor their situation and provide appropriate solutions. Wong explained, “Our strength is advisory, we have a deep insight into the market which is crucial to understanding the underlying issues of an organisation, and we bear these issues in mind when strategising alongside HR.”
Generating ideas is one part of the solution, but implementing them can prove challenging especially when this requires leveraging new technology. To help deal with this, Mercer has acquired Thomsons Online Benefits and its HR-related software solutions. This suite of assessment tools now gives Mercer the capability to accurately and objectively assess organisational wellness and benefit options for talent therein. Wong concurred, “Investing in technology saves time for everyone in the organisation, better engages talent and helps to prompt individual staff members into timely, appropriate and healthy activities.”
Know your Thrive potential
For efficient talent management, it is essential for HR to fully maximise the performance of their workforce. Mercer’s diagnostic tool, the Thrive45 Survey, backed by their heritage of industry-leading research and experience, helps HR do exactly this. Wong explained, “From our research, we have identified eight key factors which enable a thriving workforce. After taking part in the free Survey, the results are given to the management of the organisation, so they gain a more holistic overview of the causes behind some of the challenges and potential limitations their organisation has. This information is absolutely vital to empower companies to create positive solutions so they can ultimately thrive.”
A key strength of Thrive45 diagnostic tool is that it helps bridge the gap between HR strategy and business strategy —a crucial link that HR and decision makers must be able to make seamlessly. Wong expressed, “We do not just look at things from an HR perspective, but also provide a detailed picture of the whole business and highlight areas that could be improved. Enabling your talent to thrive is at the heart of this enhancement and essential for any organisation’s success.”
Leverage Thrive45
Mercer has seen an influx of organisations taking part in the Thrive45 diagnostic survey. Wong explained, “The Survey,
which is completely free of charge, brings organisations a number of benefits. Firstly, it allows organisations to benchmark themselves against other organisations in HK and globally. Instead of just focussing internally, the survey results provide organisations with objective insight into their position in the market. Secondly, the Survey helps HR gauge levels of employee engagement and satisfaction with current HR policies and processes. Thirdly, the Survey can be leveraged as an internal SWOT analysis and helps highlight areas for future focus. All of this information is invaluable
to CEOs and senior management to better formulate strategy and create truly thriving work environments.”
Organisations which participate in the Thrive45 survey gain numerous benefits
for employees and the organisation as a whole. Wong highlighted, “Employees can leverage Thrive45 to express their opinions and increase engagement by getting more ideas for the organisation. If the employee feels empowered and engaged, this helps the organisation to thrive.”
These key enablers vary slightly between organisations, but form a useful checklist for HR to ensure their policies and processes are well aligned with employee sentiment and business goals. Wong noted, “By leveraging Thrive45 survey, we will
be able to understand the companies on a personal level, which our role is a little bit like a doctor in this regard. We diagnose the key areas that are inhibiting development in a workplace so that we can then better tailor solutions to help the organisation move forward and truly thrive.”
Increased digital disruption & talent mobility
Mercer’s 2018 Global Talent Trends Study highlighted a dramatic shift in employee expectations with the main catalysts being new technologies, younger generations entering the workforce and increased talent mobility. Wong explained, “The adoption of new technologies is completely changing the nature of work in many industries. Innovations such as AI and robotic process automation are redefining work processes. For management, this presents issues when trying to re-imagine what the business will look like in the future, in the face of this rapid change. HR needs to consider what future job roles will look like and design appropriate talent strategies to assimilate these technological processes. Many organisations are still lagging behind in this regard.”
Due to its unique location, Hong Kong has long been strategically utilised as a conduit between Chinese organisations and western multi-national companies. The recent Belt and Road initiatives and development of the Greater Bay Area are necessitating even more talent mobility to take advantage of the huge opportunities this presents. Wong explained, “One of the challenges for HR is selecting talent suitable for such postings who may be apprehensive about relocating to mainland China due to the very different cultural, language, legal and business methods that exist there. HR needs to look at recruiting highly-mobile talent to enable them to help foster more robust business ties between business units that exist in Hong Kong and mainland China, which are currently often operated fairly independently of each other.”
"Bringing all staff into the bigger-picture conversations, instilling a sense of unity in our vision and helping them to achieve their personal goals enables talent to thrive.”
Leading by example
Mercer is certainly walking the talk when it comes to creating
a Thriving organisation themselves. Wong said, “At Mercer,
we are serious about being the thriving individuals ourselves. In the past, there has been a tendency to simply throw money at a problem—this is, however, rarely the best solution. The Thrive45 diagnostic tool enables us to take a much more holistic approach in our analysis, provide tailored solutions while keeping costs to a minimum.” Wong went on to share specific examples of what Mercer is doing internally to ensure a thriving working environment. He said, “Our business model is to change the market as well as anticipate and adapt to changes, so we empower our employees to be agile and have created multiple platforms to enhance communication and feedback. We understand the importance of getting to know your talent and listening to them, regardless of their position. Bringing all staff into the bigger-picture conversations, instilling a sense of unity in our vision and helping them to achieve their personal goals enables talent to thrive.”
Paul Arkwright
