|
|
 |
| |
Having entered its sixth year, “Greater China
Talent Management Summit 2011” organised by A-Performers.com
was successfully staged at Kowloon Shangri-la on 8th July,
2011.
In the theme of “The Engaged Leader -
a Fundamental Pillar for Organisational Success”,
the summit attracted more than 300 human resources practitioners
and senior executives to attend, where 10 prominent guest
speakers who are all esteemed leaders, academics and human
resources professionals from best-practice organisations
were invited to share their unique insights and suggestions
on various hot topics of talent management and engaged
leadership.
Definition
of Success
The morning session kicked off with Hon Paul Chan, Legislative
Councillor (Functional Constituency - Accountancy) HKSAR
who keynoted the definition of success - the aspiration
of young people in his interesting speech.
When it comes to the definition of success, Mr. Chan mentioned
the book Chasing Daylight written by the chairman
of KPMA in the US. He said, “The book describes how the
author reflects his career as he was diagnosed of having
a brain tumor. Today, no matter what position we are in,
work/life balance is important. Success is about legacy,
the value and meaning of us as an individual.”
Mr. Chan also shared two concepts he learnt from Rick
Warren, a Christian leader: Stewardship of affluence and
stewardship of influence.
“When you have money, remember to share with people around
you, particularly those in need, so that your blessings
will also become blessings to others. That’s stewardship
of affluence. For stewardship of influence, when you are
successful one day, please use your influence for the
good of the community to help those who are less fortunate,”
he said.
Coaching
Culture
The second speaker of the summit was Mr. Tony Dickel,
Chairman – Hong Kong of the Institute of Executive Coaching
and Leadership (IECL).
Talking about coaching culture and its benefits, Mr. Dickel
quoted a recent survey and said, “On a global basis, 25
percent of people will leave their company within 25 years
of joining it. It turns out that there’s a very high risk
that somebody may leave within the first 12 months of
joining. The research indicates that in China 40 percent
of mid senior level managers will leave their company
within 18 months of joining.”
As told by Mr. Dickel, IECL has conducted a number of
researches around the challenge of how to create and empower
a productive culture which encourages innovation, ownership,
engagement, participation, collaboration and sharing.
“So how do you get local executives and managers into
a habit of speaking up? It turns out that what’s happening
is that companies are doing that by creating a coaching
culture within the company.”
“A coaching culture would help you to diagnose somebody’s
deep need. Coaching is the best way to support behavioral
change which actually brings an individual to reach their
own goals,” he continued.
Finally, Mr. Dickel reminded the audience, “Coaching culture
needs to be planned carefully. It is not something that
you can do overnight.”
A
Pair of Hands
The next onto the stage was Mr. Stephen Lee, President
of Peter F. Drucker Academy, who delivered an inspiring
speech on the topic “From a Pair of Hands to a Whole Man”
Mr. Lee started his presentation by sharing the story
of Henry Ford, who used to say that “why is it that when
I always get the whole person when what I really want
is just a pair of hands?”
“Nowadays, when we employ people, we want to employ the
whole person, but he/she is not going to give you a pair
of hands. They only sit down and wait for your instruction
for what to do. A leader is not only to get things done,
but also to embrace how to understand the inners strengths
of a person, and how to put the strengths to align with
the organisation’s setting,” said Mr. Lee.
To build up the future leaders of the company, Mr. Lee
mentioned three assumptions: mission, core competence
and environment, which made up “The Drucker Theory of
Business”.
“You need to put your head out of the window to look at
the world rather than just being inner focused to see
how we are. Therefore, once we identified the three assumptions,
then we need to ask ourselves what is our business? Who
is our customer? And then identify some innovation opportunities
to develop strategies and objectives for the organisation,”
he suggested.
Improve
Performance Process
After the refreshment break, Mr. Francis Chan, General
Manager Hong Kong of Lumesse Hong Kong Limited began his
speech by sharing effective performance management processes
that we can learn from organisations.
He shared Lumesse’s recent research about the industry’s
best practices and organisations’ performance management
practices. As revealed by Mr. Chan, the research findings
showed that over 75 percent of companies have developed
goals based on financial metrics.
“In order for goals to be good and smart goals, it has
to be measurable. In Asia Pacific, only 15 percent of
companies show this particular behaviour. The result is
not very encouraging, so there is room for improvement.”
Mr. Chan also recommends organisations to improve their
performance process by
．Incorporate both goals and competencies
．Set schedule for formal reviews
．Encourage informal feedback and communication
．Training and leadership development for managers
Manage Talent through
Change
The next onto the stage was our strategic insights speaker
Dr. Aidan Goddard, Chief Financial Officer - Asia Pacific
of L’Occitane en Provence, who shared his experience and
views on managing and developing Talent through Change.
Dr. Goddard said that changes always associated with some
forms of restructuring. Leaders therefore had to decide
who were going to stay or who were going to be retained.
“A lot of contemporary management theory tends to focus
on the strategies, the products, the markets and the operation,
but I’d like to stress the importance of managing ‘people
issues’. The positive aspect of leadership is that people
can be developed or coached to become leaders. Leadership
is never really about self-dominance. It’s much more about
empathy with people and sharing,” he added.
Dr. Goddard asked the audience to remember the word “VICE”:
| ． |
"V" stands for values
– it is important for leaders to identify the values
and fit it; |
| ． |
"I" is for ideas – good
leaders need to continually generate new ideas as
organisations without ideas have only history and
no future; |
| ． |
"C" stands for courage
– an important element of leadership. Courage simply
means the willingness and preparedness to accept
a degree of risk in managing relations and making
decisions; |
| ． |
"E" means energy – people
in an organisation are taking on more and more responsibilities
that require more energy. Good leaders are in a
higher energy level which enables them to lead a
good and effective team and motivate their people. |
Align HR and
Business Strategies
The last speaker of the morning session was Ms. Huo Tuanjie
Olivia Head of Human Resources of Bank of China (HK) Limited.
Ms. Huo spoke on the topic “Align HR & Business Strategies
via Talent Management” and said, “In the past decade,
we put talent development as our top priority. Even our
Chairman sees human capital as a milestone of business
success. Therefore, we invest a lot in talent development.”
At BOC (HK), there are three major objectives to support
business growth:
1. to increase productivity to support the business
2. to improve staff quality and enhance staff commitment
and engagement
3. to optimize human resources and utilisation
Ms. Huo continued, “The focus of our HR work is to support
business strategies. We have an increasing emphasis on
talent management and we also enforce succession planning
as our top priority. Our talent management work is well
supported by staff relationships, training, compensation,
motivation, corporate culture, etc. All these form a total
reward strategy.”
Leadership
in Hong Kong
The afternoon session began with an inspiring speech by
our afternoon keynote speaker Mrs. Ip Lau Suk Yee Regina,
Chair of New People’s Party on the topic “Leading and
Managing in Hong Kong Today”.
Having worked for the government all of her life and with
her experience in management in large organisations, Mrs.
Ip shared her views on leadership and said, “Leadership
is not just about personality, it is about relationship,
relationship with your followers. And sometimes being
a leader to implement change could be dangerous.”
According to Mrs. Ip, changes can be divided into two
types: technical change and adaptive change. “To lead
adaptive change, get on the balcony and see yourself objectively;
find out where people are at; listen to the song beneath
the words and read the authority figure for clues.”
Mrs. Ip suggested leaders to think politically, “Create
and nurture networks of people whom you can call on; work
with and engage in addressing the issue at hand. In addition,
find partners to build your political power, and to be
seen by your followers that you also experience the same
hardship.”
Empower
Your Talents
After the remarkable speech by the well-known charismatic
leader, Mrs. Carmen Lam, Chief Executive Officer of PrinCorp
Wealth Advisors (Asia) Limited, the Summit’s platinum
sponsor, came onto the stage and delivered an insightful
presentation with her fluent and pleasant English.
The Employee Choice Arrangement (ECA) is about to launch.
According to MPFA’s statistics, 40 percent of MPF members
plan to transfer their accrued benefits upon the launch
of the ECA. Mrs. Lam believed this implied that the ECA
would bring about new challenges and opportunities to
HR practitioners.
Mrs. Lam suggested HR people to leverage the ECA to show
their concern for their employees’ needs. “HR managers
should remind employees that MPF is a long-term investment,
and should empower them by widening their choices, such
as introducing one to two more MPF service providers.
Showing concern about employees’ compensation and benefits
schemes will be helpful to engage and retain talents.”
Engaged Leadership
Culture
Ms. Ong Eng Hwee, Director of Corporate Training & Talent
Development of Shangri-La International Hotel Management
Ltd, shared the engaged Leadership Culture in Shangri-La
in her presentation.
She said, “Leadership in a hospitality environment is
about engaging the staff so that they are able to provide
good services and solve complaints in difficult situations.
People are those who make the difference, so it is important
to ensure that our people are engaged to delight the guests.”
According to Ms. Ong, Shangri-La has developed a “Talent
Development Programme” comprises of different sub-proogrammes
to grow different people to different levels. “We adopt
a very systematic approach to talent development, and
have designed a series of development programmes targeted
at talents at different levels. With a robust talent development
system in place, we hope to create an engaged leadership
culture in the hotel where staff are all engaged and motivated.”
HeadlineJobs
Quality Workplace Index
The last speaker of the summit was Dr. Chung Ting-yiu
Robert, Director of Public Opinion Programme (POP) of
The University of Hong Kong. Dr. Chung reported the findings
of HeadlineJobs Quality Workplace Index (2011 1st Half).
As Dr. Chung revealed, the survey, conducted by HeadlineJobs.hk
in association with the POP of The University of Hong
Kong, explores employee job satisfaction in Hong Kong.
The survey indicated that 77percent of employees are willing
to give up their dream jobs for work/life balance, and
60 percent and 39 percent of employees would give up their
dream jobs in exchange for personal health and dignity
respectively.
“As Hong Kong’s economy further recovers, job satisfaction
among employees drops further to 55 percent, whilst their
wish to change jobs gets higher to 25 percent,” Dr. Chung
said.
The survey also showed that when confronting a dream job
with various concerns, most employees would only give
up their dream jobs for reason of personal health. Other
considerations are comparatively less important.
A Note of Thanks
A-Perfomers.com, as the organiser of the Greater China
Talent Management Summit, would like to take this opportunity
to thank all the honorable speakers, partners, sponsors,
exhibitors, advertisers, facilitators and delegates from
Hong Kong and overseas, who have made the summit a successful
and memorable one. See you next year!
|
|
|
|
|
