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Hewitt Quarterly
Asia Pacific
is made possible through the combined skills and experience
of Hewitt consultants from across the Asia-Pacific region.
For further information please
contact:
Hewitt Associates
2601-05 Shell Tower
Times Square
Causeway Bay
Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 2877-8600
Fax: (852) 2877-2701
editor-hqap@hewitt.com
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"HR teams provided Hewitt extensive insights into their people management strategies, performance metrics, and organizational statistics." |
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| "Best Employers see a direct link between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. They make sure employees have a clear understanding of what the business needs are, and spend time and resources building a strong culture and strong people practices to support those business needs." |
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The major growth in Asia's economy has created a seller's labor market. The ability to find the right people, develop them, and then hold on to them, can potentially make the difference between an outstanding financial performance for an organization and a merely passable one.
This helps explain why the Best Employers in Asia 2007 study attracted participants on an unprecedented scale. The gathered data will enable Hewitt and its clients gain the best possible insights into what practices optimize employee performance and enable organizations to gain competitive advantage in a robust labor marketplace.
The study shows The Best have outperformed The Rest in terms of revenue growth over the previous three years, have greater improvement in productivity, better HR efficiency and achieved consistently higher growth in profit over the previous two years.
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"More constructive organizations are significantly more successful in terms of total shareholder return, and in terms of shorter- and longer-term measures of performance," says Andrew Bell, Global Head of Hewitt's Talent and Organization Consulting Practice.
Who Took Part
More than 750 organizations registered to participate in the study in seven markets
- China, India, Australia and New Zealand, Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Methodology
- Approximately 160,000 responded to the Employee Opinion Survey (EOS), representing the views of more than 1.7 million employees.
- HR teams provided Hewitt extensive insights into their people management strategies, performance metrics, and organizational statistics. The information was collated into a People Practices InventoryTM (PPI).
- To validate the data, Hewitt conducted four-hour-long audits of randomly selected participants in each market.
- Hewitt also interviewed CEOs and collected their views in the process.
- Hewitt then conducted an initial analysis of the three tools, and produced blind-coded company reports, which provided a filter to assist the independent local judging panels.
- In each market, the independent judging panel, made up of experts from business and the academic world, chose their list of Best Employers based on their own criteria. These organizations were named the Best Employers in that market.
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The analyzed data provided Hewitt with a unique opportunity to gain deep insight into some fundamental questions:
- What impact do people practices have on the success of a company?
- What are the effective people management strategies being used by employers to ensure their success?
- Can effective practices be successfully copied and adopted by other organizations? Do general principles apply? Or do practices need to be specifically aligned to individual organizations to be really successful?
The study was open to all companies that have over 100 full-time employees and have been in the business for more than two years. Within different sectors, it covered participating organizations from public multinationals to privately owned businesses that still had input from the founding partners or family. |
The Results
The Best come from nine different sectors, ranging from call centers to retail chains and from pharmaceuticals to restaurants, and seven different markets-six are from China; four from India; four from Australia and New Zealand; three from Singapore, and one each from Hong Kong, Japan and Korea.
The Best Employers in Asia in order of excellence are:
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Spansion (China) Ltd. ~ China |
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| 2.~ |
Three On the Bund ~ China |
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| 3.~ |
The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong ~ Hong Kong |
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| 4.~ |
Shangri-La's Kerry Centre Hotel Beijing ~ China |
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| 5.~ |
Four Seasons Hotel Singapore ~ Singapore |
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| 6.~ |
SalesForce ~ Australia & New Zealand |
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| 7.~ |
Marriott Hotels India ~ India |
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| 8.~ |
SK Telecom Co., Ltd. ~ Korea |
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| 9.~ |
Four Seasons Hotel Shanghai ~ China |
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| 10.~ |
Nanfang Lee Kum Kee Co., Ltd. ~ China |
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The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore ~ Singapore; |
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| 12.~ |
Satyam Computer Services Limited ~ India |
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UBS Securities Japan Ltd. ~ Japan |
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SEEK Limited ~ Australia & New Zealand |
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| 15.~ |
Renaissance Beijing Hotel ~ China |
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| 16.~ |
Aditya Birla Group ~ India |
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| 17.~ |
Cisco Systems ~ Australia & New Zealand |
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Raffles Hotels & Resorts ~ Singapore |
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| 19.~ |
Novartis Consumer Health Australasia ~ Australia & New Zealand |
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| 20.~ |
Domino's Pizza India Limited ~ India |
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The Best All Excelled in the Stringent Criteria Identified by the Judges:
- Senior leadership commitment and effectiveness in people management;
- Overall effectiveness in human capital management;
- Employee engagement and alignment;
- Customer focus; and
- Business success.
The Best had significantly higher employee engagement scores of 87 percent, compared to only 57 percent in The Rest.
Engaged employees speak positively about their company, don't want to leave, and willingly put in extra effort to ensure strong company performance.
The Leaders' Perspective
"Best Employers see a direct link between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. They make sure employees have a clear understanding of what the business needs are, and spend time and resources building a strong culture and strong people practices to support those business needs," says Bell.
- The Best develop people strategies aligned with the aims and ethos of the organization, and develop the capabilities of team members. As a result they are less influenced by general market factors such as employee turnover and skill shortages.
- The Best work hard to ensure their employees are highly engaged and will strive to meet customer needs.
- The Best recognize employee engagement as a critical factor for business success. A total of 55 percent of The Best use employee engagement as a performance measure in their organization compared to only 28 percent of The Rest.
The Employees' Perspective
- Career opportunities are a primary driver of engagement in all organizations, but more employees have positive perceptions about opportunities at The Best (79 percent) compared to The Rest (48 percent).
- At The Best, employees are driven by the high levels of recognition they receive in the workplace and are involved in work activities that have a positive impact on engagement.
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Financial Results
- Revenue-Best Employers have outperformed
The Rest in terms of revenue growth over the previous three years.
- Productivity-Best Employers have shown greater improvement in productivity, with The Best outperforming The Rest in terms of sales per employee.
- HR efficiency-Best Employers have an HR function service ratio of 1:87 compared with 1:50 at The Rest.
Profitability-Best Employers have demonstrated a consistently higher growth in profit over the last two years.
Best Employers Have Clear Talent Management Strategies Involving:
- CEO ownership of talent and leadership development;
- Robust performance and competency assessment leading to talent segmentation; and
- Compelling talent development practices and processes.
Where The Best succeed is in truly valuing their people and bringing out the best in them. They can do this by making sure the organization's goals, resources and programs are aligned with their people's aspirations, and vice versa. In doing this, The Best motivate their employees to achieve far more for their organizations than they ever thought possible. And once that happens, the business results literally take care of themselves.
| Leveraging From Some of The Best |
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| LEFT TO RIGHT: Chen Long and Benjamin Lu, HR Director, Spansion (China) Limited |
Spansion (China) Ltd
The Best Employer in Asia 2007 has 1,300 employees and is based in Jiangsu province, China. It is part of Spansion, the world's largest company dealing exclusively in Flash memory technology for home and business computers.
People Practice Highlights
A Happy Company Culture: The emphasis is on a 'family' feeling, respect for individuals and good training. If employees or their family members are sick, co-workers donate to help them.
Good Communication: Employees are able to talk to the managing director and senior managers at least once a fortnight.
Leaders Develop Other Leaders: HR cooperates with function managers to provide development training for successors or high potentials.
Recognition of Employee Achievement: These include a knowledge sharing award, suggestion award and long-term service award.
PC Loh, Spansion China's Vice President and Executive Managing Director, says, "As an experienced observer, you know straight away when you walk in to a workplace whether people are happy, or whether they are behaving a little stiffly as if they are not fully end.
"If you have a group of people who are very happy, they will be more engaged and more willing to contribute to the job."
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| LEFT TO RIGHT: Eric Fiedler, Regional Director,
Asia Pacific, Hewitt Associates and Mark Lettenbichler, Vice President and Area General Manager,
The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong |
The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong
The organization has 310 employees and describes the hotel as the city's most intimate luxury accommodation.The hotel also made it to the list of Best Employers in Asia study each time it participated in 2001, 2003 and 2005. It clinched top position of Best Employer in Asia in 2005.
People Practice Highlights
The Ritz Motto:
The in-house culture is epitomized by the tagline "Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen," emphasizing employees are service professionals, not servants.
Empowerment: Employees are free to optimize service to customers, with a monetary threshold of US $2,000 per guest interaction.
Culture: The Ritz-Carlton has a distinct culture based on genuine care, a good working environment and respect for the brand.
Recognition: Examples of exceptional service provided to guests are published in the internal daily communication.
Recruitment: The company strives to recruit the right people who will share the values of the organization.
Overseas Cross Training: A week's cross training at one of the sister hotels in the Asian region is offered to the 10 best performers/high potential employees each year.
Mark Lettenbichler, Vice President and Area General Manager, says, "What makes us a Best Employer is the quality of how we execute our practices."
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| LEFT TO RIGHT: Eric Fiedler, Regional Director, Asia Pacific, Hewitt Associates and Santrupt Misra, Director, HR & IT, Aditya Birla Group |
Aditya Birla Group
The Aditya Birla Group is based in Mumbai and describe themselves as India's first truly multinational corporation focused on value creation for their multiple stakeholders.
The group has 82,000 employees from 20 countries a market capitalization of $15 billion, and is a leading player in a number of fields including textiles, chemicals, telecoms and IT services.
The group was named a Best Employer in India in 2003.
People Practice Highlights
Recruitment and Orientation: Families of new recruits are invited to visit the workplace. A 30-day probationary period is used with new hires in case of mismatches.
Performance Management: Selected line managers act as Performance Champions with the mandate to change performance processes that do not work effectively.
Management of High Potentials: This is done by senior management using global benchmarks.
Reward and Recognition: The reward program is designed to reinforce the HR vision. 'The Power of Five' honors what the company calls Value Champions, while 'Vision 2015' encourages dialogue about the group's future direction.
Learning and Development: The group emphasizes meritocracy and promotion based on talent. Online learning allows information to be shared across the group's facilities.
Consultation: Large group dialogue sessions are designed to engage employees.
Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of Aditya Birla Group, says, "Our people systems are aligned to foster excellence, empower and enrich people, and recognize creativity, innovation and reward performance. People with a track record and people with a passion to perform are steered on to a growth trajectory."
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| LEFT TO RIGHT: Lee Taek, Vice President of HR, Nam Young-Chan, Executive Vice President, Hwang Se-Yeon, Senior HR Manager, Lim Kyu-Nam, HR Manager, SK Telecom Co., Ltd. |
SK Telecom
Based in Seoul, SK Telecom is a member of the SK Group, the number one wireless communication services provider in South Korea. In 2006, it invested $1 billion in China Unicom, taking a stake of just under 7 percent.
People Practice Highlights
Performance Evaluation: A supervisor can write comments into an online evaluation system as frequently as he or she wants, and HR collects the comments three times a year.
Flexible HR: This addresses leadership and employee issues raised by diversification beyond the core activity of this mobile carrier. The cultural focus has been shifted from employee seniority to performance and competency.
Talent Development: SK Telecom are making conscious efforts to position themselves as a talent-growing company and as a best place to work.
Rewards and Recognition: The company has been a leader in reforming the traditionally hierarchical structure of Korean business. Satisfaction regarding compensation, benefits and employer reputation is extremely high and staff turnover extremely low.
Workplace Conditions: This company aims to resemble a five-star hotel, with well planned, relaxing office spaces decorated with art and rest rooms are fitted to a high standard. Employees are also given free latte coffees.
"SK Telecom has tried to provide leadership that allows our employees to develop innovative services and products on their own. To do this, we activated open communication between top management and employees, and created a flatter organizational structure by abolishing traditional ranking of job titles. All of these were backed up with the promotion of a corporate culture based on challenge, creativity and teamwork," says Shin-Bae Kim, SK Telecom's CEO and President.
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