| |
Ethos Issue 5, Nov 2008
Talent Management in Asia:
Four Perspectives
Featuring Singapore Human Capital Summit Plenary Speakers: Kan Trakulhoon,
Ho Kwon Ping, Peter Cappelli and Israel Berman
Experts and business leaders share insights on the challenges of managing talent in Asia today.
KAN TRAKULHOON: I’d like to start by pointing out three key aspects of talent management: selecting the right people, developing them and letting them grow.
The first point is to recruit the right people. Every year, we recruit more than 40% of the total cohort of top-honours graduates in Thailand, through campus recruitment programmes and internships. When they join the company, they go through a 20-day orientation, where I teach the first modules covering our core values and vision.
People development is important. Every year, we spend about 600 million baht for classroom training. For the past 24 years, we have brought in Wharton professors to work with our middle managers on six modules on management. We also work with Columbia University on leadership issues, because some of these soft skills need more work. We also send executives to do MBAs in Harvard and Wharton. Today, we have about 334 graduates who have completed these programmes.
And finally, retention. The best way is to challenge people, give them stimulating work and allow them to grow with the company. It has worked well for our company. According to statistics, 30% of overseas graduates who come back leave their company; 20% of them change work partners. But this is not true in our case. Since the 1970s, none of our graduates have left the company, even though they do not have binding contracts. The turnover rate of our staff in Thailand is less than 1%. The turnover rate in our 100 subsidiaries and affiliates outside Thailand is higher at about 10% to 15% but it is declining.
HO KWON PING: I think in Asia, you have to look at the mobility of talent beyond any one single country. The whole concept of expatriate talent is not the same as before.
In the past, the term "expatriate" used to refer to white males only. But now we have a rainbow explosion of talent from different nationalities and both genders, and management culture is therefore changing in significant ways.
The second point is that although in Singapore we are concerned about an ageing society, there are still a lot of young people in the rest of Asia. The workforce and the widening talent pool in Asia generally comprise Generation Y individuals, not baby boomers. You need to manage these young people and their aspirations differently and I think this is a defining feature of talent management in Asia.
Take Banyan Tree as an example: we currently have 8,000 people across 20 countries, and we are expected to grow to about 15,000 to 20,000 in a few years. We are not a very big company but we deal with about 15 nationalities. I have to work with 2,000 young, ambitious people in middle management who only want to work in high-flying companies. In this situation, one of the key challenges is to develop a company culture which is cohesive and dynamic enough to attract and retain these people who have unique aspirations in a globalised Asia environment. I think what is increasingly important isn't technical competencies but soft skills: the ability to communicate your ideas clearly; to act and function effectively in a cross-cultural environment. This again will be one of the defining attributes of young talent in Asia.
In my experience, Asian talent and young Asian people in general are not so quick to show initiative and push themselves to the forefront. If you want to get somebody to push their own ability beyond the defined norms of authority, you cannot just tell people they are “empowered”. You have to structure the empowerment so that they can gradually discover how to take initiative for themselves. We should help them overcome their cultural hesitancy in pushing themselves forward. The capability is there, but culturally, Asians are not as assertive. Therefore, there is a need to train people to be assertive if wewant to groom talent that can rise to the top.
Another point is that generally speaking, Asian talent tends to be more home-bound; they like to stay within their own country and in the region, as opposed to Western expatriates who are very keen to see the world and travel. In order to give our Asian staff international exposure, we adapt by giving them shorter programmes where they don’t have to be away from home for long. We give them assurances that after they go overseas for assignment, we guarantee them a position back home. So if you want international exposure for your young Asian talent, you have to recognise this cultural inclination to stay close to home.
A fourth point is that, in the hotel industry just as with the military, there are people who have dynamism, initiative and enthusiasm but not necessarily the academic qualifications for a fast-track career. It is necessary to have a fast-track programme where you can recognise raw talent and push them to the fore. Otherwise, you will find that you have missed out on talented individuals who do not have all the academic prerequisites.
Continuing management education is important. At Banyan Tree, we have our own management academy, where many of our own senior management are facilitators and where we provide opportunities for enthusiastic young staff to develop, regardless of their academic background.
|
|
