2019年05月20日

Expert Insights - By Gurpreet Grewal, Regional Head of Human Capital, Asia

People are the most important assets of an organisation. Not only do they represent 50-70 percent of a company’s costs, they enable businesses to achieve their growth targets. Today’s leading organisations create their people strategy as an integral part of the strategic planning process, one that is not left for HR to determine alone. They do this by shaping their plans according to the needs of their workforce with the premise that their competitive advantage depends on attracting and retaining the best talent.

The workplace has changed over the last decade beyond recognition, driving the evolution of HR’s role from ‘administrator’ to ‘enabler.’ Traditionally, HR focused on improving a company’s operating efficiency and ensuring the effectiveness of administration. Now its success lies in its ability to enable employee growth and ensure an organisation can execute its strategy more effectively and improve overall performance.

As a strategic business enabler, the HR function will help create a company’s culture that focuses on its people. HR also needs to drive the talent agenda to attract the best people in the market, support the development of a leadership pipeline and drive cross cultural alignment and global performance.

One initiative which we have been running at Generali Asia to address these responsibilities is our successful action-based talent development program, now into its fourth year.

After a comprehensive selection process, the participants work in teams on a project for a six-month period, one that will deliver real outcomes for the business. The projects are outside each participant’s speciality area. In this way, they are challenged outside their comfort zone and given an experience where they will grow and develop personally and professionally. Each project requires active on-the-job learning and participants can receive mentoring.

Senior managers play a key role in selecting the participants which gives them an opportunity to identify talent in the organization and how this impacts succession planning.

The benefits of the program have been felt across our organisation. Most significantly, it has helped to drive a culture of empowerment. We believe this is very important because trusting our employees to make the best decisions and do what’s best for Generali is essential to creating an excellent customer experience and a winning team.

We have also seen a significant change in participants following the completion of the program. What they have gained has been more effective than any classroom theory approach we have used in the past. 

Another benefit is that this program is scalable and has been adopted by some of Generali’s local businesses in Asia.

We also ensure those employees who have participated receive on-going support and opportunities to further develop their careers. This has helped retain talent as there have been very few departures by those participants.

This is just one example of how Generali Asia focuses on attracting and retaining the best talent to ensure that our people remain our strategic advantage.

Our business objectives will be achieved by our people, so it is essential that we ensure they thrive.