HR INSIDER
WHO’S WHO IN HR
JENNY OOI
Chief HR Officer
NG JIA HUEY HR Director
want to be known as the premium building products company and the knowledge gained by our employees is crucial when they go out to meet clients,” says Ooi. Quality, not quantity, is key when it comes to learning and development across the board. “HR folks would always say ‘my people need more training’. But, it has to be training where once given, it impacts the bottom line,” she says.
Engagement with an end product Impacting the bottom line and enhancing brand awareness are also required from USG Boral’s staff engagement strategies, Ooi says adamantly. “It’s not just about having fun by playing bowling, for example. Even engagement has to have an end product,” she reasons. For USG Boral, every employee engagement initiative rolled out in different countries must, as Ooi puts it, “move the needle”. One example of this bottom line focus involved the organisation’s employees in Thailand. USG Boral realised its Thai staff had a poor command of English, which was increasingly being used at work and in professional settings. The Thai employees had to brush up on their language skills to engage in knowledge-
NORHAYATI ALI
Senior Manager, HR Management System
KAMONPAN TANSAWANGKUL Senior Analyst, HR Information System
sharing with USG Boral’s Englishspeaking clients and customers. Ooi says the company promptly arranged for English lessons for its Thai counterparts. However, the lessons were not runof-the-mill classes. “We incorporated games along with assessments,” says Ooi. “The end goal was to improve their English, which would then allow them to better engage in knowledge sharing of our products to potential clients. “This would then lead to better sales revenue for the business.” USG Boral has also been steadily cultivating its brand image among employees through a popular corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative. The firm has been collaborating with nonprofit organisation Habitat for Humanity to build houses around the Asia-Pacific region. Employees from each of the South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia subsidiaries have been helping to construct homes, using USG Boral products. “This has been an amazing engagement initiative that can kill several birds with one stone,” says Ooi. “Employees get to engage in CSR activities which they like, and they can also learn more about our products and understand how to use them on an everyday basis.
GILBERT LAI
Senior Executive, HR
JULIAN TAN
Senior Manager, HR
Power of home One area of constant debate is the compensation space. In fact, Ooi includes herself on the list of staff who will never believe they are paid enough. “If you ask me if I’m wellcompensated, I’ll say ‘of course not’. Nobody is ever satisfied,” says Ooi. “If you’re always going to tie rewards back to money, it’s going to be tough.” After years of handing out gifts to employees, leaders at USG Boral decided to try something different in 2016. Rewarded employees were instead afforded a gift voucher to have dinner with their families. The message was simple: have a good meal with your loved ones, take a picture and send it to your colleagues. It has been seen as a a powerful, yet moving gesture. “Leaders who have worked with us for many years sent us photos of their families having dinner and said this was their best reward in their 25 years’ of service,” says Ooi. She is adamant that employee rewards like this should always “affect home”. “The concept behind such rewards is that we believe you can never separate work from home,” she says. “People will forget what you say and do, but they rarely forget how you make them feel.”
MARCH 2017
HRMASIA.COM 37