Senior HR Leaders from across Asia Pacific joined IIC Partners in a webinar to share their perspectives on the impact that COVID-19 is having on their organization, the challenges they are facing, and how they are responding.

The webinar was held on Jun 18, 2020, and here is the recording and transcript.

Moderated by:

Bhavishya Sharma, Managing Director of Athena Executive Search & Consulting, an IIC Partners member.

Panelists:

• Rajat Bhatia, Vice President & Board member (People & Culture) – Fareportal
• Adeline Foo, Head of Group Talent Acquisition – DKSH
• Nicole Karagiannis, Executive Leader People and Culture – Disability Services Australia
• Sonia Kutty, Head – Global Human Resources – QuEST Global
• Craig Thomson, Chief Human Resources Officer – Essential Energy
• Iker Urrutia, Sodexo HR Director – Corporate Services – APAC
• Linda Fan, Principal – Resource-Center Consulting Co. Ltd.

Christine Hayward, Executive Director of IIC Partners:

So welcome to everyone who is joining us from across Asia-Pacific and around the world. It’s wonderful to have you all with us. I’m Christine Hayward, I’m the executive director of IIC Partners and excited to have this panel put together to talk about the challenges that HR leaders are facing in the region at the moment. We have an esteemed panel to present to you today. And Bhavishya Sharma of Athena Executive Search and Consulting based out of India is going to be moderating the session today. So with that Bhavishya, I’ll put it over to you. The seminar is now in your safe hands.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thank you, Christine. Well, once again, hello and welcome to all of you for joining us today for this webinar. I’d like to thank our panelists who are here to share the valuable perspective with all of us and the participants who have taken their time to be a part of this discussion. Now, many of you would agree that we are witnessing one of the most strange and the most challenging phase of our personal and professional life for the past few months. COVID-19 has occupied our thoughts more than any other dreaded term before. Now, while some of us have already witnessed quite a few global downturns, like the Great Recession, the dot com bubble burst, and the Gulf War crisis. The current impact of COVID-19 is unlike any one before because this has in a lot of ways changed the fundamentals of human engagement for us and also the way we operate in our personal and our professional spheres.

Bhavishya Sharma:

And for instance, our walk from our bedroom to our living room is a new office commute. The group video conferences is the new huddle meeting and Zoom is the new conference room for all of us. Now, while some of these challenges could end up becoming more effective concepts but this whole forced disruption of the workspace has led to quite a few challenges as well for the corporate world. Our idea today to host this webinar is to gather thoughts from some of the leading minds, subject matter experts, and eminent HR leaders in the APAC region on how they’re getting to address the challenges of this change changing world. With that, I’d like to make a very quick introduction to our panel today and if we can take a lead with Craig.

Craig Thomson:

Hi, everyone, so just quickly my background, I’ve held senior executive roles, probably key areas would be Singtel Optus during their startup, Coca-Cola Amatil, for a long period of time, working out of Australia and then a DP World, which is a global stevedoring business with about 40,000 employees. And I’m currently working for an Australian business called Essential Energy. And they are basically an energy distribution business. As you’ll see from the Zoom that I am working from home, our business has been operating for about three months in this mode and I’m very pleased to be here today. So thank you.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thank you Craig. Sonia, can we have you pitch in?

Sonia Kutty:

Sure. Thank you so much Bhavishya. Hello to everyone on the call today. Thank you Bhavishya first of all for having me here. It’s a delight to be on this. I head human resources for QuEST Global, which is an engineering service provider with offices across the globe. And quite like Craig shared, this has hit us and almost overnight we have been on the work from home mode in all our global offices largely. So thank you once again and great being here.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Rajat, can we have a quick introduction from you?

Rajat Bhatia:

Sure, Bhavishya. Good morning, afternoon, evening to everyone across the globe. Thank you for joining in. My name is Rajat Bhatia. I am part of Fareportal. Fareportal is in the consumer internet space and the travel domain. One of the hardest-hit domains struggling at the moment and fighting. As my background, I’ve done various roles in operations and quality and more recently in HR, across various organizations like the Matsushita Group, Circle, and some Blackstone companies, et cetera. And more recently over the past, almost five years with Fareportal. And part of the people and culture team at Fareportal. And welcome to everyone.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thanks Rajat. Iker, can we have a quick introduction from you?

Iker Urrutia:

Hi everyone. Thanks for the invitation. I’m very happy to be here today with all of you. My name is Iker and the HR director for corporate services segment for Sodexo in Asia Pacific. We operate in 12 territories and we have around 75,000 employees in this region. I’m based in Singapore but I’m Spanish as you probably noticed in my accent. And I have also worked for a few years in the UK, France and in Italy. So I’m very happy now to be living and working in Asia. I’m happy to be in this panel to talk with all of you.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thank you so much Iker. Nicole can we have your introduction?

Nicole Karagiannis:

Thank you so much and thanks for having me. Hello everyone. Nice to meet you. My name is Nicole. I head up the people and culture team for Disability Services Australia. So we provide disability services in both the employment and the living space. I look after work health and safety, HR and our learning and development. So it’s been a fascinating time looking after the various aspects of people during this interesting phase. So really excited to be here and to share some of those learnings and to learn from all of you as well. I am in an office today for the first time in a very long time. So, it’s been quite surreal to be here with fellow team members and colleagues. Thanks for having me.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thanks, Nicole. Adeline can we have a very quick introduction from you?

Adeline Foo:

Hi everyone. My name is Adeline, I’m based in Singapore working with DKSH a Swiss multinational company. We are known for our market expansion services. So we do provide essential services primarily in the fast-moving consumer goods space, as well as healthcare. Our businesses are not so much impacted because we are providing essential services, thankfully. However, a majority of our workforce who are professional levels, we are required to work from home just like I am today. So I head up the Group Talent Acquisition for DKSH globally. And we have about over 33,000 employees globally in 36 markets. Thank you for having me today.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thanks Adeline. Linda, can we have a quick introduction from you?

Linda Fan:

Hi, good morning. Good afternoon. And good day to everyone. So nice to meet you. I’m Linda Fan from Beijing. I’m the principal of Resources Center consulting firm. I’m currently responsible for the customized solution relating to people decisions and the organization culture, especially committed to helping Chinese companies because they’re growing very fast and setting up their tailored solution, building competence model, and improving the system of high potential systems. My background is much more MNC in the senior management role, including HP and Cisco, UTStarcom, mostly IT and the Chemical industries. So nice to meet you guys. Back to you Bhavishya.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thank you, Linda. Thank you everyone for that round of introduction. Once again, I really appreciate the kind of panel we have today, a very diverse panel. We’ll now look forward to jump into the agenda and start off the conversation. So the first one that we want to pick up is what has been the role of HR in managing this current crisis? I would love to have Craig starting off that conversation for us.

Craig Thomson:

In terms of HR involvement, I think it’s been central. Certainly in our organization it has been a central team effort across the organization. I will confess that in February, I work out of Sydney business, so Sydney, Australia, we started to get reports of COVID-19 in February. And at that time, a lot of us thought that this probably wasn’t going to be something that was going to affect us too much. I think we all thought that it would be contained in China. And I remember a risk manager came and saw me and wanted to do a presentation to our executive about COVID-19 and a pandemic response.

Craig Thomson:

So we had quite an interesting conversation at that time just going through well is this really necessary as an executive team we’re all very busy. Is this the biggest priority on our agenda at the moment, we’re implementing a new ERP system and significant number of other initiatives across the business. So he convinced me that we should do that in early February and within two or three weeks the whole scene here in Australia had changed significantly. So from that point, we put together a pandemic response team of which myself and the risk manager chaired that committee. And we brought in people from operations and finance and all areas of our organization.

Craig Thomson:

So I guess, like a lot of people on this call, we were learning as we went. We did have, through our business continuity team, we have done exercises in pandemic responses previously. I was only fairly new to this particular organization, Essential Energy, with only 12 months under my belt with that business. So, yeah, I think there was certainly one thing to have a pandemic response plan, it’s quite another thing to actually put something in place within the organization. But in terms of HR’s role, I mean, I could certainly talk a lot more about that but I might just hand to you, Bhavishya.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Really thank you for your response to that, Craig. I want to deep dive into this topic further and I just want to have a little more specific responses from some of our panelists. Sonia, I can call upon you and talk to us a little bit more about how the role has changed for you, forced private situation. And what’s been the biggest surprise that you have faced in this role due to the pandemic?

Sonia Kutty:

So I think when this started off Bhavishya, right, when we first got the inklings that this was crossing boundaries and becoming something that’s going to impact us in the various offices that we have. The first impact is that we had as an HR team and as an organization was for employee health and safety. That was the first thing. That quickly then moved into going into the work from home mode because that became the next need of the R. And QuEST as an organization, we have been working in offices, 99% of the time, that’s been our way of working. So that quickly changed as well. And then it was to ensure that business as usual is something that can be kept through and it’s coming. So while that happened, I think, so the biggest surprise for me or what was really new was the risk management change. 

Sonia Kutty:

Now, we’ve always been as a fraternity talking about a VUCA World and how that’s going to be and how we need to be prepared for it but to me and I think to a whole lot of us, the VUCA World almost happened overnight. Okay. It suddenly came in our face, so that was a huge learning and to deal with it. The other thing I think that was very important was that how to do the things that you were normally doing but in very, very different circumstances. And to learn that on the go. Simple things like onboarding employees or off-boarding members or doing business was something that we did face-to-face. That changed very, very quickly, and became that everything had to be done remotely, including having to manage what was a carve-out, remotely, without necessarily being in the same place.

Sonia Kutty:

So those were things I think the biggest learning is that when change happens, the human adapt. And to make sure that things can actually happen, is I think a very pleasant surprise. We’ve always spoken about it but to see it happening before your own eyes was fantastic, actually. Bhavishya, over to you.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Okay. Thank you Sonia. I think now we all appreciate that positive sentiment that comes out from all this, this is about how we as a human community has responded to the whole situation. Yeah, I think probably moving on to the next aspect of it, especially Rajat, I would like to call you on that because you look after the global HR operations for Fareportal. And as you said, this is one sector which has been quite hugely impacted by the whole situation. I’m assuming that would have called in for a lot of effective communication for your teams and employees. And I just want you to get your response and that, how have you managed that part of your job in terms of managing that communication for teams across APAC, and have they been able to adopt some global policies on all across Asian offices?

Rajat Bhatia:

Sure. Thanks, Bhavishya. So communication I believe has been one of the most challenging aspects in the current times. And I’m not saying from a logistic standpoint, more so what to communicate. And in a situation like ours, where we are obviously like I mentioned upfront that we are amongst the hardest hit sectors. The situation is changing by the day as we all are experiencing across the globe. Every day there are new norms and new changes, governments are taking decisions on the fly because they also don’t know what’s going happen. So in a situation like this, obviously our intent has been to be as open, transparent and communicate as often as possible to our employees. But some of these things have been very, very resisting to try and share what you can or what the employees anticipate.

Rajat Bhatia:

Of course, what we have done is at the best, we’ve tried to, whenever we’ve gone ahead and communicated with employees, we’ve been as open, as transparent, anticipating as many questions. We’ve tried to give them as much clarity as we can. Of course, alieve some fears to the best of our ability, we’ve been going ahead and doing a significant number of town halls on a regular basis. The HR teams have really scaled up, I would say in taking communication down the most effective ways, we’re have been going down, one-on-ones communicating with individuals, doing it in smaller groups. So communication has played a very crucial role. A lot of the panelists have already talked about it.

Rajat Bhatia:

One, we are not face-to-face with our employees, right? What used to be a very, very small percentage globally, even with the best of companies who have been operating on a work from home model, there’ve been a certain percentage that they’ve been doing. Suddenly you’re forced into managing a workforce, which is absolutely a hundred percent working from home or not in front of you. And not exactly prepared. So communication has been somewhat challenging but I think, like I said, at least for Fareportal, I can say the HR teams I’ve really scaled up, they’ve stepped up on it.

Rajat Bhatia:

We’ve been communicating as much as possible to individuals, to teams and at a global level through town halls as leadership, we’ve got them together. We’ve tried to engage with some of the medical experts and do town halls specifically on COVID, trying to answer questions to people or address some of the concerns or about COVID, how to manage some of those things. On the global policies, absolutely. We’ve been trying to run some standard policies, a lot of standard policies, we’ve been trying to drive across the organization. Of course, the local flavors added onto it but wherever we’ve been operating, we’ve tried to do things which are more or less similar across the organization. Back to you Bhavishya.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thank you so much Rajat. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on that. Iker, If I can call you on because I know that you’ve lead the HR function across the region for Sodexo. I wanted to pick your thoughts in terms of what have you discovered to be the most effective way to engage with employees in this current situation and what has been the tools that you have probably deployed in terms of having employees focused on their achieving their objective targets, despite having so much of change, which is happening all around us.

Iker Urrutia:

Yeah. In Sodexo, we offer food services on IFM and facility management services in our client’s sites. So we have thousands of sites across the region. So it’s very fragmented on the centralized organization. So it is a challenge to communicate with all our employees and especially in these challenging times. Some of our services are essential services like cleaning, disinfection and maintenance of the sites. So those have continued the work normally. So we have employees still working. Some others like in food services have been severely impacted by the crisis and have to stay at home. In those cases, we still try to maintain all the benefits for those employees. And we have kept all the communication channels open with all our employees. I think as Rajat said earlier, being open and transparent is very important in these times of crisis.

Iker Urrutia:

I think, companies that are seen as taking care of their employees, I think will become stronger. I really believe they will become stronger from this crisis than those that a straight away start cutting costs and clean up employees. So we have tried to always be very open, transparent with what is happening. This is probably the biggest crisis that we have all lived in our lives. We need to be giving a message of tranquility and calmness but being aware that there’s a big crisis. So we have plenty of webinars, town halls and have the given the tools like a manager communication guidebook for all our line managers to communicate to their teams and tell them about what was happening. We were lucky enough or lucky or we had a big presence in China. So China has been, of course, the first affected country here.

Iker Urrutia:

So then we could learn from our experience there, then transfer those experiences to the rest of the region and even the rest of the group. So Sodexo is a French company. It has a big presence in Europe and the U.S. We have more than 400,000 employees worldwide. And they have been looking upon us in Asia Pacific. So it’s not that one of the questions there is how the HQ policies have been affecting APAC. It’s been actually the other way around. So I think they have to be global but there’s centralized and the closer you are to the business and the clients the more you learn. I mean, this case, our group has learned a lot from the China experience, I mean, the Asia Pacific region. And then we have plenty of, as I said, webinars, manager guidebooks and other direct communication with our employees.

Iker Urrutia:

I think it’s also important in these times to make a distinction between clarity and certainty. I think nobody is certain of what’s happening in this VUCA world. The more certain you are, I think the more wrong you will be. But you can be clear. You can be clear on the overall direction and you can give that clarity message to the employees, which I think is very important for them to understand that there are no responses or answers for everything but at least we have a clear direction and clear vision of where we want to go. And how we can get there having, of course, some flexibility.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thank you, Iker. I think you made an excellent point. I think this is one aspect in which probably the world would look upon to APAC and the playbook would be the APAC playbook, which will probably get implemented across the globe. Thank you for thoughts on that. Now, I think, probably a good way for us to have all our participants, also feel engaged in the conversation to maybe run a quick polls, should just capture opinions. So we’d like to just start off one poll at this point in time to capture everyone’s thought. And as you would probably see it on your screens right now, this is about just analyzing how much your role has changed since the pandemic and you have a few options to respond. And if we can just have everyone very quickly respond to that.

Bhavishya Sharma:

I think we have some interesting responses. So we have about 30% where the role is just somewhat changing, and about 70% of people who have definitely seen some big significant changes happening in their role. I think this is probably a good learning for us to move into our next conversation. And we would get a little deeper into the whole employee engagement aspect of it. And I feel this is very important because most of the clients that we are engaged with have certainly brought in a lot of focus on this particular aspect of HR. And I think this is probably the most in need as well at this point in time. So, we feel that it’d be great for the panel to respond to that, that how the relationship between the employees and the organization has changed significantly in the last few months. And if we can have Nicole to start this conversation for us and give her point of view on this.

Nicole Karagiannis:

Thanks, Bhavishya. Happy to. I think for us, it’s the roles of employee engagement. That’s definitely been the topic through the last few months but also through how we engage our employees in the various concepts, whether they’re working from home, whether they’re still attending work, if they’re an essential service. And in our case, attending the homes of our customers and assuring them that their safety and their wellbeing is still paramount. And engaging them in wanting to attend work, in what was and what still is an uncertain time around what would happen to me.

Nicole Karagiannis:

And that really quickly put the spotlight on the leadership at our frontline. So our frontline leaders, our direct leaders to those employees has been our connection and our communication with them from senior leaders to those leaders, has been crucial and has overnight really critically improved across all silos and all challenges and all types of workload to say, how are you supporting your employees? What do you need from the senior leaders? How will you keep them engaged and what tools and what support do you need to make everyone feel safe in any context?

Nicole Karagiannis:

So knowing that our engagement channels, where they were crucial to stay through the normal leadership channels, that was one big thing focus. The second focus is really being clear and open about the employee safety and the wellbeing of our employees and what we’re asking them to do if they’re still out and about or if they’re at home. Just those really strict rules around how we will look after them. What leave we will provide, what allowances we will provide, what does our wellbeing program look like? We quickly designed one and rolled it out and walked the talk, which I’m very proud of. And again, it has been the quick turnaround and the urgency in getting that good quality work implemented is definitely not just down to the HR team or the HR function or the crisis team, it’s been a true collaboration across all parts of the business in breaking down the silos that I ironically, we spent so long talking about breaking them down and it took a pandemic to all of a sudden see what true collaboration looks like. To echo Sonia’s sentiment earlier, that is a positive, that we’ve been leveraging and harnessing and plan to continue on that journey. So for us, it’s been through that leadership connection, our wellbeing programs and really driving that through that now is the time for that to shine through a pandemic.

Nicole Karagiannis:

And lastly, for me, the third place to the employee engagement has been delivering the difficult message on an individual level and doing that with dignity and with respect, whether it was a, for example, just relaying a message about someone’s health conditions would stop them from being out and about in their role. And therefore we would be asking them to stay home for their own safety. And sometimes they don’t agree with that because they’re so passionate about their roles. So having, there was at times those, the need for those difficult conversations and the tension. I won’t shy away from that but doing that with respect and dignity and on an individual level. Taking the time in what was the crazy times, just one way of explaining, describing it, taking that time for direct individual human connection was the third piece and people felt engaged and appreciated. Thank you.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thanks, Nicole. I think that’s a very well structured strategy to manage employee engagement at these times. If I could probably have Sonia, come in and share with us any new processes or policies, which might have emerged from this sudden need that has erupted. And if you could share with us any successes from implementing those processes and policies and we all can learn a little bit from that.

Sonia Kutty:

Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Bhavishya. So I think the way I see it is two different ways. Okay. So one is about new policies and processes but the biggest thing also has been that existing policies and processes. You can’t do it the same way that you’ve been doing it, right? So there has been a tailoring to everything that we’ve been doing in the past and there’s a new way of doing it today. Like I mentioned before, even if you were welcoming and inducting an employee, it’s no longer the way you used to do it, you could welcome them into a room, hand them some company collateral, make them feel special, take them out to lunch, all those things no longer exist. Right? Today’s a very different way of doing it.

Sonia Kutty:

So actually the way of doing has changed much. Like we heard Nicole speak, there are things which have come in newly in terms of maybe allowances in terms of making differences to the way people have been engaged within the organization. One important thing that has really heightened in QuEST, as well as an organization, is the communication piece. Many of us spoke about that. I think, it’s about the 10 by 10 by 10 rule that we hear about. Right. You have to repeat the message 10 times. You have to say it in 10 different ways and then hope and pray that at least 10% is retained. Right?

Sonia Kutty:

So communication has been the single most important element that we have heightened. We do it in multiple ways. We try and do it as clearly as possible in the organization. The second thing that we have done is about making sure that people are comfortable in the new ways of working to whatever extent. We’ve adopted technology, I remember earlier, where we solicited response like you did a poll over here. Our open houses have also have this element of either a mentee poll coming in or some sort of poll. The first thing that you heard was about anxiety. That was the topmost response.

Sonia Kutty:

So the emotional part of an employee has what it really got amplified during this anxiety about their jobs, anxiety about their health, anxiety about the future. I think that’s one thing that we have tried to address and our emphasis on making sure that we have health and safety, especially psychological safety programs, getting heightened up is I think one thing that I would like to call up Bhavishya.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Sure. Sure. Thank you, Sonia. Thank you for sharing those thoughts. If I can have Adeline come in for the next question and I understand that when you come with more strong experience that focus towards Talent Acquisition and I would probably, towards this question to look at what are we doing to engage a future employer. As a search firm, we love talking about recruitment somewhere. So I think keeping that objective in mind if we can learn from you and any challenges that you have faced in terms of looking at engaging with future talent and any strategies that you’re developing to those challenges?

Adeline Foo:

I think overall, we definitely saw that even though we are providing essential services in DKSH, we still have the consistent message that let’s try not to hire at this point in time if we can but if we do it’s business-critical roles. So we do encourage engaging with the talent continuously. Our recruiters in the various markets continue to do talent mapping, engaging candidates informally, whoever are in the database is a great time now to engage them, clean up the database so that when the timing is right for us to do the search and recruitment again, they stay constantly reminded of our brand. So those are the strategies that were put in place and also improve employer branding, taking the opportunity to show that more on social media.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Sure. Sure. Great. Thank you, Adeline. Thank you for sharing the thoughts on that. I think we have a question to the panelists and I would like to take it up. And I’m going to read this question for the rest of the audience, they want to talk about the fact that since there are so many changes, which are happening with the whole lockdown and COVID time related to guidelines, how do we handle this confusion and how do we avoid this being transferred to the employee? I understand that Raj your question is coming more from what is happening in India but I think in a lot of parts of the world, this confusion is still there. So, if anyone from the panel can respond to that if you’ve faced that challenge before.

Rajat Bhatia:

Bhavishya, I can go ahead and try and respond to that.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Sure.

Rajat Bhatia:

So as an organization and a lot of the other organizations similar to us, have not been in a work from home model at all, literally. At least I would say that we’ve been the least on work from home and with a whole lot of contact centers, supporting global setups, et cetera. We’ve been operating from the office premises, mostly. Having said that, now the recent situations, especially in India, that’s been fairly changing significantly, it has definitely been a challenge. I think the only way… what we’ve been trying to do with our employees is continuously go back to them, try and… like I said earlier, on some of the points that I made, that we’ve been trying to alieve their fears, we’ve been trying to give them as much clarity as we have right now, trying to help them overcome.

Rajat Bhatia:

I think it’s coming from a significant amount of anxiety. People have a significant amount of uncertainty, which is obviously expected because the situation is changing. But I think what we’re trying to do is as much as possible, trying to give them at least – I can’t say it’s a mid to longterm clarity you can give – but as much as possible extend the short term continuity or consistency we can give them. So we’ve been trying to tell them over the next couple of weeks, this is what we’re trying to focus on and this is how things are going to pan out. So they at least are familiar. The other thing is that as much as possible, if there’s been a change in certain situations, then we try and let them know what the change has been because the government policies also have changed over a period of time.

Rajat Bhatia:

There’s no right or wrong way. There’s no one standard way to approach this. I think it will be very, very situational but I would say that to our earlier point, it’s all about trying to communicate. I think that’s a challenge. We’ve also been learning because wherever we’ve seen that communication has missed in certain areas in which is very, very normal, because in this circumstances, when you don’t have your employees in front of you, a lot of cases, you just assume that you forget to communicate or you don’t think it’s as important. But those small things could impact your employees very, very significantly. And that could create a lot of confusion amongst employees’ minds. So I would say that that’s the best way you could manage it right now.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thanks for responding to that Rajat. I think, we’d like to start off going to what other participants are connected to this topic about how the whole work from home is coming along for all of us. And we’d love to pick all the participants’ views on that. And I would encourage if you’re responding to this, either as an employee or if you are heading in an organization as an HR, you could be responding to this as your opinion about the entire workforce. [pause for audience responses]. This is how most of the reports are also coming in. Most studies are reflecting something similar that most of the employees are actually talking about. So we have about 50% of employees talking about having increased productivity, 50%, is talking about decreased productivity. I think this is something in line with what we would have anticipated. Great. I think with that, we probably would love to move to our third topic that we want to discuss with everyone today. And Rajat, maybe I would like to call you back in for this, because I think you’ve talked about in the past about the focus on L&D, that you have. And this whole shift probably, has impacted certain channels. Very, very deep. I think L&D is a channel where we have always worked with an impersonal and physical model of transmission. So how that shift has come along, how you are adapting to that, or are you making some customization with the entire L&D strategy in order to suit the current situation?

Rajat Bhatia:

Yeah. So I think L&D has always been an area of focus for organizations but in the current situation, L&D definitely has taken a very, very crucial role. There’s a lot of focus on learning and development, not just from the organization side, also from the employee side, I think the employee is also keen. Maybe it’s also partly that there’s nothing better to do right now. A lot of people want to learn and enhance new skills. Suddenly they feel the importance of learning and development because earlier people were so engaged in their day to day work and running for work. I think when they’ve got time to sit back and think through. So as an organization, I think we’re putting a lot of focus on learning and development.

Rajat Bhatia:

Of course, it has required significant change. There’s been a lot of focus from the instructor-led modules to a lot more self-learning or guided learning structures as an organization. We’ve suddenly enhanced our strategy to use learning platforms a lot more effectively, going out and reaching to people, trying to create a lot more self-learning, self-paced training modules. Of course, our L&D team has been supporting that, has been guiding that through and through. But this has also been a good time. But one of the things that is significantly there and I know one of the questions you have that and I have, my thought is at least for us, it’s not been so much a change in the technical and functional skills that have required too much of training. I think the focus has been on the soft skills. That is where the significant change or focus is required because nobody was prepared for a situation like this and to manage a workforce, which means completely remote and in this changing environment. So that’s been a significant focus for us from L&D standpoint, apart from your regular technical and functional trainings. Back to you Bhavishya.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thanks. Thanks Rajat. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Linda, can I have you share some thoughts about the new work environment that was triggered a shift in the skill requisite in your sector. And if you can also talk about how your L&D team is managing that shift?

Linda Fan:

Yeah, I would like to share something, especially regarding to China. If you look at the crisis, we can see this really opportunity to some companies, they transfer their business from offline to online. So, that means online covers all aspects of our life. Not only limiting to like daily shopping, food and beverage or catering but also it’s spending such as, for example, seeing doctors at home, even seeing some famous doctor at a home. And also buying furniture, expensive furniture because some furniture shops pre-sell with discounts, and people even look at house online. So this kind of business is transferred from offline to online. What the employees and management team can consider the real solution for the competency improvement.

Linda Fan:

Another interesting phenomenon that happened in China is F&B food and beverage and FMCG industry, because some of them the stores and restaurants, there was no business in February and March. And they had to think about selling online, try to sell to try the success. But it happened the successful as soon as sold out. Of course, they used a lot of TikTok or live streaming, online promotion. For sure this is a quite challenging situation and our specialty. From this, we can see how online is very important, especially with the people needing to learn telecommuting practice. And also to learn how to improve online skills. For example, we need to use the tools, Zoom and Tencent telecommunication systems. And also we need to think about how to improve online business capability. So the companies will spend the most effort on this.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Right. Thanks Linda. And I think this is an important point that you make. And I think the biggest shift that we’re talking a lot of ways is about things moving to a digital platform. Whether it’s in terms of business model or as terms of the modules that the HR is running as a function. And just a continuation to that thought, Iker, if I could have you come in and talk a little bit more about if the L&D function by itself has seen any bit of a digital transformation or triggered by the whole pandemic situation. Or are there any changes in the whole L&D system than pre COVID and post COVID situation, if you can share your thoughts on that?

Iker Urrutia:

Yeah. Definitely. I think, in Sodexo, we have the digital transformation process, a project going on for a few years already. I think the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated that everywhere. And that’s been also the case in our case. We’re already using e-learning, microlearning apps for frontline employees for some of the tasks they are doing. But we accelerated that and we have been using that even more and for all employees working from home. So we have also been having some of the webinars were about the content of other jobs, with new skills or different things to keep that engagement. So having worked in a lot on that. As for learning and development, I think one thing is digital platforms you can use but at the end, how you develop and learn is the most effective way to learn is to do, to learn the job.

Iker Urrutia:

So I think we need to still enable people, learning from others, having coaching, mentoring, even if it’s remotely. So it’s not just about having an e-Learning platform on that, it is about combining all that in a blended learning approach in which people can learn on the job, can shadow other more senior staff, have mentoring and coaching. And in that we have continued working in that but of course, doing that remotely. I’m a certified coach myself and I’ve been doing some coaching also remotely. And I think it’s not the same as doing it face-to-face because you don’t see full body language of the person.

Iker Urrutia:

But still, I think it’s a good substitute. We need to continue working that. So I think, my message here is that we often are a bit blinded by talking about technology but at the end technology is an enabler and we need to continue giving the tools to people to learn and develop. Technology is another enabler that allows us to reach to the people that are at home, et cetera. But we need to continue working in all aspects and giving them the experience of different projects and mentors, et cetera. Back to you Bhavishya.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thanks. Thanks Iker. I think that was really helpful to get your thoughts on that. And I actually had a poll planned at this phase but I think I’m also pragmatic about the time that we have and I know some of you have very hard timelines to follow. So we’re going to jump straight to the next topic to get some thoughts on the whole impact of executive mobility in the organization. I think, one of the key significant factors that we are all suffering is not able to travel, and I think that’s impacting the mobility of talent across borders. And I wanted to just get a little perspective in terms of understanding, how that is playing a role in the current dynamics of the organization. And if I can have Linda start this conversation and talk a little bit about If you deploying and mobilizing talents to areas of business that we need more resources because of the whole impact and where have you needed to make any resource adjustment in the past? If you can respond to that.

Linda Fan:

I think this crisis is the biggest black swing event in the past 50 years. For sure the business and economic impact is huge. And even right now, nobody can predict what will happen yet. And also the consequences. Like Sonia said we are HR, before we always talk about VUCA but did not feel close to VUCA, just talk. Now every one of us is witnessing and involved and living in this VUCA times, right? So that means all the companies if they want to be successful, need to pay attention. I think the first response is response to the changes, it is not easy.

And the second is speed. One of our clients requested the project at the beginning of the outbreak by the founder. They requested us to evaluate how efficient their organization’s agility is for their executive team because he thinks if his executive-level cannot be agile, it is difficult for other people, including the whole organization. Actually, this is a very that we say is a very regular assessment but not many companies consider to do it during regular time. So we help them to work out during VUCA time, their current uncertainty, and ambiguity under economic session and they found specifically who are the people strong in agile leadership and ability of managing crisis and the sharp insight capability. Because looking back these three and four months is a big examination to all of us.

Linda Fan:

So especially for the top management, when you help them to see what their agility and the insight capability will help this company to have a clear understanding of who are the people who have a strong skill facing challenges, facing changes and encourage changes. Because right now you can see, last two and three days, Beijing has a little bit raising cases. So you never know what will happen tomorrow. This outbreak we think is good time for them to review and evaluate, how the leadership team is agile or not agile. So we call the agile leadership here to achieve their uncertainty. For this case, we currently already completed within two weeks and now we’re following up with this client, their new request, how to manage the real solution about their ambiguity, and the most important issues because this ambiguity has no clear solution.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thank you so much Linda. Thank you so much for your response. I think, yeah. As a search organization, I think we all are witnessing one very interesting trend, which is coming up, especially post-pandemic that actually people are reluctant to take international assignments. And this has been a challenge that all my peers and partners have been experiencing. And that’s where probably I wanted to bring in a subject matter expert, like Adeline and talk to us about her experience as a TA head, what has been these reservations that you have witnessed, especially post-pandemic and what could be the solution to resolve that because of the restriction in travel and relocation.

Adeline Foo:

Yes. So we do a lot of hiring of senior executives and candidates can be coming from anywhere. It is true that when we reach out to candidates, particularly, maybe because of our business operations being very big in Asia, if we do reach out to candidates who are maybe out of this region, from Europe, from U.S.A, I do see that reluctance level is higher in general to take assignments in places like Asia. We can do as much as providing assurances about how the organization, how HR plays a very important role in helping them get over the barriers of, to ensure their safety, that’s number one. And only when it is safe for them to travel, then they need to come on board but they can even start doing the work.

Adeline Foo:

It’s not necessarily that we must have them on board right now. So these are the assurance we can give potential candidates to help them, what all the organization is doing and get them on board. Within the organization, we do have a lot of internal assignments that is going on. These are assignments that were already confirmed, like three months, four months, even six months ahead. And having the situation, we have many of our colleagues who are stranded wherever they are, for example, some employees were hired, who are currently based in Singapore were supposed to start in Thailand but they cannot move. But we haven’t stopped them from starting their job on time.

Adeline Foo:

So what we have really encouraged is to ensure and enable them to have the technology tool, the access to whatever they need to get started and ensure that we providing a lot more orientation, with who are the key stakeholders, they need to have a video time with it to get them up to speed just as if… it’s not the same as before, it’s not face-to-face, but we do what we can to the maximum to help them to onboard on time, to help them to have the technology and the toolset they need to get their job done. So we are seeing that internally the reluctance rate is a lot lower because they’re already familiar with the organization but truly now when we talk about external talent attraction, there is a level of reluctance.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Right. Right. Thanks for your thoughts Adeline on this. The next one is actually an open question to all the panelists and we know as well as all the participants. So we shot a quick poll. And as you know, our participants are responding to this question, if we can have any of the panelists… This is just a… I think everyone’s guess is as good on this aspect of it. But when do we potentially see business travel, making a return in the region, specifically talking about Asia Pacific right now. So any one of you who wants to take that question.

Rajat Bhatia:

Bhavishya, on business travel, there are organizations which definitely have significant requirements for business travel. Even those organizations today are questioning the whole model of to what extent but of course, which are very, very high intensive client-facing, which may need to a significant extent, need the business travel. You’ll have to bifurcate these in the kind of need from… I guess, from now on until definitely until the end of the year. We’d have to bifurcate this in organizations between which definitely thrived on a lot of business travel because they had a lot of client-facing or there was a requirement and those organizations, we would still see some business travel coming back, being in the travel sector, not so much business. But obviously, some people are being a bit optimistic and trying to plan a couple of months from now.

Rajat Bhatia:

So you will start to see some amount of that coming in over the next, maybe 30, 60 days in some bits and pieces. Organizations where the business travel itself was limited. I think they will be far more hesitant because they can do without it. And even the organizations that need business travel, because keep in mind that it’s not just about allowing the business travel, it’s also about the risk that the organizations will be thinking from an employee health and safety viewpoint.

Rajat Bhatia:

As HR, if you ask me would you want people to travel right now, I would say no because that exposes my people to a higher risk. And when they come back or move into offices, that could be a higher exposure.

Rajat Bhatia:

So one is of course at least in the Indian context, we would probably in a lot of other areas. I mean, if you look at United States., U.S. is opening up in a lot of states. But there’ll be some amount of business travel that will happen. But not to the same extent, I think. Again, it’s a guess but I would say if they go at best 30 to 40% to pre COVID levels by the end of the year.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Yeah. I think that we are getting a similar kind of response to the poll as well, that we’re anticipating about six to 12 months, is where most people are anticipating things to be back to some level of normalcy. As you said, we don’t enter the bid this to be fully normal but to have some level of normalcy. Good. So I think we’re going to quickly dive into the last aspect of our discussion today. And if I can have maybe Craig come back into this conversation and just again, share with us, if this whole certain learning or forced learning that we’ve had due to this pandemic has triggered any bit of a risk mitigation, planning, any kind of future secure planning, to handle similar situations are coming up. And if there has been any development of strategies in that direction, if you can share some thoughts on that Craig.

Craig Thomson:

I might come at this a slightly different way rather than on the risk mitigation a cover off in terms of organizational culture and employee engagement, et cetera. I mean, our executive team has spent some time thinking about what the future will look like post COVID. And I think there’s a lot of organizations or some organizations may really squander a great opportunity that’s presented at the moment. I mean, it’s obviously a tragic situation in many countries. But in some ways the way that organizations and people have shifted from the traditional at your desk work environment to the working from home environment, it’s almost taking us forward a whole decade in a matter of three months.

Craig Thomson:

In 2020, if we had just… if life had have continued as it has been, would probably have taken us to 2030 before we would’ve had some of the opportunity and see some of the degree of change that we’re seeing in around the globe right now. So for us where we’re turning our mind significantly to how do we create a more flexible work environment for employees? How do we… in the past employees would come to ask and request for… could have more flexibility, could they work from home? Our policies and procedures were set around those parameters.

Craig Thomson:

Whereas, now we’re looking to turn that around and say, well… and I know some organizations have been quite contemporary and quite advanced in this area, others haven’t. I guess our organization probably sits in the middle. So that opportunity for employees to come forward and look for greater workplace flexibility. And then for the organization to think about, well, it’s a bit difficult now to say, well, I’m not sure that that role could be done at home, because, there are many roles that may have happened in the past. So for us, that’s the opportunity that we’re looking at in terms of forward planning.

Craig Thomson:

We have been fairly fortunate on the technology front. Maybe if this pandemic had come along three years ago, we would have been in a lot more trouble as an organization. We’ve taken a lot of our systems to the cloud. So it has created the technology, opportunity for us to be able to do things differently as a business. We’ve run surveys in our own organization and had feedback from employees. And in some areas we’ve got, 40 to 60% of employees saying that they would like to continue with greater levels of flexibility in a way that they’ve been experiencing today.

Craig Thomson:

So I was very surprised at that high number. And even in my own HR leadership team, we’ve had a conversation about it. And one of the members of my team said to me, “Look, Craig, I really hope that as a result of what’s happened in the way that we work, that when we actually do… when we do come back into a more normal work environment that I’m not coming into the office to stand in front of a screen, that the reasons I come into the office are to collaborate, to engage, to participate in particular activities. Because I think we’ve been able to show you that we can work in front of a screen anywhere.”

Craig Thomson:

So for us, from a policy procedure, from a culture, from an engagement, from a values point of view, I really think they’re the areas that are creating the greatest opportunities for us and probably a lot of other organizations. And I think the ones that don’t see this as a catalyst of change. I think they may struggle in attracting talent in the future, because I think those organizations that really grasp this and take it forward, will have a greater attract strategy in terms of that workplace flexibility in the way things happen.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thanks Craig. I think that’s very insightful and yeah, I think I have somewhere come to the thought that this is the time to change and all organizations have to take this opportunity to bring about those changes. I’m going to combine the next set of questions. I’m going to take it to Sonia but then I’m going to probably open it up to all the panelists because I think this is where we want to part some knowledge transfer to all our participants today. If we can share some bit of learnings from this whole situation. And if we can offer some bit of advice to all the leaders, which are participating on the call with us today, Sonia, if you could start with it and we’re going start having a deeper conversation.

Sonia Kutty:

Sure. So very interesting question, right? About what are the learnings. So I think what I have learned personally and which I think will make sense, a majority of people who are on this call or others is A, I think it’s very important to unlearn Bhavishya. Okay. I think a lot of us have been doing things in a certain way, have been used to doing and seeing things in a certain way. Unlearning is very important for us to work through any pandemic or any situation, which is unpredictable. The second point is when this pandemic started, my CEO asked, “How many of us have actually been through this exact same situation?” Okay. So as to actually design or go through and plan what needs to be done. And QuEST as an organization has always been growing, growing, and growing.

Sonia Kutty:

None of us have seen the standstill coming. So experience is not there. But I think what we all can actually be very proud of is that we’ve had the opportunity to learn so much during this entire phase.

Sonia Kutty:

And this, we will appreciate, I think when we look back at some point in time, because what we need to achieve, what we’ve been able to do under so much of uncertainty is something that will stand with us in good stead for years to come. And I do hope we don’t have another pandemic to deal with. But definitely the learnings are something that we could use. So I’ll stop at that and let others take a shot.

Nicole Karagiannis:

I’ll jump in if that’s all right. Thank you, Sonia, for that. I absolutely agree with all of it. I think another learning for us has been what critical functions continued through the pandemic and what will continue. But also just in terms of that same vein of the unlearning, there was a learning for an opportunity coming our way soon to discuss as an executive team, what activities we need to stop or what has stopped during the pandemic that we need to recommence but with a completely different lens and a completely different approach. And the last one that I’m quite excited about is the learnings from what we are going to leverage from a technology point of view, things quick, innovative solutions that were put in place for bandaid solutions for the pandemic. Maybe could they stay as permanent solutions? Do we need to undo them when we go back to some kind of normal, whatever that is. And that’s a really important discussion for our HR team. What’s been the need for fast-tracking of some innovations, what stays with us and what do we let go of? 

Rajat Bhatia:

Bhavishya, let me add-in. I think for one, if we go back, we look at it and more from a learning standpoint, our preparedness to deal with such a crisis, I would say most organizations but not restricted to ours for sure, has been pretty limited, nobody anticipated it, with all the BCP functions across the organization. I think nobody went beyond to think something like this will happen.

Rajat Bhatia:

Right. So that obviously, taught us that there have been limitations in our preparedness because we don’t think beyond a certain, what we think or what we assume is going to happen. The second piece, which has been a good learning is our ability to adapt in such a changing situation and crisis. And the response of people and organizations, most organizations has been very, very good.

Rajat Bhatia:

Craig pointed out that this is probably a catalyst for change for most organizations, those who would not, would struggle in the near future. Definitely. The third thing I think from going back to the whole fabric of the organization, the leadership. This is a big learning because you have to look at your leaders with a very, very different lens at this moment. I think it’s about the expectation from leaders will change a lot more. We’ve been talking about it more academically that leaders need to be more adaptable. They need to be open to change but this situation has actually triggered that.

Rajat Bhatia:

Going forward, you will need leaders and each one on the call that is there. And everyone needs to understand that if you’re not adaptable to change, if you’re not willing to imbibe changing structures, requirements, automations, technology, it’s going to become very difficult because a lot of things which we assume could not happen, have obviously taken shape. On a lighter note, I think one good thing that has happened is that it’s made the employees feel the importance of the organization. They seem to be missing the organization suddenly. But having said that, I think, yes, it’s got to be a lot of lessons that have come out of it. And like Sonia mentioned, hopefully we don’t see this but I can tell you in our organization, we’re very clear. We are trying to design or define a model or an operating model or a strategy, which actually now is aligned to cater to any kind of situations like this in the future. And I’m sure most organizations are doing that. So the entire thought process has changed with this.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thanks Rajat. Iker, if we can have some thoughts from you.

Iker Urrutia:

I read recently some research saying that in times of crisis, our brain is more open to big changes. It’s more open, it’s like we are more open to press the reset button. And I think this crisis is a big opportunity to change. And I think we all are a bit afraid, anxious, but also hopeful that things will get better because I think there’s many areas and not only in business but in the society as a whole, I think there are many things that can be improved and I think they will. And we are, I think, we can see that that can be improved. For me, at least I’m hoping so. I think this crisis has given us an opportunity to change. I think I realized that human beings are more adaptable. That what we thought, I didn’t think… I live alone. I’m single. So I didn’t think I will be able to survive almost three months staying at home and not physically seeing anybody only seeing people through Zoom. But I have survived and it hasn’t been too bad actually. So I have reflected a lot. It’s been a good time for thinking, et cetera. So we adapt to the realities we have and we come forward, so I think it’s good learning. An organization needs to be more agile and adaptable in the new reality. And I think we are all realizing that those, that don’t change rapidly, won’t survive.

Iker Urrutia:

And I think also we realized that the working from home is here to stay. I think people will want to have more flexibility in the way they work. I don’t think it will be a hundred percent working from home. As I said, I survived these three months but I’m really looking forward to meeting my colleagues in the office and having some social time. But I think we will be more flexible and we will be working, those of us who can will be working more often from home but also we will cherish the time that we can go to the office, time for social interaction, team building, team meetings, more creative aspects of our job.

Iker Urrutia:

So we will have to change also our office spaces, the workplace design and workplace strategy will be more and more important to improve the employee experience. And then I think as we work more and more from home, the so-called war for talent, will actually be a global war for talent because now location wouldn’t be so important. So I think that’s an important consequence of also this crisis. Thank you.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Sure. Thanks, Iker. Adeline, Linda, if any of you have any thoughts to share with all our participants?

Linda Fan:

Yes. I like to echo the Iker’s comment and I use Churchill’s sentence ‘never waste a good crisis’. And I totally agree with Iker, after crisis, for sure we need to change. And we may think differently from our values, from our mission, even from our goal. So I really hope we all grow deeper during the crisis and also may, the bless, the storm pass soon.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Sure. Absolutely. Amen to that. Adeline, can we have your thoughts?

Adeline Foo:

Yes. Thank you. I totally echo with the earlier panelists. I think the key thing that we really have to learn from this is to be agile, to be very flexible and ready to change. No organization is actually prepared for COVID-19. But we all learn, we all adapt as we move along. I think this is the most important skill that we cannot do without. And from an organization’s point of view, I think it’s important that leaders stay open, have an open mindset to what needs to be changed. I totally agree that it’s proven that working from home is possible.

Adeline Foo:

Who would have thought that Talent Acquisition can be done a hundred percent without a face-to-face interview? We do that now across all the markets and people are even asking, during interviews, if working from home can be possible, as part of their employee benefits, or is that something the company practice moving forward? So I think within our organizations, I’m seeing the shift in the leaders thinking. We are making progress, which wouldn’t have been possible at all. Absolutely, out of question, if not for COVID. Great news for everyone.

Bhavishya Sharma:

Thanks, Adeline. Thank you so much for your thoughts. I think just to echo that sentiment, I mean, things definitely have changed for all of us. I mean, at IIC Partners, we would have these HR round table conferences twice a year during our global conferences. And we were so used to having these conversations face-to-face with the likes of you. And now this is the new normal where we are moved to or graduated to doing this online digitally. And yeah, I think we are all getting used to this new way and the learnings from this. I think I’ll probably call the end to the meeting, keeping in mind the time that we have in hand. I’d again, like to thank all of you so much, we’re privileged to have this kind of panel with us today. Thank you so much for your thoughts that you’ve shared, the wonderful ideas you’ve shared, the experiences that you’ve shared from this. And I think that has led to a lot of learning for all of us, our panel, as well as all the participants. I look forward to seeing you all in person, someday soon but definitely over our webinars, definitely, sometimes sooner than that.