Talent Management is a critical aspect of organizational success and is often considered the backbone that drives growth and innovation. From attracting top talent to nurturing their development and retention, organizations must create a culture that values and invests in its employees. By fostering a supportive environment, providing meaningful opportunities for growth, and aligning individual goals with organizational objectives, companies can cultivate a workforce that is motivated, engaged, and committed to delivering exceptional performance. LeadersTalk recently spoke with Dr. Loo Leap Han, Group Head of Talent Management at BioMed Global.
Here are a few interesting excerpts from the interview:
1.How did you get started in HR, and what inspired you to focus on talent management within your career path?
I attended a career talk right after my SPM and became fascinated with the HR field of work that involves making a difference in people, culture, and organization. Specifically, HR work that involved people & culture capacity building, designing HR processes, policy making, experimenting with HR techniques, and understanding people’s needs; to help employees remain productive, engaged, and motivated. I never look back since.
I started to “specialise” and “experiment” with the talent management scope of work five years ago. I realised the need to manage talent strategically, build a high-performance team and culture, add value to the employer brand, and improve diversity, equity, and inclusion to be the key business success factors. Managing talent management in today’s market is no small task and HR practitioners should lead and work with partner organizations (shared responsibility) to come up with good talent strategies.
2.How do you identify and attract top talent to ensure a strong pipeline of skilled individuals for critical roles?
The definition of top talent is subjective and personal to individual (hiring managers).
a. Define what you are looking for in a talent
Talent tends to come to people more naturally i.e. communication skills, creativity, inspiration, and networking while a skill is something that one acquires with practice, training, and effort i.e. Java programming, SPSS data analytics. By clearly defining and assessing (competency assessment tool) these attributes, you can pick the most qualified individual for the role.
b. Promote the company’s reputation
Communicate the company’s vision, mission, brand values & behaviour and how we bring positive changes to the community (purpose). In addition, communicate the working practices that are in place to attract talents who want to work with us. Furthermore, having employee feedback on the career site provides potential talents with a better insight into day-to-day working at Biomed Global.
3.What strategies do you use to develop and retain high-potential employees within the organization?
a. Tailor general and personalised compensation & benefits package.
b. Develop realistic career development and training plans for each key role.
c. Show appreciation and respect.
d. Provide ongoing upskilling and reskilling learning experiences.
e. Regular check-in on work progress and real-time feedback.
f. Initiate well-being programs.
4.How do you leverage HR technology to streamline and automate HR processes, such as recruitment, onboarding, and performance management?
Biomed Global has a 3-year digital transformation plan in place. HR is leveraging the right technology to make the HR department more efficient and effective at what we do.
- Online performance review – better manage employees’ OKRs and evaluate their progress throughout the year.
- HR analytics – using real-time data to make better people decisions, and more informed choices, and assist our people strategy.
- Engagement enrolment – reduce hr administration of works and enable enhanced HR support and solution delivery to the stakeholders.
- Streamline recruitment activities – utilising applicant tracking system (ATS) to manage candidates for multiple positions, while still providing a good candidate experience.
Biomed Global onboarded a new HRIS (Worksy) and ATS (SmartRecruiter) to streamline and automate HR processes. More new HR technologies will be onboarded in the 3rd quarter of this year.
5.How do you assess and shape the organizational culture to align with the company’s values and strategic objectives?
Biomed Global’s culture is shaped by our 7 Brand Values and Behaviours. We embrace and instil these brand values and behaviours into our daily work affairs; how we interact, work, behave, and respect each other in the workplace.
We actively conduct Employee Opinion Surveys and Focus Groups on what is working and not working at Biomed Global. The survey and focus group are specific in topics and target diverse levels of employees. Thus, we can gauge the employees’ honest and genuine feedback. We analyse the feedback, prioritise the agenda, align with all leaders, communicate the intention with all employees, implement the initiative and evaluate the outcome. At times, we have “sembang-sembang teh tarik” sessions with our colleagues to find out the latest people and culture issues in the workplace.
6.What strategies do you employ to measure and enhance employee engagement within your organization?
We design our employee experience survey by individual, team, and organization levels. The questionnaire varies in the topic and on a need basis. We also use structured offboarding interviews to find out what could have been done better to improve engagement. Additionally, this can also find out what makes them engaged and what holds them back from being engaged. HR will communicate the results with relevant stakeholders and design an action plan to continuously improve employee engagement.
In addition, we enhance our employee engagement through:
- Recognising achievement publicly – to energise and make employees feel valued.
- Promoting transparency – business direction, financial performance, productivity level, and how each of us is doing. Employees can raise questions in the town hall meeting or via the queries portal.
- Revamping the office design – promote more cross-communication office space and well-being facilities.
- Keeping remote colleagues and distributed teams engaged – virtual team bonding initiatives i.e. virtual office games, lunch and learn, celebration, theme days, to name a few.
7.What advice would you give to someone just starting out in HR or non-HR who would like to be in your position one day?
As you begin your HR career or desire to pursue the HR field of work, remain open to different HR portfolios and learning opportunities. Through these experiences, you will gain HR valuable experience. HR is so multi-faceted and demands different HR skill sets. So, invest in your learning!
If you enjoyed this interview, you may follow Dr. Loo Leap Han at 👉🏼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/loo-leap-han-he-him-62a02b24/ for more insights related to the field of HR.
