On the spot: 3 HR leaders on the most important HR strategy to engage employees

Hear from City Super's Isabella Tam, Aqua Restaurant's Theresa Sham, and Toys”R”Us Asia's Angel Kwok, as shared with HRO’s Roetta Wang.

As business, digital, and management transformation takes place, HR strategies are also changing creatively to meet the new demands of employees and better align talent with future business development.

At the recent Employee Experience Awards 2024 in Hong Kong, HRO’s Roetta Wang caught up with three of our esteemed jury members for their insights on the most crucial HR strategy to better engage their employees. Here are their responses.

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Isabella Tam, Senior Head, Human Resources and Administration, City Super Group

Employee engagement and motivation is the best strategy. For commercial departments, there's a lot of emphasis on how to win over our customers' heart. But for HR, we need to know how to win over our employees' heart. After all, happy employees bring in happy customers.

As an HR manager, we have put in place a lot of retention strategies. Communication is very important, so we have our annual employee forum to communicate with all employees, both from the frontline as well as from the office. We have good communication about the company’s direction and where we can go from here. Since we are a retail company, I think communication with the people on the ground, as well as in the stores, is particularly important.

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Theresa Sham, Human Resources Director, Aqua Restaurant Group

My focus now is on employee engagement and employer branding.

Nowadays, people, especially the younger generations, are more focused on life than work. The strategy is to make people feel proud of the brand, have fun at work, and feel respected.

Also, the focus should no longer be on loyalty or the turnover rate. It’s natural for people to come and go. But we can look at the rehiring rate, which reflects people's perspective of your brand.

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Angel Kwok, Chief People Officer, Toys”R”Us Asia

I think the most important HR strategy is to make our employees happy. Only when they feel happy would they love coming to work and be proud of themselves.

Because we are in the toy industry, which emphasises much on the playful culture, we make sure our people are happy. We have childcare leave to allow our employees to spend enough time with their families. Another example is our family-friendly day when staff can bring their kids to the office. You can imagine how excited the kids are when they are surrounded by so many toys!

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Photos / Provided