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Operating in a highly matrixed organisational structure, the Philip Morris International HR leader is committed to delivering a standardised global employee experience.
Vital stats: Joan Ronquillo-Cuevas has over 20 years of HR experience across various multinational companies, industries, and locations such as the Philippines, Switzerland, and now Hong Kong. This has brought her a diverse and global perspective in crafting talent and organisation strategies; and a strong capability in deploying effective collaboration across all layers of an organisation.
Ronquillo-Cuevas is a true advocate for the strategic value that HR brings to the business. She is passionate about building high performing organisations that are anchored on inclusion and positive engagement; and coaching both leaders and employees to reach their full potential. She joined Philip Morris International (PMI) in 2014 as the Talent Management Manager, and currently is the Head of People and Culture (P&C), Asia East Cluster, for the US-headquartered tobacco company.
Introduction: Serving as a talent hub, the Hong Kong office of Philip Morris International is home to more than 300 local and international employees, representing cultural diversity and the breadth of experience across its domestic market, regional office, travel retail, and the Electronics Product Development Centre.
Led by our interviewee Joan Ronquillo-Cuevas, the HR team in Hong Kong consists of about 15 dedicated professionals supporting business units, global functions, and HR operations. Operating in a highly matrixed organisational structure, the team is committed to delivering a standardised global employee experience while remaining agile and responsive to meet business and employee needs.
“Our collective mission is to drive the organisational priorities of the company,” she says.
“These priorities are not just for and by the HR function, but key priorities that will enable our business objectives through our people and organisation. These serve as our compass to ensure that we will bring value to the business and our people in whatever role we do in HR.”
Creating an inclusive and collaborative culture is one of the priorities of PMI, which has been well-defined by its core values – ‘We care, we are better together, and we are game changers’.
“At PMI, we pride ourselves on our values that represent who we are when we are at our best,” Ronquillo-Cuevas affirms.
“The moment you step into the PMI office, you will feel the diversity of our workforce across genders, nationalities, and experiences. Hence, our focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) adds to the vibrancy of the PMI culture. With our employees feeling included in everyday interactions and the way we collaborate, we create an environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute their best.”
In this interview, Tracy Chan speaks to Ronquillo-Cuevas to learn more about PMI’s culture and transformation journey, as well as her approach to creating an involving and thriving environment for her people.
Q: Tell us about your role at PMI. What is your top priority, and what talent goals do you want to achieve for the company?
As the P&C Head for the Asia East Cluster, my role covers the people and culture agenda across Hong Kong, Macau, China, and Singapore. Our agenda is about our organisation being designed to enable business growth, with strong leaders ready to take on roles in various areas of the business, a skilled and engaged workforce that is agile and high performing, and embedding our cultural values and behaviours that make us proud to be PMI.
As the market leader in Hong Kong and Singapore, our focus is to protect and grow the business despite the regulatory challenges. In the HR context, this would mean ensuring we have a consumer-centric, highly skilled, and efficient organisation with the agility to reallocate resources to where the business needs it.
As a key talent hub for Asia, we aim to accelerate the development of our Asian talent to take on leadership roles not just for the Asia East Cluster, but for PMI internationally. This means identifying talent who will feed into our leadership pipeline with potential to grow on functional paths or general management roles, and ensuring the right development plans are in place to support their growth. We leverage on PMI’s comprehensive leadership development programmes and learning resources, from on-the-job opportunities, international assignments, mentoring and coaching, to online courses.
Q: Having worked at PMI for over a decade, what are the biggest changes you have seen in terms of people and culture? How have these changes shaped your approach to the company’s talent strategies?
Since we embarked on our global journey of a smoke-free future in 2014 – our vision to replace cigarettes with smoke-free alternatives for smokers – we have gone into a business and organisation transformation like no other. That has required changing our business model, building capabilities that we did not have before, and reshaping our ways of working so we are able to work with speed and agility.
On the talent side, we defined the critical capabilities needed (that is, data analytics, digital, experimentation, multi-category deployment excellence) to succeed in the new business environment, and supported that with the right buy/build/borrow/bot talent strategy.
Since these capabilities were not necessarily strong in our organisation when we operated solely as a conventional cigarette business, a number of hirings had to happen to bring in the capabilities. This made us look at the way we build talent and foster a culture where our in-house talent continues to develop while integrating the new hires into the organisation so they understand our company and business and perform at an accelerated pace.
Now that we have made significant progress since starting our transformation, we are now focusing on ensuring that our talent will have the capabilities to support our multi-category business and be able to operate effectively in a horizontal and cross-category/cross-functional way.
Q: What are some of the unique nuances that you’ve observed leading HR across such diverse markets in the Asia East Cluster?
As much as we try to synergise a number of our initiatives so we experience the breadth of our cluster, you will still observe that each market is unique and has a distinct role to play in the cluster.
It starts with the external environment that influences our business model and the critical capabilities it requires. We may have the same capabilities needed, but the markets will be at different levels of proficiencies depending on their ability to put these capabilities into play.
Culturally, these markets may have common threads, but are still unique in their own ways, which makes the cluster very exciting and rich from a learning and diversity point of view. These differences don’t necessarily change our strategy and focus. Instead, we use these as guard rails to deploy our initiatives in a meaningful way – one that responds to the business context and appeals to our employees.
As HR, we need to ensure that we are able to leverage on our cluster set-up in developing our talent. It is actually another layer of development that we proudly have. We are able to cross-pollinate talent across our markets, either transferring or acquiring skills, and have roles that support the entire cluster as additional ways of talent development.
Q: PMI has been acknowledged as among the Global Top Employers for eight consecutive years. How do you ensure an employee value proposition that is adapted to the changing talent landscape as well as the evolving expectations of employees?
PMI’s recognition as a Global Top Employer for eight consecutive years is a testament to our commitment to delivering best-in-class people practices. By regularly benchmarking our practices externally, we are able to see that our practices are competitive and what areas we can do better.
Inclusivity has always been a core to PMI. Our commitment to inclusivity drives us to continuously seek ways to improve and foster a workplace that is more responsive to the evolving needs of our employees. Some areas recently focused on are:
- Flexible work arrangements: We offer flexible work options such as remote work and flexible hours to accommodate the varying needs of our employees. This flexibility helps us attract and retain talent who values work-life balance, and it supports our employees’ wellbeing.
- Employee wellbeing: We prioritise the wellbeing of our employees by providing resources and support for mental, physical, and emotional health. This includes wellness programmes, access to counselling services, and initiatives that promote a healthy work environment.
- Continuous learning and development: We invest in comprehensive training and development programmes to ensure our employees have the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Our learning ecosystem is robust to cater to various employee groups, development needs, internal and external learning offers, and digitally enabled for people to access globally.
- Career growth opportunities: We provide transparency on career development in PMI and progression paths for people to grow within the organisation. This helps us retain top talent and ensures that our employees are given ample support and resources for their development.
Q: The year 2024 marks the 10th year of PMI’s journey for a smoke-free future, which aims to replace cigarettes with smoke-free alternatives for smokers. How does this milestone relate to your employees in the Asia East Cluster, especially in case where these smoke-free alternatives are not available in your markets?
This 10th year anniversary of our global smoke-free journey is made possible by the hard work and commitment of all our employees regardless of what business they support. Our transformation journey required that we operate differently and adopt behaviours that supported the change needed. These required us to be more agile, innovative, failing fast, and looking ahead.
The external market challenges have strengthened our resiliency to keep on going and contribute to PMI’s vision. Over the past 10 years, the markets of the Asia East Cluster have kept on changing the game and driving higher and higher levels of deployment excellence. Our business results speak for themselves having kept our market leadership, and our employees believing and feeling inspired by our smoke-free future with positive levels of engagement and wellbeing.
Q: PMI has been going through a digital transformation with the aim to be a digital leader to deliver a smoke-free future. How do you leverage data and technology to optimise the employee journey and experience as well as support more informed people decisions?
Digital is indeed one of the key levers for HR to support the business transformation and respond to how the external environment is evolving. Our digitalisation in P&C entailed that we shape the delivery of our services globally in a simple, standard, and employee-centric way.
As you could imagine, operating in more than 80 countries globally, we maintain various systems and policies that deliver different kinds and levels of employee services. By putting all these together in a digital ecosystem, we will be able to standardise practices and delivery, and adopt more advancements on self-service functionalities and AI to elevate the technology experience of our employees.
Q: DE&I is also a focus at PMI. What affirmative actions are you taking to create an environment of inclusion and belongingness where everyone can grow and thrive? How has this been achieved so far?
At PMI, DE&I are fundamental values that shape our workplace culture. We don’t view DE&I as merely affirmative actions, but as key elements to our ways of working and people practices.
We strive to have a workplace that is fair and equitable, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic. This commitment to fairness is reflected in our policies, practices, and the way we treat each other. We believe that everyone should have equal opportunities to succeed and that a diverse workforce drives innovation and excellence.
To foster an environment of inclusion and belongingness, we focus on several key initiatives:
- Inclusive hiring practices: We ensure that our recruitment processes are free from bias and that we actively seek to attract a diverse pool of candidates. This includes using diverse interview panels and assessment techniques that focus on skills and qualifications.
- Employee resource groups (ERGs): We support various ERGs that provide a platform for employees to connect, share experiences, and advocate for their communities. These groups play a crucial role in promoting awareness and the understanding of different perspectives within the organisation.
- Training and development: We offer regular training sessions on unconscious bias, cultural awareness, and inclusive leadership. These programmes help our employees and leaders understand the importance of DE&I and equip them with the tools to foster an inclusive workplace.
- Flexible work arrangements: Recognising that everyone has different needs and responsibilities, we offer flexible work options to accommodate diverse lifestyles. This includes remote work, flexible hours, and support for employees with caregiving responsibilities.
Our achievements in DE&I so far include recognition for global awards such as Top Employer and Equal Salary Certification. Locally in Hong Kong, we have been recognised for Good MPF Employer, Family Friendly Employer, Good Employer Charter, and a proud participant at the historical Gay Games HK in 2023, just to name a few.
Q: Looking into the future, what kind of mindset would you like to cultivate among employees to support the company’s growth, and what are your HR must-win battles to achieve this?
As we have clearly laid out our cultural values and behaviours, it is essential that we embed these in our people practices – from our hiring to our ways of working, and the way we develop and recognise our employees.
To truly make these cultural values part of our employees’ every day, we need to cultivate a growth mindset that will inspire our employees to continuously learn and challenge themselves so they can drive and contribute to the company objectives. This mindset encourages us to embrace change, seek and give feedback, and continuously acquire new knowledge and experiences.
To achieve this mindset, we have a global and integrated career and competency framework for people to draw inspiration from; set up continuous feedback mechanisms for employees to understand their strengths and areas for improvement in real-time; and formal and informal recognition tools to reinforce positive behaviours that will promote our cultural values and a growth mindset.
We also need to equip our people managers with the right capabilities to develop our employees, support constructive feedback, and promote inclusive team behaviours.
Q: As an organisation that is pivoting its core product for a more sustainable future, what is your take on ESG, and as head of HR, what are some actions you can take to encourage employees to get involved?
Sustainability is a top priority for PMI, and this commitment extends to our approach to ESG principles. At the employee level, it’s crucial to build an understanding and awareness of the impact each of us has on the world. Many people associate a sustainable future primarily with environmental impact, but ESG encompasses so much more. It includes the way we live our lives, the fairness and equity in our workplaces, and the governance structures that ensure ethical practices.
To foster this understanding, we need to create a work environment that is sustainable for our people. This means ensuring that everyone has the same opportunities and equity to perform at their best. By promoting a culture of inclusivity and fairness, we can help employees see the broader implications of ESG and how their actions contribute to a sustainable future.
In my role, there are several actions I take to encourage employees to get involved in our ESG initiatives. First, it’s important that ESG is considered a business imperative led by the Management Team (MT). ESG is not owned by just one function in the organisation. By having this collective responsibility, we are able to focus on the various areas of ESG and ensure actions do happen to achieve our objectives.
In the Asia East Cluster, we are proud that our ESG efforts are led by a Sustainability Project Team represented by different markets and functions, sponsored by an MT member with dedicated resources to drive the initiatives.
Making employees understand the importance of sustainability and how they can contribute both professionally and personally is fundamental to drive commitment and participation. The fact that we support a project-based effort for sustainability helps us to get employee volunteers who then become advocates to our sustainability efforts.
It is important that we engage with our employees by having them participate in sustainability initiatives, communicating regularly, sharing updates on our goals and progress, and recognising and celebrating the contributions of employees who actively support our ESG initiatives.
Q: On a personal note, what is your goal or ambition in 2025, and beyond?
Continue on my self-care and fitness journey in 2025, and beyond. I endeavoured to spend more time and be disciplined to stay fit this year so I can be a better partner to my husband, mother to my kids, and P&C leader to my team and the Asia East Cluster. With the stresses of work and personal life, I need to look after myself so I have the energy to do the different roles I have at 100%.
Lastly, continue to challenge my assumptions and learn more things – be it recipes to cook, new workouts to try, and even work or leadership skills to develop. By making myself grow, I believe I can help others around me grow and succeed as well.
This article first appeared in the H2 2024 edition of Human Resources Online's Hong Kong e-magazine. View the e-magazine here, where you'll find power-packed features and interviews with leaders across various sectors!
All photos / Provided (Lead image: Joan Ronquillo-Cuevas, Head of People and Culture, Asia East Cluster, Philip Morris International)
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