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Up the ranks: CY Chan is HKBN's head of talent engagement & CSI

CY Chan has been promoted to head of talent engagement & corporate social investment and co-owner at Hong Kong Broadband Network. He joined the company in 2012 as manager, talent management, and worked his way up the ranks. Most recently, he held the position of associate director – talent management & organisation development and co-owner.

Chan took up his new role on April 1, 2017. As part of his key responsibilities, he will oversee talent related operations, drive talent engagement and culture, and uplift talent quality and branding to ensure business success. Additionally, he will promote corporate social investment initiatives both within and outside of HKBN.

Speaking to Human Resources magazine about his new role, Chan said he's currently working on driving the leadership culture within HKBN with a focus on "leading disruption" and "empowerment". For the upcoming year, his priority is using data to design and support talent engagement initiatives and digitalisation.

When asked about the one talent challenge keeping him up at night, Chan said: "How can we make Corporate Social Investment a true competitive advantage for long-term business success?"

"Purpose" could be the answer, he said referring to an idea proposed by motivational speaker and founder of NGO Room to Read, who suggests that "purpose" can be a company's competitive advantage.

"The idea is that in the long run, having a purpose can improve customer engagement, helps attract, motivate, and retain top talents, and helps attract investors," Chan said.

"For example, at HKBN, our core purpose is “making our Hong Kong a better place to live”. In the past years, we made services like long distance calls, high-speed internet, and 4G mobile affordable to the mass public through competitive pricing. With a conviction that high-speed broadband service should be a basic utility available to all, we pledge to keep the monthly fee for our basic 100Mbps internet service at or below 1% of the Hong Kong median household income."

While he's sure this is helping the business and employer brand, Chan wonders how HKBN, and Hong Kong companies in general, can go further by embedding purpose into their core business or operations.

"For existing businesses, making CSI a competitive advantage is not easy because it means you might need a new business model. But I do believe this should be the future way of doing business, especially with Millennials dominating soon."

In his new role, Chan reports to the company's chief operating officer NiQ Lai. He continues to be based in Hong Kong.

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