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What guides AIA’s employee-centric decisions and actions
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What guides AIA’s employee-centric decisions and actions

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This article is brought to you by AIA

Underpinned by its employee value proposition ‘believe in better’, the insurance company strives to build a workplace that enables everyone to thrive at work and in life.

With the largest number of policies in Hong Kong and serving over 3.4mn customers, AIA stays true to its purpose of helping millions of people live 'Healthier, Longer, Better Lives'. And this is not only a commitment to its customers, but also to staff.

“Employees are at the heart of AIA and we are committed to engaging our people and empowering them to succeed,” affirmed Maylie Lee, Chief Human Resources Officer, AIA Hong Kong & Macau.

AIA’s human-centred approach to employee wellbeing is based on its four ‘Work Well Pillars’, which cover initiatives around physical health, mental health, community engagement, and financial planning. These include an in-house developed employee engagement app ‘AIA ONE’, COVID-19 support, employee assistance programme (EAP) and wellness-themed activities, charity and sponsored events such as online hackathon ‘hackUST2022’, employee share purchase programme (ESPP), and retirement plan. All of these aim to help employees ‘live well’, ‘think well’, ‘feel well’, and ‘plan well’.

While emphasising wellbeing, AIA is also making continuous investments in employee learning and development to help people develop meaningful careers.

For example, ‘Curiosity Lab HR’ empowers employees to experiment with different ideas, test, and learn. Even during COVID when face-to-face interaction was not feasible, AIA continued leadership development by leveraging VR technology to carry out training on unconscious bias, emotional intelligence, and leading in uncertain times. One of AIA’s targets is to ensure an average of 24 learning hours for every employee per year by 2024.

Recognising that different employees have different career aspirations, AIA also offers dual career streams, allowing employees to choose their career paths and grow into specialist or managerial roles. Lee reiterates: “As an organisation, we are continually evolving and finding new ways to provide an even better employee experience and create a diverse and inclusive culture to support and enable our people to shape their career.”

To cater to the next generation of talent, AIA has been evolving into a simpler, faster, and more connected workplace. Under its ‘Organisation of the Future’ (OotF) transformation programme, one prominent measure is streamlining the organisation to enable faster decision-making. “We encourage and empower our people to ‘believe in better’ – because together we can achieve so much more for the communities we serve and the environments we live in,” Lee shares.

Another effort is building a ‘new way of working’ culture. By adopting an agile way of working, the organisation acts as an engine to support cross-functional collaboration and business impact. Two agile tribes are in place, comprising members from different departments, to solve customer-related problems, as well as creating a ‘start-up’ style office to engage tribe members through interesting projects under a customised performance review mechanism.

aia 2022

In line with this progressive approach, Florence Tsang, Director, Talent & Sustainability, AIA Hong Kong & Macau, believes ESG and people sustainability will be the main focus for HR professionals; thus, AIA is leading the way by incorporating ‘people and culture’ under the umbrella of ESG.

"In the past, ESG was mainly about CSR, company policies and governance,” says Tsang. “In the future, HR professionals should think about how to merge people and culture into their ESG strategy.”

“AIA will continue to go the extra mile to maintain our leading position and focus on ESG and DEI to achieve our great purpose of helping people and the wider community to live 'Healthier, Longer, Better Lives',” she adds.

“AIA”, “AIA Hong Kong & Macau” or “AIA Hong Kong” herein refers to the Hong Kong Branch and/or Macau Branch of AIA International Limited (Incorporated in Bermuda with limited liability). “Hong Kong” and “Macau” herein refer to “Hong Kong Special Administrative Region” and “Macao Special Administrative Region”, respectively.


Photos / AIA

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