Winning Secrets: Co-development with leaders is key to Siemens Healthineers' success in employee retention

"We had fantastic support during the roll-out, for example, leaders and HR delivering training together to our employees," says Sebastian Schwab, Head of HR APAC, Siemens Healthineers. 

With a gold win each for Excellence in Retention Strategy and Excellence in Total Rewards Strategy at HR Excellence Awards 2020, Singapore, Sebastian Schwab, Head of HR APAC, Siemens Healthineers shares how a coaching culture has helped in agility and adaptation.

Q What is your organisation’s winning HR strategy, and what are some milestones you’ve accomplished along this journey?

As a HR team in Siemens Healthineers, we have been continuously working to upgrade our HR portfolio and processes over the last years. Major milestones were, for example, the introduction of our People and Leadership Practices (PLP) and part of this is a new way to recognise and reward our employees.

Q How has this strategy helped you achieve your HR priorities, and what role has the leadership played in helping make it a reality?

The HR priorities and the role of leadership go hand in hand. Very strong collaboration and teamplay are key to success. One success factor is co-development with our leaders. We had fantastic support also during the roll-out, for example, leaders and HR delivering training together to our employees.

The leadership culture here focuses on coaching and enabling our people to make decisions and find their solutions.

It is important that our leaders are strong role models. As important and reinforced in our PLP is that leadership is not limited to those in management positions. We strive to have a leadership culture where everyone can apply the leadership mindset in their area of work.

Q Unexpected roadblocks are part and parcel of executing any initiative. What were some of the barriers that you and your team experienced while rolling this out, and how did you successfully get past them?

This year was very special facing the pandemic. We all faced a new reality and live the Healthineers Way of Working. e.g. face-to-face goes online, purely working digital and overall, and most important, that everyone is safe and healthy.

Hence, this year’s win makes us as HR team even prouder.

Q As evidenced by the win, this initiative clearly delivered some amazing results. What was your gameplan for measuring ROI? 

From my perspective we should not purely measure the ROI of a specific HR initiative. For me it is more how it all adds up and creates an inclusive culture.

The combination of all initiatives will have a very positive impact on engagement and unique employee experience that earns the loyalty and trust of our employees, which in turns helps us attract the best talent as an employer of choice.

Studies have consistently shows that there’s a correlation between an engaged and motivated employee base and company performance. Some of these dimensions can of course be explicitly tracked via KPIs such as eNPS, turnover rate, etc.

Q Given just how quickly the external business environment is adapting, how do you ensure that your HR team keeps pace and is constantly upskilled to manage newer HR scenarios?

As an HR team we are continuously asking ourselves how we can best improve and upgrade the way we are working. We need to drive several initiatives for our own HR team to be and stay best-in-class.

Even more important is the culture of our team and the way we work together. i.e. that we practice open dialogue, give regular feedback, encourage our employees for self-nomination for programmes and enable our people to drive their own development.

We want to practice a coaching culture where managers act as a sounding board, empower the team to learn and make decisions on what’s best for their work and development.

Photo / Provided

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