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Winning Secrets: How Fujifilm's woo-wow-win framework unleashes the potential of its people

Winning Secrets: How Fujifilm's woo-wow-win framework unleashes the potential of its people

"We 'Woo' talent to our organisation with a positive 'Wow' experience and 'Win' their heart with a sense of belonging as Fujifilm Business Innovation Singapore (FBSG) members," says Jacely Voon, GM, People Culture & CSR, FBSG.

At the Employee Experience Awards 2021, Singapore, Fujifilm Business Innovation Singapore received the gold award for Best Holistic Leadership Development Strategy and the silver for Best HR Communication Strategy.

In this interview, Jacely Voon, General Manager, People Culture & CSR, Fujifilm Business Innovation Singapore, shares the secrets behind this win - how the organisation stood in the shoes of its people, listened, and empowered them, which helped the business maintain performance and productivity despite the pandemic.

Q Congratulations on bagging this award! What is your award-winning employee experience strategy that led to this win?

We aligned our employee experience with our customer experience strategy of Woo-Wow-Win. We 'Woo' talent to our organisation with a positive 'Wow' experience and 'Win' their heart with a sense of belonging as Fujifilm Business Innovation Singapore (FBSG) members.

At FBSG, our People and Culture’s mission is to maximise and unleash our people's potential by engaging their 3Hs – heart, head and hands. We believe that our business grows when people grow. To realise people’s potential, we capitalise on people engagement, communication, and development as the key pillars of high-performing culture.

Winning the Best HR Communication Strategy and Best Holistic Leadership Development awards is a recognition beyond achievement, but a testimonial for our employees and potential recruits to know that we take their satisfaction and feedback seriously. We believe that employee experience is a relationship with engagement and performance.

Q How did you and your team conceptualise and adapt this strategy to suit evolving workforce needs in the past year?

Knowing the 'need' above the problem, hearing the ground, and sensing the pulse. When problems arise, there are tons of solutions, but what makes it work is to identify the real 'need' – which is the voice of the people. Over the years, various programmes and activities have been implemented, however, neither did we measure the outcome nor understand the impact from employees’ view. 

With the Employee Experience concept, we position the lenses from the employee's perspective and re-examining the entire employee lifecycle. With people in mind, we focus on employee’s feedback, leverage data, and form employee engagement communities to drive initiatives that align employees’ needs with the organisation’s value. 

The overarching goal of high performing culture is supported with our 4Es’ strategy; engage, enable, empower, energise. 

  • Engage: Deepen team connections with heartfelt trust that we have their best interest in mind.
  • Enable: Equip employees with the necessary resources, tools, and skills for future-readiness.
  • Empower: Build trust with a sense of ownership and autonomy to realise their full potential.
  • Energise: To inspire and motivate employees to perform their absolute best.

When you involve your people in the journey, they feel engaged. With necessary tools and training, it enables and equips employees to excel. Empowerment sparks a sense of autonomy and in return, they become energised and increase productivity and performance.

Therefore, a successful HR communication strategy is essentially the 4Es approach alongside leadership training, as we believe that leaders are the key connector to the employee and play a key role in shaping employees’ motivation and realising sustainable success in the organisation.

Q What challenges did you face along the way, and how did you overcome them?

Our original plan and activities were upended due to the pandemic and lockdown. Instead of waiting for the chance to resume face-to-face communication and in-person training, we had to quickly switch gears by relying on a technology to create the same engaging vibe virtually. 

While we were struggling to adapt and learn how to deal with the changes, we were expected to act as a virtual meeting advisor for virtual etiquette, facilitate training, and have engaging communication virtually. With our corporate value - 'value with innovation', we strive to turn crisis into opportunity by advocating for initiatives that create values for our people such as regular check-in, virtual team engagement, and multi-channel communication to meet the ever-changing need.

The demand for our jobs has never been greater nor more complex; finding the market trends, practices, and knowledge to stay abreast of the constant changes of the pandemic situation, with our limited bandwidth can be a real challenge.

Without the team spirit, agility, and a can-do attitude, all these would not be made possible.

Q How did the strategy add to the overall employee experience in your organisation, in terms of ROI?

With a holistic employee experience strategy backed with our strong inward game; trust; respect; pride, and team has brought the people together beyond a sole HR designed programme but joint ownership and involvement from employees. This has ignited the engagement scores and excitement from our people.

Data from our employee engagement survey showed significant improvement in various areas: a 26% improvement of performance management, setting a record high for performance results; a 15% increase in employee engagement, kudos to the leaderships sponsorship and their commitment to strive for transparency, open, fair, and clear communication. We received numerous comments with positive feedback from employees and testimonials from managers that our people truly experience a sense of belonging and self-worthiness.  

With strategic change management, we take pride in building unity and camaraderie during this critical time in the current pandemic and succeed in supporting the company to maintain solid performance and productivity throughout the year.

jacely voon fbsg provided

Q What is the most exciting and valuable thing about being part of (and winning at!) the debut Employee Experience Awards?

The most exciting part is the change journey, be it winning the award or not, the employee engagement score has proven an increase in employees’ satisfaction and recognition from our people for all the effort and changes that we have put in place. The journey has created memories that connect our people and boost workplace morale in order to embrace inward game and comradery.

Q Looking ahead, what else do you have planned as you continue to enhance the overall employee experience?

Per our corporate slogan, 'never stop', we will continuously be reinventing and improving the way we work. Change is the only constant in life. One's ability to adapt to those changes will determine their success.

Q Do share some tips to inspire your peers who are working on their EX strategies and would love to participate in the awards next year.

Tips 1: Adopt our People & Culture Mission, by engaging people with 3Hs. Connect people from the heart, work hand-in-hand with your people, listen to employees, and act with their best interests in mind (head).

No idea is better than the voice from the employee, the best antidote comes from the source of heartfelt engagement.

Tip 2: Apply a 360 approach: Voice from the ground, commitment from the leaders, strong desire to drive, and win from People & Culture (HR) team!

Q Lastly, to end on a fun note – if you could describe the employee experience at your organisation in one sentence, what would that be?

Our motto: Never stop to be ever better. Why stop there when the world is constantly changing, and to be sustainable, we pride ourselves in creating value with innovation for the world.


Image / Provided

Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section!

Follow us on Telegram and on Instagram @humanresourcesonline for all the latest HR and manpower news from around the region!

Follow us on Telegram and on Instagram @humanresourcesonline for all the latest HR and manpower news from around the region!

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