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Procter & Gamble (P&G) Indonesia took home several awards at the HR Excellence Awards 2021, Indonesia. On top of receiving the gold award for Employer of the Year, P&G Indonesia also attained the bronze for Excellence in Total Rewards Strategy.
This was in addition to several individual accolades, such as Ilham Maulana for HR Leader of the Year (bronze), Adhika Widya Sena for HR Manager of the Year (gold), and LV Vaidyanathan for Most People-Focused CEO (silver).
In this interview, award-winning HR leader llham Maulana, HR Director, P&G Indonesia, tells us how the organisation set its sight on becoming the best place to work - by focusing efforts on addressing and meeting employees' wellbeing needs and revamping its work arrangements to hybrid.
Q Tell us a little bit about your journey reaching here – how did you get here and what was most important to you during this process?
In 2020, P&G Indonesia leadership team set the organisation's vision to become the 'Best Place to Be'. There are four pillars to achieve our vision:
- Best in talent,
- Best in culture,
- Best in engagement,
- Best in corporate citizenship.
We then enrolled our organisation to our vision, and co-created the idea with many of them. Our organisation's enrolment, energy, and excitement are the biggest help while we were going through the journey and I’m thankful for their contribution. Even amid COVID, we were able to achieve our internal organisational target, and grow organisational engagement. Another thing that we did differently is not just focusing this effort internally but also externally as we benchmarked our programme with other company.
The most important thing is we continued to learn from internal and external stakeholders, and took the learning for our own improvement.
Q What would you list as your company’s most meaningful contribution to employees in the last 12-18 months?
Protecting the safety & wellbeing of our employees. This could be overlooked in the past, but in the last 12-18 months both physical and mental wellbeing have taken a hit for many of us. Although we’re not perfect, I’m proud that we highlighted this as our key focus, and brought this into reality through our approach during the COVID-19 period. In the past 12-18 months, P&G Indonesia has launched multiple initiatives on this front such as company drive for vaccination, health protocol of conducting business, and employee assistance programme to fulfil our goal.
Q What are some challenges you've had to overcome, both as a CHRO and as a people leader, and how did you get past them? What was your biggest learning?
The past 18 months have brought grief and sadness to many of us, including myself.
During the peak of the COVID period, many of our colleagues were sick and we worked hard to help them get the right and best support. But despite our best efforts, unfortunately, we lost some of our colleagues.
During this time, I learned that emotional resilience is very important and I was only able to get through it by focusing on what we could do to support their families, and at the same time by supporting our other colleagues.
I would say the biggest learning was that our wellbeing is important and we sometimes neglect this. COVID has reminded us how important it is to take care of both our physical and mental wellbeing.
Q Onwards and upwards! Can you share some highlights of your year ahead in 2022, and what your workforce can look forward to?
In 2022, we’re excited to bring the best of the 'old normal', and the work-from-home arrangement to:
- Protect the safety and wellbeing of our employees, and
- Serve our customers and consumers.
We’re crafting this hybrid arrangement as our way forward, and this will impact us on all our fronts, and shape how we conduct our business.
Q Bring out your crystal ball - 10 years down the line, where do you see the future of HR?
In the next 10 years, this capability would be enhanced by analytics and other HR digitisation tools to better predict employee and business needs. But HR will continue to bring value by bringing employee voice on the table, and the ability to balance that with business acumen. This requires us to stay in touch with the organisation and the business.
Image / Provided
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