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Pfizer Thailand took home the Bronze awards for Excellence in Workplace Wellbeing as well as Excellence in HR Team Collaboration at the inaugural HR Excellence Awards 2021, Thailand.
In this interview, Sasivimon Wongwairoj, HR Director, Pfizer Thailand, shares the strategy behind this win – and how agility and leadership support have played key roles in making its mission come to life.
Q What is your organisation’s winning HR strategy, and what are some milestones you’ve accomplished along this journey?
Customer centricity is at the heart of our success. Our customers include both business as well as the organisation.
We designed our strategy based on the company’s vision and what was needed to enable the organisation to meet that vision. Numerous programmes on talent, culture, D&I, transformation, wellbeing, and more have since been initiated to make Pfizer an amazing place to work.
Q How has this strategy helped you achieve your HR priorities, and what role has the leadership played in helping make this initiative a reality?
It serves as our North Star reminding us what and when is necessary to accomplish in this agile and competitive environment. And of course, our initiative will not be successful without leadership’s trust and support, including financial support, endorsement, participation, and recognition.
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?
Like Frank A. Clark said: “If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”
I am sure every company has been facing similar obstacles during this pandemic time. We had to suddenly move towards a remote working environment. Working from home has become a new norm. We have to be fast in coping with change and be creative in delivering our initiatives in this remote environment. Priority and the way we work have changed.
Employee safety and wellness has become our focus. How employees remain effective in this tiresome situation has been our challenge.
However, with agility and leadership support, we have able to roll out our initiatives and make Pfizer an amazing place to work.
Q As evidenced by the win, this initiative clearly delivered some amazing results. What was your game plan for measuring ROI? What are some proud achievements you can share with us on this front?
Since customers are at the heart of our success, our measures must be towards our customers! The business will be able to meet its objectives and the voices from employees would resonate with the success of our HR team. In these past few years, we have seen significant and continued improvement of our employee’s survey, lower attrition rate, formal and information recognition from employee and leadership team, and of course the HR Excellent Award we received are the witness and our proud moment.
Q We’re now seeing HR manage portfolios that were previously considered far from their job description. In your view, what are the top three skills and attributes of today’s successful CHRO?
While there are a lot of skills needed for CHROs to be successful today, if have to pick three, I would say:
- Know your business & the organisation: In order to be a good strategic partner to leaders, the CHRO needs to know the business. Be able to think like the commercial team, know the market, and speak the business language. At the same time, know how to design and build the organisation for today and for future business objectives.
- Agility: With the fast-moving environment, it is important for HR to be able to embrace change, be creative, as well as design and lead necessary agile actions beyond traditional HR work.
- Strategic thinking: There is no one-size-fits-all and there is no luck involved in leading the organisation toward success. The ability to think strategically will enable CHROs to be good strategic partners to the CEO.
Image / Provided
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