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These play into the company's wider strategy on sustainability, with bold targets and commitments that ensure a positive impact for stakeholders, Victoria Ang, Head of People Functions, and Mabel Chang, Senior People Partner – Commercial, share.
HEINEKEN Malaysia, a brewer with a portfolio of iconic brands such as Guinness, Tiger Beer, and Heineken®️, employs more than 500 people at its headquarters and brewery in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, as well as at its 13 sales offices throughout Peninsular and East Malaysia.
The brand's HR team was the proud winner of a gold award for Gold - Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at the HR Excellence Awards 2022, Malaysia, and in this interview, Victoria Ang, Head of People Functions and Mabel Chang, Senior People Partner – Commercial, share with us the key pillars that drive DEI in the organisation, progress in representation at the Board and management levels, and more.
Q Congratulations on the achievement! Could you take us through the highs and lows of your people strategy, with regard to the DEI space?
HEINEKEN Malaysia’s commitment on DEI is part of our wider strategy on sustainability, which we call Brew A Better World. Through this strategy, we focus on three areas – Environmental sustainability, social sustainability and responsible consumption – with bold targets and commitments that ensure we create a positive impact with our stakeholders across our business and beyond.
Whilst we are proud to receive this recognition, embracing DEI and accelerating this cultural change is a continuous journey that is built around three key pillars. Firstly, this commitment to DEI needs to start with Courageous Leadership, and we need our leaders to uncage their courage to develop and encourage inclusivity within teams. To support our people to do this, we organised workshops on inclusive practices, which were attended by 80% of our employees in 2022.
In 2023, our target is to train 100% on inclusive leadership.
Secondly, we foster an Inclusive Environment by encouraging diverse thoughts, ideas, and perspectives. By encouraging an environment where all views are listened to and respected, we make sure that everyone participates and contributes towards developing a more holistic view of issues, solutions as well as the impact we are making for our customers and consumers. For instance, an internal competition was organised, inviting company-wide employees to submit ideas on finding innovative solutions and efficient way of operations to support the organisation’s quest on funding growth and improving profitability.
Thirdly, we create Equal Opportunities in all the moments that matter. From talent recruitment to development and promotions, we consciously work to ensure we provide for equal opportunities and fair consideration throughout these processes. We also ensure that our policies and support on people matters account for the different ways different people and groups experience these policies or benefit, for example our enhanced employee medical benefits include alternative treatment, i.e., chiropractic, acupuncture, chiropody, homeopathy, osteopathy, or other traditional and complementary medicine.
We continually review these processes and policies to ensure we are aligned with our Brew A Better World strategy, particularly in the aspect of equity – across genders, nationalities, cultures and experiences.
Q How did the HR team identify and align the business & employee needs, and craft this perfect solution?
Thank you for the kind words. I would not claim ours to be a perfect method, and we remain steadfast to the spirit of continuous and incremental improvements.
DEI is much more a journey and less a destination per se. At HEINEKEN Malaysia, we have a three-year roadmap that sets us on the path of embracing DEI more comprehensively.
The roadmap started from the onboarding of our management team as an initial target group and progressed with a robust communication strategy that created awareness for our leaders and people managers, especially in helping them make sense of inclusion and diversity.
We also engage all levels of our organisation and actively listen to our people through focus groups, dialogues, and feedback sessions.
To take stock of where we are and set the course for our future, we utilise diagnostic models to review our gender balance, age group generation, people policies and practices, as well as inclusion index, and our annual climate survey. We analyse the findings and set priorities in alignment with our Management Team, looking into pain points and opportunities, as well as actions to address concerns and close gaps.
We then designed our DEI strategy incorporating ideas and best practices both from within HEINEKEN globally as well as referencing externally. We embed this strategy in our organisation’s annual plan and people plan, with a clear ambition and transparent indicators. Guided by this strategy, we deliver the action plan through consistent communication across channels and encourage regular conversations through storytelling and workshops on real people and real cases.
Further, by leveraging on the network of HEINEKEN’s global organisation, we are further able to learn, share and reapply best practices from across other operating companies across geographical regions, cultures, and experiences, all as part of a continuous effort in embedding DEI in our day-to-day activities and processes.
Q Could you share the results that your strategy has delivered – be it on the business, HR, or people side?
In the Malaysia Board Diversity Index by the Institute of Corporate Directors Malaysia (ICDM), HEINEKEN Malaysia ranks second out of 312 companies included in the study. Presently, we have 43% female representation at the Board level. Five out of eight (63%) of our management team are women and at middle-to-senior manager level we have a male-to-female ratio of 58:42.
Since the roll-out of our inclusion and diversity programmes, we have improved the recruitment of females especially in roles traditionally dominated by males, e.g., sales. We also measure and evaluate our climate survey results on key DEI metrics making high single-digit improvements across the areas of inclusion, sense of belonging, equal opportunity, openness to discuss discrimination, as well as teamwork and collaboration.
Q What is your message to all the stakeholders who have supported you in this journey?
At HEINEKEN, we believe that embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion enriches our lives and strengthens our business, fostering a sense of true togetherness, and activating the motto of 'Together, we will Brew a Better World'. Living our purpose of 'Brewing the Joy of True Togetherness' means DEI principles are applied to everything we do with consumers, customers, colleagues, and the community in every possible way.
Therefore, the responsibility to create an inclusive workplace lies with every employee.
We acknowledge the power of diversity by creating an inclusive environment where everyone matters and has an equal opportunity to contribute to business success, in which
- Everyone can feel they belong, and
- We can leverage the contributions that a diverse workforce can bring.
Q What are you most excited about when you think about the future of HR, with regard to the DEI space?
HEINEKEN’s EverGreen is a bold strategy to deliver superior and balanced growth and the next evolution of our business. One of the core pillars of EverGreen is: Unlock the full potential of our people. People are at the heart of our business. Our success is dependent on having the very best talent, highly motivated to deliver results and guided by a strong sense of purpose – to brew the joy of true togetherness to inspire a better world.
To support our growth ambitions, we are excited to bring DEI to the next level in HEINEKEN Malaysia, surpassing the workplace and further embedding DEI principles in the day-to-day lives of our people.
We are committed to help our teams break down unconscious biases, discovering blind spots and recognising culturally and socially driven practices that will help shape HEINEKEN Malaysia’s future.
Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section!
Photo: Provided (featuring the HEINEKEN Malaysia HR team)
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