share on
Wipro Unza Indonesia won the bronze award at the HR Excellence Awards 2021, Indonesia (HREA), for the category, 'Excellence in Business Transformation'.
In this interview, we speak to Adi Sumarno, Head of HR, Wipro Unza Indonesia to learn how the organisation manages its digitisation processes while caring for its workforce through an all-rounded employee experience.
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?
This is the third year that we have received the award from HREA, and our second year receiving the bronze award for 'Excellence in Business Transformation'.
We are fully aware that we can still learn and adapt to deal with uncertain conditions, therefore the spirit of improvement and acceleration in every process has always been ignited. We expect that by continuing our experimentation, we will gain more effective and efficient results. In this case, a digital mindset and behaviours, as well as key measuring points have become the catalysts.
In short, we can say that the keywords for us are adaptation, acceleration, and transformation.
Q What would you list as your company’s most meaningful contribution to employees in the last 12-18 months?
To get employee engagement, we are not only focused on the hygiene factors, but also on the motivator factors. We value every single employee's contributions and dedication. As a company that adheres to the values of ​​ethics & spirit of inclusiveness, people-focus, open communication, and feedback, we put respect and ethics as a priority on a daily basis at the workplace.
We also ensure that every employee can freely express their aspirations and concerns directly without any hierarchical barriers, while allowing employees to actualise their hidden talents through various company activities.
In terms of development, we also conducted 360-leadership feedback to build awareness that every leader must be able to hear other than walk the talk, so the connection between employees and the company remains well-structured. Especially in an uncertain condition and while the business is in the recovery period, communication plays a pivotal role in building consolidation.
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?
There will always be two conditions in every change, hope and fear. In the beginning, for sure, we were not feeling confident on whether we could digitise every HR process that was previously still manual, whether that was due to cost, capability issues, gaining support, or behavioural factor.
But there will always be a challenge - it's about whether we want to face the same problem all the time while doing nothing, or start to make something of it.
Finally, what we did, and continue to do, is to share the objectives, gain commitment, create initiatives, be consistent in execution, and update the progress and result. Currently, almost 80% of HR processes are carried out digitally and this has created confidence levels that everything is possible, and made a credit point towards the HR team as well.
Q Onwards and upwards! Can you share some highlights of your year ahead in 2022, and what your workforce can look forward to?
2022 is still a year of uncertainties for all of us, and we are still in a humanitarian crisis. Therefore, in my view, the workforce will still majorly be focused on:
- Flexible working models, which is still common sense whereby the security, safety, and welfare of employees should be placed as the top priority;
- HR tech, because we work remotely, having a digital platform is a must to support processes and productivity;
- Collaborative working process, where at this time we can no longer work in silos, but must work together to come out as winners;
- Internal mobilisation/internal talent marketplace, where the company is currently working on employee efficiency - while tackling employee retention issues, and
- People capability with internal mobility, which is necessary to support the ability of employees to be more agile and fluid with existing needs, both in new positions or additional roles and functions.
Q Bring out your crystal ball - 10 years down the line, where do you see the future of HR?
To predict, we need to see current indicators for sure. From here, I see HR will focus more on people-centric strategies and become a business navigator. There are several reasons for this, firstly, this pandemic has become a game-changer and has changed people's mindset and behaviours to be more concerned about health. Meanwhile, uncertainty will continue so it will take a long haul to deal with this condition which will definitely make us tired, thus HR will still take care of a lot of wellbeing issues.
Secondly, organisations must also continue to accelerate to be able to recover quickly, in this case, we require agility, therefore capability and experimentation are very necessary, and the third to navigate better, data has become key, therefore data analytics is very important here.
Image / Provided [Adi Sumarno, first-row, fourth from left]
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!
share on
