Answers from Jamie Endaya, APAC communications director, pictured below.
Total number of Procter & Gamble APAC employees: Around 9,000
Total number of communications employees: 45
Number and location of APAC offices: Nine offices in nine markets - Singapore (APAC headquarters), Japan, Korea, Australia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
How do you ensure your company is competitive in terms of salary and other financial benefits?
We are committed to hiring and retaining the best people – and believe in providing a highly competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package that rewards our people’s contributions and achievements. We do annual benchmarking, to calibrate our employee benefits with competitor organisations and other key companies; this helps ensure our salaries and benefits are top-notch.
We likewise have a "My Pay, My Way" programme – where certain benefits are customised according to the priorities and personal preferences of our people.
How do you ensure your teams receive the required training?
We promote from within as we build our organisation, so our people never stop learning! They learn internally and externally. Besides on-the-job experience, we provide a wealth of functional and leadership skills training. We have a Leadership Development Academy in Singapore, where 20,000 hours of training are done each year for at least 500 leaders from across the region.
Programmes are offered at career milestones, such as when an employee first takes on responsibility for managing others, while other programmes take managers out of the classroom and into retail stores or even into consumers’ homes.
How do you ensure your staff have a clear career path and help them achieve their personal goals?
At P&G, we believe in creating early, meaningful responsibilities for every employee matching business needs with personal strengths and interests. Through this, we are able to assess and identify the individual training our employees need. By fully understanding each employee’s role, we provide the necessary guidance and develop the plans that allow our employees to grow and succeed.
Linked to this – we have a "70-20-10" development plan for all employees – where 70 percent of learning is done "on the job" – 20 percent is through mentorship and 10 percent is through formal courses and instruction within the company.
How does your company maintain a good work/life balance?
We have a variety of programmes that allow our people to deliver P&G business, while also focusing on their personal priorities. We encourage working from home and provide our people with benefits so they may set up a home office, inclusive of data connection. We practise Flex Hours – where we require employees to be mandatorily reachable only during the core hours – after which they have the flexibility of adjusting their own schedules.
Finally, we have a Vibrant Living programme, which provides comprehensive support for employees’ health and wellness by having a sports club, wellness education and health consultation.
How do you ensure your physical workplace environment and atmosphere is an attractive place to work?
Our work places across all our office locations are as dynamic and as diverse as our brands. We hire the people who are the best; leaders who are passionate about winning through team work and partnership. This drives an atmosphere with high collaboration and fun.
How does your company effectively communicate with employees?
We have specific employee engagement programmes – which include town halls, virtual conferences, and other forums where we connect. We use the latest digital technology – video conference facilities, web-ex, and instant messaging – to enable connections within the company. We encourage mentorship, and virtually all employees are linked with a mentor who provides guidance. All these platforms enable our people to voice their concerns, share ideas and engage with colleagues across various business units.
How do you ensure diversity at all levels of the organisation?
We formalised a mission linked to diversity: "Everyone valued. Everyone included. Everyone performing at their peakTM." We are intentional on driving diversity; and we are able to become an "employer of choice" that hires, engages and retains the best and diverse talent from the region.
This is linked also to being "in touch" so we create brands and products to improve the lives of the world’s diverse consumers now and in the future. Through our focus on understanding each individual’s skills and passions, as well as our fundamental commonalities, we enable behaviours that lead to a culture of innovation.
If you had to pick the one most important factor for how your company minimises turnover, what would it be?
Investing in our employees’ development! Our people are our greatest assets, and we pride ourselves in hiring the very best, as well as training them to be the best. Our business depends entirely on the strength of our talent, as our company is primarily built from within. This is why it is crucial that we attract people who are driven by performance, passion and success.
We do this through a proven selection process that identifies if applicants will fit well into our company culture. Once in – the variety of brands and locations and assignments certainly help keep things exciting.
In three words, describe what it is like to work at your company?
Challenging, dynamic, inspiring.