HR Shaping The New Future
International HR Day is here! We are thrilled to join organizations across the globe in dedicating our appreciation to HR professionals and honor them for their vital roles and tireless efforts to transform organizations in leading the human capital to be a more agile and adaptive future workspace, moving this trend with a broader lens.
2022’s International HR Day theme is HR Shaping The New Future. To better understand how this impacts our HR professionals, we have asked three of our team members to weigh in on what the future of work means to them as HR professionals.
Having multiple cultural backgrounds in our environment requires us to adapt. The adaptation process includes matching timezone differences and respecting each other’s nationalities, lifestyles, beliefs, and others. All of these create diversity within the team.
Sri Hadisti, our Group Head of Talent Acquisition and Employer Branding, notes that the future of HR means continuing to champion Diversity, Equity, and embracing Inclusion while catalyzing positive impacts in the workplace–bringing in talents with unique sets of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives from various places to be part of HappyFresh team which are paramount in building a thriving organization and agile culture.
Leading the Group Talent Acquisition function while being based in Singapore requires Hadisti to regularly connect with her team members virtually and frequent travel to offices in different locations while aiming to continuously create emotional connections to the mission, to get people to march in the same direction by designating constant communication through company huddles, employee engagement events, off-site team-building activities, and knowledge-sharing sessions. These initiatives enable employees to identify as being a part of the organization, feel proud of owning their impact, inculcate the organizational cultural pillars, and achieve shared vision and goals.
She adds that HR’s role in the future will need to facilitate workplace diversity by reformulating new policies, from talent acquisition to performance management, and reflect an entrenched learning culture. At the same time, encourage more opportunities for HR professionals to exchange best practices and experiences with other HR leaders contributing significantly to the increasingly interconnected people.
With the support of technology and internet connection that enables us to stay connected from literally anywhere in this era, we saw an opportunity to implement the hybrid working arrangement. This opens more opportunities to collaborate with more global talents and be able to just live wherever we like. It is also a huge advantage for working parents in our team who have to juggle their roles at work and home at the same time. However, it comes with a challenge, too.
Working from anywhere makes our presence virtually most of the time. As much as it saves our commuting time and energy to be in touch, building a connection and relationship without physical presence might feel different. Forming a bond and alignment to have the same understanding in reaching the same goal as a team can be tricky too, but it surely is doable. So, how do our People Care Team create and maintain their relationships within the team?
According to our Country Head of People Malaysia, Siewling Tang, she likes to spare some time to check the pulse within the team consistently to understand their well-being. For this, she is ready to listen to the team’s concerns while providing solutions, being authentic, transparent, and also keeping a positive attitude. She also allows some time to talk about things outside of work. Siewling also mentioned that HappyFresh cultural pillars lay down a set of behaviors that involve in our daily decision making. To deliver and receive clear messages and avoid misunderstanding, Siewling added that consistent researching and learning about the new cultures from different nationalities, communicating in English, being respectful to each other, and regularly seeking to clarify things when needed is a must.
Milk, our Senior HR & GA Officer from the People Care Thailand Team, also agrees that HappyFresh culture helps in shaping our behaviors to achieve the organization’s goals & objectives which can be beneficial to solving global challenges internally and externally as well. One of them is by applying the Openness cultural pillar, which means being able to communicate all the diverse ideas, speaking up for your own voice, giving constructive feedback, and keeping an open mind.
It helps with overcoming language barriers and understanding the same messages. Milk notes that communication is the key and HR is a department that acts as a bridge between all departments and everyone in the company. Therefore, it is important to have good interpersonal skill that allows you to reach everyone in the company.
Overcoming global challenges is not a simple thing to do, but it is doable. With everyone making the same effort, having a diverse team and work environment adds lots of new perspectives to achieve our vision, mission, and goals.
To all HR professionals out there, you truly have made such a difference! Everyone at HappyFresh is wishing you a joyful HR Day and stay motivated!
#OwnYourImpact right here if you have what it takes and are up for the challenge!
