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As a prestigious brand builder and investor for over a century, the Group believes that an engaging workforce is the best storyteller of its brand story.
This article is brought to you by Jebsen Group
Having emerged from a family-owned shipping business in 1895 and having navigated through a century-plus journey, Jebsen Group has never ceased to make progress. Through courage, creativity, diligence, tenacity, and entrepreneurship, the Group has now developed into the most-respected brand builder and investor in Greater China, housing more than 2,200 staff across 11 cities in Greater China and carrying over 200 of the world’s leading lifestyle brands such as Porsche, Blue Girl, Bollinger, Casio, etc.
Jebsen’s success has been achieved by investing in its most valuable asset – "PEOPLE". By always putting employees first, Jebsen strives to build a great workplace that inspires collaboration and happiness. The company's golden rule is a "ME" to "WE" equation that starts with human interactions, which has helped cultivate a family-friendly culture.
Starting with the hardware, Jebsen moved to a new office in 2021, and prioritised employee experience through redesign. A highlight of the new office is an interconnecting staircase which all the way through its three floors joined together to further facilitate communication among employees from different business lines and departments. Complemented with an agile working space on each floor and smart facilities, the new office aims to facilitate cross-team collaboration and synergy in an inspiring and agile workplace.
On the software side, underpinned by its 3Cs of engagement strategy: cares (wellbeing), cheers (having fun), and celebrates (milestones & accomplishments), Jebsen undertakes various initiatives to fuel employees on a daily basis – be it through the physical working environment, wellbeing, learning and career development, recognitions, and even their families.
These initiatives include the 'Employee Abundance Programme' (EAP) and the launch of ‘Wellness Month’ to support staff and promote wellness; a ‘CEO Townhall’ and the ‘Lunch with CEO’ programme to give staff and the CEO more chances to bond and communicate; celebrating big wins to appreciate the little things made by every ‘Jebsen Hero’; as well as different leisure classes, sports training and charity runs to create fond memories while having fun, thus covering employees’ all-rounded needs.
“Engagement stems from trust, and trust is accumulated by dialogue and consistent positive employee experience along the employee life cycle,” Sara Ho, Group Chief Human Resources Officer, Jebsen Group affirms. “Above all, authenticity and care matter most.”
The evolving role of HR to accelerate people and organisational development
As a people-first company, the HR function plays a crucial role – it acts as an expert advisor on business matters, facilitates clear and consistent two-way communications between management and employees, and aligns employees to the company's objectives and impact.
Evolving from a ‘business enabler' to a 'business accelerator', with a greater purpose to achieve sustainable growth of people and organisational development, Jebsen’s HR creates new opportunities for innovating employee experiences, streamlining processes, and building new business intelligence through HR digital transformation, while the senior management is charging forward with agility and versatility.
Following the Group’s Vision 2025, an action plan for Jebsen to evolve and adapt to change to achieve further success, Jebsen HR is focused on two deeply interlinked areas — systems and processes, as well as people and culture. “Successful digitalisation relies more on the human factor than the technology piece. Having systems and processes in place is just the foundation, because it is the people and culture that determine how effectively the technology will be used,” Ho emphasises.
In essence, to Jebsen, HR digital transformation is people transformation. Therefore, robotic process automation (RPA) has been implemented to automate manual and repetitive processes, allowing HR to focus more on employees’ satisfaction and career paths. A powerful HR portal named ‘Jeb Link’ has been launched to digitalise the entire employee lifecycle, with the establishment of online platforms to augment employee learning. Further, wide-encompassing dashboards offer instant and valuable analytics to managers and management for data-driven decision-making.
“Digitalisation is about people. Systems and technologies are just tools that we can use to solve people’s problems and make their lives easier or better. In HR, we must still take a people-first perspective but add a data-driven view to that,” Ho says.
As Jebsen moves steadily towards achieving Vision 2025, Ho believes HR should continue helping to prepare the company and the people by:
- building an agility mindset and being trained for unexpected situations;
- playing an important role in staff communication to ease people's minds and make them feel connected to the company and each other; and
- raising employees’ engagement and boosting their mental health.
"When the company puts employees first, they take more initiatives and proactively bring about change and business benefits through their endeavours. This process of reciprocity reinforces a culture of growth and autonomy in response to macro challenges,” she concludes.
Photos / Jebsen Group
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