Winning Secrets: AXA Indonesia's transformation journey sees higher employee engagement amidst a digital mindset

AXA Indonesia took home three awards at the HR Excellence Awards 2021, Indonesia, namely: gold awards in two categories, 'Excellence in Talent Management' and 'Excellence in Total Rewards Strategy', and the silver award for 'Excellence in Women Empowerment Strategy'.

For this interview, we speak to Dian Yuwiraswati, Head of Human Capital, AXA Indonesia, on the initiatives implemented that encouraged employees to be more agile and innovative, and enabled them to explore creative new ways of working.

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?

We can’t deny that the pandemic situation in the past few years has been the strongest driver for our company’s transformation. We changed our processes using a digital mindset, encouraged our people to be more agile and innovative, and explored creative new ways of working. Although team collaboration was our main challenge, we managed to boost engagement among employees, and we made sure that employees feel connected to each other while maintaining productivity. We got here by listening to our employees' voice and inputs regularly. Their feedback has provided great insights to help us adapt our actions to support the employees in the best way. 

Q What would you list as your company’s most meaningful contribution to employees in the last 12-18 months?  

Aligned with our brand promise ‘act for human progress by protecting what matters’, for the last 18 months of the pandemic situation, we were focused ion our employees’ wellness & mental health protection. In addition to that, we ensured all our employees and their families are vaccinated, thus supporting the government's vaccination programme. One of our key activities is what we call our ‘Employee Assistance Programme’ in health & wellbeing, which is implemented through teleconsultation, webinars, virtual sport activities (yoga, Zumba, virtual run), as well as by providing a health kit support.

As a result, we maintained our team connection score at 97 out of 100, and wellbeing score of 87 out of 100 from our employee survey. 

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? 

Due to the pandemic situation and the ever-changing government regulations, we did experience some challenges, such as the new work-from-home arrangement and ensuring our employees can adapt well into the new working arrangement. In the beginning there were some issues with maintaining productivity, disconnect among teams, and retention. Also, we needed to ensure our leaders can manage their teams remotely.

So we sat together with our leaders to brainstorm and collaborate with the best people. Other than that, we continued to actively listen to employees to provide the best solutions. The biggest learning is that we must actively source updated information, have an agile mindset, and put trust in our employees to do their best. 

Q Onwards and upwards! Can you share some highlights of your year ahead in 2022, and what your workforce can look forward to?  

A 'smart working' concept is our target as we are focused on implementing a new way of working. Not only in the physical preparation of our work station with ‘hot desking’ style but the most important part is how to educate employees to be ready for the new working habits and culture. We already shifted our learning culture to virtual learning yet keeping it interactive, and using this tool to educate employees through a series of smart working learning journeys. By implementing this smart working concept, we believe we will make a big impact, not just for employees' wellbeing, but to the company, society, and even the environment. We will also be more diverse and inclusive in career opportunities and fair treatment. 

Q Bring out your crystal ball - 10 years down the line, where do you see the future of HR?

Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic and the experiences we have had, we are moving to flexible working as one of the strategies in attracting new talent and retaining internal talent. This flexible working is not only about where to work, as we have already started with remote working, but we will move to other dimensions of flexible working concepts, such as when we work, what to deliver, and how to measure achievement.

Aligning HR strategy using data and analytics will also be important in the future as we build our data-based talent strategy and provide analytical support for business decision-making. In addition to that, it is also important to grow our learning mindset into one of agile learning and equip employees with future skills that are useful in this current & future business change.

Lastly, we believe we are heading to be a strong HR (team) that provides equal opportunity for all and drives our employees be more aware of environmental sustainability

Image / 123RF

Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section! 

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