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Training is not just about developing strong content and assessing learners, but it's the essence of creating a learning culture to foster a dynamic workforce, says Felicia Tan, GM HR, FUJIFILM Business Innovation APAC (Malaysia Operations).
At the Employee Experience Awards 2021, Malaysia, FUJIFILM Business Innovation Asia Pacific (Malaysia Operations) won Silver for Best In-House Learning Academy, and emerged as a finalist in two categories, Best Crisis Management and Leadership, and Best Employee Wellness Strategy.
In this interview, Felicia Tan, General Manager, Human Resources, FUJIFILM Business Innovation Asia Pacific (Malaysia Operations) shares the secrets behind these achievements - how it all comes together using an employee experience roadmap, studying the employee learning journey, and introducing initiatives to focus on important touchpoints in this journey.
Q Congratulations on bagging this award! What is your award-winning employee experience strategy?
Thank you! It was an honour to be recognised with this award for our Sales Learning Academy. We are proud to say that FUJIFILM Business Innovation (Malaysia) has a solid foundation in sales training and we have developed content that has set the industry standards for sales training.
However, with the ever changing economic and social environment, there is no longer a place for traditional or typical facts-and-figures training.
Hence, we seized this opportunity, recognising that our employees needed a ground-breaking training approach to enable them to capitalise on the opportunities that lay before them, by designing an integrated and holistic Sales Learning Academy.
Q How did you and your team conceptualise and adapt this strategy to suit evolving workforce needs in the past year?
Like how we designed our employee experience roadmap, we studied our employee’s learning journey and introduced new initiatives to improve and focus on important touchpoints in their learning journey. As training goes, it’s not just about developing strong content and assessing the learners, but in the essence of creating a learning culture to foster our dynamic workforce, we focused on creating a guided learning academy emphasising on social learning and support.
This pandemic has taught us the importance of social and emotional support, to which we introduced our Rookies Attachment Program (RAPPERS) to provide this support at multiple touchpoints of their learning journey. Looking on the bright side, the abrupt change from Working in Office (WIO) to Working From Home (WFH) was also a catalyst for virtual learning. We are now embracing a blended learning approach for our learning academy!
Q What challenges did you face along the way, and how did you overcome them?
Our biggest challenge is always to improve and promote a learning culture. It is much easier to engage new hires who come with an eager learning mindset, but it is still a challenge to engage and encourage our existing workforce to invest more time in self-development. With the team engrossed with their daily deliverables, self-development can tend to take a backseat.
We improve this by introducing short learning sessions that can be easily slotted into our busy schedules. This is an ongoing learning for us too, to introduce new ways to cultivate a strong learning culture.
Q How did the strategy add to the overall employee experience in your organisation, in terms of ROI?
As a start, this learning academy has eased our new sales hires into our working culture. This allows them to assimilate and adapt quickly, and sales results are early as their first month on field!
Our organisation encourages graduate hires. In the past year, due to the pandemic, we have hired a diverse group of profiles from non-sales background. The sales learning academy has proven to be an effective learning ground for anyone to pursue a career in sales.
For our existing team, the learning academy lifted the average and improved our value based selling approach, leading to an increase in our solution sales despite the challenging economic environment.
A truly amazing achievement and a huge shout out to all our sales employees and our dedicated trainers!
Q What is the most exciting and valuable thing about being part of (and winning at!) the debut Employee Experience Awards?
It is a proud moment and a great recognition for the team who has put in their hearts and efforts to design and run the learning academy. Participating in this award was an opportunity for us to document and share our experience and whilst doing so, we found that it allowed us to reflect and realise all the opportunities to improve our employee experience strategy.
What truly excites me is to see so many organisations putting so much emphasis in enhancing employee experience.
Q Looking ahead, what else do you have planned as you continue to enhance the overall employee experience?
Like I’ve said, it is also a continuous learning journey for us as HR. There is so much more we can do to drive business excellence through the people.
As of now, we are in the midst of enhancing the design of our new managers' development programme for grooming our future leaders.
Most of our people managers in the organisation are homegrown, or in other words, promoted internally. We know that being a people manager is an entirely different ball game so we plan to have a comprehensive programme that will enhance their leadership success whilst building a high-performance culture.
Q Do share tips to inspire your peers who are working on their EX strategies and would love to participate in the awards next year.
It is important to have a very clear objective and knowing your ultimate goal in mind. With this, do your research or studies to design a data-driven approach. For any initiative to succeed, you need to get strong support from the management and the leadership team. If you have a compelling story to tell, participating in the awards is a great way to showcase your accomplishments.
Q Lastly, to end on a fun note – if you could describe the employee experience at your organisation in one sentence, what would that be?
A structured and stimulating journey towards a high-performance culture. We hope that what we have in place for our employees at different touchpoints of their journey adds to their personal and professional development.
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Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section!
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Follow us on Telegram and on Instagram @humanresourcesonline for all the latest HR and manpower news from around the region!
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