Talent & Tech Asia Summit 2024
Winning Secrets: GlobalFoundries’ comprehensive and unconventional career development experience

Winning Secrets: GlobalFoundries’ comprehensive and unconventional career development experience

GlobalFoundries (GF) took home the gold award for 'Excellence in Talent Management', and bronze awards for 'Excellence in HR Team Collaboration' and 'Excellence in Leadership Development' at the HR Excellence Awards 2021, Singapore.

In this interview, Jennifer Pickering, Senior Director, Global Learning & Development, GlobalFoundries (GF), shares how the organisation prioritises and empowers its people by offering them comprehensive and unconventional career development experience, as well as by building an inclusive work culture where they can thrive.

Q What is your organisation’s winning HR strategy, and what are some milestones you’ve accomplished along this journey?

At GlobalFoundries, our people have a relentless focus on our company’s vision of changing the industry that is changing the world. The best ideas come from a diverse & inclusive team empowered to bring their whole self to work.

GF is proud to employ a highly diverse, multicultural workforce around the world, harnessing the unique backgrounds and experiences of our employees, and uniting to develop, design, and manufacture technology solutions that fuel the world.

We prioritise a comprehensive and unconventional career development experience for our employees through an integrated matrix of technical, soft-skills, leadership, and coaching programmes powered by strong people and technologies.

With an intense focus on developing talent, we not only managed the challenges from COVID but also took our company public in 2021! With each step, we come closer to our vision of changing the industry that is changing the world.

Q How has this strategy helped you achieve your HR priorities, and what role has the leadership played in helping make this initiative a reality?

Since GF recently listed on the Nasdaq (GFS), expanded globally during a pandemic, and battled the global demand for talent, changes in HR priorities are inevitable. The demand for talent has never been so urgent.

Through steadfast determination and innovative thinking, the GF team has identified unique strategies to sustain an inbound talent pipeline, and refine skills needed to achieve the business' goals.  The alignment between HR and the business is a constant work in progress as needs rapidly evolve. Our robust talent management strategy includes finding the world's greatest talent, and hiring them. Once hired, we focus on growth and development for all employees via custom individual development plans supported by an enterprise-wide development portfolio.

Constantly collaborating with leaders to implement HR programmes that diffuse GF values and messages, enable and empower employees, and build an inclusive culture at GF where our employees thrive.

Q Unexpected roadblocks are part and parcel of executing any initiative. What were some of the barriers that you and your team experienced while rolling this out, and how did you successfully get past them?

In this volatile and uncertain world of unprecedented change, disruption, and technology demands, we believe our people are the key competitive advantage and differentiator to help us succeed.

Explosive demand for our products, COVID challenges, and a global battle for talent have been barriers for many technologies-focused employers. It is critical to find opportunities to be different in times of crisis. Driven by the GF values, we prioritised the needs of our people putting in place flexible and remote work programmes that enabled employees to better juggle the demands of work and of life.

Putting people first worked - and together, our strong management commitment to nurture the next generation of talent and pure hard work enabled us to foster a strong employee development experience.

Today, we are proud to share that we met and exceeded multiple talent milestones, and ultimately achieved the incredible goal of becoming a publicly-traded company.

Q As evidenced by the win, this initiative clearly delivered some amazing results. What was your gameplan for measuring ROI? What are some proud achievements you can share with us on this front?

Talent management, leadership development, and HR collaboration with the business are key strategies behind GF’s success helping the business to identify, and prepare talent to accelerate the growth of our business. We utilise numerous dashboards and talent analytics to identify, and address trends in the workplace. Beyond ensuring the there is a healthy, and robust succession pipeline, and strong bench of talented employees, we focus on resolving critical business issues quickly, accelerating business results, and ensuring our employees are engaged with their work, and our teams.

We pulse employee feedback frequently via periodic engagement surveys, focus groups, coffee sessions, and performance reviews. Making human connections, and building trust becomes even more key to GF as we take another step toward our vision of changing the world!

Q We’re now seeing HR manage portfolios that were previously considered far from their job description. In your view, what are the top three skills and attributes of today’s successful CHRO?

In the rapidly changing business environment, there is a need to:

  • Be bold, dedicated, and humble in trying out new solutions and initiatives to lead HR and the business forward. What works today, may not work tomorrow. It is important to learn to fail fast and continuously improve. Agility wins the day.
  • Communicate and align with leaders, management, and stakeholders as it is vital for deriving a sound and inclusive HR strategy that meets the needs of the business. Do it together!
  • Put people first always, like leaders putting employees’ needs ahead of their own, listen first/speak last, and care for and nurture them. If you take care of your people, they will take care of the rest.

Image / Provided

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

Follow us on Telegram and on Instagram @humanresourcesonline for all the latest HR and manpower news from around the region!

Follow us on Telegram and on Instagram @humanresourcesonline for all the latest HR and manpower news from around the region!

Free newsletter

Get the daily lowdown on Asia's top Human Resources stories.

We break down the big and messy topics of the day so you're updated on the most important developments in Asia's Human Resources development – for free.

subscribe now open in new window