Winning Secrets: How Allianz Technology (Thailand) is successfully overcoming the shortage of IT talent

The company has demographically advertised jobs in locations with large pools of IT talents and minimal lead time to relocate to Thailand, shares Thitima Buranawat, Head of HR & Change.

Allianz Group has been serving its customers for over 130 years. As the technology partner of choice, Allianz Technology has a vision to serve the Group through world-class, agile, and sustainable IT solutions that enable its customers for a full-spectrum digitalisation experience.

At the third annual edition of HR Excellence Awards - Thailand in 2023, Allianz Technology (Thailand) was declared the year's HREA Grand Winner as result of strong showing in various categories:

• Gold for 'Excellence in Corporate Wellness'
• Gold for 'Excellence in Hybrid Working'
• Gold for 'Excellence in Talent Acquisition'
• Gold for 'Excellence in Workforce Mobility'
• Silver for 'Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion'
• Bronze for 'Excellence in Graduate Recruitment and Development'

To celebrate this milestone, we catch up with Thitima Buranawat, Head of Human Resource & Change, Allianz Technology (Thailand) on the several recruitment tools that were utilised to successfully fill vacancies and become an employer of choice in the tech sector. 

Q Congratulations on your top performance at the HR Excellence Awards! How has your HR and people strategy contributed to your success this year?

As an 'employer of choice' strategy, our objective is to create an attractive tech employer value proposition to become the tech employer of choice in key locations, build an effective candidate hiring experience, and offer an outstanding employee experience to our workforce. We re-shape the global talent strategy to become a tech employer of choice, based on upgraded delivery excellence and upgraded hiring capabilities to attract top engineering talent at strategic locations. We always listen to and focus on employee feedback to make sure that this place is a 'great place to work' for everyone in Allianz Technology Thailand. Great teamwork and strong collaboration were the main keys to success to drive us to become a tech employer of choice in the IT industry.

Q Looking back at your achievements, what aspect of your HR initiatives are you most proud of and why?

Our corporate wellness programme is the proudest initiative among all our HR initiatives. It’s been a long journey to establish the best corporate wellness programme that perfectly fits with our employees and the company.

At Allianz Technology Thailand, employee feedback is the most important part that we focus on and take seriously in order to fulfill our employee’s needs, helping us to reach our goal as tech employer of choice. Our company strives to position itself as an attractive employer for prospective applicants along with its current employees. Employees are our biggest assets and Allianz Technology is not only focused on acquiring and retaining customers but is also committed to employee welfare and development. Being an employer of choice means that our employees believe that the organisation values them, cares for them, and is committed to their holistic growth. The health and wellbeing of our employees is key to the success of Allianz Technology Thailand.

Q During your HR journey, what were some significant obstacles you faced, and how did you overcome them to achieve excellence?

As we operate in the IT industry, the shortage of IT resources is one of the most significant obstacles we faced. While there were business needs to hire IT talents for around 80-100 positions, we were facing IT resource scarcity in both the local and global recruitment markets. Our Talent Acquisition team tried every possible way to utilise the recruitment tools we had in order to fill vacancies as many as possible. Whilst we strategically invested more in the successful channels, we explored new options.

Besides the traditional and direct approach to find potential candidates, these are a few examples of talent acquisition strategies we tried and succeeded with:

• Boosted the employee referral programme by creating new campaigns every quarter to attract and motivate employees to participate,
• Demographically advertised job in locations with large pools of IT talents and minimal lead time to relocate to Thailand,
• Promoted company culture and hosted virtual 'TechTalk' events on social media to attract the young generation,
• Started building talent pipeline through our graduate programme which equipped fresh IT graduates with our own training curriculum.

Q How does your organisation measure the success and impact of your HR initiatives?

- 'Allianz Engagement Survey 2022': Allianz Engagement Survey (AES) is an Allianz-wide survey that aims to measure a variety of topics linked to our day-to-day employee experience and engagement at Allianz. The value of the AES is that it enables results to be broken down on a team level, ensuring that targeted follow-up initiatives can be implemented to address what matters most in each individual area. Following our survey results for 2022, we achieved a positive Allianz Engagement Survey result and a better-than result for 2021.

- 'Great Place To Work' certification: Great Place to Work is about the level of trust that employees experience in their leaders, the level of pride they have in their jobs, and the extent to which they enjoy their colleagues. In July 2023, Allianz Technology Thailand accomplished being recertified as a Great Place To Work.

- EDGE MOVE Certification: EDGE Certification is the leading global assessment methodology and certification standard for gender equality. Our company successfully obtained EDGE MOVE certification for gender equality in 2021 and is about to be recertified in late 2023.

- Follow up onboarding session: We received positive feedback from new employees on our company’s welfare, benefits and flexible working.

Q In what direction do you see the HR/people function evolving in the future, considering the emerging trends?

We aspire to become a tech employer of choice and create the best place for our people. A place that equips them with all they need to shape a whole industry by pioneering the digitalisation of Allianz Group. We want to achieve this ambition by identifying impactful actions along our key dimensions - technology, organisation, and people. Through these actions, we want to win our employees as our brand ambassadors to attract new talent and to be recognised as a great employer in IT talent markets.

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

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