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Winning Secrets: How Chandra Asri Petrochemical instilled its iSTAR values in the midst of the pandemic

Winning Secrets: How Chandra Asri Petrochemical instilled its iSTAR values in the midst of the pandemic

Here's how this winning team embraced change, and showed agility, commitment and accountability to keep people processes going.

To have a robust and integrated people process infrastructure for its employees to grow with the company is Chandra Asri Petrochemical’s goal for its human capital strategy.

Evolving since 2015 when the human capital function was formalised within the company, the team at Chandra Asri Petrochemical has continuously improved, attracted, developed, motivated and retained its employees. It is no surprise that the team won the bronze for Excellence in HR Team Collaboration at the HR Excellence Awards 2020, Indonesia. In this interview, Lenny Woen, GM - HR Strategy Management, Chandra Asri Petrochemical shares the team’s strategy to improve people processes and how a change mindset and agility were instilled throughout the pandemic.

Q How would you describe your overall HR strategy, and what are some key milestones you’ve accomplished thus far?

Our overall HR strategy has to align with our business growth strategy in mind as well as one of the company’s missions – that is to develop and nurture our human capital. Our human capital strategy function was only formalised in 2015 and since then, we have been evolving to continue to improve, to attract, develop, motivate and retain our employees.

Ever since, we have improved and digitalised our processes with the goal in mind – to have robust and integrated people processes as an infrastructure for our employees to grow with the company. We have shaped and reshaped our talent management strategy from talent acquisition to talent mapping, succession planning, to developing career management frameworks based on competencies and establishing our employer branding and EVP.

Q What role has your leadership team played in supporting your HR priorities? How does your HR team collaborate closely with senior management to achieve business goals?

In order to achieve our overall objectives, the whole team had to be ready for change, by building a change mindset.

Upskilling, reskilling and digital literacy was no longer just an option. This was not an easy journey for a 28-year-old company managing four different generations, including our HC team.

With the clear objective in mind and involvement from all our managers, we defined and prioritised our improvement initiatives. We formed different task forces with each task force being responsible for reviewing, and proposing improvements. All the improvements, solutions and new initiatives were executed based on discussions, feedback and inputs from respective managers. This is to ensure that our processes that we put in place were the right ones for our business and our people.

Q The pandemic has caused many business plans to be upended. What was the greatest challenge you faced and how did you manage to pivot your HR framework?

The pandemic has forced us to change in many different ways. The way we work, the way we communicate, the way we collaborate. Our team had to embrace these changes, show agility, commitment and accountability to keep our people processes going. Our management’s priorities were clear – which is to ensure operational stability, to keep our people productive and safe. With this, we prioritised our plan to focus on ensuring that development programmes continue, wellbeing of our employees is maintained, as well as promoting and instilling our iSTAR (Integrity, Safety, Teamwork, Respect) values in the midst of this pandemic. All these programmes were adjusted and delivered virtually.

Q What was your game plan for measuring ROI in HR team collaboration? What are some proud achievements you can share with us on this front?

I can say that our team has come out of the woods a champion. All of our internal improvement projects for an integrated HR process were completed last year. We reviewed our KPI cascading process and established KPI library. We also developed a 360 competencies assessment tool, introduced a new career management framework and had a new Employer Branding! The greatest appreciation and recognition for the team is when we won a Bronze for Excellence in HR Team Collaboration at the HR Excellence Award 2020, Indonesia.

We are still in the journey towards completing our objective for a more robust talent management, improving our people experience, but with the collaboration and commitment of our team. I am confident that we will achieve what we have planned.

Q One of HR's biggest responsibilities has been crisis communication and engagement, as a bridge between management and staff. What are some lessons you've learnt in an event year of improving communication?

The crisis has put an emphasis on open and continuous communication by leveraging on our communication tools, whether it is messaging tool, emails, meeting platforms or collaboration tools. Virtual town halls, talk shows and webinars are some of the activities that have become routine events in our organisation, to ensure that the message from our management gets across to our 2,000 employees. Most importantly, this is necessary to ensure the safety of our employees and to ensure our operational stability.

Photo / Provided

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


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