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Vichai Saksuriya, Vice-President for HR and Administration, Delta Electronics Thailand talks us through the integration of a recruitment system that has reduced lead time by at least 21%, despite seeing a 73% increase in demand for headcount.
Delta Electronics Thailand was a finalist for Best HR Digital Transformation Strategy at the Employee Experience Awards 2021, Singapore.
In this interview, Vichai Saksuriya, Vice-President for HR and Administration, Delta Electronics Thailand shares with us how the company took advantage of the digital realm to grow its digitalisation strategy, be steadfast in meeting its varied business and workforce needs from administration, to development, to recruitment, and more.
Q Congratulations on securing a finalist spot at this inaugural edition of the award! What is your employee experience strategy that led to this achievement?
One of the key strategic priorities of our company is to pivot our vision, goal, and mission, and to support our company’s Industry 4.0 transformation goals, which will help us meet our increased demand to recruit and develop engineering talent. Right now, we have a high focus on automation engineers. We also work to mitigate risk to our existing workforce by introducing new training and upskilling programmes internally and with our partners.
Our company’s sustainable development strategy comes directly from the top management, and they offer full support to HR’s role in providing the necessary talent and an upskilled workforce to meet the needs of our company-wide Internet-of-things (IoT) driven smart manufacturing implementation.
Q How did you and your team conceptualise and adapt this strategy to suit evolving workforce needs in the past year?
Delta Thailand’s HR department is leading our company's transformation through the aggressive recruitment of young talent from Thailand and abroad. This leads to many new ideas for HR solutions including e-learning platforms, new talent development programmes for management succession, and international study and internship exchange programmes to give Thai engineering students opportunities to study and work in Taiwan.
Delta Thailand HR plays a key role in transforming our business by recruiting Industry 4.0 talent and upskilling our workforce for a digitised workplace.
Throughout our company, our people are dedicated to optimising all internal systems and processes to meet the needs of the digital transformation era. We focus on eliminating manual procedures and paperwork by introducing better system flow, mobile OA, and applying QR codes for simultaneous interaction and information sharing.
Q What challenges did you face along the way, and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge we faced was in the execution of our strategy due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on large gatherings for training, town hall, and employee activities. To overcome these challenges, as well as effectively communicate our strategy to stakeholders, we have utilised digital channels and small group events.
We are developing a Facebook Delta Thailand career page to build employer branding. Our follower growth rate is over 1,176% (rising from 251 to 3,205 followers) in March 2020.
We are collaborating with virtual career fair organisers and teaming up with external job banks to find more potential candidates by holding Delta career virtual events called 'Find Your Right Career Path'. This event aims to improve candidate experience with our company.
We have worked with our employee relations department to start a new company LINE account for two-way communications. We also worked with our corporate communications department to produce more employee-generated content like audio interviews that we publish in our internal magazine.
This digital transformation strategy has been embraced by our stakeholders, with over 80% signing up to the company LINE account, and high engagement rates on the company's Facebook page. This has helped boost morale during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has led to a 493.2% leap in our Q3’20 operating profit compared with Q3’19.
Q How did the strategy add to the overall employee experience in your organisation, in terms of ROI?
The key objectives of our digitalisation strategy are to streamline and enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of all our administrative functions. More efficient operations will help us to maximise our company’s resources and provide better value to all stakeholders.
We optimised the online system by integrating a recruitment system that has reduced lead time by at least 21%, despite seeing a 73% increase in demand for headcount.
We have also introduced a performance management system, and are building up the training system and e-payroll process. Further, we have implemented a decision support system by integrating regional data into an electronic dashboard for the management team to make decisions quickly and efficiently.
Q What is the most exciting and valuable thing about being part of the debut Employee Experience Awards?
First, we would like to thank Human Resources Online for holding these awards to boost development in the Asian HR field. In our point of view, joining the awards is a great opportunity for us to organise our experience, review all the work HR does, and learn from other participants. We can also summarise what we can do better for our employees during the process.
We definitely will not stop development, and we always try to find the best ways to engage our employees, starting from their first day onboard to immersion in a happy workplace environment, until they grow with continuing training for their career development.
Being a finalist proves that our efforts were not in vain, and is a valuable learning experience, pushing us to go beyond our limits. This challenge will let our employees grow along with our company. We hope to gain the competence to be not only the best in Asia, but also be globally competitive by delivering the greatest value to all stakeholders.
Q Looking ahead, what else do you have planned as you continue to enhance the overall employee experience?
The strength of our strategy is that we provide information visualisation as a single, comprehensive database. This enables our organisation to provide structural connectivity across units and activities, and increase the speed of information transactions. For example, with our system synchronisation, it is now much easier for management and employees to get information across different systems.
Our strategy also leverages unique in-house resources and competencies to implement. For example, our Thailand headquarters has an on-premise data centre to securely handle all company data for production, operations, communication, and employee data. Our IT department and automation engineers can also roll out digital communication, training tools, and platforms without the need for vendors.
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.
The top three takeaways from our digital transformation strategy are:
- Efficiency
- Accuracy
- Transparency
While there are many benefits to digital transformation, current gaps include ensuring that talent uses digital platforms and the uptake of new tools by managers and supervisors.
The strength of our strategy is that we provide comprehensive information to provide structural connectivity across units and activities, and increase the speed of information transactions. Our strategy has unique in-house resources and competencies to implement actions securely and speedily without third-party vendors.
We encourage our peers to utilise the resources they have, and build from there with a 'can do' attitude. If we can do it, so can you.
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?
Everyone doing what we love and growing together.
A diverse and inclusive culture in the work environment helps to promote collaboration. Having an empowering environment at the workplace proves to each of our employees that they can contribute in their own professional capability and assist the company in creating success.
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