share on
Audrey Khoo, Senior Director of HR - APAC & China shares her insights on how the organisation cultivates a culture of belonging and inclusion to ensure a successful yet engaged and diverse workforce.
Herbalife APAC strives to achieve total wellbeing by balancing one's body, mind and future and focuses on the core belief of a balanced nutrition and a healthy & active lifestyle.
With over 40 years of experience, and brand presence in over 90 countries, Herbalife prides itself on keeping balanced and staying successful in the midst of their competitors.
The organisation's HR team took home the bronze award for 'Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion' at the HR Excellence Awards, Singapore (2023). In lieu of this win, HRO catches up with Audrey Khoo, Senior Director of HR - APAC & China, who shares her insights on how Herbalife ensures a sense of belonging and inclusion in its workforce, therefore ensuring a successful company with engaged and diverse employees.
Q. Congratulations on your top performance at the HR Excellence Awards! How has your HR and people strategy contributed to your success this year?
Herbalife’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) strategy is to advance an inclusive, diverse and equitable workforce of all backgrounds and cultures, embracing differences as we progress together as One Team towards continuous organisation success. HR team in Asia Pacific is committed to making DEI a people-focused strategy in our region, and it has helped us enhance our people’s belonging; elevate our diverse talent representation and employer brand; reinforce our leaders’ accountability towards DEI and enable equal opportunities through fairness and transparency. All of which have contributed towards strengthening our organisation’s bench strength and building an engaged workforce.
Q. Looking back at your achievements, what aspect of your HR initiatives are you most proud of and why?
Led by our Regional President – APAC and China, Stephen Conchie, we have formed an APAC DEI Council, which comprises of a lead and members of the Regional HR Team, to drive our DEI strategy and its initiatives in the region.
We take immense pride in all our HR initiatives, which are focused on Talent Management and Employee Wellbeing. We also pay special attention to women and racial matters. The initiatives were implemented through using three main platforms and channels of communications - our APAC DEI Intranet Page; APAC DEI e-Newsletter and in person activities, together with our Country HR Business Partners.
Q. During your HR journey, what were some significant obstacles you faced, and how did you overcome them to achieve excellence?
A couple of common obstacles would be conflicting priorities and resource gaps. Nevertheless, these were easily overcome through the passion and unity of the team and above all, the commitment and support rendered by the entire APAC Leadership Team.
Q. How does your organisation measure the success and impact of your HR initiatives?
We have a good mix of talent distribution by gender and generation groups in APAC, and gender diversity is maintained at a healthy level across the region. Millennials remain the largest generation group within the organisation, with more Generation Z joining the workforce while Generation X remains the dominant generation group within our management teams. We also conduct regular engagement surveys to measure employee engagement and in our recent survey, we received a high response rate of 90% across the region. We believe DEI is an ongoing journey for the organisation.
Backed by our Leaders’ commitments to making DEI a strategic focus in the region, we are confident that we will succeed in creating a culture of belonging and inclusion to drive organisation success with an engaged and diverse workforce.
Q. In what direction do you see the HR/people function evolving in the future, considering the emerging trends?
DEI will remain one of our key people focused strategy as we see more and more organisations, globally, expressing a new and renewed commitment towards the cause, largely due to increasing awareness of the importance of DEI through globalisation and digitalisation. In Asia Pacific, we will continue to promote the “One Team” spirit and foster intercultural understanding across our 14 markets in the region and focus on advancing a diverse talent representation to build a sustainable pipeline of successors for the organisation.
Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section!
Lead image / Provided
share on
