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Hiro Ota, L’Oréal’s HR Director for the South Asia Pacific, Middle East & North Africa (SAPMENA) Zone, shares how the company brings its innovative mindset to employee engagement.
At over 115 years old, L’Oréal Groupe blends its rich history with a startup mentality where freedom within a frame is the mantra. A company where employees are continuously learning, L’Oréalians love to try new things and invent the future of beauty.
Catching up with HRO, Hiro Ota, L’Oréal’s HR Director for the South Asia Pacific, Middle East & North Africa (SAPMENA) Zone, shares how the company brings this innovative mindset to rethinking engagement – not as a programme, but as a set of principles that empower people to create an environment where talent can grow and develop.
This commitment to purposeful engagement saw the L’Oreal team bagging seven awards at the HR Employee Experience Awards 2025, Singapore,:
Gold
- Best Employer Branding
Silver
- Best Hybrid Work Model
- Best Recruitment Marketing Campaign
- Best In-House Candidate Experience
Bronze
- Best Skilling Strategy
- Best Talent Mobility Programme
- Most Innovative and Sustainable Office Design
Q How does L'Oréal define "employee experience", and what aspects do you prioritise most?
At L'Oréal, we see employee experience as a journey of growth and connection. It’s all about how your career develops through continuous learning, new challenges and teamwork. We call this our "Future Fit" approach, as our goal is to equip employees for whatever tomorrow brings.
We prioritise five key areas:
- Empowerment & growth: We want our employees to take charge of their own development, investing in skills essential for the future through our learning programs and mentorship.
- Wellbeing & safety: We make sure employees feel supported with flexible work options and regular opportunities for formal and informal feedback.
- Belonging & purpose: It’s important to celebrate our diverse workforce and ensure every individual feels valued.
- Simplicity: Our aim is to simplify processes and reduce unnecessary complexities so our employees can focus on the work that makes a big impact.
- A future fit mindset: We encourage being adaptable, continuous learning and staying resilient. Our employees are empowered to navigate change and shape their own careers in the evolving beauty industry.
Q Can you walk us through your most high-impact EX initiative that led to your success at the awards this year? What business need did it solve, and how was success measured?
Our standout initiative was Discover SAPMENA — a pioneering talent mobility programme that redefined what it means to grow within L’Oréal.
With a future-fit mindset at its core, this initiative helped talent stay mobile, agile, and inspired.
- Flexible mobility models: From virtual assignments to intra-regional rotations, we created easy paths for career growth across the SAPMENA region.
- Development built into every move: Cross-market exposure, leadership access, and cultural training were embedded into each move — expanding mindsets, building foresight, and enhancing collaboration.
- Data-driven strategy: We used talent intelligence to anticipate gaps, target high-potential roles, and strengthen our leadership pipeline.
A highlight? Our immersive SAPMENA takeover of our Paris offices, designed to bring the vibrant world of SAPMENA directly to our employees. Following this, some of our high-potential employees from Paris flew to Singapore to “experience SAPMENA” firsthand — meeting leaders, deep-diving into regional strategy, and making valuable connections. This powerful initiative tangibly demonstrated how committed we are to advancing top talent.
“Initiatives like Discover SAPMENA are enabling us to make real impact. We’re seeing greater internal movement of staff, improved ability to retain employees, stronger cross-market collaboration, and improved employee survey scores on learning and wellbeing.”
Q How do you balance personalised employee needs with scalable EX programmes?
At L’Oréal, personalisation and scalability are not trade-offs — they are actually twin pillars of our people-first strategy. With the future fit mindset as our anchor, we create space for individuals to own their growth, while offering structured support at scale.
- One profile, our digital tool, provides every employee with a self-directed platform to curate their learning, define career aspirations, and track progress — supported by scalable, AI- powered recommendations.
- Our connect conversations, which are quarterly check-ins with employees, ensure every career journey is accompanied by meaningful dialogue, from goal-setting to feedback to development planning.
- People reviews prioritise both depth and equity — ensuring every voice is heard and every plan has a path forward.
Our learning infrastructure blends online modules, workshops, and mentorships to help employees build the very skills a Future Fit mindset requires: resilience, adaptability, curiosity, and the ability to work effectively across different teams. This balance empowers our teams to move at the speed of change — individually and collectively — across a region as diverse and dynamic as SAPMENA.
Q What are some underappreciated drivers of employee engagement that you think deserve more attention?
In our experience, the most powerful drivers of engagement aren’t just the perks. What employees are really looking for is a company with the mindsets and mechanisms that enable people to feel capable, connected and courageous. This points to the importance of psychological safety – an environment where individuals feel safe to take risks, share ideas, and navigate change without fear.
At L’Oréal, engagement is something we cultivate by design — not just programmes, but powerful principles that foster individual growth and enable people to navigate change with confidence and clarity.
Q Finally, what is the most important message that you'd like to share with L'Oreal as you plan ahead?
Looking forward, our guiding star remains the same: “People are at the heart of everything we do,” or as we say in French “Les personnes sont au cœur de tout ce que nous faisons”. That really sums up our philosophy; it’s all about putting our people first as we move forward."
“People are at the heart of everything we do,” or as we say in French “Les personnes sont au cœur de tout ce que nous faisons”. That really sums up our philosophy; it’s all about putting our people first as we move forward."
Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets section!
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