Hong Kong CEOs reveal top HR priorities this year

In a world of ever changing dynamics, it is up to us to create effective strategies to improve all area of business, including HR. In Hong Kong many CEOs are planning to focus on internal operational strategies and work with the key stakeholders to acquire, integrate and retain the right talent.

I have identified three main HR priorities for Hong Kong CEOs in 2014 when I spoke to CEOs from a variety of industries. These are critical for finding and hiring the right talent, retaining this talent, avoiding the loss of a skilled and talented workforce, and proper management and training.

With the right training, performance is significantly enhanced.

Effective team building
Company CEOs are expected to achieve a number of difficult goals. We must ensure smooth business functioning and close coordination of departments.

Once our employees align their individual goals with those of company, those employees will be more engaged. One of the questions CFOs ask us is `what happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?' whereas we ask `what happens if we don't and they stay?'

We address this by placing managers in leadership programs. They then have the opportunity to grow with the company once they prove their leadership skills.

The must ensure interdepartmental coordination and build strong teams that can effectively execute project tasks.

To build these skills, managers are exposed the marketing and sales departments, among others. Management metrics that analyze and monitor performance are used to assign managers higher roles.

Mid- level managers must motivate and monitor the performance of junior-level staff members who have the responsibility of hiring and training candidates from the available market pool. These new employees are then exposed to a career development program, to inspire enhanced learning and growth.

Increasing engagement of employees
In most organizations, employees are expected to align their career goals with the goals of the organization. When this happens, the success of both parties is easily attained.

However, this is only possible when each employee shows a high level of engagement. We must develop excellent strategies to keep employees motivated and performing at their highest potential.

To achieve this, we must determine the priorities and factors that motivate our employees. Increased salary was once the main motivational tool, but recently other factors have come into play.

These factors include career development opportunities, recognition and appreciation, personal development, exposure to multiple areas of work and work-life balance.

Work-life balance in particular has gradually achieved momentum. Most CEOs also agree that flexibility improves performance.

For female employees in particular, this factor affects their performance in higher level positions. However, flexibility as well as employee and boss cooperation would solve this problem.

The key is to create a working environment where the employee trusts the organizational processes to provide opportunities for career development through goals built into the performance management processes. Research shows that better collaboration and training boosts employee engagement levels.

Since the new generation is quick to change jobs/roles, we must plan to better engage both individual employees and employee teams in 2014.

Talent retention
Acquiring, training and motivating new talent is time consuming. This is even more difficult because of the overall lack of talent in the market, so we are focusing on building stronger relationships and motivating our existing employees.

In Hong Kong, this has always been a priority, though recent initiatives further emphasis this. We are creating new policies aimed at channeling motivation and excitement into employee retention.

These strategies are built around areas including;
o Performance management,
o Competency management,
o Learning and development,
o Compensation plans,
o Leadership development,

The integrated approach involves;
o Performance measurement,
o Training to mend talent gaps,
o Preparing the best talent for future leadership roles,

Our top priorities should be building stronger teams, enhancing employee performance, and shifting the focus from hiring employees to employee retention. However, we must remain open to new acquisitions of the best talent available.