Carlsberg Group

Katie Chan

Katie Chan is a seasoned HR leader  withextensive experience in several industries. Companies which she had served in her career include Hoechst China Limited, Merck Sharpe and Dohme, Littelfuse, Vertiv (formerly known as Emerson Network Power). She is currently the Vice-president of Human Resources Asia for Carlsberg Group.

In an exclusive interview with Manage HR APAC, she shared valuable insights about the importance, challenges, and process of securing an inclusive and diverse workspace.

Could you provide a brief overview of your expertise in the industry and the roles and responsibilities in the organization you are a part of?

As the VP of HR for Carlsberg Asia, I am responsible for ten Asian  markets. We have a total direct workforce of more than 13,000 employees.  In addition, due to our large manufacturing presence, we do require a substantial number of contractual hireseven though they are not part of our direct workforce. We have 41 breweries all across Asia, including China, our biggest market.

I am currently located in Hong Kong, which is our Asian headquarters, and I have been a part of Carlsberg for 4.5 years. Before this, I worked in Human Resources in the Asia-Pacific region in similar capacities for other multinational companies.

What are some of the prevalent challenges in the human resource and talent management sector?

In the post-Covid world that we are currently in, attracting and retaining  talent has become increasingly difficult.  As many countries are facing the challenge of shrinking and aging workforce for different reasons, it is critical to take a holistic view of workforce planning and develop an integrated and dynamic approach of strategic talent pipeline building. Previously, one would expect young people to complete their university education and immediately begin their employment search. In the present scenario, young talents have more choices and have become much more selective regarding their careers rather than jobs. They have different values as compared to their parent's generation. Consequently, employers need to develop compelling employment value propositions in order to attract the best young talents and develop them as their future leaders.

How do you manage to bridge the gap between the younger and older workforce and get them together to work as a team?

In our organization, we currently have four generations – the Baby Boomers, Gen X, the Millennials, and Gen Z . To address the generation gap issue, we share the latest trends and new phenomena with the leaders. The idea is to familiarize them with the priorities of the young talent due to the evolving employment landscape and changingexpectations and social contract.

“I think as the HR leader, one has to make sure that the people's agenda is tightly connected with the needs of the business. It involves engaging in the business and understanding the challenges and its implications.”

There has been extensive research from a number of renowned research organizations on the trends and insights on the War for Talent and in particular the expectations and preferences of Gen Z who are entering the universal workforce.   The data shows that the young workforce, amongst many other factors, prioritizes a sense of purpose in the company they work for.  A purpose-driven culture provides a strong sense of pride to the young talent who expect their employers to be socially responsible across different dimensions such as environmentally responsible, diversity, equitable opportunities, inclusive leadership & culture and social justiceInclusive leadership plays a big role as it is recently reflected in our engagement survey.   We are at the moment rolling out a new training to all people leaders on helping them to nurture inclusive leadership skills.

Apart from education and continuous communications, we engage the leaders in mechanisms such as reverse mentoring in which a leader is being mentored by a young talent. We have a program called Candid Conversations, in which we ask the leaders to sit with a group of young talent and listen to what the young talent expects and understand their perspective. In this exercise, the leaders are asked to refrain from their judgment or act defensively but keep an open mind.

On the other hand, for young talents, we make the best efforts to engage them when they are on board and provide comprehensive training. We have a very robust Graduate Trainee program where individuals have the chance to meet with and interact with our senior leaders through learning sessions and their rotational assignments.

Could you elaborate on some of the practices you follow to uphold diversity and inclusion in the workspace?

Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program is at the core of our business agenda. It is a key business priority owned by our executive committee and supervisory boardand it aligns with our overall ESG objective as a corporation.  We also have a Global DE&I Council which is comprised of a diverse representation of senior leaders. 

Carlsberg’s DE&I strategy has four pillars. The first is what we call 'Business Priority’ which is to assert that diversity and inclusion are leader-driven, owned, and is a key part of Carlsberg’s leadership expectations framework that propounds certain behaviors and values that are expected of our leaders. We measure the progress of our DE&I agenda through many different ways.    For example, the organization takes the help of an external consultant every other year to run a DE&I maturity survey by tracking and benchmarking our best practices on DE&I.   Carlsberg also runs an annual engagement survey in which a DE&I index is included.   We recently published our DE&I survey as part of the employee engagement survey and as a corporation, we are seeing very satisfactory progress. 

The second pillar is about ensuring that we have Diverse Representation in the workforce so that we can harvest their experiences and perspectives. From among the different drivers and social dimensions of diversity, emphasis has been laid on gender balance by our top management, with our 2027 goal at 35% of female leadership and the long term goal being 40%. We started to measure the female representation at the leadership level in 2021, and in the Asia region, we have made a 5% increase up till end of 2022, a very encouraging progress within a span of 2 yearsWe also have a women sponsorship program, which is a coaching program for female talent, with senior leaders assigned as mentors or coaches.  Through this program, we aim to heighten the visibility of the female leadership talent, increase their confidence and ultimately enhance their chance of success in terms of career progression.Apart from gender, we have also embraced other social identities such as  ethnicity and sexual orientation. Diversity in perspective is embedded in the different facets of the talent management process in terms of attracting diverse (beyond genders) talent and ensuring development and growth in their careers.

‘Equity’ is the third pillar which aims to provide equal access to opportunities and create an atmosphere of zero tolerance for discrimination and harassment. We have developed several equity policies and practices to address this, like flexible working guidelines, parental leave policy, pay equity between genders. We are also developing various programs to strengthen the prevention of sexual harassment and discrimination.

The fourth pillar is what we call an ‘Inclusive Culture’. Given that inclusive leadership behavior has become the foundation of leadership expectations, we want to ensure that the process starts with the leaders themselves. Accordingly, leaders are expected to start behaving more inclusively and adopt an inclusive mindset, thereby enabling us to create an inclusive work culture. We have started two programs called 'Leading Inclusively’ and ‘Unconscious Bias’, both with the objective of raising inclusiveness in our culture.

What would you advise young leaders and entrepreneurs in the HR space today?

Every business has its unique challenges and needs. Young leaders and entrepreneurs in the HR space have to make sure that the people's agenda is well connected with the evolving needs and priorities of the business. Although every industry differs in terms of its agendas and challenges, many of the issues we are facing are similar across industries. For instance, every company is currently preoccupied with diversity and inclusion as the world puts increasing focus on a broad-based sustainability agenda.   Undoubtedly DE&I will remain to be a key priority in every company’s board.  DE&I is a complex and continually evolving agenda, hence young HR professionals should continue to learn and put in place the relevant practices in their organization in advancing its strategic importance.

Another advice for young HR professionals is to stay abreast and learn more about  deploying AI and a data analytics approach to developing a business case, illustrating the business impact from implementing people process and programs and to making business and organization decisions. The data-driven approach is a developing field, but it is now at the core of HR  function, which is traditionally more reliant on qualitative metrics. With the technology of Power BI, it is not difficult for us to develop predictive analysis, deploy a people matrix as part of the strategic business planning and use data analytics in our pitch to business leaders.