In the digital era, technology plays a significant role and has an impact on all sectors including private organizations to adapt themselves to cope with dynamic changes. It is undeniable that one of the key factors to drive organizations successfully is “People” as Miss Sarinra Wongsuppaluk, Chief Human Resources Officer of True Corporation Plc., has shared her HR knowledge and experience of telecom-tech company in Techsauce Global Summit 2023, the Southeast Asia’s Premier International Technology Conference which was held recently at Queen Sirikit Convention Center.
Future Workplace must create “Happiness – Community – Creativity”
Khun Sarinra pictured that the workplace of the future must be a place where employees work happily, especially at the millennials’ company. How do we want this group of people to create values in a crucial role, succeed in their career path and work in the organization happily and in a sustainable way? Meanwhile, we need to build a community where everyone feels connected as a part of the society. This means employees can work from anywhere, but they are still connected and have a platform to talk to each other efficiently. In addition, the new world is about collaboration and innovation. We need to build workplace where employees can showcase their potentials and capabilities based on the “innovative culture”, encouraging people to continuously create new things.
Future Leaders must be always ready – fit into your own roadmap – learn together
In a workplace with a work-inspired atmosphere, how do we see people being ready to be a leader? Khun Sarinra said, “The best thing is to find internally hidden talents who are ready to face new challenges and we support them to do greater things and be successful. Leaders of the future must prepare themselves ready all the time, have ability to learn and enhance skills including leadership, managing people, power skill, critical thinking to solve problems, tech-savvy and story-telling not just only communication. Moreover, don’t forget to reinvent new jobs, reskill and upskill to get into the world of new career. The company creates opportunities as well as supports employees’ learning and growth, but employees owe for the career themselves and learn how to fit into their own road happily.”
Khun Sarinra added, “The company can prepare future leaders. We should have “reverse mentor” which is exchanging knowledge and experience between “mentor” as a team leader and “mentee” as a team employee knowing a lot of new things. The mentor, meanwhile, helps the mentee grow. Furthermore, it is about ecosystem. We need to breakthrough by not working in a silo. And importantly, mentorship must be fun. We need to make it enjoyable. Last but not least, every time you start the process, you need to ask about a goal. What is the goal that the mentee wants to achieve? For the mentorship, it’s not like you ask questions and that’s the end of one hour.”
Create a Strong Corporate Culture and Transform into Digital Organization.
“Working society is community where everyone could share their inspirations, connecting closely with one another. At True Corporation, we are determined to strengthen our corporate culture and instill the 4C Values consisted of COMPASSION – Concern about others and the community as if you think of yourself, CREDIBILITY – Build trust from the determination for success, CO-CREATION – Unite into one force with collaboration among alliances and COURAGE – Dare to think and execute out of the box”.
“Lately, True Corporation has just went through one of the biggest amalgamations in the Southeast Asia. True-dtac have been merged for 6 months. Definitely, the most challenging and the most crucial thing is about “culture”. It is found that we have both similarities and differences. Most importantly, how we are going to maintain the excellent similarities and manage differences so that we can live together. After conducting Organization Health Index with employees and a mirror workshop of top executives, we have come out with 3 common things;
- We need to be ONE TEAM.
- We want to be a high-performance culture.
- We want to focus on our customers.
We have driven initiatives for the organization culture.
- Leader as a coach – Top executives need to talk and engage with people. This is very important.
- Internal communication – Every change is about communication so people know what the company is doing, based on the 4C values and sharing their inspirations.
- Hackathon, a creative competition for staff who have common interest to continuously create innovations and further develop start-up business.
- Field visit of management to give moral support to employees, especially the front line who will pass on 4C values to our customers.
- Culture Igniter – Representatives from each department, passing on the organization culture to employees. They will be the one who give us feedback of what we need to do more or to do less.
We need to create culture awareness everywhere, make it fun and must be able to measure the result such as our Pulse Survey conducted in every 3 months or even sending thumbs up stickers via the internal digital platform “TrueConnect” to gain rewards or extra days off.
“Culture is very crucial and there is no fixed formula. You have to lead it by heart, so it can be successful.”, Khun Sarinra concluded.