Blurring the Lines of the Traditional Employer/Employee Relationship in Hong Kong
- Date:
- 2 April 2015
In March, the Chapman Consulting Group facilitated two APAC Talent Leaders’ groups with Moody’s and Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong. Both networking meetings were cross-industrial, and featured a great diversity of TA and TM Leaders from companies such as AXA, Barclays, BASF, Credit Suisse, Dell, Deutsche Bank, Estee Lauder, Nomura, Schneider Electric, Schroders, Standard Chartered Bank, Telstra, UBS, Verizon and Zurich Insurance.
The Growth of the Internal Headhunter Function in Asia
At the TA Leaders’ meeting at Moody’s, the group discussed a broad array of topics spanning from diversity to application tracking systems to social media and employee branding. One of the key themes throughout the meeting was the increasing maturity of the internal recruitment function within multinational organisations in Asia. Some companies shared experiences of setting up an internal headhunting function, which charged the business for its services, and this discouraged line managers from engaging the TA function in ‘window shopping’ exercises. However, the model is tough to manage, since the headhunter mentality could lead to a lack of collaboration and sharing of information between individual team members; therefore, it was imperative to set up a culture - or indeed a formal service agreement based on measurement of team KPIs - to instil a ‘business first’ mentality. In one TA Leader’s experience, it took two quarters before the model worked, and the company found the right mix of people for the roles.
All TA Leaders agreed that upgrading the internal headhunting function is in itself not a panacea, it requires an ongoing improvement in stakeholder management of all interested parties. For instance, with the business itself, the relationship works best where the line manager takes accountability for the hire and TA acts as a facilitator. In one case study, hiring managers themselves have KPIs to own the recruitment function and even handle market mapping, rather than sitting there and asking TA for their best people each time. This has led to a system whereby an internal headhunter is tasked with taking new joiners out for a coffee soon after they start in the company to validate organisational charts, assess the reputation of external headhunters, and to encourage further direct referrals. In a similar example of stakeholder management, another TA Leader has adopted a policy of longer-term relationship-building between internal and external headhunters, referring to externals as ‘recruitment partners’ rather than ‘vendors’, and breaking down the somewhat imperious ‘us and them’ mentality that something acts as a barrier to successful outcomes.
The most interesting new development in the realm of the internal recruiting function is in headhunting employees from your own company, to move them into another team internally. One regional TA Leader gave a fascinating case study about this process, whereby an employee can be headhunted, so long as they ticked a box labelled ‘open to internal options’ as part of their last talent review process. The company has instigated a rule that an employee can be approached for a first-round interview without that employee’s manager being told. The manager is only told about it if the interview moves forward to the second stage, at which point the headhunter can also have a structured discussion with the manager about how to back-fill that employee’s position if they do end up leaving his or her team. This creative approach has both supporters and detractors within the business, so it’s not clear whether the system will be allowed to continue, but it has allowed TA to play a much more important part in Talent Management and Mobility than ever before. Before the policy was in place, these conversations only took place in counter-offer situations where employees had already threatened to resign. It will be interesting to see if other companies adopt this somewhat controversial approach.
