Talent development is a major focus at HKBN, where many employees are shareholders in the company. Managing their development became challenging as the number of HR systems multiplied through business acquisitions. The company needed better tools to empower its Talents to develop new skills for a changing business environment and to extend ownership.
We believe that we’ve been connecting pretty well with our Talents, but without a world-class system, we won’t be able to keep up the pace, especially as we continue to grow.
Co-Owner and Chief Talent & Purpose Officer
A partner with shared values.
HKBN wasn’t simply looking to swap out its old systems for a new one. The company wanted to transform practices, so that HR could better align business objectives across all HKBN entities. Important for HKBN was finding a system provider whose culture, including a laser-like focus on customer satisfaction, reflected HKBN’s own culture. Plus, it wanted a partner that it was proud to be associated with.
“When you are a talent-obsessed company like HKBN, you are going to look for partners that share your same philosophy,” says NiQ Lai, Co-Owner and Group CEO. “We jumped at the opportunity to work with Workday because of our common values. Plus, in Workday, we saw a system that met both our present and future needs.”
On time and on budget during a pandemic.
No one could have predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic would strike in the middle of the project, where HKBN needed to shift to all virtual over the course of three months. Still, HKBN pushed ahead for a smooth remote deployment, knowing that if it hit any problems, the Workday Community would be there to help as a trusted resource. It also found a great implementation partner in KPMG. The company met its go-live target and was able to improve engagement with frontline Talents at this critical moment— overcoming past issues from having no remote access to talent systems. HKBN achieved a 100 percent adoption rate of Workday in its Hong Kong offices after their first month of going live.
Mo Ngan, Assistant Officer for Talent Management says, “Even though COVID-19 affected all of us, we stuck to our tight schedule because we knew how important Workday was to the continued transformation of our business. We were all on the same page—and understood how Workday could bring something new and be really useful to everyone.”
With Workday, we saw that efficiency wasn’t just about automation. It was about simplifying workflows and using data analysis to make better decisions as a company.
Co-Owner and Chief Talent & Purpose Officer
Business agility in a changing world.
COVID-19 showed how quickly the world of business can change. With Workday, HKBN is making sure the company is agile enough to adapt to a transforming environment by carefully managing the development of its Talents. Today, through ownership dashboards, HKBN can identify and have a comprehensive view of employee ownership by function or group to formulate more effective and targeted engagement strategies.
The company has also created dashboards to help ensure its Talents are aligned with the needs of customers. In the public sector, for example, there is a greater requirement around the certifications of suppliers. With Workday, HKBN can track employee certifications and allocate the right resources to the right projects, which will improve their ability to drive more effective proposals.
Stronger engagement creates more business value.
As HKBN’s business continues to grow, the company recognizes the need to transform its approach to talent engagement. Connectedness is improving across the HKBN workforce. Regardless of the workforce distribution, with Talents working remotely, Workday is creating a strong sense of engagement and empowerment. That, in turn, is increasing efficiency and productivity at every level. “Our view is that greater engagement improves productivity,” says Lai. “That improvement could just be 1 percent—but that’s worth 100 million Hong Kong dollars to our business.”