Highlights from Campaign Leading Change 2022

Our editors have compiled some highlights from Campaign Leading Change, held virtually on June 1st:

EFFECTING A NEW MANDATE FOR CHANGE

“Despite what we as leaders saying, there isn't enough communication. It can never be enough, and there is clearly scope for a lot more transparency in the impact of the policies. There are different experiences for people and that experience can often shape your perception that things are not alright. But for eight people it may be good experiences and for two people it may be bad experience, but the key thing is for the organization to be able to spot it and call it out, because mass behavior chain doesn't come overnight. But I'm happy to see [awareness and impact] generally moving in the right direction. But there’s definitely a need for more shared knowledge of data.”

—Ashutosh Srivastava, CEO, GroupM APAC 

"I would say that policies and processes are really important for clarity and for transparency. And I think where we hadn't implemented those kinds of things, we've started to do that. I concur with the findings of Kantar. They are consistent with what we are finding. You know what I'm not so worried about? The pace. As you know, we're talking about mindset shift and change of behaviors and not everyone wants to change their behavior. But what we can do is make them aware, and I think that's what the focus should be, and its where we are focused."

—Zarka Khan-Iltaf, chief talent officer, Mediabrands APAC 

"DE and I, I feel, has to be more than something we talk about. That comes from all the leadership on the ground and across the different layers of hierarchy – that they walk the talk and also take feedback. I think we agree that everyone is on the right trajectory with policies and values that affect behaviors and experiences. It’s interesting to see some commonality across agencies, which means that as an industry, we can hold hands and stand together stronger because there are common challenges that we can come together to address as one."

—Chloe Neo, CEO, OMG Singapore 

"With pay parity, we first start with the with the data. Are we at market, comparing ourselves with not just with our own industry but with all the people going to the client side and into the tech side of the business? We're constantly competing with companies or industries that may pay better than our industry. We need to look at those benchmarks and see where we’re at.  Another thing we need to look at is if we can really share salary benchmarks data among ourselves to make sure we are within level, so this will give us a better insight on how we're comparing pay for our people."

—Kevin Zhang, chief human resources officer, Havas Group APAC 

"I have a slightly different kind of perspective. Transparency is always the preferred currency, but not without any potential corrections or any actions behind it. You need to have data to accept all these pay ranges and all. But what do you do with this after that? Are we willing to invest? Are we willing to get correcting some of the wrongs? I also think you also need to look at really clear and concise communication, because whatever you say might not be the intended message that's received on the other end by the party."  

-Jolene Huang, chief talent officer, Publicis Groupe Singapore 

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LEADERSHIP AND MENTAL HEALTH 

"The role of leadership is critical. Leaders have to show mental health matters to them. Not just at the top, but for people managers and emerging leaders too. It is about having the aptitude and skill to communicate with people. It is critical to be able to listen to people when they are expressing issues or being able to pick those up from cues—both observed and spoken. I think it’s important for leaders to set the tone right."

—Zeeshan Khan, head of marketing, Legoland Malaysia

"It’s very important to be honest with ourselves. There’s always this expectation of being put-together and everything is great and as leaders nothing phases us and we’re 100% on all the time. This trickles down and our teams believe this is how they need to behave. Any conversation otherwise indicates vulnerability that is a weakness and lack of potential to be a future leader. Regardless of whether you’re a leader or on the way to becoming one, it is fine to feel and breaking those barriers and having those conversations starts with us."

—Charu Srivastava, deputy managing director, Redhill

"There are four key aspects of mental health 1. emotional. 2. physical (sleep, eating and exercise) 3. social (we have been locked in our homes for so long, that at a recent in-person conference I was over-stimulated) and 4. workplace mental health. The big questioin is, how do we recognise mental health issues safely? In Asia, people don’t speak up because they don’t feel safe. So, how do we recognise this and give people a safe space to discuss mental health? I have seen a lot of great initiatives from platforms and agencies, but it is not consistent. How we work together to support this mental health discussion is a very important topic."

—Rose Huskey, chief client officer, APAC, Wavemaker

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PANDEMIC PEOPLE LESSONS 

"The world changed very rapidly in a matter of days. Suddenly, the skillsets people needed were totally different. The way we had to build and invest in our people had to change and we had to do it quickly—there was no time for it. The whole work-from-anywhere culture was very different for us as established organisations. We didn’t realise when your work day started and home boundaries ended. We had to build the work culture and invest time and effort to ensure people new where the boundaries are and people knew how to work with each other. Then, everyone’s development needs changed. It’s not just tech and digital. Imagine getting someone becoming a leader of 20 people, when they haven’t met 19 of them. The final piece is wellness—and I can’t emphasise this enough—people need to believe there is investment from the organisation in their wellness."

—Monty Bharali, chief talent officer, India, Ogilvy

"Even during the pandemic, we took the opportunity to talk to our people closely to see how we could keep them in the organisation. We conducted a series of 'stay' interviews to see what motivates them and keeps them with Klook. First it is about their experience with their direct manager—whether they care about their growth and opportunities here—instead of just using them as resources. Another finding is the keen interest in growth—whether they can have different opportunities and exposure was key."

—Cary Shek, vice president, people, Klook 

"During the pandemic, everyone needed our service (online grocery delivery) and because of our hyper growth, many teams would burn out. Due to our open culture, we had a lot more conversations with our team leaders and managers about their teams and one thing that stood out—and we had taken for granted—was mental health. This is an area we have invested in over the past 24 months…we had in-house psychologists and it turned out to be popular. We also did things intentionally (to address employees’ mental health). I’m sure we all get on seven to 10 Zoom or teams calls, not allowing us to take a breath in between. We pushed our managers to set up these calls with no business purpose—to catch up with people just to have casual conversations."

—David Lim, SVP, marketing, Happy Fresh

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PASS HER THE MIC

“It's really no surprise that only 30% of speakers of global conferences are women. And this is in spite of the fact that there's a demand for it are 94% of the women in those same conferences say it's important to have other women in the lineup.”

"Here's my request to you. Take action. We all have a solution to something that's annoying the heck out of us. But we never really act on it because it's too small. No one's gonna listen, I'm just staff in this company. I'm just one person. But even the smallest actions can drive change. Because remember, less than a year ago, all I did was write two names. In a notebook. And today what we have is a movement. "

—Anna Soliman, Agency Development Lead, APAC, Meta 

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UNSUSTAINABALE PITCHING PRACTICES

“Number one in my rogue gallery is the Singapore whole of government creative tender that concluded in April 2020. In this day and age, we should not be seeing pitch reviews, where 162 agencies compete and then 100 agencies are added to rosters so that they can then once again pitch projects as and when they come up. This demonstrates a mindboggling wastage of precious resources like time, money, and human resources, both at the Ministry of Communication and Information, to review the entries and the vast number of agencies invited to win a place on the roster. I do not believe this process will get better work; there are lower costs such as environmental costs and causing burnout.”

—Julian Douglas, international CEO & vice chairman, VCCP

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PAY PARITY AND HIRING BIASES

“Over the years, leaders or hirers have been looking out for people with degrees. The hiring practice then become one where they went out and look for candidates, they automatically removed those without a degree. Or if someone comes in with less than a degree, they feel that the person does not need to be paid as much. But is that a fair way of gauging somebody's capability and ability to perform? Conversely, is that the right way to then pack them into salary brackets as well? That is why hiring practices now have a lot of biases that are conscious, but I think a lot more are unconscious for many reasons.”

—Charu Srivastava, deputy managing director, Redhill

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DEI MEASUREMENT

“What gets measured gets done. Leaders must integrate the values of DEI culture within the organization objectives, measuring those key performance indicators to help measure the progress. I think it's a combination of clear metrics for DEI, but also ensuring that the metrics measures behavior change. And that goes back to ensuring that the lived experience is making a difference and people are starting have those behavior shifts linked into broad training around unconscious bias.” 

—Trezelene Chan, Sustainable Transformation Practice Lead, Kantar