BAT

Laila Ngo

Laila Ngo is a dedicated HR professional, fostering inclusivity and prioritizing employee well-being. With a decade of international experience in HR strategy, DEI, and talent development, she is currently driving the digital transformation at BAT for A Better Tomorrow.

1. What are some of the major challenges and trends that have been impacting the HR industry lately?

There are a few things that I think is the hot topic right now from an HR perspective. First is still the concept of total wellbeing and how this strategy is becoming more and more important in having a strong team to deliver business results. HR policies and interventions are starting to evolve and more and more organizations are looking into offering different support for all facets of wellbeing (social, financial, emotional etc.).

I think Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) while not a trend will continue to be an important and evolving facet for HR and business leaders. It would be critical for organizations to get their DEIB strategy right and integrated to all employee life cycle. I think it would be crucial for organizations to relook at their people practices and evaluate how inclusive it is. From recruitment, promotions, benefits, workplace design etc. This has the opportunity to really unleash talent potential and innovation.

Lastly and I think this will continue to be debated for a while, in our post COVID world how do we actually get remote working and hybrid work right? In the last few months, I have seen some big company proponents of remote working backtrack their policy and everyone seems to be doing the happy medium of 3 days return to work policy. I think there is a big opportunity for each organization to figure out what is right for them and for business units and teams. There is opportunity to use data here to capture what impacts engagement, productivity and collaboration rather than a broad stroke approach.

2. What keeps you up at night when it comes to some of the major predicaments in the HR industry?

The last 3 years has been quite interesting for HR, the industry continue to be tested with Pandemic, ever changing workforce dynamic (quiet quitting, great resignation, career cushioning) and economic challenges and we cannot seem to get a break.

The role continues to evolve and what keeps on my toes is how fast things change while we are expected to continue to deliver the constants (keep the lights on and continue HR process wheels running). I think it would be critical for HR to be closer to the data, get the insight, catch the trend, and build targeted interventions. It’s critical for us HR professional to upskill ourselves and have a closer pulse on how the business and people are doing, be more proactive and be ready for the next curveball to ensure we support business sustainability.

3. Can you tell us about the latest project that you have been working on and what are some of the technological and process elements that you leveraged to make the project successful?

One of the elements I am excited about is the work on data analytics and being more of a data driven function. When I was in Vietnam, we looked at a few elements when it came to well-being looking into self-reporting of time spent in meetings, focus hours and line manager engagement. It allowed us to have specific people intervention to address how we can drive efficiency and productivity while still giving people their time back and really pushing for our wellbeing agenda.

“There is also more and more technology being available to improve and support hybrid and remote workplace strategies, it would be interesting how the whole metaverse play out and immersive technologies evolve”

I think with data and technology being democratised there is huge space for HR to bring this into play and automate many of our processes. From employee listening, better visualization of data and insight and even dabble on app building. I have worked on small projects in powerApp that focuses on centralizing data, approvals and its good tests and pilots before investing in heavy systems.

I think there is endless opportunity of building smarter, automated process if we keep ourselves up to date on what technology is out there, and how you can apply it to your work.

4. What are some of the technological trends that excite you for the future of the HR industry? 

I am excited about the upcoming CoPilot/AI trend happening in the corporate space. I am excited on how we can use this capability in our HR work and how it could enable engagement and improving employee experience.

There is also more and more technology being available to improve and support hybrid and remote workplace strategies, it would be interesting how the whole metaverse play out and immersive technologies evolve.

People Analytics is not new but its getting more sophisticated and the modelling capability for predictive elements is becoming more reliable. With AI and machine learning models, we can process data faster and more effectively than ever before.

There is a lot of way technology can shape how HR function in the future, so the critical aspects would be how intentional business are when it comes to interfaces that matter. Technology is one thing, but it is not a direct replacement of human interaction.