Only when employees grow can the company grow

Axtor is the smart card and terminal division of the former French Schlumberger company, which became a separate company in 2003. Since the first memory smart card and the first microprocessor smart card, Axtor has been a leader in the global smart card industry in designing applications, developing solutions and delivering innovative technologies. As of last year, Axtor has successfully maintained the No. 1 position in the global market of microprocessor cards for three consecutive years.

Despite this outstanding performance, Axto's employees are young, with the average age of all employees in China being less than 35 years old. It brings together outstanding talents from various countries such as the United States, France, Malaysia, China, etc. Helping employees develop is the secret of YASTOR's ability to recruit talents. It is for this reason that the company's average turnover rate is 10%, far below the industry average. In 2003, Alastor was awarded the title of "Excellent Employer".

The company's Asia president, Dili Chen, and Asia's human resources director, Marc Ribas, are examples of the company's emphasis on employee development. Today, the two of them have served the company for 19 and 14 years respectively. Chen Dili said that the company has grown to this day, and its growth has benefited from the growth of its employees.

Capture people with high growth potential

How to connect employee growth with company growth?

Chen Dili: According to survey results, employees often leave the company because of salary problems, but when he chooses a company, whether the company can help him grow is the most important criterion. Therefore, we will not try to retain the employee when he is about to leave, but give him the maximum space to expand himself during his service to the company.

We encourage employees to expand their careers, provided that he does at least his job well, so that the company will give him enough credit to put him in a new environment. Generally speaking, employees have the desire to develop themselves, but also the ability to choose new fields of work. From the company's point of view, we don't worry about what the employee's work background is, but encourage them to try new jobs, tell them which skills they should focus on, and provide them with opportunities to learn so that they may have new possibilities for development. There was once a Taiwanese employee who majored in chemical engineering. After joining the company, he worked in the banking sector and achieved good results. The company wanted to train him and put him in a more senior position, but found that his English was not very good, so we encouraged him to learn English. Now he is the general manager of one of the company's factories.

Of course, some employees are not satisfied with the company's arrangements, or have their own career development ideas. In this case, we will communicate with him to understand his strengths. If he wants to try a new job, we will arrange for him to have a trial job in the new department, then ask him how he feels about the trial job, evaluate his performance, and make a transfer decision based on the evaluation results. If he is not satisfied with the company's transfer to him, we will not force him, because forcing him to do the work he does not want to do, he will not do it well. There was once an employee at the front desk who had many career dreams and proposed to do a sales job. I chatted with her and asked her why she wanted to do sales, if she knew sales, and why she thought she was suitable for the job. After the chat, she felt that her previous understanding of sales was wrong, but she is very outgoing and likes to deal with people, so we helped her find a position that could give full play to her advantages and transferred her to the personnel department.

Generally speaking, when a new employee comes into the company, we will give him a promise: if you perform well, the company will give you the opportunity to arrange a transfer after a year or half a year.

How do you determine if a new employee has developmental potential?

Mark: Capturing candidates with high growth potential is one of the most important criteria for companies to recruit. When we recruit new employees, we try to take a long-term view to see what he can do in the future, what kind of positions he can take, or at least grow up in this environment.

Most of the employees recruited by the company are fresh graduates, because fresh graduates are more receptive to the company's culture, and the company will give them opportunities to grow in this atmosphere. We find high-potential objects by holding events. For example, our "SIMagine Global GSM and JAVA Card Application Development Contest" has been successfully held for six sessions in China. The gold medal of last year's contest was won by students from Beihang University. The content of the competition is to require participants to develop wireless application solutions for SIM cards based on Java technology. On the one hand, the company has developed the application functions of SIM cards and expanded new research and development directions through this competition; at the same time, we have also found strong competitors in the competition, and some of these people will become employees of the company.

In addition, the company will target one to three key universities for recruitment. The students in these colleges are very capable, and the companies are well-known in these schools. We will establish long-term relationships with these colleges and universities, so that recruitment is guaranteed. From the current point of view, nearly half of the new employees will come from these key universities, such as Tsinghua University and Peking University.

The company also has an internship program to screen students. Half of the students who interned with us last year have become full-time employees of the company.

We will also recruit people with work experience, and some of the company's employees have worked in Microsoft and IBM. Among the newly recruited employees last year, the ratio of students to those with work experience was about 7:3.

Employee growth comes first

After recruiting new employees, how does the company help them grow?

Mark: In our company, employees develop careers in three directions: The first is function. Employees can choose to develop in various fields such as marketing, personnel, sales, finance, and technology. The second is the different business units. For example, it varies between different sectors such as the mobile communication sector, the banking sector, and the public utilities sector. The third is the transformation of the region. Of course, it is very difficult to carry out three transformations on a certain employee at the same time. Imagine sending someone from Beijing's technical department to work in Russia's finance department to communicate with an unfamiliar salesperson. Generally, it starts from one or two directions, and after gradually familiarizing itself with all aspects of the new job, other plans can be made.

When it comes to helping employees develop, it is necessary to introduce the company's online employee management system SLP3. After a new employee comes in, the personnel department will collect his photo, resume and some personal information, including his major, preferences, future career expectations, etc., and upload it to this system, his boss and human resources. Department can see. And the system will keep track of the development of employees. For example, an employee worked in Beijing for a period of time and was later transferred to France as a financial control assistant. All these contents can be found online.

The work plans and goals formulated by the employees at the beginning of the year, the evaluation results at the end of the year, as well as the development plans for the coming year, the expected development direction, etc., will be displayed online, including the goals that the employees have achieved and failed to achieve, the strengths and weaknesses of the employees, and their plans for the next year. where to develop etc. Even some work-related life content will be reflected in it. For example, if an employee plans to have a child next year, and he does not want to be transferred to another place or work in another department, his wish will be transmitted online, and his boss can see it. Whenever the company wants to give an employee a new position, his boss will call up his record online and have a complete picture of the person.

The development opportunities provided by the company to employees have no geographical and position boundaries, and their development will not be restricted because of their professional background. We are willing to let employees develop their abilities in new positions. For example, some employees worked as technical support in Shanghai in 2000, were transferred to France in 2001 for personal development of banks, and were recently transferred back to China. We also have some employees who have just joined the company and were placed elsewhere. Not long ago, a newly recruited female employee from the personnel department in Beijing started her new job in a French town, and a Taiwanese started working in Paris. The company pays more attention to the diversity of employee development. As long as he has the ability and works hard, the company will provide him with development opportunities. This is the culture of the company, globally. Almost half of our HR staff were not from the HR department before, but were developed later.

Examples of this abound. In my own experience, before I came to the company, I worked in a bank in France, where all the key positions in the company were local French people, and there was some kind of relationship between many executives. At Alastor, our middle and senior management come from all over the world, including Chinese, Malaysian, French, etc. Because I am determined to develop in the human resources field, I did not choose to work in multiple different departments. But the company has provided me with many opportunities to complete different work tasks in different regions and manage people in different business units. For example, my last job location was South America, where at least half of my working time was dealing with the local union, coordinating issues between the union and the company. Now the work content in Beijing is very different, the main work is to recruit new employees and help them develop. The content of my work is constantly changing with the different work locations and business units I manage.

Chen Dili: My experience is the same. Before joining the company, I worked for a Singapore company and came to Schlumberger in 1986 as an application engineer. Two years later, the company gave me training and sent me to Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Later, I was transferred to Korea to train people who were much older than me. Although I have the expertise to allow the company to entrust me with this task, it is still risky for the company to do so because of my low level.

A year later, I changed my field of work as a project manager, and this was my first opportunity to develop my leadership skills. After that, the company did not directly promote me to management, but sent me to work in the marketing department to develop my ability to deal with customers. In Marketing, I was transferred to Australia to do business when I was not yet 30 years old. It is conceivable that the company has provided many opportunities for young people like me.

For so many years in the company, I have worked in seven places including Korea, Taiwan, Beijing, Australia, and India. I have tried many departments and have also done many jobs. That's how I grew up, and I also provide this opportunity to my subordinates. When I see that they can complete their tasks well, I increase the power of empowerment and let them take the initiative to do something to expand themselves. They will also contribute to the company after they have obtained these opportunities. As the company grows, it will provide them with more opportunities for employees to grow. Therefore, helping employees grow is the first priority in the company.

Frankly speaking, when I am in this position now, there will be headhunters coming to me, two or three times a year, but I still insist on staying in the company.

What attracts me is the company's trust in its employees and the opportunities for employees to develop. No one will stop you from doing things here, there are no boundaries for development, the boundaries are set by yourself. Of course, people make mistakes, and so do employees. But the company believes that as long as employees can learn from their mistakes, it's fine, let them learn by trying, and then learning can help the company grow. In such an environment, we will not think it is very painful to go to work every day, and we will actively do it when we have a task. It can be said that work has become a part of employees' lives.

Will there be any employees complaining about why they let others work overseas and not themselves?

Chen Dili: There are complaints, but not everyone can go. The implementation of the system is conditional. It is not guaranteed that everyone can be sent abroad. It is necessary to see whether the employees have completed their work well and how much they have contributed to the company according to the performance appraisal results.

On the other hand, the company system is continuous, so that everyone can be treated equally and everyone will have a chance. When we made the decision to send, the staff knew how we made the decision, on what criteria, and why this person was chosen to go abroad, so that they would respect my decision without being suspicious.

If an employee comes to me with a question, I can also directly answer why he gave others a chance this time instead of you. We have reasons to be openly convincing.

What is the company's succession plan?

Chen Dili: The company records and evaluates everyone's performance from the very beginning. The content of the assessment includes 30 items such as the ability to communicate with people and the ability to develop subordinates. Each ability is divided into four levels from A to D, and half of the assessments are soft skills assessments. After the evaluation, the results will be uploaded online as a basis for selecting a successor. This online evaluation method is unique, and all employees are subject to evaluation, which has become a system of the company.

Succession planning is closely linked to potential assessment. The content of potential assessment includes leadership, work performance, communication ability, analytical ability, work attitude, creativity and so on. Generally speaking, the boss and the employee conduct the evaluation together.

The management of the four departments, Legal, HR, Finance and IT, is a rectangular structure, with employees under the dual supervision of both geographic and functional leadership. Their functional leadership is in France. When employees in these departments have problems, they can report the situation to functional leaders across regions, so that the headquarters can understand what happened in the company. It is also a regulatory balance.

There are two to three candidates for each key position within the company, and incumbents have specific development plans for these candidates. As a candidate, there will be targeted training courses. There are times when employees don't even know they've been on the list because the company re-evaluates the candidates every quarter to see if they need to be adjusted. If the candidate is adjusted in the reassessment, be clear why the person was chosen in the first place and why it is being replaced now.

Choose training according to the development direction

If the company lets employees develop, it will bring great challenges to the training work. What is Alastor's training system like?

Mark: At the end of each year, the employee and his boss will analyze two aspects of the employee's work performance: one is the advantages that can be maintained and exerted at work, and the other is the character and ability. Inadequate, which needs to be further made up and improved. Through such analysis, employees can get a development direction, according to which to formulate the training plan for the next year.

The company's training mainly falls into three categories: internal training, online training and on-the-job coaching. In addition, we will also arrange for employees to participate in external training according to their needs. Because we formulate a development plan every year, employees will also put forward the training they want to participate in, and they can also freely choose the inter-departmental courses arranged by the company. But if his choice has nothing to do with his current job, and it is not his development direction, we will put it up with him and encourage him to take some courses related to his current job.

The company does not set a rigid rule on how much training employees should take each year, but we require employees to participate in training every year, and these trainings are confirmed by his boss and linked to his career development.

Not much to say about general training, on-the-job coaching is a unique training method for the company. When a new employee enters the company, we will arrange an employee who has been in the company for at least three years to form a one-on-one pair with him, and the old employee is his mentor. Mentors have different roles from supervisors and bosses. The new employee just came to the company and is not familiar with the working environment. Through the communication between the two, the mentor helps the new employee to solve possible questions, so that the new employee can understand and become familiar with the company's culture more quickly.

Not long ago, a newly recruited Chinese employee was sent to work in France, and I was his mentor. He had just graduated, had no work experience, and was in an unfamiliar environment where it was difficult for him to work. He would contact me almost twice a week to give him some guidance.

Roughly 20% of employees in the company now have mentors.

Dili Chen: Because I have worked in three different business units, I have also had three mentors to help me familiarize myself with the environment. Three different departments, three different teams, through the guidance of my mentor, I know who to contact in the new environment and where to get information, which is very important to me.

How often do mentors communicate with employees?

Chen Dili: In general, mentors and new employees have monthly conversations. But this kind of communication doesn’t have to be a formal one. If a new employee has a problem, they can always find a mentor for help and solve the problem over a meal or a cup of tea. For new employees, coming to a new department or a new place will become an obstacle for them to start their work. Especially for newly graduated employees, they have no work experience and may have greater barriers to communication. At this time, the help of mentors is very useful.