makings of an industry leader in China, The

China Staff, Dec 2004/Jan 2005 by Caplan, Jessica

For Carl Bian of Mead Johnson China, a key challenge as the HR director of a rapidly growing company has been attracting and retaining his staff in China's competitive marketplace. The winner of China STAFF'S China HR Manager of the Year award tells Jessica Caplan how the company overcame difficult conditions and better aligned itself with headquarters.

When Carl Bian joined Mead Johnson China (a Bristol-Myers Squibb Company) five years ago, the company was merely a small player in the industry. Today, the nutrition company is a key player in the industry, boasting a stronger market share in the past year than ever before.

But, says Bian, the company's success did not come smoothly. Bian tells of the company's relocation from Shanghai to Guangzhou roughly five years ago: "We were a small player in China, with a very small market share. The organisation was weak, and key talent were making the decision to resign or leave."

Indeed, Bian's foremost challenge from the outset was finding, retaining and developing the right people who would help drive business growth. To this end, Bian and the Mead Johnson China Leadership Team concentrated far-reaching efforts on this goal, attacking the issue from all sides. Bian was instrumental in instigating the overhaul of the company's performance management system, leadership development and change management, and continues to finetune the company's HR strategy as new challenges arise.

Aligning PMS with headquarters

One of the first tasks Bian faced in his retention efforts was setting up a practical performance management system (PMS) in China that aligned with headquarters' system. There were many cultural conflicts in this respect, says Bian, because people in China typically prioritise relationships over processes.

In the past five years since the company instituted an improved PMS, HR has supported healthy behavioural assessments and promotion in the organisation. One of the most critical elements of the process, says Bian, is feedback and coaching. Position profiles, or job descriptions are used to help line managers provide the necessary feedback and support to subordinates or supervisors on a regular basis. Furthermore, both an annual review and midyear review provide line managers and staff the opportunity to formally review progress in performance results and behavior improvement areas.

The new system also serves as a valuable career development tool. "Title inflation" - whereby companies inflate employees' titles in order to give the semblance of promotion - is common in China, says Bian. But Mead Johnson does not want to simply pass off meaningless promotions. Instead, the internal process developed by the company helps people understand their career development beyond mere title promotion, says Bian.

The manager coaches the subordinate in a career dialogue, Bian explains. In doing so, the employee gains a real understanding of career development. The HR and line managers also help staff engage in gap analysis of competencies and leadership behaviour.

"It's very tough because it's time-consuming to instill those modern concepts in all local staff," admits Bian, adding that he does occasionally receive complaints from uncomfortable line managers about the burden of the new system. But ultimately, the advantages far surpass these burdens, he says. Furthermore, to help employees meet the requirements of the process, the company provides time resource allocation training to employees.

Moreover, feedback and coaching do not have to be time-consuming. If feedback and coaching are provided routinely, in regular meetings, then each session can be as brief as one to two minutes, Bian says.

The platform of this initiative, explains Bian, is that "position profiles are critical in helping transparency and involving employees, through selfdiscipline and motivation, in their own career development."

Facilitating change management

Another result of the company's significant growth over the past five years was the need for change management to facilitate the move away from a traditional management style, says Bian.

The company's growth necessitated the hiring of many new people, as well as the development of the old people, explains Bian. Even employees who remained in the same positions needed to acquire new skills to adapt to the changing environment. For example, says Bian, the overarching responsibility of a sales manager in 1999 or 2000 was to sell as much as possible, due to the company's weaker positioning at the time. The issue then was survival.

Conversely post-2001, which Bian describes as a period of "healthy, quick growth," a sales manager faced a slew of other issues; namely, how to reinforce the company's position, keep brand development healthy and align with the marketing team to sell and provide a superior service.

In order to facilitate change management, HR rolled out the leadership program entitled "Learning to Lead." Employees were asked to fill out a questionnaire on topics such as employees' responsibilities in their current position last year, their current position's new requirements this year, the key differences in responsibilities and challenges between the two years, the competencies required in the same position in a different time period and the employee's future role in the short term. Employees' responses then provided a framework to help employees achieve the goals and requirements of their current or even new positions.