We consider AIA employees our best brand ambassadors: AIA Insurance HR Director

Chathuri Munaweera Attorney-at-law, HR Director of AIA Insurance Sri Lanka talks about AIA’s mission in Sri Lanka, and also about some of the people practices that make AIA one of the best companies to work for. Excerpts of the interview

How would you characterize AIA insurance and what are its core principles?
I would say AIA Insurance as a very ambitious Company with goals set to achieve sustainable quality market leadership. We are a part of the AIA Group, one of the world’s largest life insurers and our Global Vision is to be the pre-eminent life insurance provider in the Asia Pacific region.  This is our strategic as well as our business focus.  

Our core principle or our operating philosophy represents the ‘How’ or manner in which we set out to achieve our business focus.  That is, doing the right thing, the right way with the right people, which we believe will lead to the right results. 

AIA was awarded a Great Place to Work and how was this achieved?
AIA achieved the title Great Place to Work, consecutively from 2013 to 2016 and our people’s confidence that the company is a Great Place to Work has remained unchallenged through some tough times. We believe this is because the Company concentrates on a few fundamentals in creating a great place to work, and continues to outshine at it. Primarily, we attribute this success to our leaders and the trusting work environments they create for their people.  It is through our leaders at every level that our people experience a great place to work.  AIA supports its leaders to demonstrate three leadership essentials at work: that is clarity, courage and humanity.  Clarify is essential for our people to know what we need to achieve, what needs to be done and how to get there.  

Courage allows us to be bold to do the right thing and stay on course even when things get tough and be humble enough to be flexible to adjust to changing environments.  Humanity is about care and trust, an environment of mutual trust essential for superior performance.   We consider our employees our best brand ambassadors and it is important therefore that they are proud to be a part of AIA.  The business of life insurance is very much about people.  Our employees are regularly trained and developed to deliver superior service and proud to be a part of the Company that allows them to provide the best possible service to our customers. 

What is your employee value proposition?
Our employee value proposition is built around making sure that employees have peace of mind to come to work, support their education and career growth and if they experience any personal issue, they know that they can reach out to the company for support.  For example, our maternity policies go way beyond just providing minimum levels of leave – it extends way beyond that and our female employees are allowed to adjust their work times to balance critical periods of motherhood.   

The health and wellness of our employees are important to us. Hence regular medical checkups not just for employees but family members are arranged by the company.  Encouraging quality time away with family to spend a quality weekend at a 5-star hotel, is a regular annual item to show our appreciation not just to the employee but to the family on their contribution to work. 

Beyond our commercial Vision, we have a larger purpose of being an entity that cares about the social and economic development of the country as a whole.  AIA’s employees are allowed to be a part of the company’s contribution to the society.  Our shareholders allow us to spend millions every year in extending education facilities of those less privileged children.  We contribute very much towards good health and wellbeing of our stakeholders.  Our employees take pride in being able to play their role in these activities, be it through financial contributions or contributions of time and effort.  They are even provided ‘time out’ with paid leave just to take part in these activities.  

 
Could you explain the people development practices that differentiate AIA from other companies? 
Developing our people and allowing them to grow in their careers play a central role in our value proposition.  Our approach is twofold – As I mentioned below, we look to our leaders to play a crucial role in making our people understand their role expectations and feel that they are able to give their best at work every day.  Hence developing our leaders is vital to us and we invest considerably in that.  “AIA Manager” is our flagship leadership development journey where our leaders go through a series of learning that emphasizes the company’s strategic priorities, self-awareness, building optimal working relationships, delegation and empowerment. These are some of the key facets of leading high-performance teams at AIA.  At AIA, coaching is our preferred leadership style, and our managers attend tailor made programs to learn the best of class techniques in coaching. Among many training interventions we have for our people, we even have programs focused on developing individual contributors. Young people who still don’t manage teams but who are clear about what is expected of them. 

In our people development endeavors, we follow a 70:20:10 model, a globally accepted methodology.  We promote career guidance to university students for the greater good of society in making commercially savvy graduates. Our internships are not just ‘work and learn experiences’ but extends to residential workshops with star quality trainers and hotels.  These undergraduates are not obliged in any way to join AIA post their experiences, but invariably they become some of our best good will ambassadors where ever they are in the commercial world.

AIA culture can be described as high performance, innovative, creative and diverse. How can this be achieved and maintained?
Consistent focus on few that matters most. The Aspiration to deliver higher performance is very much a part of ‘business as usual’ at AIA.   Any intervention we do, whether it is learning, recognition or a celebration, has the focus on our long term Vision and the key activities we concentrate in achieving it. As explained above, at AIA high performance is not just about delivering a financial matrix this year and next year – It is about sustainable quality growth delivered in an environment of care and respect and with leaders internally developed to enable this.    

How serious is succession planning within the group and company?
Developing our talent pool of next generation leaders from within is a key part of our long-term strategy. We do follow a robust process, which we call Organization & People Review (OPR) where a pool of ‘ready now’ and ‘ready later’ leaders are identified and nurtured to take on larger responsibilities.  

What is important for us is our ORR process’s practical relevance and application. To achieve our Vision we need to develop talent from within, if we want to raise the bar.  Our OPR process takes into account not just an individual’s own career aspirations but his or her level of engagement with the company and the capability development needed to fill a particular role or function in future. Through this process we have been able to identify the ‘talent realities’ within our organization, what talent we have, what talent we don’t and what we need to buy and build.Our OPR process is linked to clear measurable outcomes.  Our ambition is to make sure that all the key senior leadership positions in the Company have a ready now successor and 65% of our leaders are promoted from within by the year 2018.  Hence there is a clear measure of our success and a timeline attached to it. 

What are the relevant metrics to measure the success of employee roles and how is it aligned with achieving AIA’s goals and objectives?
We measure our employees’ success in achieving their goals by way of a process that is uniquely known at AIA as ‘Performance Development Dialogue.’ As the term implies, this shifts the focus from assessing performance to developing our people to be the best they can be. Our focus is achieving long term sustainable business results, and to this effect, we encourage our employees to challenge status quo and make a step change in the how they think and do things. “How” we deliver is equally important to “what” we deliver. 

While ‘what’ they need to deliver is linked to our strategic priorities, our Operating Philosophy is once again the guiding principle on ‘how’ they will deliver.  For each of us to be successful, we need to be connected and aligned with the broader goals and also demonstrate behaviours that are in alignment with our operating philosophy of “Doing the Right Thing in the Right Way with the Right People … and the right results will come”.

How are you dealing with the millennial challenge as a company?
Sixty five percent of our staff are below 35 years, so as an employer, we understand that what motivates Gen Y or millennials now are very different from what motivated employees a decade ago. This generation looks at working environments, opportunities to learn and grow, and recognition for a job well done among other things. All our people initiatives are developed with the aim of being the best-in-class employer. 

We plan several engagement initiatives each year which spans from awards ceremonies to recognize top performers, organizing talent and quiz competitions for fun interactions, to engaging employees in CR projects, which were previously mentioned. This gives them the opportunity to get involved in a worthy cause. Our continuous focus to build a sense of trust, hopefulness, inclusiveness and pride in our people has helped us retain our employees and has also led them to recommend AIA as a Great Place to Work. 
(The writer is a CIMA Passed Finalist, a graduate in Financial Management (UK) and currently reading for a master’s degree in Financial Analysis in the UK)