Question 1

Up to 2012, EYZ was among South East Asia’s leading insurance companies. EYZ Group has 7 offices across 5 locations in SEA whilst being headquartered in Singapore. It enjoyed a good business track record and has been profitable until 2012. From that year, it started to experience declining growth.

A new CEO, Mr Robert Seah was appointed subsequently to revitalise the business and organisation. Under his leadership, a new growth strategy was instituted with the goal to turn around the business and bring it to new heights within 10 years. The company has the vision to become a leading regional insurance group rather than being content to focus on growing domestically.

To achieve the regional vision, it meant that the company needed to make acquisitions in a more definitive manner. Over a period of 5 years, the company made two acquisitions to build its regional capabilities in the areas of investment and increasing its footprint in Indonesia.

The EYZ Group’s vision to become a leading regional insurance group by 2025, focusing on three strategic thrusts:

– Secure EYZ’s position as the undisrupted leader in insurance services in Singapore

– Strengthen regional presence through enhancing the quality of operations in 5 out of 7 SEA countries EYZ operated in, whilst continuing to look for opportunities in other growth markets in the region

– Become a talent and execution focused company

The company also wanted to maintain its lead in the industry which is challenged by digitalisation and automation.

There are 5 imperatives that the CEO have instituted to support the vision:
– Leadership
– Deliver results
– Shape the future
– Energise the team
– Operational excellence

The HR function needed to adapt more quickly to the speed and complexity of change with the continuance of the acquisition strategy and fortification of new business lines.

To ensure that the human capital of the company was capable of carrying out the company’s strategy, the CEO created a “burning platform” about the urgent need for change in the way business was being done in the company. He hired senior management from outside the company who would be able to drive the change that was needed to achieve its objectives.

One of the first new hires was the Head of HR, Ms Kim Ng. To facilitate the transformation from local to regional, some changes in the organisation need
to be made. The CEO instituted a company-wide programme of transformation of people, processes and systems. Under the transformational programme, there were 20 initiatives that were identified in several areas of the company including human capital, finance, operations and the different business lines. Many of the transformation programmes, we’re focused on
People and Performance.

The transformation was executed in two phases with Phase I focusing on putting in place the organisational structure and laying the ground for building organisational capability. Phase II of the transformation was when the business lines would drive their own initiatives and also capture cross business synergies to facilitate company-wide performance.

For the area of Human Capital transformation, the Head of HR, Ms Ng, was responsible to oversee the implementation of HR initiatives in support of the business strategy. She started by creating two units – the Transformation Office unit and the Group Human Capital Change Management unit.

The role of the Transformation Office Unit was to track milestones that were set at the start of the transformation programme. The Group Human Capital Change Management unit had the responsibility to drive and implement change initiatives and make quick decisions in relation to changing scenarios.

At the point when Ms Ng took over as Head of HR, each of the four business lines had their own HR team whilst being served by Shared Services for transactional HR processes like benefits administration. The HR teams in each business vertical were doing similar tasks which were more transactional and operational in nature.

(a) Examine the organisation’s strategy and challenges and appraise the role of HR as a critical business partner in implementing the growth strategy for EYZ Group.

(b) Discuss the competency requirements for the changing role of HR from transactional to strategic in nature; in particular the competencies for HR business partners.

(c) As the business begins to scale, workforce planning needs to scale in tandem. Analyse the future demand of people and skills for EYZ Group and design a set of actions for workforce planning.

 

 

Question 2

Companies need to find a way to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage over their competitors in the same industry or market. To do that, they adopt strategic business models to pursue competitiveness.

a) Discuss two of the following business models and contrast the models in terms of their effectiveness :

• Cost Leadership
• Differentiation
• Customer Relationship
• Network Effectb) Select a company in the airline industry. Propose how a Differentiation model would apply in the company to gain a competitive advantage.c) In reference to the selected company in Q2b, assess the pitfalls to strategy implementation and recommend an approach to counter the pitfalls.

Question 3

The Human Resource function has evolved significantly for more than a decade along with the changes and challenges in the business environment. To have an impact on the business, HR needs to align its structure and services to the business needs. Strong HR capabilities enable an organisation to implement its business strategy more effectively.

Propose areas and actions for the transformation of HR function from support function (transactional role) to a strategic business enabler (strategic role).