Essilor Amera is a part of HRD Asia's Top HR Teams 2018
Industry: Optics/vision care
Areas of excellence: Leadership development, recruitment, benefits
As a demonstration of HR’s efforts to be more innovative, the team at Essilor developed an Emerging Talent Program designed to instil the company’s core value of entrepreneurial spirit in the newest and youngest members of its talent. “This is a unique accelerated leadership program which provides unparalleled opportunity for young graduates to be deployed in various countries and placed on assignments in curated projects,” says HR director Tan Boon Boon. The program has helped the business significantly expand its talent pool while boosting employees’ value and marketability across the organisation.
In addition to this, the team is also focused on maintaining an excellent onboarding experience, which they call the ‘Shopper Experience’, wherein each newbie is asked to visit a shop of their choice and evaluate their experience, and then share that with the rest of the team. This has enabled new employees to better see and remember the end customer’s perspective, which will hopefully help them address issues more effectively in their respective roles. The feedback gathered from the exercise also assists the business in regularly evaluating its own service quality and in-store experience.
Given Essilor’s line of business, the team thought it fitting that employees should receive the best vision care. This led them to set up the year-round Employee Vision Center, where resident optometrists conduct eye exams for employees and prescribe lenses with the help of internal lens and frame owners. And as a nod to work-life balance, the team is also looking at how to best implement ‘customised’ flexi-work that takes into consideration employees’ preferences as well as existing diversity and inclusion initiatives. The flexi-work program will include arrangements such as staggered start-and-finish work times, compressed work weeks and telecommuting.
