There are three things about Charles Lim that remind you of an unyieldingly loyal employee of a job-for-life Japanese corporation back in those days. They are his strong corporate persona (the human resources director of Procter & Gamble for ASEAN/ Australasia/ India calls himself "a typical P&G employee"), his 11-year tenure at the firm or since he left university and his firm belief in its "promote from within", work your way up policy. But the truth is, Lim does not work for a Japanese company nor live in that bygone era. He just works for a company that has a very distinct corporate image.

These admissions reveal a great deal about the culture of Procter & Gamble (P&G). And in the company, culture is a distinct, well-defined and almost tangible quality. To most people, however, P&G is a company better known for its marketing and product development than for its HR and corporate culture. Its offerings' range is impressive. To name a few from its stable of 250 products, there are beauty care, health and household products, food and beverage and pet health and nutrition. The plethora of brands includes Pantene, Pampers, Gain, Whisper, Pringles and IAMS to premium lines such as SK-II. In fact, the giant is about to permeate supermarket shelves even further with the recent acquisition of Gillette, which includes not only its signature razors but also Duracell batteries, Braun and Oral-B brands dental care products.

An estimated 6,000 job cuts is expected to result from the US$57 billion deal, brought about by the elimination of management overlaps and consolidation of business support functions, according to media reports. The company said that the staff cuts will not just be from the Gillette side, but the P&G side as well. On the positive side, the acquisition will produce the largest consumer products company in the world.

In fact, the Asian operations of P&G received an upshot of its own in 1985 when the company acquired Richardson-Vicks. "Suddenly, we were in Asia," says Lim. Following the acquisition, the region underwent a restructuring in the late 90s, breaking up the continent's focus into three regions: Northeast Asia, Greater China and ASEAN/ Australasia/ India - with Singapore being the regional headquarters in 2000 - which saw the office's headcount grew from 50 to 700 in the last five years.

The considerable growth of P&G Singapore's headcount puts its talent management programme into greater perspective, spelling greater challenges for HR to build the talent pipeline. And as a company that grows its own talent within, a policy of not turning to external hires unless no suitably qualified candidates can be found, the consequence of not developing its leaders properly today is grave. "We could end up with a leadership vacuum," says Lim.

"In P&G, you either get kicked up or block someone's growth." Lim qualifies that growth or moving up in the company does not necessarily have to be a promotion; personal development is also greatly valued. For Charles who has lived and worked in six countries during his employment with P&G, he has had "the opportunity to deal with different kinds of challenges and get exposure to diverse environments and issues". "Typically, an executive here ‘moves' every 18 months to 2 years. You become a different person compared to the time you started with the company or if you had stayed in one place the whole time," says Lim. It's also important for employees to value opportunities for personal growth and development as opposed to just promotions because of the company's relatively flat hierarchy structure. The highly mobile nature of a P&G employee, according to Lim, is what sets them apart from others and defines the organisation as a truly global yet connected organisation.

Lim continued to shed light on his career at P&G as well as more information about his background. An Indonesian Chinese born in a "small town" in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, he was recruited during a P&G college hire initiative 14 years ago in Central Java, Indonesia, after graduation. He started his career as human resources development manager in P&G Indonesia. Three years later, Lim found himself in its Hong Kong operations. He then left P&G to join Sewu Bank (under the Gunung Sewu Kencana (GSK) Group). After a three-year stint at the bank, he returned to P&G where he was relocated to Korea to be involved in integration work. Before assuming his current position, the human resources director has worked in P&G Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam - a marked difference compared to his younger  "country boy" days of never having travelled in an aeroplane until age 19.

His ambition during college was not human resources. "I wanted to be a lecturer or social worker then," he recalls. The avid reader says books relating to the subject of Psychology remain his favourite and that reading was, for him, a great introduction to the corporate world. When probed further about his personal life, Lim replies that there is nothing really remarkable about his "boring background" to talk about except that he married his wife who is from the same hometown and has three children.

Returning to the topic of staff development, Lim says the company's strong commitment towards talent development has inevitably made employees hot pursuits amongst its rivals, yet, the company's inclination to promote from within does not encourage it to poach from them. Lim says some of its managers have been wooed with seemingly better prospects and impressive job titles such as vice president, "but I tell them to look at the job scope and growth opportunities before making the move."

The company believes it has found a way to achieve the elusive staff engagement that many companies are still coming to terms with. Fundamental to building an engaged workforce, says Lim, is ensuring that the workforce is well aligned to the business. Lim says that one of HR's main responsibilities is to ensure that the company has very clear work plans linked to the organisation's goals and that employees understand what exactly is expected of them.

Another striking feature of P&G's efforts at keeping staff engaged is getting employees to perform at their peak every time they are at work. But first, says Lim, it has to face up to the reality that this would not happen as long the work schedule continues to follow the traditional 9-5 structure because employees have a life outside of work. That notion prompted it to implement flexible work arrangement.

Briefly, the scheme allows employees to schedule their start and finish times, provided that they fulfil the stipulated number of hours. Employees are also required to be present during certain core hours defined by the company. P&G also allows staff to work from home for up to three days a week with support to set up a home office (high speed internet line and separate business phone line). The scheme has seen close to 60 percent of P&G employees work from home occasionally and 40 percent work from home on an average of one day per week.

Lim cautions that if companies want to breakaway from the traditional work schedule, they would have to change their mindset and view productivity in a different light. "If you need to see employees work eight hours a day in order to feel good, then my advice is that you don't implement such a scheme. Do the punch card system instead."

Lim says the flexibility provided by such a scheme proves to be an effective form of staff empowerment, which arises from the opportunity to maintain a better work-life balance. "As an employee, you feel so good about being in control and that nobody is watching your back, making sure you work eight hours a day. Employees actually become more efficient in such an environment," says Lim. However, he adds that such flexibility cannot be made available to every employee due to the nature of their jobs.

If HR practitioners are constantly talking about moving with the business or planning ahead for the future workplace, then foresight must be a very important quality for them to have. Whilst that logic is undeniable, Lim says that "HR in P&G is not all about anticipation. If that's all we're doing, then we are not staying in tune with current issues." In this context, he says that there are two aspects to his work: traditional management and breakthroughs. Traditional management refers to "the work you need to maintain, but don't have to constantly think about improving on." He elaborates, "Think about payroll. If I don't maintain that, I've got a big problem, but I'm not going to improve the function by paying people three days earlier!" On the other hand, the team focuses on creating only one or two breakthroughs a year. These are tasks the team does well, but aims to take to the next level. He cites the example of employee satisfaction for the present as well as future workforce. "That latter is where anticipation comes in," says Lim.

A major breakthrough helped change P&G's culture from rule-based to principle-based. Instead of playing the traditional role of the corporate policemen, HR helped employees understand the principles behind policies and gradually allowed them to make decisions without going to HR.

A greater involvement in the thinking and decision making process served to place a higher degree of responsibility and accountability in employees' hands. "This concept of putting people closest to the work to make decisions permeated P&G. People stopped going to their bosses all the time and took the initiative to make decisions about their jobs - but not without boundaries." says Lim. He believes the change in mindset led to the development of a higher degree of maturity in employees, which he attributes to being an important factor to the company's flexible work arrangement's success where self-regulation plays a crucial role.

Like experiments, breakthroughs do not produce positive results every time. A case in point is the initial implementation of a self-service employee portal, which turned out to be a double-edged sword. Whist it was a breakthrough in terms of minimising transactions traditionally administered by HR, enhanced communication and bolstered the efforts of the internal job posting function with its global reach, Lim admits that it was taken a little too far. "We were pushing so hard into self-service that human interaction was compromised. And suddenly, we saw a different kind of impact."

The on-boarding process was one of the first aspects to be adversely affected. By downplaying face-to-face interaction, the company relied on the written word to convey information about the company. "So instead of moving towards a principle-based culture, we were moving away from it," says Lim.

"It's the classic question of efficiency versus effectiveness," he says. "The intranet brought about greater efficiency, but it was not so effective in meeting our communication objectives. The company has learnt to strike a greater balance between the two aspects."

P&G's growing presence in Asia brings to the fore the need for more Asian talent, an issue Lim feels passionately about. He believes Asian leaders are capable of providing that connection with the markets and consumers in the region.

Through the creation of more successful Asian role models, the company hopes it can attract more Asian talent to work in the company. "When recruiting in Thailand or Indonesia, it would be very different if we have a local leader talk to them and show them the way, versus having an American go to a campus in Malaysia to talk about a career in P&G," he explains. "The connection is different."

However, at the end of the day, the objective is not just to have Asian talent lead the region because diversity is also greatly valued by the company. "There is a danger in creating the same individuals across. I know people out there call us ‘Proctoids' because of our strong corporate culture and how we're clearly defined by our principles," says Lim. He refutes that while there are certain things in P&G that do not change such as its core values and principles, the company believes that "diversity is a business strategy that the company can leverage to come up with new ways of thinking and doing things".

"We want more female leaders," he states, whilst adding that gender wise, the number of male and female employees in the region are relatively balanced. Lim notes that the female leadership in P&G is growing. A new general manager and the new president of the region (Lim's boss), for instance, are both female.

Six countries and several different portfolios later, it is interesting to know where Lim's career at P&G is taking him next. It's a question Lim claims he, himself, does not know at this point in time. However, he says that he has settled very well into Singapore and now that his children are attending school, "it's time I think seriously about balancing the needs of my family and work". Nonetheless, Lim embraces that mobility is a "fact of life in P&G" and that he is open to being ‘kicked up'. "It's what I preach."

At the photo shoot which followed straight after the interview, a request for Lim to put on a tie was politely, albeit adamantly, turned down. "In P&G, we don't wear ties. I would like to maintain our smart casual dress code," insists the Proctoid. It's a decision that most people would respect, after all, you wouldn't want to meddle with the culture of a 170-year old establishment.

Biographic data

Charles Lim

1990

Bachelor of Psychology from Universitas Gajah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

1990

Joined Procter & Gamble (P&G) Indonesia as human resources development manager

1993

Moved on to P&G Hong Kong as a human resources manager

1996

Joined Gunung Sewu Kencana (GSK) Group, Indonesia as the director, consumer banking & human resources, Sewu International Bank

1998               

Moved on to P&G Korea as an integration manager

1999

Joined P&G Malaysia/Singapore as an associate director, human resources

2000

Moved over to P&G Philippines/Vietnam as an associate director, human resources

• 2004

• Proceeded to join P&G Asia as the director for human resources in ASEAN/Australasia/India