How I spend my time

Wilson Tan, director of human resources, legal and corporate affairs, TNT Asia

Building the talent management pipeline
We’re really big on people so we have a development pipeline that looks at increasing and developing the capabilities of our existing staff. There will be more employment opportunities for people within the group as we are going to have a significantly enlarged footprint in Asia within the next five years. We need to groom a strong and sustainable pool of talent that understands the Asian business environment and how business is done in Asia.

So we will be looking at mobility programmes to embed these Asian skills set in the Asian talent we want to develop. For example, Thai or Filipino managers will move around on a short or long term basis where they can learn from the international assignments and also contribute to the host countries. It is the transference of expertise.

I am looking at developing the key talent and putting them on specific Asian training and career developing programmes so TNT can cross fertilise in terms of expertise where talent can be transferred within countries.

Mentoring and coaching
As part of my management role, HR aside, I spend time looking at the strategic direction of the company, looking to contribute to the development of the initiatives, strategic initiatives around the region. Basically, my job is to mentor and coach a selected talent pool, which usually are the high potentials and what we call the first line country managers. And I have a personal interest in developing their career within the company.

Risk management
I also manage insurance and risk as part of my job, which involves the SWOT analysis. We are actively involved with Fedex, UPS, DHL and APAC organisation, where we come together as one to lobby for change in regulation.

Lobbying for change
Our customers require us to facilitate trade between borders so we see ourselves as integrators offering a one stop cradle to grave shop. And part of that is actually to get through the custom hurdles, regulatory hurdles, the export restrictions. We have successfully educated the import and export departments, the customs and other departments on how to upgrade their standards. As a quality organisation, all our companies are certified so we want to continue working on the same quality base and move on from there.