Employee engagement is tricky at the best of times, but the challenge is magnified when you are a business rapidly growing in value and size with a geographically dispersed workforce constantly burning the midnight oil.
Despite such hurdles, however, accounting firm KPMG China decided to boost and consolidate its employee engagement efforts on realising that the old way of doing things was less than ideal.
'It had become increasingly difficult for heads of department to manage their team due to the large staff numbers and the fact that much of the work now requires travelling,' said Harry Yu, an audit partner at KPMG China, the second runner-up in the Large Enterprise category of the HKIHRM/SCMP People Management Awards.
Audit departments that had 30 to 40 people a decade ago now had about 100, he added.
'We wanted to streamline our previous people engagement efforts and give staff the personal touch and more care and attention,' Mr Yu said.
The solution was the launch of KPMG's People Management Leaders initiative, which recognised talented leaders within the organisation and tasked them with the responsibility of coaching, mentoring and guiding other team members.
The firm has more than 340 such leaders in Hong Kong and the mainland. These managers, senior managers and partners have been chosen for their positive influence, attributes and people skills.