Through the looking glass: L’Oréal Singapore

Over the decades, the L’Oréal name has become synonymous with these words – beauty and perfectionism. Celebrities such as Eva Longoria, Frieda Pinto and Julia Roberts are known for fronting advertisements for the Group’s beauty products. Currently, the L’Oréal Group is one of the leading names in the beauty and cosmetics industry with 23 brands across the globe.

The organisation also boasts 66,000 employees on a global scale, and managing this large group is no easy feat. Locally, the L’Oréal Singapore HR team manages over 200 employees. So, what does it take to attract talent into this multi-billion dollar organisation?

Attracting and nurturing young talent

“The key challenge is getting the right talent with a right fit,” says Alice Lim, HR director of L’Oréal Singapore.

The organisation uses innovative ways to bring in talented individuals, especially young employees. The L’Oréal Group has been running an initiative – called Brandstorm – to find talented tertiary-qualified students for 20 years, and it is now in its 10th year in Singapore. L’Oréal Singapore engages students from three local universities – NUS, NTU and SMU – to work on a case study for a brand. In 2011, tertiary teams worked on the L’Oréal Professionnel Homme case study, a hair care product for men, devising concepts for marketing the brand and how they would go about doing it.

The organisation works with professors to shortlist the top four teams in each university and these teams complete a presentation in the semi-finals in front of L’Oréal Singapore’s brand managers and other stakeholders. Subsequently, shortlisted teams will enter the finals and the winning team will represent Singapore in the international L’Oréal competition in Paris. Thus far, teams from Singapore have won the international finals three times.

Lim states that the Brandstorm initiative helps L’Oréal Singapore attract young employees. So far, it has attracted several marketing students, though those from other faculties also sign up for the project. “The benefits are twofold – it helps with the employee branding and it also promotes L’Oreal awareness in universities. Brandstorm is only one of the tools we use to do this, but it’s a powerful one because we get to work with the universities,” she says.

Complementing Brandstorm, the Singapore team also conducts campus recruitments annually and, on average, about six to 12 people are employed in this way, notes Lim.

Subsequently, learning and development starts from the moment employees join the company. “L’Oréal believes in nurturing talents from within, thus, we place high emphasis on developing our fresh graduate hires,” says Lim.

There is a Management Trainee (MT) Programme for fresh graduate hires. It is a one-year programme where they go through a series of attachments with various departments such as sales, marketing, retail, and HR and operations. This allows the new hires to get a better idea of how L’Oréal runs its business, states Lim.

She explains that these high-potentials have already been identified during the campus recruitment process through interviews and assessment centre evaluations, where they are assessed on various skills such as their critical thinking abilities, creativity, communication skills, and how well they fit into the organisation.

“After recruitment, we continue to evaluate our MTs based on their capabilities and performance at work and then plan for their career development in L’Oréal,” highlights Lim.

Integrating and igniting employees

Bringing talent into the company is essential but equally important is for employees taking their time to understand the intricacies of a new corporate culture and adapting to it. As such, L’Oréal Singapore takes employee integration seriously and runs several programmes to ensure that its new hires are well-adjusted into their work environment.

The organisation provides mentorship for new employees, which is part of the two-year FIT (Follow-up and Integration Track) programme. “This mentorship offers assurance to our new hires that they have someone to turn to when they are faced with difficulties, especially when they first join the company,” explains Lim.

The company also runs a Discovery Programme, which is conducted once or twice a year. Running over two days, employees are given the opportunity to learn about different divisions and different areas of work. Employees from various divisions also share their experiences about their work.

Employee engagement also plays an essential part in retaining employees in any organisation and L’Oréal Singapore has it as a major priority. Open communication and an easy-to-approach attitude practised by the organisation’s managers help in this area. “Employee engagement is a big part of what we do with our people. We encourage people to go and talk to the managers, and employees know what the channels are and who to approach if they have an issue,” explains Lim.

Employee engagement activities play a great part in getting employees to work together in L’Oréal Singapore. The organisation has an Ignite Team, a committee that comes up with various activities for employees. It comprises eight people (excluding sponsors) from various divisions across the Singapore team and it is rotated every six months. Any employee who has an interesting team activity in mind could propose it to an Ignite team member. Lim says that it is informal and fun, and it helps employees from different divisions to work together.

Furthermore, a monthly employee gathering or a town hall meeting of sorts is conducted where basic announcements are made. These gatherings have different themes each month. Lim recalls that there was an Ethics month (the L’Oréal Group runs an Ethics Programme that explores ethics in business management), a Chinese New Year lunch, and even an mid-autumn festival month during which information regarding the festival was shared with expatriate colleagues.

Employees also receive a bi-monthly newsletter regarding the happenings in the organisation such as the latest product launches as well as welcome messages for newcomers in the Singapore team. The organisation’s Beauty Advisors (who work at the stores) receive a hard copy of the newsletter.

Learning is a priority

While integration is just the first step, ongoing development of employees is one that plays a big role in retaining them. Lim explains that although L’Oréal Singapore brings in external talent, especially for high level positions, it prefers to develop its internal employees through its ‘Learning for Development’ track.

Learning for development is a must for all employees and programmes include workshops, seminars specific to technical skills, and generic IT or language skills. However, not all training is done within the classroom; there is self-learning or on-the-job training, explains Lim. Occasionally, the organisation also invites VPs or MDs from Asia or international teams to give a talk about a particular topic.

In the virtual campus, known as the Management Development Centre located in Shanghai, the zone director who is in charge of learning and development manages and distributes programmes to the various countries, including the Singapore team.

Besides these programmes, employees from the Singapore team also have secondment opportunities to develop their skills or to work on projects. However, Lim explains that this is on a needs-basis. “Sometimes there can be projects which are to be completed in a short timeframe of between three to six months. Also, it could provide for the development of a person, in which case it might be between two and three years.”.