Ehab Hafez
Talent Aquisition Solutions CoE Lead, Asia Middle East & North Africa
PepsiCo
Ehab Hafez, Talent Acquisition Solutions CoE Lead, Asia Middle East & North Africa at PepsiCo speaks to the Content Hub providing us with his professionals insights and experiences on talent acquisition.
EH: Thank you very much for having me today, I’m very excited to join you again in the HR Vision conference in Amsterdam, 6-7 June 2018, after a very successful event in London last year.
CH: To begin with tell us a little about your journey working at PepsiCo?
EH: My journey with PepsiCo started back in 2010 in Talent Acquisition, I started in an operational role based in Egypt, then I was asked to manage the Talent Acquisition agenda for the commercial side of the business in North East Africa, which is our biggest corporate owned operations in the Middle East with 12,000 employees spread across 11 plants and 70 Distribution centres at that time.
After 3 great years there with frontline hiring transformation and significant improvements within the professional hiring, I moved to lead the people management agenda of the MENA region HQ in Dubai as the HR Business Partner, an experience that I really enjoyed translating business needs to HR interventions and demonstrating how HR can bring real value to the business.
As the Talent Acquisition Solutions CoE lead for AMENA and as a member of the broader PepsiCo’s Global TA CoE team, I lead the strategy development and solution design of all TA interventions for the professional population across the sector, from streamlining and optimizing the hiring process, identifying new sources for professional talents, to overall campus approach, unlocking diversity opportunities, and building our Talent Acquisition analytics practice.
CH: Has talent acquisition at PepsiCo changed over the last few years whilst working at PepsiCo?
EH: Talent Acquisition at PepsiCo has been evolving for the past eight or nine years, moving from reliance on external support in acquiring talents, to building our internal teams’ capabilities and investing in the right systems, processes, tools/technologies to enable them supporting PepsiCo’s growth.
During the past few years though there has been a jump shift in how we as a Talent Acquisition organization operate globally, we became better connected, curious, globally minded, and tech savvy. Our teams drive functional excellence, and through top notch technologies we are becoming better in anticipating talent needs & bringing talent that delivers competitive advantage to our business.
CH: You are positioned as the Talent Acquisition Expert. What are the differences and similarities of acquiring new talent within Asia, Middle East and North Africa?
EH: Well in a diverse sector like Asia, Middle East and North Africa, there are lots of differences when it comes to talent market dynamics. To give you an example, in India 65% of employed individuals are actively looking for other jobs, and 44% of talents preferring MNCs, so PepsiCo’s attraction and engagement approach would be very different from China where Less than 20% of employed individuals are actively looking for other jobs coupled with only 14% preferring MNCs.
However, whether your candidate is active or passive, they are all looking at a wowing personalized experience to fall for your organization. Moreover, one will find that key enticements for candidates to consider a move are becoming more around work-life balance and rapid career growth, and this is across all our AMENA markets.
CH: Like many companies, PepsiCo has identified the strengths in employing diversity throughout the company. What strategies implemented have you found that have worked at your company or your region?
EH: Of course, diversity (in its broader sense) is a key enabler for our continued growth as an organization, and we are very committed to that. We adopt different strategies to ensure we deliver on our diversity aspirations, this starts with building internal awareness on the value and need for diverse teams, ensure talents we supply to the business are as diverse as the communities we live and operate at, and we continuously build partnerships to support the development and growth of diverse talents who can become future PepsiCo employees. In our management layers in China we have 50+% female representation, and we have been successfully injecting and retaining female talents in our Saudi business across all levels.
CH: Looking at the next 6-12 months, are there any areas that PepsiCo is seeking to either expand or develop that you require a set of new skills from talent which current employees are now having to have training in?
EH: Absolutely. As we invest more on our everyday nutrition portfolio, we are injecting more nutrition and R&D talents into the business. Consumers are now enjoying the convenience of e-Commerce channels vs spending time in retail store, so we are building our e-Commerce capability globally to cater for these new trends.
Furthermore, with the technological advancements and digitization happening, skills like data-driven decision making and cognitive computing in finance, promoting to bots and algorithms in marketing, automation and robotics in supply chain, and “people” skills in HR are all becoming on our radar to attract, build, and grow.
CH: How do you see the role of the HR professional changing over the next 6-12 months?
EH: Last year in Brussels I shared my perspective on what skills we as HR leaders need to demonstrate to be seen as “relevant” to the business, and in summary those skills are:
1- Business Acumen:
Really understanding “the business of the business”, facilitating the business strategy and aligning the people agenda to the business.
2- Change Leadership:
Continue driving change, and communicate value and impact of what we do to the leadership team and the associates in general.
3- Critical Evaluation:
Moving from the mere data gathering and reporting to testing propositions, asking insightful questions, and critically evaluating outcomes.
4- Global & Cultural Effectiveness:
Especially in MNCs, developing and maintaining a strong understanding of the many aspects of global business and demonstrating sensitivity to the cultural nuances is key. HR leaders should leverage diversity as we discussed earlier, and building locally relevant global programs (glocal programs) that engages everyone.
You can join Ehab at HR Vision Amsterdam in June as he delivers a roundtable discussion on 7th titled ‘The Attraction to Selection Redefined’. In smaller cohesive groups, our workshop sessions tackle your corporate challenges facilitated by the very people in your shoes who have been there, done it, and are willing to share practical tips and advice, to help you on your way.
Global Leadership Forecast 2018- a three-way collaboration with Development Dimensions International (DDI), The Conference Board, and EY- is the eighth Forecast since DDI began the stream of research in 1999. The report summarizes dozens of practical, evidence-based recommendations for critical business issues.
