How Tokopedia has established a winning people ecosystem to #MakeTheShift

Led by Nanang Chalid, VP of People and Office Management, Tokopedia, this winning HR team wants to make things simpler, more human, deliver impactful results, more fun and more technology-driven for all employees (referred to as ‘Nakama’).

“At Tokopedia, learning is a strong part of our culture. One of our three DNAs is Growth Mindset, where we encourage our Nakama (Tokopedia’s employees) to embrace change and continue to have the curiosity to learn like a student, and the humility to share like a teacher.” – Nanang Chalid, VP of People and Office Management from Tokopedia.

The HR Grand Winner 2020 from the HR Excellence Awards 2020, Indonesia – Tokopedia, takes the stand and shares their winning secrets on their HR achievements. With four gold awards in Women Empowerment Strategy, Workplace Wellbeing, Learning and Development, and HR Communication strategy; two silver awards in Employee Engagement and HR Innovation; and one bronze award in HR Change Management, we find out more about their HR formula and strategy.

Q How would you describe your overall HR strategy, and what are some key milestones you’ve accomplished thus far?

As an Indonesian technology company, Tokopedia’s mission is to democratise commerce through technology in Indonesia. In line with that, our vision is to create a super ecosystem where Indonesians can start and discover anything. After operating for 11 years, the company has contributed more than 1% to the Indonesian economy, connecting over 9.9mn merchants with more than 100 million monthly active users.

Moving forward, we intend to be the technology company with a leading marketplace platform that helps Indonesians fulfil their daily needs, following our tagline, ‘Selalu Ada, Selalu Bisa’ (that means, whatever users are looking for and want to do, can be accommodated by Tokopedia). As our journey continues, we constantly #MakeItBetter in our People practices.

To support Tokopedia’s mission, the HR has set a team mission to make Tokopedia the ‘Most Admired Technology Company in Indonesia’ by establishing a winning people ecosystem. The winning people ecosystem ensures that we #MakeTheShift (simple, human, impact, fun, tech-driven). We want to make sure that we make things simpler, more human, deliver impactful results, more fun and more technology-driven.

Q What role has your leadership team played in supporting your HR priorities? How does your HR team collaborate closely with senior management to achieve business goals?

The People team reports to the COO (Chief Operating Officer) of Tokopedia, so that all People initiatives are integrated with what the company is aiming to achieve.

The People team also has a People Partner team which collaborates closely with all business units to handle all-things-People-related, every day.

Q The pandemic has caused many business plans to be upended. What was the greatest challenge you faced this year and how did you manage to pivot your HR model/framework?

The biggest challenge was ensuring that there is clarity in the middle of uncertainty, and ensuring a balance between employees’ productivity and engagement (i.e. wellbeing). Especially as we entered the work-from-home setup, considering it is the safest protocol in navigating the pandemic.

Q What was your game plan for measuring ROI in learning and development? What are some proud achievements you can share with us on this front?

At Tokopedia, learning is a strong part of our culture. One of our three DNAs is Growth Mindset, where we encourage our Nakama (Tokopedia’s employees) to embrace change, continue to have the curiosity to learn like a student, and the humility to share like a teacher. At the end of the day, the objective of our learning and development programmes is to support the performance of our business and organisation, thus measuring the impact of our learning programmes on the performance of our Nakama in their respective roles is a critical metric for our learning ROI.

In order to create a strong learning culture, we proactively embed our learning programmes into our organisational performance improvement initiatives (Raise the Bar project).

Every learning programme that we developed was derived from organisational objectives to assure business leaders that the programmes were designed with educational intention and for a purpose.

For example, as part of the ‘Raise the Bar’ initiative, in the skill academies that we held for our Sales & Operations team across three business units, we asked our Nakama to determine whether the academy has contributed to improving their knowledge and skills proficiency. The survey showed great improvement in the capability level of Nakama, and their improved confidence in performing in their role, which in turn resulted in a boost in the company’s overall business performance. At the end, our learning investment is clearly justified as Tokopedia achieved significant overall YOY growth mostly driven by the business units where we launched the skill academies.

Q With WFH being the norm for the bigger part of the year, how has your organisation led HR change management in this period?

In general, the implementation of all change management processes still follow the same principles as before, such as change initiation and taskforce set-up, engagement of leadership team, mass communication to Nakama, change execution, and regular reviews and improvement. However, all socialisation and communication sessions are conducted online through virtual channels and platforms.

In the last nine months, as Nakama familiarised themselves with the work-from-home policy, Tokopedia ensured 100% of our Nakama are able to work productively from home by leveraging the available virtual communication and collaboration tools with minimal disruptions.

Therefore, the work-from-home policy did not cause disturbances in Nakama’s work flows.

To further ensure an effective communication method, the implementation of more creative forms of communication was done using our own internal communication platforms, such as through Slack, email, social media, and e-learning platforms, in order to engage our internal Nakama to be our change ambassadors and role models.

Photo / Provided

Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices – head over to our Winning Secrets’ section! 

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