Emerging Leaders, April 26, 2017, Hong Kong

On Wednesday the 26th of April, our first Emerging Leaders event of 2017 was held in Hong Kong. Emerging Leaders is a platform for junior and mid-level HR professionals, providing networking opportunities as well as career advice from some of Hong Kong’s most-renowned HR leaders.

Our guest speakers were Michelle Leung, Chief HR Officer for International Markets at Cigna and Ting Lam, APAC HR Director at WGSN. Both talked about their career journeys and how they had taken unconventional routes to their current leadership roles.

Michelle began her career in finance, accounting and business analysis, eventually taking up an HR-focussed project with her previous employer, Goldman Sachs, and realising it was what she was passionate about. Ting worked in a range of HRBP roles in the UK and Hong Kong, from major global brand names like Deloitte to less well-known, niche ones like her current firm, WGSN. Both stressed the importance of finding the right work environment and manager ahead of more superficial things like company name.

Both Michelle and Ting started their careers in the UK, and reflected on how much the gap in HR quality between mature markets and Hong Kong has narrowed over the last decade. They now feel that it is up to HR departments in APAC to push for a bigger say in global decision making within their organisation.

Other topics of discussion included the future of HR. Ting welcomes the day when work will truly be flexible, and employees genuinely managed on the basis of their results, not where they work from or during what hours. Michelle takes a great interest in automation and AI in HR, and feels that it will most likely result in numerically smaller HR departments in coming years.

We hope all attendees found the discussion as interesting and insightful as we did.

If you’re interested in building your HR career, please contact any of our consultants and we’ll be sure to extend you an invite to our next Emerging Leaders event.