Background
Ciba Specialty Chemicals is a global company (with headquarters in Basel Switzerland) producing specialty chemicals, which added in small quantities, improve existing or add new qualities to materials at every stage of their production processes. As well as products, Ciba offers a wide range of knowledge-based services and expertise, providing customers with complete solutions to enhance their businesses. Ciba serves several major markets including the Automotive, Packaging, Home & Personal Care, Paper and Printing, Construction, Electronics, Water Treatment and Agriculture industries.
The company employs 15,000 people world-wide. Sales are well balanced between three major market areas: Europe, the Americas and the Asia Pacific region. Manufacturing takes place in a number of countries with significant operations in Switzerland, the UK, the US, France, Germany, Mexico and China – the subject of this case study.
The company employs some 900 people in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. There are a number of production facilities; they include production of antioxidants (for plastics industry), chemicals for water and paper treatment, and pigments (for inks industry). About half of the 900 employees are in Production, one quarter in Sales & Marketing, and the others in Research & Development and support functions. All but 5% of the employees are Chinese nationals. The international employees and regionally seconded staff are working mainly in technical or management roles with a number taking regional responsibilities.
The work of the competency centre
Ciba Specialty Chemicals co-ordinates and implements its people development policy through global and regional competency centres. Bob Morton, who is based in the UK, is Head of Competency Centre for Europe, Middle East and Africa. He works extensively across the regions in the OD field. In his view developing programmes across different countries requires a carefully considered approach which takes full account of national cultures. He recognises that there are differences between different countries in terms of their desire for, and acceptance of, experiential and instructional models; hence it is important to develop models that can be adapted to different contexts and to set up processes that ‘ensure that this adaptation can take place’. The first question is ‘what must be the same and what can be different?’ The approach is to design courses and other activities and interventions using check-lists to ensure cultural compatibility and materials and activities that can be amended or customised at the local level. Where required new activities are designed on a local basis.
Germaine Tang, who has worked for Ciba Specialty Chemicals for nine years and comes originally from Singapore, is Head of Competency Centre, People Development for Asia Pacific. This extends across thirteen countries with the largest numbers of employees located in China and India. She is based in Shanghai and describes her role as follows:
“To ensure employees are equipped with the necessary skills and competencies to be effective in their roles and in developing a talent pool sufficient and ready for succession into key local or regional leadership positions.”
Current challenges
Germaine Tang has placed, and will continue to place, much of her energies across two distinct areas in China:
- General training for all staff
- Development of leadership potential especially local talents
Ciba have a strong focus on people development and are prepared to commit resources to ensure that employees across all levels acquire a common language for skills. In Germaine Tang’s view this will create a common platform for learning. Accordingly a range of courses aimed at the ‘soft’ skills of the employees have been developed and the intention is that all employees will attend this training over a period of time. These workshops are instructor-led; they are typically two to three days in duration with between 15 and 18 participants present. Topic areas included: personal effectiveness, working in teams, problem solving, managing customer relationships, running a business etc. Most employees who have a development need will be given priority in attending these training courses.
The basic course design has been produced by Bob Morton’s team. The Competency Centre People Development team in China ‘ensure this translates’ in the local context. This adaptation takes place at the design and the delivery stage. Content must be reviewed to ensure that it will be readily understood and seen as relevant.
The way in which courses need to be adjusted for the local learner can be very detailed, and will only be understood by those with practical experience in this environment. A good example is the technique of ‘visualisation’ as in “If you are uncomfortable giving presentations, imagine you are giving a successful presentation – focus on what is going well, enjoy the feeling of confidence, positive attention & approval from the audience”. In Germaine Tang’s experience some learners who have not undertaken a great deal of western soft-skills training may find such a concept difficult to grasp.
Courses are mainly delivered by internal Ciba Specialty Chemicals’ line managers and HR, who can be expected to understand the workforce, the employees that they face and the language that they use. However, the plan is to complement this by leveraging external providers into the training and development process to gain a broader perspective both internally and externally; this will need a different approach in customisation at the delivery stage.
Germaine Tang’s recent priority, which is growing in importance, concerns the development of leadership. This concerns the identification and development of high potentials for middle to senior positions in Asia. From a management development pool of about 400 people in the Asia Pacific region as a whole, some 20 high-potentials have been identified after discussions with senior managers and human resources. These 20 will be developed by a variety of means including: international secondments or transfers; participation in regional/global projects; provision of a mentor drawn for the senior regional leadership forum; participation in regional management programmes. A new management programme for the region is at the pilot stage. This will involve collaboration efforts from two very established business schools; the INSEAD (with a campus in Singapore) and the CEIBS (China Europe International Business School with a presence in China).
Some challenges
Inevitably, Germaine Tang feels that the resources at her disposal are often extremely stretched. She also admits to frustration when Ciba Specialty Chemicals have invested resources in developing and grooming people only to see them leave. However, she sees this as inevitable and that the strong company culture of people development will continue to have support from the top and companies with a good reputation for developing people have a better chance of attracting new talent.
Her views on Chinese learners are positive. She sees a real enthusiasm on the part of employees to learn. With exposure to different learning methods over time, they will become even more independent and self-directed learners:
“Participants sometimes refer to me as ‘teacher’. I will often tell them I’m not a teacher; my role is to facilitate your learning process.”
However, as they become more exposed to management training and company practice, employees begin to feel more confident and will increasingly seek ‘other ways’ of doing things. This is seen as a general tendency in the business: not a particular issue for learning and development.
Overall Germaine Tang feels:
“In Ciba China we have made a good starting point. It is important to begin with developing this common management language across the businesses and at all levels of the organization. We will then go on to develop our line managers too. They play a pivotal role in the daily application of learning of their employees. By taking steps in ensuring that they give follow-up and support to the training and learning of their subordinates, then would the real transfer of learning take place back at the workplace.”