Week 2: Values Matter
We began our second week with G.A.P by finalizing the list of eight key deliverables to be completed by the end of April. Arindam, Nadine, and I partnered with Mr. Hieu and Mr. Anh to ensure our findings were on the right track. We hope that the deliverables we plan to address over the next three weeks will lead to a positive impact to employee engagement, improved processes for marketing/sales, and finally help the organization to run more efficiently.
Communication framework and data management are two of our largest topics. Arindam, Nadine, and I spent the beginning part of the second week conducting 1:1 meetings with each team member. These meetings provided greater insight as to how the employees currently communicate with other team members and how they track data.
During the prior week, Mr. Hieu shared the six G.A.P values with the team. The values are strong and meaningful, focusing on three topics: students, company, and employees. After sharing our SAP “How We Run” behaviors, Mr. Hieu and Mr. Anh expressed a desire to review the G.A.P values and potentially rebrand/simplify them. So, we decided to conduct a Values Workshop with the team.
I went into Wednesday’s workshop anticipating that the team would come to a quick agreement on simple words or phrases for each G.A.P value. As we separated employees into three groups (each tackling two values), we that each team took a different approach to the activity:
- The first group decided to rephrase the two values around students.
- The second group decided to combine the two values about the company and use an image of a flying school bus / train.
- The third group decided to illustrate the two values about employees.
This was a learning moment for me. As I watched the teams write/illustrated their new simplified values, I realized that the way that we plan a workshop or session to go may not always deliver the outcome that we expect. And that is okay. The G.A.P team members are the experts and our SAP team is just here to facilitate and encourage these ideas to be shared. Each group took a unique approach to the values. All employees illustrated their deep understanding and belief in the organization’s values. That’s what matters!
On Friday morning, Nadine, Arindam, and I visited a Hear.Us.Now class with Mr. Hieu. Hear.Us.Now is a non-profit organization founded by Mr. Hieu which supports the hearing-impaired youth community in Vietnam with English lessons and computer science training. Learn more about Hear.Us.Now from Mr. Hieu himself in this video. (Thanks for recording and sharing, Arindam! :))
Another deliverable that we worked on during the second week was sharing recommended steps/action items related to an employee’s life cycle at G.A.P. Arindam and I had the opportunity to conduct a session on Friday around this topic. (As you can imagine, being in HR, I was very much looking forward to this session.) :)
At a high level, an employee’s life cycle consists of the following steps: attraction, recruitment, onboarding, development, retention, and separation. While there can be a lot of information to cover (I can talk about HR topics for hours!), we kept our recommendations at a high level and focused on the most important items. Mr. Hieu, Mr. Anh, and Ms. Chau were all incredibly engaged in the topic and asked a lot of great questions. Many topics related to HR depend on the situation. The G.A.P team has now started to say “it’s situational” anytime a question is asked. :)
Week two is done and we have completed two deliverables. Six more to go!
