Unifying Brand and Culture from Within: Justin Low (Chief Communications & Talent Experience Officer APAC, Omnicom Media Group)

Justin Low: A lot of times, HR rules and initiatives, they all happen in the boardroom. It's a top down boardroom to employee, but organizations don't realize that actually it should be the other way around. When you have a comms person, HR, and a talent person in the same role, you are keeping your years to the ground, knowing the sentiment that people are talking about, how people are feeling. Justin Low: And then when you have these decisions made in the boardrooms, you're that conduit between boardroom and the ground.

Justin Low: That's a responsibility I don't take lightly. And, culture and brand is so important. They're so intertwined because that narrative that you put out actually also forms the brand narrative that you tell your employees. Justin Low: When I draft internal communications, I always make sure, I treat our employees as stakeholders as well.

How do we engage them? How do we tell that brand story? How do we build that narrative for them so that they feel like they're not just a company, you're part of a bigger organization, you're part of a bigger purpose. Dorothy Yiu: Welcome to the HR Impact Show, where we have honest conversations with global people leaders about building great workplaces.

My name is Dorothy. I'm your host. I'm also the CEO and co-founder of EngageRocket. EngageRocket is a HR technology and advisory company that leverages on data to enhance employee experience from from hire to retire.

Dorothy Yiu: Today our guest is Justin Low. He's the Chief Communications and Talent Experience Officer at Omnicom Media Group. We're excited to dive into his experience, especially in combining communications and HR to create standout employee experience within the media industry. Hi, Justin.

Very happy to have you here. Dorothy Yiu: So for the audience who may not be familiar with your background, could you share more about yourself and your journey to where you are today? Justin Low: Thank you, Dorothy. Thank you for having me here.

So I lead communications and talent experience for Omnicom Media Group. How I came to do this role was quite a journey. I guess. I studied in Australia.

Justin Low: Studied early childhood education, came back to Singapore, wanted to be a childcare teacher. I went for a few interviews and a lot of childcare centers said no to me because they said that I was too highly qualified and that I'm a male. So I think for the first time I actually encountered what it felt like to be discriminated because of my gender. Justin Low: It didn't feel nice.

It didn't feel good. So then I decided, okay, I still want to help children. So I started working for the National Council of Social Service, helping with policy making for special needs children. And then I just felt it wasn't my kind of calling, my kind of cup of tea.

Justin Low: So in the end, I decided to join the PR industry. So started off working as an intern in a PR agency. Then slowly moved my way in-house and then over the speed of, I guess 20 years, got to where I am today, leading comms and talent for OMG. Dorothy Yiu: That's quite a route that you've been on right?

From Justin Low: It is. Dorothy Yiu: Early childhood to then NCSS. Justin Low: Yeah. Dorothy Yiu: And then that switch to PR.

Justin Low: Yeah, because when I was deciding what I wanted to do as my next step. I kind of looked at what I am good at, because I think sometimes, it's important to find what you are strong in and then leverage that strength to do the work so that it doesn't feel too tiresome to do the work. Justin Low: And at that time I just thought, okay, what am I good at? I like to talk.

I like to meet people. I think I'm fairly good with people, building relationships. And so I thought, okay, if that's the case, then maybe I should do PR. So then a friend put me in touch with an agency, joined as an intern at a right old age of 28.

Justin Low: Took a huge pay cut. But then I took that as an opportunity to see what are the things I can learn in this new industry. And, lo and behold, I had a lot of support along the way. In Chinese we call them Gui Ren.

I strongly believe in Gui Ren and you always find a Gui Ren in your job, and throughout the years, I've had amazing people who have helped me, believed in me. Yeah, that's how I got to where I am. Dorothy Yiu: Okay. Just touching on this Gui Ren, right?

People along our journey that will actually add value and help us. Justin Low: Yeah. Or they're like lampposts. They guide you along a certain journey.

Dorothy Yiu: For the audience who are listening to this, 'cause I think this is very important. We always talk about building mentorship, having a circle of people that supports you. How do you go about finding these Gui Ren in your life? Justin Low: You know what, I think they find you that you don't actually go looking.

When I started my role, I didn't go out saying, okay, I need to find that Gui Ren in the company and who should it be? Because I think that becomes very methodical and it shouldn't be like that. You do the things that you do well and you treat everyone the same way that you want to be treated. Justin Low: And these people will just come into your life.

I strongly believe that they will naturally gravitate towards you. And then throughout your career, they will be that lamppost for you, guiding you into areas that you never thought you'd be doing, giving you opportunities that you never thought you'd be capable of and pushing you and making sure that they also have your back while you're doing that. Justin Low: I think that's important. And, all of my Gui Ren have actually been female.

They have been one of the most supportive people in my career, from when I joined the PR agency. My first comms role all the way till now, even lending this role at Omnicom Media Group was because of an amazing woman that believed in me and we had years of friendship and then landed this role for me. Dorothy Yiu: I'm sure it's also your ability to identify them. And making sure that you maintain those relationships.

Justin Low: But then you see, if you then become like, oh, I should do this because they might help me, then it feels very contrived. Justin Low: I think people can see through that. And also my relationship with journalists too, right? If you fake with journalists, they can see through because they deal with PR people all the time.

And if you are not genuine and not sincere, they can tell. And it's not how I build relationships with people. Justin Low: It's always going in to build that relationship first and foremost. Actually, to be honest, I never think about what they can bring to me.

It's always about what I can bring to them and then in return, sometimes serendipitously. It flips and then you realize that's the magical part, I think. Dorothy Yiu: So for you currently, you straddle both communication and talent experience, so it's HR and comms. Dorothy Yiu: So could you unpack for us a little bit more how this two come together and what kind of impact have you seen based on the synergy on these two functions merging into one?

Justin Low: So what happened was I've been doing comms as a comms person for a good chunk of my career. At Omnicom Media Group, that was what I was hired for, and then COVID happened. The opportunity came for me to lead talent as well because the head of talent at that time left Singapore. Justin Low: I have to really credit my boss for that vision.

He believed in the fact that comms and talent have so much synergy that it should be rolled up into one. So one day he proposed the idea to me and I'm like, how would that work? And he unpacked it in a nice way. The more he explained, the more I understood why that was important.

Justin Low: We do in a lot of internal comms, HR talent does a lot of these people engagement, and they overlap in this area, called culture, which is super important for a company. How you talk to your employees internally should be the same way as how you talk to your stakeholders externally. Justin Low: I think that wall between internal comms and external comms starts to dissipate and because of COVID, it really propelled, comms to the forefront because you have to constantly engage with your employees, making sure that they are aware of what's happening and this and that.

Justin Low: As a result, you end up doing a lot of the culture building of the company. My boss is like, I think you should do this role. We should bring two roles into one, into you. Because you are doing a lot of the writing, the communication, and our employees need to hear that from you as well.

Justin Low: So he brought that up and I'm like, oh, wow. I never thought of it this way. I said, okay, I'll do this role. But sometimes I also know that when you have a HR title.

You are a huge dart board for everything that doesn't go well within an organization when it comes to talent. Justin Low: He was like, I'm gonna support you in this role. We're gonna make sure we set you up success. It's been five years since I've been doing this role and I'm loving it and I see the synergies so much day by day I see more and more of these synergies happening.

Justin Low: And now I'm a firm believer of rolling up comms and talent role together. Might not work for every single industry, but I think if you're in an HR role and you're not talking to your comms person in your company, you should absolutely be talking to them. And vice versa, comms person should be talking to your HR people to understand where the areas that you can help and where are the areas that you can value add. Dorothy Yiu: What are some examples of the synergies that you've seen internally?

Justin Low: As a comms person, you always wanna project this narrative of how this company should be looking like, how we are behaving, you build that narrative for the company. Justin Low: But we often forget that our internal stakeholders are also consumers. They're also people, they're also humans like you and I, and they need to believe in the company in order for them to wanna put their heart into the company. So when you talk externally to journalists, to stakeholders and all that, you just need to make sure that message is communicated through internally so that you build that resilience and that loyalty within the organization.

Dorothy Yiu: So it's aligning the internal comms with the external comms. To the late Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos. once said, culture is brand and the brand is culture. I'm sure this interdependency, you definitely is witnessing it within Omnicom.

Justin Low: Definitely. And it's a quote that resonates really well, with any single organization. That culture and brand is so important. They're so intertwined because that narrative that you put out actually also forms the brand narrative that you tell your employees.

In this day and age, I think this whole internal external comms, it's out of the window, right? Justin Low: And when I draft internal communications, I always make sure, I treat our employees as stakeholders as well. How do we engage them? How do we tell that brand story?

How do we build that narrative for them so that they feel like they're not just a company, you're part of a bigger organization, you're part of a bigger purpose. Justin Low: So I think that quote is so important because the brand story that you tell helps build the culture narrative of an organization. Dorothy Yiu: If an organization wants to do exactly that and re-look at their internal comm strategy, what would your advice be? What's step one?

How do they get started? Justin Low: I think first and foremost is to be open to the idea that both roles can actually roll into one. Secondly, I guess leaders need to then understand the values that comms people bring and the values that HR people bring, because a lot of times comms and HR and talent are seen as cost centers. Justin Low: They're not seen as strategic partners, and I think it's changing that mindset to think, you're not just backend, you are a strategic partner helping to build this narrative, build this culture of a company.

And I think leaders need to be able to be open to that and to actually believe in it. Justin Low: Because if you don't believe in it and you're just doing it for the sake of doing it, it's gonna be really hard on that person doing the role. Part of the reason why I enjoy doing what I do is because I have the support and the empowerment from my boss, from the APAC CEO. And that's why I'm willing to try things out because I know that if I fail, I am allowed to fail and I'm allowed to take risks and try new things.

Dorothy Yiu: If I can tap into your comms experience. Obviously, there's so many different channels and different ways to comms things out, and how do you choose what is the most effective? Do you try multiple channels? Justin Low: First and foremost, you need to also understand that there's no such thing as a one size fits all messaging.

Justin Low: You cannot think that you can have a message it can hit and target everyone in your employee demographic. It's impossible because you have people who are just joining, who are new. So tenure within the agency or within the company is different, and you've got age groups, you've got gender, you've got ethnicities. Justin Low: A lot of things to want to hit every single one, but I always go back to that one true north Star for me is that the message needs to be heartfelt.

You need to go back to the core of what the message is. It's not about channels and all that. Yeah, you can have different channels hitting every single employee. Justin Low: But at the end of the day, if your message isn't real, isn't authentic, isn't intentional, there's no human in the message, then it's gonna fall flat.

Because comms right from the get go is to make sure that your messaging gets through to the other party. And that one common truth that we feel, that I feel can straddle as many demographics as possible is authenticity and that intention, the human intention of wanting to make sure that, hey, this is the message and we're seeing it in a very empathetic way. Justin Low: If it's a bad news or it's a really good news, you can get thump your chest, but in a very humble way too, because people identify with a common truth, which is being real and being authentic.

And if organizations can't do that, then what you're gonna end up is you're gonna have message that isn't authentic and you're trying to hit every single channel and you can't succeed, it's all gonna fall flat. So I strongly believe in making sure that your message is intentional, is actually heartfelt and human at the core of it. Dorothy Yiu: So I hear you that at the core of it, the messaging needs to be true and authentic and real. But how do you do that?

Dorothy Yiu: Because, of course at the C-suite level, the board level, when it come down with a message, they speak a very different language. And what resonate with the ground might require something different. Justin Low: Yeah. So that's the magic of the comms person, and that's the value that we bring, the comms person brings to the role because the comms person understands what's from the ground.

There's more of that years to the ground mentality for a comms person. And a lot of times, HR rules and initiatives, they all happen in the boardroom. It's a top down boardroom to employee, but I think sometimes organizations don't realize that actually it should be the other way around. Justin Low: I know it's very cliche.

I think every organization knows it, but whether they practice it, that's another story. When you have a comms person, an HR person, and a talent person in the same role, you are keeping your years to the ground, knowing the sentiment that people are talking about, how people are feeling. Justin Low: And then when you have these decisions made in the boardrooms, you are the one that say, Hey, actually we shouldn't be doing it this way. I think we should be doing it that way because it helps, because this is what employees are saying and things like that.

So having that role combined to one is actually very helpful because you're that conduit between boardroom and the ground. Justin Low: So that's a responsibility I don't take lightly. Because the intention is always a good intention. I don't think any organization actually decide to do something for the employee from a bad place, or at least I choose to believe organizations want to do the best for the employees or certainly for OMG, it is.

So when you know what the intention is, you are able to then be that in between and weave in your magic in terms of how you write things, how do you communicate things so that the intention is actually brought through to the floor because there's a lot of times what happens is that the intention is good, but if the messaging is wrong, it lands completely flat or tone deaf. Dorothy Yiu: Within Omnicom, there 5,000 employees within APAC alone. We don't wanna downplay cultural nuances.

Justin Low: Oh, absolutely. Dorothy Yiu: Different segmentation and demographic. So how do you tailor it on the ground so that they really resonate with the message? Justin Low: What we do, it's almost like a two-pronged approach.

The message from regional to markets, it has to fundamentally be anchored in something that's truthful. When you have a truth in there and you're able to write it in a way and communicate in a way that feels authentic, I think that's big step one already. Justin Low: I agree with you. In markets there are different cultural nuances, there are different ways of thinking .

And so, how we land in the markets, we work with the leaders and the talent people within the market and say, Hey, this is the messaging. How do you wanna reinforce it? Justin Low: Because, sometimes people don't read emails from regional, emails from the bosses. It is kind of like glazed over.

Then how do we then work with our local leaders to tailor that message? Cascaded internally to their markets. I strongly believe in town halls and town halls sometimes can be very daunting. Justin Low: It's very daunting because oh my God, what I'm gonna say this and that.

I always tell leaders, the least you need to do is at least communicate to your employees regularly. You need to give them that forum to voice up. You need to give them the forum to understand what's happening within the organization. Justin Low: And I think COVID actually helped because at that time we had to communicate news and I think employees started listening up because they needed to know what's the latest, what the company's stance is, and things like return to office, how do we do all of that?

Justin Low: If I can think of an example, so when we started, we're an organization that believes in diversity and I guess respecting different cultures. And being a gay person, I've always felt very respected. My boss knows that I'm gay and I never felt like it was something that was against me. So naturally when I think of initiatives like, pride initiatives, we wanna make sure that everyone feels that they can be inclusive and, they are included and that it's a safe space within the organizations.

Justin Low: But there are also markets in APAC that actually frown upon the idea of homosexuality. And I'm not saying whether that's right or wrong, but that's just the cultural nuance in that market. And so we always let our leaders know that, hey, we're doing this for APAC, but at the end of the day, we're not forcing anyone in your market to join these calls. Justin Low: We're not forcing anyone to join these programs.

So you do what feels right for you, but at the same time, we need to make sure that everyone is included. So this is also tailoring messaging for different markets. Dorothy Yiu: And also giving freedom for them to adjust. Justin Low: Yeah, exactly.

The funny thing is that when we ran these pride initiatives or talking about it, be quite open. We actually had an amazing session where we had L-G-B-T-Q-I-A employees on the panel and we were talking about them and, all the stories that came out of it, was so powerful. And then when I looked at the attendance data, we saw a lot of people from markets that actually frowned upon homosexuality. They actually tune in because I think they want to know and they wanna understand and learn.

And I think that's always a good point to start. And so I feel like we shouldn't hold back on doing things just because it could be sensitive. Justin Low: Yes, it is. We're not forcing in anyone's face, we're saying, Hey, it is there for people who want to join.

They join. So that everyone feels part of the company, part of feeling appreciated, seen. And every time we do initiatives, we wanna make sure that it covers as many people as possible. At OMG, we also look really closely at mental health of our employees.

So when we talk about mental health, doing programs on mental health, not everyone wants to listen but the stage, the door is open if you're willing, if you want to listen, there's something for you to listen to. If you don't want to, that's completely fine. Dorothy Yiu: So we talked a lot about the comms part of your role. I wanna look at the talent experience part of the role and Omnicom, OMG is in the creative media industry.

How do you take care of the employee journey? Dorothy Yiu: What's the employee journey look like to you? Especially one that you will wanna fuel creative performance? Justin Low: I think every company at some point wants to be creative because being creative means that you're trying to do things differently.

You wanna stand out from your competitors. Justin Low: I think when we look and identify employees who want to join us. From the get go, we map all the different touch points in the company. Justin Low: So I always alluded to checking into a hotel, right?

You go into a hotel, God, I'm so excited. I wanna stay in this hotel. You go to a check-in and then checkin completely sucks. So what happens?

You're like, oh my God, I shouldn't have stayed in this hotel. And then you already have a negative mindset. Justin Low: So it's very similar to. To people joining an organization, no one stays in an organization forever.

We have to understand that. And when someone joins your company, it's very similar to when you choose to decide to stay in a hotel. So where are all the points in that journey in your stay with the company? Justin Low: Are you able to create memorable and impactful and meaningful experiences for them?

Within the organization, within the employee journey you've got. You onboard and after that, a few years later about upskilling. Justin Low: But how do you make sure that they are equipped with new things that happens? A new technology that happens within the organization or within the industry, upskilling them.

So we also look at mobility, if I've been in this organization for so long, but I really love the organization and I wanna maybe move somewhere or someone in Australia who has roots in Korea or in Malaysia wants to go back to the country, how do we help them? So then there's mobility, then there's evaluation, then there is all these little touch points. 'cause as a media agency, we help clients understand where all the touch points that they can impact consumers. Justin Low: So if you flip that mindset and think about your agency and your company like a brand.

Where are all the touch points you can impact employees? Imbue this creative flair on how do you recruit, how do you talk to people? Then all of a sudden, you have a creative DNA embedded within your talent experience journey. Justin Low: And I think that's important because if we tell our clients that these are the touch points to impact consumer's decisions to purchase things, then as an agency, as a company who does that, then we need to look at our own touch points and where these touch points can actually impact our employees journey with us.

Dorothy Yiu: I love that you're really looking at how you service your customer and flipping that within the organization as well. So how do you measure success? Is it also a similar thing? How you measure success with the journey that you've designed for your clients, and likewise, you do that internally.

Talk to us about that. Justin Low: I think, success and ROI, is especially important right now because every department, you kind of grade it on what your return on investment is. What's your ROI for this? During COVID, what we saw was a very interesting phenomenon.

Justin Low: We saw that when people wanted to join the company, they sign up, they sign the contract they serve their notice for two months and then, eventually when they do join the company, we found that there was a drop in terms of people actually coming through. Justin Low: So I've signed a contract, but does that mean that the potential employee is not looking around? No, they are still scouting around looking for the best deals. You go to a supermarket, you pick up an olive oil, do you say, oh, this is the best one.

You're like, okay, what's the better olive oil to pick? Justin Low: And there are a lot of options out there. So we thought, okay, so then how do we look at that two, three month journey, and how do we engage them so they don't feel like they're just a commodity. You sign and then you come and you join.

So we enforced and we built a really robust, meaningful pre-onboarding process. Justin Low: Bringing them out, talking to them, connecting with them every week saying, Hey, do you have any questions? Bring them to meet other people within the team. And because of that, we actually have seen increase in terms of percentage of people then following through on the first day.

Justin Low: So another example that I can give is, I've talked before, OMG is really focused on mental health of our employees. And so we're running these activities for our employees to make sure that they're well looked after. Mentally, I always sort of frame it like the company provides these insurance for you so that you've got the physical insurance, which is your health insurance. But we also at OMG provide you a mental insurance.

So at any time you feel that, hey, I'm not, mentally fit for work, we've got Embrace Thyself Days where you don't need to give a reason. I just need to take a day off for myself and today's the day off, and we will respect that. Justin Low: So we do these initiatives for employees and sometimes when you build these sessions and webinars and all of a sudden you look at the number of people that sign up and they're like, what? 13 people sign up for this thing that I took a whole month to put together.

And I was a little bit dejected. At that time, it was just counting a sign up as a KPI. But then one day someone wrote to me after the session and said, Hey, Justin, really enjoyed the session. It was really special for me because I was in a really dark place.

Justin Low: The session really helped me and pulled me out from that dark place and I'm so thankful that the company is, being open to de-stigmatizing mental health issues at work. And that time I just thought, okay, then we need to stop looking at the number of signups as a KPI because ultimately, if I have a session and five people join, it means these five people are people that actually want to listen. And if out of this five, I get one person, if that message touches one person, I think that's a success.

Because I think sometimes with likes on Instagram or you see all these likes, but likes is not the way to count KPIs. Justin Low: Same thing for sessions that you build, that you create. Attendance is not really a KPI of sorts. It just shows people turning up.

Your KPI should be, has that impacted someone? Has that really brought someone, helped that person, brought that person out from, being sad, being in a depression. Justin Low: And I think that really helped reframe how I looked at measuring that success. I'm very candid about my own life experiences, and I was talking about the death of my father.

Justin Low: It's been five years, but I still can't get over the fact that my dad is dead. After one of the sessions someone texted me on teams is like, Hey, I really identify with that. I'm going through a tough time with the passing of one of my parent, and I really empathize with what you're saying. And then we connected separately outside.

We just spent a whole hour talking about how the death impacted our lives. That's a success to me. That's someone dialing into these sessions feeling like, oh my God, I can identify with what's being said on the screen and then taking it one step further. Justin Low: Connecting with me or connecting with whoever, or maybe there's a group of people that all connect together.

We shouldn't be looking at the number of signups as a KPI. We should be looking at how it impacts people and how it impacts our employees and take that as a KPI and if you're messaging lens on just one person, it can help one person that is sufficient. Dorothy Yiu: I almost feel like this goes back to where you said just now about how there needs to be truth, in your messaging. In this example is on mental health, right?

And mental health requires a certain degree of vulnerability. And if the organizers are actually demonstrating that, it just creates a lot more authenticity. Justin Low: Just to round that up, talking about mental health and what better way for leaders to embrace or to de-stigmatize mental health issues at work is to actually walk the talk. So when we first started this whole mental health journey, we actually built a book of 14 stories from our leaders talking about their mental health struggles.

Dorothy Yiu: That's amazing. Justin Low: So I was in there, talked about becoming grief with my dad. Another leader talked about how she's always trying to find validation from her family. This is a leader talking.

You've got another leader talking about how hard it was for her to conceive and the trauma, the pressure that she went through. Justin Low: And another leader talked about being trapped in Shanghai during COVID. We all knew what happened, so we compiled these amazing stories together into 14 stories, really raw, unfiltered stories, and we circulated it within our organization, within APAC just to tell people that, Hey, actually it's okay not to be okay. Justin Low: It's okay that you're facing this because our leaders are also facing this and.

We are not immune to depression. We're not immune to, not feeling good about ourselves. We all are humans. Dorothy Yiu: Oh, it's just been super interesting to just look at what a comms organization do internally for internal comms.

These are such great ideas. Justin Low: They are, yeah, and, again, all this is because I'm empowered to bring the meeting points together. So the boardroom wants to say, oh, we need to engage our employees. But then you're also listening, you kind of understanding how employees are feeling on the ground and how do we help bring to that point where the both points meet.

Justin Low: That's the power of comms and talent coming really synergistically together. Dorothy Yiu: So for me to wrap up on this topic how many years in this role already? Five. Five years In this role?

Justin Low: Since 2020. Dorothy Yiu: I wanna ask in this five years, for anyone dialing in that is either in comms or HR or just leader, what do you think is one most either underrated lever or the biggest opportunity, or the lowest hanging fruit that organization can consider embarking on to dramatically improve employee experience? Justin Low: That's a very good question. To be honest, I think for many organizations, it's the middle level.

Your managers, the managers managing people. More often than time, we ignore that level. And I think we do initiatives to wow people when they first come in. We do initiatives to retain talent when they're jaded and they're like, oh my God, I've been in this role for 10 years and I want to leave.

We do all these things, but in between lies this amazing pocket of opportunity, which is your current managers. Justin Low: We do stuff with our managers. Do we do enough? No.

Can we do more? Absolutely. But I think if you empower and upskill and really look after this group of your employee base, you're going to see a dramatic improvement in terms of your output because they're the ones that are managing your troops. Justin Low: And so you need to be able to make sure that the person managing your troops in a good place that they're well supported, that they have all the skillset that they need in order for them to handle the troops underneath them in that sense.

So it's like in a war, your managers are like the people leading the troops to war. And if you have a leader or a manager who is ill equipped to do these things, you're gonna fail miserably. So can we do more? We absolutely can.

Dorothy Yiu: I also always refer to managers as the last mile connection, between an organization and employees, and they're such good change agents. Anything you wanna roll out, any sort of comms, any initiative, they are your drivers. They're the one that is influencing your employees on a daily basis. In the employee engagement world, we also know one very famous stats, 70% of their employee engagement is influenced by a direct manager.

So cannot agree more and also agree that they are one of the most neglected segment. Justin Low: You know what's the second most neglected segment? It's actually the CEOs, the bosses. It is very common saying to say that, it's very lonely up there.

Justin Low: It is because when there's a crisis, the CEO needs to be the one that puts on the brave front and say everything's gonna be okay. They are constantly feeling the brunt. The financial pressures, talent, employee pressures, everything comes to them, but they have to put on a brave front. Dorothy Yiu: So just curious, what do you guys do for your CEO?

Justin Low: So we always have regular check-ins with our CEOs and it doesn't need to be a lot. Sometimes it's just picking up the phone and say, Hey, are you okay? Justin Low: What can I do for you? I know my boss, he travels to all the APAC markets regularly and whenever he's there, he's always having a one-on-one catch up with the leader because if not, it's just them against the whole world and them against everyone else.

Justin Low: So we do these really regular check-ins with our CEOs and say, Hey, are you okay? Even I do it in my role. I'll be like, Hey, I miss you. I haven't seen you for a while.

What's happening in your life? And, just connecting on a human level. Justin Low: Still love the last time we caught coffee in wherever that we met, and then all of a sudden you feel like, okay, someone is there to listen. And if they feel that, hey, I wanna talk more, then they open up.

Justin Low: If they don't want to talk or they feel like, Hey, I don't have no time, they'll tell you. Justin Low: Last year, during Thanksgiving, we wanted to take the opportunity to just thank our CEO. So, I managed to convince the CFO, like I think we should buy spa vouchers for everyone. And so we worked closely with the local admins to get spa vouchers.

And then on the day itself, we gave all the CEOs a spa voucher. I know these are little gestures. Justin Low: I think it's important to not neglect your managers and you should not neglect your CEOs because I think your CEOs face a lot of pressure. And it's true, and you can attest to that, the higher you go, the lonelier it gets.

And sometimes they have no one to have lunch with, they have no one to connect with because they're the CEO, they're the boss. Justin Low: And you'd be surprised if you say, Hey, let's go from meal one day. And then you are able to build that connection, take that business out of it. And then, even as a CEO, you get to understand, get to hear what's on the ground, how are people feeling, so I think it's beneficial both ways.

Dorothy Yiu: Yeah, I absolutely agree. Because to your analogy of the war time, you send troops out, you need to make sure that you are, I dunno what you call it. Like generals yeah. Generals.

Yes. Yeah. Is well taken care of. They need to be in a good frame of mind.

Yeah. They also need to be taken care of. And I think the mindset with employees is very often, oh, am I getting enough recognition? So it's a lot of expectation downwards.

And when problem happens, it's easy to blame upwards. And can you imagine a pyramid all the way to the top right? Dorothy Yiu: As the CEO myself also, I feel that immense responsibility to always recognize myself. Yeah.

Making sure that I care about them. They're all doing well, but the flowing back upwards is more rare. That's why I said even if there's a gesture. And I'm not ready to talk about it, it's very much appreciated.

Justin Low: I think after this podcast, I think your employees will be asking you out for lunch all the time. Dorothy Yiu: So thank you for bringing that up. Okay, now I'm gonna ask you a question that I ask all of our podcast guests. So if we fast forward, 10 years from now, what would the ideal workplace of the future look like to you?

Justin Low: That's a $60 million question. I think it really depends on industries. I think some industries you need to have people coming in five days a week. Some industries, you can do hybrid rotational stuff and some industries are like Severance.

Justin Low: It's my favorite show these days. We'll come back to Severance in a second, but the idea of a future workplace, again, it's not that one size fits all. Justin Low: You need to look at your organization and look at what actually do you want to get out of it. What do you wanna get out of your employees being back at work?

In our organization, we have to deal with clients and we have to make sure that we're there for our clients. Can they do this at home? Justin Low: Yes, they can. But do they need to be in the office?

Absolutely. Because you can only get good robust discussions what to do for clients when you're actually meeting. Back to COVID, this whole online thing, I think at the end of the day it was helpful for that time, but I think we need to move out of that now because I see the value when people meet and gather together in the office, the discussions that they have, the camaraderie that they build, the relationship that they anchor. Justin Low: You can't do all of this online.

It's like you can't actually date online, yeah, you swipe right, swipe left, whatever it is. But you need to meet to decide whether this is the future that you want to go. You need to meet. And it's the same for a company.

Justin Low: You need to meet each other at work and you need to then talk, you need to discuss, argue. You need to build that dialogue and conversation again in order to come up with great solutions for our clients. Justin Low: So it's really dependent on which industry you're in. There's no one size fits all.

But the fundamental truth in, if I take a little step back and think about the future, it has to be a workplace where business performance and humanity are in sync. Justin Low: I keep going back to that human angle because we're dealing with people. People are our biggest assets. They are our biggest assets for differentiation between other companies and if you don't have that human angle in the company, then it's not going to work.

Justin Low: And when you have those again in sync. You can learn to earn trust, you can be more flex. I think there needs to be that meeting of humanity and business performance and that I feel is how organizations will maximize effectiveness in the future. Dorothy Yiu: Can I go back to that show that you brought up?

Justin Low: Yes. Severance. Oh my God. So when I look at that show and I just thought.

It is amazing because when we look at a show, we laugh at the things that they do. I don't wanna spoil this for anyone, but if anyone's watching Severance. When they hit a KPI, they're like, oh, we're pushing out a fruit trolley for you. Justin Low: And then you laugh at it because you're like, oh my God, what a silly little thing to do.

Or when you hit your KPI, we're gonna have a little dance jazz session for you. I'm like, that's so funny. And you're laughing at the show. But then when you look at what we're doing at work, isn't it pretty much that too.

Justin Low: When someone hits a KPI or you had a five year anniversary at work, oh, let's do a ceremony. So if you take that and you put into a show, the viewers to be like, oh my God, that is so silly. Of course I know Severance, they dramatize it. So the takeaway from that show is that when you do something for your employees, just make sure that there is meaning and it's impactful.

Justin Low: You're not doing it just to tick a box that, okay, we've got employees who have been with us for five years. Okay, tick the box. We've done this five year acknowledgement ceremony for you, because to them it might not mean anything. So you need to really look at the things that you're doing and put a critical lens to it and to actually even be open to critique yourself to say, are we doing something like what I'm seeing on Severance and being totally ridiculous about it?

So I'm looking at Severance now, there are a lot of lessons you can learn from that. Dorothy Yiu: I think it resonates a lot also because of what EngageRocket does. Where it's so often don't do things for the sake of doing it. Yeah.

Really think about whether or not it is creating the desired outcome that you want and the intended impact. And, make sure that you're also always collecting feedback and data to make sure you're informing, oh, is it working, is it not working? Dorothy Yiu: And what needs to change. Justin Low: Yeah.

I think being open to say, actually I'm not doing this right. How can I change it? How can I make it better? Take that ego out of the equation.

Because a lot of times when we do things, we're like, oh my God, no, it has to be this way. But that's because your ego is talking. Justin Low: You are refusing to admit that this is wrong. If you take that ego away and you look at this, from almost like a out of body experience, is this working?

Is this right? And if you say yes, then great but also have the courage to admit that it's not working and that we should change this. Dorothy Yiu: Justin. Now we're gonna move on to a bit of a fun part of this podcast, where I'll ask you a couple of rapid fire questions.

Justin Low: Oh, okay. Dorothy Yiu: We'll start with a fun one. Dorothy Yiu: If your life were a movie, what would it be titled? Justin Low: That's easy.

Dorothy Yiu: Perfect for the comms person. Justin Low: Everything everywhere, all at once. Dorothy Yiu: Oh. Justin Low: You have to be, you have to be everybody's best friend.

Justin Low: You have to be everywhere where things are happening to know what's happening on the ground. And then you are expected to do everything all at once. So that's a great summation of what a comms and talent person's role is. I think the title of the movie summarizes everything very succinctly.

Dorothy Yiu: Oh, perfect. I love it. And if you could instantly master any skill, what would that be? Justin Low: I think a lot of times.

Misunderstandings happen when you can't understand other people, misunderstanding happens because you don't know what the person is thinking about. Justin Low: I'm a firm believer of talking through difficulties. And so the one skill that I really wanna master or have is to be able to read people's minds. I think when you are able to read people's minds, you can come into a conversation already kind of knowing what they want, the outcome, and then you can look at, okay, does that align with my outcome?

Justin Low: And then how can we get to a common place? So it's not more of oh, knowing what you're thinking about, but I think it's the hazards of my job. I hate conflict. And so if and when I am faced with conflict, I always wanna try to solve it.

And so if I'm able to read what's in other people's minds. Justin Low: I can come to that solution much quicker. Dorothy Yiu: Oh, the world will be a lot more efficient if we can read each other's mind. If you could have coffee with anyone, past or present, who would it be?

Justin Low: It would definitely be my dad. 'cause I am very close to him. When he was alive we had a great time. We had a great run as a family and to be able to have coffee with him again, it would mean the world to me.

Justin Low: And I do miss him. Dorothy Yiu: Naturally that makes so much sense. Final question, what's one thing you wish employees or leaders understood better about HR? Justin Low: I alluded to that question earlier in one of my responses is that if you see HR talent and comms not as a support function, but more as a strategic function.

Justin Low: That would be my wish for leaders to understand that the value that we bring to this role is so strategic. And it's amazing when you have HR being strategic and your comms being strategic coming together. Justin Low: And my advice to leaders is to be able to see us like a strategic partner sparring with you rather than, Hey, it's a support function, just help me activate this. We absolutely deserve the respect because a lot of heart and to be honest, I think HR people go into this role because they have a heart.

Dorothy Yiu: Justin, it's speaking to you and just looking under the hood of what a comms person would actually do to talent experience and this world of HR, and in a way, I almost feel like this potentially could be the future of what HR could also look like. Justin Low: Oh, thank you so much for inviting me. I really hope that too. And, I'm a strong advocate for, at least communicating, making sure that talent and your comms teams are communicating.

I'm a huge fan of that. And if you can roll into one person, one role, you are gonna see some amazing things happen in your organization. Dorothy Yiu: I agree. Absolute pleasure.

Thank you very much, Justin. Justin Low: Thank you, Doro. Thank you. Dorothy Yiu: To our listeners, thank you for tuning in to our HR Impact Show.

If you have enjoyed the conversation, please like and subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any of your favorite podcast apps. You can also subscribe to our community at engagerocket.co/hrimpact. I'll see you in the next episode.