Last week, we launched our office swap program in Singapore with participants coming from our regional offices across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Middle East North Africa (MENA) – Georgina Beavis and Matt Canning from Sydney, Artur Fatykhov and Elisa McCabe from Tokyo and Salwa Omerzai from Dubai were all participants of this program.
This has been designed to bring colleagues from different parts of the world together and enable them to share ideas as well as learn from one another’s valuable experiences.
At SThree, we are continuously looking for ways to improve our employee incentives and ensuring they are meaningful and inclusive. Through our office swap program, our employees are therefore able to experience life in another country and take full advantage of the opportunities that our global presence offers.
What is the objective of the office swap program?
Our Human Resources (HR) and Learning & Development (L&D) teams have created the office swap program with the aim of enhancing our employees’ personal development within SThree and providing exposure to a diverse and global network with their colleagues. This program has allowed us to reward our employees for their hard work through a platform that enables them to engage and interact with peers and stakeholders in the business. Participants are expected to fully engage and acquire new skills, experience new cultures and share their country’s best practices. The aim is for them to draw on their local experience and knowledge and share these with host colleagues. Participants are also encouraged to meet with clients and where possible, candidates based in Singapore and take part in new regional opportunities. The office swap program has been planned to take place quarterly – with offices across APAC and MENA to take turns in hosting the event.
How to qualify for the program?
Consultants across all business levels are encouraged to apply. The program is not restricted to top performers and is inclusive to all consultants who have been with the business for more than six months. The HR and L&D teams select participants based on the SThree values they portray – “Build Trust, Care then Act, Be Clear and Aim High” as well as the contribution they have made to the business in terms of performance and efforts.
What is on the agenda of the program?
Upon arriving in the host country, participants conduct a short presentation giving a brief overview of what it is like working as a consultant in their home country and what they hope to achieve during the one week office swap program. Similarly, upon their return to their respective home offices, they are expected to conduct a team presentation covering their week-long experience and new learnings acquired in the host country. The office swap program intends to provide participants the opportunity to not only work in another office, but also the exposure to new ways of working in another country.
“Incentives are key drivers in our business and ensuring they are inclusive is a priority. This is how the office swap program evolved – by listening to our employees’ preferences and crafting the program around revisiting their role in a new country, working with colleagues from different cultures, drawing on the expertise of our managers and getting to know our colleagues outside of our own office. Huxley and Real Staffing in Singapore have been fantastic hosts for our pilot scheme and we are looking forward to many more, giving our employees the opportunity to knowledge share in Tokyo, Dubai and Sydney”, said Claire Mear, Human Resources Business Partner for the APAC & MENA regions.
From Left: Georgina Beavis, Elisa McCabe, Salwa Omerzai
What our participants have to say about the program
We were very excited about our first office swap and have received the following feedback from participants:
“I was positively surprised about how much I’ve learnt from the office swap incentive. It just goes to show how amazing a little change in opinion or process can potentially add to your skillset as a recruiter with SThree. The success of our office swap has proven that our culture is strong and positive across the APAC region. The Singapore office has left a lasting impression and I’m looking forward to sharing my learnings with my home office back in Sydney” – Matt Canning, Senior Consultant at Huxley, Sydney.
“The program gave us the chance to fully immerse ourselves into the local and regional environment as well as exchange best practices that exist in different offices globally – which is extremely relevant for niche markets like Medical Affairs. This program enabled us to look into and analyse businesses from a global, strategic and corporate perspective. I believe this is instrumental especially when we aim to be consistently the best in a rapidly changing, yet globally-aligned industry like pharma” – Artur Fatykhov, Consultant at Real Staffing, Tokyo.
“Taking part in SThree’s first office swap was a great opportunity. I truly enjoyed meeting my colleagues from the offices in Australia, Dubai, and Singapore. We were able to share our experiences, learn from one another, and connect for the future. I also got to visit a new country and take in the sights, which was a great bonus! Working in a new place, surrounded by new people, really showed me that I am part of an amazing global team” – Elisa McCabe, Consultant at Huxley, Tokyo.
“Despite being a global company, the distance between our offices in APAC and MENA can make them feel a little more standalone than the tightly knit European offices. The office swap was a great initiative – not just to give those that attended the opportunity to share knowledge but to kick-start international partnerships which will enable us to build better bridges between our offices that we can leverage as we grow” – Georgina Beavis, Sales Operations Analyst APAC at SThree, Sydney.
“It was a very enriching experience to share our thoughts and best practices with our colleagues across different offices and in turn, implementing these in our home country. Everyone was really welcoming and supportive” – Salwa Omerzai, Senior Team Manager at Huxley, Dubai.
Learn more
SThree operates in 16 countries and provides specialist contract and permanent recruitment services across ten brands. If you would like to learn more about what we do and why we love what we do at SThree, watch this video.
Huxley and Real Staffing are part of the larger SThree Group across the United States, APAC & MENA and Europe. Huxley specialises within Technology, Banking and Finance while Real Staffing focuses on the Pharma, Biotech and Medical Devices industry.