6 Effective Strategies by MUC to Develop Employees’ Potential
MUC Consulting is a business company specializing in taxation, offering knowledge-based services as its primary product. These services are the result of the hard work and intellectual efforts of our employees, making them invaluable assets with great potential to grow along with the company. To fully harness this potential, it is crucial to upgrade the skills and expertise of our employees.
In companies that manufacture goods and depend on machines as the backbone of production, malfunctioning machines need to be replaced with new ones. Unlike these manufacturers, service companies that rely on human knowledge require a specific strategy to hone their employees' skills. This strategy is aimed at ensuring employees’ continuous development in line with the advancements in knowledge that form the basis of the company's services. Development efforts are carried out in various ways, including training, providing opportunities to pursue higher education, offering technical assistance, organizing discussion forums with the management, and conducting other activities that can maximize the employees’ capability.
This presents a challenge for MUC's management to apply various human capital principles in ensuring employees' optimal development. MUC's management believes that every individual has great potential for the best possible growth, and MUC's employees are no exception.
Starting with the Recruitment Process
Although MUC believes that every individual has potential, the recruitment process remains essential. It goes beyond assessing the capability; it also ensures that MUC and the candidates share the same values.
So, what values should the candidates possess to align with MUC’s principles?
Firstly, MUC embraces professionalism, which is reflected in excellent services from qualified and competent staff. Therefore, candidates are expected to demonstrate good work ethics and understand the importance of ethics and integrity to enable them to work ideally within our professional standards.
Secondly, MUC upholds the values of humanism. The company believes that every individual can thrive when treated with humanity. Thus, MUC hopes that the employee candidates share these views and beliefs. This way, MUC and its employees can work together to build a healthy work environment rooted in humanistic values.
Lastly, MUC is committed to continually enhancing its employees' competencies. This is because staying up-to-date with the latest knowledge is the key to providing top-notch services. Therefore, MUC is consistently working to boost the quality and capacity of its employees as well as the company to deliver the best services, in line with the employees' professional development.
According to MUC's Director Erry Tri Merryta, employees must balance values with technical skills. "If someone has great technical skills but lacks in values, or if their values are solid but their technical skills are lacking, their development will not be optimal," Erry said. She emphasized that MUC's product is knowledge, employees, as the "producers”, must continuously develop their knowledge and uphold positive values that align with the company. This is crucial because it ensures that the services provided are meaningful and satisfying for clients.
To this end, since the onboarding phase, MUC's Human Capital (HC) will keep a close watch and explore each employee through various developmental approach methods. Further, through the different developmental treatments provided, MUC's HC will gain insights into the employees’ skills and identify promising areas for improvement in each employee.
As time progresses, if an employee encounters stagnation in their development, HC will carry out an evaluation. This is because the company believes that when an employee hits a roadblock, it does not necessarily indicate a lack of potential. It could simply be a mismatch between their potential and the type of work in their division. HC, therefore, plays the key role in reassessing the employees, including offering options for transfer to other divisions deemed suitable with their capabilities.
If the evaluation results indicate the need for a transfer and suitable division opportunities are available, the relevant employee will be reassigned. Cross-divisional employee transfer is one of the approaches used to develop employees and assist them in maximizing their full potential.
What Are MUC's Efforts for Employee Development?
Besides transferring between divisions, MUC also uses various methods to develop the employees. This development process requires enduring time and dedication. So far, MUC's HC team has been continuously working hard to discover and nurture employees' potential through different efforts. Here are some of them.
1. Training
Employee training and development at MUC, both internal and external, are aimed at providing opportunities for employees to learn and grow, consistent with the evolving knowledge required. However, to hold a training is not a walk in the park. Since its initiation in 2009, raising awareness about the importance of training among employees has been challenging. Various efforts have been made; from using training cards as attendance records to implementing a reward and punishment mechanism involving top-level management to internalize the value of continuous learning. Year after year, MUC has kept refining the monitoring methods, not only through accurate assessments but also by organizing training sessions using the latest tech gadgets. As a result, these continuous efforts have been quite effective in building personal awareness among employees to attend training. Even more, they have been involved in innovating and improving our training programs.
Now, the monitoring of training programs is not as strict as in previous years because the employees have realized the benefits of attending training for their growth, personally and professionally. Thus, employee participation in training is no longer an obligation, but a necessity.
In addition to internal training, employees also have the opportunity to join external training based on their needs. For this purpose, the company allocates an annual training budget for each team or division. The budget for each team is adjusted based on the team's achievements or performance in the previous year. Then, each team manager/team leader manages the training budget and distributes it to team members according to their needs based on the development strategy of the team.
2. Talent Management Program
In addition to intensively forging development programs, MUC management also prepares an incubation program to groom future leaders of MUC. This program is part of Talent Management, focusing on developing employees' soft skills and leadership. Employees who participate in this program are chosen through a selection process.
Those selected will receive specialized training on soft skills crucial for their future careers, such as leadership, critical thinking, or other specific skills. In this program, the top-level management also participates in leadership training and in developing the mindset of employees chosen as Talents. They act as Coaches who can provide insights and discussions on various personal development issues needed by the Talents.
3. Employee Education Support
Valuing the potential growth of its employees, MUC also facilitates employees who want to pursue further education through study leave. This facility allows employees to work and study simultaneously. Currently, many MUC’s employees hold active student status, pursuing bachelor's, master's, or even doctoral degrees at several universities. This flexible policy allows them to sharpen their knowledge and competencies while still working. Moreover, those aiming to study abroad are also granted permission to do so. This shows the company's commitment to fully supporting its employees' self-development.
In addition to study leave, a scholarship is also offered for promising employees who wish to pursue their education, whether domestically or internationally. However, there's a selection process to ensure that this scholarship program benefits both the employees and MUC.
4. Collaborating with Universities
To boost the quality of employee self-development, MUC believes that employees need opportunities to test their abilities by providing platforms for sharing knowledge. Therefore, MUC has long-term partnerships with top universities. Through these collaborations, employees are given the chance to be speakers, lead training sessions, or even teach certain courses—or public lectures, even—on campus, focusing on topics that match their skills. Besides supporting education in Indonesia, this program aims to foster a learning culture among the employees, making them confident and ready to share their expertise as trainers or speakers at universities or other professional events.
5. Creating a Conducive Work Environment
A conducive work environment starts with a healthy and positive work culture. This culture is built through shared values, interaction patterns, and policies that emphasize positive values. Building such a work culture takes time, effort, and consistency. Positive habits developed over time will become rooted in the company's culture. That's why MUC consistently ensures that the habits shared in the workplace are constructive and grounded in good values, all to create a positive and conducive work environment.
With a conducive work culture, employees feel safe, comfortable, and motivated to grow and develop optimally. This has a positive impact on both employee performance and the company as a whole. Therefore, MUC strives to find employees having values compatible with those of the company, so we can all work together to create a positive environment. After all, consistency and sustainability are key to fostering a conducive work culture.
6. Spirit of Excellence
To support employee development, MUC management is committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels heard and valued. Therefore, the company encourages open communication, where both managers and employees have space to discuss team performance. In forums, it is not just management giving feedback and criticism; employees also have the chance to evaluate the management, especially at the end of the year. This helps build a positive mindset and amps up employee performance. Plus, the management is always open to hearing from clients to give their feedback and suggestions through the Marketing division.
In running the company, MUC Consulting places a huge emphasis on developing employees as the main asset. Through various strategies and programs, MUC continuouboosts employees' technical and personal skills and knowledge. With a spirit of excellence, MUC ensures that the employees feel respected, can speak up, have their voices heard, and get chances to grow. As a result, these efforts do not just create a healthy, productive workplace, but also contribute to the long-term growth and success of the company.
