LIXIL’s strong employer brand a key to attract talent, business growth

Japan-based LIXIL Corp (LIXIL Group Corporation), has a reputation for pioneering water and housing products. However, Audrey said, “a company’s success doesn’t belong to one person and it never belonged to the leader – it belongs to the team”.

Based in Thailand for the past five years, the Malaysian-born Audrey told The Nation in an exclusive interview that during the first few years of her management role as company leader, the group were focused on laying a strong foundation for the company’s employee branding platform. 

Since the company is one of the global leaders in pioneering water and housing products that solve everyday, real-life challenges, having the best talent on board is vital.

Employer branding is crucial for organizations like LIXIL, she explained, as it helps attract and retain top-talent employees. Employer branding is essential for achieving the company’s core purpose of making both employees and customers feel at home. Branding helps in fostering diversity and create an inclusive culture that promotes respect among employees, communities, and business partners. 

Key, too, is operationalizing the principles of excellence and meritocracy, which, coupled with a diverse workforce, enables the company to understand and better serve its customers, ultimately leading to long-term success through collaboration and enhanced reputation.

But the work of human development is somewhat delicate, LIXIL continues, as it’s developed its employees through every channel and all programs on a quest to find “the talent pool”, the potential talent in LIXIL.

“I personally believe that every organization needs to invest in building a talent pool because talents don’t just come in, don't just appear, they need to be nurtured, they need to be developed,” said Audrey.

To empower employees and uncover their key strengths LIXIL has collaborated with established organizations like Sasin School of Management and some of the marketing schools to create a very structured program for its high potential managers and senior managers levels. This initiative focuses on intensive specific courses and training to enhance their skills and capabilities.

Further elaborating, Audrey added that transparency, clear communication, values and empowering the employees are key factors at LIXIL.

To execute an effective employer branding strategy, and to deliver the employer branding message, the group leader has shared few tips:

• Employer value proposition (EVP): Understanding employee needs and expectations while supporting them to manage their concerns.
• Competitive compensation and benefits: LIXIL is working closely with Mercer, a company that specializes in health and benefits, investments and retirement, workforce and careers, and M&A advisory services to ensure the well-being of its employees.
• Diversity and inclusivity community: This allows employees to feel valued, heard, appreciated and free from discrimination, which in turn reflects positively on the external relationships with customers of diverse backgrounds, transcending mere internal branding efforts.

In line with global trends in Women in Leadership, LIXIL maintains its own key performance indicators (KPIs) for female leaders. "We have our own KPI when it comes to female leaders," noted Audrey.

Looking ahead to 2030, LIXIL aspires to achieve a 50/50 gender ratio of employees at the executive and director level, and 30% at the managerial and supervisory level. Thailand has already surpassed this goal and stands out as a leader among LIXIL Group's Asia Pacific region.

“I’m proud to say that Thailand has already completed our goal”, said Audrey with a smile and sparks in her eyes at the early achievement.
 

Among her leadership team or team of different function leaders, she has achieved 70% of her women leadership and 30% men leadership. This means that the company is making an effort to build that gender ratio where women are being seen as a very strong gender to lead the workforce. This achievement underscores the company's commitment to promoting gender diversity and positioning Thai operation as one of the leading countries in the Asia Pacific region among the LIXIL Group.

Audrey stressed that communication is critical to driving a vital message across the company. At LIXIL, communication is generated via social media platforms, both the “Workplace” internal platform, and external platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook. Updates about the company and each business unit are posted regularly, while townhall meetings are held quarterly in which all units and all levels can express and share their opinion individually.

Awards such as the Country Leader Award and the Regional Award are given to recognize and reward those who have top notch performances and have achieved significant contribution to the organization. 

To ensure we are able to retain our employees, career talk conversation takes place to understand our employees’ interest and their career goals. LIXIL takes pride in guiding employees in discovering the right path to achieve their life goals. Despite some may choose to pursue opportunities elsewhere – which can occur in any organization, LIXIL also arranges the exit interview to gather the reasons that the employee is leaving. This information will enable generating insights on eliminating those reasons and crafting retention policies to minimize future exits and it is also an opportunity for the organization to thank the exiting employee for their contributions.

The Human Resources team is the company’s key partner in delivering the vision, communicating the desired culture, and developing initiatives to build a strong platform for both current and potential employees. Employer branding unifies the organisation, meets needs, and fosters a strong, happy working community while attracting the right talent. This alignment leads to happy employees, happy customers, and sustained mutual long-term benefits, she said.

“I personally believe that when the employee is happy they will speak about our company and that’s why it’s important for us to have that very good engagement and to build that trust. Once that trust is built we will also have happy customers as well, because our employees are serving customers and we can look at mutually benefiting on a long-term basis,” Audrey concluded.

Under Audrey’s management, LIXIL Thailand showcases three global power brands – American Standard, GROHE and INAX – through three exclusively curated brand zones. The result is multi-sensory, multi-brand experiences through design, sound, and scent that change dynamically across the different bathroom and kitchen showcase spaces.