People management with a global reach

By Selwyn Parker

It is 6 am in Singapore and Jackie Lloyd, the Dairy Board's human resources chief, is on the phone from her hotel.

Immediately after the call, she is going for a run in the park nearby. Then she fronts a three-day version of the programme she set up: winning worldwide through leadership.

In between, there are people to interview for jobs. She hopes to get home to her husband and two children in Wellington by the weekend.

The Dairy Board has 82 staff in Singapore, 1800 in Asia, 9500 in 40 countries worldwide, and all of them are her responsibility. She is 38.

Hers must be the human resources job in New Zealand.

The nation's biggest company with annual sales of $7.7 billion and the world's biggest single exporter of dairy foods, the Dairy Board is in the sometimes painful throes of rebirth as a full-fledged, brand-bashing global marketing company doing business in more than 100 countries.

The board has been carved up into two distinct and worldwide entities - New Zealand Milk, which combines the consumer and food service business, and New Zealand Milk Products, which runs the ingredients business.

This latest evolution in the long life of the Dairy Board was launched in June and is still working its way through the organisation. But something must be working - last week the board won Trade New Zealand's awards for large exporter of the year and overall exporter of the year.

The upheavals at the Singapore office illustrate on a small scale what has been going on within the company. Like the other offices around the world, Singapore formerly combined under one chief executive responsibilities for consumer foods and ingredients for South-east Asia.

He ran the office relatively independently of the global business.

Like the other 40 offices around the world, Singapore has been divided into two distinct units - New Zealand Milk and New Zealand Milk Products - each with its own managing director. The two units do, however, share backroom services such as information technology, finance and human resources.

One ingredient that is not in short supply in this strategy is the white gold - namely, milk - on which the whole business is founded.

It is the right people that are scarce. Just the day before in Singapore, Jackie Lloyd had interviewed applicants for a regional human resources manager but could not find one that measured up.

The requirements for the winning candidate give some idea of some of the difficulties. He or she had to speak English and Mandarin, be used to working in a multinational company, at ease in different cultures, familiar with the local commercial environment, and preferably know what a milking shed looks like.

In human resources terms, the Dairy Board must be the most international of any New Zealand company. Most of the staff in the Dairy Board's 40 countries are local, which satisfies the board's slogan: "Global reach, local touch." And there are 180 expatriates working outside their place of birth - British, Singaporeans, Americans, Mexicans and Malaysians to name a few.

Jackie Lloyd is in charge of a shakeup. Few of the Dairy Board's 9500 staff have escaped without their job descriptions being changed.

The aim was to make them more accountable and faster moving so the board could compete with the other global consumer food giants such as Procter and Gamble, Nestles, Parmalat, Danone.

The tools she used to turn them around included every possible avenue of communication from face-to-face talks to seminars, conferences, e-mailed presentations and fortnightly newsletters.

The practical problems of running this multinational workforce are considerable. For example, it is impossible for the human resources leadership group to get together, even for a conference call, because of the different time zones in Britain, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and North America. So Jackie Lloyd has to host two calls on those days, one at lunchtime, the other at night.

An e-mail system does, however, help a lot.

"It means we can run a virtual office around the globe."

The travel can be tough. She spends roughly a week out of every five out of New Zealand.

"I could travel a lot more but I don't because I have a young family and you have to have balance in your life," she explains.

Her husband, Mike Walsh, is an executive at Mobil, where she worked before joining the Dairy Board. "He was one of the reasons I left. We felt we shouldn't work in the same organisation."

The hours can be hard. Whenever she can, she leaves the office at 6 pm to see the children, who have a nanny. After they are in bed, she unpacks her laptop. At weekends, she makes a point of doing little around the house, preferring to spend time with the family, work out at the gym ("my sanity break") or jog.

"What keeps me going is the challenge," she explains. "I just can't think of a better job. I'm always learning, always doing something different, and seeing the results."