In a recent LinkedIn blog, Suryo Sasono, Bukalapak’s Senior Vice-President of Talent, wrote about the explosion of diversity in his organisation. To quote: “We’ve learned enough (about) how homogenous talents lead to a severely homogenous perspective, leading to homogenous solutions that serve homogenous needs”.
He suggests that the degree of diversity varies depending on the company’s stage and that the growth of talent diversity should typically follow the rise in customer diversity.
“At the beginning of an organisation, it may make more sense to start with like-minded people with similar backgrounds to enable faster product development,” Sasono says. “However, as the product becomes more mature and a larger chunk of the population uses it, the organisation has to start incorporating more diverse talents in its workforce for the targeted customers.”
Starting as a group of all-male and all-engineering students from the same university, Bukalapak built an online hobby forum for, as it turns out, male engineering students.
Now, it has more than 30 specialised units, graduates from almost 50 universities, and an industry-high number of high-ranking women leaders.
Indeed, Bukalapak has reached exponential growth as it branches out in Singapore and Australia. How did it meet its staffing needs, and what challenges did Sasono encounter in this expansion?
Sasono applies the strategy of looking for “anchor employees” to meet headcount requirements in opening a new office abroad. He says these anchor employees are senior employees that can be a champion to attract the rest of the workforce.
“They should represent many of the skill sets required for that particular office, act as the informal leaders to maintain cohesiveness, and serve as the main go-to person that connects with the headquarters.”
For instance, Bukalapak immediately hired an Engineering Vice President to lead when it opened its Australia offices in Melbourne and Sydney.
Sasono admits that the challenge was quickly attracting these anchor employees to come on board. More anchors are essential to building the team effectively as the needs grow.
At this point, he referred to employer branding, which, for him, takes time to build outside of Indonesia, “So, usually, a personalised approach and often involving a headquarters management leader goes on board to attract such people.”
This feature was extracted from Chief of Staff Asia’s exclusive interview with Suryo Sasono, Senior Vice-President of Talent at Bukalapak. For further coverage, please see the below link:
