“You don’t hire for skills; you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” This wisdom of Simon Sinek, an inspirational speaker on business leadership, is backed up by a recent KMPG survey that found it is no longer skilled, but rather skillable people companies are looking for.
Talent acquisition is also at the core of the business services sector, given that it has been witnessing a significant shift in the direction of more high-complexity opportunities. Byung Kim, lead country manager of ExxonMobil Hungary, agrees that a combination of skills and attitude are critical to ensuring strategic and complex job roles can be covered.
“We can argue that exhibiting a growth mindset is a skill, perhaps in a non-traditional sense,” he says. “Highly effective teams generally tend to have those that differentiate in either skills or attitude or both,” he notes. Kim is confident about successfully acquiring operational roles and talent in Budapest.
“We feel we have a competitive advantage with the capabilities our employees bring to the table.”
The company is far from sitting back and waiting for bright minds to knock on its door and recognizes that existing talent need continued upskilling and development. The launch of a digital innovation program in 2022 is just one example of how the firm invests in building capabilities for the future.
As Kim explains to the Budapest Business Journal, such skills are essential for ExxonMobil Hungary to be competitive as a company, but they are also central to its employees being globally competitive in the future.
“We have delivered on our commitments to upskill our talent in the digital space through our offering of rich development programs, which is very well received by our employees,” Kim says of the program that focused on four types of training: Digital skills; transformation and innovation; technology and tools; and digital development.
ExxonMobil was among the first to set up a BSC in Hungary. In fact, the firm is celebrating 20 years of operations this year. As Kim recalls, the journey covers a pretty impressive evolution from a transactional, back-office type center with just a few hundred employees to a strategic site responsible for critical regional and global activities.
Today, the workforce is around 2,000, making ExxonMobil one of the largest global/shared service centers in the country. This rapid expansion goes hand in hand with nationwide trends. The number of SSC employees and facilities went from 10,000 and 156 to 70,000 and 201, respectively, between 2021 and 2023.
ExxonMobil is making its anniversary count with multiple memorable events. The performance of the company during the years has also been recognized at the highest levels. ExxonMobil Hungary has won first prize for the Top CSR Initiative of the Year for its exceptional community investment activities and earned the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency’s 2020 Center of Excellence of the Year Award.
The lead country manager praises a combination of exceptional talent, outstanding leadership, and a conducive environment for continued investment created by the government and trade associations as critical factors to success.
What does the near future hold, considering that the economy seems likely to recover more slowly than initially hoped? ExxonMobil is aware of a potentially bumpy road ahead. Kim highlights broader concerns around European competitiveness that have been well documented by the EU’s much-talked-about Draghi and Letta Reports and which impact all economies and industries. He also gets specific regarding the critical points to act upon.
Firstly, policies are needed to boost European attractiveness and competitiveness. Unnecessary regulatory burdens must be reduced, and a predictable, stable tax climate is a critical consideration for future investments. Carbon leakage protection should be sustained. The necessity for cutting red tape could hardly be evidenced better than by the fact that ExxonMobil will invest USD 20 bln in low-carbon technology in the next couple of years, but none is planned to come to Europe.
Furthermore, Kim would welcome policies to deliver a more equitable transition, such as affordable low-carbon hydrogen, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), and low-emission fuels critical to decarbonizing transport where electrification is not yet practical. Chemical recycling to tackle plastic waste and enhancing the circular economy would also be desirable.
What is certain is that ExxonMobil is proud to contribute to the security of supply and industrial decarbonization, and its Hungarian subsidiary plays a pivotal role in making that happen.
ExxonMobil moved into a state-of-the-art office complex two years ago. Pillar, as the office building is known, was purpose-built to cultivate a place for employees to thrive. Kim also stresses how in-person collaboration is a critical enabler for value creation.
“The power of a coffee together, a lunch conversation, or working through a complex problem next to your colleague cannot be underestimated. The power of physical presence and connection is incredibly impactful,” he notes.
He adds that every day, he learns “something new in an unplanned and unintentional conversation in the office that confirms” why he enjoys being in the office with his colleagues. Providing workplace flexibility is far from uncharted territory, though, as there is the opportunity to have personal time off or to work from other locations through a flexibility program.
ExxonMobil is well-known for emphasizing colleagues’ well-being and mental health, which reflects one of its core values: care.
“Our policies or benefits are there because they serve a very important purpose for us: to ensure our colleagues are well, both physically and mentally. We have many initiatives, programs, and events that help this purpose,” Kim says. He cites research that shows that “healthy employees also perform at an incredibly high level, so it’s not only good for the employee, it’s critical for our company as well.”
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of November 15, 2024.
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