Motul Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. recognised for excellence in the Oil and Gas category at SBR International Business Awards 2022

With a passion for innovation and team engagement, the global company redefined its talent development through its Accelerate Programme.

Motul Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. has bagged an award under the Oil and Gas category for its talent development programme in the SBR International Business Awards. Launched in 2014, the SBR International Business Awards is a prestigious programme honouring foreign companies in Singapore with recognition of their outstanding projects.

Recognised for more than 150 years for the quality of products and innovation capacity, Motul is a world-class specialist in the production and distribution of premium engine lubricants, and fluids for all usages and ecosystems for better energy and new mobility.      

Motul Asia Pacific has been evolving its talent development programme to better suit the diverse profile of employees within the organisation. It was during the pandemic that they faced challenges in acquiring and integrating new employees, so they started to relook at how they could build capabilities from within. 

Motul believes that all employees should get the chance to discover where their talent lies to ensure sustainable growth for the organisation and individuals. They wanted to move away from traditional ‘boxes and lines’ to encourage employees to be a part of projects that allowed them to expand their skillsets and push themselves beyond their boundaries whilst supporting the realisation of ambitious expansion plans. 

Aligned with the core purpose of their products to push and drive the highest performance, “Accelerate” was launched as Motul’s talent development programme. 

Instead of curating career development only for a selected group of high-potentials, Motul decided to widen the scope to include all employees, making this a unique proposition in the attraction and retention of talent. They employed a robust data-driven approach, utilising multiple data points and people metrics to assess individual needs and create development plans. 

As the company wanted employees to take ownership of their journey in building a strong culture of win-win growth, personalised pathways are co-created by senior leaders, the people operations team, and the employees themselves for everyone’s unique and individual development needs.

Motul’s people operations team took a bottom-up approach in determining what it believes was the formula to success – the six success capabilities. The success capabilities encompass core (cross-functional thinking, project implementation, solution building), finance (value creation) and leadership skills (influencing change and inspirational coaching). For every employee, every success capability is assigned a development action – learn (acquire more knowledge and experience), grow (expand the scope of knowledge) or teach (contribute back to Motul). 

The Accelerate Pilot Programme has been rolled out to their 44 regional leadership team members, with the intention of successively cascading it down to the wider employee network. 

These regional leaders received leadership training so they can effectively lead and cascade to the next level (directors to managers, managers to analysts) in collaboration with the people operations team.

Motul’s approach to building individual development plans was highly objective and data-driven. Comprehensive individualised dashboards were built for each participant. These dashboards contained past performance data, salary position and benchmarks, their team’s engagement score and customer’s satisfaction/feedback for areas they impact, as well as psychometric assessments and capability assessment findings. 

The results of the Accelerate Programme have broadly manifested in how they have raised Motul’s overall engagement scores, drove improved customer net promoter scores, and raised talent attraction as a key driver for the business. Customer centricity, which is central to their strategy, is strengthened by investment in talent, enabling Motul to achieve its ambitions of growth and expansion across geographical borders.

“I am very grateful for this recognition from SBR, which reflects the exceptional efforts of our Motul team and their dedication to innovation and our people’s development. With strong employee experience evidently leading to better customer satisfaction, stronger effectiveness, and autonomy of the organisation, engaging our teams is the central pillar of our strategy and is our most important challenge in our day to day. This sends a strong message that the people are the anchor of our company and that we are committed to building a culture of growth, accomplishment, and happiness for all. Every day is a new step and a new learning for all of us,” said Lionel Dantiacq, CEO, Motul Asia Pacific.

Watch the interview below to know more about their winning project: