Aboitiz: Helping shape the future, the Aboitiz way

Erramon Aboitiz
From the desk of

IN THE Aboitiz Group, we consider finding the right team member for our organization serious business. We exert a lot of effort not only in talent attraction, but also in talent retention by keeping our people engaged and committed, and talent optimization where we develop and enable our employees, who we refer to as team members, to reach their highest potential. We recognize how important it is to be able to hire the right team members not only for today but more importantly for our future needs.

We are concurrently building a talent pipeline to address our existing workforce requirements and developing a pool of young aspiring talents with fresh and idealistic minds to help shape our future. We are on the lookout for those who want to make a difference for themselves, for the organization and for our country. They are our next generation of leaders who will drive our organization to achieve our desired goals.

One major initiative we have under this endeavor is the Aboitiz Future Leaders Business Summit (AFLBS), an annual business and leadership conference for the best and the brightest 3rd year and 4th year college students from various universities nationwide.

What makes the AFLBS unique is that our very own Aboitiz Group leaders and executives take time out to speak during the two-day conference and impart valuable knowledge about business strategy, management and leadership to some 100 student-delegates. Our goal is to help prepare them to enter the corporate world and motivate them to realize their future role in nation-building.

Through the AFLBS, we seek to inspire young Filipinos to develop a renewed faith and hope in our country, encouraging them to strive for excellence in all things. This year’s conference theme is aptly called “Significantly Changing my Philippines.”

The summit will be held on Aug. 17 and 18 and promises to be another venue for us to meet new rising stars. Delegates range from university scholars, varsity athletes, dean’s listers, and organization leaders, each one of them with their own inspiring story to tell, excited to embark on an adventure that would help mold their outlook for the future.

Many of our summit alumni have gone on to reap more accolades, like becoming one of the Philippines’ 10 most outstanding students, others winning journalism awards and Fulbright scholarship grants, topping the CPA board exams, and becoming lawyers. They are well on their way to realizing their destiny as the future leaders of this country.

After every AFLBS, we continue to maintain ties with our delegates. They willingly join our team members in many of our CSR events, forming a little army of tree planters or a team of spirited outreach volunteers. Some even show off their talent in performances at our company events. We’ve created online communities for them on Facebook and in our own website so they can share their blogs, be kept abreast of company updates, and strengthen their friendships with us and with their fellow summit alumni. We invite them to do their on-the-job training with us, assigning them to mentors who guide them on their work projects.

We are proud and pleased that after they graduate, a number of them have joined the Aboitiz Group. We are impressed by their raw talent and some of them, as early as now, already have the makings of becoming the future pillars of our company. We give them opportunities that will help them build their confidence, knowledge, and business network, and further ignite their drive to excel.

We all look forward with much anticipation to the upcoming AFLBS, our 7th since we started it in 2006. It gives us a great sense of fulfillment to be able to provide our student-delegates with the opportunity to connect what they learn in the classroom to how things are in the real world. They leave the conference inspired and raring to go back to their respective organizations and schools, more confident and more determined to pursue their dreams and passions.

We now realize that the investment we make and the effort we expend in putting up the AFLBS are not the most important things we give. It is actually the process of passing on our company values which has been the cornerstone in sustaining the business for more than a hundred years. Being able to share our unique culture of “Passion for Better Ways” gives us the greater gratification in holding this annual event.

(The author is the chief executive officer of the Aboitiz Group of Companies.)