Stuart Dean, CEO of GE ASEAN.

Corporate sustainable development is a major development goal for every country. Stuart Dean, CEO of GE ASEAN, shared a case study on GE's sustainability plans on the sidelines of the Malaysian Directors Academy (MINDA) 7th Building High Performance Directors (BHPD) Programme in Hanoi late May.

GE operates in many countries. In each country, knowledge and expertise of HR must be very different. How GE keeps balance to promote employee equally? Does GE have any exchange program for staff between Vietnam and other countries?

In every country across the world, there are different levels of skills and educational qualification. Our first objective is to make sure that we are becoming more efficacious with great talents that are available in the market. We do what we call a short-term international rotation program, in which, we rotate staff either within Asia or potentially back to the Headquarters for up to 6 months so that they can get another view of how the company is operating and to obtain a bigger picture rather than just working in their own country. We also shift people from the Headquarters out to emerging markets.

I can see that in Vietnam you are trying to employ local people, even for high positions. HR policy in every country where GE operates is very important, isn't it?

Again, the key is to find the best talents, whether they have just completed universities or are in their mid-career. If you hire the best people who can adapt to the culture, both to their own culture as well as to GE global culture, they are going to be successful.

In addition to the talents, another important thing in every country is to be aligned with what the country's needs are. We try to look into every country and assess their needs and priorities are and where GE can match those.

One of the exciting things about the emerging market is there is a huge infrastructure. The huge infrastructure needs to attract more investment whether they are foreign investments or direct domestic ones. Here is the place for GE to play a valuable role in helping the country.

When Vietnam calls for investment, the country tries to get technology and expertise transfers from the investors. GE has many experiences in building sustainable business, so do you think that local companies can apply GE's practices and are you ready to share those practices with them?

Absolutely, yes. A part of our philosophy is to share with partners, suppliers and customers our global best practices. Suppliers absolutely have to meet our standards, just like when GE does the work directly. If they are not yet up to the standards immediately, we can train them. We have hundreds of suppliers in Vietnam and they are all expected to meet our global standards.

We do many best practices sharing in Vietnam. We also bring customers to some of our global research centers in the US. We are committed. It is the willingness to share and to be open that make us successful in Vietnam and in other parts of the world.

What opportunities are there for ASEAN companies, now and in the future?

I think there is already a great opportunity. I mean, AirAsia and some other airlines are already taking advantage of it. It is not truly an open sky yet in ASEAN, especially in Indonesia, but it is becoming more open.

So, enormous opportunities are available for airlines to take advantage. I see a lot more cross-border investment within ASEAN and many oil & gas companies; sometimes, they invest together. Petro Viet Nam, I think, is a good example. And other companies, you see, the Philippine's power companies buy power plants in Singapore and vice versa.

Do you have any advice for Vietnamese businesses to run business sustainably?

I think it's a great time for Vietnamese companies to start thinking about the opportunities to expand through ASEAN. In 15 to 20 years, I believe ASEAN will be highly integrated from an economic point of view and that will give companies invested across ASEAN much more scale than companies that have invested in one country. So, I wouldn't say it's an urgent issue of strategic competitiveness, but I think at some point, Vietnamese companies should leverage the scale of opportunities in ASEAN.