Read below to learn how the careers of three of our employees have developed within our business
Carmen Wong
Carmen Wong joined Becker Industrial Coatings in 2001 after university in Hong Kong. She has been working in the coatings industry for around 6 years, starting her career as Colour Stylist in Guangzhou for the specialty plastics department of Becker Industrial Coatings.
“Beckers is a big family full of enthusiastic people willing to share their experience with others. I am proud to be working for a Swedish company for which environmental concerns and overall sustainability have always been part of how we deal with business opportunities”, says Carmen.
In 2003, Carmen became head of the color styling team for Becker Industrial Coatings, China.
In 2006, Carmen moved to a business development role. During this time, she became involved in the Asian support and development of various international Fortune 500 accounts. In 2009, she became head of Strategic Planning for the Consumer Design Finishes (CDF) division.
For the past few years, Carmen has taken advantage of a number of skill building opportunities in the area of leadership and management. “Not only the improvement of the hard skills is important but also the personal reflections to better understand my own strengths and weaknesses” says Carmen. She has been given stretch goals with attentive guidance and worked with a group of visionary global team members. To add to her management skill, she started studying for an MBA in 2009 with full support from CDF Beckers in alignment with her new strategic roles for the CDF group.
“Carmen’s ability to understand the Asian and Western cultures, her interpersonal skills, as well as her industry knowledge, make her a key member of the CDF team”, says Jean-Claude Pierre, Managing Director of the CDF Division.
Jim Smith
Jim Smith is 28 years old and works as a LTD Researcher at the Becker Industrial Coatings site in the UK.
Jim joined Beckers in September 2004, immediately after finishing university. Initially he was employed by the UK Coil Development Laboratory as a technician working with product integrity and colour matching. After 15 months in the UK Coil Laboratory he joined the Long Term Development Laboratory (also based at the UK site). He has always realised that any development requires a large amount of practical ‘real world’ data and the pragmatic but scientific approach applied by LTD appealed.
Jim has been working on development projects involving; BeckryTech durability, dirt pickup resistance and most recently water-based pre-treatment primer.
This pre-treatment primer is initially intended for application onto Hot Dip Galvanised steel as it emerges from the galvanising process. He has had to learn about the benefits and drawbacks of waterborne technology. Some of this learning has involved attending a formal course run by the PRA. Jim said:
“The course introduced me to the concepts of suspension and emulsion polymers which has helped me to communicate better with suppliers of waterborne resins.”
Jim has now worked for Beckers for over 6 years in two different departments and he believes that he has gained important skills from each.
“The UK Coil Laboratory gave me a good basic knowledge of paint formulating. I also gained a good knowledge of the plant scale manufacturing process due to time spent working in the works laboratory. Beckers has shown me how some of the things I learnt at university can be translated into real world results.”
In the future Jim hopes to carry on working in LTD in an International Support Capacity.
Ada Lu
Ada Lu, the first HR Manager of Consumer Design Finishes (CDF) China, joined Beckers six years ago. She has made a significant contribution to the transformation of the CDF organization and now she and the CDF leadership team are dedicating themselves to building the global CDF organisation.
In the final quarter of 2007, CDF Guangzhou decided to start a process of transforming the organisation and Ada actively participated in the entire process.
The process started by assessing competencies and an experienced coach was taken on to provide a series of management training to Ada and her managers. This was followed up by a global leadership development programme that is helping CDF to become a global leader. In addition, individual coaching proved very helpful. Ada was also deeply involved in leading the, ‘Manage by Objective’ system setting’, and HR system redesigning programmes.
As a result Ada has become more confident in her work and dealing with Beckers’ people.
“This has been an exciting challenge for me. In the past two years I have gained a huge amount of experience, while Beckers has provided me with lots of opportunities and assistance in developing our peoples’ skills and experience. Our work highlights the fact that our people are our most valuable asset” says Ada.
Now the entire team is heading towards the goal of developing the global CDF organization.
Ada concludes: “I am ready to take on new challenges. I am very appreciative and proud to be a member of Beckers.”