Time management, family support crucial for professional success, says Ping An’s Tan

Though she is one of the topmost female executives at Ping An Insurance (Group), Jessica Tan says that there are very few of her kind in other Asian and Hong Kong companies.

Tan, who cites effective time-management and family support as key attributes for her success, laments that there is a big gap between the top and the entry, middle management positions in terms of female employees in markets like Asia and Hong Kong.

Only about 10 per cent of the directors in the Hong Kong listed companies are women. That is way below the 17 per cent to 40 per cent seen in Western nations.

Tan, the chief operating officer of Ping An, says that Ping An is different from the rest of its Hong Kong peers, in terms of the number of senior female executives its has, including chief internal auditor Solan Ye and chief human resource officer Cai Fang-fang.

“It is to the credit of our group that we have an open, diversified working environment that allows talent to blossom irrespective of the gender or background. There is no glass ceiling at Ping An. It (Ping An) provide one of the best career development and employee training programmes that I have seen in my professional career,” says Tan, a Malaysian Chinese who worked for reputed international firms like McKinsey in America and Singapore before joining Ping An.

Ping An is rather unique on the mainland as there are very few Chinese companies who would hire a plethora of talent and adopt a multitude of working styles.