Reimagining Talent as a Business Supply Chain: Insights from ETHRWorld Southeast Asia CHRO Roundtables

5th February, 2026 Singapore and Malaysia

As organisations across Southeast Asia navigate rapid business transformation, one question is becoming increasingly urgent: ’Is talent being managed with the same rigour and predictability as other critical business assets?’

This question took centre stage at two closed-door ETHRWorld Southeast Asia CHRO roundtables held in Malaysia and Singapore, hosted in partnership with Rolling Arrays. Bringing together senior HR leaders from across industries, the sessions created a confidential, peer-led environment to move beyond conventional talent frameworks and examine what truly drives measurable business outcomes.

From HR Activity to Business Impact

Traditional talent management models often focus on processes, programs, and effort. However, the discussions at these roundtables challenged this approach, proposing a fundamental shift: treating talent as a strategic supply chain.
Much like enterprise supply chains, talent ecosystems need visibility, continuity, and accountability across every stage—from recruitment and deployment to development and release. When managed end-to-end, talent decisions stop being reactive and start contributing directly to organisational performance, resilience, and growth.

Introducing the R7 Framework

Led by Manu Khetan, the dialogue introduced Rolling Arrays’ R7 Framework, which reframes talent strategy around two boardroom-relevant metrics:

• The number of A-players across the organisation
• The tenure of those A-players, and the compounding value they create over tim

By focusing on these outcomes, HR leaders can shift conversations from effort and activity to optimisation and return on talent investment. The framework sparked candid discussions around workforce quality, leadership readiness, attrition risk, and the hidden costs of fragmented talent decisions.

What CHROs Are Prioritising Today

Across both roundtables, the conversation consistently moved beyond trends to execution. Key themes included:

• Building future-ready talent pipelines aligned to evolving business models
• Enabling leaders to make data-backed talent decisions with confidence
• Creating workforce strategies that are predictable, scalable, and measurable
• Bridging the gap between long-term people strategy and everyday operational realities

The value of these sessions lay not in theory, but in the real-world challenges and insights shared by participating CHROs—grounded in organisational context and practical constraints.

Creating Space for Meaningful Peer Learning

The success of the roundtables was rooted in the quality of dialogue. With thoughtful curation by Yasmin Taj, the sessions fostered open, honest conversations where senior HR leaders could exchange perspectives, test assumptions, and learn from one another’s experiences.

Rolling Arrays is grateful to the CHROs who brought candour, context, and curiosity to the table, making these discussions both relevant and impactful.

Looking Ahead

As organisations increasingly demand accountability from every function, HR has a unique opportunity to reposition itself—not as a support function, but as an optimiser of the business engine.

The conversations in Malaysia and Singapore mark an important step in that direction. Rolling Arrays looks forward to continuing this dialogue with the HR leadership community across Southeast Asia and advancing a more rigorous, outcome-driven approach to talent strategy.

Know more about the discussion and key insights from the roundtables here.

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