Mandarin Oriental’s Chief People & Culture Officer, ShaoWei Ong, plays a key role in maintaining the company’s culture as it expands globally. In late 2024, Group Chief Executive Laurent Kleitman set out a ten-year strategy to double the size of the portfolio, with growth targeted at the Middle East, Japan, North America, and Europe’s capital cities.

ShaoWei Ong joined Mandarin Oriental in March 2025 and reports to the Group Chief Executive. She has more than two decades of HR leadership experience across hospitality, banking, fintech, music, and engineering.

Preparing for AI

As AI becomes a major priority for HR leaders, Mandarin Oriental is preparing its workforce for the opportunities and challenges presented by AI. The company is exploring areas such as AI-enabled learning, multilingual content, and digital knowledge-sharing, alongside tools that can reduce time spent on administrative tasks and raise personalised guest experiences.

HR has an important role to play in this transformation, building digital confidence and ensuring AI is adopted responsibly. The company sees AI as an enabler of growth and productivity, while keeping people at the heart of hospitality.

Leadership Expectations

Leadership expectations are evolving rapidly, and leaders need to develop certain capabilities to remain effective in an increasingly complex and technology-driven environment. These include being digitally fluent, comfortable with data, and able to handle ambiguity.

Empathy, curiosity, humility, judgement, and the ability to build trust will increasingly differentiate the best leaders. Agility is equally important, as leaders need to keep learning, ask the right questions, and create an environment where their teams can adapt and grow.

The focus is no longer simply on having enough people, but on having the right capabilities, and ensuring that staff are equipped to use technology effectively. Leaders need to build high-performing teams with the right mix of skills, digital literacy, and perspectives.