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Many years ago, when he first started working, John Victor Tence had a simple dream: to earn P10,000. “At that time, I had felt that if I made P10,000, I was lucky,” he remembers. “I never really dreamed of working abroad and leading a multinational organization.”
Tence, who now assumes the high-ranking post of Vice-President for Corporate Human Resources of Jollibee Foods Corp. has definitely surpassed that dream. Asked as to his winning formula, he replies, “I think it’s always trying to do your best. I never aspired for the next position. I just took things once step at a time.”
True enough, Tence’s journey to the top was not a short one.“My first job was as a social worker. I graduated from De La Salle, I thought I was going to be a La Salle Brother so maybe because of that mindset I was enticed to join the Social Development Organization which is the Philippine Business for Social Progress. I worked in Laguna with farmers by helping them set-up their farms.”
He started his career in Human Resource when he joined Bancom Development Corporation two years later. Yet, it was when he joined Motorola that his HR career flourished. Tence was hired as Training Manager for its Philippine manufacturing operation for semiconductors; after barely a year, he became the human resource manager. “I must have done something right,” says Tence of his promotion. “At that time I believe, based on what my former supervisor told me, I was the youngest HR Manager. I was responsible for 2,000 people.”
Tence’s stay at Motorola was a job experience many others would have wished to have: eventually, he was invited to Phoenix, Arizona to be the head for logic organization. After eight years, he moved to Hong Kong and became regional head for training and development in the Asia-Pacific.
Three years later, he joined ON Semiconductor, a spin-off group of Motorola Semiconductor, and became the HR Asia-Pacific head and eventually Global HR Head. He stayed with the company until 2003. The next step was Jollibee which he joined a month later.
At Jollibee, Tence faces a totally different challenge: “Our challenge is how to provide the requirements of the market. We’re in the food business and people’s eating habits are changing. Before everybody thought that learning how to cook was an important survivor skill, but today, learning how to cook is no longer considered by most young people as necessary because you can already go out. So the fast food industry is really providing the need. And there is a need to fulfill that particular human need easily.”
As VP for corporate HR, Tence’contributes to the industry by trying “to build the leadership engine to create the leaders, either to grow them from within or bring them from the outside.”
With regards to his management style, Tence confesses that he has a participative and transparent approach. He believes trust is vital in making things work. “I try to operate in an environment with very few secrets. Because I think the more the people know, the more the people will make right decisions,” he opines.
Tence lives a fast-paced and high profile life. But outside Jollibee, he is a simple person who enjoys life with his wife and kids. He is not one who dwells too much on his success. “I used to think that success was a position or an amount of money, I don’t anymore. (Now) I think success and contentment are a state of mind.
“It’s really being able to become yourself and being true to yourself,” he says with a smile of contentment.
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