Case study: Why 75% of NKF's staff say they're 'proud' of the firm

With reports of falling engagement levels in local firms buzzing in the landscape, it is perhaps difficult to imagine a group employees who are actually proud of working in their company.

But that is precisely what happened in Singapore’s National Kidney Foundation (NKF), which won an award in the HR Excellence Awards 2015.

The company believes in engaging each and every one of its employees to build an inclusive workplace culture together – one that is built on fairness, merit and respect to help employees perform to their full potential.

In line with that aim, a specialised employee engagement programme – the 5Cs – was introduced in 2009 to amplify its engagement objectives.

The 5Cs are the guiding principles which steer employees in their interactions with patients, colleagues and stakeholders – collaboration, commitment, communication, compassion and consistency.

Now these principles are at the heart of the NKF culture and are consistently reinforced through the various activities to create a sustainable workplace. Such activities include anniversary celebrations and compulsory induction programmes.

Throughout the year, many workplace health activities are also organised for employees such as the staff health day, the inter-zone basketball tournament, a bowling competition, the “Bond Upon a Walk”, and many more.

Employees are also given time off to participate in “Healthy Mondays” for team building activities and exercises.

Each engagement initiative is led by the CEO, leaders and the HR team to boost efforts in motivating and retaining talent, increasing productivity, fostering bonds among colleagues and strengthening NKF’s position as an employer of choice.

ALSO READ: Singapore’s top employee engagement programmes

Since 2011, the 5Cs have been integrated as part of all employees’ appraisals under the qualitative measurement section. Questions on 5Cs and engagement were also included in the organisation climate survey (OCS) which is conducted once every two years.

The firm’s employee engagement efforts seem to have paid off. OCS 2015 showed employees are demonstrating significantly higher commitment towards NKF with its employee engagement index increasing from 4.85 in 2013 to 5.09 in 2015.

In October 2014, an employee pulse survey was conducted internally as well to understand the employees’ perception on the impact of its initiatives.

Almost all (90%) of employees rated six and above on the employee happiness scale (10 being the happiest), while 75% of employees responded “Yes, I am proud of NKF”.

This case study is one of the four best practice cases included in the Employee Engagement feature – other organisations include the Yahoo and SABIC.

For a step-by-step guide to implementing an effective employee engagement strategy and to have a look at the other case studies, read the full feature here.