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Winning Secrets: Chubb Samaggi Insurance doubled the average training attendance rate per course, here's how

Winning Secrets: Chubb Samaggi Insurance doubled the average training attendance rate per course, here's how

General insurance provider Chubb Samaggi Insurance won the bronze award for 'Best Soft Skills Training Programme' at the Employee Experience Awards 2022, Singapore.

On the achievement, we interview Pakorn Pituvong, Head of Human Resources, SEA / Thailand, Chubb Samaggi Insurance (pictured above) to find out how the team rolled out its training development roadmap, which applied a combination of mandatory and optional courses to boost the learning culture.

Q Congratulations on the achievement! Could you take us through the highs-and-lows of your winning strategy?

Our 'training development strategy, approach, and framework' was designed to support our overall objective of leveraging learning and development to empower our people to be more efficient and effective, as well as to enrich their experience at work.

We started by conducting needs’ analysis from key stakeholders before tailoring the soft skill, technical, and leadership courses (under regional guidance and local needs) into the 'training development roadmap'. The process synchronises with job levels (junior employees, first time managers, middle, and senior managers), and ties training with career advancement. By putting in place a combination of mandatory and optional courses for each path, this charts the direction and guidelines for each employee so that they know how the training courses would enable them to grow their careers at Chubb.

To demonstrate the importance of central continuous learning and skills development to career advancement, the impact of not completing mandatory training courses was clearly communicated to the employees. This is an important part of empowering employees to take ownership of their development and benefit from investing time in learning to be equipped with capabilities to perform their jobs.

Q Understanding and meeting your employees’ needs and expectations is never an easy feat. How did the organisation identify the business & employee needs, and craft out the perfect solution? 

We leveraged a wide variety of sources to gather as many insights as possible to ensure that our solutions truly provide our employees with what they want and need.

We started off by performing focus group sessions and employee surveys to ensure that we obtained feedback from at least 60% of employees. Our process encompasses:

  • Embark on current findings to understand the situation
  • Identify the current issues
  • Understand the root causes
  • Identify common root causes
  • Improvement of opportunities to address the issues 
  • Application of common improvement opportunities.

From our analysis of the employees’ feedback, we recognised the importance of line managers unleashing the talents and capabilities of our employees as well as well the need to structure a training development roadmap that would provide clear directions for every employee in the organisation.

As a result, we have developed the training development strategy, approach, and framework with the aim of improving our learning and development to become more efficient and to therefore provide employees with opportunities for growth and career advancement.

Q How did the strategy add to the overall employee experience in your organisation?.

After the execution of many initiatives for L&D, we have monitored and tracked the following indicators during past two-three years. The trend is certainly positive.

  • We saw an overall increase in employees’ assessment scores after going through the courses, which aligned to the managers’ feedback that employees are applying the skills to perform their jobs. The satisfaction score is very high which reflects the quality of our courses.
  • Training cost achieved better efficiency as the average training attendance rate per course doubled from 2017 to 2020.
  • The employee engagement score for training and development improved by 50% from 2017 to 2021.

In terms of overall company business performance, we achieved a significant increase which can be partially attributed to the effectiveness of the training development roadmap.

Q Could you offer some recommendations to your peers across industries – what advice or lessons would you have to guide them? 

Before we defined a plan, the key to the success of our approach was to understand the needs and problems of our target group. Therefore, it is advisable that before planning, the focus should be on finding out the actual needs of our employees and stakeholders such as heads of departments and line managers. Do not rely on a theoretical framework to learn which factors influence the ability of employees to work more efficiently.

Next, identify and prioritise the immediate and long-terms actions. This allowed us to think about the relevant solutions, taking company culture and employee preference into consideration.

Q If you were to reflect, what is one thing you’ll do differently in executing this strategy? 

In addition to what has already been done, we would like to add a new way of learning i.e. to build a collaborative community for employees to share their knowledge or experience and exchange views in a fun and informal way. It will benefit both the ‘sharer’ and the ‘listener’ to discover new ideas and best practice to apply on their jobs and contribute to a continual learning culture in the company.

Q Looking ahead, how is the organisation going to take this winning strategy higher and further in the coming years? 

We would like to strengthen our development programme by focusing on the post-learning process. We have provided clear guidelines and tools that are easy to implement to help employees apply the knowledge to their work. To illustrate, we equipped employees with tools and templates such as a coaching log, performance catch up template, assignment after class for employees, as well as we arranged post-training activities like follow up sessions and sharing community. We also intend to focus on a more digital approach by bringing in new technology/platform to help in the learning & development journey.

Q 10 years down the line, where do you see the future of HR? 

HR must evolve to be truly digitised. We need to move away from manual processes and adopt apps to serve the remote workers, a growing trend.

Employees can now work from anywhere so everything will need to be digitised e.g. recruitment, learning and development, employee engagement, career management, etc.

In addition, there might be some change in terms of HR role and structure. The HR business partner might move to be in the business function to truly understand the business needs and challenges. The HR structure may evolve to take on a COE’s (centre of excellence) role to give guidance and consultation only.

The skills and mindset of HR professionals should also change to emphasise more on data analytics, automation process, digital expertise, design thinking and customer experience skills, micro-innovation, and an entrepreneurial and digital mindset.


Photo / Provided (featuring the interviewee, Pakorn Pituvong)

Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets section!  

Follow us on Telegram and on Instagram @humanresourcesonline for all the latest HR and manpower news from around the region! 

Follow us on Telegram and on Instagram @humanresourcesonline for all the latest HR and manpower news from around the region!

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