Winning Secrets: How RHB Singapore converts challenges into an opportunity to enhance employee experience

Fully-integrated financial services group RHB Singapore won the bronze award for 'Best HR Communication Strategy' at the Employee Experience Awards 2022, Singapore.

We interview Jenson Tng, Head of Human Resources, RHB Singapore (pictured above) to find out why its HR efforts and communication strategy have been recognised at the national stage. 

Q Congratulations on the achievement! Could you take us through the highs-and-lows of your winning strategy – and how important is it to have the strategy recognised this year? 

Being recognised in the industry for our efforts is always a bonus and we are honoured to have received this accolade! Internally, our focus is to bring our people together across the various operations in Singapore, especially during the pandemic where face-to-face employee engagement was low across the workforce. While it can easily be viewed as a low point, we saw it as an opportunity for us to think out of the box and challenge ourselves to enhance the employee experience. We are delighted that our HR efforts and communication strategy have been recognised.

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

We have always recognised that our greatest asset is our people. Therefore, we made it our strategic commitment to continuously build trust, deliver convenience and create value for our employees through our 'RHB Culture campaign'. Everything starts with our employees. Through co-creation sessions with employees to identify our strengths, interactive and dynamic initiatives were put in place to increase internal employee engagement for better collaboration and connectivity as well as enable quick and secure information flow.

Q How did the strategy add to the overall employee experience in RHB? Share with us the benefits of having such a strategy in place.

Our focus on building up our employees’ strengths through our RHB Culture campaign has helped RHB Singapore maintain exemplary service despite the COVID-19 restrictions where we saw productivity increase by 36% in November 2021.

One part of the RHB Culture campaign is 'RHB Way', where we focus on the customer journey and emphasise the importance of the customer experience. RHB Way helps cultivate superior experience to meet the needs of our customers. But before we can get to our customers, we know we have to first build up our employees. Happy and loyal employees will deliver great service to our customers and, in return, make them happy and loyal too.

Q Could you offer some recommendations to your peers – what advice would you have to guide them into implementing something similar for their own EX foundation? 

Often for service industries, we say “customer first”. But we must remember that it is our own employees that are putting our customers first. So before the customer, it is actually the employee. This requires a paradigm shift of sorts at the management level. Knowing the importance of investing in and cultivating a strong, loyal and fulfilled employee base is the key to achieving excellent customer experience. You will reap the benefits of sowing into the lives and careers of your employees.

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

One of the key components of RHB Way is our service culture where we focus on the customer journey and emphasise the importance of the customer experience. This could come across as solely focusing on the customer when really, what we are trying to instil in our employees is a heart of service all around – not just to our customers, but to our internal stakeholders such as our colleagues as well. Thus, one thing that we could improve on is to enhance our service culture to have it more all-encompassing and well-rounded. 

Q Looking ahead, how is RHB going to take this winning strategy higher and further in the coming years? Give us a sneak peek to into your upcoming plans to grow the overall employee experience. 

We believe strongly in cultivating the spirit of innovation, and thus will continue to explore various ways in instilling the RHB Culture beyond the current programmes and platforms.

We have conducted a feedback exercise where we have received feedback on the changes that our employees hope to see for themselves both professionally and personally. We are thus making plans to introduce changes based on our employees’ feedback in the hopes of becoming a progressive employer.

We are also empowering our employees to introduce changes on current workflow processes to improve efficiency and productivity. We trust our employees to bring the company to greater heights.

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

The role of HR is evolving and growing, as can be seen in the recent pandemic. There is a need to be versatile and adaptable to respond swiftly to unexpected and fast-changing situations. HR professionals would thus need to be resilient and innovative to meet with new challenges. With the world moving towards a hybrid / remote work arrangement, paired with the rapid and constant innovations in technology, HR would have to constantly explore new ideas to stay ahead of these changes. This also presents us with new opportunities to tap on for the global workforce, so I see it as an exciting new future for HR to explore and innovate.

Photo / Provided (Jenson Tng, RHB Singapore)