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RHB Singapore took home the bronze award for 'Excellence in Employee Engagement' at the HR Excellence Awards 2021, Singapore.
In this interview, Jenson Tng, Head of Human Resources, RHB Singapore (pictured above), tells us about the several learning initiatives that have delivered impact, such as an automated learning administration process, its new learning framework, structured learning by job family, and more.
Q What is your organisation’s winning HR strategy, and what are some milestones you’ve accomplished along this journey?
Through co-creation sessions with employees and customers to identify our strengths, we realised 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 and customers. Everything starts with our employees. Happy and loyal employees will deliver great service to our customers and, in return, make them happy and loyal too.
To achieve this, we embarked on initiatives such as:
- setting up a strong learning infrastructure internally with a clear learning framework;
- providing structured learning with competency development reviews;
- cultivating strong culture revolving around our core values, and
managing and upskilling our people through workshops and programmes to ensure they remain digitally skilled and future-ready.
Q How has this strategy helped you achieve your HR priorities, and what role has the leadership played in helping make this initiative a reality?
Through investing in and building up our employees, we have achieved higher employee engagement, and fostered a strong sense of belonging to the company. These have a direct impact on staff retention and quality of work rendered across all levels. There needs to be buy-in at the leadership level before we can successfully roll out these initiatives, as well as for leadership to lead by example. This demonstrates that the organisation is serious about employee engagement and truly cares for our employees.
Q Unexpected roadblocks are part and parcel of executing any initiative. What were some of the barriers that you and your team experienced while rolling this out, and how did you successfully get past them?
Particularly on the implementation of 'Enboarder' (RHB’s onboarding workflow system for new joiners), managers were initially resistant to the new system notifications. They were used to the traditional email triggers to and from various stakeholders.
HR announced the launch of Enboarder and reminded the stakeholders to watch out for the SMS notifications and take the necessary actions according to the agreed workflow.
Patient and constant engagement with our stakeholders is the key to the success of the implementation and enhancement of the workflows.
Currently, we have received positive feedback from new joiners on this new onboarding experience, and HR has received more requests from stakeholders to add to the workflows in this platform.
Q As evidenced by the win, this initiative clearly delivered some amazing results. What was your gameplan for measuring ROI? What are some proud achievements you can share with us on this front?
RHB Way, a service culture, has dramatically improved employee engagement, and spurred employees to be better engaged and committed at work. Improvements in internal stakeholder survey results testify to this. With this ongoing internal initiative, the effectiveness and outcome of RHB Way will materialise progressively over time as the service culture becomes ingrained as a result of the engagements.
Since the launch of RHB Way, the Group won the 'Best CX Business Model Award for Service Excellence' as well as 'Best Customer Experience (Highly Commended)' for our Customer Contact Centre Premier Elite Team in the Financial Services Summit and Awards. We also won Gold for 'Excellence in Business Transformation' at the HR Excellence Awards 2019. These awards not just motivate our employees, but encourage us to continue working towards providing and sustaining great employee engagement and customer experience.
Q We’re now seeing HR manage portfolios that were previously considered far from their job description. In your view, what are the top three skills and attributes of today’s successful CHRO?
A successful CHRO should be adaptable to the changing needs of the organisation, willing to explore innovation, and resilient.
Especially with COVID-19, the importance of a CHRO and the HR function is thrust into the spotlight and placed under scrutiny. There is a need to be able to adapt and respond quickly to unexpected and fast-changing situations. Thus, a good CHRO should also be one that is resilient and not shy away from a challenge.
Often, there is no one-size-fits-all solution that can be applied across organisations and the CHRO should not be afraid to try new initiatives. If they do not work out, accept that and move on to explore alternatives that may work better for the organisation. As with the digital era, the CHRO also needs to be open to exploring innovative ways to solve various challenges. With a plethora of digital solutions available, it is important to be open to new and creative ways to meet the specific needs of the organisation.
Image / Provided
Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section!
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