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It has taught the team that cultivating resilience is more crucial than ever in order to stay relevant, Vivian Cheng, People and Operations Manager, Titansoft, shares.
Headquartered in Singapore, Titansoft is a software development company dedicated to the development and maintenance of online software platforms through agile software development.
At the 10th annual edition of HR Excellence Awards, Singapore in 2022, Titansoft won the silver award for 'Excellence in COVID-19 Response'.
In view of this achievement, we catch up with Vivian Cheng, People and Operations Manager, Titansoft who credits the Titansoft workforce (known as 'Titaners') for their support and active engagement with the policies introduced.
Q Congratulations on the achievement! Could you take us through the highs and lows of your people strategy?
At Titansoft, we have always believed in a people-first approach, and employee engagement is one of the main strategies that play an important role to ensure that Titaners adapt to the situation as it evolves. Achieving this would not have been possible without the support of our Titaners.
One of the key challenges that was brought on by the pandemic was the huge uncertainty. It was important that our strategy was able to adapt to the situation as it evolved. Our key priorities were employee safety (physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing), and transparency in information sharing. Slack is an essential communication tool that we use to provide timely updates to Titaners with the latest COVID-19 news and regulations. It helped to reduce the uncertainty and anxiety that Titaners faced and many appreciated the timely updates.
Working from home may have become a norm and many faced unclear boundaries between work and personal time. However, Titansoft focused on engaging Titaners by curating an employee wellness programme that provides an avenue for Titaners to take control of their wellness in a supportive environment to avoid burnout.
During the pandemic, Titaners were also allowed to work from their home countries to be closer to their family and friends. When the office reopened, a new return-to-home country policy was created subsequently to continue to provide flexibility to foreign employees who did not have the chance to return home.
Q How did the HR team identify and align the business & employee needs, and craft this perfect solution?
Titansoft is an Agile software development company that uses Scrum methodologies and the core of Agile is to adapt quickly to uncertainties and ensure transparent information sharing with all Titaners. We had to ensure Titaners' safety as our top priority, while staying true to our motto of 'Never Stop Improving'.
Thus, practicing emergent leadership, which is one of our core values, was critical for us to actively propose creative ideas with courage and curiosity, and work toward better outcomes.
Q Could you share the results that your strategy has delivered – be it on the business, HR, or people side?
In Titansoft, we embrace the philosophy of "fail fast, fail cheap, fail often, and learn forward". From this, we have learnt that cultivating our resilience is more crucial than ever in order to stay relevant.
Our unconventional forward-thinking practices support our people to be constantly learning and developing in vertical and horizontal directions, allowing us to maintain our culture as a learning organisation.
Learning and growing is an important part of being a Titaner, because we believe in the value of "Make your people before making your products" - our company's growth lies in the growth of our people. With that, we emerged stronger from the pandemic together.
Q What is your message to all the stakeholders who have supported you in this journey?
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the management team for being forward-thinking and implementing strategies ahead of government restrictions. I am glad that the management sees the importance in ensuring employee safety and wellbeing, and takes immediate action and measures to curb the evolving situation of COVID-19.
And of course, we would not have sustained our business with minimum impact without our people. They have shown superb ability in adapting to the changes by seeing the opportunities to do things differently.
Thank you for going through this journey with us and let's give ourselves a big pat on the back!
Q What are you most excited about when you think about the future of HR?
In Titansoft, with a strong culture of ownership and mutual respect, we are excited and looking forward to stronger self-managed teams in a safe and open environment. As part of our Agile journey, being in a self-managed team attributes from a high level of responsibility and accountability for all, or most aspects of producing a product or delivering a service.
We will continue on the quest to the way of Agile, and the core of our Agile journey and mindset is adaptability. We look forward to coming up with more unconventional practices, not just in software development, but also in people strategies to ensure we achieve long-term sustainability.
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