#LEAwards 2020 highlight: RHB Singapore fosters pride amongst its employees

RHB's operations in Singapore comprises two entities - RHB Bank and RHB Asset Management. Although numerous efforts were put in place to unite employees of the two entities, the initiatives were adhoc and had no continuous engagement. As such, the team embarked on the RHB employee engagement transformation campaign, which eventually saw it bag the gold award for "Best Employee Engagement Strategy" at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's recent Loyalty & Engagement Awards 2020. Here’s a look at their secret recipe to winning.

Challenge

Previously, RHB Singapore mainly used emails for internal employee engagement, which was usually one-way, top-down and ineffective. Building an intranet to connect all employees was also costly and time consuming, and not as interactive as the brand wanted it to be. The intranet platform available at that time was only accessible to employees of RHB Bank who mainly used it as an information resource to find contact details, download forms and documents. The other two departments did not have access to the old intranet.

Meanwhile, RHB also said that its overall internal branding and identity was weak and fragmented. An immediate overhaul was required to bring together internal stakeholders and foster a sense of pride and an inclusive culture. Another challenged the company faced was that its Singapore operations was spread out across different office locations around the island. The geographical distance between departments meant that colleagues do not see one another frequently, and the communications are kept confined to emails and phone calls.

RHB got into action and through co-creation sessions with its employees and customers, it found that the company's greatest asset is its people - both employees and customers. Hence, it made it a commitment to continuously build trust, deliver convenience and create value for employees and consumers.

Strategy

To drive a high performance workforce, RHB implemented a holistic four-pronged engagement framework - Human resource planning, employee learning and development, employee engagement and well-being, and employee performance and recognition.

1. Human resource planning: It conducted a yearly manpower headcount and budget exercise to ensure the most efficient utilisation of allocated resources. It also reviewed attrition rates on a monthly basis and segregated the category in order to focus on retaining talents and managing poor performers. A job evaluation exercise was also conducted to review jobs and job description formats. Meanwhile, it also runs annual summer internship programmes to develop a pipeline of young talents.

2. Employee learning and development: Its RHB Learning Centre was refurbished and given a fresh new look to spark creative moments for better collaborations. RHB Singapore Academy also launched the learning framework in alignment with the group's 70:20:10: learning philosophy. At the same time, RHB also offered a combination of classroom training and online e-learning courses and modules on its learning platform.

3. Employee engagement and well-being: On the aspect of well-being and engagement, RHB Singapore reduced its hours to 41.25 hours per week and offered free scheduled shuttle bus services to employees located at its Changi office. Meanwhile, it created an InnoLab and Staff Resource Centre, complete with sleeping pods, nursing rooms and Bloomberg terminals. The company also doubled down on town hall sessions and staff gatherings to improve engagement communication.

Additionally, it implemented Enboarder, an employee onboarding and engagement platform to improve new hire experience and engagement for the bank. RHB not only sought to improve employee touchpoint experiences, but also implemented the Enboarder mobile technology solution as an extension to the main implementation of Workplace by Facebook, to support the on-boarding efforts of various departments.

4. Employee performance and recognition: To improve this aspect, RHB launched an online performance management system and incorporate an RHB Culture component into its performance appraisal. It also ensured that employees were recognised with its internal RHB PRIDE Hero Awards and Service Star Awards, for example.

Execution

RHB rolled out a working culture named AGILE@Scale across key business sectors to drive a high performance culture. The new working culture aims to achieve faster speed to market for products and services, enhance productivity and turnaround time, while increasing employee engagement and driving a high performance culture.

At its core, Agile is about instilling customer-centricity, being output-oriented and adapting amidst uncertainty and empowering teams. According to RHB, these values help build the agile culture that offers employees greater autonomy, better flexibility and higher engagement. Additionally, RHB also has its agile teams, also known as tribes, which are built around distinct customer journeys to best serve the purpose of fulfilling the wants and needs of its customers.

Besides having a clear vision for its operating model and teams, RHB also hopes to build a new service culture through RHB Way, in a bid to offer superior experience to meet the needs of its consumers. The RHB Service Culture was anchored on five building blocks:

1. The right people: It believes in hiring right and uses a complete set of selection tools from competency matrix to critical behaviour interview to assess service staff and create individual development plans. A dedicated cadre for service was also set up for branches, call centre and branch service managers.

2. Co-creation: Co-creation happens in small groups, immersion and interviews, ensuring that everyone in the company has a voice.

3. Make it easy: RHB believes that efficiency is key to employee and customer satisfaction. As such, it rolled out two programmes - Make it easy using appreciate inquiry and Theme Talk Wednesdays and engagement with partners.

4. Service identity: The RHB Way Service Culture is anchored on the pillars of its brand promise "Together We Progress". It has also developed service commitments so as to deliver the service to meet its promise. According to the brand, it has since then collected several heartfelt stories on how its employees on the ground have built trust, delivered convenience and created value.

5. Standards of excellence: To promote high quality service and pride among employees, RHB created a robust model adherence checklist for service at branches and call centres.

Results

Its AGILE@Scale framework produced significant and measurable results in less than six months, with further benefits expected. According to RHB, the framework also led to an improvement in customer experience and the implementation of Theme Talk Wednesdays has also boosted the level of employee engagement. Even until today, Theme Talk Wednesdays is still taking place and RHB said all employees display enthusiasm and willingness to participate and put in effort to deliver a good customer experience.