DBS Bank’s Consumer Banking Group Operations (CBGO) is present in seven markets: Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, India and Thailand.
The pandemic has changed the way we engage our colleagues and interact with them. The sudden pivot from daily physical interactions to fully virtual interactions has resulted in the engagement team needing to be creative in the ways they keep colleagues engaged and helping them feel like they are still a part of the bank.
For the past 2 years, colleagues got used to working from home and participating in events remotely. In 2022, the bank implemented a permanent hybrid work arrangement, bringing back the pre-pandemic ways of physically engagements, while providing more flexibility in their schedules. Finding new methods of engagement that help colleagues stay connected have become increasing important. Not only are we organising and facilitating more physical interactions across our different offices, we need to find ways to encourage colleagues to participate actively and feel connected.
Our holistic employee engagement framework, Engagement = Experience + Exposure + Education, comprises activations for the mind, body and heart, and is rolled out to all seven markets.
We strategised our engagement framework with the aim of:
- Fostering higher engagement within CBGO
- Allowing CBGO colleagues to keep abreast with initiatives happening across all markets
- Driving collaboration to achieve success as one family
- Promoting a growth mindset and encouraging employees to maximise their potentials
Experience: For colleagues to develop new, and enhance existing skills
- CBGO Be My Guest allows colleagues to shadow senior leaders within the function. Catering to evolving work arrangements, what used to be 100% physical shadowing has been made available virtually. This has allowed colleagues to learn about what senior leaders do, and gain new perspectives and insights, regardless of locations they’re in.
Exposure: To broaden the horizon and insights of our colleagues
A large part of our engagement comes with exposure. Often, the challenge fostering connections between with colleagues in different locations, which is made tougher with the pandemic.
- Industry award announcements: It is important to recognise our colleagues’ efforts. When a team wins n industry award, we send our eDMs to CBGO, allowing everyone to celebrate the win.
- PRIDE! newsletter: An acronym for Purpose-driven, Relationship-led, Innovative, Decisive, and Everything Fun!, our quarterly newsletter – sent to the seven markets – sheds light on CBGO’s strategic focus for the year, progress of projects, and engagement activities.
- Insights page: A one-stop portal that connects colleagues regardless of market. They can browse latest happenings, location innovations, awards won, learning initiatives, engagements and more.
- Group CBGO Open: The thrice-annual townhall adopts a phygital model to allow participation from all markets. At the recent Group CBGO Open in August, we experimented by having 3 emcees across Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This demonstrated our capabilities to learn and develop ideas as one CBGO family, and we successfully created a Wow experience for more than 1,000 colleagues. Apart from townhall updates, we incorporated fun activities, such a CBGO logo design contest, and holding a Back to Office TikTok/Instagram Video challenge. Colleagues’ creativity in designing and video production, along with voting for winners demonstrated a high engagement level. The audience was also kept engaged throughout the townhall, with surprises, such as mystery awards, interspersed between segments.
In Singapore, with safe management measures easing up, and true to our intention of increasing interaction among colleagues, we gathered our team physically after the townhall to enjoy an afternoon tea buffet, and 3 ‘live’ snack stations.
- Thank You Wall: We created a portal for colleagues to show appreciation and say ‘Thank You’ to one another.
Education: Promote a growth mindset and impart relevant knowledge that aids one’s daily work
- Philomath series: A quarterly themed newsletter to share new and interesting learnings. July 2022’s theme was Asking The Right Questions. Colleagues learnt the importance of effective listening and how to structure their questions.
- Know your management series: Colleagues shared that they wanted to know more about our CBGO management team. We launched a video series of quick-fire questions with the management, allowing colleagues to learn fun facts about them in a casual manner.
- Change Management: This included focus group discussions. For eMTK (an Operations Management Tool Kit that measures performance), colleagues across markets had the opportunity to learn more about the project, and how it could help them.
Our holistic Employee Engagement strategy creates positive impact and meaning to our colleagues across seven markets. CBGO is more than a team; we connect as family and support each other in overall development. Success is no less than the results below; ongoing adoption on deep listening and constantly implementing new channels of engagement to connect with our 3,000 colleagues across remains the focus and priority. After listening to their feedback, we better understand their needs, and demonstrate our support to them accordingly.
- CBGO Logo contest: 40 entries and 713 votes
- Back to Office TikTok/Instagram videos: 101 entries with 2,400 viewers on the voting page.
- CBGO Open post-event survey: Consistently high rating, >4.6/5 since 2022
- Industry Awards wins eDM: Senior management recognition and congratulatory messages
- Employee Appreciation: Senior management and colleagues use DBS’ rewards portal (iTQ/WeTQ) to recognise efforts of colleagues. The Thank You Wall has more than 1,000 posts
- Positive feedback from Be My Guest participants – “I highly encourage fellow colleagues to be part of this initiative. It allows you to know more about other functions within the CBO family. It’s a good opportunity to observe how the management carry themselves, and the good traits to possess in your career”
- Milestone celebrations to ensure colleagues are recognised. For eMTK, the Group CBGO Head hosted a celebration where colleagues got to learn about the project, and celebrated their success for being ranked the 1st in the Unified Ops Control Tower.
