With close to 20,000-strong employees across diversified businesses worldwide, Keppel Corporation recognises the importance of Human Resources (HR) as key to its competitive advantage. With evolving business needs in today’s highly disruptive world, the Keppel HR team continues to refine systems and processes to ensure a consistent culture of change management so that employees’ experience and skills meet the businesses’ requirements.
Mr. Yeo Meng Hin, IHRP-MP®, Director, Group HR at Keppel Corporation, believes that HR’s role in Keppel has been ever evolving “to one where we contribute to the growth of the organisation by ensuring that Keppel’s employees have the right skills today to meet the needs of tomorrow.”
One good illustration of this is the role that HR plays today in Keppel’s digitalisation journey. With evolving business needs in the Group, there have been multiple digitisation projects initiated across different functions.
Keppel also recently launched the Career Konductor programme – a new HR initiative that allows experienced employees to volunteer as career guides, providing a platform to share their experiences and improve their mentoring and coaching skills. At the same time, the programme also creates opportunities for employees to network while learning about the different career choices within Keppel. Separately, the continuing “One Keppel, Many Careers” initiative allows the group’s employees to explore various career paths, and advance their career aspirations across the different businesses within Keppel.
Learning is also a key part of Keppel’s strategic foundation. This is evident from Keppel’s Employee Development Scheme, a co-sponsorship programme which encourages employees to pursue courses relevant to their work. In line with this Scheme, Keppel has supported the HR team in putting in place several measures to help employees undergo the IHRP certification process more easily. For instance, employees can seek reimbursement of any course fee under their Flexible Benefits provision. They can also attend workshops that are fully sponsored by Keppel to gain a deep understanding of relevant topics such as the HR competency framework, labour policies and legislation. The IHRP assessments are also conducted at the Keppel Leadership Institute to provide added convenience to the team.
With the company’s support, more than 50 employees from Keppel’s HR team have been successfully certified thus far.
Keppel sees the IHRP certification as a critical part of its efforts towards continuous learning for the HR team, providing staff with the motivation and confidence to contribute more effectively to the Keppel business. As part of the IHRP Community, Keppel’s certified HR professionals will enjoy a curated series of continuous learning and development programmes to keep abreast of the latest in the HR space. This, in turn, empowers the Keppel HR team members to better understand how business trends in their industry will impact workforce and workplace initiatives, and to front HR initiatives that will have lasting impact on Keppel’s business both directly and indirectly.
Two of Keppel’s HR professionals who went through the certification journey and have since been IHRP Certified shared their thoughts below:
Tjan Shi Ying, Assistant Manager, HR Information System, IHRP-CP®
I’m proud to be a part of a growing local HR community that is committed to achieving world-class HR standards, as well as effecting purposeful change at the workplace for Singaporeans – our country’s most precious resource. This IHRP certification, supported by Keppel, is the first of many steps in this exciting journey.
Chris Poh, Executive, HR Business Partner, IHRP-CP®
I would like to thank Keppel for spearheading this initiative that encourages the Keppel HR team to get certified and for supporting us throughout the certification process. The certification process has spurred me to reflect on my HR career as well as opens up opportunities to further develop my HR skills and gain insights from other HR professionals on the latest and best HR practices.
Mr Yeo said “HR departments must work closely with the organisation’s leaders to develop strategies which support the overall needs of the business. To ensure that happens, HR professionals need to be knowledgeable and competent in engaging line managers. Benchmarking every HR professional in Keppel against the national HR competency framework sets the standards and ensures a sustainable pathway towards continuing professional development throughout their HR careers.”
This article is written for IHRP by Stories of Asia.
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