If you can't count on the organisations that insure you and your family against financial losses in times of death, illnesses, accidents or retirement for stability and security, who else can you possibly look to? Thus one can imagine the importance of what a stable, dependable image and a heritage built on trust mean to an insurance company.

Great Eastern Holdings is a classic example. The company will have you know that it was established 90 years ago and weathered some of the toughest economic conditions including the two World Wars and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Even if one wasn't aware of that, the firm's old-fashioned logo of a red lion, typically considered by local companies as a sign of tradition, gives a sense of the company's deep-rooted past.

Then, there's the Great Eastern Centre situated on Pickering Street: an ancient-looking edifice of beige, stone walls and thick columns leading up to the building's driveway, a clever attempt at distinguishing itself from the modern CBD landscape. The office, however, had a more modern twist. Behind the front desk is a row of full-length windows showcasing a recently converted roof garden patio - a refreshing change from the building's exterior. In fact, the drive of ushering the company into a new, more modern era transcends the physical changes, well into the business agenda. The instinctive question to that is what made a company that banked so much on tradition in the past want to shed its conventional ways?

"For a long time, the company was known to be very traditional. We tended to appeal to an older, more conservative customer base, but we didn't come across as dynamic. We wanted to change that," explains Chiam Boon Kong, managing director of strategic resource management.

Besides human resources, Chiam also oversees the company's IT and corporate communications divisions. He admits that merging two diversely different divisions, HR and IT, may seem "strange", but rationalise that it was a logical move in view of the change that the company is going through.

Chiam says the merger decision stems from the need for people management expertise during its major IT project of migrating the old mainframe computer system to a new, more open platform - a "very expensive" but essential move as the business gears up for the China market. The impetus was further driven by the rising maintenance cost of the aging system, thus the need to get out of the "burning platform". To give a sense of the company's financial commitment towards the project, Chiam says the recently completed first phase costs $40 million, whilst the next is in the region of $100 million. "An IT project of this scale requires effective resource allocation - who best to do it than HR? Besides, this project is not about technology alone, it involves change management." He says HR is instrumental in influencing IT recruitment, boosting motivation levels and lowering turnover rate - crucial factors that help the project stay on schedule and within budget.

From an HR perspective, it's probably more appropriate to refer to the transformation as a re-organisation, rather than a system migration, in that changes were being made to the division's management structure and new competencies were identified. The three key competencies, explains Chiam, are project management, which to a large extent involves people management, business analysis; the bridging of business needs and ways of achieving it through IT, and application development. "Of the three, only application development truly requires technical IT skills. A lot of IT projects fail because of a disregard for people issues," states Chiam.

Chiam's frequent reference to his team members and usage of words like "concerted effort" and "team work" speak volumes about his regard for team effort and camaraderie. After all, it only seems befitting of someone who places such high emphasis on the human element. Assisting Chiam on the strategic resource management team are Jimmy Tan, head of human capital and James Lee, assistant vice president of development and communications. More specific to the HR role are three other executives including Lau Ying Leng, vice president, relations and services, Fonda Tan, vice president, expectations and relativity and Hong Siu Ming, manager, relations and change management.

The fact that HR's expertise was sought for a project the company considers as a significant investment demonstrates its regard for the value of human resources management. But this view was not shared by everyone. "When we first mooted the idea of a strategic resource group, the company's chairman, a rather conservative person, was not keen on marrying the two "strange bedfellows," recalls Chiam. "I'm not sure if he's sold on the whole idea yet, but the fact of the matter is, we've made a lot of changes over the last three years."

When Chiam joined Great Eastern eight years ago, he was faced with the challenge of transforming the HR department into a more strategic business function. The tough part was not getting top management buy-in, for his CEO "believes in people and wanted HR to make a difference", but getting employees to see the real value creation of HR.

Illustrating employees' impressions of HR in the past, Tan says, "HR people acted like corporate policemen tasked to carry out instructions from the top. The communication between HR and employees mostly pertained to administrative aspects such as staff annual leave or medical benefits. HR is the last department an employee would count on for objective career advice".

It struck Chiam that the first thing HR had to do in order to become truly strategic was market itself to the company's internal customers - employees. "Under the new approach, the team was expected to build new competencies, enabling them to become, amongst others, good career coaches and people managers - and to stop behaving like walking HR guides.

That gave rise to the relationship management concept. Lau explains that relationship managers or RMs are HR staff assigned to take care of specific departments' HR needs. Though Chiam acknowledged that this was not a new concept, he believes it helped bring the team closer to staff and restored confidence and trust in the team.

Project marketing HR was further propelled by the appointment of HR Ambassadors (HRAs), representatives enlisted from every department to champion HR issues. "The idea was not just to have more people cascade information down to their departments, but HRAs are actually expected to be catalysts for change, be it for a new system or to enhance the communication between their departments and HR," says Tan.  

Chiam also espouses the need for the HR team to become change agents themselves. This brings him to elaborate on the team's bold attempt at talent management. "In the past, the insurance industry tends to poach from each other. That's because you want people who can to hit the road running. I think we've bucked the trend by hiring people, even at very senior levels, outside the industry."

He believes the move has improved the quality of hire. "Yes they make mistakes because they don't understand the products as well, but they bring with them different expertise and fresh perspectives," adds Chiam.

Attracting good people to join the firm, however, was a challenge. Tan says that finance professionals want to work for banks, not insurance companies, due in part to the stigma associated with the insurance industry. He thinks a lot of people are turned off by loud, aggressive insurance agents. "But I like them, there is so much to learn from them, they are not afraid of establishing contact with people they aren't familiar with and they have good EQ," says Tan.

Lau says her company took advantage of the structural economic change two years ago to recruit good people who have lost their jobs. "Initially, they just wanted to get a taste of the insurance industry, but we managed to retain them because of the good career development we offered."

At the same time, the team also paid special attention to the firm's compensation system; benchmarking salary schemes and conducting surveys to assess market expectations. Though not extremely surprised to find that the company was not the best pay master in the industry, discovering that its salary schemes were in some cases 50 percent below market rate was a rather shocking revelation. The team retorted that they have improved compensation over the last few years and have become "quite competitive".

Nonetheless, Chiam was quick to stress that compensation is but a hygiene factor, not a stopgap for all its recruitment and retention challenges. "There never is a right salary, what really matters is how a company treats it employees; whether it truly cares and looks out for their interests." states Chiam.

On that note, Chiam was uninhibited in his comments that the team was under pressure from the top management, and its parent company, OCBC Bank, to adopt ‘sexy' schemes likes flex-benefits. "I don't think that allowing employees to exchange their unused benefit dollars for tokens like cinema tickets or short trips are really going to attract someone to join the company, or motivate existing employees to a large extent. So, we've made a judgement call of not barking up the wrong tree." He says the "scary thing" is companies are sometimes so latched onto these trends that they lose sight of the things that really matter.

One of the factors that demonstrates a company's commitment to employees' interests and growth, according to Lee, is staff development. He says that building a reputation as a great talent developer also enhances recruitment. Whilst Chiam acknowledges this, he is also conscious of the fact that there is a higher possibility of being looked upon by rival companies as a good ‘hunting ground'. But strangely, Chiam does not see that as a demerit. "In recent years, we've lost some good people to other insurance firms such as AIA and Prudential. That rarely happened in the past. I suppose you could view that as a positive reflection of the demand for our people. It's a paradox we're proud of," he claims. According to Chiam, four of the largest insurance players in Singapore, including his firm, are AIA, Prudential and NTUC Income.

When asked what keeps the HR team awake at night, Tan says it's the balancing act of meeting employee needs without over promising. "We're selling HR in a more marketable way yet we can't run away from some of the policies, so our job is to make them more palatable."

As for Chiam, it is the question of whether the HR team, to which he refers as the most "politicised" function of a company, will have the conviction of staying on course despite pressure. "Everybody wants control over HR because it has power over the people the company recruits. It takes integrity for the team to not get swayed by the politics. HR is too important to get messed up."

It's evident that Chiam is one HR person who is not afraid of making his views, however, controversial, heard. However, he laments that forthrightness is a quality he rarely encounters in the profession. To him, the HR profession is also very guarded, "secretive". "Many HR people out there give the profession a bad name. I've stopped attending HR industry meetings because it's futile when people don't share. A lot of them think that HR is about the processes and the programmes they implement, it's a lot more than that."

On what lies ahead for Great Eastern's HR, Chiam says there are certain competencies and skills he wants his team to achieve including becoming better career counsellors, stronger EQ and a sharper business sense, which will help them make better decisions. "Currently, they (top management) consult with HR because I'm in the senior management team, so I can provide strategic HR input. I would like to see that happening at different levels of HR, rather than a top-driven approach," he says. Although it was not verbalised by his team, the members seem to exude a quiet confidence in achieving what lies ahead, perhaps their successful attempt at marketing HR has smoothened the path for bigger things to come.

Biographic data

Chiam Boon Kong

1983

Bachelor of Business Administration (Honours) National University of Singapore

1983

Held various positions in the Port of Singapore Authority including admin officer, human resource & productivity manager and business development manager.

1990

Joined Shell Eastern Petroleum as freight analyst

1991

Worked in the Centre for Tourism related Studies as centre director

1992

Joined SPH as human resource manager

1997

Joined Great Eastern Holdings as head of customer service. Chiam later moved to the strategic planning and HR department before being promoted to become the managing director for strategic resource management