Talent & Tech Asia Summit 2024
Winning Secrets: How an emphasis on growth & feedback has spearheaded Silverlake Axis' success

Winning Secrets: How an emphasis on growth & feedback has spearheaded Silverlake Axis' success

"Seeing how HR is evolving throughout the years – shifting the focus from operations toward people has served as a primary motivator for all of us," Jinny Chong, EVP, Group People & Organisation, Silverlake Axis shares.

Founded in 1989, Silverlake Axis is an IT services & consulting firm that creates technologies to enable the digital economy. Headquartered in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, it is now present in more than 80 markets across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas.

At the 10th annual edition of HR Excellence Awards, Malaysia in 2022, the team at Silverlake Axis took home four awards:

  • Bronze for Excellence in HR Change Management
  • Gold for Excellence in Work-Life Harmony
  • Silver for Young HR Talent of the Year - Samantha Wong Hor Yun
  • Silver for Most People-Focused CEO - Andrew Tan Teik Wei

In view of this achievement, we catch up with Jinny Chong, Executive Vice President, Group People & Organisation, Silverlake Axis, on the firm's transformation journey which has seen a shift towards personal and career development, a greater focus on preventative care, deeper employee and leadership engagement, and more. 

Q Congratulations on the achievement! Could you take us through the highs and lows of your people strategy?

We have worked to bring in transformational change, such as bringing in a more structured remuneration framework, shifting the learning culture onto personal and career development, and emphasising preventative care through DEBI. Often, introducing change requires facing possible resistance as it brings disruption to the usual process, or even a significant change to our culture. Supported by the data collected from research and employee feedback, we presented our frameworks for multiple rounds of discussions with the stakeholders involved. With this, we were able to achieve mutual agreement for the implementation of our people initiatives in Silverlake Axis.

Seeing the improvements through the positive feedback received from our employees through the training feedback surveys, employee engagement surveys, and personal feedback from stakeholders has made us feel that our effort as the HR team was worth the while. We look forward to improving what we could deliver to the organisation.

Q How did the HR team identify and align the business & employee needs, and craft out this perfect solution?

To identify and align with our organisation’s needs, we have gathered the necessary feedback from our employees and respective CEOs through multiple sources. To do that, we analysed our annual employee engagement survey and conducted sessions with our CEOs. After identifying the areas of improvements, we jumped right into the brainstorming phase with our subject-matter experts for the right solutions, incorporating our employees’ feedback. To answer these gaps, we designed our initiatives with data from research on the best practices of companies in similar industries along with conducting the benchmarking exercises.

Our frameworks were developed and proposed in multiple sessions with our respective stakeholders, which are then tailored according to the different needs and cultures of the business units. The journey of our initiatives does not end there, as we would ensure to continuously assess the progress of our initiatives, improving them as we go through the feedback received.

Q Could you share the results that your strategy has delivered – be it on the business, HR, or people side?

We introduced and improved our structured remuneration framework, which enhances our ability to not only retain our people, but to also gain the advantage necessary in the talent war. We also optimised our service through HR shared services, covering recruitment, training & development, and compensation & benefits.

As we placed more emphasis on personal development, we introduced programmes such as the Leadership Development Programme, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Graduate Development Programme. With this, our learning culture also improved, with the average training hours taken by our employees improving significantly as compared to pre-implementation. Feedback on the training programmes was also encouraging, with employees wanting more training for their development.

We have also introduced the DEBI Wellness Programme to shift the focus onto preventative care while emphasising other aspects beyond physical wellbeing (e.g., mental wellbeing, financial wellbeing). This helped us to introduce more flexibility in our medical and health benefits.

Q What is your message to all the stakeholders who have supported you in this journey?

We would like to thank our Board of Directors, group management, CEOs, HR colleagues, and all employees in Silverlake Axis – without your wholehearted support and valuable feedback, we would not have been able to get to where we are today with the people initiatives. It is only through our collaboration that changes could be brought into our organisation, and we hope to continue doing so.

Q What are you most excited about when you think about the future of HR?

Seeing how HR is evolving throughout the years – shifting the focus from operations toward people has served as a primary motivator for all of us. As HR, we are able to bring in positive impact beyond what has been expected from the traditional perspective, which is no longer relevant in this ever-changing business climate. As such, to improve how we could deliver our HR services, we will continue to do our research and learn from the best.

We are also looking forward to HR’s role in serving as a catalyst to bring transformational change to the organisation’s culture for the better.


Lead image / Provided (Featuring the Silverlake Axis team)

Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section!

Follow us on Telegram and on Instagram @humanresourcesonline for all the latest HR and manpower news from around the region!

Follow us on Telegram and on Instagram @humanresourcesonline for all the latest HR and manpower news from around the region!

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