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"One’s career journey will not be the same for another – and we needed to take this into account in how we plan out career pathways for different job roles," explains Jinny Chong, Executive Vice President of Group People & Organisation.
A successful employee experience initiative requires trust and collaboration – and this momentum is driven by Silverlake Axis' very own leaders.
The fintech company keeps its momentum going when it comes to nurturing talents, by creating more space for their professional and personal growth. As part of this, its key initiatives target every stage throughout its employees’ career journey, from fresh graduate new joiners to thrive in their first job roles to leadership development programmes to groom its next generation of leaders.
With this, it has won bronze for 'Best Skilling Strategy' at the Employee Experience Awards 2023, Malaysia earlier this year. Read on as Jinny Chong, Executive Vice President of Group People & Organisation, shares how Silverlake Axis creates a better career experience for its people starting from the moment they step into the organisation.
Q How do you ensure your employee experience initiatives are aligned with your business objectives?
Our Project Starlight serves to guide us in enhancing our employee experience, driving us towards creating the best space for our people to grow, aspire, and also inspire others. To achieve that, we believe in two-way conversations, through our annual employee engagement survey, for our people to share their thoughts on their engagement experience as our feedback to create a positive workspace. We see this initiative as a great avenue to allow us to understand what can be done to further enhance how we can better support our people’s needs.
To achieve the balance in meeting both our people and organisation’s goals, we proactively gathered feedback throughout the initiatives’ progress. We could then have a better understanding on the key ingredients needed to improve our people’s employee experience. Employee voice is what keeps our initiatives on track with what we want to achieve as the people and the organisation as a whole.
Q Can you provide examples of how the organisation has invested in the employee experience?
In Silverlake Axis, we want to create a better career experience for our people the moment they step into our organisation. Whether the employee is a fresh graduate, an experienced IT professional, or even a people manager, there will be something in here to guide them towards realising their fullest potential.
This is how our One Silverlake Academy came to be – to keep our momentum going when it comes to nurturing our talents in the organisation, by creating more space for their professional and personal growth. We have key initiatives targeted for every stage throughout our employees’ career journey, which includes (but not limited to) our graduate programmes for our fresh graduate new joiners to thrive in their first job roles, upskilling and reskilling programmes to nurture both our people’s technical and soft skills needed to thrive, and leadership development programme to groom our next generation of leaders.
Q What are some of the key challenges that you faced in implementing your EX initiatives, and how did you overcome them?
To change our organisation’s culture to emphasise continuous learning and collaboration, we need to have two-way communication with our people. Therefore, we took a proactive approach in gathering feedback throughout our initiatives’ implementation, and we found that townhalls were a great way for us to directly engage and have open communication on what’s coming next. Similar to our annual engagement survey, it also allows for us to get feedback from the ground, which plays a huge role in how we evolve our initiatives.
Another key challenge is in figuring out what the right “ingredients” are for our people’s career experience. One’s career journey will not be the same for another – and we needed to take this into account in how we plan out career pathways for different job roles.
Consistent collaboration with our team leads and people managers have helped us immensely in overcoming this challenge to ensure our people’s career progression is on the right track.
Q Do you have processes to measure the effectiveness of your EX initiatives, and what metrics do you use to evaluate success?
Data-driven decisions are definitely our go-to, but we also believe in the insights that qualitative data could give us. Simply looking at the numbers are not enough for us to understand the story of our people. This is why we evaluate whether our initiatives are successful throughout multiple sources, such as regular feedback surveys, check-in sessions, and pulse surveys. The constructive feedback helps us to further tailor our initiatives to fit our people’s needs and subsequently, their employee experience.
We also look forward to hearing our employees’ voices through our annual engagement survey, to better understand their employee experience as a result of the people initiatives. As our goal is to create a positive career experience and employee engagement through our initiatives, we strive to improve on what we could deliver to our people.
Q Finally, what role do leaders and managers play in driving a beautiful employee experience, and how are they held accountable for the success of these initiatives?
To achieve success on these initiatives, trust and collaboration are the foundation needed in our culture – and this momentum is driven by our very own leaders in Silverlake Axis. Our leaders are our organisation’s very own role models, driving the transformational change within the organisation and our people by empowering them, by giving them more space to have a curious mind, while taking ownership in the positive impact they could bring to the organisation.
This is why we emphasise on the two-way communication with our leaders, to keep our initiatives aligned to not only our organisation’s goals, but our people’s aspirations as well. With this collaboration, we hope to continue building our momentum in fostering a positive work culture here in our organisation.
Lead image / Provided
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