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These values – being passionate, innovative, team-oriented, trustworthy, and fun loving – are driven by two key approaches which have helped foster a common language of leadership and engagement, Chief Corporate Services Officer Norfazidah Abu Bakar tells us.
The HR team at U Mobile likens its people strategy to how it drives its 5G network. Guided by its core values of being passionate, innovative, team-oriented, trustworthy, and fun loving, the company set out to ensure employees could grow, lead, and connect with purpose, building both capability and culture.
The transformation includes a cohesive leadership and engagement ecosystem. The ULTRA Leadership Framework defines what effective leadership looks like at U Mobile, while MEGA Advance, a 10-month development programme, translates the framework into practical experiences through workshops and real-world application. Complementing these are the 'four conscious engagement pillars of connection, confidence, care, and contribution, which foster a shared culture across generations and roles.
Developing this ecosystem posed challenges. The ULTRA Leadership Framework took a year to design, involving team huddles, interviews, and close collaboration with senior leaders and people managers to ensure it addressed real organisational needs. By the time MEGA Advance launched, the initiative had become a company-wide effort built by and for employees.
Norfazidah Abu Bakar, Chief Corporate Services Officer shares: "Our strength lies in our innovative mindset and our commitment to connection, care, and collaboration, so our people strategy reflects exactly that."
At the HR Excellence Awards 2025, Malaysia, U Mobile won three awards:
- Gold for 'Excellence in Leadership Development'
- Silver for 'Excellence in Cross-Generational Workforce Engagement'
- Bronze for 'Employer of the Year and HR Manager of the Year' (Awall Osman).
Norfazidah talks more about the strategy behind these wins, in this interview with HRO.
Q Tell us about your inspiring HR initiative – what sparked the idea, and how did you know it was the right path to take?
Our transformation began with one simple idea to bring the same bold, innovative spirit that drives us forward into how we grow our people.
As we build Malaysia’s newest 5G network, we realised that our true strength lies not only in technology, but in the people who power it. We wanted to ensure that our people could grow, lead, and connect with purpose, anchored in our core values of passionate, innovative, team-oriented, trustworthy and fun-loving.
To bring this to life, we came out with an integrated journey of leadership and culture:
- ULTRA Leadership Framework (understanding self, leading others, thinking context, relationship building, and achieving results): Our blueprint for what great leadership means at U Mobile
- MEGA Advance: A 10-month leadership development journey that brings ULTRA Leadership Framework to life through workshops and real-world application
- Four Conscious Engagement Pillars (connection, confidence, care, contribution): Our employee engagement framework for all U Mobile employees, designed to ensure every individual, regardless of generation, could plug into a shared culture
Together, they form a cohesive ecosystem that builds capability, connection, and culture — the foundation of how we lead at U Mobile, and enabling us to realise our vision to be Malaysia’s favourite digital services partner through innovations that constantly make things possible.
Q Every journey has its ups and downs – can you share a challenge your team faced and how you worked through it together?
Our biggest challenge was committing to build our leadership framework and development journey from the ground up, to ensure it truly reflected our culture and values rather than adopting ready-made solutions.
A prime example was the creation of our ULTRA Leadership Framework. This wasn't a week-long project; it was a year-long deep-dive. We sat in team huddles, ran interviews, and decoded what leadership truly means at U Mobile. It took patience, precision, and a refusal to cut corners.
The breakthrough came when we turned the process itself into collaboration. We didn't work in a silo — we brought our stakeholders into the "design lab" with us, engaging senior management as co-architects to define mission-critical competencies and involving current people managers to ensure the framework addressed their real-world challenges.
That same team-oriented spirit carried us through to MEGA Advance, which transformed the ULTRA Leadership Framework into an experience. By the time it launched, it wasn’t just an HR initiative, it was a company-wide effort built by and for our people. It reflected who we are: passionate about people, united by teamwork, and committed to growing together.
Q What impact has this initiative had on your organisation so far, and what do you hope it inspires in the wider HR community?
Our people initiatives have strengthened both connection and capability across U Mobile — and the impact speaks for itself.
- More people are choosing to stay and grow: Our organisation-wide attrition rate dropped significantly from 21.9% in 2022 to just 13.5% in 2024, showing that our people see a future here.
- A stronger sense of belonging: Our focused efforts on building trust are paying off. The eNPS score in our engagement survey jumped from +14.53 in 2023 to +25.98 in 2024.
- Deeper connections across teams: 98% of participants in our Ulympics initiative made new work connections, bridging generations and functions
Beyond the numbers, our people now share a common language of leadership and engagement. Teams collaborate more effectively, feedback flows openly, and our culture feels lived — not just spoken.
For the wider HR community, our hope is simple: anchor your initiatives in your organisation’s values. When your people can see and live those values daily, culture naturally becomes your strongest advantage.
Q Looking back, is there a moment, person, or value that kept you and your team motivated throughout the journey?
Our motivation came from pride in who we are and what we build.
Just as U Mobile connects Malaysians to possibilities through innovation, we worked to connect our people through culture and purpose. That sense of belonging — to our work, our values, and one another — kept us going.
The value that grounded us was “Own Your Actions”, one of the competencies in our ULTRA Leadership Framework. We held ourselves accountable at every step, taking full ownership of the challenge, the process, and the outcomes.
We saw this value come to life during a MEGA Advance session, when our managers used our new, shared language to collaboratively solve a complex case study. Seeing them take ownership and lead with purpose showed us that the culture we had built was real, and that belief kept us inspired to keep building.
Q If you could offer one golden nugget of wisdom to HR professionals aiming for excellence, what would it be?
Anchor your people strategy in your organisation’s purpose and values.
At U Mobile, we learned that impactful people strategies don’t come from what’s trending — they grow from what’s real. Our strength lies in our innovative mindset and our commitment to connection, care, and collaboration, so our people strategy reflects exactly that.
If your business excels in logistics, think about your "talent supply chain". If you're in finance, invest in “human capital growth” that delivers measurable returns in capability and engagement. When you build from what already makes your business unique, every initiative becomes more meaningful and sustainable. A strategy grounded in purpose and values isn’t just effective, it is impossible to replicate.
Because excellence doesn’t come from doing what others do well, it comes from building something that feels true to who you are.
Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets section!
Photo: Provided
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