Date & Time
4 October 2019
At a HR Tech learning journey co-hosted by DBS Bank on 5 October 2019, about 90 IHRP-certified professionals embarked on a transformative learning experience on HR technology.
Ms Lee Yan Hong, IHRP-MP, Managing Director and Head of Group HR at DBS Bank offered our certified professionals a look into how DBS became the world’s best digital bank with her presentation “The A to E of DBS’ Digital Transformation Journey”—Audacious Goal, Build & Buy Talent, Culture, Digital & Data, and Employee Value Proposition.
Yan Hong started off by sharing a quote from DBS Bank CEO Piyush Gupta—“If we don’t completely reimagine banking, we’re going to die.” With digital disruption, like many other companies, DBS needed to transform as well.
“We want to encourage growth mindset and agility,” she mentioned. She shared that in 2014, DBS initiated hackathons in their talent development programme with the intention to build a digital mindset amongst employees.
It was through these hackathons, that the bank picked up a “start-up culture”. Working with start-ups allowed them to learn from people who took risks, were experimental and customer-driven.
Learning to be more customer-obsessed led DBS to reimagine their customer journey. In 2017, DBS redesigned their branch at Plaza Singapura and transformed it into their first social hub, complete with a cafe, Video Teller Machines (VTMs) and Pepper–DBS’ humanoid robot that is ready to assist customers in using the VTMs.
Customers are not the only group that DBS communicates with heavily; they also seek to build their employees and keep them engaged. Through rigorous experimentation and data analytics to gather insights from employee feedback, DBS has created a culture of continuous learning. “Technology is an enabler,” Yan Hong reminds the audience.
The next speaker, Alson Ong, Head-Solution Consulting, Asia & Korea at Blue Prism, wants to encourage the use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in HR.
Through RPA, robots can perform procedural tasks, replicating human actions on existing user interfaces.
Alson shared some HR-use cases of companies adopting RPA. One of such cases is Ernst and Young’s (EY) travel expense management. Having about 300,000 employees worldwide often mean their travel expenses could go up to a billion dollars yearly. In order to reduce this expense, EY has employed the use of a digital workforce that sends employees travel reminders and sources for the best airfare and hotel deals.
“Our human workforce is evolving into a digital one,” he said. In order for us to work on more meaningful things, we should adapt to allowing digital workers to take over mundane tasks.
The sharing sessions concluded with a Q&A and panel discussion moderated by Sylvia Lai, Chief Operating Officer, Group HR at DBS Bank. Our panelists—Sriram lyer (IHRP-SP, Founder & CEO of hrtech.sg), Nicole Poon (IHRP-SP, Senior Vice President of Business Operations, Partnerships & Strategic Initiatives at MatchMove Pay Pte. Ltd), Vincent Tan (IHRP-SP, VP Group HR, ComfortDelGro), Tan Sor Cheng (MD & Group Head of HR Shared Services, Risk & Information Systems in DBS HR) and Alson Ong (Head-Solution Consulting – Asia & Korea, Blue Prism), along with members of our task force Benny Leo (IHRP-SP, Human Resource Senior Manager at Baker Tilly TFW) and Dawn Wong (IHRP- SP, Talent Services Manager at LinkedIn) shared their views on topics ranging from topics ranging from coping with a digital transformation to schemes and funding SMEs can tap on.
What our Certified Professionals said:
“It was truly a TRIPLE BONANZA during the “IHRP Learning Journey to DBS Bank”, as part of the IHRP HRTech Learning Journey roadmap: an awe-inspiring presentation on the Digital HR Transformation by Yan Hong Lee (MD & Head – Group HR, DBS Bank); insightful information on the application of RPA in HR processes by the Blue Prism Team; and a glimpse of the various #hrtech solutions available across the employee lifecycle. Look forward to more such learning-filled industrial visits.”
By Sriram Iyer, IHRP-SP, Founder & CEO, hrtech.sg
“The best takeaway from this session is the importance of shifting their mindset as to what HR Tech is, be prepared with change management initiatives along the way & enjoy the ride to embark on their own HR Tech journey with the community.”
By Dawn Wong, IHRP-SP, Talent Services Manager, APAC at LinkedIn
We would like to extend a special thank you to our taskforce, who is championed by Lee Yan Hong, and joined by Dawn Wong, Benny Leo, Vincent Tan, Nicole Poon and Sriram Iyer, for their dedicated support and expert guidance in helping us co-develop the HR Tech programming, as well as Sylvia Lai and Kym Tan from the team at DBS Bank for the support in this event.
The IHRP Learning Journey is part of the on-going initiatives to help certified professionals learn the best practices and gather insights from industry leading companies, as well as earn Continuing Professional Development hours for recertification.
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