The State of Organizations 2023 - Flipbook - Page 23
CHAPTER 2: LESSONS FROM LEADERS
Leading from the
front: How DBS
embraces change
and empowers
employees
Yan Hong Lee, managing director and
head of group human resources for DBS,
discusses creating a purpose-driven,
empowered organization.
S
ingapore-based financial
institution DBS has been named
“World’s Best Bank” by several
global publications, such as Euromoney
and Global Finance. It has focused on its
purpose, pushed the limits of technology
to shape the future of banking, and
invested in creating a healthier and more
diverse workforce.
As the managing director and head of group
human resources, Yan Hong Lee works
closely with the senior leadership team to
drive the company’s strategic people
agenda and empower its more than 33,000
employees to make faster, better decisions
in line with the bank’s values and priorities.
We spoke with Yan Hong about how
DBS fosters a distinctive workplace
culture and engages and empowers its
employees. An edited and condensed
version of the conversation follows.
What sets DBS apart from other
organizations?
There are three special ingredients
that set us apart. The first is strong and
24
consistent leadership. Our management
team has been together for a long time.
They’ve set a vision, purpose, mission,
and strategy for our organization and
communicated it clearly through an
easy-to-understand mission of ”making
banking joyful.” We also use a balanced
scorecard to prioritize our efforts; it’s
created from the top down and bottom
up, so everyone buys in.
Next, we foster a culture that supports
our purpose. DBS was created 54
years ago to help in the development
of Singapore. We are here to do good
things for people and make a positive
difference; that is deeply rooted in our
organization’s psyche. When we laid
out our vision to be “the best bank for
a better world,” it wasn’t something we
were trying to discover or overlay onto
our existing culture.
At the same time, we want to make sure
the culture we build has a tangible impact
on our business, customers, and the
community we serve. We had to become
more agile, flexible, and customer centric.
We started by streamlining our matrixed
The State of Organizations 2023
organizational structure to three levels.
Now we also have a horizontal organization
that enables us to move faster by removing
roadblocks, breaking down silos, and
leveraging data more effectively.
Our third ingredient is the way in which we
deliver our employee value proposition:
“Live Fulfilled: Be the Best, Be the Change,
and Be the Difference.” We are committed
to building the long-term careers of our
people. For instance, we identified more
than 8,000 employees for upskilling in
2020 so they could master new skills and
have new career opportunities. We also
have a great learning culture, offering
more than 10,000 learning programs
and job exposure opportunities so our
employees get to experience what it’s like
to do a different job in the bank. Today,
one out of three vacancies in the bank are
filled by our own people. We were also
ahead of the curve when we launched
several flexible work arrangements in
2020, including hybrid work and a 100
percent work-from-home option for six
months for employees with caregiving
responsibilities or parents with newborns.
How did you get employees on board
with the transformational changes you
put in place?
most senior employees to speak last. We
ask employees to play devil’s advocate to
create space for differing opinions.
Change has to start at the top, with a
strong and consistent leadership team
like ours, and then involve employees
at all levels. People support what they
help create. We went to our employees
and asked them what they needed to
take the organization forward. That’s
how we came up with our PRIDE!
values: purpose-driven, relationshipled, innovative, decisive, and everything
fun! We deeply embedded these values
in our people programs and processes,
including performance appraisals,
recruitment, promotions, and various
leadership development programs.
How has DBS further fostered that
psychological safety and mental
wellness?
We also sought ways to empower our
employees and give them more freedom
to make decisions. We delegated
decisions to the lowest possible level and
started trusting our employees more. For
instance, performance and compensation
decisions, which were managed by senior
vice presidents and above in the past, are
now made by line managers. Customer
service representatives are empowered
to make decisions on anything less
than $200. We encourage people to
experiment— just not make preventable
mistakes— even if they fail. We created a
safe environment that would allow people
to speak up and take risks. For example,
during meetings, we give everyone a
chance to contribute and encourage the
More about
Yan
Hong Lee
Managing director and head of
We’ve created a lot of transparency
and accessibility, which feeds into
psychological safety and helps us meet
our goals around DE&I [diversity, equity,
and inclusion], employee engagement,
mental health and well-being, etcetera.
Employees have several opportunities
to directly access senior leaders. These
include a quarterly bankwide employee
town hall with a Q&A segment hosted by
CEO Piyush Gupta and joined by other
group management committee leaders.
Senior leaders regularly visit offices
across markets and host their own town
halls, skip-level meetings, and small
group sessions to connect with staff.
“Tell Piyush” is another open channel for
employees to write to our CEO with any
questions or ideas they have, and each
question receives a personal reply.
This level of transparency has led
to some fantastic results. Nearly 97
percent of our employees complete the
engagement surveys we field annually,
which tells us people trust that we take
their opinions seriously. In the most
recent survey, 91 percent told us they
felt DBS was a psychologically safe
environment. We were very proud of that.
group human resources of
Development Bank of Singapore
Yan Hong has more than 30 years of
experience working in human capital
management across a spectrum of
industries and geographies. She has
worked at General Motors, Hewlett
Packard, and Citigroup on topics related
to compensation and benefits, talent
and performance management, learning
and development, employee relations,
and organizational design.
At DBS, Yan Hong drives the overall
strategic people agenda of the group by
setting the direction and spearheading
various functions and initiatives in the
organizational growth of the bank. Under
her leadership, DBS has won a number of
global and regional accolades, including
being certified by Kincentric as Regional
Best Employer in Asia–Pacific, as well as
Country Best Employer in Singapore and
other markets for several years. For the
sixth year running, DBS has been named
to the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index.
‘We went to our employees
and asked them what
they needed to take the
organization forward.’
March 2023
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