Insight from the Inside

In running the inaugural show on ‘HDB Insights', CEO moderated the dialogue on HDB’s key shifts with a clutch of our Middle Management Team from RPG, BRI and HMG. The panel included Director (Physical & Digital Planning)
Kathleen Goh, Director (Urban Design & Development)
Ar. Wan Khin Wai, Director (Smart & Sustainability Research) Heru Santoso Soedarsono, and General Manager (3P West 1) Tan Beng Teck. From the panelists’ earnest conversations, we had deep insight into their past experiences at work and their future plans in dealing with emerging trends, how they have embraced HDB’s ABC values at work, and how their transformation efforts at the workplace have benefitted our residents.

Based on HDB’s ABC values and key shifts, can you share your own work domains and the changes you have made in the way you work over the years?

Kathleen: As Planners, we try to understand Singaporeans’ preferences and aspirations in looking for an HDB flat. Over time, we realised that our engagement with residents and other stakeholders had to change, so that we could achieve a balance and address the concerns of all parties. One good example is our project on Health District @ Queenstown with multi-stakeholder collaboration. We need to strengthen our soft skills in communication to better engage with residents and all stakeholders.

Khin Wai: The Covid-19 crisis has changed the way I think about designing HDB flats as an Architect. Our space design for HDB flats may be ‘boxy’ and regular, but it is highly flexible and adaptable. This was especially evident during the pandemic period when most people needed more co-working spaces when working from home. The pandemic situation pushed us to think deeper when designing our flats. We need to do more research, scan the horizons and conduct further prototyping to see how we can serve residents better.

Beng Teck: In HMG, we demonstrated agility when we test bedded specialisation on a small scale with Choa Chu Kang and Bukit Panjang Branches. Upon successful pilot implementation, we included Bukit Batok, Jurong East and Jurong West as well and these five Branches evolved into West Zone. The benefits of the new framework with such specialisation are twofold — it gives our staff more focus in their work, and enables us to better engage with our key stakeholders such as the Advisors, grassroots leaders and various agencies.

Heru: My team oversees the business of driving sustainability in HDB towns through research. In stretching our sustainability goals, we need to study more complex solutions and new areas such as cyber security and the Internet of Things. In carrying out our work, we have to build up not only our technical competencies, but also other skills such as communication with key stakeholders. My experience at a smart-enabled home exhibition in Yuhua tells me that good engagement with residents is important as they could serve as our ‘ambassadors’ on the ground.

Adopting a forward-looking approach, what more can you do in your respective fields of work?

Kathleen: With the move towards digitalisation, we will harness technology and tap on data to aid us in town planning. Through data analytics, we can obtain a lot of useful information about our residents’ living and working patterns. This will enable us to glean more insight for town planning and help us in our decision-making process to better serve our customers.

Khin Wai: In growing our professional development, we need to have the DNA to be willing to learn, upgrade and upskill ourselves, and embrace an innovative culture to try out new ideas. Also, we need to be wired with different disciplines to develop innovative solutions. It is thus important to create new processes and systems continuously and expose our staff to such an environment. If we can do this well, I believe our staff will be very resilient and we will be able to ride through the challenges that hit us at work.

Beng Teck: With the successful implementation of the West Zone, we will re-organise the remaining Branches into North Zone, East Zone, North-East Zone and Central Zone. Each Zone will be overseen by a General Manager who will be supported by a specialised team across three functions, namely (i) People, Programme & Partnership, (ii) Housing Maintenance and (iii) Housing Services. In addition, we also adopt ‘SOP’ at the workplace. This means we work towards ‘Service’ excellence to serve customers better, ‘Operational’ excellence to improve work processes, and ‘People’ excellence to care for our staff.

In managing HDB’s key shifts, can you share your thoughts or words of encouragement with our colleagues?

Kathleen: Let me talk about how we can take up our transformation values of ABC at the workplace. In town planning, we need to anticipate and stay ahead of the curve. To do so, we have to be Bold, willing to experiment and adopt a ‘can-do’ spirit. In addition, we also need to be Agile and flexible to see how we can fine-tune our ideas. And we should Collaborate with one another to tap on the collective wisdom of our colleagues to create the best outcome for the future.

Beng Teck: In HMG, we have high aspirations to provide world-class housing management. During the transformation process, we worked with our staff as a team and we thanked them for their support. I would also like to take this opportunity to express thanks to the HDB Staff Union who partnered with us and provided a lot of valuable feedback to the team during the transformation journey.

Heru: With increasing workload, I would like to encourage our colleagues to take some time off to exercise, do some retail therapy or watch a movie to relax. At work, we should also celebrate small wins to trigger a sense of pride and happiness. This will keep our momentum going and help us achieve greater goals in the future.

Khin Wai: I would like to share three As with our colleagues — Test out new ideas continuously and ‘Adopt’ them if they are relevant to our circumstances. Otherwise, ‘Adapt’ them and make modifications to apply them to our context. We also need to ‘Actualise’ and pilot them to see if they can benefit our residents.

All of us have a part to play in HDB’s transformation journey. Let us work together and emerge stronger and brighter as One HDB!