CE's speech at Staff Recognition Ceremony 2023

Introduction

1.

Dear colleagues and guests

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It is my pleasure to welcome you to our Staff Recognition Ceremony 2023, to celebrate and honour the achievements of our many VITAL colleagues.

Robotics and Automation in VITAL

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VITAL is unlike many other shared services organisations. We do not merely process HR, finance and procurement transactions. Rather, we see ourselves as an engine of innovation supported by a family of citizen developers. Our unique approach has gained international attention – for example, in the Government Trends 2023 report published by Deloitte, VITAL’s approach towards leveraging technology to transform corporate services was used as a case study.

4.

All this did not happen by chance. Rather, it stems from our deep leadership belief that our people are our best asset. Let me quote – “We must develop talents and skills of our people throughout their careers” (President Halimah Yacob – speech at the opening of the second session of 14th Parliament). This is precisely what VITAL has been doing. We have invested in significant resources to train all of you to be capable citizen developers and make use of low/no-code tools to help you streamline and automate work. Beyond this, it is also about preparing you and our workforce to stay relevant and skilled in a digital world.

5.

Many of you have stepped out of your comfort zone to attend the training, learn RPA skills and build your own bots. 193 of our VITALites are now trained in RPA, and more than 50 bots have been deployed, saving more than 15,000 hours of mundane work, freeing up time for you to focus your attention on other tasks. Thank you for coming along on this exciting journey!

A Transformation & Growth Mindset in a Digital World

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Thank you for your willingness to embrace change, take risks and seek continuous improvements. It is very important to adopt this growth mindset, to innovate, without the fear of failure.

Competency-driven Growth to Stay Relevant and Successful

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Now, let me turn to the topic of career advancement – this takes the form of lateral and upward progression. Lateral progression can be achieved through taking on more responsibilities, projects or assignments within a current role, or taking on new challenges through a different role. Upward progression typically involves advancing to roles of higher responsibilities, to achieve a broader and deeper impact on the organisation.

8.

Regardless of the form, career advancement is anchored on competency-based growth, and not about clocking time or doing things well in a Business-As-Usual (or BAU) fashion. Neither is it about which school you attended or what grades you achieved in school. We celebrate the development of our many officers sitting among you today. You have demonstrated such competency-based growth.

Celebrating Our Promotees through “Our Core Competencies”

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First, let me extend my warmest congratulations to all 45 promotees today! I will describe how some of the promotees have exemplified the core competencies.

a.

Everlynn Chua Poh Gee, Senior Section Manager, HRSA, HPA
Everlynn Chua from HPA has exemplified the core competency, keep learning and putting skills into action. After attending our RPA citizen developer training, Everlynn demonstrated deep business process thinking skills on how to leverage automation. When met with scripting challenges, Evelynn looked up Google, YouTube as well as our HPA ops-tech team and the RPA trainer during the clinic sessions. Everlynn eventually managed to build a bot to automate the downloading and uploading of appointment formality documents, saving about 23 hours of tedious work per month for her team. This is all done without any technical, engineering or IT background.

b.

Carol Lin Cairong, Senior Section Manager, HRSA, HPA
Carol Lin, also from HPA, is known for her sound knowledge in HR policies and processes. She demonstrated the core competency, working as one public service. She had worked on many WOG exercises such as ministries’ ranking & promotion and salary revision for generic schemes. Carol anticipated challenges amongst agencies in using HRP and partnered PSD HRPS and NCS to establish new SOPs. She crafted comprehensive operating notices, ensuring that stakeholders are aware of process changes, new roles and responsibilities. Serving with heart, commitment and purpose, Carol was also one of the key VITAL leads who assisted MOM and MOH during the Covid mass hiring from 2020 to 2022. She devised the internal manpower plan and went the extra mile to create an excel tracking list to facilitate collaboration between MOM, MOH and VITAL. In recognition of this partnership, Carol and the team subsequently received a Minister of Manpower Award.

c.

Vernon Tay Kwan Boon, Section Manager, DGS, CS
Vernon Tay from CS demonstrated the core competency, improving and innovating continuously. He began his career with VITAL in 2018 as an Executive in DGS. Today, he is the Section Manager and oversees DGS’ Scan Hub operations and a team of 24 individuals. Vernon continuously seeks improvement in his work and tries new ways to achieve better outcomes. He implemented RPA/macro scripts to increase the sample checks efficiency and accuracy for the digitisation process. He also created a page count macro to verify the DA vendors’ output to identify any potential discrepancies in the number of pages scanned.

d.

Bryan Lye Jun Huang, Section Manager, HR, HPS
Bryan Lye from HPS demonstrated the core competency, working effectively with stakeholders by helping a partner agency improve their interview process, encouraging and guiding them to move their interview platform to MS Teams. He suggested improvements to the AI-powered X0PA hiring platform, enhancing both system and user experience. Improving and innovating continuously, Bryan initiated the documentation of processes for Cumulus service lines from scratch and created service request templates to facilitate information request from service partners. He participated in and was recognised for his contributions to various VITAL and WOG initiatives, such as the SG-Team Change Champion and winner of PSD Challenge. When he was an Executive, he also stepped up to take on the Ops Meeting secretariat role, usually performed by the more senior Executives, and implemented improvements to the meeting process.

e.

Trevor Tan Jian Yue, Senior Executive, Pension, CS
Last but not least, Trevor Tan from CS exhibited the core competency, serving with heart, commitment and purpose, going the extra mile to provide better customer service. One service partner informed VITAL that the rightful dependent of a pensioner had dementia and was estranged. Trevor collaborated closely with the agency, going above and beyond the call of duty by researching social and legal resources relevant to the case and shared them during meetings with the agency, AGC and PSD. He received positive feedback and was awarded a VITAL Star award for going the extra mile for pensioners. Putting skills into action, Trevor attended the Design Thinking Workshop and applied the knowledge gained for an agency’s process harmonisation project to identify and streamline the different processes. He also extracted relevant lessons from his Specialist Diploma in Career Counselling to better engage retirees and their next-of-kin.

Celebrating Our LSA/SAA Recipients

10.

Let me now move on to our Long Service Award and Special Appreciation Award recipients. Congratulations to all 67 of you! DCE Yuen Sai Kuan shared this with me – “You can excel in many areas, be it automation or process. You need to master your skills, continue to improve and upskill”. This point on continuous learning is critical. Let me share how some of our LSA and SAA recipients have stepped up, embraced lifelong learning and adapted themselves to keep abreast and stay relevant.

a.

Sandy Chen Mingzhen, Section Manager, HPS (HR)
Sandy Chen from HPS joined VITAL in 2012 as an Executive and moved up the ranks to a Section Manager in HPS, leading a team of 6 officers today. Sandy enrolled herself as a part-time student of Temasek Polytechnic and attained a Specialist Diploma in Business Analytics in 2019. With the knowledge obtained, Sandy finds herself able to grasp insights faster and give feedback while participating in projects such as the E&L Analytics Study with OP, Kryon Proof of Concept with IH and Kryon system experts, and RPA for VOICES SR reports. Sandy receives her 10-Year Long Service Award this year.

b.

Mdm Tan Yoke Moi Annie, Senior Executive, HPE (Pay)
Annie Tan from HPE started her career as a Payroll Assistant with the Ministry of Education in 1999. She transferred to VITAL in 2006 and has been handling payroll and claims for MOE officers since. For the past 20 years, Annie strove to deepen her payroll knowledge. Today, she is one of HPE’s pillars in payroll administration. With her depth of knowledge, she plays a key role advising, guiding and motivating her team in managing payroll operations. Annie receives her pro-rated 25-Year Long Service Award this year.

c.

Mdm Kartini Bte Ab Hamid, Executive, HPA (PACA)
Mdm Kartini from HPA started her career as a Typist with the Ministry of Health in 1982 before joining VITAL as an officer in Finance Services in 2006. A keen learner who rises to the occasion and challenges herself to step out of her comfort zone to gain new experiences, Mdm Kartini took on the payroll and claims portfolio in 2014 and has been with PACA since. Progressive and adaptable, Mdm Kartini receives her 40-Year Long Service Award this year

A Continuous Meritocracy

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DPM Lawrence Wong said at the debate on President’s address, “More broadly, we also want to give Singaporeans who graduate from ITE and polytechnics stronger assurance: that their wages and career prospects will not be too far below their university-going peers, and will not be permanently conscribed to be below. They don’t have to succumb to a paper chase to secure a good salary and a viable career path."

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In VITAL, we have already made this a reality. Many of the promotees today, as well as in the years before, rose up from the ranks; starting their careers in VITAL as Executives and now doing very well in Section Manager, Senior Section Manager and even in Assistant Director roles.

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Through continuous learning, upgrading, and competence building, all these officers have demonstrated and applied these core competencies to achieve superior outcomes for their teams, and for VITAL.

Closing

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Let me conclude by reminding all of us that there are many formidable challenges facing our country, the little island of Singapore. Our role, as the central agency for corporate shared services, will only become more important. We must ensure that we do our job well and contribute to the stability and well-functioning of the Singapore Public Service. And to do that, it would be impossible without our people putting in their best. VITAL would be nothing without our VITALites.

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We will continue to invest in you. We will continue to bring in new and cutting-edge appropriate digital technologies and platforms, so that we can do more as an organisation. But I seek all your help and co-operation to adopt this growth mindset, to learn and adapt, upskill and reskill, for the betterment of yourselves, your families and your country of Singapore.

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Before I hand over the time to HR, I would like also to recognise Betty Teo from HRSA and Annie Tan of PACE who had earlier received their Valedictory Letters. On behalf of everyone in VITAL, I would like to thank both of you for your years of hard work and dedication to the Service. We are grateful for your commitment and for the invaluable contributions you have made during your time with us.

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With this, I would like to end off by congratulating all of our promotees and recipients of the Long Service and Special Appreciation Awards once again. I look forward to your continued contribution to the Service.

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Thank you.