Here is our interview with Gloria Chin, current Director Corporate HR & Corporate Services at Singapore MOH. She is describing the approach of establishing and growing organisational change maturity while she was working at NEA - National Environmental Agency in Singapore.
Change Management Success Story: Gloria Chin
Interview with Director Corporate HR & Corporate Services at Singapore Ministry of Health
Gloria has more than 20 years of experience in the private and public sectors. She started her career with the Housing and Development Board and Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore before moving to the healthcare industry where she worked at the national healthcare group and started up a new healthcare cluster, the Jurong Health Services in 2009. She joined the Singapore National Environment Agency (NEA) in 2011 and led HR division in developing human capital initiatives and programmes for a 3,800-strong workforce.
Q: This award equips Singaporeans with the skills needed to benefit from quality jobs created by our economy to develop and deepen the skills with relevant working experience in the Financial Sector.
Given the changing landscape and demanding banking and financial industry there is increased demand for change management professionals to handle organisational restructuring and technology upgrade projects which are required for financial regulatory compliance. Technical skills alone are not sufficient to ensure the success of these changes. To perform the role well the ability to spearhead and manage the stakeholders and employees in different divisions in the organisation, securing buy-in and achievement of a common goal is needed. The Prosci training programme, which focuses on the people side of change, equips me in applying the Prosci methodology to drive business results from these changes by initially demonstrating the importance and contribution of effective Change Management to business benefits.
Q: So what did this approach entail in the terms of laying out a change strategy?
In 2012, we started to look for ways to manage organisational change effectively. Fiscal prudence, as well as the effectiveness and sustainability of the application of the tools, were some of the key considerations in our approach. I first learned about the Prosci Change Management methodology from a training programme (run by CMC Partnership) at the Civil Service College for organisational development practitioners. The three-day workshop gave me sufficient knowledge to put a case to the NEA senior management. I appreciated Prosci’s actionable and results-orientated approach. Most of all, I liked the simplicity, yet sophistication of the ADKAR (awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement) model around which various CM tools would be deployed.
Q :What was the senior management’s first reaction to your idea?
In the OCS, we typically get responses from over 90% of our workforce and some of the statistics were quite clear. For the senior leadership team, the priority was to ensure the success of our key projects. And for any projects to succeed, we need the people involved to agree with the goals of the project. We have to manage the human side of it and that is what change management is about.
Learn more about the importance of gaining executive buy-in for your change initiative in our blog post: '5 Ways to Secure Executive Buy-In'.
Q: With the buy-in sealed, what activities did the project then entail?
In the initial stages, we relied on external expertise to introduce Prosci to NEA’s senior management, heads of departments and managers. In 2013, we sent two HR staff for the train-the-trainer certification in the US with Prosci (now also available from CMC in Singapore and UK). Such a method significantly lowered the subsequent costs of training. By 2014 we were running programmes led by internal trainers. They trained a total of almost 300 middle managers over two years – six project teams and 118 managers over 11 sessions in 2014, and five project teams and 100 managers over nine sessions in 2015 – about half of our middle managers. Our internal trainers adopted a project-centric approach, which included a combination of consultation with NEA’s senior management, systematic training of staff at different levels, collaboration with project teams and coaching of managers to create an environment conducive for the sustainable application of the methodology. The application and training were tied to projects, and focused on the business needs of the affected department so as to promote department ownership of the CM work required for the success of the project. So it wasn’t a case of HR managers training other managers – it was also coaching them in the application of the methods. That is what makes the process sustainable and also provides a return on investment on the training tools. We also obtained a Prosci manager site licence so that NEA has the liberty to customise the training workshop materials. This further lowered our overall cost of training. From 2015, it became mandatory for organisation-wide change projects to apply the Prosci change management model.
Q: How did you get middle and senior managers to commit time?
All levels of staff from the CEO, senior and middle management to ground/field officers were involved. Three years were spent raising awareness, getting staff on board, and building the fundamentals of managing the human side of change in a deliberate and structured manner for success. Most of our management were happy that HR was equipping them and partnering them to manage change.
Learn more about roles in Change Management.
Q: You mentioned “deliberate and structured” – what steps did the implementation involve?
The first key step when designing a CM plan is to identify the CM team. Typically, we picked staff with the right traits and competencies, for example, excellent communication skills, good knowledge of the change, credible business influence and preferably some experience in CM. The roles and work expected were then clearly spelled out to the team as we prepared the team to facilitate the change.
Next, we prepared the senior management team involved in the project to lead the change with their staff. Guided by the methodology, we brought them up to speed with an FAQ guide with the guidelines on what information could be shared at the different stages of the project. We also organised a workshop for the team to discuss, align and understand what was required of them as change champions.
Finally, the management team personally facilitated communication sessions to explain the rationale and details of the project. Workshops could then be held for the affected teams to clarify accountabilities, plug gaps and brainstorm process improvements for the transition period. Updates were provided at department meetings, reassuring staff the management was working to resolve any outstanding issues. Additional reinforcement to actively correct false information and manage staff anxiety was done through informal chats.
Q: Did you face any dissent?
Some of the tools that were deployed looked at potential individuals who might not have had a very strong desire to change or support change. The beauty of this methodology is that it helped us identify which parties needed a little more time. Using targeted tools, we could then try and lower their resistance to the change. Also, the buy-in from the middle managers was very critical. Research has proven employees want to hear the rationale for the change from their senior leaders – but in terms of how it will affect them on a day to day basis, they want to hear it from their own supervisors.
In any major change, you need the majority of people to go along with it. It you can get the majority of people on board, the rest will eventually follow.
Q: What should companies undergoing similar change watch out for?
The Change Management methodology was most useful for change projects with clear and defined parameters such as restructuring or new technology initiatives. Projects in the infancy stages struggles to develop concrete change management plans through the methodology as they usually lacked business information about the change – the impetus, financials and the implementation plan.
In projects where toy want to change behaviours or culture, the methodology is most useful where the behaviour change is very clear and measurable.
For example, if we are introducing a new technology – ensuring staff has the knowledge and ability to use the gadget is one thing, but do they want to use it? We can measure if the systems are being used because we are pulling data. That helps us measure if the behaviour has changes.
Q: What were the traits of your ideal change manager?
When we identified people to be in the change management team, we would have already chosen them on the basis of the core skills they had. Once they have gone through training, they would be equipped with the tools to measure a project along ADKAR – to see if the team has improved or if communication is needed.
Q: What about that last component of ADKAR – reinforcement?
This is where the senior leaders need to continue to be explicitly involved. Once a project is completed, the reinforcement will have to be done on a day-to-day basis. You have to keep the communication lines open through departmental meetings or informal chats.
Effective sponsorship from senior leaders was, in fact, the key factor for the success of the initiative. As they were the first to be trained, they became more aware of their roles, more involved in managing change, more willing to send their staff for training and actively advocated its application.
Q: Having executed this campaign, how are you tracking the success of it?
Today, we have a common CM language in the agency (based on ADKAR). At the organisational level, leaders are communicating changes more actively and efficiently. In the OCS 2015, we saw statistically significant improvement of four to five percentage points for questions on the communication of organisation changes and the current pace of change.
We had specific questions in the survey about how changes were being communicated, and how employees were finding the pace of change.
At the project level, we measured increasing levels of staff awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement (ADKAR) after CM teams have intervened.
Our staff retention rate has improved from 93.5% in 2011 to 95.3% in 2015. Clearly, we still have much more to do, but the results thus far have been encouraging.
Change Management Courses in Singapore
CMC Partnership provides support for building change management capability; that includes training workshops for private organisations globally and public training courses for individuals at selected venues in Singapore, UK, Ireland and Italy.
CMC Partnership offers a variety of world leading Prosci Change Management courses for different organisational roles such as Project Managers, Business Leaders, Operational Managers and Change Practitioners.
Ready to start implementing change within your organisation?
Prosci® Best Practices has found that excellent change management execution leads to a 6x increase in the likelihood of the expected business results of your change initiative being delivered.
Prosci's Change Management methodology is based on two decades' worth of research collected from over 6,000 participants in 56 countries and is continuously supplemented with various cloud-based tools which may suggest why the methodology and approach is used by 80% of Fortune 100 companies.
If you're interested in taking the next step in your change management career, take a look at our list of upcoming virtual Change Management courses and register your interest today.
