Humanizing employee experience is something many organizations like to bandy around with in discussions but struggle to understand.

Principal Skinner is a fictional character in The Simpsons whom many of us know from watching the cartoon series decades ago (or perhaps binge today). He was the principal of Springfield Elementary School and was constantly engaged in battle with his students, made strange demands, and tested the school’s resources. Principal Skinner was a great supporting character and useful for our study of humanizing employee experience. He dealt with the Simpson kids more than anyone else and tried desperately hard to discipline Bart like Marge and Homer tried to. Principal Skinner genuinely cared for his students.

I see here glimpses of my own beloved OCBC Malaysia – a caring organization at the forefront of various efforts to support our employees, alongside our ongoing engagement with our other communities and stakeholders. Here is what we do to elevate the employee experience.

Maximizing the Potential of our Employees

We are committed to cultivating a learning culture that prioritizes holistic development, helping employees realize their full potential both professionally and personally, and building sustainable skills in our workforce in line with our goal to become a regional leader in responsible banking. Our Future Smart programs are earmarked as our largest-ever digital transformation initiative. We partner with industry experts locally and globally to curate programs aligned with our 7 Future Smart Pillars.

Our Employer Brand thrives on the realization of our Learning Blueprint. In shaping employee experience, we realize the importance of balancing efficiency with creativity to produce high-calibre leaders across the Bank. Our integration of the Learning Blueprint connects three propositions:

• Autonomy – a sense of identity and ownership of development

• Relatedness – a sense of belonging and understanding the needs of learning.

• Better Me/Better Us – a sense of discovery and growth in learning

Anchored in Leadership Interactions in Elevating Our Employee Experience

The famous words of John Maxwell ring true, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

We unleash the strength of diversity in our people by introducing our senior leaders to inspire and share, with young leaders as moderators. In a recent series, the Leaders Sharing Sessions, we focused on managing well-being, stakeholder management, authenticity, leadership, and sustainability to drive mindset change, and build new practices and habits. We foster leadership at all levels which helps in contributing to our employee experience and ultimately leads to improving customer satisfaction and organizational growth.

Podcast Future Smart 20-minute challenge

To continue to upskill in a holistic and end-to-end environment, this year, our Future Smart pillars were curated not through the usual awareness quizzes but through ‘podcasts’ featuring senior leaders and external practitioners whom each shared on a pillar. Here are a few snippets of how things went.

Learning via Mobile Technology

Living in a hyper-connected and on-demand world, we have access to what we need at the click of a button. We built on this reality by developing designs based on our employee experience understanding featuring intuitive user-centered interactions via mobile learning. Learners can share knowledge through the Learning Community where teams are built around shared expertise as shown below. The Learning Playlists of topics were created to allow Learners to personalize their learning through a dedicated page to control their pace of learning and time.

Back to where we began then. “Do not Be Like Principal Skinner. Am I so out of touch? “Principal Skinner may have frustrated the children of Springfield Elementary. But he brought life to the series. Principal Skinner disrupted the interaction, yet his caring nature nurture a can-do spirit among his students. This is fundamental to designing employee experience as a strategic organization lever.