DPM Heng Swee Keat at the Best Workplaces in Singapore 2024 Awards

Mr Michael Bush, Global CEO, Great Place To Work
Mr Roland Wee, Board Chair, Great Place To Work ASEAN & ANZ
Ms Evelyn Kwek, Managing Director, Great Place To Work ASEAN & ANZ
Ladies and gentlemen,

Good evening, I am very happy to join you for the Best Workplaces in Singapore Awards once again. 

This is the 10th anniversary since Great Place To Work was established in Singapore. 

Today, we recognise 50 companies on the 10th Singapore Best Workplaces list. 

Among them are six “Legends” who have made it to the list consecutively for five years or more – Salesforce, DHL, Micron, WWT, Cisco, and HP. Congratulations to all award recipients!

We also celebrate Joni, Evelyn, and your team for the efforts to drive workplace transformation over the past decade. 

To select the “Best Workplaces in Singapore” over the years, you have worked hard to survey and collect the views of more than half a million employees across 1,000 companies. Well done!

Reflecting on the last decade, businesses and workers in Singapore have faced many unprecedented challenges.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains and our workplace routines, with lingering effects contributing to tight labour supply and high inflation. 

Many of us had to manage caregiving needs to take care of our young children and aged parents.

The external environment, as Roland mentioned, has become more volatile and uncertain. Politics in many countries have become more polarised. Big power contestation has heated up, while conflicts are ongoing in Europe and the Middle East. 

Technology has advanced rapidly, with digital technologies like AI, robotics, biotech and green tech transforming every sector of our economy. 

Despite these challenges, through our collective adaptability, innovation, and resilience, we have emerged stronger as a nation and a people. 

Our business transformation efforts for example, have done well, with the Government, businesses, and the Labour Movement coming together eight years ago to formulate Industry Transformation Maps. 

We implemented the strategies and together with national initiatives like Smart Nation, SkillsFuture and the Enterprise Development Grant, we have provided the tools and support for our companies and workers to level up. 

We have achieved good results so far. On a per annum basis from 2016 to 2023, our economy grew by 2.8%, labour productivity grew by 2.1%, and real wage growth grew by 1.5%. 

Another good example is that many employers now offer flexible work arrangements, including the public sector. 

The pandemic accelerated the pace of digitalisation, which enabled new ways of working like remote and staggered working hours. 

As a sign of our progress, from 1 Dec this year, Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement requests will take effect. 

The takeaway from these examples is that we can emerge stronger from every situation if we hold the right attitude to learn and improve. So earlier this evening, I asked the Great Place To Work team what their biggest learnings were. 

Interestingly, they shared that survey data shows that the expectations of what makes a workplace great has shifted over time, especially after COVID. 

Early on, the main factors were employee benefits, training and development, and work-life balance.

After COVID, while these factors were still important, workers prioritised other factors such as leadership integrity, authentic care for employees, and active collaboration through seeking feedback and making collective decisions. 

I was also told that the latest survey showed many young employees feel stressed at work.

Interestingly, I met Isaac and his team from the Colours Foundation earlier, and they did not look stressed despite being young. So maybe being able to help others makes a workplace great! I am happy to hear that on your 10th anniversary, Michael and the team at Great Place To Work has chosen to provide a grant to the Colours Foundation to do even more good work!

Now I think all these examples hold many valuable lessons:

Employees who have a positive experience at work are more likely to be engaged and perform well. 

To create this positive experience, leaders must deliver on their promises, match their words with actions, and build a psychologically safe work environment.

In other words, for our companies to do well, to stay competitive and to cope with the challenges on the horizon, they must first build trust within the company. 

Indeed, trust is the currency to tackle many of the challenges we face today. 

Greater trust between countries will enable better cooperation, as we work to tackle shared challenges like climate change and the risk of pandemics. 

Greater trust within countries will allow governments to make long-term policies that create broad prosperity and leave no one behind. 

And trust within companies will allow employers and workers to pull in the same direction, pursue transformation, and lay the foundations for future success. 

In fact, just last month, the Edelman Trust Institute released a special report on “Trust at Work”. Two findings from this global survey stood out. 

First, 79% of respondents trusted their employer – more than the government (55%) or the media (53%). This is a global survey, and the results in Singapore would likely differ.

Second, junior associates were 2.5 times less likely to have a positive experience with workplace transformation when compared with senior executives. The younger associates were also 3.5 times less likely to feel in control over how AI affects them and their job. 

Put together, this means that employers are broadly trusted by their employees, but they still need to put in extra effort where technology adoption and workplace transformation is concerned. 

On the 10th Anniversary of Great Place To Work in Singapore, it is timely to take some lessons from our Award recipients. Let me highlight three. 

First, putting our people at the heart of transformation. 

Effective change requires companies to grow new enterprise capabilities and build new markets. But companies are ultimately made up of people. 

Good employers prioritise upskilling their workforce, even as they turn to the marketplace for new skills to augment their teams. 

They also enhance the workplace, redesign jobs and use technology to bring out the best in their employees.

Workers can also play their part to play in upskilling, reskilling, and taking on new job roles as the company transforms.

New initiatives, like NTUC’s Company Training Committees, provide a useful platform for employers and employees to collaborate on this.

Second, paying attention to employees’ holistic well-being and care. 

Good employers acknowledge the stresses that technology disruption and change bring. They also understand that employees need to find harmony between their work and personal lives to perform at their best. 

Good employers therefore place intentional effort to facilitate physical, financial, mental and psychological wellness.

In fact, Great Place To Work conducted a study with Professor Rick Smith and his team at the John Hopkins University on employee well-being, which showed that employee well-being peaked during the pandemic.

Initiatives such as mental well-being ambassadors, and expanded health and employee support programmes, made a measurable impact.  

Employers can find out more about how they can implement such programmes, through resources from the Tripartite Alliance for Fair & Progressive Employment Practices or TAFEP. 

Third, building a culture of open communication and psychological safety.

Data from the 2024 Great Place To Work survey shows a growing disconnect between C-level executives and other organisation levels. This is aligned to the findings from the Edelman Trust Institute report that I spoke about earlier.

Good leaders bridge the gap through empathy, open communication, and active listening to understand the challenges of their teams.

For example, Capella conducts monthly General Manager’s dialogues with rank-and-file colleagues to understand their frontline experiences.

By closing this gap, good employers cultivate trust, maximise human potential, and build high performing teams.

Employees must also play their part by putting forward their views respectfully, staying open to different opinions, and considering the interests of the wider group.

Let me conclude. In this era of volatility and disruption, great workplaces provide a tailwind to employers and employees navigating these big changes.

A great workplace, which all of you here embrace, is characterised by putting people at the heart of transformation, caring for their wellbeing, and having a culture of open communication and psychological safety.

Employers are not alone in this journey; we have a strong tripartite movement supporting our economic transformation efforts.

The theme tonight is “Great is Possible”, and I hope that we will continually learn from and inspire one another to create the best possible workplaces for our people.

As this year’s winners show, whether you are a large or a micro company, whether you are in hospitality, manufacturing or tech, any company can be a great place to work. 

So let me once again commend Joni, Evelyn, and the team at Great Place To Work, and congratulate this year’s Award winners.

Together, we can make work a joyful and purposeful part of our lives. Everything is possible. Thank you. 

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