Debunking HR Myths and Embracing Change: Benjamin Festin (VP of HR at SP Group)

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Because actually we are here to uplift your performance and also uplift the company's performance, and HR's responsibility then is to help our managers, help everyone uplift that performance.

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Today, we're joined by Benjamin Festin, Vice President of Human Resources at SP Group, a leading utilities provider driving sustainable solutions in Singapore and across the region. With over two decades of experience, Ben has led workforce transformation and talent development across diverse organizations, such as SP Group, Dairy Farm, MediaCorp, and even consulting giants like Accenture and Ernst & Young. We're excited to dive into his experience building future ready teams, leveraging on data to attract and retain key talents, as well as what it's like to build meaningful employee experiences in a critical industry.

Welcome to the show, Ben.

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What are some standout moments in your career that have shaped your approach to HR?

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In corporate as well, I realized what resonated most wasn't the BAU per se, it was taking people through changes, recognizing what needed to be changed, and recognizing and how to bring people through that change. So every time we had to change, whether it was core values, change of a system, different implementation, those are the things that really excited me the most.

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t. While we've announced it, [: 00:03:00

So that's going to be an interesting journey. It's not like we haven't done that previously. But we've refreshed it as well, and we've made some marked changes to how we're looking at it. So in particular, one of those things that people often get a bit worried about is that if this is a leadership competency and a platform for development of your leadership capabilities, is that part of my performance appraisal? Basic things like this, which are very change management focus and taking them through, convincing them and also making sure that they're comfortable with those changes. Of course, let me qualify. I think changes, are not always nice. So making sure that people are comfortable, but at the same time, making sure that people understand why those are necessary. Leadership competencies was a big change for us. We've also refreshed our technical competencies, or what we still call skills passport.

etency framework that is for [: 00:04:00

We've also implemented actually a system that can better track some of these technical competencies for the business leaders as well.

Of course, not to mention we've added questions to our engagement survey too, right? With you guys. That was another interesting change as well. Year of changes.

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Do you mind sharing a bit more about what was the catalyst to kick off the need for this refresh?

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nology is. And the one thing [: 00:05:00

So all of those things we took into consideration. So we actually brought someone in to do sort of an outside in approach where we looked at what other businesses were using and doing from a leadership competency perspective. And then after that, layered that on with some of our realities.

Sustainability is a big component of what we do as well. If you're looking at building stronger leaders, that has to be a very critical component.

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a lot of people think that, [: 00:06:00

Because actually we are here to uplift your performance and also uplift the company's performance, and HR's responsibility then is to help our managers, help everyone uplift that performance. And sometimes it's not nice. It entails having difficult conversations and engagement. That's non negotiable.

If you're not someone who is comfortable engaging, that's fine as well. There's a place for you. You can be an individual contributor and all that, but I think as a leader, you definitely have to be comfortable with engagement, having those hard conversations and those I think are skill sets you absolutely must have.

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There are courses out there for sure, but even for me, and all honesty, especially if I know I'm going in for a difficult conversation, it's as simple as obviously preparing early is important, knowing where you are, basic logistic stuff, like finding a right place, making sure there's ample time for it.

All these things are table stakes, but I think the thing I do personally is use the mirror and I practice some of the questions. Conversations are interesting, especially if you're going to put something like difficult feedback on the table, I observed this and realize that this was the outcome and almost anticipating what could some of the possible answers be, and then also knowing how to frame that properly.

minutes, go have a chat. And [: 00:08:00

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at. So a big remit obviously [: 00:09:00

It cuts across a broad spectrum of topics. We have a huge differences in demographics with the kind of people that we have, people who are a little bit older, and people who are still fresh out of school. Then we do that very regularly on a monthly basis.

And we also conduct a lot of activities, whether it's social. So social can include even having bazaars or fairs in the office. The new chairman this year is actually having an initiative where he's reaching out to the various depots as well to organize such activities where it's just simple things like free ice cream.

But the other thing I'm quite proud of is we have this annual exercise where we provide a complementary health check. It's not a complete health check, but at least it's blood test, blood pressure, weight, basic things. But we actually do that not just in HQ, but across some of the depots as well.

d the reason there is that I [: 00:10:00

It's just these little things that we do to make sure that while they're out there in the field, they feel included as well.

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And what has led to that? Quite a strong belief in doing this is good for employees and good for productivity.

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he ground, replacing cables. [: 00:11:00

The one way we can really show tangibly that we care is looking after someone's health and wellness. In fact, we take it quite personally and quite strongly to the extent that, I think for the past two to three years, we've had an entire week of SP mental wellness, along with just physical health.

Because we believe equally strongly in that, and we actually have network of allied professionals who help to spot whether people are distressed. And if they seem a bit off or a little bit depressed, we actually have a group or network of people there amongst us, who look out for these things.

So these are the subtle, small things that we do. And I think all of that adds up and aggregates to that. We actually did a review also of our employee value proposition and we did a very ground up sort of an initiative and we went to ask a selection of people from our non executives.

The people who work in the field, our technicians, our engineers, and then also, our white collar guys in corporate, for example.

We actually asked them [: 00:12:00

And a lot of them said it's that communal spirit, that willingness to help. And I think it comes from that. If you see that your leaders care, the organization cares about your health, you well being. I think it resonates and then that kind of permeates to your people, and then your people start to care about each other.

So if you ask me, going back to the is it worth it? It's absolutely worth it, and there's nothing better than to show with your actions how you care about people.

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And they're very process oriented and they're so suitable for so many different industries and businesses and roles, and then naturally, because there's so much choices for them. That kind of leaves us with less people to stick with engineering.

That's why we did the [: 00:14:00

It's about ensuring we can bring the right ones in. And the other one is ensuring we stay continually attractive as a career of choice, actually. And the EVP was helpful. So when I was trying to weave in, some of those EVPs, like that communal spirit, the kind of culture, the kind of environment that we have. We are actually re emphasizing and restating what's the value proposition for us, as an employer and as a career almost in engineering and how exciting that is, understanding some of those things.

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Being able to showcase what's exciting about us and what we do then lands a different slant.

That EVP exercise was important to just reestablish and remind ourselves who we are and what we are good at and just emphasizing those things that are attractive to people.

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So coming back to earlier, when you were talking about agility in your employees, Very recently, I had a conversation with a friend who works in the energy sector, and he was sharing with me how with the influx of EVs, this is posing a huge threat to the power grids because people are not realizing when you're purchasing new EVs and more and more, the more popular EVs become, the more stress is going to put on the grid.

I can barely understand the technicals. But it made me think about the fact that, your employees have a challenge of being on the fact that, a lot of these power grids would probably be operating off very old technologies possibly, and even old materials.

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And everything is underground. And so if you can imagine how much planning goes into planning the tunnels, digging the tunnels, competing needs, MRT, would be a great example of competing needs. There's so much real estate underground too, as I tell people. And so a lot of that future focus, has been inbuilt into the culture and to the way we work and plan.

ften say you're not planning [: 00:17:00

That emphasis on technology has always been there. So in fact, in the power grid business, they do a technology day every year where they highlight and feature new technology that they're either using or piloting and celebrate things that they've done and also bring in sometimes potentially speakers, for instance, to share about new technologies. So that's one of those ways where you seed and embed that into the business. Recently, the risk department ,they actually had a regular a group risks day.

he business, but now we have [: 00:18:00

What are these emerging skills, especially the technical ones, that may impact the business in future or what do we need to know or make sure that people are abreast of. So we've identified a few of these skills for the future, so it either enhance some of the curriculum that we have today, if it's a bit more near term, but it's further a few. In fact, we work with our ATO. They are what we call SIPG. So it's the Singapore Institute of Power and Gas. So they're the ATO for the energy sector.

And we work with them sometimes to develop, is there new content that we need to develop, and teach or train our people. So there's a couple of things that we're trying to do there to I wouldn't dare say forecast the future, but prepare for it.

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So let's say you're speaking to another HR leader who is finding challenges in that sense that they feel that their employees are always just thinking about it short term, management thinking short term. What are some key strategies or best practices could you advise another organization so that they can build that kind of perspectives in their employees?

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If you're one that doesn't encourage learning, doesn't encourage development, just do your job, that kind of thing. And it doesn't even encourage you to make certain mistakes, and learn from them or rather give your people the opportunity to learn from them. Then I think it's really challenging to seed this kind of long term thinking.

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And if it means that, almost having to prioritize learning or development as focal, as important, right? And it's just beyond just doing your day job and getting your KPIs done If the leaders just say, no, you just get your stuff done, this is your KPI, make sure stuff is done and you don't have any emphasis or placement on time on development or to think about other things, then that's your environment.

So the leader is really important to me in how you frame and shape that.

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Your folks are going to be like that as well.

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echnologies have you seen to [: 00:21:00

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There are initiatives like just ensuring that work is done. For example, we have many different substations and sometimes someone's got to do maintenance of the facility, grass cutting, simple things like that, things that people don't think of. And we use AI to monitor whether the job has been done or not as well.

So, has the grass been cut and then all it takes is a couple of photos before and after to approve and sign off on work, for instance. So it's pretty basic things like this, but make a huge amount of difference. Closer to home or rather closer to HR, for example, we've actually instituted bots to help us to deal with the transactional from a recruitment point of view.

s, we're using some of these [: 00:22:00

But those are some of the small productivity hacks apart from planning a holiday and the itinerary, of course, which is everyone's favorite thing to do.

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truggle, because you have to [: 00:23:00

And so I had a brainwave, and I took a photo, and I put it through ChatGPT, and I said, here, go transcribe this. And lo and behold, it did. But here's where the punchline is. Had I not checked, there were so many words that were not correct because it was handwritten, and, to be fair, it had about 90% right and 10% that was not. And then I had to go manually change that. So I think my punchline here and sharing that story was, It's a great help. Wonderful to use. But that's 90 percent of the way. In fact, ChatGPT has a qualifier there that says, basically he makes mistakes.

It will help tremendously and people are not wrong that it's a buddy. But I think what's important is that you do not rely on it singularly.

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That's why I would go back for leadership competencies, the agility, all that is important because learning how to do that and being receptive to it, still having your own point of view and still appreciating the technology but not relying on it. I think that's important.

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AI is already here. We're talking about what it looks like 5, 10 years down the line, but I'm curious to hear your perspective as to what does the ideal workplace of the future looks like to you?

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The interesting thing is that, the technology has changed over time. But certain things are table stakes, right? What great culture looks like is table stakes. To me, I think the ideal workplace of the future will be evolving technology to make us more efficient, but yet still harnessing those tried, true and tested things about culture that we all like. Safe place to share your ideas, to share your views, to feel welcome, to embrace diversity, to be inclusive, those things don't change, hopefully you have very healthy dose of technology to help us be more efficient in those that would be.

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But I think the broader theme here is being inclusive, and welcoming maybe traditional demographics that were not so prepared to come back into the workforce. So a good example is, people who had to take care of young children at home, and we don't have an alternative support in terms of care, but having flexible work arrangements then allows a new group of talent to come back into the workforce, which were typically not receptive.

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And in your opinion, which one do you think serves productivity better?

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And that is, it's not taboo anymore, but typically I think as Singaporean efficiency, which we are all proud of, we have a process in place, or at least you should have a process in place now for flexible work arrangement. But which serves productivity. I think it really depends on the job.

For us, right now, for instance, the people in the field can't do that. If I don't have to go at the jobs and being specific, I think productivity is really dependent on either the kind job that you do, and a lot of it actually depends on the relationship you have with your employees.

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But if there is a lack of trust to begin with, obviously, the productivity gets eroded because half the time, what's probably happening if the person's working from home is, you have one guy thinking, is he working from home? Is he working or not?

And that's time, right? We should be spending doing something else, rather than having being hounded. If you don't have any trust between employee or boss, it's a recipe for disaster, I think, and productivity regardless.

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f that cycle? I think that's [: 00:29:00

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So earlier to your point about how there are companies who still have yet to decide about whether they want to go fully working from office or working from home or anywhere in between. So I was wondering if you could share your thoughts or any examples about how you've seen this done effectively, moving from purely reactionary as a HR function to actually actively shaping strategies.

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But at the same time, it really depends on the cycle or the season of business that you're in or the season that your business is in, to be specific. If you're really surviving and you're just thinking about the next quarter, there's little to say about thinking forward.

Your forward is, can we make [: 00:30:00

I talked a little bit about EVP and that's what was born out of that exercise, and also thinking about things like the learning roadmap, talking with my leaders and talking with my team. Those were born out of moments where I could catch a breath.

I have a chance to talk to people, but nothing more than just be used up. Have we met this target? Where are we at the project? It's being able to invest time. So all I'll say is again, time, practice time. I talked about practice earlier and then I talk about time.

Those things are so important. And then setting aside time to think. Giving myself the opportunity to think things through.

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So we do love to ask our guests this because we think it helps us to get to know the Ben behind the VP a little bit more. So no pressure to think too hard about it. We just go with what first comes to mind and I'll just shoot question after question.

You ready?

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I think that's important. So just keep trying.

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And the reality is actually, I think to me, HR, the most important thing, and that's why the job is difficult and happy to continue being in the role, because it's about being fair and equitable. Everyone's got a situation. Everyone's got a different circumstance. But ultimately we have to administer, and run the organization fairly.

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But at the same time, I think the biggest misconception is that we're just nice people with flowers and roses and pat you on the back and be all nice because actually the toughest part of the job is to be fair and be equitable, despite different people from different backgrounds with different roles and jobs.

How do you be consistent, stay consistent, and administer the function and do your job. So that's the toughest thing and treat people, based on those policies the same.

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think the projects that are [: 00:34:00

And a lot of them are bottom up from the team and suggestions from the team so it's also about making them feel part of the process and be happy right, as well. So yeah, personally, my son's going to Sec one next year. So I'm looking forward to it. Because it's a milestone for him and I can't wait to see.

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