WE ARE NOW A “PEOPLE DEVELOPER” ORGANIZATION
By Sophia Lim


On 23 January 2006, Mr Ryan Sun, General Manager joined some 60 companies to receive the People Developer Standard (PDS) award from SPRING Singapore’s Chief Executive, Mr Loh Khum Yean. The event was held as part of their Business Excellence Development Session whereupon other prestigious awards, such as the Singapore Quality Class, Singapore Innovation Class & Singapore Service Class were presented to deserving organizations.

It had been a long journey for the Human Resource Development team to develop the PDS system with the assistance of OTi Consulting. We started the process in 2003 as we introduced phases of implementation and successfully achieved the plan in September 2005.

The objective of achieving this accolade is to advocate the belief in having a structured approach towards people development for the organization. This was also in tandem with two of the organization’s objectives “To Help People Develop” and “To Pursue Excellence”. UMC ServiceMaster has always been involved in training their staff in view of the technical skills and knowledge required to perform our services. We had also gone a step further to hone the softer skills and management skills so as to enhance the level of customer service and leadership.

We took opportunity to capitalize on this longstanding culture by formalizing it into the required systems established in the PDS. The systems were logical and it had a practical concept. Championed by the General Manager himself, the task of cascading down, all the way to the ground staff, the objective was made easier.

The PDS road can never be walked alone by the HRD team. It was a concerted group effort in many ways. Members of the senior management were actively involved in conducting training and development sessions for the executives. Each facility had a designated site trainer to ensure that all training activities were coordinated and documented.

During the 2 years, the team had learnt new things from best practices and even created their own innovations such as training programmes that were unique to us. It is through this process, that we find ourselves being challenged to do better, to be better.

As the implementation of the systems were introduced at various stages, it was only about a year ago that we go see the whole cycle through and therefore was ready to be assessed.

Having achieved this milestone, it is important to maintain the momentum and progress on. Learning is not a destination but a journey as we join the ranks of some 600 certified People Developer companies and become the first PDS company in the IFM field.

Mr Ryan Sun  (left) proudly receives the PDS plague from Mr Loh Khum Yean

The moment the HRD team has been waiting for – Mr Ryan Sun, flanked by DGM, Mr Thomas Tsang presents the certificate & plague to  Sophia Lim, Asrazillah & Noel Pang