Human Resources
RP’s concerted commitment and efforts in good human resource practices was reflected in the two coveted awards that RP received at the annual Singapore HR Awards 2006 organised by the Singapore Human Resources Institute (SHRI). The two awards received were in the categories of Leading HR Practices in Learning, Human Capital Development (Special Mention) and Leading HR Practices in Quality-Work Life Award.
RP was also successfully re-certified and re-attained the People Developer Standard (PDS) in November 2006. The report commended RP for the significant improvements made to the People Developer programmes and processes to promote staff development over the last three years. Some of RP’s key strengths included our open culture which allowed staff to communicate their needs and share their ideas, a clear direction on staff learning given to staff by senior management such that they know what is expected and how to follow up, good IT support and our people’s ability to handle IT, the support provided to PD such as dedicated resources being allocated to staff learning, and support from Reporting Officers (ROs) for staff to attend training. The assessors remarked on the ease of assessment and were impressed with our systems and the knowledge of our staff during the interviews. An important note was that RP had made an overall improvement of 34% compared to the first audit.
In a bid to develop strategic research and collaborative programmes, RP developed and implemented the Distinguished Professional Programme (DPP). This programme aims to attract local and overseas prominent professionals from other Institutes of Higher Learning and the industry to RP, to jointly embark on research and development and other collaborative initiatives. To date, RP has appointed two Distinguished Professionals in the categories of Distinguished Scientist and Distinguished Academic.
RP also developed and implemented a new e-Appraisal system. The system, which is fully on-line and web-based, is linked to RP's HRIS system. The new e-appraisal system is designed to facilitate discussions between staff and their supervisors in a timely manner and can be easily scaled to meet RP's growing staff numbers.
The Technology Development Assistant (TDA) Scheme was developed to hire outstanding RP graduates to assist in RP's Technology Development Centres (TDCs) initiatives within the Schools and Centres. The stringent selection criteria for the TDA scheme allows only the top 10% of each year's graduating cohort with a minimum GPA score of 3.35 to be eligible. This demonstrates RP’s endorsement of the competence of RP’s graduates and the conviction of the PBL learning approach. In addition, to facilitate the development of internal technical competencies, RP also developed the Technical Specialists Scheme (TSS) which allows the departments to recruit directly from specialised technical staff (at diploma level) directly from the market.
To further align RP’s existing work-life programmes to the needs of staff members, RP has embarked on an organisation-wide staff engagement survey and initiated a series of focus group discussions where staff members could provide feedback on areas that they feel can be improved.
In RP’s journey towards promoting work-life excellence, staff welfare and care initiatives were launched. This includes the provision of staff housing facilities and a childcare centre available on site within RP. These efforts are in addition to the coordination of inter-pod games, workplace health activities, movie screenings, educational visits, health talks and healthy-cooking classes, and so on. Staff are also able to enjoy the use of the well-equipped staff lounges, corporate passes for various places of interests as well as staff discounts from various shops and service providers.
Corporate-wide cohesion events were organised by the Health and Recreation Club. Family Day 2007 was held at Sentosa and we celebrated RP’s 4th Anniversary at the newly completed lawn within the RP campus, where the annual staff awards ceremony was held to recognise our staff for their contributions and achievements.
RP was awarded GOLD for the Singapore HEALTH (Helping Employees Achieve Life-Time Health) Award in recognition of our commendable health promotion activities. This award was presented by the Health Promotion Board.
RP also received its first Distinguished Defence Partner Award in recognition of the support that was extended towards National Defence and National Service.