Episode 86: How to Enable and Measure Culture Transformation (Interview with Dr. Jaclyn Lee)

This week’s podcast guest is Dr. Jaclyn Lee, Chief Human Resources Officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, who is talking about the role of data and analytics in the culture transformation program at the university. While technology plays a big part in culture transformation at the university, Jaclyn remained ever cognisant of the people at the heart of the transformation and ensuring that their diverse values were understood and respected.

Throughout this episode Jaclyn and I discuss:

• How to attract a diverse pool of international talent to a brand new university

• Bridging the practitioner, academia divide to develop a tool to measure culture transformation

• Establishing a data-driven workforce planning process at the university and overcoming initial resistance by establishing a task force

• Up-skilling HR professionals to become more digitally literate and analytically capable

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Huler, you can learn more by visiting huler.io.

You can listen to this week’s episode below, or by using your podcast app of choice, just click the corresponding image to get access via the podcast website here.

Interview Transcript

David Green: Today I am delighted to welcome Jaclyn Lee, Chief Human Resources Officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, to The Digital HR Leaders Podcast. Welcome to the show, Jaclyn, it is great to have you on. Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to you and your role at the university?

Jaclyn Lee: Hi, good afternoon, everyone, thank you for listening in. I am Jaclyn, I am the Chief Human Resources Officer for the Singapore University of Technology and Design.

In my role, I manage the entire human resource operations as well as organisational development. And that also includes the new role that I have been appointed recently, which is the Incident Commander for COVID Operations. 


So, it has been a challenging two years for me, in the last two years, but otherwise I have been having a really fun time at the university. I have been here for the last 12 years, and the work is still really exciting.  


David Green: Thanks Jaclyn, and I think you highlighted something that has been top of the agenda for chief human resources officers and their teams around the world, for the last 20 months or so, obviously the COVID 19 pandemic. You have talked about an additional role as the incident commander for COVID, how has that changed your role within the organisation, since the pandemic started?  


Jaclyn Lee: I think with COVID-19, it has really made HR a very crucial job. Actually, human resource leaders have now got to be able to integrate sustainability, be able to look at integration, and be able to bring the workforce together during this COVID pandemic. 


And I found that as an HR leader, my role really involves not just running all the usual, run of the mill HR functions but moving beyond that to really think about the safety of the workforce, the health and safety. You have to think about how to ensure that business continuity carries on, despite having to go into team A and team B. And you have to ensure that you look at policies, because there are so many policies, there are so many changes. Also getting your workforce ready for changes because, for example, we work very closely with the Ministry of Education and educational policies change, every month. So, it is literally sometimes, I have to execute things within a 24-hour turnaround time.

So basically, it is the speed of operations ability to, not just manage your normal functions, but really stretch to go beyond that. And I think especially of late, the whole issue of mental wellbeing comes into play. 


David Green: It is interesting, isn't it, that a lot of organisations around the world, during the crisis, have really been prioritising employee safety and wellbeing, and obviously HR has been at the forefront of that. Do you see that as something that is going to continue? I am talking about organisations generally now and maybe what you are seeing in your region. Do you think organisations are going to pay more attention now, to mental health and wellbeing moving forward? 

Jaclyn Lee: I certainly believe so. The last two years, I think a lot of people have gone through a lot of mental stress and I have realised that mental resilience is so important in today's world.

First, we were all hit by this digital transformation. There were so many changes happening to every job, every profession. And then you got hit by COVID-19, which has essentially accelerated digitalisation by, I would say, five to six, seven times the speed that it was going about. So, because of all these changes I think people are unable to cope. So, if you are asking me, I think mental wellbeing is not just for now, but in the future because they are going to be increasingly living in a very dynamic and changing world.

So, it is the role of HR to manage employee resilience. Employee wellbeing is going to be, I will say, employee experience 4.0.  

David Green: Well, we will delve into that a little bit more during our conversation.

You mentioned that you had been at the university for 12 years, actually the university was founded in 2009. I would love to, and I am sure listeners will as well, hear about your experience of building the HR department at the university from scratch and some of the challenges that you faced over the last 12 years, to do that.  

Jaclyn Lee: Well, it is nearly 13 years of history, but I will try to make it really compact.

When I first started in 2009, I remember the first day walking into the office, it was just a table. Literally a table, there was nothing, really nothing. So, I kind of asked myself, my goodness, how am I going to get from here to our mission of wanting to be the best university on offer, for design intensive education. 


So, what we did in the first few days, was really to open doors to bring in international talent. Because university is all about talent, and of course in order to attract talent, you need to have a really compelling compensation and benefits scheme, that is really the international rewards strategy. And of course, what is the story you are going to tell candidates? How are we going to build a talent attraction? Why would people come to an unknown university?

So those were the initial days where we spent a lot of time thinking through those issues and how do we begin?

I will say, the very first piece I did was the total reward piece. We worked with a top consulting company to come up with that piece and with a compelling total reward strategy, we were able to take that package to go out internationally, to recruit the talents. But of course, maybe as we speak along the way, I can share a lot more about the entire talent strategy. There was a lot of components and also, we were fortunate enough to have MIT as our partner, so that became one of our value propositions.  


David Green: Yeah. Well, a great magnet, I guess, for talent as well. Actually, most of the listeners to the show work in HR, many of them working in global organisations and maybe looking at ways to attract international talent. I would love if you could share with listeners, some of the strategies? Obviously, reward was one, but some of your specific strategies for attracting top international talent? 


Jaclyn Lee: Okay. When we were trying to attract international talent, one of the first pieces we did was to think about, what kind of talents we want. So, we did a talent stratification exercise. 
If we were to go out there and get, say 50 top faculty to join us, we were very clear that we wanted a group that was really fresh, kind of up-and-coming high potentials that are probably young, in the early thirties. Most likely be fresh PhD holders.

Then we were very cognisant of the fact that we had to bring in senior academics. So, people who probably are varied now in their field, this will be probably your 10% or 15% of your talent stratification and reserve the rest for other specialised functions.

So, we were very clear about the kind of talent we wanted, and we came up with very, very clear brand values and core values of what we want in those talents. 


So, once we were very clear about the talent strategy and we were able to match the talent strategy to the total reward strategy, then we came up with an entire talent plan. So, we said that in order to get international talent, we had to go out into the world. We can't be sitting in Singapore. So, we said, okay, we need to do an international talent workshop.

So, I began intensively traveling for the first three years. Went all over the world. So, three things we did to attract talent. The story was that they would have an opportunity to work with a start-up university, a blank sheet of paper, there's nothing there. You get to create. And then the second story we told them was, there is an opportunity to work in a very multi-disciplinary environment where innovation happens and design thinking. And of course, the proposition was enhanced by the MIT connection, you have the chance to be exposed to the best in the world for research collaboration. 


And of course, along with that, we were very fortunate to partner with the Economy Development Board. So, we brought the EDB folks along with us to South Singapore, as a destination. Singapore is a very attractive as a destination.

So, we spin a very interesting story and whenever we do a recruitment roadshow, it was never going there to do an interview, it was about running a seminar. The seminars were around the topics of, the smart nation, what is it like to be able to work in a multi-disciplinary environment. So, we always spin interesting seminar topics and run a networking event and would invite and reach out to entire networks of people to come to the event. We will always get our president to come along, and they get to meet the top senior management of the organisation and then we will sell the story, and you will get EDB to Singapore as a destination, and that is a package deal. We were incredibly successful with those virtual as well.  


David Green: Obviously I am fortunate to have been to Singapore a few times and you are right; it is a great destination and I know it is a magnet for international talent. In fact, the show's producer Ian, actually spent several years living and working there.

As well as obviously bringing the right talent into the organisation and the focus on the strategy first and the values, and then bringing the right people in. You have obviously done a lot of work, and again that blank piece of paper for you, as a CHRO, a lot of work to develop the culture and accelerate a culture transformation at the university. Let's talk a little bit about that program now. Why was a culture transformation necessary at such a relatively young institution?  


Jaclyn Lee: So even though the institution is young, you are still going to be recruiting people from all walks of life. You are going to have senior academics or people that have been very successful in a very traditional university environment. So, when you are going to have people from all walks of life and people that have been exposed to working in very different environments, definitely there will be diversity of views and not everyone thinks the same, and also everyone has their own personal values.

So, we decided at that point, I knew it was important to have a culture alignment exercise. It was important when we recruited these entire groups of people into the organisation. We had a very international talent pool, we have people from almost over 40 countries, and also the ethnic and cultural diversity. So that is why the cultural alignment is a very important project to embark on. To get everyone to be on the same page. This is why, in the initial five to seven years of my time there, I spent a lot of time on cultural transformation projects.  


David Green: Yeah, and I guess, as you said, it is good to have that diversity of views of course and diversity of experience. I guess the challenge is to bring that together and then determine the culture for the university, because what you don't want is lots of different cultures, you want to try and create that unique culture for the university itself.

So, part of that culture journey I understand, was using research data to understand the evidence and impact of a transformation occurring. 
I would love to hear, and I am sure our listeners will as well, a little bit more about that. How do you go about measuring culture? And what are some of the specific success metrics that you use?  


Jaclyn Lee: So, it is a really interesting story. When I began on the culture project, we started with values. Then we said, hey, look, we have got to start measuring culture, but how do we measure culture?

Also at that time, I had got interested in doing a PhD. I happened to meet two interesting mentors from the University of Twente, in the Netherlands. They were computer science professors, you might say, what on earth am I doing with a couple of computer science professors? I said, hey, I am interested to do a cultural transformation project, but I want to use quantitative data. It is not just about the fluffy stuff, what is this culture, we want to make it more data driven. So, they say, why don't you work with us to look at using a design methodology that is grounded in software engineering and also let's look at using digital tools for transformation. 
So, I began to be so interested in that topic. And then they said, okay, let's turn this into a PhD dissertation.

So, we kind of started to design this whole thing by saying, look, why don't we do this measurement of culture? Let's measure our culture before transformation and after transformation and let's see if the digital tool, that we are going to develop, is going to improve and speed up change management. 


So, we started with this culture measurement tool called the organisation culture diagnostic instrument, it was developed by two professors in the US. So, we started to look at this tool and we said, why don't we look at current culture and desired culture. That means between the current and the desired culture, let's measure the gap. So, the gap analysis is going to be what we are going to do to try and close the culture gap.

What we did was at that time, is to talk to several software companies and we found this interesting company called Splinter. They said, hey, why don't you use my tool for part of your research, and we are going to give it to you for free. So, we talked to this Dutch company and that came up with this entire thing called the, CATM methodology, which is in my book, Accelerating Organisation Culture Change.

So basically, what this tool does is interestingly, it has a portion for measuring culture. You do a survey of your current culture with the tool, and you do a survey of your desired culture with the tool, and at the end we have a gap analysis.

So, what the tool does is that it has a group decision support system. So, we use the tool for digital brainstorming. You might ask, Jaclyn, there are so many tools for virtual brainstorming, but this is interesting to me, it is a very intelligent tool. The tool allows you to be able to do group position support. That means you can have 50 people in the decision room and if I ask them for ideas for change management, all 50 can input ideas at the same time and they can vote for the best ideas and they can critique the ideas. What the system does, is it is able to rank the ideas of top three to four ideas in the group, in a matter of like 30 to 45 minutes. 
So that means what you do in a normal culture transformation discussion might take you three hours, but this tool takes you half an hour to 45 minutes. So, it speeds up culture transformation, two to three times.

So, I have collected pretty solid data. We did a lot of experiments within the university, and we have very robust data to show that the tool works for culture change. 
  


David Green: And you said, you talk about that in your book, which is, Accelerating Organisation Culture Change. We will put a link to that in the transcript that goes with the podcast as well. We may come back to that as well.

What I would love to hear is, what was the reaction of some of the people working at the university around using the technology to support this cultural transformation? 


Jaclyn Lee: Okay, it is quite interesting. I started with the most senior group, I got all my bosses and the entire senior management team into a seminar. I was like right, I am going to use this tool on you, you are going to be my guinea pigs. And they say, okay, sure, let's do it. They had so much fun with it, they really enjoyed it and we came up with fantastic ideas for change. The ideas later on, were to become really embedded into our strategic planning to bring the university to the next level.

So, it was really fun convincing the senior group and then of course, after that, we went down to each level to the ground, and we even did it with the students. The first group of pioneering students that came in, we tested on them. So, I collected data from students, from faculty, from employees, and from the senior management. I would say the reception to the tool was very positive.  


David Green: And it seems entirely apt that a university of technology and design, is using technology to help support its culture transformation. 

Jaclyn Lee: Precisely, yeah. 

David Green: And then obviously measuring culture is something that I think a lot of organisations struggle to do, and the fact that you are able to get that baseline of where you were, and as you said, understand the gaps of where you wanted to be and then actually use the technology to support the transformation to close that gap. 


Are you still using that tool to measure culture and make sure that you are still where you want to be, or is it a continual evolution that you are on? 

Jaclyn Lee: Culture transformation doesn't stop there. You have to continuously measure culture. 


So, what happened was after that initial exercise, we said, why don't we give ourselves two years to see how we are doing in closing the culture gap. What I did was after two years, I said, let's do another measurement. So, we sent another big survey out there and we found that we managed to close the culture gap. So, there were two big gaps mentioned, we managed to close one of them. The other one still needed some work. So, we said, why don't we now work on this other gap. We went on another round of change management exercise to close the other gap.

To answer your question, yes, we are continuing to use the tool. We are using it now for culture conversations. 

David Green: Fascinating, really, really, really good stuff. And as you said, something that continues to evolve.

So, let's shift a little bit now to talk about workforce planning at the university. I know you have done a huge amount of work to understand every single job across the university and the potential for automating specific tasks and activities. 
Can you tell us a little bit more about that process? It sounds fascinating. 


Jaclyn Lee: So, somewhere as we began to grow the university, there came to a point in the organisation where it grew quite substantially. And as organisations grow, you are going to have a lot more layers of processes, a lot more bureaucracy, and we kind of suddenly realised that we had a huge administrative group of staff. The layers of management became thicker and there was a lot more bureaucracy. So, we said that look, in order to optimise the workforce, it is now time to start thinking about how do we look at the right sizing of the workforce, the right costs, and the right skills. 


So, I began to speak to my senior management, and I said, look, if we are going to be sustainable for the next 5 to 10 years, we have to start looking at workforce planning. So, I had the blessing from him to begin on this project.

What is interesting is we started to talk to the management team and said that we need to collect data. First, we need to collect data on each and every job. So, collecting data on each and every job is a very onerous task. I literally had to convince everyone in the organisation, look, I am going to be looking at what you are doing. 
We have to list down your process steps, you have to be able to cooperate with me. I had a lot of resistance in the initial days, but I had to form a task force to convince everyone that this was the right thing to do. I think people were just afraid of losing their jobs, what if I write down all this tasks and you realise that what I am doing is redundant, I might lose my job.

So, there was a lot of convincing them and managing them, that this is going to help you because we are going to help you automate your processes.

The data collection lasted six intensive months. We collected thousands of data points. So, with that massive amount of data, we got a consultant to come in to analyse the entire data set and from the analysis of the data set we had wonderful, wonderful insights.

We came up with three key imperatives. We found out that 25% of our work processes could be automated by information systems. 
We found out that we were doing a lot of unnecessary process steps in what we are doing.

We found out that we lack data analytics capability in most functions, to be able to use data for work. And then we found our procurement steps were way too long. So, with these four insights that we arrived to, we actually began a project to really improve things. 


I am happy to report today, that we have come up with a new system for procurement. It is a bespoke system to reduce process steps. We have put the entire workforce through data analytics training. We have formed a central data analytics community, to look at university wide data science projects. We have also started on an IT transformation exercise; all the systems are going through a major overhaul. 


So, these are the wonderful things that come up from studying data and see the idea is, the human resource profession, we have to be very computational. If were to go to the board or go to our bosses, without being able to substantiate with data, it is very hard to have a seat at the table, but once I was able to pull all these entire data sets it was so easy to follow up on the next steps and to ask for resources. 


David Green: Yeah. I mean, it is fascinating, a really great example of using people data to help transform the way that the organisation is operating and potentially help employees as well. Because I am guessing, and I would love to hear more, obviously you found that 25% of processes could be automated. I guess that is helping people overcome the fear, it is not necessarily the job that is going to be automated, it is certain tasks that are going to be automated which frees up time to do other things which may be a more value adding. Is that some of the findings that you uncovered? 


Jaclyn Lee: Yes, because a lot of the tasks that the people were doing, there was really no value add. For example, the process steps, could I do these things in one step or three steps? So, when we were doing that kind of data collection, when we were able to look at each job and collect that data and the step-by-step process, then you are able to look at the steps you can eliminate. 
But without the data you couldn't do that, you see.   

David Green: I guess it is like growing pains of an organisation that, as you said, was founded in 2009, probably growing in terms of faculty and other staff, more students. And it's just, as an organisation grows, it needs to probably be doing the exercise that you did, and just understanding are we being efficient? Have we got too many process steps when we can have one? Can we automate certain tasks?

Jaclyn Lee: That’s right.

David Green: Now I love what I just heard there that you trained everyone in the organisation around data and analytics. Now I know like me Jaclyn, you are passionate about using analytics in HR. We have both spoken on the same panel, I think, at a couple of events held in the Asia Pacific region. I would love to hear more about your decision to train every HR professional to become more data savvy and analytically capable. Why is it important, in your opinion, for every HR professional to learn these skills?  


Jaclyn Lee: I started developing a passion for data and analytics while I was doing my PhD research, I realised the power of computational data and the research really helped me to focus on fact-based evidence in managing projects. I realised that this is really important for HR professionals and a lot of people I talked to in the HR profession, were really struggling with even producing reports that were fact based and data driven.

So, I realised that with the knowledge and the skills that I have learned from my PhD, why don't I turn this around and equip the profession with skills in data analytics. That kind of started about five years ago, I got interested in this, and it was about this time that we started that SUTD Academy for Adult Learning. 
I spoke to my boss, and he says, why don't you become a senior fellow with the academy and help us to start the digital HR track. And that is how we started the entire digital HR programmes. Today we have programmes in data science, agile thinking, we also have programmes in design thinking, programs in HR tech. We have advanced and intermediate data science courses, and I must say that the academy and myself, have probably brought thousands of HR professionals to these programs. And it is just so rewarding. It is so rewarding.  


David Green: And what is great about that is you are not just helping the HR professionals at the university you are helping the HR professionals in other organisations as well, to get these much-needed skills. 
And I know from the regular trips, well not so regular in the last couple of years, but the trips I have made to Singapore, the appetite in the HR community for learning more about analytics and data is real. But the gap sometimes between the appetite and realising those skills can be quite significant and I guess you are helping to close those with what you are doing.

I would be interested, as you started that training for your own HR team, did you face any resistance? Were there any data sceptics in your team or did you manage to convince them with your experience from your PhD? 


Jaclyn Lee: I think, a lot of the people in my team are as young as 20+ and up to 60. I think a lot of times when I was trying to start on this data journey, I had a lot of resistance from the older ones. The younger ones are much more savvy. I think it takes a lot of time, I spent in fact years just convincing them, talking to them, putting them through courses. It is something that takes time. I don't think you can change a mindset over night, but I am very proud to say that today 90% of my team is computational. They are using Lean and Six Sigma tools, statistics, a lot of computational tools, to basically produce data for their work. So, it is a journey.  


David Green: It is a journey and that is really impressive. I don't know if you have found, but when I speak to HR professionals, there is a little bit of fear. With the HR training and certifications that most organisations have produced around the world for years, decades, there has never been anything about statistics and data, unless you initially trained to be an IO psychologist or something, so it is almost like it is that fear of the unknown. Is that something that you have encountered?


Jaclyn Lee: Yeah. I think the fear is always going to be there. I remember one day, when I was running a class, a very senior HR professional, she was like the VP of HR in a global company. And the first thing she said when she walked into the class is, I have something to confess, and say, what is it? I have no idea how to run the Excel spreadsheet. I was of course, a bit shocked, but I said not to worry, just sit through my class. She did wonderfully. At the end of the day, she managed to do three sets of exercises in correlation and analysis. And she came to me, and she beamed. She said, you know what, it is not so difficult.

So, it is just helping them to overcome this fear. Many students come to me and say I am so frightened, but as they go through it, and they realise that it is not so difficult. And because it is taught from an HR person, I am able to use real life stories, I make it really simple for them to understand.  


David Green: Yeah. I think that is the important thing, isn't it?

How are you measuring the impact of the up-skilling initiative for HR? The proof is in the pudding of the work you did around workforce planning.  


Jaclyn Lee: I think to measure what I am doing at the academy, might be a little bit tough because we started this training model five years ago. Many of my students have come back to me and said that they are using data in their jobs and many of them have started to implement initiatives. I just had a recent student, complete my data science course, and she is actually implementing the principles in the workforce planning projects that she is doing.

So, I think, I would say the evidence comes in the fact that many of them have gone back to their workplace and started to implement. At least the awareness is there, and the skill sets has gone up.  


David Green: Obviously you are training HR professionals across a wide range of levels and ability, in organisations. How is that helping you in your work?  


Jaclyn Lee: Well, when you are teaching, you have to do a lot of research, right? You are creating a lot of awareness and I believe they are doing a lot of research. So, I do a lot of research and also when I write books, I will be able to pull a lot of information. Because when you are writing computational books, you have to do the research. So, I get a lot of my knowledge and my skills from conducting research, just trying to continually learning. And I have been taking courses online from other universities. So, I refresh my knowledge that way.  


David Green: You have highlighted something there, I think it is so important in today's world that it doesn't matter if you are a chief people officer, or chief learning officer, or even a CEO, we all need to continuously be learning. 


Moving to the last question that we have got, and this is something we are asking everyone on this series. I am particularly interested in your perspective on this. How can HR help the business identify the critical skills for the future? 


Jaclyn Lee: I think that it is important to understand the strategy of the business. For example, at SUDT, we have a growth plan with five strategic trusts. So, once you are very clear of the strategic trust, you need to look at the future skills that are needed and do an inventory of your current skills.

We did this exercise about two years ago, we managed to look at an inventory of skills. And what I do is that once I see the gap, I either go by acquisition, I acquire the talents, or I train or upgrade the skill sets to lifelong learning. So that is why the workforce planning is so critical because one of the things we do now when workforce planning is we should look at the skills gap. And then we came up with a very comprehensive capability plan to beef up our abilities. 


David Green: Yeah, really, really good. And you struck on that continuous learning and the most important thing, start with the strategy. Start with the strategy of the business, understand what the business is trying to achieve rather than just diving into skills for the sake of it.

Jaclyn, it has been great understanding the work that you are doing at the Singapore University of Technology and Design and also the value that you are providing to the HR community, through the teaching that you are doing as well. 
So, thanks very much for being a guest on The Digital HR Leaders Podcast. We will let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you and follow you on social media, in the copy that goes out around the podcast as well. So, thank you very much.