It has been a large­ly suc­cess­ful year for the Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL). In No­vem­ber, the bank an­nounced it had record­ed $2 bil­lion in prof­its for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

Al­so, in No­vem­ber at the 3rd An­nu­al Hu­man Re­source Lega­cy Awards, the group, af­ter be­ing nom­i­nat­ed by a third par­ty, won the Lisa James Award for Learn­ing and De­vel­op­ment. RFHL was al­so nom­i­nat­ed for the Coreen Jones Award for Best Place to Work at the cer­e­mo­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to RFHL vice pres­i­dent Karen Yip Chuck, the awards en­dorse the com­pa­ny’s de­sire to look in­ward as it has in­tro­duced pro­grammes to en­rich hu­man de­vel­op­ment as part of the group’s strate­gic plan span­ning 2023 to 2028.

“The most far-reach­ing was the Out­ward Mind­set Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme that we im­ple­ment­ed for our lead­er­ship,” said Yip Chuck, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian at Re­pub­lic Bank’s Park Street of­fice. She ex­plained that staff were placed in a two-day, full-time pro­gramme fol­lowed by a six-month im­mer­sion, which was geared to­wards shift­ing fo­cus. The pro­gramme was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Ar­bin­ger In­sti­tute.

“What it does is re­al­ly take away the fo­cus on self, to help­ing oth­ers, to un­der­stand­ing and help­ing every­body, and look at the con­tri­bu­tion that they can make to the over­all as­pi­ra­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” said Yip Chuck, “When peo­ple look out­ward­ly from self, you move away from com­plain­ing and grip­ing to re­al­ly, how can I be part of this big­ger pic­ture? How can I con­tribute to it? What do I need to do in my in­ter­ac­tions with oth­ers so that the in­ter­ac­tion it­self is pos­i­tive and a win-win. It is be­ing a lot more self-aware in terms of in­ter­ac­tions and more em­pa­thet­ic, it al­so re­sounds to more lis­ten­ing and un­der­stand­ing of each and every in­di­vid­ual that you in­ter­act with.”

Yip Chuck said the greater un­der­stand­ing of the team ob­jec­tive worked favourably, as did staff morale.

“If each per­son sees how they can con­tribute, they will feel a dif­fer­ent en­gage­ment. They will feel a dif­fer­ent pas­sion, a dif­fer­ent en­er­gy, a dif­fer­ent com­mit­ment. That would be en­rich­ing to them­selves. First­ly, it would en­rich the re­la­tion­ship and in­ter­ac­tion with cus­tomers and key stake­hold­ers, and it could on­ly re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the or­gan­i­sa­tion at the end of the day.”

She ex­plained that the group was al­so plac­ing em­pha­sis on in­no­va­tion and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly as younger cus­tomers are in­creas­ing­ly em­brac­ing dig­i­tal op­tions. To ac­com­mo­date this, the group has in­vest­ed in sig­nif­i­cant train­ing and suc­ces­sion plan­ning for staff.

“We have a very strong man­age­ment as­so­ciate pro­gram, which would be the staff who we would iden­ti­fy from our su­per­vi­so­ry lev­el, that we would put them on a five-year train­ing pro­gramme to be­come a man­ag­er in dif­fer­ent ar­eas of the bank. That re­al­ly helps our suc­ces­sion plan­ning over the next four, five years, iden­ti­fy­ing at least two can­di­dates in every area to re­place the peo­ple who would be re­tir­ing, the peo­ple who we know would be leav­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion

“Be­low that, we have the Promis­ing Per­sons Pro­gramme for the more ju­nior staff, the cler­i­cal staff who have high po­ten­tial, to move them up to su­per­vi­so­ry po­si­tions again with­in a cer­tain time­line and with spe­cif­ic fo­cus on their train­ing and their de­vel­op­ment,” said Yip Chuck.

“We have a very strong men­tor­ing and coach­ing pro­gramme, where our more ex­pe­ri­enced lead­ers help the younger or the new­er su­per­vi­sors or lead­ers to learn from mis­takes, to learn from what worked for each one of us, and they could ben­e­fit from it as they take up lead­er­ship po­si­tions to en­gage our staff and our cus­tomers.”

Yip Chuck said the bank was al­so plac­ing spe­cial fo­cus on men­tal health through im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion with staff as well as the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a re­mote work pol­i­cy.

“We had done a cul­ture health di­ag­nos­tic sur­vey some time ago, and it is a re­sult of that sur­vey that re­al­ly led us to en­forc­ing and putting greater fo­cus on lead­er­ship, on work-life bal­ance, and on many of the things that the staff ac­tu­al­ly told us or shared with us in the in the sur­vey,” she said.

Yip Chuck ex­plained that sur­vey called on the bank “to be more trans­for­ma­tive and in terms of lead­er­ship.”

“They want­ed to see more con­nec­tion, more em­pa­thy, more 360 think­ing, more strate­gic vi­sion­ing, which ex­ists in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, but some­times, and es­pe­cial­ly top lead­er­ship, that doesn’t fil­ter all the way down to the staff for them to un­der­stand the over­all vi­sion and what is their role in it. There­fore, when we looked at a lead­er­ship pro­gramme and what our mid­dle-lev­el lead­ers could do to close off any gaps.

“So that the mes­sage at the top is felt by all 7,000 (of our) staff. And that’s the on­ly that they could re­al­ly all em­brace it be­cause you need to first know it, un­der­stand it, see how you fit in­to it, and be ex­cit­ed about your role that you have in the fu­ture,” said Yip Chuck.

She ex­plained that the adop­tion of re­mote work and flex­i­bil­i­ty has ac­tu­al­ly aid­ed in the im­prove­ment of the bank’s work-life en­vi­ron­ment.

“Whilst many or­gan­i­sa­tions, I guess, re­vert­ed to be­ing in the of­fice, we fa­cil­i­tat­ed staff who could work re­mote­ly up to two days a week, as long as you could on­ly work re­mote­ly with 100 per cent pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and no im­pact to cus­tomers or your team in any way. So it is a sig­nif­i­cant thing for us, for work-life bal­ance, and it’s some­thing that we have to do be­cause, as the next gen­er­a­tion of our em­ploy­ees and our cus­tomers start to show dif­fer­ent ex­pec­ta­tions, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has to be flex­i­ble and evolve with those times,” she said.

“The work­ing en­vi­ron­ment, or rather the coun­try, has al­so got much more dif­fi­cult with traf­fic. For the peo­ple who have to com­mute, es­pe­cial­ly if you come in right from the east or from south, you’re lit­er­al­ly spend­ing two hours of traf­fic on the morn­ing and to­wards the traf­fic in evening as for­wards of your day lost. And if we could fa­cil­i­tate some of these staff who can work re­mote­ly. That’s a big help for them, and we hear from them that they are even more pro­duc­tive when they work from home.”

An­oth­er vice pres­i­dent at RFHL, Richard Sam­my, ex­plained that the group was al­so plac­ing spe­cial em­pha­sis on di­ver­si­ty as part of the strate­gic plan.

“What that sought to do is ready to col­lect da­ta on what peo­ple thought was im­por­tant to them, how they showed up in the of­fice, what we could try to do dif­fer­ent­ly to cre­ate a more in­clu­sive or­gan­i­sa­tion,” said Sam­my.

“There are 37 dif­fer­ent di­ver­si­ty di­men­sions out there, and of course, some of them are the more provoca­tive ones and are the ones that get press. But where we want to re­al­ly fo­cus is on peo­ple hav­ing a voice, peo­ple en­sur­ing that their voice mat­ters. The or­gan­i­sa­tion takes in­to ac­count the dif­fer­ences, but at the end of the day, en­sur­ing peo­ple still feel­ing in­clud­ed.”

Sam­my said the cu­ra­tion of an en­vi­ron­ment where all mem­bers of staff can feel safe about speak­ing up would al­low the or­gan­i­sa­tion to con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from good news go­ing for­ward.

For the five-year pe­ri­od from 2020 to 2024, RFHL’s to­tal as­sets in­creased by 13.6 per cent from $104.3 bil­lion to $118.5  bil­lion, while its prof­it af­ter tax for the same pe­ri­od grew by 122 per cent from $900 mil­lion in 2020 to $2 bil­lion in 2024.