“How to build a people-centric organization”

Ever since its foundation three decades ago, TRG has always been an extension of me, a part of my life. Its core values reflect the beliefs and principles that I live by every day. As the company grows and reinvents itself multiple times over the years, so do I.

I have been a numbers person - being a professional accountant and a techie. Today, I still love numbers, but I am also a people person, being a serial entrepreneur and a certified executive coach. It should come as no surprise that TRG has also evolved to become more people-centric.

As a provider of enterprise solutions, our tagline used to be “Helping your business shine.” It has been changed to “Helping you and your business shine” for we now understand that true progress comes from people.

Being people-centric means being agile. In today’s world of increasing uncertainty, agility is key to business resilience and success.

When the pandemic struck, we were able to seamlessly transition from our physical workspaces to virtual ones with minimal disruptions to our operations and the customers’ services.

Additionally, we took advantage of the crisis by embracing virtual internships and scaling up. Usually, we have 6-12 interns from multiple countries in the office most months of the year, we scaled this to typically 40-50 interns, most of them virtual, from up to 10 different countries.

We even managed to launch our brand new on-demand training platform – TRG Academy – amid strict lockdowns and travel restrictions. Developed in-house, TRG Academy allowed us to deliver end-user training services to our customers anywhere in the world, at their own pace, even during the peaks of the pandemic when travelling was impossible.

As it turns out, other people are also interested in our courses so we have decided to offer them to the public.

We would not have achieved so much during such a turbulent time without investing heavily in our people, especially in terms of lifelong learning and personal growth.

Our people are encouraged and offered opportunities to learn new things, reinvent themselves, and realize their full potential. They can, for example, receive free coaching sessions conducted by certified coaches.

Furthermore, those who wish to become certified coaches themselves are also offered chances to do so. That way, they, in turn, can coach others in the organization too.

Our commitment to becoming a people-centric organization is reflected in our 6 core values: Passion, Integrity, Innovation, Collaboration, Kaizen, and Coaching Culture.

I’m a strong believer and practitioner of personal transformations through coaching. Properly applied, coaching can impact an individual's life and career, a team's performance and cohesion, and a company's bottom line and culture.

Being a certified coach, I am actively assisting aspiring entrepreneurs to navigate this business-as-unusual environment. I also provide them with coaching techniques that help maximize their employees’ performance by tapping on their hidden potential, not by relying on control and coercion.

A coaching culture also means less friction in the workplace. For example, it fundamentally changes the way people deal with criticism by trying to eliminate the root causes of such criticism. They also learn how to nurture a non-judgmental mindset and how to ask powerful questions.

We are highly committed to finding the right people and putting them in the right positions. TRG was among the first adopters of ATS in Asia. And today, we continue to be at the forefront of adopting technology into HR practice.

We’ve integrated and automated our ATS with Employer Branding, psychometric assessments and video CV applications to provide a smoother and more streamlined candidate experience. Onboarding is also accelerated thanks to on-demand video-based training courses.

Make no mistake, building a people-centric organization is a taxing endeavor that requires a lot of commitment and perseverance. But it is well worth the effort if meaningful and lasting transformations are what you are aiming for. IE