What makes
Ngern Tid Lor’s People Learn & Culture team different from the Learning and Development function in other organizations is not just its name but also its “mindsets and practices” that are driven by our corporate culture embedded in the DNA of everyone at Ngern Tid Lor. Let’s take a look at how these mindsets can help people in the organization overcome limitations and work together toward our shared goal.
EVERYTHING WE DO IS BASED ON UNDERSTANDING “NTLERS”
To enable company growth, we have trained new hires to support our branch or business expansion and developed our existing employees to help them gain knowledge and skills needed to provide customer services correctly and efficiently.
NEW BRANCH STAFF
- We design training content to suit specific roles and responsibilities of our employees in order to enable them to perform properly and efficiently. To build confidence in new branch staff, every new employee is required to undergo branch-based training to gain a clear understanding of branch operating procedures and reduce errors.
EXISTING BRANCH STAFF
- New Product System & Service and Refreshment When there is a new product process or system, every branch staff will be updated on the changes and have the opportunity to review their knowledge and understanding of operating procedures on a regular basis.
- Branch Career Development We have designed a branch career path model to develop employee knowledge and skills needed to perform duties. The career path follows the rank progression: Bronze, Silver, and Gold, corresponding to employee roles and responsibilities.
- Training Methodology & Tools Each course focuses on two-way communication and is full of learning activities, such as gamification board games and interactive e-learning. Even though training is difficult during the COVID-19 pandemic, the People Learn team has created flexible training courses, allowing employee development to continue without disruption. These courses consist of classroom, online, and hybrid courses, which could be catered to different situations. We have also follow-up closely to ensure the quality of all training formats.
NEW HEAD OFFICE STAFF
- Organize the Onboarding WOW course to introduce new head office staff to the organization and welfare benefits, as well as the NTL DNA course to help them better understand corporate values before starting work.
EXISTING HEAD OFFICE STAFF
- Our development courses are fun, creative, and educational. Our head office career model is designed to suit specific roles, responsibilities, and positions. Every year, we collect data about senior management and general staff in order to design a learning structure that aligns with our corporate culture and core values. We always look for new knowledge from our national and global partners and books that will help develop our colleagues to become change agents. We carefully select trainers with expertise and competencies relevant to the training courses being provided from within the company and reputable institutions.
- One of our signature courses and successes derived from understanding our colleagues is the Culture Fit Interview Guidelines. This course is designed to provide guidelines for supervisor-level officers to interview job candidates. Because we are driven by our seven core values, we also want to work with people who have these values in their DNA. All seven values are equally important to us, and we will not accept job applicants who fail to share even one of our values, no matter how capable or talented they are. We believe that working together with people with the same values will create a positive workplace environment and enable us to achieve success more easily. The length of time each of our employees continues working with us attests to this fact.
Our leadership development program changes each year, and our leadership lessons come from books. Every year, we read many books and brainstorm with our executives to determine which one is suitable and best reflects our leadership. The person who inspired us to read and do a workshop, which have become activities that we have organized every year, is none other than Mr. Piyasak, our managing director. We have read Start with Why, The Lean Startup, and Onward. When reading Onward, which recounts the Starbucks success story, Piyasak wanted executive employees at the head office to gain insights from a successful business. After our executive employees read this book, we organized an off-site workshop to allow them to better understand the importance of maintaining Ngern Tid Lor’s core strength. While delivering the perfect espresso every time is Starbucks’ strength, our strength lies in our “efficient credit approval process to deliver excellent services to every customer for a better quality of life.”
We have also organized leadership development workshops for our region and area managers. The training activities were designed based on management insights obtained from the book “Leaders Eat Last.” This book shows that the success or failure of an organization depends on the ability of its leader and that true leaders inspire others to dream, to do more, and to one day become good leaders themselves. We also gained insights from another book, “Extreme Ownership,” which tells a war story (applicable to business competition). It shows that a leader with extreme ownership will inspire the rest of the team to feel the same sense of ownership, turning them into an extreme team ready to bear full responsibilities for their missions.
“When everyone understands leadership roles, they will feel a sense of ownership and responsibility toward their duties. In every workshop, our executives will join us to learn and share ideas, creating a warm and fun learning environment. Even now, there are many executives asking when the next workshop will be held.”
Within the People Learn & Culture team, there are also sub-teams who help support NTLers in their learning and development.
- Multimedia Development: From storyboard writing to media production, such as still images, videos, and engaging e-learning materials.
- Multimedia System Support: Manage the TidLor Portal and TidLor TidRian, which are e-learning systems designed by Ngern Tid Lor to allow our employees to learn from anywhere and at any time.
- People Learn Support: The back-office team helps every employee at Ngern Tid Lor to receive internal and external training, from preparing course approval request letters to providing support before, during, and after training.
- Financial Education: We create a retirement financial plan for our employees starting from the first day they start working with us. Every year, we provide financial literacy through fun and engaging activities to help our employees better understand and manage their money. Moreover, we have initiated the “Financial Knowledge to Communities for Life Rolls Forward” project and collaborated in the Kamlangjai Project under the Royal Initiative of HRH Princess Bajrakitiyabha to provide basic financial knowledge for prisoners in order to prepare them for life and career opportunities after prison.
- Culture Activity: We have designed our activities and communication in a way that reflects our corporate culture and core values. We understand that there is no fixed formula to make employees understand our culture and values and apply them in their work lives at Ngern Tid Lor, but consistent and continuous communication may be the key.
PREPARE FOR CHANGES
Every year, we talk to our executives to understand the direction of change and receive advice on development. Change is challenging, but it is also stressful and exciting at the same time. We believe that for an organization to thrive and grow, we have to disrupt ourselves before we are disrupted by forces. Consequently, we have created many courses and learning activities every year. For example, the Re-Skilling in Basic Programming for the Non-Programmer course aims to teach employees without basic programming knowledge how to use RPA (Robotic Process Automation) to write programs to develop work processes or solve problems in their own departments. It will improve employee skills more effectively, in line with our work smart value.
NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SAY NO
Even though training and development seem difficult due to the COVID-19 situation, this does not stop us from looking for solutions. Every member of our People Learn team is ready to work together to support every employee at Ngern Tid Lor to continuously develop and grow alongside the company. We have always produced learning media and looked for new tools. Our team mottos are: “when you fall down, rise up quickly” and “never say no.” A person should not say that he or she will never do something because it is impossible. Rather, he or she should consider a range of options that would address the problem. This mindset helps the team to understand that anything is possible when you “never give up, never say no.”