“When I became a MD, I felt that employees weren’t proud to work at Ngern Tid Lor. Even our management would tell their friends that they worked for Krungsri Group when asked where they worked, or they wore a jacket to cover the company logo when walking in a mall. I thought something was really wrong; it was an organizational crisis!
We needed to clean up our corporate image as a finance shophouse. Of course, shareholders could be our strength, but they weren’t everything. We needed to rely on ourselves and we firmly believed that we could become an organization that helped people access transparent and fair financial services.
In fact, we already had what it needed and we were doing what we could to achieve this goal. Ever since AIG had acquired this business, we had strived to set a better and higher standard for business conduct. We had to be explicit about who we were, and did everything we could to realize our belief.”
Piyasak Ukritnukun, Managing Director of Ngern Tid Lor Public Company Limited, told us about Ngern Tid Lor’s statement of corporate intent, which not only helped its employees to proudly answer why Thai society needed a vehicle title loan business like Ngern Tid Lor, but also reassured them that the job they were doing was not to extort money from poor people. Rather, they were providing opportunities for grassroots people, who were Ngern Tid Lor’s main customers, to have a better quality of life by allowing them to have access to transparent and fair financing sources. This became the beginning of empowering employees in the organization to help create opportunities and make the dreams of ordinary people come true:
“When we get our good intentions on the right track and everyone has the same belief, every employee will serve with heart. When benchmarking against competitors, it’s not difficult for us to open 1,000 or 3,000 finance shophouses, but how do we make employees care and help customers with heart? I don’t think that’s easy.
Different customers have different problems and some may not even meet any conditions set by the company, but caring employees will know where they could break the rules to help customers without causing damage to the company. Financial services differ from money lenders, and ‘services with heart from people who care’ is what makes Ngern Tid Lor stand out and win the hearts of our customers.
People do not decide to buy particular products just because they are the cheapest. They choose things that they like or that give them positive experiences at affordable prices.”
Creating Organizational Sustainability through People
“Today, we’re excited about digital, about a future in which humans might not need to work. Ngern Tid Lor pays great attention to technology development as well, but we still believe that people are key to building organizational sustainability. For me, sustainability also includes “keeping one’s word,” meaning that an organization must do as it has said or promised. For example, last year’s COVID-19 outbreak was a test of whether Ngern Tid Lor truly wanted to help people. As was evident, we were the only company in this business that waived interests and fees of up to 500 million baht for customers who applied for a loan payment deferral. Thus, last year’s revenue decrease was not caused by our poor performance but by the willingness of everyone in the company, from the Board of Directors to management and branch staff, to help customers during this difficult time.
Anyone can say they’re going to do something, or serve customers with a smile, but it’s useless to just smile and offer no help. I believe that no matter what technology is used or who the competitors are, our employees are ready to fight.”
Candidate Screening through Core Values
Because of the belief that people are important resources, we screen candidates to select qualified colleagues through the “7 Core Values” which are jointly identified based on our corporate culture by Ngern Tid Lor’s employees.
“Most companies screen job candidates based on technical skills. For example, excellent sales skills are required for every salesperson. But at Ngern Tid Lor, we believe that technical skills can be taught and learned later. Thus, rather than technical skills, we screen candidates who share our common belief and passion. That is, the passion to help other people and the belief that helping people while earning a decent income is a good career choice. It would be great if 70-80 percent of qualified candidates were to be selected. Their passion will make them patient, hard-working, and eager to learn, striving to develop in the direction that aligns with our core values.
When we have job applicants, we have them read our “
7 Core Values” and ask if they share these values, because we only want to work with like-minded people.”
Mr. Piyasak also told us about the strategy used to identify Ngern Tid Lor’s 7 Core Values which involved every employee in the company.
“We initially hired an agency to help us write our core values. Although the resulting core values comprised short and rhyming words that were easy to remember, our employees had a difficult time understanding them. We asked 10 people what these values meant and we received 10 different answers. So, we decided to get every employee to help write our own values
We started by searching for the “Rockstars” in the company, or people who were respected or admired by most employees. We tried to determine the traits or patterns in these Rockstars that made them admired by others. They were our first Culture Heroes. Then, we worked together to write concise and easy-to-understand phrases that could convey our values.
After several rounds of brainstorming and writing together, we had finally come up with the values that we thought were right for us, which we have continued to apply in every work process from the first day employees start working with us.”
The ideas of creating organizational sustainability through people and using core values to screen job candidates also ensure that Ngern Tid Lor’s values will be passed down from generation to generation, thus preventing our good intentions from fading away.
Not only were passion, strong why, and core values the key to our transforming from a finance shophouse to a listed company of today, but they will also lead Ngern Tid Lor toward strong and sustainable growth in the future.
(Excerpt from an interview with
The Standard)