How Goldbell helped staff embrace the tech transition

In today’s digital age it is essential for businesses to be open to new ways of doing things to improve efficiencies, productivity in order to retain their edge.

While business leaders are easily sold on the need to adopt new digital ways of working, convincing employees to embrace the digital change is oftentimes the main challenge in this tech transition.

Building on its 39-year success in the commercial vehicle and warehousing space, Goldbell Group has over the past seven years been focused on adopting technology in a big way.

A mandate under its third-generation leadership to help propel the company forward, Goldbell has implemented a number of new tech-driven processes to future ready its core business.

 One of the first tech changes adopted was a new IT system to eliminate redundant tasks of hardcopy filing and manual tracking. It also deployed a new biometric face recognition time and attendance management system in place of the old punch card system for better reconciliation of employee data.

Having data being shared automatically and seamlessly across several departments from a single entry not only significantly reduced the administrative workload, but also increased the accuracy of the time and attendance monitoring data by eliminating the possibility of “buddy punching”.

Goldbell also implemented the Maximo Job Assignment system across all its aftersales services centres to enable more efficient job allocations to technicians with simultaneous alerts to the Parts department.

This system allows Customer Service Associates to automatically assign new job requests with real time monitoring by the workshop controller and team of technicians.

Daily reports on all completed and outstanding jobs are generated for better management  and efficient resource planning.

As part of its tech overhaul, Goldbell invested in a new CRM system to enhance its customer service, enable automation of everyday tasks and facilitate data-driven decision making.

The collation and management of customer data creates opportunities for collaboration and cross selling between teams to further improve the overall customer experience.

On the training front, Goldbell set up an e-training platform as part of its new Learning Management System where all employees are encouraged to plan their learning journey and take ownership of their career development.

Optimising learning in every workshop, the e-training platform facilitates pre-training engagement with employees where training teasers and quizzes are sent to participants to build their interest in anticipation of in-class sessions.

Educate, but also listen to get buy-in

With these developments came the need for Goldbell to help its team embrace technology, take up new skills and adapt to the new ways of doing things.

Recognising that there would always be the initial apprehension and resistance to change, measures were taken to ensure that the need, the benefits and the ease into how this would be implemented was communicated across all levels right from the onset.

Building this understanding of the value and positive impact new initiatives could have on one’s professional career as well as the business at large helped successfully shape the workforce’s attitude and receptiveness towards change.

Employee Communication Sessions were held regularly for employees to voice out their concerns about the adoption of new systems which were taken into consideration at the implementation stage.

Having a structured roadmap of change and understanding of what lay ahead, together with task specific training sessions, gave employees both a clarity of vision that this change was only for the better as well as the confidence of knowing that they were an integral part of the technical transition.

Incentivising change

Recognising that peer-to-peer guidance and knowledge sharing would be crucial to the success of any team in transition, Goldbell put in place a reward scheme to recognise and reward trainers and employees for their efforts in embracing the change.

Additionally, they introduced a new performance appraisal method Modelled after the Bell Curve to help the management team identify top performers and those who had potential for career growth.

Recognising contributions, the new appraisal method also served as a motivating force to increase not only morale but also productivity levels among employees.

Five years on, Goldbell has successfully rolled out a whole suite of new systems and processes across its entire organisation, a major accomplishment for a company that prides itself on staff loyalty and retention and where a good percentage of its 800-strong team has served the company for more than 20 years.

About the Author

Tan Su Ching has more than 20 years of experience in human resource development. As General Manager of Human Resources at Goldbell Group he oversees the development and delivery of human resource policies to retain existing and attract new talents as the business continues to grow.