DHL, Salesforce, Trust Bank named among Singapore’s best workplaces

SINGAPORE – Companies here must build trust among workers and leaders at all levels if they want to be competitive and cope with a range of upcoming economic challenges, noted Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat on Oct 30.

DPM Heng cited this need for trust as one of the key lessons gleaned from employee surveys conducted here over the past 10 years by consultancy firm Great Place To Work (GPTW).

He made his remarks at the 10th edition of the annual Singapore’s Best Workplaces awards held at The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore, which honoured 50 employers who have performed the best on those annual surveys.

GPTW certifies workplaces with an outstanding employee experience through surveys and analytics.

Winners in 2024 include software giant Salesforce, which has been a fixture on the list for the past decade, and logistics company DHL Express Singapore, which ranked top among large companies with 1,000 or more staff here for the fifth year running.

DHL Express was praised for various initiatives, including a 32-hour induction course that conveys the primary business focus, strategy and spirit of the business to foster belonging.

Salesforce was lauded for its considered approach to infusing artificial intelligence at work via an internal council of staff that mulls over how best to deploy the technology.

Mr Sujith Abraham, Asean general manager and senior vice-president at Salesforce, told The Straits Times that a great workplace promotes genuine commitment from people, drives innovation and ultimately helps customers succeed.

“We remain intentional about our culture. That’s what’s been amazing at Salesforce – we write it down; we prioritise it; we programme it; we measure it; we innovate on it; and we hold ourselves accountable to it,” Mr Abraham said, when asked what has kept Salesforce on the list for so long.

The firm came in sixth among medium-sized firms with 100 to 999 employees here in 2024.

Around 18,000 employers from 170 countries apply to be certified each year.

DPM Heng also said three other lessons can be learnt from Singapore’s best workplaces.

The first is that businesses in a transforming economy are ultimately made up of workers whom employers need to nurture.

“Good employers prioritise upskilling their workforce, even as they turn to the marketplace for new skills to augment their teams,” he added. 

The two other lessons are to pay attention to employees’ holistic well-being and care, as well as to build a culture of open communication and psychological safety.

DPM Heng said good employers make the effort to facilitate physical, financial, mental and psychological wellness, noting that a joint GPTW-Johns Hopkins University study found that employee well-being peaked during the pandemic, when adversity drove home the need to promote employee well-being.

However, he said, GPTW’s 2024 survey shows a growing disconnect between top executives and other organisation levels, noting: “Good leaders bridge this gap through empathy, open communication and active listening to understand the challenges of their teams.”

Still, employees must also play a part by putting forward their views respectfully, staying open to different opinions, and considering the interests of the company and customers, he said.

The GPTW-Johns Hopkins University joint study, which was also released on Oct 30 to mark the 10-year milestone, detailed trends seen over the past 10 years of surveys here. The consultancy has run employee surveys for nearly 1,000 employers here from 2015 to 2024, accounting for over 440,000 workers in all.

GPTW said the joint study found an overall upward trend in employee trust and satisfaction over the past decade, from a low of 68 per cent in 2017 to 80 per cent in 2024, with a high of 83 per cent in 2021.

Nonetheless, aggregate scores fell across all age groups from 2016 to 2017, with those aged 55 and above and 26 to 34 years old experiencing the most significant drop.

“This trend likely reflects the impact of slower economic growth and concerns over job security due to organisational restructuring and increased automation,” GPTW said.

This would later rebound but at different rates, with younger employees showing quicker improvements, a trend possibly driven by expanding opportunities in entry-level positions as many industries doubled down on digitalisation efforts.

The gap in perceived experience widens further when viewed across job seniorities, with senior executives opening up a gap of over 10 percentage points in satisfaction scores from all other job levels.

One new entrant to the list is digital bank Trust Bank, which was

launched in September 2022

. Its chief people officer Jocelyne Loh said: “We had the rare opportunity to build a bank from scratch and this meant that we could build not only a bank that is best-in-class for our customers... but also a bank that has the best (workplace) culture.”