Enabling our People to Build Long-term Careers through Achieving Purpose and Balance

The UOB Way is our unique culture and belief system codified for the benefit of members of our UOB family. It represents the way we work at UOB and our people philosophy.

To strengthen our culture, we rolled out a series of The UOB Way workshops across the Group this year. The workshops reinforced our commitment to cultivating an environment where each member of our UOB family feels recognised and valued. In doing so, we enable our employees to thrive and to excel at UOB.

Close to

90

workshops conducted across ASEAN, Greater China, London and Sydney.

75%

of people managers have participated in The UOB Way workshops.

The UOB Way workshops reaching colleagues across UOB.

The UOB Way also shapes the development of strategic people programmes and policies to benefit our employees in the long term. From hiring, onboarding, learning, rewarding to promoting, it serves as the compass directing our workforce principles.

Findings from our employee survey in 2023 showed that

89%

(+3% year on year) of employees are proud to be working in UOB.

Our commitment to our employees extends far beyond the present – it is rooted in our dedication to fostering long-term well-being throughout their various life cycles. As we navigate a post-pandemic world, we remain attuned to the evolving workforce dynamics. In achieving a healthy balance between work and life, we continue to stay focused on our people’s mental health and to provide an environment in which they can thrive not just today, but also well into the future.

Mental Wellness Days

The UOB Mental Wellness Days initiative is focused on helping employees improve their overall well-being to lead healthier, happier and more fulfilling lives through monthly lineups of activities. Our holistic employee wellness approach spans across four pillars – Mental, Physical, Financial and Intellectual.

In 2023, more than 3,900 employees and their dependants participated in 38 wellness talks and workshops. We also extended suitable wellness programmes to the dependants of employees.

UOB’s holistic approach to our employees’ well-being aims to help them achieve balance at work.

Taking care of the total well-being of our people

The care we have for our people is demonstrated through our total employee wellness approach:

Our workforce at a glance

Mental
wellness

We strive to create a workplace environment focused on fostering a positive state of mental health for our employees.

Physical
wellness

We enable our employees to maintain a healthy lifestyle through providing comprehensive medical and lifestyle benefits for them and their dependants.

Financial
wellness

We seek to equip our employees with financial management fundamentals and strategies through financial literacy programmes.

Intellectual
wellness

We provide avenues for our employees to explore potential activities to stimulate their minds and self-enhancement activities to improve their personal lives.

UOB Health+

Beyond core medical coverage, we structured employees’ health benefits to include HEAL$ (Healthy Employees, Active Lifestyles) and Dependants’ Hospitalisation Insurance Subsidy (DHIS), to offer flexibility and inclusiveness, with the long term in mind.

#Better Health Bazaar

To encourage our employees to go for health screenings, we organised a #Better Health Bazaar from 19 to 21 September 2023, featuring wellness booths that offered onsite health and eye screenings as well as other services.

Key highlights from the Health Bazaar:

Increased affordability
We provided complimentary basic health screenings for our employees and offered complimentary upgrades for selected screening packages.
‍
Seamless claim experience
We streamlined the claim process by auto-deducting from employees’ HEAL$ as opposed to the traditional process of pay-and-claim.
‍
Raising health awareness through education
Health talks were conducted to help employees understand the importance of regular health screenings in order to make informed decisions about their well-being.

UOB Health+

HEAL$

Flexibility to choose from a wide range of claim categories, e.g. preventive care, wellness, travel, dental, optical, medical treatment

Generous HEAL$ quantum to cover outpatient visits
for dependants
of employees

Enhanced

DHIS

Receive reimbursements
while enjoying transferability of personal hospitalisation insurance for eligible dependants

Simpler claim process

Higher claim limits

Add-on riders are claimable

As part of the #Better Health Bazaar, we offered basic complimentary eye screening to our employees.

Supporting Ur Retirement and Future (SURF)

Launched at our Better U Festival in October 2023, the SURF programme aims to adequately prepare employees for retirement or re-employment with the Bank. Colleagues with less than two years to the statutory retirement age are invited to workshops spanning two-and-a-half days, which focus on strengthening their mental, physical and financial preparedness for retirement or re-employment.

The workshop modules include developing health plans based on employees’ physical profiles to provide them with cognitive enhancement strategies and to share insights on the importance of estate planning.

The SURF programme workshop enables our employees to improve their physical health, among other activities.

“I have certainly benefitted a lot. This workshop gave me the opportunity to think through what I want to do after retirement.”

Ms Foo Kim Lian

Executive Director, Group Credit (Commercial)

“The programme is excellent. It is an eye-opener because the workshop covers topics that I am concerned about, like finding meaningful things to do after retirement and how to go about it.”

Mr Goh Teik Cheng

First Vice President, TMRW

Our learning and development programmes support our employees’ desire to upskill and reskill so as to stay relevant amid evolving industry trends and to pursue their career and personal goals. Over time, we want to give our people the opportunity to expand their skill sets so that they can pivot their careers seamlessly within the Bank and build long-term careers, staying true to The UOB Way.

Career + U

The programme is focused on bridging employee aspirations with job opportunities within UOB. In 2023, we placed greater emphasis on internal mobility through initiatives such as:

Targeted talent programmes to encourage mobility across the Bank, where about 500 employees have been trained across a variety of career coaching topics;
Career counselling to help employees navigate and chart their paths to the next role they are interested in. More than 2,000 employees participated in our career mobility outreach during the 2023 UOB Better U Festival; and
One-stop microsite to provide useful resources and to highlight available roles in UOB.

UOB Better U Campus

As part of our commitment to grow our own timber and to develop our existing talents, we established the UOB Better U Campus to nurture internal talent and to facilitate upskilling and reskilling within our workforce. During this year's Better U Festival, UOB partnered the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) to launch the UOB Better U Campus located at SIM's Management House.

Operational since 2 January 2024, the UOB Better U Campus marks a pivotal first step to centralise our developmental resources and to deepen our ongoing investment, so as to foster human capital within UOB. By consolidating diverse training academies under one roof, we demonstrate our unwavering dedication to promoting continuous and rigorous pathways for professional growth.

The UOB Better U Campus is a dedicated venue to consolidate all training and development programmes under one roof.

Enhanced Better U Programme

Boosting the Better U catalogue
In 2023, we expanded the Better U catalogue from its initial six courses to 30 courses to cater to the diverse range of learning needs of our employees. A total of 80 sessions were conducted in 2023.

Amplifying employees’ agility, resilience and ownership of their career development
Through the Better U: Empowered to THRIVE programme, employees can do a self-assessment of their current skill sets while also learning the importance of continuous growth and skills training to be ready for the future. Employees were also equipped with guides and tools to build a partnership with their managers through a growth conversation as a first step.

Enhancing employees’ data-related skillsets
Through the Better U: Data Analytics Level 3 programme, employees will be equipped with advanced data skill sets and certified as UOB Power Users – individuals who have completed all modules in either Microsoft Power Business Intelligence or Qlik Sense Track.

Helping employees new to the financial industry
Through our Overview of Banking @ UOB programme, new hires and existing employees with no prior banking experience are given insights into the inner workings of financial institutions, and more specifically, UOB. This enables participants to better understand the Bank and our products and services, on top of our ways of working. Fifty employees participated in the two pilot runs in 2023.

More than 100 employees from across the region came together for the pilot programme of Better U: Empowered to THRIVE.

Leadership Acceleration Programme

To build a pipeline of leaders, our Leadership Acceleration Programme (LAP) provides high performers who exhibit high potential with growth and development opportunities such as leadership development and executive coaching, job rotations and strategic project assignments. These provide them with the necessary exposure and networking opportunities to accelerate their readiness to take on leadership roles in the Bank. Our LAP efforts 2023 included a series of in-person knowledge-sharing sessions, company visits and a "Connecting LAP in ASEAN" regional immersion week in Thailand.

LAP participants from across the Group with the UOB Thailand management team during the "Connecting LAP in ASEAN" programme held in Bangkok, Thailand.

Empowering our people managers to lead The UOB Way

Through our programme Better Manager: Lead The UOB Way, we equip people managers with core skills and competencies to lead effective teams. The programme is designed to help people managers build essential competencies, such as giving and receiving feedback and everyday coaching skills, for them to lead their teams effectively in The UOB Way.

Through the Better Manager: Lead The UOB Way programme, our people managers learn more about leading The UOB Way.

Management Associate Programme

The Management Associate (MA) Programme focuses on young graduates as part of building our pipeline of future leaders. Each year, we receive more than 30,000 applications Group-wide. After a rigorous selection process, we hired about 60 MAs in 2023. The MA Programme works through a structured development framework that equips MAs with holistic knowledge and experiences in various business units, offers valuable insights essential for leadership readiness and provides cross-border opportunities to inculcate a regional mindset.

To support the MAs, we engage our former MAs and LAP participants to mentor and to guide our MAs in navigating their careers within UOB.

The Management Associate Programme is designed to nurture our next generation of leaders across the region.

U Unleash Programme

To give prospective graduates a more insightful and personal view of what working in UOB is like, we collaborated with Singapore polytechnics and the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) to launch the U Unleash Programme (UUP). Under UUP, final-year students from the hospitality, business and information communications technology schools in all five local polytechnics and three ITE colleges participate in a year-long internship with UOB, in the first partnership of such scale in Singapore.

Students can be placed in business units such as UOB Private Bank, Group Technology and Operations, and Group Channels and Digitalisation. Participants will undergo training courses to equip themselves with knowledge and skills relevant to the banking industry.

Following graduation, UUP participants who have performed well during their internships will be offered a full-time position with UOB. Should they wish to further their education, the Bank also provides sponsorships for eligible participants to pursue their academic goals.

We launched the UUP where students can participate in a year-long internship with us, with the possibility of being offered full-time positions and sponsorships to further their education.

Core to UOB’s people philosophy is promoting a culture of trust and empowerment in the workplace. We strive to excel in things that are meaningful for us so that our people are empowered, recognised and rewarded.

UOB Global Appreciation Month

Held annually, the UOB Global Appreciation Month celebrates the dedication and contributions of our people. The theme for 2023 was “88 Years with U”, to celebrate our employees, both past and present, who have contributed to the Bank’s success over the past 88 years.

A series of activities and initiatives were organised to mark this special month. Here are some highlights:

Mr Wee Ee Cheong, Deputy Chairman and CEO, UOB and Mr Dean Tong, Head of Group Human Resources, UOB, visited employees at the UOB branches in Ang Mo Kio, Hougang, Novena and the Contact Centre, in Alexandra, Singapore to show their appreciation to our frontliners.

Employees gathered at our employee clubhouse located at 28 Boat Quay for Thankful Tuesdays, where they enjoyed bonding time with their teams. Games, a photo booth, back massages and snacks were also provided.

“Appreciation Month is really an opportunity to show care for our employees for their
hard work."

Mr Dean Tong

Head of Group Human Resources, UOB

Celebrating loyalty and dedication at the 2023 Tenure Recognition award ceremony

In August 2023, we celebrated more than 400 colleagues who marked their 10^th, 20^th, 30^th, 40^th and 50^th year of service with us. Nine of them celebrated their 50^th-year milestone, including some who started their careers at UOB at 17 years old. Their career journeys include stories of how they have supported the Bank through mergers and seen the industry through digital transformations. They also shared insights such as how to adopt a continuous learning attitude.

Awardees with 50 years of service at UOB celebrating their special day with Mr Wee Ee Cheong, Deputy Chairman and CEO, UOB and other members of the management team.

Building employee pride as we are recognised across the region

Our ambition is to be number one in employee pride in ASEAN. We are honoured to be recognised for the following awards and certifications, including the win in TIME magazine’s World's Best Companies of 2023 where UOB ranked second in Asia. We were also certified as a "Great Place to Work" by the namesake institute.