NTUC FIRST CAMPUS CO-OPERATIVE LTD
Awards and Recognition:
2019
2020
2021
Company details
Address
229 Mountbatten Road
#02-20 Mountbatten Square
Singapore 398007
Attention: Valerie Ong, HR Department
229 Mountbatten Road #02-20 Mountbatten Square Singapore 398007
Attention: Valerie Ong, HR Department
Industry
Early Childhood Care & Education
Vision
To be a thought and practice
leader in the development and
care of young children, partnering
working families in every Singapore
neighbourhood.
To be a thought and practice leader in the development and care of young children,
partnering working families in every Singapore neighbourhood.
Head Count
5350
Website
Explore opportunities with us!
About NTUC First Campus
NTUC First Campus (NFC) started 44 years ago as part of Labour Movement’s efforts to support working families in Singapore. We are now one of the largest networks of preschool centres in Singapore. Our vision is to be a thought and practice leader in the development and care of young children, partnering working families in every Singapore neighbourhood.Today, we have achieved over 23,000 childcare enrolment across more than 160 pre-school centres in Singapore. We have 2 pre-school brands, My First Skool and The Little Skool-House fulfilling the different needs of parents. We also own a Student Care brand, afterschool, with 9 primary school-based centers.
As a Social Enterprise, our mission is to fulfill the promise of each child, enabling them to have a good start in life, regardless of background. This requires holistic support to children in the areas of financial, social-emotional and learning needs.
As a leader in early childhood care and education with over 40 years of expertise, we believe strongly in engaging our employees to adopt a growth mindset, bringing together diverse disciplines, knowledge and skill sets. These will build on our strength of customer-centricity, agility and fostering active collaboration and innovation.
Continuous Engagement, Holistic Employee Well-Being and Towards Our New Normal
In NTUC First Campus, we are committed to providing a fruitful and rewarding career for our employees. As the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to persist, continuous engagement by our CEO and the Management Team and focus on employee well-being have been our key priorities.At the same time, our Management Team looked ahead and took bold steps towards a new normal of working for our corporate employees by introducing a Hybrid Work Model. This incorporates Safe Management Measures as well as provides flexible work arrangements for employees to work from home and in office pivoting towards productive facetime and collaborations.
Continuous Communication and Engagement
With the evolving pandemic situation from the beginning of the year where our childcare centres had to pivot based on government and ECDA’s advisory and our corporate office mainly on Work From Home default, communication and continuous engagement became very important. Clear and timely organisation communications on measures and approach for employees provide guidance and reassures them that they are kept safe at work.Unfazed by the rather impossible task of reaching out to leaders and staff across the island, CEO and the Management Team held various virtual communication sessions with leaders and employees sharing the year’s business plan including celebrating Lunar New Year virtually. The recorded sessions were then disseminated and shared by these leaders with their employees. Half year updates on the business with some fun activities were also held via zoom sessions to keep in touch with leaders and employees.
On special occasions like Teachers’ Day, Management took the opportunity to extend deep appreciation to all employees for their passion and commitment through a video. NFC also recognised 563 Long Service Award recipients via a video production in conjunction with Teachers’ Day.
CEO also announced a special appreciation bonus for all centre staff to recognise the dedication and efforts in challenging pandemic times. This cost the company more than $2.2m.
Employee Well-being
Amidst Covid-19 and to comply with the various Safe Management Measures, we continued to focus on mental and physical well-being as priorities. We do this by organising regular webinars on mental health and physical exercises. Evaluation and feedback is done after each session and it’s heartening that participants find the sessions useful and are able to apply to their personal life. We also nudge and share well-being tips on day to day living through our NFC Yay! portal (intranet) so that each employee can take personal care for self, family and team members Employees are also provided with a helpline should anyone require additional psychological support to cope with adjustments during this challenging period.
Our New Normal - Hybrid Work Flexi Model
One of NFC strategic shifts in our way of work was to move into a new normal to achieve two objectives.(a) Provision of agile work arrangement to support employees’ needs for a mix of remote and physical work without compromising productivity.
(b) Promote multidisciplinary collaboration with more workplace catering to private and open discussion spaces as we embrace a more inclusive culture and spirit of innovation.
Hybrid work model was introduced to all employees who worked in our Corporate Office as part of embracing new ways of working where employees could also work flexibly from home and office with some guidelines in place. This encouraged employees to be more agile and adaptable to changes. When in office, they can continue to connect and collaborate with each other in the redesigned work environment. In order to support HQ employees to be able to work from home comfortably, an entitlement of a one-time $200 Remote Work allowance per corporate employee was given to defray costs for home office set-up.
With the objective of multidisciplinary collaboration and redesigning the workplace, more collaboration spaces were carved out and added 16 additional meeting rooms, 17 additional privacy pods and more than 200 desk phones were replaced with on-the-go mobile app to enable work related calls.
Positive NFC Outcomes
Our overall sustainable engagement score was 84%, which was 9 percentage point above the Singapore National Norm in 2020. Sustainable engagement, as explained by Willis Towers Watson, is the intensity of employees’ connection to their organisation, based on 3 core elements, being Engaged, Enabled and Energised.Our overall retention rate of 90.6% to date is evident that we continue to do well in our internal policies and practices to benefit our employees. This is a high retention rate in the sector.
Our educators are also recognised at national platforms,including 6 top prizes awards at the 2021 Pre-school Chinese Language Storytelling Aids Competition, organised by the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) Committee to Promote Chinese Language Learning (CPCLL). NFC continues to ensure our employees are given development opportunities and right platforms to be recognised.
