ORACLE CORPORATE SINGAPORE PTE LTD
Oracle opened its doors in Singapore in 1988, and has since expanded its footprint in the market and across the region. As part of its overall transformation and cloud expansion strategy, Oracle announced in 2016 its plan to grow its workforce and build five Digital sales hubs placed strategically throughout Asia Pacific. This was followed by the launch of the Oracle Digital Hub in Singapore in 2018, highlighting Oracle’s strong commitment to better serving the SMB market.
At the heart of the company is a strong culture of innovation. As emerging technologies continue to disrupt businesses in the digital economy, Oracle champions the importance of a future-ready workforce and encourages its employees to continuously evolve and pursue a lifelong journey of both personal and professional growth.
With 137,000 employees globally, the company is committed to supporting its diverse employee base with region-specific programmes to best manage work and personal responsibilities. “Our competitive advantage is our people and we have the best and brightest in the industry. We are driving internal momentum to make Oracle Singapore a great place to work,” said Rachna Sampayo, Senior Director, Human Resources Asia Pacific.
Employee Experience At The Core Of People Strategy
“We often hear that businesses can’t thrive without delivering the right customer experience. The same can be said about the right employee experience – at Oracle, we ensure that our employees have the best possible experience at work for them to succeed. And this is imperative to our success as an organization too,” said Rachna.
To provide people with the support they need to do their work, grow their professional careers, while having as much fun as possible, Oracle has, in the last few years, launched a series of programmes across the ASEAN region to meet those needs.
To ensure every employee is empowered and enjoys working at Oracle, the ASEAN team has launched a robust Onboarding Programme to let each new hire get to know every bit of Oracle, beyond the team they will be working with. Through a 2.5 day programme, new hires get to meet and interact with key leaders from various lines of business and senior leaders, including HR, to learn about Oracle’s business, its goals and direction.
To keep employees engaged, the HR team, together with employee-led groups like the Young Oracle Group at ASEAN (YOGA), constantly plan events both in and out of the office. “From festive celebrations to sports activities, we make it a point to organize fun activities to get everyone together and interact with each other outside of the usual work environment. These events offer a platform for our employees to network with our senior leaders and fellow colleagues in a more relaxed setting, and often we get creative juices flowing from these events too – which is a win-win for all,” said Rachna.
Empowering Employees To Drive Personal Growth Plans
Oracle encourages and empowers employees at all levels to engage in professional development. There are a range of initiatives and platforms that provide employees the opportunity to continuously learn and grow. Training and development programmes and professional skills development workshops are all re-assessed and improved upon each year so that employees get the best out of the trainings.
For a start, every employee has access to their personalized career roadmaps via the Oracle HCM Cloud tool, where both the employees and their managers can provide inputs on their career goals and aspirations. Through this tool, employees can also identify relevant training programmes that are aligned to their respective growth plans, explore career opportunities both within and outside of their lines of business or job functions, depending on their interest areas and competencies.
Oracle has created a system based on a skills repository, incorporating sufficient cross-functional skills to allow interconnections between business lines. At every stage of their career planning, employees are constantly reminded of Oracle’s seven core competencies – the skills and behaviors that are critical to every job at Oracle.
“Giving our employees autonomy and putting them in the drivers’ seat to navigate their own career paths have proven to be a great recipe to our people’s success. Given transformations that are underway as a result of Industry 4.0, we strongly believe in helping our employees manage their career paths focused on skills rather than positions for the future,” said Serene Sia, Country Managing Director at Oracle Singapore.
Embracing A Diverse And Inclusive Culture
Oracle’s innovation and competitive advantage depend on the talents, skills, and backgrounds of its diverse workforce. Globally, the company celebrates diversity within its growing workforce, which spans four generations in more than 85 countries.
“In Singapore, we pride ourselves in being a culturally diverse organization. We also have a strong bench of women leaders in the organization, where women are given equal opportunities and consideration for leadership positions. This is especially important as we continue to champion more female representation in the technology industry,” said Serene.
Through employee resource groups like Oracle Women Leaders (OWL) and Oracle Pride Employees Network (OPEN), employees are given platforms to discuss and initiate efforts towards diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
“We strongly believe in creating an environment where employees should feel safe and comfortable to be the best versions of themselves, both in and out of the office. We have made great progress in the past few years with eliminating bias in our hiring and to provide equal opportunities for all employees,” said Rachna.
To further advance its corporate mission to improve lives within the communities it operates in, Oracle encourages its employees to champion a community cause through its corporate social responsibility programmes. It’s important for all new colleagues to understand this facet of Oracle, and the company believes it helps them all deliver better – be it at the workplace or to the community. New joiners are also encouraged to volunteer with local organization, Willing Hearts.
“At Oracle, we are focused on driving corporate social responsibility efforts which are meaningful and employees can connect with. On top of HR-led CSR initiatives, we also encourage employees to find a meaningful cause that they want to champion, build a business case and gather fellow employees to support the cause. We enable employees to pursue causes they are passionate about as we strongly believe in empowering employees to make an impact in their respective communities,” said Geraldine Tay, Employee Success Manager, Oracle ASEAN.
