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My career at Philips – starting from Intern to Team Lead
Name: Baoyun Ong
Role: Team Lead, PPS Contact Centre
Location: Singapore
Philips has always been a respectable and well-established company in my opinion. This stems from my exposure to Philips household products in my home (from television to telephone) during my childhood days. This impression continues to hold true in me while I was an undergraduate, and I stumbled upon an internship opportunity posted on my school's career portal. I seized the opportunity and have not looked back since.
In that enriching albeit short one-month stint, I gained a myriad of experiences. It was a fruitful internship – by placing me in a contact centre advisor role, there was great exposure across the organization and plentiful opportunities to work cross-functionally!
Everyone was so supportive that it cemented my desire to join the organization full-time.
Upon graduation, I joined the Philips People Services (PPS) team. My job scope consists of handling HR enquiries and service requests from our stakeholders in the Asia Pacific region. We provide advice to customers, to ensure that service level agreements are met and that the highest level of customer satisfaction is reached for our consumers.
With the Team Lead role, I also provide internal support, such as mentoring and coaching younger colleagues and implementing process improvements.
Work never gets dull here. We work under managers who encourage us to generate original solutions, which means that each day presents a fresh challenge. In fact, we hold an annual competition across the globe where we submit ideas, or ‘Kaizen’ as we call it (Kaizen is a Japanese term for “continuous improvement”), and do so with the full support and guidance of our managers.
Some of the most memorable projects we’ve worked on were definitely the Kaizens submitted over the years! The most recent one was for the Chinese market, where we proposed to simplify the letters and certificate processing system. In Philips, one of our core beliefs is to team up to excel – and this project was a prime example of how collaboration breeds success. We teamed up with some of our colleagues and stakeholders in China and now, the generation of letters and certificates has been reduced from an average of 3 to 5 days to 0.5 to 1 day!
Innovation does not come just from the employees, it impacts us in differing aspects. For instance, the new office design has an open concept, which is a good step towards workplace innovation and also encourages creativity and collaboration in the office.
We live in a fast-paced society and one definitely must learn to adapt well to the changes around us. I believe that circumstances can be classified into two groups: those that are within our control, and those that are beyond our control.
For things that are within our control, always give it your best. As for the things that are beyond our control, well… always hope for the best! And even when I find that things are not within my control, I am quickly able to get back on track with the support of my team mates and managers. The important thing is that we are able to grow and develop at Philips.
It’s exciting to be in such a big and established company like Philips and I look forward to many more memorable events to come!
