In many organizations, the impact of COVID-19 could be so devastating that they find it difficult to recover. However, for TIDLOR, the COVID-19 crisis is a test to measure the strength of our “immunity” derived from our core values. How could TIDLOR create a strong corporate culture?
Let’s see the journey.
How TIDLOR starts to create its corporate culture and values
Our Culture Gangster Team told us that TIDLOR culture was conceptualized by Piyasak Ukritnukun, Managing Director of Ngern Tid Lor Public Company Limitede because he wanted NTLers to have shared beliefs that could drive everyone to the same shared goal.
We started from learning by doing through workshops and reading many books to gain deeper understanding and find the truly right Why and How of our organization.
To develop our core values, we collected examples of behaviors and practices of NTLers and selected what everyone mutually agreed to be the right behaviors that clearly reflected TIDLOR-ness.
Our Culture Hero Team was another key that helped build TIDLOR culture, selected via an online game “Who Knows Who” that measures the relationship amongst NTLers. This group of people is the most well-known and trusted by colleagues from different departments and functions. They have influence and inner power to motivate others and lead corporate culture building activities. For example, a Culture Bootcamp is held twice a year for NTLers to better understand TIDLOR core values. The culture activities are determined based on an evaluation of the previous activities. If there are any core values that should be improved, the Culture Hero team will brainstorm to develop additional activities to communicate with other colleagues to make that culture or core value stronger. The Culture Heroes will pass on the role of leading the Culture Bootcamp to the next generations, as well as keeping on corporate culture communication and care values to the new generation of NTLers.
The obstacle to overcome
Before our corporate culture and values became a strong immunity as today, there’s surely turbulence. There is no instant success formula for creating corporate culture and core values, unlike instant noodles that can be eaten straight from the package.
“There were many trials and errors. We started with seeking services from agencies to help us come up with beautiful written core values, but it didn’t quite succeed because our employees didn’t fully understand them.
After much research, several workshops and our hard effort, 7 core values have been defined. However, in our first evaluation, we found that only 6% of NTLers clearly understood the core values. So, we have made numerous efforts and communications to actively and continuously reinforce understanding of our corporate culture and values, which enables us to understand culture and core values more thoroughly and effectively.”
COVID-19: A test for TIDLOR immunity
In the situation where the impact of COVID-19 has challenged everyone and every organization to adapt, TIDLOR culture and core values have proven to be the “immunity” and “navigator” that leads NTLers, customers, and organization to move forward and get through this crisis together.
The 7 core values reflected especially on works that we’ve done together during the COVID-19 situation; many things that were once believed to be impossible are possible.
For example, our sincerity well portrayed from helping customers, even though we knew that we would lose almost 500 million baht from Debt Payment Deferral program. Our front liners including back end teams, branch teams, collections teams, IT teams, and operations teams have joined forces to assist customers in accordance with the company’s policy to the point of hardly having time to take a break.
Our team has also dedicated time and energy to developing technologies such as the NTL mobile application and Chatbot to help facilitate and answer overflowing questions from customers in a timely manner, as it was difficult for customers to visit our branches due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finally, our passion and cooperation of everyone that worked together to push the IPO process completed successfully against time and amid the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling us to achieve the record shortest time to enter the IPO market and other new records in the stock market.
In addition to our dedication to helping customers, we also have selflessly helped NTLers infected with COVID-19 to get through this difficult time together. Our Happy People (HP) Team has relentlessly helped find hospital beds for them and their family member, 24 hours a day. The volunteer team “We Care Hotline” has been set up to provide emotional support to NTLers and mental health counseling services by professional psychologists to help our colleagues deal with worry and stress during the time of COVID-19. These activities evidently demonstrated our core value: candid teamwork to achieve a common goal.
“During the worst COVID-19 outbreak, even our executives who are usually preoccupied with their own work found the time to encourage other employees, telling them to never give up and that we will be back on track soon. They also sent Disney Plus out to NTLers, so that they could sometimes relax during work from home.”
Because COVID-19 has forced society and organizations to adapt and change a way of communication and working, our value: thirst for wisdom and self-development allows us easily adapting and using our strengths in technology to implement work from home arrangements up to 100% without any problem.
The business is ongoing and our branches are still open, but our management does not look over the safety of employees. We fully provide personal protective equipment for COVID-19 to our employees as well. Caring and valuing employees are the keys that keep the organization moving forward.
This situation clearly shows that even though COVID-19 has divided us, our corporate culture ties us together through culture activities organized by the Culture Gangster Team and full support from our executives.
A strong culture that is the key immunity of TIDLOR has been guaranteed by the Thailand Best Employer organized by the World HRD Congress for two consecutive years. This year, TIDLOR has received two awards, namely Best Employer Brand Awards 2021 and Dream Employer of the Year 2021, which attest to the quality of every NTLers, their lifestyle and workstyle aligning with TIDLOR culture and values that everyone involved in defining.
This is the story of our corporate culture, which does not only create immunity for TIDLOR but is also a pillar for customers and support that helps society get through this crisis together.
Tips for building corporate and core values
- Finding the Why and How in order to find the right direction for the organization.
- Learning from books and studying how other organizations succeed in building a strong culture.
- Experimenting to lead changes. Do not be afraid of trial and failure as there is no instant formula to success.
- Creating opportunities for employee to join because the corporate culture building is responsibility of all.
- Caring and valuing employees are the keys that keep the organization moving forward sustainability.
- Having communication and activities that reinforce corporate culture and values regularly so that everyone could see the same shared goal.
- Selecting right evaluation tools and methods. It’s important for continuous improvement and further development.