Believing that people are the heart of an organization, we at Ngern Tid Lor strive to take a great care of our people, to create opportunities for every NTLer to grow and develop to move the organization forward and achieve success alongside the organization.
Mr. Piyasak Ukritnukun, Managing Director of Ngern Tid Lor Public Company Limited, told us that: "At Ngern Tid Lor, we often say that the company logo does not identify what Ngern Tid Lor really is. What Ngern Tid Lor really means is the feeling or impression that customers have when they interact with NTLers, whether through a call center, a branch, or even a debt collection team that goes to visit them, and call back to praise how Ngern Tid Lor understands and take good care of customers."
But the difficulty is that how to make all 6,000 employees at Ngern Tid Lor convey clearly and consistently what the company is to customers. Mr. Piyasak revealed the secret of how Ngern Tid Lor has built people that:
"We can achieve this because we have spent many years investing in building and fostering a strong and distinct corporate culture and core values."
Two Keys to Bridging the Generation Gap
Many organizations may face a problem with generation gap in the workplace, which can lead to some conflicts. There are two keys at Ngern Tid Lor that help bridge the gap.
"The first key is our clear corporate intent to enable Thai people to access transparent, fair, and responsible financial services and formal financing products that will enrich their quality of life.
The second key is our 7 core values that embedded our working style, such as Serve with Integrity, Informality, and Authenticity and Experiment to Lead Change that guide us toward a common goal. Having and seeing these corporate purpose and core values helps forge us to have the same set of DNA and create a sense of belonging in the same family.
Despite differences in seniority, years of services, and positions exist in our organization, they are not a big deal because everyone is working together toward the same shared goal to deliver financial betterment and improve the quality of life for customers. In a result, other problems become less important."
Support for Each Other: Power to Get through the Crisis
When every organization was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, Ngern Tid Lor has proven to be able to roll forward through the crisis despite having had to take care of its customers and employees and create sustainable growth. Mr. Piyasak told us that:
"What really affected us was that some of our employees were found to be infected with COVID-19. We were so worried at that time as we were trying to secure the vaccines for our employees and find hospitals for those who were sick. We had never encountered something like this before, but we needed to look for information to keep our people safe. There were some difficulties along the way, but NTLers were ready to fight together. For example, if any department was not well equipped for work from home, our IT team worked tirelessly without sleep to deliver equipment and user’s manuals and install systems and software programs for employee at home to enable everyone to work from their own home.
COVID-19 also affected our employees’ families. Many employees sent me messages to tell me that they were very glad that Ngern Tid Lor did not resort to pay cuts. They were happy to still have income because some of them were the sole pillar of the family and needed to take care of others. This was very important to us. During that crisis, we communicated directly with our employees that this was a difficult and challenging time, but we wanted to ask everyone to remain strong and synergized because we don’t want to cut anyone’s salary. We wanted everyone to have jobs because everyone was an important cog in the wheel that kept the organization strong. When everyone saw and understood the same picture and worked together to help customers, our operating profit did not fall at all.
Because we are in the financial business with hundreds of thousands of customers requesting payment deferral at the same time, every employee worked very hard. And it was even more challenging when we had to work separately in our own homes. But we made it in the end. This is the clear impact of our investment in people.”
Filling Joy to Relieve Stress in a Ngern Tid Lor’s Style
In addition to synergy to drive the organization through the crisis, we also care about the happiness and distress of our employees.
"We know that NTLers have been working hard as the COVID-19 situation prolongs. We sent out questionnaires, as we do regularly, to check how our employees were doing. We found that some people started to feel lonely, some became low-spirited and depressed. So, we tried to solve this problem by using the annual party and travel budget to buy Disney+ Hotstar for all employees to fill some joy to their life, allowing them to relax and reduce stress from working from home.
We also invited professional psychologists to give advice to employees who needed it. At the same time, we encouraged every team to organize activities through the company’s online channels to make employees feel engaged and give them a sense of belonging."
Ways to Remain a Leader and What Ngern Tid Lor Wants to Contribute
Mr. Piyasak told us that consistency in everything that we believe and do is the key to remaining an industry leader. There are also things that Ngern Tid Lor wants to do. We want to pass on the lessons learned and success from building corporate culture and core values to others.
"Earlier we called this project, the Culture WOW project, which allowed governmental and private organizations to register for an office tour. During the session, we shared them how we have built our corporate culture. We have been doing this project for years and our visitors are diverse, such as airline companies, telecom companies, financial institutions, and foreign organizations that wanted to understand how to create a strong corporate culture. This year, we continue to drive this project under the name TIDLOR Academy, which offers a 3-day workshop for interested companies to join us in finding out how to build a strong and sustainable corporate culture for their own organizations."
No organization in Thailand has offered a course to share corporate culture building before. But Ngern Tid Lor is determined to do this because we understand that "building people" is the heart of a sustainable organization, which not only benefits the organization but also has positive impact on the social and economic development of the country.