From shift rosters to the executive committee

Mandate

Make the people consequences of delivery products, rider arrangements and peak rosters visible before commercial commitments are made.

Outcomes

• Funded platform-worker protections for about 1,150 Singapore riders directly, at S$2.4 million in 2025
• Removed lateness deductions from rider pay; reported heat illness fell from nine cases to two
• Capped Shah Alam peak overtime at 96 hours a month while raising base pay by RM180
• Reduced technician attrition from 24% to 13% between 2022 and 2025

Decisions in context

I joined the executive committee when the founder family and our private-equity shareholder agreed that workforce decisions were shaping margins as much as fuel or rent. The role combines employee HR with rider relations, which most courier companies still split between operations and procurement. I have used that combination to bring one view of every working arrangement to the chief executive and the board. My hardest calls have been the ones where safety or fairness cost revenue, and I have learnt to bring the commercial director's objection into the paper rather than argue around it. I share incident reviews with the chief operating officer, who owns safety, and I rely on counsel for classification and employment-law questions. The five-year record of presenting to the remuneration committee is my main exposure to board work; I attend by invitation and am not a director.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking a first non-executive directorship alongside it, with my chief executive's consent.

Mandate

Build a people function able to support rapid parcel growth and the new rider model.

Outcomes

• Created a rider-relations team and a written appeal route for account suspensions
• Opened a workshop academy for technician apprentices in 2019
• Recruited about 900 hub and van staff in five months during the 2020 surge in home deliveries
• Moved Malaysian payroll from three hub systems onto one platform

Decisions in context

I arrived as the company was learning that growth on marketplace volumes brought people questions it had not planned for. Riders were being suspended by an automated rule with no human review, and some had lost a week's earnings over a customer complaint that later proved mistaken. I built a small rider-relations team, wrote the appeal route and reported suspension outcomes monthly to the chief executive. The 2020 surge in home deliveries tested everything else. We recruited about 900 people in five months while protecting distancing on the sortation floors, and I learnt how quickly a hiring standard erodes when volume is the only measure discussed. The workshop academy began in 2019, after a year in which we lost eleven senior technicians. I left the role with a function that could be trusted with the harder decisions that followed.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief human resources officer when the role joined the executive committee.

Mandate

Bring consistent employment standards to a growing warehouse network and price them honestly into customer contracts.

Outcomes

• Added a labour-cost schedule, including foreign-worker levies and housing, to every major tender
• Introduced a single hostel standard across five Malaysian sites
• Cut agency labour from 31% of warehouse hours to 12%

Decisions in context

This role taught me that employment standards are decided in tenders. A customer comparing warehouse bids could not see whether a low rate assumed agency labour, unpaid waiting time or crowded hostels. I added a labour-cost schedule to every major tender so that our commercial team could defend a price that included levies, housing and lawful overtime. We lost two bids to cheaper competitors and kept a third at a higher rate after the customer's own audit team reviewed the schedule. I also worked to reduce our reliance on agency labour, which had grown to nearly a third of warehouse hours. Direct employment cost more in some months but gave us control over pay, documents and training. I reported to the Malaysian managing director and presented annual workforce reports to the group HR director in Kuala Lumpur.

Reason for the move

Returned to Singapore for family reasons and to work in parcel delivery, where app-allocated riders raised new questions.

Mandate

Establish basic employment control over a largely agency-supplied foreign workforce.

Outcomes

• Moved about 780 agency workers onto direct employment by 2009
• Replaced cash wage envelopes with bank payment for every warehouse employee
• Began HR-led hostel inspections, closing one hostel that failed them

Decisions in context

When I arrived, nobody could give me a reliable list of who worked in our four Klang Valley warehouses. Agencies supplied most operatives, paid them in cash and controlled their hostels and documents. I started by building the list: employer of record, accommodation, wage method and who held each passport. That work was slow and unglamorous, and it changed what managers believed was happening. With the head of HR and the managing director, I moved about 780 workers onto direct contracts over three years, opened bank accounts with them and arranged hostel inspections carried out by my team. One hostel failed and we moved its residents within a month. Some agencies resisted and we ended two contracts. I learnt that written welfare commitments mean little until someone checks them on an ordinary weekday night without notice.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead HR for Malaysia and Singapore.

Mandate

Stabilise employee relations with unionised drivers and stem the loss of experienced mechanics.

Outcomes

• Negotiated two collective agreements without service disruption
• Rotated breakdown and night shifts across both depots' mechanics
• Started an apprentice scheme that trained fourteen mechanics by 2006

Decisions in context

Crossing the Causeway to take this job was my first management role and my first experience of collective bargaining. Our drivers' union was well organised and wanted predictable duties more than additional allowances, which surprised the family owners. I spent my first year learning how a coach timetable becomes a driver's week, then used that knowledge in two negotiations that closed without lost services. The mechanics taught me a harder lesson. When two senior technicians left for a dealership, breakdowns rose within weeks, and I found that the depot rota had given them almost every difficult night job. We spread those shifts across the team, added a skills allowance and started an apprentice scheme. I also completed my part-time master's degree during this period, attending evening classes in Singapore twice a week after the depot day ended.

Reason for the move

Moved to contract logistics to manage a larger workforce with more complex employment arrangements.

Mandate

Maintain fair shift rosters and handle first-stage grievances for cargo handlers.

Outcomes

• Redesigned the ramp roster so that afternoon apron shifts rotated weekly
• Cut unresolved first-stage grievances from 58 to 21 over two years
• Prepared the first shift-pattern analysis presented to the terminal's management committee

Decisions in context

I joined straight from university and spent five years close to the people who loaded and unloaded freighters. My job was administrative at first: rosters, leave and the paperwork behind grievances. Within a year I noticed that the same handlers kept drawing the early-afternoon apron shifts because the roster cycle aligned with a stable flight schedule. Nobody had intended it. I proposed a weekly rotation and showed the HR manager how sick leave clustered among the people carrying those shifts. The change was modest, but it taught me to look for the commitment behind a complaint. I also handled first-stage grievances and learnt to write a fair account of a dispute before anyone decided it. By the end of those five years I prepared the first shift-pattern analysis the terminal's management committee had seen.

Reason for the move

Joined a coach operator in Johor Bahru to take a management role in employee relations.