My contribution to a board
Most boards I would join oversee businesses that depend on qualified people they cannot hire quickly: nurses, care staff, technicians, qualified operators. Their papers usually show headcount and staff cost, and rarely show the things that decide whether those people stay: who works nights, what a new recruit paid to arrive, how many people hold lapsed licences and which managers are losing staff to a sister business. I know how to ask for those figures and what they mean when they arrive, because I have produced them and been embarrassed by some of them.
I would also bring experience of oversight across borders. I have run HR in Singapore and Malaysia and integrated five Indonesian hospitals, and I know how differently pay, licensing and employment law work in each country. A board expanding across the region tends to assume that its home country's people practices will travel. I can help directors test which ones should.
My natural home is the remuneration committee. I have written its papers for four years and understand executive incentive design, but I have never been a voting member, and I would serve a full year before chairing. I am not a financial expert for audit purposes. I would also be useful to a nominating committee on executive succession, and to any committee responsible for quality or safety where staffing is part of the risk.
Judgement in practice
01Reporting lapsed practising certificates before I had the remedy
In early 2020 an audit I had commissioned found eleven nurses in two of our hospitals who had worked between two and seven weeks after their practising certificates lapsed. Our chief executive for Singapore and Malaysia asked whether we could fix the process first and report it at the next quarterly meeting. I took it to the chair of the clinical governance committee within the week, with the facts and without a solution, because the committee needed to decide with our lawyers and clinical leaders what had to be reported and to whom. The committee's questions shaped the register we built afterwards. On a board, I would want management to bring a compliance failure early and unfinished, and I would make that safe for them to do.
02Asking the remuneration committee to drop a measure that rewarded vacancies
In 2023 hospital chief executives' bonuses included a staff-cost ratio, measured against revenue. I found that two hospitals with the best scores also had the highest nurse vacancy rates and the most closed beds, because an unfilled post lowered the ratio. Our group chief financial officer defended the measure as the only discipline on staff costs. I proposed replacing it with agency spending and first-year turnover, and attached his objection to my paper. The committee accepted the change for 2024 and kept a group-level cost measure, which I thought was a reasonable compromise. As a director I would read each scorecard measure for what it makes a manager do, not what it was meant to encourage.
03Opposing volunteers on the hospice night shift
In 2022 Sennett Lane Hospice faced a funding gap, and a board member proposed replacing six paid healthcare assistants on night duty with trained volunteers. As chair of the people committee I argued against it: night care for dying patients needs consistent, supervised staff, and volunteers could not be rostered or held to the same standards. The committee instead recommended reducing day-care hours for two months while the board raised funds, which it did. The proposal's author disagreed and said so in the minutes. I would rather a board carry a visible cost than move a risk where directors cannot see it.
My first year on a board
I would spend the first three months listening and reading. I would ask the company secretary for two years of board and committee papers and the most recent board evaluation, and I would ask management for one document that rarely reaches the board: a breakdown of where the frontline workforce is thinnest and why. I would meet the chair, the committee chairs, the chief executive and the head of HR separately, and visit at least one site at a shift change.
During the remuneration committee's annual cycle I would participate fully but propose little, unless I saw a measure working against the company's own safety or retention aims. In my experience a new director's first proposals are usually answers to problems from their previous company.
Towards the end of the year I would ask the chair two questions: which of my contributions were useful, and where my hospital background had led me to see a staffing problem that was not there. If the answers suggested that the board needed someone different on its remuneration committee, I would rather hear it than hold the seat.
Conflicts and their management
Three kinds of conflict matter for me, and I would decline the seat rather than manage the first.
The first is direct competition and commercial dependence. I would not join a hospital operator in Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia, a health insurer or third-party administrator that negotiates rates with Aravelle, a nurse recruitment agency, or a significant supplier to our hospitals.
The second is overlap that disclosure can handle. Sennett Lane Hospice receives referrals and a donation from Aravelle; I hold Aravelle shares; and a company in a neighbouring sector might share a remuneration adviser or recruit from the same nursing pool. I would list each before appointment, update the list each year and leave the room when a matter touched one of them.
The third is information. I hold Aravelle's pay data, workforce plans and acquisition work. None of it would enter another board's discussions, however useful it seemed. If I found myself abstaining often, I would conclude that the seat was wrong for me and resign. My chief executive has agreed in principle to one outside seat of up to twenty days a year, subject to a review by our general counsel.
My independence statement
Whether I am independent is for a board to judge, not for me to declare. The facts it would need are these: I am a salaried executive of Aravelle Health Group, I hold shares in it, I sit unpaid on the board of a hospice that receives patient referrals and an annual donation from Aravelle, and I have no family or business ties to any other healthcare company. A Singapore board would weigh those facts under the Singapore Code of Corporate Governance and the Exchange's listing rules, and I would give it everything it asked for before the nominating committee met.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to chair | Remuneration committee, after a full year as a member · People or staffing committee of a healthcare charity (current) |
|---|
| Ready to join | Remuneration committee · Nominating committee · A board committee overseeing quality, safety or workforce risk |
|---|
Board and committee exposure
Served as a director
Sennett Lane Hospice
Board of directors; chair of the people committee from 2022; member of the finance and audit committee
July 2020–present
Director of a Singapore charity providing inpatient and home palliative care; chairs the committee that oversees staffing, volunteer policy and the chief executive's pay.
Reported to a committee
Aravelle Health Group
Board remuneration committee
January 2022–present
Prepares the committee's papers on executive remuneration, the annual nurse pay review and long-term incentive design; attends meetings apart from private sessions.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Aravelle Health Group
Clinical governance committee of the board
2020–present
Reports quarterly on staffing exceptions, licence compliance and early-career nurse turnover; presented the 2020 lapsed-certificate findings.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Aravelle Health Group
Full board
2023–2024
Presented the people integration plan for Wiralaksa Hospitals and six-monthly integration reports.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Seri Andalan Medical Centres
Board human resources committee
2011–2013
Presented the single grade structure and the resident medical officer career framework for approval.
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 20 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- Aged care and community care operators · Medical technology and healthcare distribution businesses with field service workforces · Healthcare and nursing education providers · Facilities or logistics services with large shift workforces in Southeast Asia
- Company type
- A listed mid-cap company on the Singapore Exchange or a large registered charity, with an established remuneration committee
- Company stage
- An organisation growing across Southeast Asian borders, or integrating an acquisition, where the supply and retention of qualified staff limits what the board can do
The seat I am pursuing
I am looking for one non-executive seat, on a Singapore-listed mid-cap company or a large charity, where the board's main constraint is the supply and retention of qualified people. Aged care, community care, medical technology with field service teams, healthcare education and shift-based services across Southeast Asia are where my experience would transfer best. I would like to join the remuneration committee and, after a year, to chair it if the board wanted that. I would also contribute to a nominating committee or a quality and safety committee. I am not looking for a seat because of my employer's name, and I would not take one where a board wanted healthcare credibility without a role for it. Before going further I would want to know what the chair thinks the board lacks, how the remuneration committee uses its adviser, and whether the board has ever seen a frontline roster.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
India's IICA keeps a databank of people eligible to serve as independent directors of Indian companies. I am not seeking an Indian directorship, so it does not apply to me and I have not registered. For a Singapore-listed company, independence would be assessed by the board and its nominating committee under the Singapore Code of Corporate Governance and the Exchange's rules.
- A director foundation programme for prospective board members of Singapore-listed companies, completed in 2024
- A course on remuneration committee practice and executive pay disclosure, 2025
- Charity board service since 2020, including chairing the people committee from 2022
- Annual briefings from Aravelle's remuneration adviser on regional pay practice and shareholder expectations