Low Peck Kem, Leading the Future of Work

Low Peck Kem is one of the best known human development professionals in Singapore and a founding member of the ASEAN Human Development Organisation. She has a top position in government as Chief HR Officer & Advisor (Workforce Development) for Singapore Public Service. She is also President of the Singapore Human Resources Institute, the leading HR association of Singapore.

Picture: Low Peck Kem

I met Peck Kem when she was setting up the Singapore Human Capital Leadership Institute and saw her speaking at many of the HR conferences I attended. I became interested in her career when we began our meetings about Singapore joining AHDO. She had a very successful career in high tech companies as regional HR leader until 2007 when she decided to cross over institutional lines to go into public service. Her career will not end with retirement from her government work. This interview shows the continuity of her human development commitment and points to how one can lay the foundations for a flourishing lifelong employability in the new long life. 

Family and early life

I grew up in a modest Singaporean family. My parents met when they both worked in a printing press and after my mother had her first child, she became a homemaker. Four more children would follow. I was the fourth child and the only sibling in my family to get a university degree. My older siblings had to start working and, as they were much older than I, they also helped finance my education.

I graduated as an engineer from Nanyang Technological University, even though my passion was really in the arts and painting. I could not afford to pursue that path, as the “Arts” do not pay your rent. My eldest sister who pursued the arts did not do well financially after her studies. Whenever I would come home from school and pull out my drawing block, my mother would say, “Peck Kem, you should be studying and doing your homework, not waste time painting like your sister.” Since I was the first to have a chance to go to university, I thought that I should prepare for a career where I would always have a good paying job. Pragmatism meant I would pursue technical studies and I joined the art club as my extracurricular activity, to satisfy my passion to paint. While we always encourage people to pursue their passion, often times, reality sets in and one just needs to find the right balance to be able to feed both their passion as well as their stomachs.

Picture above: My pride and joy Family portrait with daughter Ashley, son Kevin and husband Mario

Picture above: with MOM colleagues

Picture above:HR Colleagues from HP/Agilent and Avago days : Judy, Kristine, Peck Kem, Cindy and Abby

Picture above:HP/Agilent/Avago colleagues

Picture above:MOM colleagues in Emergency Preparedness and Facilities Management

Picture above:Colleagues from Tandon and Western Digital when I started as a Quality Engineer and ended as a Production Manager.

Engineering, art, people

Studying engineering was interesting because it gave me the space to be creative. I wanted to create things with both my hands and my ideas. While I would rather have majored in mechanical engineering, the future then was in electrical and electronics. To ensure employability, I chose that major, so that it would pay off my study loans quickly. In my university years, thanks to my passion to create, I also found an interest in people and human behaviour. How do I marry both a logical engineering mind and creative behavioural science mind to make the best out of each situation? How do I make the best use of myself? Those were the questions I was asking myself when thinking about my future career.

After graduation, I started work with one of the high tech companies in disk drive manufacturing in Singapore, Tandon. My first job was as a quality engineer, which nourished my interest in people and human behaviour. Quality Assurance used my engineering background as a foundation but managing quality is mainly about human behaviour as much as ensuring a safe and efficient design. Quality engineers interact with everyone along the manufacturing value chain: production operators, supervisors, engineers, designers, procurement, and customers.

Taking strategic responsibility

In 1988, Western Digital acquired Tandon. In the new organisation, I got promoted to Senior Quality Assurance Engineer. I subsequently applied for a role as Assistant Production Manager and learned how to run an assembly line. Again, seizing the opportunity to learn new skills, this job honed my management skills and I continued to grow.

One Saturday morning, while reading the newspapers, I saw a job advertisement by Hewlett Packard in the Straits Times for the position of Production Section Manager. I said to myself “Hey, that’s me! Let me see what HP is offering.” My husband was in the Singapore Air Force and had to work Saturdays. The job interview was a walk-in at the Hyatt. So told my husband “Drop me off at the Hyatt after work and I’ll see what this job is all about.” Three weeks later, I was hired into HP.

In the 80s, HP was well known for its quality of management, strong engineering base and a culture of promoting from within. At the same time, HP wanted to diversify their talent and had decided to look outside for the position of Production Section Manager. With a little bit of luck, with the right timing and opportunity, I was hired into HP.

When I was at Western Digital, I had a different way of running the production line, which was very people-centred. I brought that practice to HP when I joined them. The Operations Manager, Mr Ho FL then felt that HR was too administrative, and did not have a good understanding of his business. He was intrigued with how I managed my team on the production line. So he asked me if I would be interested in a lateral career move: arguing that I knew the business and worked well with people. I said I’d like to give it a try but I didn’t have an HR background. He made sure I had a chance to learn in my new career by supporting me to take a Master’s Degree in HR offered by Singapore Institute of Management with Rutgers University.

HR Manager

By 1994, I had made the career switch: I not only graduated with a Master’s degree in HR, I also became Mummy to my first child, Kevin. But in the change to a HR career, I quickly noticed that as an engineer I had a different approach to the job: engineers are trained to be curious, we are always learning about new things and upgrading our skills to keep up with the technology changes.

Picture:PSD chatting with colleagues

Picture:Peck Kem at her Workforce Development office

HR managers, on the other hand, tend to fall back on what they already know, past precedence and solutions that are supposedly tried and tested. I decided to use my engineering mindset for my HR role: I looked outside the box and beyond current practice to find out what was new and who was innovating in people development.

HP always supported me in my experiments and trying new things. They thought I could do more and gave me the recruitment portfolio for all of HP Singapore. Using my engineering background, I set up an evidence-based measurement dashboard for such things as the hit rate and turn-around time for candidates. This data analytics savviness led to another promotion to run compensation and benefits for Asia Pacific. Again, I set up ways to make compensation and benefits data easily understood by line managers, who didn’t connect with words and theories, but loved data, evidence and charts. HR had to adapt its communication to the company culture and this evidence-based mentality resulted in building credibility when we wanted support for our proposals and initiatives.

Picture above:PSD Team in Workforce Development

By 1999, HP had decided to carve out its test and measurement business as a wholly owned spinoff called Agilent Technologies and I became HR Director for 3 countries: Singapore, Philippines and Thailand. By this time, high tech manufacturing was changing a lot and in 2005 the semiconductor business of the Agilent spinoff, which had retained much of the high tech and humanistic culture of HP, was bought by a consortium of venture capitalists KKR and Silver Lake Partners, giving birth to Avago Technologies. The President of Agilent Southeast Asia, Datuk Tan Bian Ee asked me to help with divestiture of Agilent’s semiconductors business. I worked with the investors and came up with a transition package for Agilent employees. This went beyond just buying your way into employees’ minds to cross over; we had to win their hearts! We were aiming for more than 90% of employees to cross over to the new company. HR being a central function, I had a choice of staying or crossing over to the new company.

So, what about me? I was in an auditorium explaining the transition package to about 200 Agilent employees. At the Q&A, an Engineering Manager raised his hand and said “Peck Kem, I only have one question - are you crossing over or staying?” I hadn’t made up my mind but I was fully aware of being challenged at an ethical level. I made my decision and said, “I’m crossing over”. The Engineering Manager said, “That’s good enough for me”, and promptly signed the transition letter.

Eventually, more than 95% of Agilent’s affected employees crossed over to Avago. I took over as Vice President Human Resources for all of Asia Pacific. Although my work was recognised by the Work life Excellence Award in 2006, I knew that the number one objective for the venture capitalists was to maximize profits, lower operating costs to quickly turn around the business. It was challenging to balance the promises we had made to people while reaching our ambitious profitability targets. Too often, private equity owners tend to focus more on short-term gains and hold back on long term investments in human capital development.  

From private to public sector – human development at the social level

Picture above: MOM HR colleagues squeezed into Peck Kem's office

After the transition years and stabilising the new company, I concluded that it was time to move on with my career. I asked myself - What is the purpose of my life? Am I creating value for my organization? Do I see myself growing with the company? Do I see my next 5 years with this organization and am I proud to be associated with it? In 2007, I considered a few offers from organisations. One of them was the Singapore Ministry of Manpower. I thought about making a career switch to public sector. I wanted to be able to contribute back to Singapore and to HR at a national level beyond just a company’s bottom line. When I told my husband that I was seriously considering the offer, he raised an eyebrow and said “Are you really sure? Do you know how government really works? ”

It was indeed quite different, but I knew I could bring value to developing our Singapore workforce to be ready for the technological and economic changes that lie ahead. As I have also benefited from the HR community, I wanted to give back and focus on uplifting the capabilities of HR professionals. We started out with a small team and we worked on initiatives to create an ecosystem to make Singapore the hub of excellence for human capital management and leadership development. Hence, the birth of the Human Capital Leadership Institute HCLI, a tripartite alliance between SMU, MOM and EDB. Since then, the human capital development space has grown to include the Workforce Singapore WSG, Institute of HR Professionals IHRP, Human Capital Singapore HCS and ASEAN Human Development Organization AHDO, apart from Singapore HR Institute SHRI. Collectively, there are more 300 people devoted to workforce development in Singapore.

How do you see your future career — will you continue what you are doing, do something new?

Throughout my career, I have always had the opportunity to do something different every 5 years or so. Even at a senior leadership position, there is no lack of opportunities to continue to learn and try something new or different. I am not yet at retirement age and in any case, Singapore is extending retirement and re-employment age by 3 years from ages 62/67 to 65/70 respectively. My two kids are all grown up. So as long as my work is still purposeful, I continue to learn new skills and I am adding value to my organization, I will continue to go with where I am most needed and put my experience and influence to good use.

There is no lack of opportunity if you want to continue to learn and contribute – you just have to keep an open mind. Last year I accepted the nomination to be President of Singapore Human Resource Institute SHRI and was elected President in a pro bono role. This year, I committed to chair the Singapore Chapter of the ASEAN Human Development Organisation AHDO. These activities over and above my day job are creating an ecosystem that I am investing in quite consciously. An ecosystem of HR in all aspects that can benefit both the public sector as well as private sector. This strategic career path taps on my strength of an influencer and eco-system curator.

From your perspective, do you see the role HR moving more towards human development?

In a simplistic way, I see the role of HR as the Architect of people’s careers and Engineer of the jobs and workplace. HR needs to engineer the redesign of jobs to be future ready. After we have an idea of what the future jobs look like, and clear on the competencies needed, we then Architect the process, programs and environment to incorporate human development as part of people’s careers. Human development is not an afterthought – it is part and parcel of preparing our workforce to be future ready. That’s why I’m a strong proponent of the Skills Future strategy that the Singapore government has implemented to help our workforce be future ready, and the value of this policy is even more visible with the Covid-19 impact on jobs.

Clearly, the trend is one towards proactive development of human capital to be more agile, resilient and flexible, while still developing deep expertise in areas of needs. This requires HR professionals to take on a strategic role of workforce planning and designing the employee experience. The real issue is whether HR professionals have the appetite to move up the value chain and take a leading role in human development and job redesign. HR is no longer just about paying people on time and making sure employees follow the HR rules based on past practices. HR is about making work and life meaningful for our talent, worthy for them to invest their time and resources in the journey with the organization.

For people interested in a career in human development, what hopes and advice can you give?

Human Development continues to be a competitive advantage for organizations when the workforce is ready for now and the future. For someone interested in a career in human development, I would say “Good on you!” To remain relevant, I would advise that you always take into consideration the entire development value chain. Learning and development as a profession is not about offering training courses and getting people to attend them. After all, with the 70/20/10 model of learning (70% On the Job, 20% mentorship, 10% classroom), classroom training is a mere 10%. Consider developmental needs from a strategic point of view, and then look at the capabilities needed to ensure workforce relevance in the immediate and long-term future, and design the platforms to acquire those competencies throughout the 70/20/10 cycle. You also need to plan the transition to make the shift from now to the future and set interim milestones for specific jobs and hand hold the workforce in their journey to be future ready.

There is a great deal to be done in human development strategy, leading transitions and managing the agility and flexibility needed to manage the changing environment.

Picture above: PSD colleagues at the SHRI Awards night

Picture above:PSD Colleagues at the Workforce Development Business Partnerships team