When the Ministry of Health needed to set up its own virtual call centre to handle surging call volumes, it reached out to Chia’s team for assistance, who were able to help set it up within a week. At its peak, the virtual call centre supported 175 volunteers across more than 45 government agencies, greatly increasing citizens’ access to accurate healthcare information.
On the backend
Mohamed Riduan Ahmad, Principal Engineer of the Security and Network Operations Department at CPFB, works with his team to protect the organisation from cyber threats and attacks. Since CPFB handles sensitive information, addressing such issues quickly is of utmost importance.
“Communication is always a struggle in any security operations centre environment, with threats like zero-day exploits [needing to be patched immediately],” says Riduan.
To ensure that actionable insights reach relevant personnel as early as possible, his team created a portal earlier this year that automated the dissemination of security alerts to the pertinent stakeholders. Previously, this task was managed via emails and instant messaging.
“Improving this process allows our colleagues to better protect the Board’s sensitive assets,” Riduan says. He noted that CPFB employs other tech such as data analytics to proactively identify potential areas of security compromise.
Insights gleaned from such operations can be shared not only within CPFB but also across other government agencies to build up a more resilient network.
Working at CPFB
In order to put its people – like Chia and Riduan – in a position to innovate and succeed, CPFB constantly looks for ways to remove pain points and maximise staff efforts. Case in point: As the pandemic put e-services front and centre, CPFB moved “decisively towards an appointment-only model at service centres” while “mundane and manual work like drawing up contracts were also digitalised,” says Loh. Consequently, the time savings “allowed staff to focus on high-touch service for more complicated matters faced by our members, including less tech-savvy seniors,” she adds.
Beyond helping its people do their jobs better, CPFB takes a holistic approach towards employee development and wellness. For example, in order to nurture work-life balance and better mental health, it organises talks, courses, and newsletters that promote self-care habits. A trained team of wellness ambassadors is also on hand to provide support.
Believing that hybrid work is here to stay, CPFB has also invested in new infrastructure, systems, and processes to facilitate telecommuting in the long run.
Both Riduan and Chia also note that staff have close, cohesive, and supportive relationships with each other. Riduan, for example, remembers one instance when he and colleagues from other teams came together to defend against a potential cyber attack.
“Since then, that’s how I’ve observed the culture to be – agile, flexible, and supportive,” he says. “Everyone, including Group Directors, is willing to roll up their sleeves to help.”
