- Since 2020, UOB’s operating profit has climbed to nearly S$8.0 billion.
- UOB’s Citigroup acquisition of consumer banking has essentially doubled its customer base.
- The 5,000 employees were successfully brought into “the UOB Way” with hyper-focused culture coaching.
It’s been a very big five years for United Overseas Bank.
Headquartered in Singapore, the company has increased its annual operating profit from around S$5.0 billion to nearly S$8.0 billion since 2020, while adding millions of customers through its acquisition of Citigroup’s retail banking businesses in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The transaction brought around 5,000 additional employees into the group across Southeast Asia.
UOB executives concluded that the success of the deal hinged on integrating these employees into the bank’s culture. Ian Wong, managing director at UOB, says the leadership team began by articulating a clear strategic rationale to incoming staff. “The first thing we did was to share our vision for the market,” says Ian Wong, managing director at UOB.
“We are doing this because we want to grow our market share. When the market share grows, that means each and every one of us will be gainfully employed in a bigger capacity.”
The UOB Way
As leaders invested in building trust with their new colleagues, they sought to align behaviors with what the bank calls the UOB Way, aiming to quickly lift engagement and productivity.
- Honorable We act prudently to fuel your success, maintaining the highest professional and moral standards. We do what is right for you through discipline, clarity, and courage.
- Enterprising We were built with an enterprising spirit, demonstrated through thought leadership, keen insight and a forward-looking mindset.
- United We work as a team to achieve individual and corporate goals with cooperation, mutual respect and loyalty.
- Committed We are committed to building a better tomorrow. We ensure that UOB is a trusted source of stability, security, and strength.
The values reflect a long-term commitment to Southeast Asia and a belief that the bank is part of a bigger movement to develop the region. “Whatever programs that we have on the people side are really to qualify and build authentically a culture that will last the test of time,” Wong says. “We believe that people want to do better if they’re given opportunity.”
The Increasing Demands of Leadership
UOB places such a strong emphasis on leadership because of the mounting challenges leaders face in the workplace: global economic uncertainty, surging mental health crises, and demographic shifts keeping more generations in the workforce. When leaders embrace their roles as coaches and mentors, these challenges can sometimes be solved all at the same time.
One example, a new management associate at the bank was inspired through a leader’s mentorship to volunteer to build a new solution for a work process that was outdated. What her leader did next was what really made an impact.
“The leader said, ‘Don’t just organize the project among yourselves. Involve colleagues who are deeply involved in this process,’” Wong says. “So, they put together a multi-generational task force, people in their 20s and 30s, as well as 50s. Seven weeks later, they re-engineered a process that used to take many hours across five business days to occur in just five minutes.”
With this shared task force, UOB team members were able to work across generations, solve a key business problem, build their professional skills, and reclaim time from a menial task that was creating stress.
The time saved from added efficiency isn’t just good for your business, Wong says. “People are able to go home early enough to have a warm meal with their loved ones before they sleep. How awesome is that?”
UOB Tips For Building a Coaching Culture
How can your organization build a culture where leaders embrace coaching and adopt key leadership behaviors?
Wong offers a few tips:
1. Set clear expectations for performance
Leaders at UOB adopt a coaching mindset because it is explicitly measured in their performance reviews. “We build it into our performance appraisal framework and evaluate leaders not just on measurable business outcomes, but also how they have demonstrated the UOB way and expected leadership behaviors,” Wong says.
2. Make sure leaders understand how becoming a better coach will help their career
Developing leaders to embrace high-trust leadership behaviors is good for the organization, but it’s also essential for leaders to grow in their careers.
“We remind our leaders that when you go through a mentoring or coaching journey, you become a lot more self-aware, and as a result, you become a better person and a better leader,” Wong says. Amid uncertainty and a rapidly changing business landscape, new skills are insurance for the future.
“A mentoring and coaching culture not only brings out the best in our people,” Wong says. “It futureproofs employees organically in an evolving workforce.”
3. Make sure outcomes are measurable.
If you want leaders to embrace a coaching program, they need to be able to see the return on their investment, Wong says. “Building a coaching culture takes time, space, and effort, so people must see that it pays off.”
One way to measure impact is through business outcomes like increased efficiency or reduced cost. Another is employee survey results, and comparing your company against industry benchmarks.
“It’s not just talk; it’s how to bring it to life,” Wong says. When leaders feel they have skin in the game, they more quickly embrace change.
