When it comes to developing staff and strategies, the human resource (HR) department is often a pillar of support for companies in any sector.

For an organisation such as SingHealth, this entails hiring and developing healthcare professionals to deliver high- quality care to its patients, as well as pursuing innovation for medical advances in the industry.

Ms Christabell Wong, deputy director of Strategic Human Resources at SingHealth, shares how HR plays an important role in the healthcare organisation.
 

What does your role involve?

Together with my HR Policy and Planning team, we harmonise HR policies across all the institutions within SingHealth, leverage best practices within the cluster and ensure compliance with employment legislation.

In managing manpower requests for SingHealth’s headquarters, I help ensure that our headcount is optimised by making available manpower data and putting guidelines for manpower planning decisions in place.    

One key ongoing project is building the HR data warehouse to facilitate HR analytics. This is important for us to analyse manpower data on the fly so we can keep a constant pulse on our staff strength position and workforce engagement levels through attrition analysis.

How does this make a difference in healthcare or patients’ lives?

Even though we do not directly interact with our patients, what we do impacts every SingHealth staff who works tirelessly to serve our patients and make a difference in their lives.

It is wonderful to know that in our own way, we are supporting patient care and safety, and supporting the company in achieving its organisational goals.

Why do you think others should join the healthcare sector?

It is a people-centric sector that brings together many different individuals with diverse skills and experiences, each contributing in their own way to touch the lives of many — be it patients or their family members. This makes for a truly meaningful career where you can lend your abilities in big or small ways to achieve something greater.