Can you imagine someone who studied Education in university to become a specialist in Technology field? We had a chat with Rhoda Ng, from T&O - IBG Technology to find out how she managed to transform herself from a "teacher-to-be" to a "tech superstar" in DBS who manages our finance matters.
"I joined the bank’s Graduate Associate Programme 4 years ago. I heard about the GA Programme from a senior fellow at the university who shared her fabulous experience gaining from the programme. That sounded attractive. Though I studied Education in the university, I am willing to learn new matters so this triggered me to apply for the GA programme," mentioned Rhoda. She added the bank’s strategic direction of Digitalisation was another key spark attracting her.
Rhoda continued, "After the 2 years of GA Programme focusing on operations, I landed to IBG Technology team. At the same time, my manager asked me to take up the finance management role for the team. It’s a totally great challenge to me as I do not have any background in technology and finance. And I joined the team during the budgeting season, which meant I have to pick this up in a short period of time!"
This did not scare her off. With the attitude to pick up new subject matters, Rhoda had many late nights to learn about the finance related matters, e.g. to know the accounting terms of ledger and accrual, to get familarised with the budget template, to work on the following year’s budget forecast, etc.
On top of the budget, Rhoda’s key role is to support solution delivery for IBG. "I am involved in the SME Digibank project to digitalise the customer and employee journey to ease the account opening and lending from those manual workflow and paper forms." Without any technology knowledge, she learnt everything from scratch and applied 4D – DBS’ problem solving framework. "Starting from discover, I conducted market research to understand the business user requirements; define the solutions, develop the systems and finally deliver to market launch. I am so happy to see it launched," she shared.
With the support of local and regional colleagues and her manager, she swiftly adopted to her new roles. She continues receiving guidance from her manager via frequent discussion sessions and ongoing review even she has been working from home due to pandemic, as well as clear management direction by attending virtual townhalls.
We encourage colleagues to take charge of their personal growth by gaining exposure and experience, evaluate their personal performance by seeking regular feedback and acquire new skills and knowledge as part of their learning journey. Rhoda supplemented that the bank provides various initiatives facilitating us to keep on learning. "I took the modules via Learning Hub, and also courses covering business related topics like Finance at LinkedIn Learning. There are some other collaborations with external vendors, like teaming up with Amazon Web Services to organise the AWS DeepRacer League for us to learn Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning," she mentioned.
Rhoda also actively participates in the bank’s volunteer movement, People of Purpose. Lately, she took part in the e-book production for HK Blind Union which she can work this at home by observing social distancing. Indeed, she is deeply impressed by the sharing of a visually impaired person. Though he is physically disabled, this does not bound his passion on learning which he keeps learning and finishes his study in the university. This triggers her to rethink profoundly the importance of continuous learning and we should not live within the comfort zone. "Be open-minded to keep growing and improving myself. Be persistent and not give up easily," she said.
At the end of the chat, we asked Rhoda to use one word to describe her life in DBS. She replied, "Joyful! It’s not easy to take up new tasks especially under time pressure. I have learned different new domain knowledge these 4 years."
