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People Mentality Inc has been featuring a series of HR Tech partners to share more about their stories as well as how users can benefit from engaging them. And guess what, we have reached our 10th feature already!
In this week’s issue of People Mentality HR Tech Feature, we are excited to have with us Lam Mun Choong, CEO of SelfDrvn Enterprise, to share his story. Find out more about the story of Selfdrvn and how users can benefit from this HR Tech app.
Interview Summary
Sam: What was the spark that led to the start of Selfdrvn Enterprise?
Mun Choong: I am the CEO of a high growth tech company in Singapore and Malaysia. To support business growth, we needed to scale our team rapidly from 8 to 350 people in less than 4 years. We wanted to be able to attract, retain & motivate our team constantly. We thought if good companies create loyalty programs to retain their best customers, who don’t we create an employee rewards and recognition program to do the same for our best employees? That was how the idea of creating Selfdrvn as an employee engagement platform started.
Sam: How did the name Selfdrvn come about?
Mun Choong: To me, employee engagement starts from identifying talent with the right skills and cultural fit, removing barriers to performance and then motivating them intrinsically. Psychological studies have shown that money isn’t the biggest motivator. Instead, it is believed that we humans are naturally motivated when we have autonomy, purpose, and mastery at work.
Selfdrvn’s mission is to help organizations develop the culture of autonomy, purpose, and mastery with the use of our intuitive technology. Selfdrvn’s name is derived from “self-driven” which implies “autonomy”.
Sam: If you could turn back time, what would be one thing that you would have done differently?
Mun Choong: If I could turn back time, I would have made more deliberative decisions on hiring. It is critical for many companies especially start-ups to build a cohesive team who is highly resilient and can adapt to changes. I have learned the hard way that scaling fast by hiring quickly is a bad idea. To make quick decisions, we depend on hiring a person based on skills and experience rather than cultural fit. It would have helped if we have been clearer about what sort of people will fit into our culture.
Sam: What kept you going when things got tough?
Mun Choong: This is a hard one, ha-ha. I am driven by my need to achieve and learn new things. Sometimes I imagine myself playing a computer game, and I motivate myself by keeping scores and leveling up in the game of “entrepreneurship” ha-ha.
I also realized what we do is a team sport. The more challenges I faced and overcome, the more I feel grateful that I have a good team who stayed with us through thick and thin. One of the things that comfort me is seeing how our young team grow and become better versions of themselves in a challenging environment through learning from mistakes and coaching. I am impressed by their energy and never say die attitude. They motivate me to pick myself up and come back to fight another day with them.
Sam: What are the top 3 features of the tool?
Mun Choong: We believe the top-3 features of Selfdrvn are Employee Rewards & Recognition, Real Time Peer Feedback and Agile Goal Setting, all gamified to make it even more engaging. We designed our app to be very intuitive to help you drive higher engagement and improve performance at work.
Sam: Who would you recommend to use this tool?
Mun Choong: If you want to simplify the process of engaging employees for better performance, then Selfdrvn is for you. We help you build a more human experience at work with timely recognition of employee efforts and achievement, openness to give and receive feedback. We simplify the CEO, HR managers and the line manager’s job with good data-driven actionable insights on engagement and performance, all on a single app.
Sam: Is there anything you would like to say to HR practitioners out there?
Mun Choong: Rather than focusing on administrative aspects of HR and analyzing symptoms such as employee turnover, HR practitioners should have more frequent dialogues with stakeholders to understand how they can be more strategic to help the business. A great way to do so is by adopting a Design Thinking approach to improve how HR works.
Sam: Where can people find out more if they are interested?
Mun Choong: Please check out our website at www.selfdrvn.com.
Closing thoughts
I am a firm believer of what Mun Choong shared in terms of how HR can deliver greater value by shifting its focus away from transactions to experience. Through frequent engagements and dialogues, that is how HR can draw out better insights and create a more meaningful impact as not only a support function but instead, a value-adding one.
It is really interesting how the birth of this tool started from the needs within the organization and it shows how a people-first mentality truly matters if you want to drive results and make a difference
We have come to the end of this week’s issue of People Mentality HR Tech Feature. More exciting updates coming up soon so keep a lookout for it!
Together we can create a better workplace for tomorrow!
People Mentality Inc is a HR Consultancy firm in Singapore. Our clients include Pfizer, Great Eastern, Accenture, DHL, Samsung, Coca Cola, Keppel, Loreal, Under Armour and more.
