Winner and nominee of top human resource awards, Brady Corporation Asia Pacific is a company that looks after its people. Human resource director Vincy Ng tells City News why people are Brady’s greatest assets.
Contributed By Eugene Teh
Ng wins big for her company. CN PHOTO: Daniel Poh.
Brady Corporation is a world leader in complete identification solutions that help companies improve productivity, performance, safety and security. It offers over 50,000 products including high-performance labels, precision die-cut materials, signs, software, printers, and automatic identification and data-collection systems. Founded in 1914, the company serves the Fortune 1000 companies and hundreds of thousands of other companies worldwide in markets ranging from telecommunications and electronics to transportation equipment to education.
It may seem a very technically successful company, but Brady calls its staff “a strong franchise of great people.” The company’s human resource practices earned it five nominations at the HRM Awards in March this year. The HRM Awards is the biggest HR Event of the year. The award recognizes leading human resources management and organizational practices, personnel and organizations, and in this, its eighth year, it saw nearly 200 companies compete for 22 awards. The five categories Brady was nominated for were Center for Creative Leadership Award for Best Leadership Development Practices; Best Performance & Productivity Practices; Grass Roots Asia Pacific Award for Best Reward & Recognition Strategies; Best Corporate and Employee Citizenship and Best Work-Life Harmony.
Brady also won three awards this year at the Asia’s Best Employer Branding Awards: the Award for Innovation in Retention Strategy; the Award for managing Health at work and the Award for Talent management.
“Being nominated for five HRM awards and at the same time winning three awards from Asia’s Best Employer Branding Awards are both a validation of Brady’s value of Investing in people,” says Vincy Ng, the human resource director for Brady Corporation, Asia Pacific. “As an organization, we will continue in our ambition to bring out the best in people through a structured way of attracting, developing, motivating and retaining employees.”
As the head of human resource for Brady, Ng plays a central role in the company’s success in this area. She admits it was a conscious effort on the part of her department.
“First, it was birthed with a vision of positioning Brady as the Employer of Choice. We executed on that vision based on a framework of talent management, performance management, learning and development, employee engagement and rewards and recognition practices,” Ng explains.
Under Ng’s leadership, Brady’s employees were not only well-looked after but also meaningfully engaged.
“As part of our branding exercise, we enlisted the services of Corporate i, a marketing communications company to put together a holistic program using an employee engagement framework for our South Asia organization. The framework covers wellness at the workplace, quarterly recognition and rewards for outstanding contributions by employees, and employee communication, for example, townhall meetings, skip-level meetings and one-on-one meetings.”
Not all companies believe in the importance of a good human resource department. Ng believes that a strong human resource framework forms the backbone of a strong organization.
“The difference between an average and a great company is the competence, passion and commitment of its people,” she explains. “Bringing people through the door should be taken very seriously because if you hire the wrong fit, it will take a lot of organizational energy to fix it.
“Building organizational capabilities is a crucial function of human resource. The human resource managers are the ones that provide expertise and facilitate in talent acquisition, talent development and talent engagement. Without an effective HR dept, a company may miss out on a very important competitive advantage, that is, building up its people’s capabilities and commitment for sustainability.”
For her passionate efforts, Ng has brought home the prize for Brady. “For me, the HRM award nominations and Asia’s Best Employer Brand awards have both been humbling experiences, ones that will spur me on to greater heights in the pursuit of human resource excellence.”
Ng, who was formerly with Atos Origins, joined Brady just three years ago, and has made the most of that time. “I’ve enjoyed every moment here,” says the married Christian who enjoys reading and skiing.
Ng sees her mission in human resource as a call to “impact lives by bringing out the best in people through a structured way of identifying development needs and providing opportunity for every individual in the organization. Ultimately, it is my deepest desire for God’s love to shine through my actions to the people, and to make a difference.”
