Trainers Award

I received my first award in the Bank after almost 11 months of service yesterday. It was an event which I looked forward to (not extremely anxiously) in getting a direct recognition from the Group CEO (which is quite a privilege to me). This is a trainers award (for being a specialist trainer), which was given to staff whom had conducted >7 hrs of training sessions in a year and got a relatively good rating from the participants.

For a period of time, I was quite motivated with a MOE poster that I saw in Raffles Place MRT station. That slogan goes "our teachers make a difference. what do you make?" It hit me because there I was, after a tired day of work, on my way back home knowing that it's going to be an hour train ride, thinking that I have worked so hard, just to have a secured future. Being a teacher, educator, certainly makes much more impact to the generation that is going to take over us. I thought I would probably really try out doing this when I decided to quit this current role.

So, for a period of time, when people asked me, "so, when are you going to rejoin SCB?" I responded that it's not going to happen, if I decided to leave my current organisation, I would have completely decided to exit from the banking industry - and move on to be an educator. (to qualify, perhaps this is my current sentiments, which can be changed again given few years down)

At the ceremony, after the speech from our Group Head of HR, she reminded us that it was not easy being a trainer in our specialised area. To be a successful trainer, one has to have a good grasp of knowledge and be able to pass on the same set of understanding to our fellow colleagues. She recognised the fact that each of us had to put in additional hours to prepare our courses which is required over and above our existing BAU tasks. Her speech was simple, but yet, sent through a clear point that we have helped the organisation in one way or another, to train fellow colleagues and in turn, added value to the organisation.

At that point, it dawned onto me that I can continue with this organisation for now, given that there are so many opportunities to conduct trainings, briefings, and even management presentations, it's a good training ground for me to continue to polish up and gather more conviction that I do like teaching and be able take this as a full time professional role.


As part of the reward for being a specialist trainer, the Bank threw in 2 movie tickets for us to watch 'Avengers' which is a great treat.. And after the show, I changed my superheroic character 'like' from Iron Man to Captain America!