Health Promotion Board Reviews

1. Poor infrastructure and by that I refer to both office infrastructure and systems' infrastructure. Office is old and run down, and limited budget is spent to ensure that the office space is clean/maintained to allow more productive meeting and discussion to happen. The gym is terrible and even though we are a health promoting organisation, equipments are so limited and outdated. Systems used in the organisation is old and outdated - platforms for files sharing, group conference virtual platform, everything is purely outdated. We need to keep up with the time. 2. Terrible IT team. Most of the IT team are personnel from GovTech and while it is a G to G relationship, the experience with the IT team in HPB is terrible. No form of direction, and they push all sorts of responsibilities to the business users with no proper guidance or help given despite their expertise. Hardware provided to the company staff are old and slow. Especially when you see other companies providing their staff with up to date hardware to support their daily work needs, you naturally feel that everything is severely lacking in this organisation. 3. Working relationship with others dependant on your own luck. When you work here long enough and get to interact with many different colleagues, you start to wonder how some of them even got into this organisation. Thereafter, when you start to realise there are more of such people, you start to wonder the HR capability of hiring. You have staff that are unable to deliver, poor working etiquettes and quality of work, and most importantly many who obviously shun responsibilities. Many of them only respond quickly in front of the big bosses, and many Middle Management who claim credit for the work done by the working level. 4. Many red tapes. Not for someone who hope to see your ideas and work come to live fast and efficiently. Staff are put through many rounds of presentation (that no one really care and bother to contribute) and many layers of clearance, with no clear purpose. More so, you realise that at times the Middle/Higher Management have no clue of what they want at all, and provide no form of guidance and directions besides screaming at you because what you did, is just simply not what they want. Geez. Also, poor communication, you will soon realise the bosses do not talk to each other. 5. Staff Welfare. For starters, strict rules on transport claims. Ever since the start of the swab operations, HPB staff has been sent all over the island for various reasons: planning purposes, on ground operations running, admin support, swabbers etc. And nobody is given a choice on their location and distance from their home. I have colleagues who stays in the west, and are sent to the extreme east for deployment for 2 weeks straight. Reporting time is 745am, and they are expected to take public transport as HR policy is no claiming of transport unless it is a Sunday. Ridiculous. I think many have spoken about how staff are treated during this period of the swab operations. Fortunately, I am lucky enough to not be deployed as much as other colleagues. However, I have seen colleagues (the young ones, and the old ones) working till 2-3am just to churn out presentation decks (favourite term in HPB) for bosses which sometimes are really pointless. Sooner or later, many of them are going to fall ill and have to tap out of this whole swab ops. No one is able to give a clear timeline as to when this will even end. But all we are told are a few things (that are repeated throughout the past 3-4 months): 1) "Remember to take your break! We can not have you falling ill during this period" (Management proceeds to contact you and ask for favors/work during your off days...) 2) "Things will get better. Soon we will have help" (Management proceeds to get more HPB staff to come help, and everyone just get more tired together) 3) "Swab ops is priority. Every thing else will be put on pause" (Other half of management not doing swab proceeds to email you about BAU, and request that BAU still happen and ask for your follow up/ clearance even if you explain you are off site) -------- Maybe everyone is just having a really tough time now and have difficulty voicing it out because the truth is, no one listens. They act like they listen and it is easy to ask you "to take a break". However, as a responsible employee, how do you "take a break" when in parallel, others are requesting for things "as soon as possible pls". I empathise with all my fellow colleagues who have stated their views below, and honestly understand if anyone feel jaded and tired and are unable to see the light at the end of this long dark tunnel, because personally, I do not too. This has just been a long and dreaded process, and every day you wake up thinking when this will ever end.