Employee Spotlight
Kwek Ling Ling
Head - IT Run & Demand Management
At Great Eastern, we recognise our people are our greatest assets. Our employee engagement survey by the research firm, Kincentric, regularly places us in the Best Employers zone, supporting our efforts in creating an engaged and future-ready workforce. In this Employee Spotlight series, we sat down with colleagues in our IT and digital teams to learn more about who they are and what motivates them. Just like the lucky 8 ball, we discussed 8 questions with them. Read on and get to know Kwek Ling Ling, Head – IT Run and Demand Management.
Great Eastern: How long have you been with Great Eastern?
Ling Ling: 5 years.
Great Eastern: What do you like about your job?
Ling Ling: Two main areas – the ability to work with users to solve their pain-points as well as supporting my team members in their growth.
Great Eastern: Do you have a favourite project during your time at Great Eastern?
Ling Ling: The acquisition of PT. Asuransi QBE Pool Indonesia (PT QBE) and transiting it into the Great Eastern Group in 2019. It was a project of 8 months, where we transferred PT QBE’s infrastructure, data centre, email, policy admin system (the entire end user computing and application landscape) to Great Eastern.
Great Eastern: What is the best career lesson that you have learned so far?
Ling Ling: Empathy and believing that you can learn something from everyone that you work with.
Great Eastern: What is your advice to people who are looking to join the technology field?
Ling Ling: Do not confine yourself by viewing your role as only a technical role. Continuously learn and it is important to build your soft skills too.
Great Eastern: Do you have a role model to recommend? And why?
Ling Ling: It has to be the founder of modern Singapore – Lee Kuan Yew. Under his leadership, Singapore transformed from a tiny outpost with scarce resources to a successful city-state with a thriving global financial hub. The results says it all!
Great Eastern: What do you outside of work for a balanced life?
Ling Ling: Retail Therapy. As the saying goes “Shopping is an art and I’m an Artist”.
Great Eastern: How has your lifestyle changed as a result of the pandemic?
Ling Ling: I feel life is really fragile. You may not always be able to guess what comes next, as such, one should stop procrastinating and complete as much as possible in a day instead of moving planned tasks / projects to the next day / week / month.