A proven HR professional with more than 20 years of military and public sector HR experience, Kok Heng’s passion for people saw him developing the workforce strategy, together with its soldier value proposition and Army branding to attract talents to join the Army during the “East Asian miracle” in the 1990s. His HR pursuit saw him managing the human resources of two of the largest government ministries, MINDEF and MOE, each with more than 25,000 employees.

At MOE, Kok Heng took charge of branding teaching as a profession. Collaborating with the compensation, career development and employee engagement teams, the employee value proposition and the prestige of the teaching profession was brought to new levels resulting in more recruits and better work life balance. Its Teacher Recruitment Campaign “Mrs Chong” won the 2011 Viewer’s Choice.

A one-year secondment to then MDA as Director Corporate Planning, Kok Heng was instrumental in driving the refresh of the corporate vision, mission and values, leading to an organisation re-structuring by the Strategy Team. An opportunistic call to join the newly formed MCCY, saw him engaging the merged leadership team in developing its first mission, vision and values. He developed the employee value proposition and employer branding to recruit new staff for the merged organisation. He did the same at CPFB with “Team CPF” building pride in its employees to be an employer of choice.

Most recently at MFA, he was responsible for domestic and international HR policies for over 50 overseas locations. He managed COVID operations to ensure the morale of all employees around the world were kept high with timely vaccination in Singapore and host country where permissible. Better compensation and posting packages were developed to enhance its employee value proposition to retain its talents.