Kabila’s Internship Journey in Flow

It has been about four months since I have been a part of Flow. I started out as a part–time HR Intern and currently I am HR Associate under the SGUnited Traineeships.

When I walked into Flow Singapore office the first time, I was really attracted by how the entire office seems so well furnished and stylish. I really liked the office space where there is no cubicle styled desk so we can have conversations to anyone without the ‘barrier’. I also really like it that there were no separate rooms for the management staff, and they work together with the other employees in the office. By having horizontal working culture, it makes me feel more comfortable if I want to ask any questions or have a conversation with the management staff especially to my boss the CHRO, Shree.

Part of Flow’s family. Kabila hanging out with her colleagues. From left: Kabila, Colin HR coordinator, Tomasz CEO, and Mayuri Finance Manager.

I am also really impressed with the management in Flow being very transparent with the company’s progress to the staff. Through regular Company Townhalls, the employees would know how the company is performing, its progresses and challenges, and this also allows to close the gap between the management and the employees.

Project 1: Mapping Recruitment Process

In this project, I was tasked to collate how the recruitment process was done for back-office staff and call center agents in India, Indonesia, and Vietnam office.

Through this project I got the opportunity to speak to the local HR managers from India, Indonesia, and Vietnam separately to gather more information about their current recruitment practices. After the call, I had to come up with a detailed flowchart that shows the recruitment process from the moment that the hiring manager need an additional headcount to the moment the candidates join the company. Once that was done, I had to look through the recruitment process and see if there were any steps that I felt it should be added or removed and provide recommendations.

This was an interesting project as I have not done mapping the whole recruitment process on my own before. I had to do some research on how to create a proper detailed flowchart that will be useful for the company.

As this was my first solo project in FLOW, I have many takeaways from this. I have learnt how to properly document the recruitment process, provide feasible recommendations to improve the process and properly presenting my content.

Project 2: Conducting Salary Reviews

This project was about conducting a job matching exercise for all the existing roles in the Kyiv, Ukraine team to better develop and establish a proper salary structure for our employees in the country. This would help us to identify and assess their current salaries with the job market, with the ultimate objective of ensuring that everyone earns a fair and livable wage more accurately.

The first step of this whole process began by finding the suitable Job Description from Mercer’s job library that matches with the role that the employees are currently doing our Ukraine office. This process required a lot of attention to detail or else it will lead to a lot of problems in the upcoming steps where it could possibly lead me to identifying the wrong salary level.

In this project, I had the assistance of my colleague, Colin for this project who was of huge help where he ensured me that I was on the right path on collecting the data. As Colin has a lot of experience and understanding of the roles in our Ukraine office, he also told me that there were some roles that can be included even though the job title did not state the role’s name directly.

However, since we were not able to get salary data from Mercer, we had to find alternative ways to conduct this exercise. We had to depend on reliable websites that provided the salary data that we needed.

There were some challenges faced such as the sample size for certain roles were adequate, but the sample sizes for others may not be adequate. Next, the salary data from the website were for broader/ more general job roles rather than specific positions. Furthermore, the salary data is only for monthly wages and does not include other compensation components such as incentives, bonuses, or allowances. We had to take all these limitations into consideration when we were deciding on revising the salary of the employees.

Through this project, I have learnt how to conduct a salary review for the employees who are not from Singapore. I also learnt how to be meticulous when I am collecting and analysing the salary data.

Enriched and Excited as a Part of Flow’s Family

All in all, I can confidently say that this traineeship has given me plenty of learning opportunities, both the soft and hard skills to go far in my next challenge. The teammates and Flow’s culture has inspired me to do my best. I’d definitely recommend anyone who is looking for an internship experience that offers valuable experiences to consider Flow.