Institution

Our Temasek Heartbeat

As a purpose-driven organisation, we are guided by our Temasek Charter and MERITT values, and are united by our Temasek Heartbeat.

Supporting Our People

Over the year, we rolled out a range of support measures to care for our employees and strengthen organisational resilience during the pandemic.

Our staff around the world were provided care packages which included essential supplies such as masks, health supplements and wellness equipment. They were also provided additional IT equipment to allow them to work comfortably and effectively from home.

Recognising that our staff had been working longer hours even as they did so from home, we provided additional flexible leave to allow them sufficient time to rest and recharge. We developed and shared a series of informational materials on staying resilient. This is to help alleviate stress that our people could face during these challenging times. The series also included information for managers on leading and managing teams remotely to adapt better to various work from home requirements.

We use technological tools to improve the way we work and gain deep insights to enhance our investment and institutional decisions.

We use technological tools to improve the way we work and gain deep insights to enhance our investment and institutional decisions. Our staff have adapted to the virtual workplace over the past year. They tapped on IT applications, conferencing and collaboration tools that allowed them to work more effectively.

These various initiatives during a pandemic year enabled the institution to maintain a strong pace of investment activities, on top of various institutional workstreams and COVID-19 community programmes.

We use technological tools to improve the way we work and gain deep insights to enhance our investment and institutional decisions.

We use technological tools to improve the way we work and gain deep insights to enhance our investment and institutional decisions

We continue to explore the Agile way of working with the aim of fostering a nimbler mindset and responsive decision making. To this end, we have formed cross-functional teams who are trained in Agile Scrum project management methods.

Growing Our Talent

Talent development is a key area of focus in our firm’s long term strategic plans. We have developed a holistic talent agenda to empower our people to take charge of their careers and prepare themselves for the future.

Through our learning initiatives, we equip our people with the skills to stay relevant in an era of rapid technological transformation. Our staff are also encouraged to embrace a mindset of continuous learning. They are offered learning programmes that expose them to the latest technologies and topics such as data science and leadership. We developed an in-house training programme titled “Introduction to Data Fluency”, to enable our staff to express ideas about data in a common language and strengthen their data literacy.

To expand the range of learning programmes, we collaborated with renowned institutions to develop self-paced online and virtual classes. These classes aim to encourage our people to take ownership of their own learning and allow them to develop new skills, even while working remotely.

Our staff receive feedback on their work performance through regular discussions with their supervisors and are encouraged to continuously strive for excellence. To build a nimble workforce with multi-disciplinary skillsets, our employees are given opportunities for job rotations and to work on cross-functional projects, even outside their key areas of focus.

Making a Difference

Our “Make-a-Difference” (MAD) Programme has been an integral part of Temasek’s journey since 2008. MAD promotes a culture of personal ownership and responsibility. Individual and company-wide MAD targets are set each year. These go beyond financial and performance targets to cover self-development, institution and community goals, and foster lifelong skills and health habits.

Over the past few years, we have equipped our employees with life skills by offering biannual cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) workshops as well as emotional and financial agility programmes.

We equip our employees with life skills by offering biannual CPR and AED workshops.

Our CEO Challenge aims to encourage continuous learning and innovation among our employees. Since 2015, our staff have been acquiring new skills in areas such as coding and data science, languages, as well as music and dance.

We equip our employees with life skills by offering biannual CPR and AED workshops.

Since the launch of the CEO Challenge six years ago, more than 80% of our staff have learnt a new skill or enhanced their proficiencies. Over 60% have completed courses in programming or data science and analytics.

Our CEO Challenge also aims to encourage our people to develop innovative technology applications to solve real life problems. Our people have attended strategic ideation workshops and worked with mentors to develop new ideas and refine their applications. Some of the innovative ideas have been used to develop in-house applications that have improved our work efficiency.

Doing Good Together

Our people give back to their communities by taking part in activities organised by T-Touch, a volunteer initiative driven by our staff.

During 2020, our staff have volunteered their time in programmes led by Temasek Foundation to support our community response towards COVID-19 — for example, the setting up of swab testing operations for our migrant worker dormitories; developing and distributing BluePass, an automatic contact tracing device; and working closely with the authorities and our portfolio companies to establish Community Care Facilities for younger “Walking Well” COVID-19 patients, as well as recovering patients. These efforts have pivoted in 2021 to focus on the safe reopening of the economy for lives and livelihoods, as vaccinations started rolling out across the world.

Our staff across China, India, Europe and the Americas have also helped to provide food and medical supplies to their local communities, especially to those whose lives have been badly disrupted by the pandemic.

Staff take part in a range of volunteering activities — both group-based and individual.

Staff take part in a range of volunteering activities — both group-based and individual — throughout the year, and have access to a dedicated leave balance for their volunteer work.

Tabitha Sum, a Director in Temasek’s Finance team, distributing BluePass to migrant workers at Choa Chu Kang Dormitory

(as at 31 March)

Our Staff Composition

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Keeping Our Communities Safe and Healthy

We provided about 40 hospitals in Brazil with ventilators, oxygen concentrators and surgical masks during their major outbreak last year.

Hospitals, long term care facilities and nursing homes across the US were provided N95 masks, face shields and surgical gowns, sponsored by Temasek. Through our donation to St Anthony’s, a non-profit organisation in San Francisco, we provided food, shelter, clothing and medical care to vulnerable groups in San Francisco.

In the UK, we sponsored essential supplies such as gloves, surgical masks and sanitisers that offered some 1,500 volunteers of The Felix Project additional protection. The Felix Project is a London-based charity that provides food to needy people.

Following the massive outbreak of COVID-19 across India in April 2021, our staff rallied to work with partners to ship around 8,200 oxygen concentrators, 1,300 BiPAP positive airway pressure machines, 51,000 oximeters, as well as 37 Advanced MedTech’s ICU-grade Alpha ventilators equipped with remote monitoring and control capabilities, to India.

On the social front, our Brazil team supported a programme in Tianguá, a city in the northeast of Brazil, that saw locals sewing about 7,000 cloth masks that were distributed to underprivileged communities.

Temasek supported a community-led mask sewing initiative to protect the underprivileged in Tianguá, Brazil

Providing Meals to the Needy

Our team in Shanghai, China took part in a rice cutting programme and the harvest was distributed to needy families living in a mountainous area in Zhejiang, in eastern China. In Brazil, we provided food baskets to some 500 families living in the northeast of the country who had suffered significant loss of income due to the pandemic.

Our Shanghai team helping to harvest rice for distribution to needy families in Zhejiang

Food baskets containing staples such as rice and beans were provided to vulnerable families in Brazil

Supporting Vulnerable Children

Some 200 children from vulnerable families living along the Mekong Delta in Vietnam were provided with emergency care packages sponsored by Temasek to help them tide over these challenging times. The packages included items such as books, food, clean water and housing allowance. Many parents of the children hold casual or low wage jobs such as working as street vendors and had lost income due to the pandemic.

Emergency care packages containing daily necessities were distributed to vulnerable children in Vietnam

Many children of migrant workers in China were not able to see their parents last year due to travel restrictions. To show our care, our team in Beijing, China, took part in a card making activity which saw them decorating about 70 cards that were given to a primary school that caters to children of migrant workers. Our staff made the cards by hand and penned words of encouragement on them. Together with the cards, a selection of stationery, hand sanitisers, face masks and books were also given to the children.

Our team in Beijing decorating cards to uplift the children of migrant workers

Our team in Mumbai, India, interacted virtually with some 30 children who are underprivileged or ill to share good values and habits through games and activities. For example, our staff played a word game with the children that saw them forming sentences that emphasised the importance of having good habits such as brushing their teeth and washing their hands regularly.

Inspiring Hope

Over 400 participants, including youths with special needs and ex-offenders and their families, went on tours of the Singapore Airlines (SIA) Training Centre that were sponsored by Temasek.

Our staff worked with SIA staff to plan and customise the two-hour tours. They also joined the tours as hosts to ensure that the needs of beneficiaries were taken care of, while the SIA staff led the tours of the mock-up cabins and flight simulators.