Halmie also played a pivotal role in merging two regional offices into the Western Regional Office in just six months, also as part of the reorganisation in 2019 where five Regional Offices were restructured to three. This was part of an overall push to streamline operational processes to meet rising public expectations.
The reorganisation was a “massive one”, involving the physical movement of 200 staff across three locations across the island, he recalls.
Managing Change in Organisations
For Halmie, the priority was to make the transition as seamless as possible for the staff and to ensure that “everyone had enough time to mentally and physically prepare for the move and change,” he said.
Striving to keep that personal touch, he engaged every one of the 200 staff to explain the rationale behind the transformation. He held multiple consultation sessions with the senior managers and managers, followed by small group discussions with supervisors and their teams.
In each session, he ensured that groups were kept to 15 people, so that people could feel comfortable speaking up candidly about their concerns. They peppered him with questions on the new changes, structures and reporting channels.
"They had concerns such as, whether we could be flexible on starting hours as they would need a longer time to travel from their home to the new office, or how they were going to move their items to their new location."
"It was important that we sat down with them and address their concerns," said Halmie.
Even choosing a date for the physical move had to be carefully planned, as staff were busy with the peak of dengue operations.
In the reorganisation, the task-oriented mindset came first, as we had to be clear about the tasks, changes and outcomes before we could “communicate to the staff clearly, right down to the details,” he said.
From there, we would naturally be more people-oriented approach. “I view good administration as a backbone to a positive experience in organisational change,” said Halmie. “Listen to staff, put ourselves in their shoes and aim to resolve, mitigate, or manage it.”