Issue 1 2010 > In the Company of People

In the Company of People

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One-on-One with Kamarul Bahrein, Head of Regional HR Services Centre, Shell People Services Asia

Kamarul Bahrein

Kamarul Bahrein, Head of Regional
HR Services Centre Shell People Services

Shell People Services was established in January 2000, following a strategic decision by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group to create an internal HR shared services organisation offering both transactional and expertise services to its businesses. Staffed by experienced human resources practitioners, Shell People Services is now a global HR operation which provides HR strategies and organisational development–as well as support for global recruitment, performance management, learning, payroll, expatriate services and industrial relations.

On September 1, 2007, Shell People Services Asia Sdn Bhd (SPSA) commenced a relationship with Crown Relocations. Each year, Crown provides relocation and immigration services for approximately 3,000 Shell employees in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Pakistan, and provides coordination services in Brunei and Guam.

Kamarul Bahrein, who is the head of the regional HR Services Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, discusses Shell’s approach to managing the company’s international assignees in Asia and the Middle East.

Crown has been in operation now for 45 years. Shell has been operating in Malaysia for over 100 years. What advice can you give to Crown as the company looks toward the next 55 years?
You need to be agile and be able to respond to business challenges quickly and effectively; have less people making decisions and more people executing the decisions.

Shell People Services was formed in Malaysia in 1995. How would you describe the changes you have seen in your People Business over the last 15 years?
HR in Shell is essentially grouped into three buckets–Centres of Excellence, HR in the Business and HR Services. Shell People Services started off as the Company providing HR Services in the main, essentially expats services and Malaysia local services plus some Centres of Excellence type of activities.

SPSA has now grown, with HR Services itself now providing five lines of services, expat, local, systems, Information Management and Organisation Management (the latter two being global) to the whole Asia Pacific, Middle East, Oceania and Sakhalin, an area of some 30,000 employees and covering about 30 countries. Services are provided seven days a week in four languages, 18 hours a day. HR Services is now evolving as part of a Shell Shared Service organization that provides Finance, IT and Procurement services to Shell employees globally and Customer Services to external Shell customers.

Why was Crown Relocations the final choice as your relocations service partner in Asia?
Our selection for a relocation partner was concluded at the end of a regional tender process. Among the key specifications that Crown satisfied were:

Kamarul Bahrein

Left to right: Kamarul Bahrein; Jan Gregory, Crown APAC
Regional Client Account Manager and Kelvin Lai Keong Seng,
Project Manager, Regional Crown Services

How has working with Crown for the last two years assisted with your business objectives?
As with all new startups there were periods of great expectations and the hope of delivery. We are satisfied with the performance of Crown as a partner in our goal to deliver quality.

You manage a diverse team of people at SPSA, who are delivering services remotely to a great number of Shell International Assignees. What are the challenges you face operating at a regional level, and how does Crown assist you in managing these?
One of the essentials in running a regional or a global service is a standard IT platform and a simplified, standardized policy and process. We depend on Crown to deliver services in accordance with these policies and processes without exception, to agreed service levels and in accordance with Shell Business Principles.

What is the most rewarding part of your role?
To see the organisation grow over the last two years in terms of coverage and maturity and delivering against stated service levels and importantly, to see how the people themselves have grown and developed into a highly efficient and professional team that delivers, and also knows when to have fun.

Shell employees share a set of core values–honesty, integrity and respect for people, At Crown, we are continually improving our systems and processes to adhere to Shell’s Core Values. How do you think we are doing?
The Crown team that is servicing the Shell account has been very receptive to the changes we have initiated over the periods. Crown has continued to bring in new qualified and professional team members into the different locations to align with the set service delivery standards throughout the region. This has resulted in vast improvements in service delivery and customer satisfaction.

One of Crown’s Core Values is "People are Our Greatest Asset." What do you and your team enjoy about working with Crown’s people?
In my experiences and interactions so far, the people from Crown have demonstrated values such as flexibility, helpfulness, anticipating, tactfulness, patience and good hospitality.

As outsourcing relationships evolve, specific roles and accountabilities will evolve as well. Do you have predictions about changes we will see in the future?
Shell is ever evolving to serve customers better and more effectively. In doing so, we seek to leverage opportunities including different business models and technology to synergise across our operations where these exist in our quest for top quartile operational excellence.