ST Engineering Annual Report 2020

CORPORATE OVERVI EW PERFORMANCE REVI EW SUSTAINABI L ITY CORPORATE GOVERNANCE F INANCIAL REPORT than before, having set the stage for further excellence, and I am confident the newly reorganised ST Engineering is poised to achieve more global success. Q/ What are your priorities as you operationalise the new organisation structure? We took about a year to plan for this reorganisation. We pored through many design iterations of the new structure with leaders and managers across the Group, and sat through numerous deliberations and engagements with internal and external stakeholders before deciding on the one we implemented. This new organisation structure, designed to be sharper and more agile, is now better aligned to our growth strategy, and allows us to be highly attuned and responsive to our customers’ needs in an evolving and competitive landscape. Our utmost priority, in the transition to the new organisation structure, is ensuring that our employees, customers and partners remain positively engaged, which underscores our strong intent to be an even more agile and sharper organisation, for the benefit of our stakeholders. I have every confidence that we will do well in managing the change. We will also continue to invest in our technology and engineering core, overcome traditional ways of doing things where needed, and undertake continuous improvements, including adjusting our approach along the way. COVID-19 has taught us that to thrive, we need to diverge from how we traditionally operate, while maintaining our poise to create value, differentiate, and gain a competitive edge under new market conditions. To stay relevant, we also have to score highly on customer responsiveness, to be faster and more effective in meeting the changing needs of our customers. We are now set up to do this better with more domain focused teams. I am certain that if we continue to motivate and engage our people, they will feel more empowered to take a more active role in driving the whole organisation forward. Q/ What are the contributing factors that will make the new organisation structure successful? Is there a timeline to achieve this outcome? This reorganisation is one further step in the continuum of our business, prompted by our desire to do better and achieve further global success. Hence, it is less about achieving a certain milestone or deliverable, but more about better supporting our growth strategy to drive towards our aspiration. There are numerous factors that will drive the success of this reorganisation, and I will highlight three key ones. Firstly, our focus on customers. All aspects of our business must be connected to our customers and their expectations. This is a journey that the whole organisation needs to continue on. To serve our customers well, we need to continue to build breadth and depth of our competencies in domains and segments where we can have the most competitive advantage, and where we can scale and grow. Secondly, we must elevate the very capabilities that have led us this far – exceptional technological and engineering capabilities that have blazed the trail and put ST Engineering on the world map. It is the very core of us being a technology, defence and engineering group that creates solutions to enable a sustainable world, and the linchpin of our success. Lastly and importantly, our success hinges on our people. It is pivotal that we have a resilient and diligent workforce that can adapt to meet new demands, particularly in the current climate, and creatively manoeuvre through disruptions and crises. We must have a strong and steady talent pipeline to ensure continuity. Ultimately, any changes or initiatives that we undertake will have to translate into value creation for our stakeholders. From our shareholders’ perspectives, this means outstanding and sustainable financial performance and better shareholder returns across the business cycles. 27 ANNUAL REPORT 2 0 20 /