How one CCO is using culture to drive digital upskilling

When Sandra Teh, chief culture officer, Amazon Web Services, (AWS), APJC, was growing up in Singapore, her family’s core values taught her to only do something when you’re 100% sure.

So, when Teh joined AWS five years ago, it was a bit of an adjustment when her first line manager told her, “If you’re 70% sure, and you have 70% of the ingredients, go ahead.”

It's a piece of advice that Teh has taken on board and run with. “If you wait for 90%, chances are you’re being too careful, you’re overthinking it and you’re probably recycling an old idea,” said Teh, who despite holding an HR role has also conceptualised and rolled-out several digital products for AWS.

With a global tech-worker shortage, AWS has a company goal to train more than 29 million people with digital skills, for free, by 2025. In Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) alone they have trained 3.5 million people since 2017. An initiative that Teh is most excited about when she sees employees at AWS who don’t hold digitally skilled roles using the training programs to upskill themselves.

“They're able to build up their digital skills and pick up industry recognised AWS certifications. We've seen so many cases of people who are classified initially as non-tech category and now they are considered part of our digitally skilled workforce because they've been able to upgrade themselves through our training programs,” said Teh, adding that there is no age limit when it comes to learning.

“So, I’ve actually got folks in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s within my team,” said Teh who is passionate about multi-generational diversity. “That's exactly why when we talk about being inclusive in the way we build, as well as inclusive in the way we set up our workplace culture, we always have a saying here, that we will give you a self-service kitchen, we will provide all the ingredients the pots and pans the tools, so builders just go ahead and build. There are deliberately no gatekeepers by design. So, there's plenty of chance whether you're in 20s 50s and even the 60s, it's possible for you to think really big and to drive your very own inventions.”

Teh, who sees herself as the storyteller of the company and the glue that brings a global workforce together, uses real time employee feedback to make decisions about culture in her team.

“90% of our products at AWS are built based on customer feedback so when we look internally, it’s important for us culturally, to make sure that we are also listening to the sentiments of our employees,” said Teh.

AWS employees start every day with a culture-based poll question – a pop up as soon as they log on to their computer. Questions like, do you prefer the hybrid environment versus coming into the office, or have you connected with any of your peers this week. Data generated from the poll gets fed back to Teh in real time. 

“So, in the event that I see a particular score has gone down from 4.7 to 4.5. I will realise that hey, perhaps my team is feeling a little bit tired today,” said Teh. “With the data, as well as with the anecdotal feedback, we're able to help ourselves inform more of a strategy and build an even better place as well as a better culture for all and our employees love the mechanism, and actually can see actions coming in straightaway instead of waiting for a month, three months, or a year later.

“We're making sure that we are able to pause as well as take a take a sense check in terms of how employee sentiments looking like right now, and that with the data, as well as with the anecdotal feedback, we're able to help ourselves inform more of a strategy and how can we build even a better place as well as a better culture for all?

“I really love our culture,” said Teh, “but that stems from the way I love our people.