WHEN a sales team leader at real estate agency PropNex passed away earlier this year during the Covid-19 pandemic, the company sprang into action to raise some S$200,000 to help provide some financial support for his wife and 5 children - the youngest of whom is just 3 years old - and also bought a house for the family.
'We found out that they were worried that they do not have a permanent home and had insufficient financial support," said Ismail Gafoor, PropNex's executive chairman and chief executive officer. "His team rallied together to raise funds across the whole organisation, including our management, and we managed to secure his family an HDB unit."
On the business front, the company also worked quickly to find innovative solutions as restrictions to the physical viewing of properties at the onset of the pandemic hampered its business activities.
"We were the first to introduce a Virtual Singapore Property Expo, designed to educate property owners and investors with curated programmes, including a series of webinars, guest speakers, and virtual open houses which showcased over 1,000 listings," Gafoor said.
Despite the challenges, such initiatives helped PropNex achieve record revenue for FY2020.
PropNex represents one of many examples shared by listed companies here, as the Singapore Corporate Awards (SCA) returned with a special edition to honour 26 listed companies that have shown outstanding resilience in navigating through the dark clouds surrounding Covid-19.
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Named the Corporate Excellence and Resilience Awards, the special edition of SCA for 2020/2021 recognised exemplary companies that have upheld best practices in corporate governance and shown leadership, innovation and resilience during the pandemic.
Co-chair of the SCA and editor of The Business Times (BT) Wong Wei Kong noted the importance of strong leadership during the pandemic, as the best companies were often those that were prepared for the worst.
"It was also important for us to recognise companies that were promoting sustainable practices, making use of technology and developing their people, especially so as to increase their resilience in a time of really exacting business challenges," he said.
SCA is jointly organised by BT, the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA) and the Singapore Institute of Directors (SID), and supported by the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority and the Singapore Exchange.
The winners were selected based on 5 criteria: corporate governance, financial resilience, strategic and operational excellence, people management, and sustainability and digital.
PropNex was one of the 9 companies that scooped awards for the small-cap category for companies with market capitalisations below S$300 million. The other winners in the small-cap category were: Sing Investments & Finance, LHN, Valuemax, The Trendlines Group, Boustead Projects, Singapore O&G, InnoTek andTeleChoice International.
"I was quite impressed, but not surprised, by the positive actions taken by all the shortlisted companies our judging panel interviewed," said John Lim, SID's immediate past chairman and a veteran on the board of several Singapore-listed companies, who led a panel of judges for the shortlisted big-cap listcos.
The 10 winners in the big-cap category for companies with market cap of S$1 billion and above were: SATS, DBS, UOB, OCBC, CapitaLand, Ascendas Reit, ST Engineering, NetLink NBN Trust, UOL Group and Wilmar International.
"All the companies demonstrated a high level of resilience and corporate governance. A very encouraging revelation was that there was strong involvement of the board in the direction of their companies and business during this period," Lim said.
One of the highlights, Lim said, was how companies set up task forces to deal with groups of customers that needed help during this period. The trio of local banks, for example, moved quickly to support their small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers through the tough times.
"These are very challenging times and there is great temptation by companies to take short-term decisions, often at the expense of longer-term sustainability. These are also times when many business continuity measures established in a more normal business environment are put to the test and when companies are seriously challenged to walk the talk," Lim said.
"It is only appropriate that companies that are able to demonstrate the maintenance of a high level of resilience and strong corporate governance should be publicly recognised," he added.
In the mid-cap category for companies with market values of S$300 million to less than S$1 billion, the 7 winners were: Micro-Mechanics Holdings, Boustead Singapore, iFAST Corp, Sasseur Reit, SBS Transit, Hong Leong Asia and United Overseas Insurance.
Many, such as public transport operator SBS Transit, tapped digitalisation efforts to keep the wheel turning and even accelerate growth.
"Despite the fall in public transport ridership during the pandemic, we continued to operate our buses and trains reliably to ensure that commuters, such as those in essential services, can get to work without any inconvenience," said Cheng Siak Kian, chief executive officer of SBS Transit.
Notably, he said the group employed the use of Electrostatic Disinfectant Spray (EDS) on its buses and trains to keep the virus at bay.
The group is also conducting a trial at Woodleigh Station, where it uses video analytics to detect crowdedness in stations and commuters without masks at the train platforms. It intends to roll this out across 5 of its MRT stations next year.
"We have been ingraining a culture of innovation and governance by accelerating the digitalisation of our bus and rail operations. We're improving existing systems and work processes to enhance productivity, increase reliability and garner greater cost efficiencies in our work," Cheng said.
The way Kon Yin Tong, ISCA president and managing partner at accounting firm Foo Kon Tan, describes it, the special edition of the SCA this year is an important morale booster for the winners and a timely reminder for all companies that there is a correlation between good governance and strong performance even during a crisis.
"One thing was clear: The common thread among all these companies was the tone at the top. It was key to the companies' ability to pivot their businesses while prioritising employee welfare and safety, nurturing good relationships between board and management, and being able to guide through choppy waters and maintaining stakeholders' confidence," Kon said.
"In a time when we are isolated in a hyper-connected world, the winners are a role model for others to emulate. The awards showcased the successes of strong corporate governance in helping build resilience in an environment that posed challenges on multiple fronts like Covid-19, climate impact, and technological transformation," he added.
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