Interning at Keppel
Dean Lok
Y2 Business, MNO
Co-President
What is/was your internship role?
I was a Learning & Development (L&D) Intern in Keppel.
Our role in the learning team is to help Keppel achieve its Vision by fulfilling learning needs and ultimately, the development of Keppellites (Our employees).
I was involved in the planning of an organization-wide Growth Mindset initiative, where I liaised with multiple trainer providers, planned & executed a large-scale Global Learning Festival with multiple high profile speakers and even had an opportunity to facilitate our in-housing training on training managers to be better people managers.
Share with us a brief background of your internship company.
Keppel is a conglomerate with business units across various industries such as Asset Management, Offshore Marine and even Properties amongst many others.
What was your best takeaway/insight(s) from this internship?
“As a people manager, you are not just managing people, most importantly you are managing people’s emotions.”
This was a line shared by my boss about leadership and has since changed my view on what it takes to be a good leader. As a manager of people, your main role is to manage the feelings and the emotions of the people under your charge. This is the way towards effective leadership because at the core of it all, people just want to be valued, to be heard and to be wanted.
In terms of the actionables,
To build psychological safety, where people can truly be themselves, fail safely but learn quickly.
To allow the freedom to explore wild ideas and not be micromanaged.
To give your people a voice and to seriously hear them out.
What was/were your biggest challenge(s) faced and how did you overcome it/them?
My biggest challenge was my lack of knowledge on L&D frameworks, as I did not enter the internship with any sort of training or background in the L&D space. Hence, I was not able to effectively contribute to the team’s efforts right off the bat. To overcome this, I made use of Keppel’s LinkedIn Learning platform to better understand the various learning theories. Also, each and every member of the team was also very kind to impart their knowledge on this matter so this challenge was very quickly overcomed.
What would you do differently if you could go back to the start of the internship?
I had started the internship with an intention to keep a personal weekly performance journal so I could have tracked my performance and learning throughout summer. However, I gave up after just a month because it was just getting too busy (perhaps even laziness on my part). I wish I would have disciplined myself to keep the journal, and even requested my manager to be my accountability partner on this.
How has the internship value-added your prospective career in HR?
Having experienced a L&D role, I am one step closer to understanding the full spectrum of how HR functions in the marketplace. I now know that I am definitely open to the idea of a L&D role in the future. This internship role has further confirmed my belief in HR as a meaningful career and I am incredibly thankful for that.