Mr. Roger Tan

Roger fondly remembers his ‘uncles’ and ‘aunties’ at City Hall—colleagues much older than him at the Public Service Commission (PSC)—when he joined in 1993 as a newly minted PSC scholar, his very first job.

“They were mostly ladies, who had already been with the PSC a long time when I joined, who often took us younger ones out for lunches or often brought their culinary creations for us to sample.” Regular gatherings to celebrate each other's birthdays, durian parties, potlucks were part of the family-like atmosphere at the PSC. “Back then there were a lot fewer emails so people generally talked and interacted a lot more in person.”
 

The Start-Up
The PSC resided on the fourth and highest level of City Hall. The Public Service Division (PSD) was later spun off from the PSC to specifically focus on developing and enabling the civil service, and Roger moved to the PSD, while keep the same office. Most staff faced the side overlooking the Adelphi and the present-day Supreme Courts, while the bosses commanded spectacular views of the Padang on the other side.

“To go to work, I would have to go in via the basement entrance underneath the front staircase that’s in the middle of the Padang side, where during important events all the important people will sit,” recalls Roger. “Police guards manned the entrance, and as you walked in, it's a very interesting feeling to transition from the very old, colonial, majestic façade to a modern office inside.”

Roger was a psychologist tasked with helping the civil service assess and select scholars. He cited the seminal influence of the legendary Mr Lim Siong Guan, who was made the Permanent Secretary of the PSD during Roger’s third year of work. “Mr Lim was impressed with what we’d been doing to help assess and select scholars for the PSC previously,” Roger shares. “He asked me to help set up a similar unit for the entire civil service.”

This became Roger’s core charter at the PSD, and he grew the unit from one psychologist to - at its peak—more than 30, serving the entire public service. The way it was run was also pioneering, more like an enterprising ‘start-up company’ in the way it charged and accounted to other agencies for its services.

“This was unheard of at the time because public agencies used to provide services to each other for free, but Mr Lim didn't want the system to be abused, so we had to create this charging mechanism” Roger explains. “I really grew professionally, had fun and learned a lot from Mr Lim.”
 

Lead with Empathy
A personal anecdote about Mr Lim has shaped how Roger conducts himself as a leader. PSD psychologists were regularly assigned handphones to use when coordinating psychometric tests on the university campuses. In the early 1990s, handphones were not cheap and once, three went missing. Mr Lim started a board of investigation and one of Roger’s young psychologist colleagues was deemed responsible for losing them.

“My director and I were planning to pay the sum, because it would have been prohibitive for the junior staff—each handphone cost about $1,000!,” Roger shared. “But when Mr Lim sent the endorsed report back, he included a cheque with the amount required.  He explained that as a public officer, we had to follow the rules but at the same time, as a leader, one could also exercise discretion. He felt that while the junior staff had been a bit careless, it was not all his fault, so he decided to help.”

“This showed me that the leader is someone who should uphold justice but at the same time, show empathy as well,” he reflected. “We were all very touched by the whole incident, and it has left a very deep impression on me till today.”
 

Treasure the Work Family
Today, Roger still keeps in touch with many of the ‘aunties and uncles’. While most of them have retired, annual gatherings and very active WhatsApp groups keep ties alive. Roger treasures these relationships fondly in contrast to what he sees as the more superficial office relationships of today. Thinking about his time in City Hall, he grew philosophical.

“Life was quite different then, and this may sound cheesy, but there’s nothing wrong with being old. Whether you are a person or a majestic building like City Hall, there’s bound to be something that we can find value in, and that we can always treasure.”