Awareness Campaign 2015 Evaluation Report

Pang Jun Xiang

Peng Jingyi

(Interns, 11 May – 31 July 2015)

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IA Awareness Campaign 2015

[Introduction & Context]

Internal Audit (“IA”) has typically been viewed in a less-than-ideal light in many organizations, NTUC

Income (“Income”) being no exception. Common stereotypes include the notion of internal auditors

being annoying policemen, just waiting to catch others in the midst of their mistakes, and persistently

wanting to find fault with the way things are currently done even when it seems fine. However, IA is

definitely more than just an in-house police department and its role in Income goes beyond policing.

Setting out to improve this undesirable and inaccurate view of IA, the Awareness Campaign was

conceived in 2014 to work toward this. It was envisioned that through this campaign, the staff

throughout Income will appreciate the indispensable role that internal auditors play in ensuring the

organization is operationally healthy, and also that better working relationships will be built with the

staff outside of IA as they come to realize that internal auditors are actually an approachable lot.

[Objectives of Campaign]

The IA Awareness Campaign had 2 main goals, summarized under IA – Indispensable & Approachable.

The first goal was for the staff of Income not from IA to gain a greater appreciation and awareness of

IA’s critical contribution to Income’s operations. The end state is for these staff to know that IA staffs

actually play an indispensable role in keeping the organization in good operational health.

The second goal was to improve personal and working relations between staffs of IA and other

departments. Through engaging in the activities designed, staff would hopefully have fun together and

establish or deepen friendships in the process.

[Overview of Strategy]

An initial presentation proposing 6 brainstormed ideas or activities was made. Following that, one was

chosen and adapted to drive home the key message that internal auditors in Income are not only

indispensable to ensuring effective functioning of Income’s operations, but also an approachable lot,

both in and outside of work.

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The strategy concept was to carry out the campaign in two phases – the first phase involving an initial

perception survey coupled with photo taking, and the second phase entailing distribution of

personalized IA Awareness Campaign cards followed by administering a simple feedback survey.

The expenditure for this campaign was kept under $50.

[Phase One]

In Phase One of the IA Awareness Campaign, the campaign coverage1 spanned most departments in

Bras Basah HQ as well as Harbourfront Center. Through the creation of a movement chart for all the IA

staffs, each of them got to involve themselves in the campaign at one point or other. Two key elements

for Phase One were created, namely the voting board and the photo frame.

Voting Board

Which occupation below resembles Internal Auditors

the most?

Grab a sticker, take your vote!

#IAawarenessprogram2015

A voting board was created to encourage easy and light-hearted participation from the non-IA staffs. As

seen above, the two A4-sized printouts were pasted onto a corrugated board. The IA staff would carry

the board around and armed with stickers, invited the non-IA staff to do a very quick perception survey

on which of the four following occupations (fireman, doctor, policeman, repairman) resembled internal

auditors in Income the most, in their view. The expectation was that the policeman would be most

popularly voted for, with little votes for the other occupations, especially the doctor.

1 At Bras Basah HQ, we reached out to Branch Services (BS), Office Services (OS), Group & Health (GH), Information Management (IM), Personal

Lines (PL), Legal (LG), Finance (FN), Actuarial (AT), Compliance (COM), Corporate Office (CO), Marketing (MK), Corporate Social Responsibility

(CSR) and Human Resources (HR).

At Harbourfront, we reached out to Life Insurance (LI), Motor Insurance (MT), Office Services (OS) and Information Management (IM).

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Additionally, a photo frame (above) titled “Internal Auditors … Friends or Foes?” and five props

following the then-popular and friendly theme of “minions” and was created to facilitate a fun time of

photo taking between staff of IA and non-IA departments. Photos taken during Phase One would then

form part of a card and be printed out and distributed during Phase Two.

Chocolates were also purchased and given out during Phase One as an act of goodwill and to thank the

other staff for their sportiness in participation in Phase One of the campaign.

Overall, 101 photos were taken with non-IA staff and many more took part in the perception survey.

Some of the highlights are included above. The post-campaign voting board is shown below.

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As expected, we observed that many actually

voted for the occupation of policeman, some

without even giving it a second thought!

Interestingly, we noted that there were many

votes for the occupation of doctor – many

more than we expected (just a handful)! This

was particularly heartening as it showed that

there were many non-IA staffs who actually

knew and appreciated this positive aspect of

IA’s role. Hearing from some of them mention

phrases like “You guys diagnose our problems

and advise us!” was also very encouraging.

Lastly, there were a few unconventional

responses such as placing the sticker in the

center or even at the side. When curiously

asked for an elaboration for such a choice,

some of them felt that internal auditors play a

mix of all four roles from time to time and thus

he couldn’t decide. Another staff felt that

internal auditors ought to focus on prevention

rather than merely cure in their jobs.

Based on the voting results, almost

half (48%) of Income staffs we

surveyed felt that IA most resembled

policemen, similar to our

expectations of what people thought

about IA. Surprisingly, there were a

sizeable number (33%) who believed

IA was like a doctor.

This demonstrates that in the eyes of

other Income staffs, IA has its merits

and plays an important role. It was

an unexpected takeaway and a great

encouragement to the IA team.

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Photo Frame & Props

The photo frame and props designs were well-received, capitalizing on the current trend of “Minions”.

They elicited positive responses such as “cute” and “interesting”, and also made others curious about

our campaign as we passed by.

The photo frame was hand-made using

corrugated cardboard and cutting materials.

The designs were taken from online images

and printed on 250gsm paper before

attaching onto the frame. The props were

printed out and laminated to ensure

durability.

“Internal Auditors … Friends or Foes?” was

the tagline created to generate interest about

IA in a fun manner and encourage people to

contemplate IA’s role in Income. The yellow

and purple minions aptly reflected the “friend”

and “foe” roles respectively.

Internal Audit’s abbreviation “IA” was spun-off

creatively to stand for “Indispensable &

Approachable” and “Irritating & Annoying” for two

of our props. Many staff had fun using these props.

To portray a friendy image of IA, the phrase “Your

friendly neighborhood spiderman auditor” was

created and made into a prop, taking inspiration

from the quote in the movie Spider-Man.

[Phase Two]

For Phase Two of the campaign, we compiled all the photos and posters and liaised with Office Services

at Harbourfront Center for high-quality color printing on thick 250gsm A4-sized paper. The papers were

cut into A5 size and manually folded into A6 cards (see below for sample). Finally, they were given out to

every staff member who took photo(s) in Phase One as a personalized IA Awareness Campaign card.

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The personalized card consisted of 4 key elements.

One, a self-designed “What people think I do vs What I really do” poster on the front. The inspiration for

this came from 9gag, a popular website with young people these days and where many memes such as

this can be found. We felt that expressing the IA awareness message through such a medium would be

amusing and casual, and really capture the attention of readers.

Two, a stethoscope-themed poster from the IIA (Institute of Internal Auditors) website on the back. This

formalizes and clearly spells out our IA awareness message in the event that readers do not fully get it

yet after reading through the rest of the card.

Three, a standardized message from the IA team to thank the staff who participated.

Fourth, the photo taken during Phase One. This would hopefully entice the non-IA staff to hold onto this

unique and personalized card as a souvenir from their participation in the campaign, and from time to

time when they look at it, they will be reminded of our IA awareness message.

Through Phase Two of the campaign, we shared with the non IA staff that IA plays an often-overlooked

role of an Indispensable and Approachable doctor, by performing periodic reviews on organizational

health and keeping Income “healthy”. Similar to health checkups that might not always be pleasant or

enjoyable, audits done by IA are always necessary in the long run in helping to improve the control

processes in different departments, such that Income operates efficiently and optimally as a whole.

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At the end, to facilitate reflection and learning from this year’s

campaign, a quick feedback survey (below) was administered to

identify the responses participants had towards our activities.

[Results of Feedback Survey]

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Compiling the 75 responses gathered from the post-campaign feedback survey (not 100% as some were

away or out of office then), we have the following observations to highlight:

1. All of the respondents found the campaign a fun one, with about 60% of responses saying it was

a little fun and 40% saying it was lots of fun. This was good as it was a key objective of the

campaign – not just to put forth the message in a serious and un-engaging manner but to get

people hyped up and interested to know more.

2. When asked about the improvement in understanding of what IA does at the end of the

campaign, approximately 50% of respondents said they understand a little better, 40% a lot

better, and 10% not really or not at all. However, we note that many of the apparent negative

responses were actually qualified and these respondents meant that they already had a right or

fairly accurate understanding of what IA does, and thus the campaign did not add too much

value for them in this sense. Nevertheless, as seen from the results of the first question, they

had fun participating in the activities.

3. Food and games seemed to be the top 2 picks for respondents when they were asked to think

about what they would like to see in next year’s campaign, with souvenirs following close

behind. This would be good for next year’s team organizing the campaign to keep in mind.

4. 10 comments were given, with 2 being suggestions for improvement and the other 8 being

affirmation.

[Learning Points]

Looking back at the fruits of this year’s campaign, we have identified a few key learning points that could

prove useful for next year’s campaign or a similar awareness outreach program.

1. As our campaign involves a great measure of personal interaction between the IA staff and

other staff, the IA staff would have to be unafraid to approach others and initiate conversation.

2. The activities of choice need to be minimally intrusive and time-consuming to incentivize the

non-IA staff to participate. This aspect of convenience should be clearly conveyed to the non-IA

staff from the get-go (such as by telling them it is a quick 30-seconds survey or voting).

3. As Phase One and Two of the campaign were tightly linked (the perception survey and the card),

the four images used should ideally be congruent to avoid confusion.

4. The survey form design can be tweaked to be avoid misleading survey participants. Tick boxes

created for question c) caused some participants to only tick one option rather than ranking all

four options given, which was the original intention. A possible improvement is to make the

keyword “rank” explicit such as through bolding it.

5. Every member of the IA team was involved in the campaign to some extent. This is good as the

involvement allows the permanent staff to feel that this is more than just a project tasked to

interns, but it is really a department effort.

6. The IA team could be better prepared in explaining why we are having the campaign, and being

able to communicate the awareness message in an easy-to-understand way for non-IA staff.

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7. Different staff have different levels of prior understanding and past interaction with the IA

department. Therefore, one size may not fit all when it comes to selecting the strategy to

increase awareness. If possible, a brief audience analysis should be done to predict the likely

response of the staff the IA team intended to approach.

8. Currently, most of the IA staff approached other staff they already knew. However, this partially

defeats the purpose of the awareness campaign, which was to get the IA staff to establish new

connections with other staff. It would have been even better if the IA staff could be bolder in

approaching staff they do not know.

9. The Tampines center was left out of the campaign participation due to a lack of time to attend

to it, with the other tasks at hand for the IA team. Possibly, a day or two could be specially

carved out for the IA team to focus on the campaign efforts.

10. There was positive bonding with managers from other departments and we believe that this

campaign has left a different and positive impression on most of them about IA.

[Conclusion]

The fruits of our Awareness Campaign were seen in around 100 staff getting the chance to hear more

about what IA is really like from the IA team, and also have some fun and laughter together.

We have enjoyed the process of being involved in the IA Awareness Campaign 2015 from cradle to grave

immensely. It has allowed us to work and interact with multiple parties across Income and given us a

fresh and novel way to contribute to the IA department as interns. We sincerely hope that our efforts

have made a positive difference in improving the perceptions of non-IA staff towards the IA department

of Income, and trust that the phrase “Indispensable & Approachable” will be one that is here to stay.

We would like to thank Ms Goh for giving us the opportunity to take the lead in planning and executing

this campaign, and the entire IA team for being sporting in helping us to execute Phase One and Two.

Special mention also goes to Office Services for assisting us with the otherwise complex printing job, and

Alvin for giving us much valuable guidance along the way.