SHATEC CEO Margaret Heng wins Executive of the Year Award for Talent Development and Engagement

Under Heng’s leadership, the company’s brand innovation strategy has allowed the school, which is renowned in Singapore for talent development in hospitality, to reach Asia and beyond.

SHATEC CEO Margaret Heng bagged the Executive of the Year Award for Talent Development and Engagement at the Singapore Business Review Management Excellence Awards 2019.

Back on its second year, Singapore Business Review honours the Lion City’s most outstanding business leaders, including trailblazing teams and individuals whose initiatives have resulted in substantial business gains for their company’s operations.

In 2017, the chief executive led the company’s management team in establishing SHATEC Global, the enterprise’s first overseas arm.

Leaning on SHATEC’s strong legacy and reputation for hospitality training and development, Heng conceptualised SHATEC Global to offer a new suite of services beyond Singapore.

These services include consultancy in the establishment of hotel and tourism training institutes, the provision and licensing of proprietary programmes and curricula for implementation in host countries as well as structured or ad hoc training services in the fields of hotel operations and hospitality for participants from training institutions and the industry.

With a goal to provide upskilling opportunities for hospitality workforce worldwide, particularly in developing cities, Heng sought to level up regional standards in service excellence using the tried and true SHATEC Model of hospitality education.

The proven working model, which has been successfully implemented in Singapore and partner institutions in Asia, is centred on three key pillars: a strong theoretical foundation that leads to a firm repertoire of knowledge pertaining to the specialisation of study, a strong emphasis on skills acquisition through laboratory and hands-on training, and a strong link to industry to reinforce the training from institutional training and real-life practices in the industry.

During its first major inter-regional collaboration, SHATEC Global partnered a Thailand private school to set up the International College of Hospitality Education. In this joint venture, SHATEC Global roped in leading international brands to offer structured internship opportunities for the graduates.

SHATEC Global works closely with partner institutions to ensure contextualisation and a smooth transfer of knowledge when it comes to running a hotel and tourism training institute. They achieve this, despite the challenge of environmental and cultural differences from the countries they partner with.

Besides making inroads in Thailand, SHATEC Global has, since its inception, also extended its footprint to China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Papua New Guinea and the Middle East.

In extending SHATEC’s reach to Asia and beyond, Heng was also appointed as vice president of the Asia Pacific Council for Hotel and Restaurant Institutional Education for 2019 to 2020. She also won the Singapore bid to host the regional advocate’s conference in 2021.

Heng is the Executive Director of the esteemed Singapore Hotel Association (SHA). She works closely with the SHA Board to implement projects related to manpower, productivity, marketing, image building, human resource training and development, service quality, environment, fire safety and security, amongst others.

The CEO also garnered the Public Service Star Award by the President of Singapore in 2017 and the SPRING Singapore Merit Award for her contributions to the Singapore Standardisation Programme in 2014.

The Singapore Business Review Management Excellence Awards was held on 26 November 2019 at the Conrad Centennial Singapore.

The 2019 winners were judged by a panel consisting of Henry Tan, Managing Director at NEXIA TS; David Chew, Executive Director, Risk Advisory at Deloitte Southeast Asia; Lim Wei Wei, Partner and Practice Leader, Governance and Risk at Baker Tilly TFW; Yang Eu Jin, Partner and Co-Head of Capital Markets Practice at RHTLaw Taylor Wessing LLP; and Pardeep Singh Khosa, Director at Davinder Singh Chambers LLC.

If you would like to join the 2020 awards and be awarded as one of the most outstanding management executives of Singapore, please email Julie Anne Nuñez at julie@charltonmediamail.com