Lunchtime is spent in breakout groups, playing Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB), a popular multiplayer online battle arena game, Pokemon Unite, or any of the team’s latest gaming obsessions.
AFK, short for “Away From Keyboard”, happens every last Friday of the month. That is when Razer staff play games or watch others play them during working hours.
Wan also leads her team in organising the Razer Cup, an internal gaming tournament with regional competitions usually held yearly and live-streamed to staff.
A big part of her job includes advocating for sustainability, and shaping the work culture for greater diversity, equity, employee engagement and well-being.
Under her leadership, Razer USA and Razer Singapore obtained the Great Place To Work certification for two consecutive years from 2021-2023. This global certification is based on employee feedback and independent analysis.
DIVERSITY, THE CORE OF INNOVATION
Being a female leader sets her apart – Razer Singapore is 65 per cent male and 35 per cent female. The company’s global gender ratio is 62 per cent male and 38 per cent female.
She is also a Gen-Xer, a group not traditionally seen to be driving the gaming culture. Wan admitted that she is not a hardcore gamer and is currently playing a more “childish” game, Disney Frozen, which is similar to Candy Crush.
But she points out that gaming today has moved beyond male or youth culture. And with that, diversity of the workforce is key to innovation.
“Diversity is about diversity of thoughts, and diversity of thoughts come from the individual background, culture, gender and people each person interacts with. That is key to creating products that are going to be relevant to our target audience,” she said.
In fact, the first order of business for Wan upon joining the company in 2019 was to push for the transition to a human resources information system, which allowed the company to digitalise and analyse the data of its 1,500 employees worldwide.
It took around a year for Wan and her 50-strong team to input the data. With information like employees’ race, gender, age, job, pay and so on, the software can indicate which pockets in Razer have more skill sets and which areas are lacking so that the company can optimise performance and productivity.
It also enables the company to implement inclusive hiring practices and anti-bias training programmes.
