Reducing social gap between employees and the management

Why is it important to reduce the gap between employees and the mgmt? Is is necessary? Wht would be the benefits? Nowadays employees are more open and direct. They are not like it used to be 10 or 20 yrs ago. Last time, we were so influenced by the British, so the employer-employee relationship is more like master-servant kind of relationship. However, time has changed. The new generation doesn't buy the idea anymore. They want equality and respect. May be not in term of pay & benefits but in term of relationship. Leaders in organization must go down and meet their staff. In politics, they are called "grassroots". At workplace, if leaders can spend some time to listen to their employees, they will gain more respect and loyalty from the employees. It would be easier then to implement anythg even if some of the decisions are not very popular. It's not so much like politics within an organization, but more of understanding, respect & care tht's important to the employees. So treat your employees well & they will work for you unconditionally.

Developing Your Ownself

You have a steady job already. They pay is not bad. Every year you receive your increment, bonus etc. There are times when the company is not making tht good and there's no bonus and only with little increment, but you still have a job. Then the company starts to offer Voluntary Separation Scheme (VSS) package to the staff. The HR policies are getting tougher and tougher. Little mistakes and flat performance are considered misconduct. What should you do? Stay on or find a new job? But then this question comes into your mind, "what else can you do other than wht you are doing now, with current company..?" Man, tht's bad news. You shd start thinking ahead and use some of your savings to develop yourself now and then. You can't really depend on your company to develop you. The best tht the company can do is providing skill training. If you are lucky the company might send you to further your education, but you have to serve some odd years to pay back for its investment in you. Lucky if tht's what you want. And lucky if tht knowledge can be applied or marketable outside. But you have the choice to do it on your own, why wait? Now the question is wht shd be your focus of study? Of course the most important thg is the course tht you decide to take must be marketable in the future. Second it shd offer better pay than wht you are currently getting. Third is your interest, you must be interested in the area of study, because tht might be your nxt career.

There are a few suggestions tht I think might be usefull in selecting the type of course. A friend of mine who are already at the age of 53 just registered for LLB degree. I asked him why? He said lawyer has no retirement age. You may work as long as you want and retire at any age you prefer. There are a few other professions tht there might be no age limit to it, ie; lecturer, architecture, doctor or pharmacist. You can't be doctor or pharmacist or architecture at tht age. But you can learn to be a lawyer. Well, you can also be a lecturer if you want but you need a PhD or DBA to qualify for tht job. I'm in HR, and I'm considering LLB as my next course to pursue. Before tht I'm also planning to take my HR professional certification course from SHRM to get better recognition. I'd like to take professional course in Company Secretary but abundant tht idea when I was no longer doing secretarial job. Btw tht's also a good profession to consider.

So don't think too long, act now...

Managing Problematic Staff

How to manage a big spender (coz he's in sales, so need to budget to entertain customers), but performance is average? The answer is simple but yet complicated when it comes to implementation. Well lots of people are good at planning but lousy implementer. If he or she's is a contract staff, once his or her contract expires, do not extend the contract. Put it to an end. Simple right? But when someone has high profile connection, in an Asian environment, this is not possible. So wht can be done? How to manage this situation? The only best solution is to offer him or her a fresh new contract on a "contract for service" terms. Contract for service means tht he or she works for a company as a contractor not an employee. So the arrangement such as salary etc does not apply. At least we are giving him or her a chance to work as a contractor and improve him or herself. And at leas he or she'll have the experience working as a contractor or consultant to a company instead of as employee. Wish this will work. Wish his performance (in this case) will improve. Wish the management will not consider him next year if his performance deteriorated or nor improvement at all.

Managing Talent & Move Faster

Once you have identified talents within the company, you need to plan for their career path & development. Talents valued self development, through lateral transfer or promotion. They do not want to do the same thg for years. Maximum they can take it is only 3 years, but some talents might get boared easily, ie; less than one year. So how to manage them and get them occupied? The managers need to plan for activities and development program for them internally, with or without HR a simple plan can be developed. You can do tht and retain those talents for years within your department or lose them. Either way, you have to react. Managers have to act not only as managers but also mentors to them. Simple activities would be to throw them into new project, get them involved in drafting new strategy, coming up with new product, or letting them involved in assisting others esp new comers to adopt to the new environment at your department. The idea is to keep them busy and get them to explore and learn new thgs. They can manage their normal chores while doing tht, don't worry. Tht's why they are talents. They objectives are to make them involved in creative thinking, new products or projects, asissting others and get thgs done faster.

Try this...and you'll see them around for a while longer before they get bored. Move fast...


- chezul

Social Reengineering

In order for a company to implement culture change within the organization, a social reengineering is required. The question is what is social reengineering and how to implement a social reengineering for a company?

A company has its own culture. A matured organization has set of cuture and values for years. Why change? The answer is survival. Can a company maintain at status quo for years without any changes? Even Coca-cola has changed over the years. Shell also has changed its values from pure-profit orientation into a 'green' company.

Leaders in the organization must embraced the new culture first. They have to show the example, they might even have to change their way of life. Respect must be earned! No exception.

Change or social engineering must be implemented to address a crisis. If no crisis, employees will take it lightly. It'd be better if the crisis has direct impact on them and they can see the impact so immediate and in front of their eyes. For instance, customer's complaint or sales dropped or part of company's building collapsed etc. This is the best opportunity to address the desired culture and to drive the employees to work harder to achieve the company's objective. However, when the company achieved its desired target or it managed to come out of the crisis, if necessary the employees must be rewarded accordingly. When rewarding, while they are still in high spirit, the leaders of the company can reaffirn the new cultures within the staff and the process must be repeated to ensure it's embedded in each and every employee's "DNA".

When you manage to change the employee's culture form one level to another, and the result shows, social engineering is done (but not completed coz it's ongoing effort).

So let's implement it...

- chezul

customer service representative

Customer service representative or CSR has a career.

most CSR jobs are contractual on a short or mid-term basis. this is simply because the CRM companies manage customer service on outsourcing basis is also on a fixted-term contract. however, a good CSR can develop his or her own career in CRM simply because the CRM business is a fast growing industry.

what you need to do is to learn as much as possible about customer service, management of it and skill and competency required, and start to improve.

CSR can become team leader, customer service manager, sales executive, trainer, counselor, and alot more.

Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

EAP stands for employee assistance program. it's a program that focus on industrial counselling at workplace. not many companies embrace eap coz it's cost related and revenue generated.

however, when automibile companies started eap some 50 years ago in the US, it's all about sustaining profitability. eap somehow assisted those companies to maintain and sustain their assistance. ceo needs to take care of its human capital first, then the bottom line, not the other way around.