e-HRM Inc

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Emerging HR Practice in Singapore: "No Medical Certificate" Required!!

Since last year March or April 2010, my company started practicing "no medical certificate" if you need to take half day or one (1) sick leave. This is one of the positive action taken by the company management. I just hope the employees don't "miss-use". I guess it worked well for my organization is because it is a regional management office and most of the employees are of middle and senior management staff category who 'clocked' more eleven (11) hours a day.

In recent month, I received a few emails and calls asking if my company was into the "no medical certificate" practice for one (1) day sick leave. I happily mentioned to them "Yes" but some of them were 'skeptical' about the practice.

For the 'skeptic' ... I shared with them the following ...

in India and Indonesia - most companies only require the employees to produce "medical certificate" if they are taking medical / sick leave more that 2 days (meaning 3 days).
why no medical certificate required? The countries I mentioned above, medical facilities are not easily accessible and it can be expensive for low wages employees to seek medical treatment and ask for medical certificate.
practice self-healing or medication. Feedback from our employees: sometimes they are just dizzy or having a mild flu. They only need to rest at home and self medication e.g., taking 'Panadol' (Paracetamol).
company policy / precaution - since our management office is small, we always advise our employees that if they are having flu, please stay at home - don't come to office and spread it to other... maybe this is why in Singapore during the flu season it became an epidemic!
can be a 'cost saving' effort. If every time our employee need to take medical / sick leave and the management impose them to submit a medical certificate from the company doctors ... ask yourself ... who is paying for it ... end of the day ... it is still the company bearing all the cost and if it is a co-payment scheme ... at least 80% of the cost is bear by companies.

With these sharing, I would like to stress that for the 'no medical certification' policy to be successfully accepted by company management and the HR community ... the key word is 'trust'.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Website for Job Descriptions

For the past few days, I have been drafting some job descriptions and it trigger me to write a short article on this topic.

Over the years, I have always find it useful to make references on the following website for some JD "juice" ... please click the hyperlink to visit the following website

O*Net Online: http://www.onetonline.org/

The Job Explorer: http://www.thejobexplorer.com/Job_Description/A-Z_Listings.html

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Website: "SME Toolkit Singapore"

Singapore, 07 June 2011 - Yesterday, I don't know what I click in the Internet and ended-up to this website page known as "SME Toolkit Singapapore". It was a blessing for me, another HR related website to my collection. The website has other non-HRM topics like:

Accounting & Finance
Business Planning
International Business
Legal & Insurance
Marketing & Sales
Operations
Technology
Workshop

Note: Do remember, you need to register (it is simple and free!) to enjoy the access to tons of templates and samples. Please click the hyperlink to visit the website: http://singapore.smetoolkit.org/singapore/en/category/1384/Compensation-Benefits

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Emerging HR Practices in 2011

Recently, I attended Singapore HR Summit 2011 - Productivity & Workplace ROI. One of the interesting topic that was presented by one of the international speaker was two (2) "emerging HR practice" ...

'Sleeping' .... in Europe, organization is allowing their employees to take a nap or have a 'sleep session' between 20 to 30 minutes. According to the presenter, research finding indicated that a 15 minutes nap / sleep can increase productivity as much as 15% to 30%.
'Removing the practice of conducting yearly performance appraisal session' ... according to research, there is no evidence that performance appraisal session improve employee's performance. Please don't take it that by removing the yearly performance appraisal session - the organization does not care about managing performance. What they are arguing is managers should be managing and providing positive feedback to their subordinate on 365 days a year.
'Free food' ... there is a trend that large organizations (Google, Microsoft Corp, etc.) are provide 'food' as part of their employment benefits. Some provide breakfast and other provide lunch! The presenter link the logic of providing 'food' benefit to "Maslow Hierarchy of Needs" ... sound logic!

Exhibit 1: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Employee Engagement Models

In addition to my previous article on "Video Session: Employee Engagement" - listed below are some samples of the Employee Engagement models available from the Internet ....