Saturday, March 25, 2017

Employee's "Probation" Confirmation: New Practices!

25 March 2017, Singapore: I was out on a dinner gathering with my old HR colleagues from the Aerospace Industry. They shared with me how they have adopted a new improved process for their employee's "probation" confirmation (aka automatic confirmation). I felt that it was a good topic for my HR blog.

Over the past 12 months, I have heard the following new practices how some company manage their "probation" or employment confirmation process: -

  • One US company (based in Singapore), they don't have "probation period" for new employee who join them. In their employment contract, they is stated clearly that upon accepting their employment offer - the new employee is confirmed in their employment and is entitled to all the employment benefits. This is a great way to engage a new employee!

  • One company in the Aerospace Industry, adopted an automatic probation confirmation method. The recruiter will send an email reminder to the hiring manager one month before a new employee probationary period will expire. The email clearly indicated that if their is not feedback or "report" of poor performance by the Hiring Manager - the employee will be automatically be confirmed. After the expiry date, the employee will be notified by email their their employment is confirmed. Assuming that after receiving the email reminder from the recruiter, the Hiring Manager request for the employment be termination or extend the probationary period – HR Dept will contact the Hiring manager to justify the case for termination or reason to extend the probation period.
I will introduce the above practices to my company. It will help reduce all the paperwork and improve how company engage new talent.

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Friday, November 18, 2016

Segregation of Duties: A Simple Example

18 November 2016, Singapore: The last couple of days, enforce my positive view of "Segregation of Duties". By adherence to this 'internal control" policy, it create less conflict and help you to see other people professional opinion... 

Example # 1:
I wanted to use my HR Blog e-HRM Inc as an information sharing and HR training for my team. But due to some stupid bloggers, they tarnish the blog site by blogging racism topics and up-load porn videos - my corporate IT deactivated the picture download. It affected most of my blog articles. After few round of explanation to my local IT management team, Corporate IT requested an official approval from the IT Director to make the decision if the website can be moved to the company white-list. I decided to drop an email to him and his manager and informing them that it is alright for them not to approve my request and I will respect their decision. At the end, the IT Director made the decision not to put the blog website on our company IT "white-List". I accept it. Why? Because it was his area of expertise and authority. 

Example # 2:
After a discussion with my Managing Director, I was tasked to inform my colleague, Manager in charge of Facilities Management to look into my department office renovation. I dropped him an email, enclosed the designated area floor plan and shared with him my proposal. He came to my office, looking worried and shared with me that he cannot accept my proposal as it will cost a lot and too complex due to internal piping and electrical wiring. I told him that I will accept his counter proposal as I am not the expert but shared with him my expectation that the rooms should be sound proof and visitors / non-HR staff should not be able to view my HR staff LCD monitor due to nature of their work.

Based on the above examples, if every one understand the "segregation of duties" policy - there will be less conflict, and misunderstanding among department / functional heads. Beside used as an internal control mechanism, it help to establish the area of accountable and decision making authority.  



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Monday, November 14, 2016

HR of The Future, By Dave Ulrich (1997) ....

14 November 2016, Singapore: After attending RGF "Future of HR" conference, I started to "googled" and was redirected to this website entitled (click it to read for details) "HR of The Future: Conclusion and Observations" by Dave Ulrich, 1997

Is was written by Dave Ulrich in 1997. Do you think, after almost 9 years ... 2016 ... How much has change and evolve in the field of HR Management?

Please write your comment.

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Singapore MOM 2017 Regulations: Paternity Leave and Maternity Leave for Unwed Mother

14 November 2016, Singapore: HR Professional, whose job portfolio cover Singapore - Please take note of Singapore Ministry of Manpower (MOM) changes with effect from January 2017: -

  • Paternity leave for father whose child is Singaporean citizen - with effect from January 2017, it will be mandatory for 2 weeks. Currently, 2016 regulations is 1 week mandatory while another 1 week is voluntary by the employer. For details, click the hyperlink: http://www.heybaby.sg/
  • Maternity leave for single or unmarried Mother: With effect from 2017, they will be entitled to 16 weeks of maternity leave compared to current which is only 12 weeks.
Click the hyperlink: http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/parliament-unwed-mums-to-get-16-week-maternity-leave 
Listed below are some of the current 2016 MOM regulations governing the paternity leave and maternity for single or unmarried mother. Click the hyperlink: -

I know some of the reader from outside Singapore will mention that there is some form of discrimination between married and unmarried mother. I will not comment on it as it is not the objective this article but I do hope in the future, Singapore being a develop country will be able to close such gap.


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Saturday, November 12, 2016

Fake Diplomas and Degrees: Tough to be a HR Professional

12 Nov 2016, Singapore: I wrote this short article on 21 March 2015, but did not publish it. Saw the status "Draft" and since I have not been active since Aug 2015 ... here it goes! Now days, there is too many fake degrees - as a HR professional, I think it is getting difficult to verify a fake diploma or degree with a real one. Some of the fake diplomas / degrees makers has their own university website and 'professional' call-center to verify the validity and authenticity of their fake degree when you call-in. They will pretend to be the university when you call in to conduct reference check.

Click the hyperlinks for website that can help to educate you on fake degrees: 







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The Future of HR:

12 Nov 2016, Singapore: Last Thursday (10 Nov 2016), I was invited by RGF to attend their annual conference entitled “Future of HR: Technology I Disruptive I Collaborative”. It was an eye-opener for me. Back in 2014, I started my HR Team to use “WhatsApp” to speed up our HR team communication. At the conference, I was introduced to other application like “Slack” and “Facebook: Workplace” which was developed to improve communication and engage team members / company employees.



To keep it short, the 1 day conference was divided into: -
  • The Collaborative Panel
  • The Asia Panel
  • The Disruptive Panel
  • The Technology Panel
Details can be obtained at the following website (click the hyperlink): www.futureofhr.events 



A speaker from IBM, Ms. Pallavi Srivastava shared with the participants about the future changes to HR professional skills in their respective "specialist" roles (for details, please refer to the pictures): -






I hope this article was helpful to newbies (like me) to the world of HR "Technology, Disruptive, Collaborative".

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Saturday, August 22, 2015

What should be the ideal size of my HR team?

22 August 2015, Singapore: Got this article via my email. Very information and will help me justify my department headcount.

Click the hyperlink: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-should-ideal-size-my-hr-team-tushar-bhatia


(source: From Mr. 


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Friday, July 24, 2015

FREE "MOOC" Training in Psychometric Testing at Work

24 July 2015, Singapore: I received an email request to share this in my e-HRM Inc Blog. PsyAsia International is offering the world's first Psychometric Testing MOOC. The focus is on Psychometric Testing for the Workplace and hence very relevant to Human Resources and allied professionals.

It is a 10-week, free online course. The principal mode of instruction is the same as most MOOCs - video lessons, followed by interactive quizzes. They also have a course forum for delegate interaction and their facilitator will arrange LIVE sessions for additional learning and Q&As.

The company is a leader in innovative Psychometric Test Training in Asia and the lead facilitator for this course is a UK and Australia-educated, award-winning registered psychologist.

Kindly visit their Psychometrics MOOC webpage for full details of the course and facilitator, and to register: http://psyasia.com/psychometrics-mooc/



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Saturday, June 13, 2015

Coursera: International Leadership & Organizational Behavior

13 June 2015, Singapore: Since middle of April 2015, I wanted to share this course or should I called it "Verified Course" entitled International Leadership and Organizational Behavior (ILOB) but work and personal commitment kept me busy. Before going into details - please let me "boss" about my achievement in the course: -


The ILOB course is offered by Università Bocconi, Italy (it is conducted in English ... I don't speak - read - write Italian!). It is a 6 weeks course and the syllabus are listed below: -

Week 1:  Leadership Acumen. International perspective on leadership, common traps & challenges, and opportunities of intercultural leadership. 

Week 2:  Navigating Culture. Impact of cultural differences on organizations, decoding culture, culture classifications and stereotyping, developing intercultural intelligence.    

Week 3:  Communication. Communication and its impact on leadership identity and relationships, managing communication to improve decision making, steps for developing your intercultural communication skills.

Week 4:  Motivation. Views on individual motivation, cultural differences in motivation, developing motivation and commitment in teams.

Week 5:  Networking. Patterns of interpersonal relationships in/across organizations, strategically developing social networks and social capital, norms for networking across cultures.

Week 6:  Conflict. Effective / defective conflict management approaches, dealing with ethical dilemmas.

I strongly encourage anyone who wish to go 'expat' or international assignment enroll this course. The course are supported by videos interviews and sharing by former student of Università Bocconi / Bocconi Alumni Association.



Assistant Professor Franz Wohlgezogen is the Lecturer for the course.

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Singapore Management University (SMU) + Accenture: New Directions in Change Management

13 June 2015, Singapore: On 03 June, I was invited to attend the SMU Breakfast Event. I went for the briefing session by Carly Switzer, "New Directions in Change Management".



The session lasted for for about 90 minutes - the information and knowledge I gained make me want to attend her public course.

Below is just some of the information shared by Ms. Switzer: -





Click the hyperlink: https://www.smu.edu.sg/conference/exdbreakfast_2015?itemid=8531

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Sunday, April 12, 2015

Summery of SHRi Article: Are your job ads discriminatory?

01 April 2015, Singapore: This is a summary of an article from SHRi (Singapore Human Resources Institute) Human Capital magazine (Jan-Mar 2015 Issue). Good article for those in the talent acquisition field. If you are a new HR practioner taking up talent acquisition roles in Singapore please take note of the seven (7) criteria ... as the author wrote: it is a no-no's in Singapore recruitment advertisements. 

Nationality
Words or phases that excludes Singaporeans or indicate preference for non-Singaporeans, for example, 'Non-Singaporean / specific nationality preferred / welcome only', or 'EP / S Pass / WP / DP / LTSVP holders preferred / welcome / only.

Language
If a job entails proficiency in a particular language, the ad should explain why. For example' "Mandarin is an advantage" doesn't cut it.

Age
Words or phrases that suggest preference for candidates of a particular age, for example, 'Below 30 years old only'.

Race
Race should not be a criterion for selection of candidates.

Religion

Religion should not be a criterion for recruitment unless the job requires employees to perform religious functions as of the job.

Gender
Words or phrases that suggest perference for job candidates of  a particular gender.

Marital Status
Generally an irrelevant criterion, so for example,"Preferably singles' is not acceptable.



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Thursday, April 2, 2015

TED Talk: Dan Pink on Motivation

02 April 2015, Singapore: This is a video (18 minutes) about motivation. I was introduced to the video when I enroll for the COURSERA course 'International Leadership & Organizational Behaviour'.

After viewing the video, I have to agree with the presenter Daniel Pink. As a HR Professional, now I know why some jobs cannot be rewarded with money! Watch the video!

Click the hyperlink: Dan Pink on Motivation


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