I recommend this book

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need (Paperback)

by Daniel H. Pink (Author), Rob Ten Pas (Illustrator)

Have you read a career guide book illustrated in manga (Japanese cartoon genre)? Check it out, click on the book.

Manila Trip - learnings from a passionate and energised culture

I am currenthly involve in a global project to improve the Shared HR Services operations in my company. The team comprises of representatives from several regional service centres. We had been sharing on good practice from each service centres during our teleconference meetings and I was interested to learn how Manila is doing as the service centre over there operates at night as they had to serve the Americas. I was there on 23-24 July.

I flew out of KLIA mid morning of 23rd and arrived in Manila in the afternoon. To start the day (or rather night), I arrived at the Manila office at about 8 pm. The scene at the office was just like an early morning rush in KL. I could see a lot of workers rushing through checkpoints at the entrance(these are very common in Manila).

I had a preliminary meeting for an hour with the Facilities and Infrastrure Manager. I was informed that there were close to 25 different entities of Business Processing Outsource (BPO) companies in the building itself (apparently BPO is an industry in the Phillippines).

Then I joined the Shared HR Services 15 minutes briefing. Eventhough they were working at night I could sense the excitement, energy and passion from the team. They were listening attentively throughout the session.

Right after that, it was a marathon meeting with the Operational Leadership team. The first session was a sharing of the work which had been done in KL. This took about close to an hour and a half, then it was Manila's team which was similarly lengthly. The session was an open discussion in exploring opportunities to cooperate and improve the Shared HR Services operations. Though we were suppose to have our lunch (at 12 midnight, mind you), we ended up having a working lunch. By the time we finished the meeting, it was close to 2 am.

We took a break by going on a walk round the office. I saw the staff were hard at work. After half an hour, we continued with plenary sessions which were equally exciting and full of passionate discussion. We ended our day (or rather night) at 4 am and I then headed back to the hotel.

I reached the hotel at about 4.15 am. By this time my eyes were closing as I have been awake for the past 20 hours. I took a hot shower, performed my prayer (fajr prayer starts at 4.21 am in Manila) and went to sleep. I skipped breakfast and woke up at about 11 am to get ready to check out and attend a business lunch with one of the Phillippines business Human Resources General Manager. The lunch ended at 2 pm and then it was a rush to the airport.

My airport check-in was not as effiecient as my itenarary at the Manila office. The airport IT system was down and the whole rows at the check-in counters were stuck. It was a very long wait. After close to 45 minutes, only then I was checked in manually. Obviously the Manila airport did not have a proper Business Continuity Plan (BCP). What is BCP, well, it has to be a separate posting as this one is already long. If anyone of you are interested to know, write me an email.

I arrived at KLIA at 9 pm, performed my prayers, took the ERL at about 9.45 pm, arrived at KL Central at 10.15 pm, my wife picked me up at 10.20 pm and arrived home safely at 10.45 p.m. It was a very long day and night.

An email from Le Service Ressources Humaines

Last Saturday, I received this email from Le Service Ressources Humaines

From:
To: amzzah_naseehah@ymail.com
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2008 1:51:24 PM
Subject: Votre Mail

Bonjour

Ce poste n'est actuellement plus ouvert. Nous nous en excusons et vous proposons de revenir consulter nos offres ultérieurement.

Vous souhaitant bonne chance dans votre recherche d'emploi.

----------

Cordialement

Le Service Ressources Humaines

I then went to http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ to translate the email and found out its meaning in English, with some funny grammar as follows:

Hello

This station n' is currently more open. We excuse ourselves some and let us propose to you to return to consult our offers later on.

Wishing you good luck in your research d' employment.

----------

Cordially

The Service Human Resources

It is still a mystery to me since I have not consulted nor visited any French languange Human Resources websites recently and the email cannot be a spam as it does not seem to have the look and feel of a spam. Any clue?

Employee Motivation: Tips for Entrepreneurs from IdeaCrossing

An interesting news article I have read in the net.

Employee Motivation: Tips for Entrepreneurs
Source: IdeaCrossing
Posted: 2008-07-14

July 14, 2008 – Cleveland, OH - The success of new business ventures is tightly tied to employee motivation, and profitable entrepreneurs are serious students of the art and science behind motivating their employees.

“Understanding the diversity inherent to employee motivation is important to a startup’s success,” said Tiffan Clark, Marketing Vice President of JumpStart Inc., the venture development organization behind IdeaCrossing, a free online resource that connects entrepreneurs with investors and provides entrepreneurs with a multitude of resources to help grow their business. “Employee motivation is different from person to person and from business to business. The successful startup ventures we see pay close attention to the key factors that drive employees to greatness.”

Employee Motivation 101

The basics of employee motivation are consistent across most organizations and include:

• Enthusiasm of leadership.
  If you demonstrate enthusiasm through good times and bad, you’ll find your positive spirit is contagious.
  
• Employee Interaction.
  Be available for regular, meaningful face time with your team; this will help to keep the lines of communication open between you and your employees.
  
• Recognition.
  Consistently compliment a job well done.
  
• Incentives.
  Cash isn’t always king; a flexible workplace allowing for no-hassle personal time and family obligations is important to employees, and goes a long way in fostering loyalty and spurring motivation.

Employee Motivation for Top Talent

Though usually self-starters, the best employees typically require more from employers to remain motivated over time. A primary motivator for exceptional talent is having the ability to speak their minds in a free and unrestricted fashion. Offering channels for feedback, and acting on that feedback, will go a long way to retaining and motivating your key people.

The opportunity for self-improvement is another powerful motivator for high-performing employees. Providing your people with opportunities for professional growth through continual increases in responsibility, as well as education, is a known method for keeping your best talent stimulated and energetic. Finally, don’t be afraid to consult a trusted business mentor for advice on employee motivation; business mentors provide living proof for what works and what doesn’t. Online business communities such as IdeaCrossing streamline the process of connecting business mentors with entrepreneurs seeking advice on important matters such as employee motivation.

It pays to remember that unhappy employees usually leave supervisors and managers, not jobs and companies. In addition to fostering motivation through positive action, be sure to avoid these consistent killers of motivation:

• Lack of clear organizational goals and employee expectations
• Failure to provide performance feedback
• Fostering an environment where fear prevents innovation
• Threatening your employee’s position or income – probably the easiest way to scare top talent into initiating a job search

------------------------------------------------------------------------
About IdeaCrossing
IdeaCrossing is a free Internet resource available to all individuals and organizations with an interest in supporting and promoting entrepreneurial activity. IdeaCrossing helps entrepreneurs find the assistance and investment capital they need to launch promising new business ventures. Additionally, IdeaCrossing serves the Angel and Venture Capital communities by identifying and screening new investment opportunities. Simply stated, IdeaCrossing is about creating the connections that build businesses.

For more information contact Tiffan Clark at tiffan.clark@jumpstartinc.org or call 216.363.3400.

Denying comfort zone to unleash our talent

As I had mentioned previously, I currently have 3 teams in my unit reporting to me, each led by a Team Lead. Uniquely, the coverage of each team is dissimilar due to the complexity of each team's roles. However each team has an equal ratio of coverage to the number of team members. So I have a large size team, a medium size team and a small size team in my unit.

Each of my Team Leads has their own strengths and weaknesses. One of them, let us call her L, has high management skill but is still developing her knowledge and skill of the job. She also needs to work on her temperament, as she is easily agitated by new things and aversive to managing difficult subordinate or handling difficult situation. L is the Team Lead of the large size team.

As I had mentioned in my earlier posting, I had to let 5 of my team members joined another unit due to operations expansion, 2 of them progressed with promotion. Then, I had 2 resignations in the team during the same period. To make matter worse, I had to release one of my Team Leads to head a new unit. I took this opportunity to reorganise my team.

In the midst of the reorganisation, L approached me. She wanted the team she is leading to be resized so that the 3 teams in my unit to be equally distributed. Somewhere along the discussion, she also disclosed to me that she was uncomfortable to handle payroll activities, one of the knowledge and skill sets she was developing. So she was hoping by resizing the teams, she would not be handling payroll activities.

After listening to her, I calmly told her that with the payroll activities skill she was developing, she would be able to expand her knowledge and skill on the trades of the job. With the knowledge she would be able to lead the team more effectively as well as beefing up her dossier which will be beneficial for her future progression. I also told her relying entirely on her management skill strength would be insufficient to lead the team effectively. By possessing the knowledge and skills of her job, she would be able to acquire the confidence of her superior, respected by her colleagues and being looked up by her subordinates. I shared with her that what she had confided to me was really her fear to leave her comfort zone. She had been comfortable relying on her current skill sets that she was reluctant to expand her spectrum.

In life, we need to be bold and take calculated risk to progress. The world is revolving and takes in new days and nights, and we as human needs to seize the opportunity and unleash our talent.

An easy decision

While I was having dinner at home on Thursday night, my Regional Operations Manager (let us call him ROM) called me on my mobile. After a few pleasantries, he asked me about the performance of one of my team members who had resigned recently (let us call her Resignee).

I was a little bit taken by surprise, the question did not sound logical as Resignee had already resigned, so why did ROM wanted to know about her performance. So before answering him, I asked ROM why did he want to know about Resignee's performance. He said that Resignee wanted to rejoin and had called one of her colleagues. I asked who did she call as I wanted to know whether the colleague was one of my team members. As I have expected, indeed she had called one of her previous colleagues. From here I deduced that she wanted to rejoin my team, as if she were to call some other colleagues from another team, then her intention would somehow meant that she wanted to rejoin but into another team. Another deduction that I could make was, she was not having problem with the team or me before she left.

Let me share more about what had transpired before Resignee left the team. As I had mentioned in my previous posting, since May, I had to let 5 of my team members joined another unit due to operations expansion. 2 of them progressed on promotion. To make matter worse, I had 2 resignations in the team during the same period. Backfilling of the vacancies was challenging as the support from the resourcing department was far from satisfactory, the time ran faster than the replacement coming in. So when Resignee tendered her resignation, her Team Lead and I had plead for her to complete part of her notice period of three months so that we could appoint a replacement and she could then hand over her job properly.

Alas, Resignee was so adamant in resigning and tendered a 4 days notice of resignation and bought out the rest. This showed the utmost selfish attitude that prevailed in her. The least that she could do was to stay a while longer and negotiate with the other company to hold on to the offer. The company would certainly hold on the offer if she was the best candidate, otherwise the company was no better if it was to offer the next best candidate as it had lowered its standard. Afterall Resignee was gainly employed.

Back to ROM. I told ROM that my assessment of her was not that impressive. I had caught her unable to provide assistance to her team during two critical events. Then I also caught her not paying attention during several team meetings, once I even saw her talking while I was giving my speech. I had given her my feedback individually. When she left abruptly, I was not too happy.

Early the next day, I called Resignee's ex-Team Lead to relate to her the previous night's story. Apparently she had been approached by the same Resignee's ex-colleague to relate the appeal to rejoin. Before I told Resignee's ex-Team Lead what had happened, I asked her what was her opinion, she said that she also would not want Resignee to come back.

Then mid morning, my boss came over to me for a discussion. Apparently, Resignee also called another ex-colleague and appealed to rejoin. So this other ex-colleague approached my boss. I gave the same answer, No, and she agreed with me.

To conclude, why did I say this was an easy decision? It was obvious that Resignee's performance was unimpressive when I, the team Manager, personally provided to her my preliminary assessments. To make matter worse, Resignee did not tender her resignation with due consideration to her other colleagues, an obvious lack of team work attitude. This was her lasting impression to me. It would have been different if she could have at least showed that she had changed her attitude by staying back for a while to properly hand over her job. Albeit all these, her ex-colleagues had called everyone else except me knowing quite well I would have opposed the appeal to rejoin. However due to my strong relationship with ROM and my boss, both of them had to consult me and I had the final say.

A difficult decision

Last Monday while driving home from the office, my boss called me. As she came to know that I was driving, she quickly said that she would like to speak to me once I reached home as it was not safe for me to take her call while driving, a valid reason I would say. Along the way, I was wondering what was so important that she could not wait until the next day to speak about.

After taking my bath and performing my prayer, I called her. It was about something that we had discussed before. To put things into perspective, I have 3 Team Leads and 35 team members reporting to me. Since May, I had to let 5 of my team members joined another unit due to operations expansion. 2 of them progressed on promotion. To make matter worse, I had 2 resignations in the team during the same period. Backfilling of the vacancies was challenging as the support from the resourcing department was far from satisfactory, the time ran faster than the replacement coming in.

Back to my boss, she was approaching me to get my agreement for the release of one my Team Leads to head a new unit. It was a good opportunity for the Team Lead to progress his career as it will be a promotional move. However, with him moving out, my dilemma has become unbearable since I would be losing a Team Lead apart from 7 team members whom I had already lost. After a lot of effort in building the team and stabilising operations within the past six months, I had to do some patching work to get new people in and build back the team dynamics.

However, I took a similar stand that I had made in letting go 5 of my team members earlier, that was to allow them to gain exposure for their career progression. This particular Team Lead had almost reached his retirement. He was senior in service and age compared to me, nonetheless he had been my loyal Team Lead and provided me tremendous support during the short six months working under me. I immediately agreed to the proposal and quickly shared my reorganisation plan in preparation for his departure. My boss agreed totally with me as she had always been due to the rapport that we have.

Deep inside, I was so happy for the Team Lead and my conscience was clear. Do good unto others as you would like others to do good unto you kept ringing in my ear.

It has been a while

Yes, it has been a while since I have written something in this beloved blog. Nonetheless I am happy that I have traced several visitors to my blog, either from within or out of the country. Thank you for visiting and I hope you are enjoying the sharing that is offered here in my blog.

Work demand had taken me off blogging for a while with extensive travelling adding to the complexity. By the way, since January 2008 i.e. this year, I have assumed a new role as the HR Services Manager for Asia Pacific, Middle East, Oceania and Sakhalin region and still working with the same company, praise to God. I have a very new and young hardworking team which had taken most of my time in developing and moulding into a formidable force for a period of six months. This is a challenge which I cherish and I will be sharing a lot more about it with you in my next postings.

And interestingly, I have started writing in a magazine, yes, since April 2008. It is a surprise to me as well. It is a locally published magazine called Milenia Muslim, you would be able to get more information of the magazine or subscribe to it at this url http://mileniamuslim.com.my/index.htm or just purchase one at your nearest book store. It is an extension of what I have been sharing in this blog. I hope you would enjoy my written articles in the magazine as well.

So my plan would be, I will share my past experiences in the Milenia Muslim magazine and will write my ongoing experiences in this blog. Please do not miss this sharing from me. See you and God bless.