Every organizations aim to have

the leanest manpower to deliver

the highest profit for their stake
holders.

With the weakening economic

situation, almost all top
management starts to identify
What they can do to contain
costs.

Costs that cover labour expenses and materials. Down-

sizing the workforce would be a common decision if
demand for company’s product or service starts to
decline.

If company chooses to hire contract labour, the

situation would be not as bad as expecting the reduced
pool of employees to double their outputs. This will
 Squeezing employees to double
their productivity will cause a drop
in quality of their work quality.
There must be a trade-off.

The resource requirements can all

be easily computed. It is simple
mathematics.

The white-collar jobs especially supervisors or people

in the middle managerial level, employer can take
advantage of the employees’ personal (family) time to
attempt various assignment by issuing them with a
lap-top. A lap-top which is relatively inexpensive
nowadays costs around USD 1300 to USD 2300 with a
3-year depreciation period can last up to say 5 years
will help company save plenty of overtime costs, by
pumping ‘home works’ to victimized employees.
Likewise, a Blackberry is good enough to work the
 Virtually
Balance Fully filled enlarged
d 2:1 glass
1: 1 3:1
(Water:Gl
ass
Volume)

A normal glass Modern management Anorexic management

containing ½ glass of tends to raise (water would expand your
water is in a balanced level) the physical work work port-folio to more
level . Equivalent to a level including admin, than 1.3 times of your
knowledge employee’s meeting, travelling time possible time. This will
ideal condition where etc, all the way up to mean your attention will
there is space for this the brim of the glass. be competitively
employee to think. required in more areas
THINKING also requires than you can
time. Not all concentrate. Without
management believe in assistants, your
 Modern management tends to
lock employees in with too many
KPI – key performance indicator.
When overly used, it is simply
KEY PARALYSIS INDICATOR. They
no longer have meaning because
no one can fulfill that laundry list
long of kpi. Is this KPI thing a
management evolution or
disaster.
Job cut everywhere; retrenchments; merger &
acquisition; all these make the condition favourable to
employers. Sole bread winners who need to bring in the
bacon to feed mouths are the anguished workers –
deprived of truthful feedback to management that their
workloads are beyond possible time delivery for fear of
losing job or appraised poorly for ‘incompetence’
Sometimes, competition posed by foreign workers also
give you a run for the money. Union might have a meek
 School leavers each year amount to
millions of people. The used-to-be
‘iron rice bowl’ comfort associated
with government jobs also lost their
glamour as these governmental
bodies also begin to practise LEAN
management. Social responsibility
on job to fellow citizens dwindled to
alarming proportion everywhere.

School leavers, workers and employers are unable to

foresee what holds for them in the future.
Many decades back in Japan, job security was boasted to
be the best where the employers take good care of their
loyal employees. Today, the employment culture tends
to slant towards the American’s style of hiring and firing.
What loyalty, you are supposed to be compensated
through your salaries and bonuses. Hence, value had
changed in reciprocation of employer’s treatment.
 Globalization has somewhat
liberalized job boundary. On the
other hand, small countries may
find foreign ‘talents’ competing the
same job you are doing for less $.
Situation is increasingly alarming
as people from larger countries
like China and India are populating
jobs local citizens at a lower salary
because over their countries, the
salary range is contrastingly lower.

Owing to such strong competition from these foreigners,

one tends to be silent and stay obedient despite their
out-of-proportion work assignments and port-folio.
Countries affected by foreign workers, be it skilled or
unskilled job, are Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia etc.