Difficult Conversations Made Easy

‘Performance appraisal’ - words which bring unease not just to employees but to managers.  Many managers find it challenging to provide feedback to employees whose performance have not been up to their expectations.  Having these difficult conversations need not be as challenging as one would think, and could help improve performance as well as your working relationships with your team, if done well.  At the same time, performing employees should not be neglected as well.  It is just as important to recognise their contributions and reinforce positive behaviour.

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Job Competency Modelling

Competencies are the skills, knowledge and personal characteristics that contribute to superior performance. A well-developed competency framework can achieve alignment and integration of business strategies:

 

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Newsletter - September 2017

In September, Ministry of Manpower (MOM) announced the introduction of a new Work Pass (WP) card with a QR code and a free mobile application called the SGWorkPass. The app enables employers, pass holders and any other stakeholders to check the status of work passes with their smartphones. This is more reliable as the date of expiry printed on a work pass may not reflect the most up to date status for various reasons, e.g. cancellation due to resignation or restructuring.

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The 5 Key Features of a Good Incentive Plan

Incentive plans are becoming an increasingly popular tool to drive employee performance. A well-designed plan can help to accelerate business growth as well as achieve talent attraction and retention. Today we explore 5 key features of a good incentive plan.

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Does Cultural Fit Impact Hiring Success?

Ignoring Cultural Fit Can Be Costly

All organisations will definitely benefit from an awareness and benefits of the role of cultural fit in the recruitment and selection process. The challenge lies in knowing how to strike the delicate balance between probing further to ascertain a candidate's likelihood to succeed in that organisation's culture and recognising there is sufficient 'evidence' of a good cultural alignment. 

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(HBR) Onboarding Isn’t Enough

Many businesses think they are doing a good job of bringing newly hired executives like Jacobsen into the fold when they actually aren’t. Nearly all large companies are competent at the administrative basics of signing leaders up, but that level of onboarding does little to prevent the problems that can arise when these people start working with new colleagues and grappling with unfamiliar cultural norms and expectations. Companies vary widely when it comes to how much effort they put into integration, with major consequences in terms of time to performance, derailment (through termination or resignation), and talent retention.

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(HBR) Building a Game-Changing Talent Strategy

Founded 25 years ago by eight partners, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, rewrote the playbook in financial services. While many of its peers were stumbling and retrenching in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, BlackRock was charting a course for growth. Its revenue, profits, and stock price all performed consistently during that tumultuous period.

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Excerpts of NWC 2017/18 Guidelines

The NWC Guidelines cover the period from 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018 and applies to all employees – management, executives, professionals and rank-and-file employees, unionised and non- unionised companies in both public and private sectors, workers who have been re- employed.

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The Importance of Cultural Intelligence for Successful M&As

A staple of modern-day business, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) can make or break a business. When you choose to buy (or be bought by) a partner company, this can and should lead to an outcome where the whole is more than sum of the parts. Unfortunately, if the merger does not go well, the opposite can happen. Both sides can, and unfortunately sometimes do, drag each other down through infighting and miscommunication. Today, we are going to look at the important role of cultural intelligence in successful M&As.

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Our thoughts on remaining employable and relevant

Besides having more people competing for fewer jobs, globalization and advancement in technology have also put downward pressure on wages, making it harder for young graduates to find a job that meets their salary expectation. Young people will need to be agile, adaptable and be prepared to put in the effort and time to understand emerging trends. After they’ve landed a job, they should also continue to develop the skills needed to create a difference in the organizations they are a part of. 

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Organisational Culture: How important is it?

Organisational culture is one of the latest buzzwords in the human resource industry. Unlike the usual fads that come and go, this is backed by research which shows that  culture does indeed play a significant role in any organisation, and that it would be wise to take culture into consideration in  strategic business planning and decisions. Let’s look into some ways a strong corporate culture can drive business goals and achieve success for your organisation.

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