South China Morning Post

December 13, 2007 Thursday

Challenge to keep up with change

BYLINE: Managers need to realise that employees want to be more knowledgeable and involved in decision making, writes Andrea Li

SECTION: SUPPLEMENTS; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 795 words

Two decades ago, workers in Hong Kong would have thought it ludicrous for a boss to explain the rationale behind each crucial decision being made. Archetypal employees then did not question, they just did as they were told.

"The business environment in Hong Kong was far more paternalistic 25 years ago," said Paula DeLisle, vice-president of international client services, Asia-Pacific at Watson Wyatt Worldwide, an international human resources and finance consulting company.

"The attitude was: 'You come work for me and I'll take care of you but don't question me or the direction I am taking the company'," said Ms DeLisle, who has been a member of the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management (HKIHRM) for decades and has had a ringside seat to the evolution of the human resources industry for years.

The pace of globalisation, coupled with access to better and improved education, have reshaped the expectations of the workforce and revolutionised generations of employees who, once content so long as they were taking home a pay cheque, are now placing greater demands on office life and how it affects their personal situations.

Francis Wong Wai-wah, cluster general manager - human resources at the Hospital Authority, said: "The shift to having more knowledgeable workers in the workforce who have a better understanding of their rights has raised the bar on what individuals have come to expect from their employers."

Mr Wong, a member of the HKIHRM since 1979, said the need for open communication, transparency and fairness was more pertinent. "Communication is now critical to any organisation as staff want things laid out and explained to them much more clearly and in-depth. With the prevalence of the internet and the speed at which news is being transmitted, organisations that can't keep up on the communication front will have difficulty coping with this new generation of needs."

He said effective interaction with the workforce did not mean the frequency of communication but its mode and quality. Enterprises in Hong Kong still had a way to go in

refining their internal communication networks before they caught up with the west, where intranet systems were used and senior members of staff solely looked after internal communication.

Aside from wanting to be more engaged in the company for which they are working, the modern worker is no longer interested only in money. Individuals are looking for companies that understand work-life balance, and provide career opportunities, training and development, while being treated as equitable members of the organisation.

Professional bodies including the HKIHRM have over the years reflected the broader needs of the more dynamic workforce. Perhaps the clearest sign of this was in 1994 when the Hong Kong Institute of Personnel Management changed its name to the HKIHRM to better represent the widened scope of human resources responsibility.

Human resources is no longer the mundane department that processes leave applications and recruits bodies to fill cubicle trenches. It has become an indispensable part of any business and its importance will only become more pronounced.

Meanwhile, an ageing workforce, coupled with phenomenal regional economic growth, triggered most notably by China and India, has further fuelled the chasm between recruitment needs and the available talent pool.

Recruitment has become a complex game and will be more difficult as companies wrangle over the limited talent supply while trying to meet the workforce's shifting expectations.

"One of the biggest challenges for corporations is finding the right people," Mr Wong said. "Salaries are no longer the be all and end all, because the salary differences between companies are generally not huge. Instead, companies need to provide some motivational factors that can help with recruitment.

"Though there is no fixed success formula to retaining people as this depends on corporate culture and the way business is managed, broadly speaking at the most junior level, companies need to look at whether staff are getting the right benefits, and the people mix and their chemistry in the company."

At the middle-executive level, Mr Wong added, corporations should focus on providing the right career development, leadership and training opportunities.

Ms DeLisle said the recruitment of senior management was proving to be especially hard, due partly to the talent drought but hampered further by the type of leader companies wanted today.

"The type of leader being recruited has changed dramatically from a command-and-control type 15 years ago. Leaders today would be more like coaches and really need to inspire their team members and get them focused and working as an interrelated team," she said.