Aug 26, 2009

How firms stay in business?

 

By Charissa Yong

CURBING costs and reaching out to customers are the top two tactics being used by Singaporean companies to keep their businesses on track, a study conducted by the Singapore Human Resource Institute (SHRI) has found.

SHRI's report - which looked at 50 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), large local firms and multinational companies (MNCs) - shows that 86 per cent have focused on cost management and 82 per cent on delighting their customers.

Only 2 per cent have concentrated on keeping their products and services affordable.

The study - presented on Wednesday at an SHRI-organised human resources seminar held at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront hotel - found the top three challenges facing companies during the economic downturn were: deciding how to cut costs, ensuring adequate cash flow and managing employer/employee relations.

How companies dealt with these issues often determined whether they were sustainable or not, said senior manager at the SHRI research centre Jayantee Mukherjee.

She gave the example of a company that was unnecessarily harsh during its retrenchment and voluntary turnover exercise. One employee was informed only half an hour before he was due to report to work, she said. To worsen matters, his wife had just given birth.

Former employees who felt they had been badly treated complained and the company subsequently experienced recruitment difficulties.

This, said Ms Mukherjee, was unsustainable behaviour that harmed the company.

Read the full report in Thursday's edition of The Straits Times.

 

Survey shows S'pore firms put environmental issues on back burner
 By Desmond Wong, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 26 August 2009 1804 hrs

SINGAPORE: With the global economic downturn, some Singapore companies have put environmental, human resource and long-term business issues on the back burner.

According to a survey by the Singapore Human Resources Institute (SHRI), 36 per cent of locally-based firms surveyed were not even aware of the importance of business operations on environmental issues.

Twenty-four per cent merely intended to meet government regulations for human resource and environmental standards.

The survey also found that reducing energy usage remained a low priority for most Singapore companies.

SHRI said companies should be more pro-active in caring for the environment and their people.

Davig Ang, executive director, SHRI, said: "Do we need to look at government laws and regulations just to follow them and have a compliant business? We would rather the firms think in the longer term, that they need to sustain their business in other ways, even without the incentives that have been offered."

Experts and companies also said the downturn will not affect the building of environmentally-sustainable and people-friendly businesses. In fact, some companies are even benefiting from having such policies, and even making money out of those solutions.

Sandeep Bhattacharya, ASEAN vice-president, Ramco Systems, said: "Most of them look at certain software products that actually carry out physical energy-saving and process optimisation for large manufacturing organisations, by reducing their consumption of power, heat, energy or carbon emissions. These then provide the firms tangible dollar savings in a very short time frame of a few months."

While moving businesses to a more sustainable model may take some time, experts and companies said it does not take much cash to do so. As a result, everyone, at least financially, should be able to afford to make the change.

- CNA/yt