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Organisation


Human Resource Management
Human resource management set out what the organization intends to do about its human
resource management policies and practices, and how they should be integrated with the business
strategy during the economic downturn. According to Roche, below are the common practices
used by any organisation during economic downturn.




Wage
Adjustment
Freeze or reduction in wages, changes in wage structures, lower start rates
for new employees, limiting overtime bonuses.
Employment
Adjustment
Redundancies (voluntary /compulsory), voluntary retirements, increased use
of temporary / part-time employees
Reorganization
of Working Time
Shorter or more flexible working time, limiting or cancelling of overtime,
new forms of work organization
Workforce
Stabilisation
Redeploying employees; greater use of employee training, introduction of
temporary lay-off schemes, relocation of employees, use of sabbaticals or
unpaid leave; in-sourcing of previously outsourced activity
Voice and
Engagement
Using existing communications challenges more intensely, establishing new
forms of employee involvement on organizational restructuring, new
collective bargaining deals (e.g. no strike clause in return for job security for
a particular period).
Process or
Product
Innovation
Measures aimed at changing work practices/systems to promote innovative
activity, reconfiguring the HR function to support the business.
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Wage Adjustment
Unisem Group didnt make salary adjustment for their existing employees. However it reduced
the overtime bonus of 100% to 50%.

Employment Adjustment
Recruitment process was totally stopped in Unisem Group. Although the group didnt suggest
compulsory redundancies, 3 months salary for voluntary redundancies were offered for
employees being in service from 6-24 months and 6 months salary for greater.

Reorganisation of Working Time
Instead of the regular 40 working hours per week, employees took turn to report work late or
leave work early to fulfill only 35 working hours per week. Besides this the group also limited
the maximum hours of overtime claim to only 2 hours per day.

Workforce Stabilisation
As a result of the economic downturn, rather than working overtime, employees were sent on
unpaid leave for 4 days a month.

Training
The group had implemented many approaches in employee training. For example, the
management team was equipped with new leadership and coaching skills to better support and
motivate its subordinates. This had helped the management team identify how processes can be
cleaned up and made smoother without impacting on quality. This had resulted in their
subordinates to be more productive and to have greater time management skills.
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Leading

Interpersonal Communications

The group conducted meetings to ensure the employees to understand why the company must
change and emphasised that the change was necessary. In the meeting, the management team
clearly spelled out what was to be achieved, what were some alternative methods of approach,
and what were the more important problems that might result from each of these alternatives.
At the end of the meeting, the group ensured everyone involved was close to agreement.

The success of transmitting a group message is relied on the interpersonal skills of the
management team. The process of communication must be two-way. Managers and supervisors
must transmit information about the change to their subordinates. In addition, however, they
must listen to their subordinates. From the feedback, they will be able to learn how to improve
their preparation for future changes. On the other hand, by understanding what is to happen,
employees will be better able to adjust to new situations.

Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership is a process that changes and transforms individuals (Northouse,
2001). In other words, transformational leadership is the ability to get people to want to change,
to improve, and to be led. Therefore during economic downturn when a company needs to
change in order to survive in the market, transformational leadership is vital.

A transformational leadership creates decentralized organization structure where individuals
have autonomy on decision making (Bowditch & Buono, 1994;in Mishra, 1996). For example in
Unisem Group, line managers and supervisors were given authority to reorganize their staff
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working time such as approving paid or unpaid leave and planning shift hours and then report to
the human resource department without having their approval beforehand.

Motivation

Motivation Through Job Design

Motivation Through Less Monetary But More Non-Monetary Rewards

According to Dewhurst (2009), numerous studies found that when employees are satisfactory
with their salaries, non-monetary rewards are indeed more effective than monetary in acting as a
motivational factor of building long-term employment whereby many financial rewards only
generate short-term boosts of energy.

The Company practises Kaizen, a culture of continual improvement, change for the better and
standardisation to yield results in productivity improvement. This scheme is opened to the
Companys non-executive employees from production, maintenance and quality assurance to
invite improvement ideas on job functions and to ensure continuous improvement in these areas.
Participants will be rewarded with certificate and cash voucher.