Expert insight on all aspects of human resources

Our proprietary in-depth expert insight for HR professionals, providing prescience on important HR issues impacting SMEs. Keep abreast of HR trends & best practices, especially on key topics such as HR analytics, performance management, employee & customer engagement, learning & development, talent management, health & benefits.

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic motivation

Money is unquestionably a powerful motivator. Pay can encourage certain sought-after employee behaviours. But beware! Intrinsic motivation employees possess for their work will be replaced by extrinsic motivation in the presence of pay for performance.

Busily going nowhere

If you live in Singapore, you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t actually matter.

Invent your job at Lee Wenyong & Co.

At Lee Wenyong & Co., while every team member possesses basic HR knowledge, you will need skills & motivation even more.
Team members who are intrinsically motivated, curious, persistent, & daring,will learn new knowledge & skills continuously, because as traditional careers disappear, you will need to start inventing & creating your own to succeed.

Why in HR, human connections matter

The role of the human resource partner is not to be dispassionate or neutral. 
It is precisely the emotive traits that are rewarded, like the empathetic sensitivity to what will attract attention & linger in the mind; or the voracious lust for learning; or the enthusiasm for wanting to positively impact lives; or the human ability to grasp context just so to make exceptions.

Our culture, the best there is

If you look closely, organization charts resemble technical drawings, where people describe departments as FUNCTIONS. But, an organization is NOT AT ALL like a mechanism. An organization is a living organism, it’s organic, it is driven by feelings, connections, relationships & motivations. Instead of an industrial metaphor, I prefer to frame the organization in an agricultural context. 

Judgement

Professionals in the field of performance management are always desperate to appear scientific. Consultants want to appear scientific only because they want to prove to clients they are selling something more than just sound reasoning. In the field of performance management, judgment matters most, & it is the most difficult to quantify. 

ROIC for SMEs

Return on invested capital (ROIC) is applicable to all businesses of all sizes, whether revenue generated is $10 or $10 million.
It is the best gauge for comparing the relative profitability levels of companies of all sizes, as long as there is capital sunk into the business.
Calculating ROIC enables SME owners to learn how much true value their company is creating. 

Trust

We were recently featured in the newspapers again, this time in the Straits Times, on August 11, 2014. If you read the article, you’d think, wow, why do the company’s executives trust in their employees so wholeheartedly? The evolution of companies proves that a unique few have an inbuilt capacity to grow to high levels of profitability per employee, while others struggle to even survive. 

Our brand of leadership VS. 
traditional SME leadership

If you want to boost your SME's productivity, revamp your leadership culture & approach. 
Not implement more processes. 
Not install a clock in/out system to monitor attendance. 
Rather, engage your employees by trusting them. Trust that if you truly care for them, they will in kind do everything they can to grow your business.

Analytics requires context

On its own, data does not create meaning. We do. 
If we don’t take time to create the right context, & we process exabytes of data in seconds, we will make bad decisions more quickly & more efficiently with greater negative impact.

Performance management

Companies get what they measure. It is absolutely essential for companies to implement a thorough performance measurement system, especially in exiguous economic conditions. 
A well designed performance measurement system will determine how & what business decisions executives will take, & how these decisions will be judged.

Balancing vested interests

Executive compensation & benefits is more of an art than it is a science. It has to protect shareholder interests, ensure board oversight & manage employee pay expectations. There is no cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all definitive solution when designing a compensation & benefits (C&B) strategy or plan. How much is enough is dependent on business strategy, profitability, key performance indicator (KPI) metric selection, target achievement, outcome assessment & compensation calibration.

Types of incentives

Incentive plans distribute rewards according to the achievement of company objectives. Well designed incentive plans take stock of the total budgeted value of the reward components & formulate how to strategically allocate & divide these incentives based on merit.

Types of performance metrics

Determining & focusing on the right performance metrics to suit the company’s unique business model & culture is a prerequisite for any company to succeed. There is no universal formula that calculates the most appropriate or most equitable compensation plan. The process of choosing performance metrics which are best for the organization must be based on reasoned judgement, factual research & extensive C&B experience.

Meaningful peer comparison

Peer group comparison brings defensibility to the company’s chosen C&B strategy, providing external validation to shareholders that the chosen pay structure, scale & magnitude is reasonable relative to results achieved.