Managers, if you find your minions workers chafing under your whip, read this.

A recent survey by Hay Group Insight of eight Asian countries found 29% of Asian workers frustrated generally due to overwhelming red tape and a lack of opportunities to grow - professionally, not literally - in their cages cubicles.

Other culprits: impotent work systems, feckless managers, and restrictive offices. Companies suffer too. Disgruntled employees are big liabilities and even cause business to fizzle out.

What your workers really want are challenging tasks with the resources to complete these successfully. Instead of just engaging and motivating your subordinates, take time to tweak existing office processes that promote productive performance. It would also help to loosen up a bit and grant them the freedom to make decisions that actually matter.

Most importantly, where your presence will not help at all, stop breathing down necks and get out of the way. If you insist on being a dictator, try politics instead. ; )

WHAT'S CHANGING?
From Oct 1, employers here will have to pay the Skills Development Levy for all their workers. Currently, they only have to do so for workers earning less than $2,000.

Instead of the existing rate of 1%, the monthly levy that employers have to pay will be 0.25% of the first $4,500 that a worker earns or $2, whichever figure is higher.

HOW DOES THAT AFFECT YOU?
Employers may soon have to pay the levy for all their workers, but the reduction in rate per worker will serve to ease the transition.

For employees, the amendment is a good sign, as an increasingly educated workforce means that continuous upgrading and training should not only apply to lower-skilled workers.

Researchers in Germany recently found that cattle graze and deer sleep in alignment with the North-South axis of the Earth's magnetic field, after studying thousands of satellite pictures of such herds across the globe.

The discovery suggests that our planet's magnetism has more effect on living things, aside from it just guiding the migration of birds, salmon and the like.

What impact does all this have on you?

Consider this: some studies indicate that sleeping in a position aligned with the magnetic poles, instead of in an East-West direction, somehow results in more Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep which translates into more rest which means less lethargy and dragging of feet when it comes to waking up for work the next day.

Fengshui anyone?

The latest fiasco to rock our little red dot: Lee Bee Wah's shock sacking of table tennis team manager Antony Lee.

The decision comes about a week behind Singapore's first Olympic medal after almost five decades, barely a day after a coachless Gao Ning crashed out of the Games in 24 minutes to a relative nobody, and just before a jubilant Team Singapore returns home.

MP Lee Bee Wah, who is also president of the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA), had already taken an unforgiving stance early on. She said: "We cannot accept such things happening in such an important tournament," referring to the Gao Ning incident.

But no one expected the guillotine to fall so soon on Antony Lee, with Head Coach Liu Guodong also on the chopping board. With no proper inquiry conducted and no official reason given except that it being best for the STTA chief's "new team" to choose their manager, due process is conspicuously absent in the swift dismissal.

Further raising eyebrows: Ms Lee's inexperienced but heavy hand after only a month at the helm of STTA, and her denial that the Gao Ning incident had anything to do with the team boss' sacking, who apparently was due to go in a decision made before the Olympics.

When asked to comment, Singapore National Olympic Council president Teo Chee Hean said: "I assume that she has the facts of the situation to make the decision that she did."

Well, we know what assuming makes out of you and me.

Have you been to a mall at 9am when it's almost totally devoid of people?

I did, along with 35 Retail Studies students and their lecturers from ITE College East who livened up the silence. Taking the lesson out of the classroom, the teens were there to experience for themselves the nitty-gritty of being in the service industry as staff from Page One showed them the ropes...

read more for full story and pictures..

Some have wondered if four months of maternity leave will result in more pregnant employees losing their jobs. Thankfully, new rules will be put in place to prevent this from happening.

From January 2009, employers who fire pregnant employees within the last six months of their pregnancy will be made to pay maternity leave benefits.

No further details have been revealed yet, but such a move is definitely necessary, considering how the number of complaints from pregnant women who lost their jobs actually rose the last time maternity leave was extended.

Acting Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong has also announced that the third and fourth months of maternity leave can be taken any time in the first year of the child's birth, which will be particularly good news for employers of smaller companies.

Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng has revealed that the government did consider giving paternity leave as part of the enhanced Marriage and Parenthood package.

However, it stopped short of doing so due to how men in other countries did not take up the paternal leave that they were offered. For instance, only 1% of men in France did so in 2004.

Instead, the new offer of infant care and childcare leave that both fathers and mothers can take is supposedly a flexible arrangement to signal the importance of shared responsibility in parenting.

But if men are not expected to take up official paternity leave, why should they be expected to absent themselves from work to clear leave that they can ask their wives to take?

If you've ever considered retiring in another country, you're not alone.

According to a survey of 300 Singaporeans aged 21 to 55, two-thirds indicated that they have thought about retiring in another country with a slower pace of life and lower cost of living.

Only 50% felt comfortable with the physical and social support available here, while 90% want to spend their old age at home, and not in a nursing home.

It's interesting how "a slower pace of life" and "lower cost of living" are reasons that Singaporeans commonly cite for not wanting to spend their twilight years here. Is Singapore really such a bad place to retire in?

Tell us what you think here

In line with PM Lee's call for Singaporeans to be more gracious along with his announcement of a slightly bigger hongbao this year, my paper published a letter from Mr Brandon Lee under the headline "Why must we help the lazy?"

Here are some choice excerpts:


"Why should middle- and high-income workers be penalised in the form of higher taxes to support low-income workers who do not take charge of their lives and bear responsibility for themselves and their families?"

"Expecting responsible, hardworking Singaporeans to help pay for the lifestyles, families or maids of irresponsible Singaporeans is simply irresponsible."

"In Singapore all of us go through the same education system and are given the same opportunities to earn a good livelihood and build a family."

"In fact, (the Government) should cut back on handouts in order to urge all Singaporeans to be more self-reliant, even during bad times."


While his view can be called pragmatic, it is also extremely narrow and simplistic. Mr Lee has entirely discounted other factors that influence everyone's cards in life: luck, family circumstances, accidents and misfortune, even something as seemingly mundane as personal looks.

Moreover, Mr Lee has displayed a distinct failure to properly grasp government policy. Singapore has never been planned as a welfare state and it's policies are correspondingly designed to not allow its people to entirely depend and subsist on handouts. They are instead tailored to minimise the impact of our shrinking dollar, an effect surely much more felt by the low-income earners than Mr Lee, protected on his self-erected pedestal.

Worst, Mr Lee's painting of every low-income Singaporean with the same brush and then crying out against them receiving financial aid reeks of elitism. It is a feeble mind that fails to think of the taxi-driver slaving away to put his son through university or the factory worker slogging double shifts to finance her part-time diploma.

It seems that responsible and hardworking Mr Brandon Lee wants to have his cake and eat it too; all by his deserving self, of course.

my paper article and forum discussion here:
Why must we help the lazy