Commentary

So you have gone through 3 rounds of gruesome interviews and you finally got the job. The day of your new beginning has come! What should you do? How would your new colleagues react to you? What type of impression should you be giving them? What is the working style of your new boss? I believe these questions would have raced through your mind as you would want to blend in as fast as possible, to be well liked and to get into your boss’s good book.

Just across the water, north-west of Singapore, a new metropolis is taking shape. According CIMB, now that Khazanah (Malaysia’s government investment arm) have jumped into the fray and that international schools are springing up, Iskandar has taken a major shot of credibility to the arm. Along with the new schools, decent(ish) infrastructure and bungalows, such as the Horizon Hills development currently going for around S$230 (US$184) per square foot (as opposed to Singapore’s District 10, currently running at an average of S$2,000 per square foot), Iskandar is beginning to look particularly attractive. In the April-May 2013 issue of Property Life magazine we look at houses, or landed properties as they are otherwise known, and compares and contrasts what bang can be bought for your buck. With London and Tokyo running at over US$2,400 per square foot, a million greenbacks doesn’t really get you much more than a one-bedroom apartment, whereas in Sydney, it will get you a reasonably sized four-bedroom house, just a walking distance from the iconic Opera House. The year 2013 is shaping up to be an interesting year in the global property markets. The USA is rebounding and there is wealth of excellent inventory on sale at rock-bottom prices. London is still on the up, and plainly an excellent investment opportunity. Australian Property Monitors reports that the national average house price in the country rose 2.1% in 2012, reversing much of the 3.6% decline of 2011 – and it’s projected to continue in that direction this year too. With the cooling measures kicking in in Singapore, overseas property has never looked quite so attractive and with low mortgage rates, finance has never been cheaper. However, caveat emptor is even more relevant now than ever; according to The Daily Mail, ‘Harlequin Resorts, which apparently now looks derelict and nothing like the promotional materials... seems to have preyed on 3,000 Britons, who have fallen victim to a £250 million (US$380 million) fantasy villa fiasco that was promoted by Pat Cash and is now being investigated by UK fraud police.’

Copy-Paste (CP), the most commonly used Information Technology (IT) action, frowned upon for its lack of ingenuity and the sense of shameless pilferage. It would be a faux pas to believe that CP is a new idea born of IT while the moot point here is CP as a concept is agnostic of its pertinence to any particular industry.

With the announcement of Singapore Budget 2013, and the Wage Credit Scheme (WCS) as its centerpiece, no doubt Singaporeans are going to feel the ripples differently depending on where you stand. In this article, I will be sharing my thoughts as a small Food & Beverage (F&B) entrepreneur, as well as a Singapore citizen.

‘Teams’ has long been a popular concept in the workplace, as it’s common sense that “two heads are better than one” and “many hands make light the work”. However, people don’t always work together well, whether in their families, on sports teams or in the workplace. Thus, encouraging your people to function efficiently with colleagues presents an on-going conundrum for managers. This blog offers two concepts from Chinese culture that may help.

In such a geographically constrained city-state, it’s hard not to notice and hear about the population growth planned for Singapore: from 4.5 million in 2007 when I arrived to 5.3 million by June 2012 with plans for 6.9 million within the next decade. This population level is what the Singapore government has determined the country needs to sustain its economy, bringing in the necessary skills and labor to support it.

We’ve seen a recent array of articles bemoaning the short-term attitudes of staff in organisations across Singapore. The anecdotes of the recent years of a mobile workforce who are only interested in the next role have now materialised in hard data provided by JobsDB[i], and it’s not pretty reading for companies who want long-term commitment from their employees.

Contrary to what many designers and aspiring designers believe, some form of higher learning qualification is very important in today’s job market. Employers are looking for designers with good qualifications so the better the qualifications you have the more chance you have of landing your dream job.

Talking to members of the C-suite and senior management can be stressful, but it can be the difference between a successful career and a go-nowhere job. When face time is limited, how do you make the most of these conversations?

Busineses, don’t do everything themselves - they outsource or relocate.

 

Dispute resolution should not only be the responsibility of HR. Line managers should be well versed in handling difficult situations or else organisations risk being viewed by their employees as faceless.

The well-known saying “Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus” is apt, especially when it comes to defining the most important factors when looking for a new work environment.

By Ms Tan Gek Khim, PBM, Senior Director of MDIS

Since the emergence of the modern corporation at the turn of last century, the debate on whether and how business can be responsible has never seem to end. Indeed, there is not even a consensus.

Singapore, like the rest of the world, faces a new paradigm for energy supply and even more important the energy supply chain – exploration, exploitation/extraction, transport, grid, pollution, carbon dioxide emissions. Shale gas is the game changer, but to a lesser extent than presumed and resulting in changes different from those original expected.