Employee Relation Issues in Singapore

Discuss about the Employment Relations for Employees and Labors.

Employees and labors are one of the integral parts of any business as the success and failure of any business organization vastly depends on the performance of them. One can see the existence of various employment related issues in an organization. Here comes the part of the employment relation or employee relation or labor relation. Thus, the function of employee relation is to consult, facilitate and develop effective strategies to resolve various employee relation issues in an organization (Zukauskas & Vveinhardt, 2015). Employee and labor relation helps the management of a business organization in various manners like to develop, maintain and improve the employee relation with the help of communication strategies, performance management, processing grievance and in many other ways. There are various employees relation issues are there almost in every country (Fossum, 2014). However, it has been observed that Singapore has been the centre of attraction for recent years by the controversial closing of the plants of various multinational companies and the large number of employee layoffs. It can be clearly understood that this issue is not good for the health of Singapore economy as the businesses are the backbone of any economy (Hendrix, Hayes & Kumar, 2012).

There are various incidents of wind up of businesses and employee lay off are going on in Singapore. Now-a-days, this is a growing concern for various parties in Singapore like the government, the employees and the businesses. In order to get the clear picture of the situation and to find out the solution strategies, it is important to discuss some of those major plant closure and employee layoff issues. Some wind ups and layoffs of some major multinational companies in Singapore are discussed below:

Coca-Cola: As per the latest news in Business Times Coca-Cola Singapore Beverages, commonly known as CCSB, is going to shut down its manufacturing operations in the bottling plant of Tuas, Singapore (www.businesstimes.com.sg 2016). According to Stephen Lusk, chief executive of Coca-Cola, Singapore plant will be compromised so that CCSB can focus on more on the high value added services like new technologies, innovation and research. This step of the company will cause on the loss of job for more than 200 employees in Singapore. (Carpenter & Ng, 2013).

Seagate: Seagate is another multinational company in Singapore that is planning to close one of its hard drives manufacturing facility in Singapore. There are around 4000 employees in the plant and ads per the company, 2000 among them is going to lose their job in this process. There are two reasons behind this closure. One is the effects of economic recession and another reason is the missteps taken by the management of the organization. (www.eetimes.com 2016).

Tate & Lyle: Tate and Lyle are going to close down their plant in Singapore. As per the company, the reason behind this close down is supply not demand. There is enough demand in the market, but the Singapore plant is not able to maintain the supply as per the demand. The profit has been reduced to 16 million pound in 2015 as compared to 62 million pound in the year 2014.

Reasons Behind the Growing Issue

Motorola: Back in the year 2009, Motorola shut down the cell phone manufacturing plant in Singapore. The plant used to manufacture high end cell phones, mobile phones and many others. The initial was taken to cut the cost of around $ 500 million. At the time of the closure, Motorola has 2500 employees in that plant and the closure of the company cut the job of 700 employees from that plant (Pyzdek & Keller, 2014).

Barclays: Barclays is another company that is planning to cut the jobs of one hundred employees in Singapore form its IT operation department. The reason behind this employee layoff is cut of cost from the bank (Heinemann, 2015).

IBM: One of the shocking news is that IBM is also planning to terminate some of the employees from its operation in Singapore. IBM has a reputation about the process of fire and hire. The company denied commenting further in this matter but they have confirmed that they are going to terminate some employees for sure. IBM cuts the jobs of the employees irrespective of the fact that how many years they are serving for the company (McNeill, 2015).

There is other many companies that either plan to cut the jobs of the employees or planning to do so. Global bank Standard Chartered has terminated some of the employees in Singapore while they cut around 15000 jobs globally. As per HSBC, the company has announced that they will freeze the salaries of the employees and in this process more than 3000 employees of Singapore will be affected. In order to reduce the cost pressure, Resorts World Sentosa cut the jobs of a lot of employees in February in Singapore.It can be seen that so many renowned companies lay off employees in Singapore and the list is growing continuously (vulcanpost.com 2016).

There are some reasons behind this growing issue in Singapore. As per the statistics, the majority of the employee layoffs happen in the service sector in this year and the number is 2500. Manufacturing and construction sector are the next after service sector accounts for 1800 and 300 layoffs respectively. The main reason is the economic slowdown in Singapore. Due to economic slowdown, most of the companies in Singapore are facing loss and their production is not up to the mark. On the other hand, the costs are rising continuously. In this situation, the companies are left with two situations. That is they either have to close the business operations in Singapore or they have to terminate a large number of employees to cut down the costs. Some of the companies are taking the first step and some of them are taking the second (Juma’h, Morales-Rodriguez & Lloréns-Rivera, 2015).

From the above discussion its can be seen that there are many renowned multinational that closing their business operations in Singapore due to the above discussed reasons. This is the kind of problem that is affecting the economy of the country as well as the working people of it. It is not desirable that the current situation stays like that. All the parties involved in this problem must involve in finding the solution to revive the situation. They should handle this situation with utmost attention and need to find the way out from this universal problem. One of the ways to handle this situation is the co-ordination among the businesses, the labors, the society and the government. There are many ways that a business can come out from this business closure and employee layoffs puzzle. Some of the strategies are discussed below to prevent the plant closure in Singapore.

Strategies to Prevent Plant Closure and Employee Layoffs

It is advised to the business that they should target the correct market for their business. One of the reasons of the plant closure in Singapore is the section of wrong market by the business organizations. There are various benefits of selecting the right market like it prevents the wastage money for lost causes. On the other hand, the selection of right market will maximize the profitability of the firms and the companies can get a clear view about the market position.

The unique selling propositions or the USBs of the business need to be strong enough for the companies so that people only choose the products of that business at the time of purchasing. This process will give the organization a competitive edge over its competitors.

Diversification of the marketing channels is another way to prevent the plant closure form Singapore. The companies put themselves in a great risk at the time of choosing only one marketing channel. It is recommended that the companies should select more than one marketing channels to avoid risk in this highly competitive market. For example, a company should select both online and offline marketing campaign for their business activities (Hameed & Khan, 2014).

Every business organization has a message to give to the customers. The business organizations should make it clear that they are successful to convey the right message to the customers.

It can be happened with the business organizations that they are running out of cash or the cash flow of the company is not sufficient.  In this kind of situations, companies need to have some campaigns ready to create instant cash flows. This process reduced the possibility of making loss to the business organizations.

The business organizations need to take steps to expand their business on a regular basis. In today’s highly competitive market, expansion is necessary to retain the palace in the competition. On the other hand, expansion increases the profitability of the business organizations (Contu, Palpacuer & Balas, 2013).

These are some of the steps that the business organizations should take to avoid the shutdown of the plants in Singapore. On the other hand, employee layoff is another issue in Singapore. The main reason for the employee layoff is the reduction of costs of the business. However, there are various other reasons. The businesses also face some issues due to employee layoffs like lose of institutional knowledge, disruption in work relationships and the increase in burden on the remaining employees. To handle this employee layoff issue, some steps are recommended below:

The complexity in the structure of the organization is one of the reasons for employee layoffs. Extra level of organizational structure increases the possibility of employee layoffs. Thus, it is recommended that the companies should have simple structure with a few layers for their businesses (Cascio, 2015).

It has been seen that the companies often value the customers more than the employees of the organization. It has to be remembered that the employees are the life of a business that helps to retain the customers. Thus, employees need to be given utmost attention. The wage structure for the employees should be reasonable based on the economic condition (Weiss, 2014).

The government of a country is like the backbone of that country. Every policies, rules and regulations about the business of a country is made by the government. Hence, it is expected that the government should include themselves to resolve this situation. The government needs to develop and implement some employment relationship friendly effective strategies in order to prevent shut downs and employee layoffs.

The government should take strategies so that more job opportunities can be created in Singapore. The initiative of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI) can be set as example. The Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI) have been urging the small and medium for the enhancement of their business models so that more job opportunities can be raised (Gelman et al., 2015). As per the Singapore Retailers Association of Vice Presidents, several retailers are closing down the less profitable business stores and release their employees. Loan facilities have been arranged for them so that they do not have to close their businesses.

It will decrease the rate of layoffs of employees (Baraldi et al., 2015). These are example of the ways by which the government can resolve the issues of plant closure and employee layoffs.

Conclusion

Shutdown of various renowned plants and employee layoffs are the two growing issues in Singapore. Economic slowdown and various other issues are responsible for this shutdowns and layoffs. It can be seen there are various renowned companies like Coca-cola, Seagate, IBM, Barclays and many others are there that have either shut down the plants in Singapore or are planning to do so. This is the high time for the companies to develop and implement strategies to eradicate these issues. Various recommendations to prevent the shutdown of plants and employee layoffs are discussed like to increase marketing diversities, decrease the layers in the business and others. One of the most important aspects is that the government of the country has a significant role to play in these issues as they are the one that create rules and regulations for the countries. It is the duty of the government to develop business friendly strategies to promote business. Thus, it is recommended the inclusion of government to resolve these issues.

References

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