Every China HR manager knows the direct costs of high turnover. Recruiting, testing, training — the cost in hours and the loss productivity. But there’s another, potentially more damaging, threat. Everytime one of your people quits or gets fired, your company loses their experience, training, connections and abilities. Your storehouses of knowledge are walking out [...]
The China-based service business wants to expand. How should it proceed?
Bob Jones is the expat owner of a 20 person travel-related service business in Shanghai. He and his marketing team decide to develop the middle-class Chinese market for overnight business travelers. Reaction to his initial promotion was unsatisfactory. What should he do next?
1) Focus on [...]
If you are involved with HR or management in China as part of a MNC – or multinational corporation – then your biggest HR challenge is unlikely to be recruiting, training or compensation. Sure, you’ll have the same problems there as anyone else. But your biggest HR issue will be your own HQ and the [...]
Smart China managers who are looking for the ROI from the their training program may be looking in the wrong place. Instead of looking for increased sales, maybe the ROI metric in China should be an HR retention number. Maybe we should measure training effectiveness in China through months on the job instead of money [...]
Staffing used to be a difficult but relatively simple problem in China – fill seats with the highest quality people available. Standards were uniformly low, and performance ratings were more about attitude and language ability than accomplishments or transactions. ‘In the kingdom of the blind…’, and all that.
As the new year unfolds, your China HR [...]
In an ideal world, your experienced China hands and talented locals are freely volunteering their time and effort to younger team members to help them become successful. This world, as we know by now, is far from ideal. Your bright, shiny new hires may be getting great information and knowledge from their colleagues, or they [...]
Chinese HR managers will face a tougher situation no matter what happens to the Chinese economy. If the Chinese economy keeps booming, then they are going to face a continuing wage spiral and shortages of key middle-managers. If the economy slows down then they are going to be pressured to cut costs and hold on [...]
“Managerial Thinking” is one of those fashionable terms we hear a lot, but sometimes the meaning isn’t really clear. What is “managerial thinking”, and what does it mean to China’s professional managers?
We defines managerial thinking as “being willing to take responsibility for EVERYTHING that happens in your department or company”. When we say “take responsibility”, [...]
