Management Archives | Page 2 of 2

Improve Your Business With Employee Engagement

Do you want to increase your employee’s happiness, safety, participation, and good health? Then, you have to be familiar with the term called “Employee Engagement”. Employee Engagement is an approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to the organization’s values and goals. This later leads to organizational success.

The benefits of Employee Engagement are tremendous.

For instance, a study examined 168 engaged and disengaged employees to measure their stress levels and health indicators. Findings showed that engaged employees reported lower stress as well as improved cholesterol and blood pressure readings. Not only that, they engaged employees are proven to perform better by producing better results. Lastly, research showed that engaged employees have a lower chance (i.e., 5 times less) of experiencing accidents at work than their disengaged counterparts.

Having this in mind, you must know that Employee Engagement is one of the most important things to manage and to measure an organization. Measuring employee engagement may seem like a challenge as it focuses on specific areas of the organization’s strengths and gaps. This shall be observed in a personal and a group level through monthly or yearly surveys.

To boost and manage the employee engagement, here are a few steps you may take:

1. ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR STRENGTHS AND CAPABILITIES

Recognizing the employee’s strengths and capabilities does not always have to be monetary. A respectful acknowledgement of the contributions they have made is enough. Never forget to give your employees flexibility to explore how they can contribute best by allowing feedbacks.

2. CREATE TRANSPARENCY

An organization with transparency creates a room for engagement and a sense of significance. Transparency exists when the leader is comfortable enough to share his or her success to the team.

3. EMPOWER THEM

To enable active participation, put your employees in the position of influence. For example, let them lead a project and choose whom they want to collaborate with. This simple deed will make them realize their own potentials.

Image Credits: thetaxhaven via Flickr with Creative Commons License

Sources: 1, 2, & 3

Opening A Franchise in Singapore? Know These 5 Things First

Starting a business in Singapore cannot only be expensive but also difficult. As Albert Kong, CEO and chairman of Asiawide Franchise Consultants that advised 650 franchise clients in Asia, once said: “Starting a business in Singapore is much tougher than other countries in the region especially when it comes to dealing with landlords and managing employees.”

1. SAVE LOADS OF MONEY FOR FUTURE EXPENSES

You must save for the franchise fee, renovation of the space, rent requirements, raw materials, and employee salary. Regardless of whether you are making a huge profit or not, the franchisor will request a share in your revenues.

For example, the franchise fee for a cafe is about S$50, 000 for a 3-year contract. The renovation costs may hit about S$100, 000 for only a 600 sq ft place. The rent of this 600 sq ft place costs about S$7, 000 a month. Additionally, the raw materials and employee salary for the first few months costs an extra S$100, 000. These costs heavily depend on your franchisor and landlord.

2. EMPLOYEE EXPENSES ENTAILS HIGH COSTS

Employees in Singapore are among the highest paid workers in the world. Not to mention, as an employer, you will have to contribute a given amount to the Central Provident Fund (CPF). Employees can leave you whenever they want and because of it, you will have to spend more resources to hire and train again. To avoid this, layout a 1-month waiver for employees that want to resign.

3. FAMOUS BRANDS ARE THE SAFEST

A household name such as 7-Eleven is your safest bet if you are franchising for the first time. First, the landlord will be more lenient to you as they know the “required look” of the establishment. Second, consumers tend to buy brands that they are most familiar with. In Singapore, the famous F&B franchises are Subway and Ya Kun Kaya Toast.

4. FOLLOW YOUR PASSION

Follow your passion so you do not feel the stress of costs too much especially during the first few months. If you are motivated by your happiness then, you are more likely to succeed in what you do. Furthermore, you may consider franchising a unique business with a popular brand to avoid the competition.

5. BUILD GOOD BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS

It pays to have a good business relationship that is open and honest with the suppliers and the landlord so that if disagreement and troubles arise, you can settle it out in a friendly manner.

Image Credits: 드림포유
via Flickr

Sources: Business Insider Singapore

Portfolio and Risk Management

It’s a boring topic, but when money is involved, is it still boring? I hope not! Investing is more than just buying and selling, it’s the art of handling risk and emotions. Having read through many blogs and seen many portfolios, there’s one similarity among all of them. They all have Portfolio Management. If the rich are doing it, there must be a compelling reason why they are doing it right? Having a good portfolio management can help enhance returns and reduce risk. Not everyone wants to have a portfolio that moves together all in the same direction, and not everyone realise that they may be having it. A good portfolio should comprise of several forms of assets and preferably in different industries because that way your risk will not be concentrated in a single industry. Yes, you may have a chance of making it big when the sector goes into a boom, just like the technology stocks prior to the .com bust. It is one thing to be overweight on an industry, but it is foolish to allow yourself to take on a risk that you may not be able to afford. The last thing you want to do when investing is to be wiped out completely. In this article, I wish to share using a top-down approach and gradually zoom in on how one can have a good Portfolio Management and avoid undertaking too much risk.

Portfolio Management

As mentioned, a good Portfolio would be one that can withstand years of market movements and still stand strong. The word ‘Diversification’ may come to your mind when Portfolio Management is mentioned. There tend to be a misconception about diversification, especially towards investors. To most investors, diversification simply means diversifying your money into different sectors of the market. This isn’t entirely wrong, and there are indeed benefits to diversifying into different sectors. However, may I present to you a broader view of what diversification means. Diversify into different asset classes. A truly good portfolio should be one that is invested into different asset classes – Stocks, Bonds, Commodities, Forex, Properties, etc.

Having a portfolio that is diversified into different asset classes will save you from having your hard-earned money from being wiped out in a black swan event. You can be sure that even if the stock market crashes, you still have other streams of income from your different asset classes like bonds or rental income from your residential properties (Note that REITs is still classified as stocks). Imagine if all your money were in just the stock market alone, perhaps even diversified into a few sectors. Your portfolio would have experienced a hard pounding and it served as a wake-up call for many who did not diversify across the different asset classes. That’s not to say that being diversified into different asset class will make you immune to any big worldwide crisis like this, but at least it mitigates the damage dealt.

Risk Management

In theory, everything sounds perfect. However, not everyone of us can afford the luxury to be invested in all the 5 asset classes mentioned. It would be nice to try to be as diversified as possible, but even if it’s just stocks, there’s another way to manage your risk. A part of portfolio management is Position Sizing. Always consider how much risk you are willing to take in a trade, preferably in dollar amount rather than in %.

Step 1: Consider the maximum loss(in $ amount) you’re willing to accept.

Step 2: Set a stop-loss level

Step 3: Calculate the capital exposure per unit (Entry price – Stop loss price)

Step 4: Maximum position size = Step 1 / Step 3

This formula can be found in Robert C Miner’s High Probability Trading Strategies book. If you’re interested, do head down to NLB to borrow because that’s where I got the book from! Although not everyone has the luxury to take up the maximum position size for every trade, it will still serve as a good gauge as to how much the maximum should be. This prevents you from over trading beyond your risk tolerance level. There are many strategies available and this is one of the strategies that I have found to have served me useful because I know exactly how many shares should I limit myself to. Hopefully you would re-look at your investment strategies and identify if you are carrying too much unnecessary risk.

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