In recent months, the buzz term on the Singapore HR landscape has been employee productivity - moreover, how companies in Singapore can raise the productivity of their employees so that the country need not rely on a steady influx of foreigners for work.
In order to be self-sufficient with the labour workforce that we have, the government introduced new measures to boost employee productivity in its recent Budget Statement.
The government announced measures such as training courses for the Singaporean workforce and grants for companies to implement automated processes to reduce manual labour.
In this month's issue of Human Resources, my colleague Lee Xieli presents a story on the best onboarding practices that companies execute for new hires.
It is an important read for companies which are looking to ramp up their recruitment process and want to ensure employees are properly integrated into the company.
More importantly, a sound onboarding process can ensure you manage your employees' work expectations properly and keep them engaged in their work.
A recent survey by corporate consultancy firm Corporate Executive Board found that only 19% of Singaporean employees are willing to go the extra mile and do more than what is expected of them at work. This means a whopping 81% are perfectly happy to perform within their given tasks and not show any willingness to boost their productivity measures - a staggering figure by any count.
Should employers be concerned about these figures? Yes.
So why is this happening? Perhaps one of the reasons is the lack of engagement felt by employees - whether it is to their jobs or their organisation.
This is where onboarding should come in.
When used as part of the employee engagement process, workers who are willing to put in the extra effort to learn more and to train others will help increase the overall productivity of an organisation.
Perhaps when HR practitioners look at improving employee productivity, they shouldn't overlook employee engagement.
Lisa Cheong
Editor
lisac@humanresourcesonline.net
