If Lim Jit Lee, the human resources director of Singapore's STMicroelectronics wafer fabrication (fab), were to organise a wear-your-national-costume-to-work day for the fab's 5,100 staff, the employees would probably turn up in at least 30 different ensembles - assuming that every nationality engaged by the organisation has one. There would be the Chinese Cheongsam, Japanese Kimono, Filipino Barong Tagalog, Indian Sari and Russian Sarafan. And that's just for wafer fab, which consists of five-inch, six-inch and eight-inch wafer processing plants. In Singapore, there is also the back end manufacturing and business headquarters, which consists of general administration, sales and marketing, research and development, design centre and logistics.
Whilst the interesting mix of outfits and harlequin of colours would certainly be nice to marvel at, and for some enlightening, it would be a challenge to get every employee to appreciate, much more like, the difference they see on each other. Such is the challenge faced by Lim and her team. However, unlike the case of this imaginary, one-day event, getting employees to work harmoniously and accept the importance of developing tolerance towards cultural difference, is a daily grind.
"A foreign employee often feels displaced when he or she first comes to Singapore and will need some lead time to get adjusted," says Lim. "But local employees who don't understand this may perceive that their foreign counterparts are not contributing." As far as possible, the company wants to reduce these opportunities for negatives feelings to arise. "When people go to work, they should be thinking of how to deal with a particular issue, not co-worker," states Lim.
Lim describes her role at STMicro as somewhat of a balancer of business needs and employee expectations; on the one hand align employees with organisation's goals and help top management "feel" employee needs, on the other. "Taken the wrong way, it can appear as if HR is sandwiched between the two," quips the fair and impeccably groomed human resources director.
Lim graduated from Utah States University in the United States with an MBA in 1984. Upon graduation, she joined a European international bank as a private banker in the investment group where her key responsibilities were to service, market and sell investment portfolios to high net worth individuals. Lim says that as a private banker, she learnt the art of reading and quickly sizing up one's needs and expectations and translating them into "tangible deliverables" - essential qualities for an HR practitioner.
Lim says she relishes the opportunity to work with a team of supportive management that values good HR. "In the manufacturing industry in particular, where results are often measured by production, the less tangible aspects such as HR are sometimes not recognised by the company." Her pet peeve, however, is having to make hard decisions, not because she is incapable of doing so but that she's a stickler about promoting a positive work environment. She explains, "Even at times when an HR decision is considered as most effective by all parties concerned, oftentimes, a certain group of employees perceive that they benefit less than the mainstream." Moreover, Lim adds that in HR, every decision is unique. "You're managing human capital, not a pair of hands. Precedence may only be used as a guide."
Lim says the issue of recruiting foreign talent is also one much deliberated at the national level. The reason according to STMicro's Singapore wafer fab unit is not very different from that of government officials: the shortage of suitable local talent. "Moreover, the shortfall was compounded by a rapid and massive workforce expansion of some 2,300 employees in the country's wafer fab division two years ago due to a surge in wafer fab manufacturing activities in Singapore, explains Lim. "Taking into account turnover, we are looking to recruit, train and bring-on-board more than 3,000 people in two years - more than the existing staff strength at the end of 2002!"
Despite the steady stream of engineering graduates from the growing number of polytechnics and universities, the shortfall was still apparent. To this end, the wafer fab is working with local educational institutions like universities, polytechnics and specialised technical institutions to develop and define relevant training. It sends representatives to these institutions to conduct regular guest lectures. In addition to the lack of suitable local candidates, Lim says that many Singaporeans are also averse to the idea of working in a clean room environment. "It's a common perception here," she explains. "The locals do not like being gowned up."
Gowning up is a term which refers to the protective, fully encapsulated gear, or "bunny suits", as it is commonly known, that employees working in clean room environment have to wear to protect the wafers and chips from contamination. A single particle of dust, dirt, or other material can possibly ruin a chip (this is known as a killer defect).
Wafer fabrication is the front-end manufacture of silicon electronic chips fabrication. It is a process by which raw silicon, which is basically purified beach sand, is grown into crystal ingots before it is sliced into exceptionally thin wafers. Silicon wafers are the fundamental building blocks for making chips. The highly-engineered round disks are produced in various diameters from one inch to 12 inches and serve as the material on which more than 95 per cent of semiconductor devices - or chips - are fabricated.
The wafer fab's People Integration programme implemented recently aims to help both the foreign and local talent and their families integrate culturally. Lim says the objective of the programme is not to enforce one single culture in the workplace but to promote a tolerant, understanding and diverse multicultural environment.
Lim says that in some organisations, spousal and family support for foreign employees are either overlooked or not sufficiently addressed. "When employees and their families are not properly integrated, it will have an impact on employee job satisfaction and affect staff retention."
In Singapore's STMicro wafer fab, international employment including family support for foreign employees is looked after by a member of the HR team, whose job is devoted to helping these employees and their families address international mobility needs, such as helping foreign staff and their families locate suitable accommodation, and schools for their children. "Recently, we discovered that the non-English speaking spouses of our Korean employees had problems communicating with the local doctors so the HR specialist sourced around for a Korean clinic and found one at Gleneagles Hospital."
A staff feedback programme, initiated by the HR team that allows employees to raise any concerns regarding their jobs or company practices, serves as a barometer to assess employee satisfaction and to resolve issues before they get blown out of proportion. "As our site grows larger and along with the growth and complexity of technology and depth of diversity of foreign talent and workers, it is important that the company feels employee concerns and understands what they are happy or unhappy about," states Lim. More than that, the weekly Hear Employees Act Real Time, cleverly dubbed HEART, dialogue sessions are also aimed at resolving employee concerns and issues quickly and effectively. Lim says keeping employees satisfied on the job boosts retention rates. "In the long run, that saves the organisation money to replace and retrain." To make the process more transparent and accountable, issues raised are posted on the organisation's intranet so every case that requires further action by the company is documented and tracked.
"The key challenge with HEART is the commitment and timely delivery of actions to create a trusting environment," says Lim. She adds that the company is still fine-tuning the system. In addition to face-to-face dialogues, she also hopes to incorporate a web-based chat or forum and have a devoted HR specialist attend to electronic submissions. "The objective is to make the Act Real Time more visible and speedier."
As with any global recruitment drives, one of the main challenges is determining the source for appropriately skilled workers. In partnership with recruitment companies, Lim and her team source for hotspots to target - often locations that are in close proximity to other wafer fab plants - so the chance of finding skilled workers is higher. "We issue hiring notices, travel to those locations and carry out walk-in interviews," says Lim. Such global locations include hi-tech industrial areas of India and China.
In the last four years, the Chinese semiconductor industry is increasingly becoming a force to be reckoned with in global semiconductor manufacturing. Fuelling the country's industry growth are global and local demand, lower labour costs and healthy government subsidies. According to industry forecasts, China produced about $2.4 billion worth of chips last year. In 2003, it accounted for four percent of world production. But by 2007, it should more than double that, to nine percent. This year, China is expected to use US$34.3 billion worth of semiconductors, making it the world's largest chip market, according to chip consultancy IC Insights in Scottsdale, Arizona. Many major semiconductor manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon; building plants in China and placing orders with its foundries, including STMicro. Together with its joint-venture partner Hynix, STMicro announced its intentions to launch a China plant by the second half of this year, according to Business Week Online. Laurent Bosson, corporate vice president for manufacturing was quoted as saying in the report, "You have to produce where your customers are. China is becoming the manufacturing workshop of the whole world."
Although the leads from recruitment companies are helpful, they do not determine its foreign human capital source. In 2002, Lim's HR division built a knowledge bank using its overall employee profile and with the help of analytics software, allowed HR to view, categorise and study information pertaining to its employees. The programme enables the organisation to conduct geographically segmented analysis of its employees from every country, including technical competence, reception to integration and career progression. The information is then used to support its recruitment strategies.
As the HR director for the largest STMicro wafer fab in the world, Lim cannot afford to micro manage her team of 25 human resources employees - as it is, her average workday is 12 hours, leaving her with little time to spend with her husband and teenage daughter - yet, ensuring that staff do not lose sight of the big corporate picture. She believes the way to achieving this is making sure her team understands what their key priorities are, what is expected of them and the parameters in which they can operate. At the beginning of each year, she meets with her team from the different wafer fab facilities to discuss their previous year's achievements, challenges, areas they failed to deliver and how they can do a better job in future. "When staff are empowered with the right information, you can trust them with autonomy to make their own decisions and develop action plans for their individual units," says Lim.
According to various industry reports, the semiconductor market looks set for a mediocre year in 2005. The reports point to a softer market with analysts predicting single digit growth. During an interview with CNN early this year, the CEO of STMicro, Alain Dutheil, said he expected a decrease in the market in the first quarter of 2005, followed by a flat second quarter but said improvements should set in by the second half of year. CNN also reported that STMicro expects to produce some 52 percent of its silicon-based products in Asia by the end of 2005, up from 19 percent in mid 2002.
Lim says expansion plans are slated for STMicro Singapore in the near future. "The company has announced that it will be investing S$2 billion over these two years to expand STMicro's existing facilities in Singapore and adding 1,600 employees. There are also plans to build a new S$3.3 billion plant," she adds.
"The aggressive growth of our wafer fabrication activities will see rapid growth in headcount. HR will undoubtedly have to assume a more proactive role to search, attract, recruit and grow the organisation's talent pool," says Lim. She is confident the HR team can rise up to the challenge "Aggressive and well targeted recruitment is our forte," she enthuses.
Biographical Data
Lim Jit Lee
1984
Graduated from Utah States University, USA, with Master of Business Administration.
1988
Joined Microskills Training Centre as the operations manager and was responsible for the sales & marketing of its training programmes.
1992
Training manager at Philips Singapore and was responsible for the total site management development training programmes.
1996
HR Manager, STMicroelectronics. Her roles include total site HR, Total Quality Management and training activities.
2001
Promoted to HR director, STMicroelectronics wafer fab
