China Staff articles from July 2006

China Staff archives from July 2006

Chinese professionals unwilling to relocate without incentives: ample job opportunities mean that many well-qualified employees on the Mainland would rather switch jobs than switch cities. Uneven economic development and strong family ties are exacerbating the problem.(Job Grading)
July 1, 2006... Understanding an organisation's structure and maintaining a consistent relationship between jobs is never easy, especially when you factor in such issues as educational attainment, previous work experience, administrative duties, planning and...

Merger mirth at B&Q: challenging, but not impossible: it was always going to be challenging. Take a well-known British home improvement brand, merge it with a similar German company, and expand in the fickle Chinese market. Integrate the companies and their thousands of staff, harmonise policies, corporate cultures, supplier contracts and brands--and do it all in six weeks.(M&A in China)
July 1, 2006... The task was formidable. The staff had different contracts, working habits and organisational cultures. The products in the stores were different. The merger had to be perceived by all staff as a benevolent integration, not a takeover--staff...

Manila's Jollibee serves Chinese food: cultural clash or happy synergies? Jollibee learns through its acquisition of Yonghe King the art of cultivating personal ties within and outside the firm.(M&A in China)
July 1, 2006... Ysmael Baysa, chief financial officer at Jollibee Foods, still remembers that first meeting in early 2004. The US$710m-a year Philippine transnational had just bought Yonghe King, a mainland Chinese fast-food noodle chain, and senior Filipino...

Don't let the numbers scare you: you might be able to walk the walk, but can you talk the talk? Planning a human resources budget without being able to communicate the details effectively to your company's finance department could lead to your hard work getting sidelined.(HR Budgeting)
July 1, 2006... Joe Logudic, Partner for International Assignment Services with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, spoke at the recent AmCham 15th Annual Human Resources Conference about how to get over the fear of numbers and to translate data about people into...

Coping with the "Millenials": unlike the generation of workers born in the 60s and 70s, the Millennials have developed work characteristics and tendencies that can pose a challenge. A product of doting parents, structured lives, and contact with diverse people, Millennials, if managed well, can be developed into the desired workforce of the future in China. Marlene Ye offers some helpful hints.(Workforce Diversity)
July 1, 2006... "I'm having problems working with these young guys fresh out of college.' They are very ,poor in interpersonal skills. They are so money oriented that you can hardly expect them to make any kind of sacrifice to the organisation." "These...

Frenetic recruitment continues in accounting & finance field: it is the fastest-growing and the most challenging recruitment scene in the world--but Guy Day argues that the last six months have seen subtle but fundamental changes in the attitudes of employers and candidates that signal a new maturity in the China job market.(HR Trends)
July 1, 2006... Accountants are still seeking big pay rises to switch jobs but they are starting to look beyond salaries to the value of training, and the quality of the corporate structure. In at least some cases, they have been prepared to forgo pay rises to...

Creating business-literate, cost-conscious, revenue-seeking entrepreneurs: Kevin and Jackie Freiberg explain the benefits of teaching employees to see themselves as the people who can make the organisation grow.
July 1, 2006... At Stanley Steemer, the Dublin, Ohio-based carpet-cleaning giant, new hires are not oriented or trained right away; instead they are celebrated. Founded in 1947, this company began just as wall-to-wall carpeting was starting to roll across...

Mitigating conflicts of interest in the hiring process.(HK Employment Watch)
July 1, 2006... Asking a candidate about his family affiliations during an interview may be one thing, but how a potential employer responds when it receives the answer may well flirt with the boundaries of legality in Hong Kong's anti-discrimination...

Is a letter of offer binding in China?(employment contract)
July 1, 2006... Q: When we recruit new staff in China, they usually want an offer letter from us before telling their current employer that they intend to leave. Is the offer letter binding? What is the position if we, or they, change minds before they...

Most critical impact of the new cap on Guangzhou's City Average Salary (CAS).(Data Page)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... The Housing Fund Administration Centre of Guangzhou, effective July 1, 2006, implemented a new cap of 5 times of Guangzhou City Average Salary (CAS) to apply to the Provident Housing Fund contribution base. Before, no such cap existed in...

Standard Chartered readies to be first HK bank to run full six days.(Standard Chartered Bank PLC)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Standard Chartered Bank (HK) Ltd has announced it will be the first six-day bank in Hong Kong, with all branches in Hong Kong open six full days per week from 4 September 2006. Being one of the three bank-note issuing banks in Hong Kong,...

New contracts raise doctors' ire.(Frontline Doctors' Union)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... An issue of new contracts raised considerable ire as frontline doctors complain they were forced to sign agreements that did not stipulate working hours, reported the South China Morning Post. According to medical sector legislator Kwok...

Unemployment rate rises to 5%.(Hong Kong News)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... According to the latest labour force statistics released by the Census and Statistics Department, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose slightly from 4.9% in March-May 2006 to 5% (provisional figure) in April-June 2006. Analyst...

Calls to cap excessive SOE pay.(state-owned enterprises)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Alarm at the widening wealth gap in China is driving new initiative to keep employee incomes on an even keel. Presently, employees in profitable monopoly sectors can earn up to 10 times the national average. To this, researchers affiliated to...

Graduates fall back on guanxi network for employment.(China News)(Survey)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... More than 40% of China's college graduates believe the most effective way to get a job is through social contacts, reported a survey jointly released by the Communist Youth League of China and Beijing University. The survey, covering 6,000...

Guandong economy signals overheating.(China News)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Guangdong's economy is showing signs of overheating, with a first-half growth rate of 14.4% year on year, 3.5 percentage points above the national rate and 1.8 percentage points up on the figure for the first half of last year, reported the...