Model Employer
Setting / Challenge
B. Braun was a fast growing company, in the years before I joined it had grown from 45 FTE manufacturing one product type (sutures) to 2000 FTE producing many hundreds of articles. Human Resource however had not kept pace. We were a byword for bad employee relations, losing all court cases claiming unfair dismissal. As a matter of fact my function, Group Finance & Administration Director, came into being after a consultancy outlined much of what was amiss in its report.
Solution
I set out to change this situation drastically, part of this was the removal of the then Human Resource Manager as well as the instruction of basic labour law to the different HR executives. All employee disputes had to pass my desk and I would actively engage in them, thus changing the overall attitude, not merely of HR employees, but also of all managers. Proper procedures were set up requiring full documentation of both the complaint but also the actions taken to remedy the situation. Expatriate managers were held to the same, if not higher, standards than local managers and there would be no cover-ups.
Result
Some 5 years after I joined I was asked for the first time to be a feature speaker at a labour conference called by the local labour office. My task? To explain to Penang’s employers, both local and international, how create a Human Resource department that was effective and actually alleviated the job of the labour office. The rare complaints this office now received from our employees were generally baseless and inspired not by facts. Over the years that followed I became a regular speaker at both Malaysian and Singaporean labour conferences, whether organised by the ministry or the employer federation.
During these conferences I was also often asked to speak on the flexpay system (EQIB) we had put in place at B. Braun.
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