I'm Clayton Tan (a.k.a. Ju Chiae). More about myself could be found by clicking on the "About" link above. Having much passion on youth development, the education system, political environment, talent management, corporate strategies and entrepreneurship, you'd expect more of my articles to revolve around this area. All posts in this blog are merely my personal opinions, therefore I invite that you post your comments as desired.
This is a very much overdue post. I was all the while thinking about sharing this simple assignment I did as part of my DBA program. The questions is - “Is HR on the table? or under it?”
My immediate reaction was “HR is NOT YET at the table”, and there’s a web of issues that preventing HR from getting to the table. These issues are very much inter-related as shown in the web below (extracted from my assignment):
HR Profession's Web of Issues
I’ll share the simple conclusion on this post. Feel free to download the paper for your own reading pleasure. (more…)
Last Saturday was the much awaited Musical Charity Concert organized jointly by 13 Leo Clubs in Selangor. It was a very good musical show (should I call it romance or comedy?) put together by collective effort of schools, colleges and university students. While amateur in acting and stage performance, the show was indeed entertaining and well worth the RM15 ticket (especially when it goes to Charity).
Anyway, I wasn’t able to stay for the full event due to Chinese New Year open house to attend. At least managed to stay for the opening story (which includes dances and songs) and also an inspiring speech by YB Hannah Yeoh (State Assembly Representative for Subang Jaya) for all the youth out there (the title of this post summarizes it)! (more…)
Looking through my postings, I realized that I haven’t written much about the Leo Club especially in the capacity of my role as the Regional Committee Chairperson for Leo Clubs in Region 5 (Selangor). Here’s something I’d like to share.
I’ve had a regional meeting with all the Leo Clubs in Selangor on 20 February. To make the meeting more interesting, I’ve thrown in a competition among all the clubs to design a short clip to share with everyone else what the club has done. The clip I’m sharing here is the winning clip which I was truly impressed with.
So for those of you who are not familiar with the Lions and Leo club activities, here’s a video clip that gives quite a good picture:
If there are any of you aged between 18 - 28 live around Petaling Jaya and wish to join this wonderful club, do drop me your contacts or visit their blog at http://leopji.blogspot.com.
When an employee gets on-board, and you’re planning an orientation, what would you generally prepare to brief the new employee?
I’ve been through many training programs all these years … technical training, process training, standard operating procedures, rules and guidelines, handbook, standard scripts! These are often the “tools” provided to new employees to get them up to speed. In today’s world where turnover is often high, this is sadly true in most organizations in trying to get employees ready for the “real work” as soon as possible. (more…)
I was recently in a good debate and discussions on Linked-In about Gen-Y - the similarities and differences accros culture and how to deal with them. It triggered me to think about how to bridge the gap between the different generations.
Sometimes I do keep wondering why we often see programs, articles, workshops focusing on “how to manage Gen-Y” or “learning about Gen-Y behaviours” or “Building an environment for Gen-Y”. We might have been knocking on the wrong door. I guess the other method to bridge the gap is to capitalize on the Gen-Y’s inclination for “knowledge and education”. Revamp the strategy and turn-it around! (more…)
What surprises me is that Taman Megah have frequently used as an example (or maybe I’ve noticed it more since I stay around here). Anyway, the most recent article caught my attention most. It painted the Taman Megah resident associations in bad light and went to the extend of quoting unhappy residents. I wonder where were those so called interviews with the residents done since majority of the residents were supportive of the idea, only very few which disagreed. TheStar, however, interesting only managed to speak to those who disagreed. Maybe TheStar should be invited to the Taman Megah Resident Association’s meeting and witness for themselves the true feelings of the residents. (more…)
I made this the topic of the blog post because it reminds me of the project I organized when I was once a Leo Club member. The purpose of this project is to guide school leavers on selecting the best career options for themselves and to understand what the working world is like. Getting youths who have been working for less than 6 years to share with their juniors how it feels like to have taken their chosen paths.
Today I’ve once again been asked to advice on career options for a high-school leaver. Since I was once working in a bank, the topic began by revolving around how it feels like to be working in a bank and what are the career options in banks as well as graduates in accounting and finance. Well, I wasn’t a graduate in accounting and finance so really I can’t talk much about that, but I could probably share some of my general advise to school leavers. (more…)
“I may not be best at anything or the most knowledgeable in organizing projects, but I believe the role of the leader is not to do the work hands-on but to provide directions, bring the team together and set good visions” - The phrase was not said in as many words but that was the essense of the “campaign speech” given by a potential presidential candidate (Damian Leong) for Leo Club of Petaling Jaya Integrity for fiscal year 2010/2011. Although he didn’t win the majority of votes of was made the Vice President, I strongly believe that he is a great leader in the making and with the drive to succeed, he’s definitely one that could bring the team to greater heights. Hats off to him and I’m looking forward to a great leader for 2011/2012, don’t give up!
Back to the topic, what’s the role of a leader? I guess that phrase was spot-on! A leader’s role in fact isn’t to become the smartest, the know-it-all or the complete hands-on person; but one who knows everybody’s capabilities, motivations and the abilities to bring everyone towards to set vision and mission. (more…)
There was an interesting article in Economist recently titled “Fighting Corruption in India: A zero contribution“. I found the article very interesting, especially the unique way that’s used to fight corruption. However, I’m seriously skeptical about the possibility of it working accross different cultures, especially here in Malaysia (It does keeps me wondering though whether corruption is more prevalent in Malaysia or India).
Zero Rupees
Anyway, back to the topic, the techniques used here is championed by an organization, 5th Pillar, which prints zero-rupee notes to be distributed. This notes is then used by any individual to “pay” officials seeking bribery to signal that they will neither take nor give bribes. (more…)
Stumbled upon this article (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/01/avatars_at_work.html) recommended by a friend via LinkedIn. It got me thinking about a project I was on many years ago which involves the development of Virtual Campus to deliver Virtual Learning Programs and knowledge sharing platform. For those who is not familiar with the SecondLife yet, I’d encourage you to find out more from:
It’s very much like a world within the cyberspace that uses single currency (The Linden dollars) and you could suddenly feel like a billionnaire overnight by becoming “owners” of lands, buildings or even Island! So is this just another fantasy game like “The Sims” or could it be more than that? (more…)
