Thirty-six percent of Malaysian employees are likely to leave their present jobs in the next two years as they become more demanding in terms of intangible rewards like empowerment and work-life balance to keep them loyal to their organisations, according to an article on human resources website, www.humanresourcesonline.net.

The article, titled “Retention still a key challenge for Malaysian HR professionals” said the main reason was a “lack of engagement” by employers beyond the usual areas of salary and job security.

The finding was obtained by global human resources consulting firm, Towers Watson, in their 2014 Global Workforce Study and 2014 Talent Management and Rewards Study, which covered 32,000 employees worldwide.

It found that employers could improve employee engagement and retention in the areas of “empowerment”, “goals and objectives”, “workload and worklife”, as well as career management.

These “drivers of attraction and retention” were things that employees were increasingly looking for. Employees also expected employers to “know their needs and meet them”. However, more than half of workers surveyed felt that organisations were not living up to their promises.

Director of talent and rewards in Towers Watson Malaysia, Mary Chua, said companies had to distinguish themselves from competitors by developing these drivers to attract workers.

Chua also said that the survey was as a wake up call for employers to revamp their career advancement opportunities for their employees so that they would feel highly engaged within the company.

Since 2012, Malaysian employees have stated “pay/salary”, “job security”, “learning and development”, career advancement and “relationship with supervisor/manager” as the main drivers of job attraction and retention.

“The employment landscape in Malaysia is very competitive and therefore the ability to retain top talent will continue to be a challenging reality,” the article also quoted Dr Joyce K. Noser, Tower Watson’s practice leader, organisational surveys and insights in Malaysia. – January 12, 2015.

Source: The Malaysianinsider.com

Salman Khan became famous for teaching. Now he’s in a different role: Learner.

His Khan Academy is a free online education platform founded in 2006. Its 15 million registered users complete four million math problems per day.

But lately he’s facing a challenge unrelated to long division or polynomials. Khan Academy now counts 80 employees, and its boss has to figure out how to lead a growing organization.

“I’m not an expert manager,” admits the 38-year-old visionary, whose mission is to educate the world for free.

Although he’s achieved great individual success in his short career, Khan knows his organization won’t succeed on vision alone. So recently he’s begun meeting with his top people to develop a leadership and management strategy. “We’re this organization that’s all about learning,” he says. “But I find myself at a spot where it’s like, wow, there’s this whole thing called management. There’s a whole art to it. We’re asking ‘What does management training at Khan Academy mean?’ ”

Salman Khan

Rest assured it won’t mean creating a traditional corporate learning culture. The Khan Academy is about blowing up traditional models. His learning platform gives teachers a completely new way to teach children math, science and other subjects. His challenge now is to figure out a better way to teach his adult leadership team how to motivate, delegate, set goals, monitor performance, hold people accountable, and so on.

The one thing he knows is that the manager is “the most powerful teaching role in an organization” and that managers will be at the center of his learning culture. “It’s an 18th or 19th century phenomenon to say the role of a manager is to get someone to do work,” he explains. “That’s wrong. The role of a modern manager is, ‘How do I develop my people?’ ”

Interesting story: When Khan worked as a senior analyst at a hedge fund before founding Khan Academy, the firm hired some junior analysts. “They were from top Ivy League schools with 4.0 GPAs in economics,” he recalls. “But they didn’t understand the basics of reading a financial statement.”

So Khan, being Khan, created a series of micro lectures on video. One day his boss noticed and Khan’s first reaction was to apologize. That time spent teaching, after all, was time not spent getting stuff done. “But my boss said, ‘No, this is great. I haven’t seen this happening at a hedge fund before.’ “

Khan’s evangelism about putting the manager at the center of organizational learning is anchored in a driving principle that spawned the Khan Academy and sustains it today: People don’t all learn at the same pace.

Which means what Khan calls “the Prussian model” for teaching kids never really worked, and neither does the classroom-style “sage-on-the-stage” model that currently dominates corporate training.

It never made sense to Khan that the kid who’d already figured out long division had to listen to the same math lecture as the kid who was totally lost. The key to successful education is to coach that lost kid, fill in his “gaps,” and get him to achieve mastery of long division before letting him move on to the next thing.

Khan proved this model back in 2004 when he created his first video tutorials for his niece, a seventh-grader who’d been excluded from the advanced math track. She was a thousand miles away, so Khan filled her gaps with short video tutorials. She got into advanced math. And the model for the Khan Academy was born.

Today Khan Academy has half a million registered teachers. Many of them are “filling gaps” in schools using his bite-size learning method. There’s no question he’s changing the way education works.

But Khan laments that today most companies “have formal training programs that mirror traditional academic models,” and they’re making the same mistakes schools did. “There are two things that are even more true about the workplace than the classroom,” he says. “The first is that the differences between people’s gaps in understanding are more diverse. The second is that there is even more need for people to learn asynchronously.”

It’s true that a given workplace team will have wildly varied backgrounds and lack a shared knowledge base to build on. The “gaps” will be huge. While it’s efficient to gather the team for a “synchronous” classroom-style training event where they all learn together, Khan is saying that in the workplace it’s likely to be ineffective. Even more ineffective than it is in schools.

The only alternative to that model is the manager/teacher role. Managers need to assess the gaps of the people they oversee, then coach them at their own pace and help them achieve mastery of skills.

That takes time and effort. And most managers, even those who really want to develop people, will struggle to get it done. So I asked Khan, given the time constraints , and the mindset of most managers, what leaders can do to create a learning culture with the manager/teacher at its center. He suggested three strategies:

Strategy #1: Motivate managers by linking talent development to their compensation. Khan believes most managers aren’t motivated to develop people. And that senior executives, who “have all the levers at their disposal” to incentivize managers, are missing a huge opportunity.

“The main lever is how people are compensated,” Khan says. “Management can make the rubric for how managers are rewarded and promoted. And part of that rubric is, you go to our corporate intranet and you achieve mastery of certain skills, and if you do that you get rewarded.”

The idea of measuring training behavior rather than training results doesn’t sit well with traditional learning professionals. But as I pointed out in a previous article, demonstrating a “training ROI” is often impossible because there are so many variables. More and more companies, including GE, have recognized the futility of correlating soft-skills training to business results. Instead, they’re measuring the behaviors that should logically lead to better results. Engaging in training activity is one such behavior, and it’s relatively easy to measure.

Strategy #2: Make it easier for managers by giving them tools. Khan’s vision of people development at Khan Academy is all about “artifacts,” his word for learning tools. He wants to create a library of internal videos that capture the Khan approach to every imaginable challenge, from “How do you read a financial statement?” to “How do you delegate but not over-delegate?” or “How do you keep a balance between strategic and tactical?”

The idea is to mimic the “flipped classroom” concept that many teachers have adopted using Khan Academy. The teacher assigns an online math module to be watched at home, then coaches students as they do problems in class. So students do classwork at home, and homework in class. The workplace version of this model has managers assigning a training module to their team, then conducting a meeting where they discuss the learning concept and the manager plays the role of coach.

Strategy #3: Set an example. Two years ago Khan sort of accidentally modeled the way for future leaders at his organization. His CEO coach suggested a 360-degree feedback survey, where his team rated Khan (anonymously) on various aspects of leadership. Subjecting yourself to 360 feedback is scary. It’s designed to raise self-awareness by revealing things you don’t know about yourself.

Khan’s results were mixed, and he resisted when his coach suggested he show them to his team. “I’m like ‘Really? How about I just share the positives?’ As a manager I’m this person people are supposed to respect. If I go out there and tell them all my weaknesses, are they going to respect and listen to me? Everyone has that insecurity.”

Eventually Khan revealed the results to his team. They showed that he was a good communicator and visionary, but sometimes didn’t prioritize goals and follow through. “None of us like to hear negative feedback, but it’s powerful,” Khan says. “And my team appreciated me sharing my 360. They were, like, ‘That meant so much to us. That makes us more comfortable. That makes us eager to improve ourselves more.’ ”

Khan lives and works in Silicon Valley, a place where “talent is everything” and personal development is a high priority. Despite the fact he can’t offer huge comp packages with stock options, he’s recruited a world-class staff from elite schools and marquee companies by leveraging his reputation as a teacher. “Only 1% of applicants get through our interview process,” he claims. “And although most of those we accept have offers from Google GOOGL -0.31%, Dropbox, Facebook and other start-ups, we get 70% of them to join us. The reason is that the pitch we make is that ‘We’re a learning organization and we’re going to invest in you. Five, 10, 15 years down the road you’re going to be unstoppable.’ We don’t just say that; we genuinely believe it.”

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemeyer/2014/12/03/salman-khan-the-worlds-best-known-teacher-is-learning-to-lead/

Isn’t it amazing that some people you know always seem to be working hard, but never seem to get anything done? As an entrepreneur, you need to avoid partnering with these people, or hiring them at your startup. The challenge is to find people who get things done, as well as work hard. LinkedIn profiles and resumes still focus too much on responsibilities rather than results.

The best entrepreneurs never confuse motion with results. It’s easy to find people in every organization rushing around from one meeting to the next, often working overtime to generate more work for themselves and other people, but rarely taking the action to close an issue or contract. We all need more people around us who make every motion mean something.

Related: The 3 Qualities of Likable People

So how do you recognize those few people on your team who are getting things done, or even recognize ahead of time those who have that potential? Such people are different, but are not necessarily the smartest or the most skilled. But they do seem to have some common characteristics and approaches that you can look for.

1. Possess street smarts, as well as skills and experience.
People like this quickly figure out how businesses really work, and how to resolve the challenges in their business. They have a special ability to cut through the confusion, dodge any head-on collisions, and negotiate compromises leading to required actions and resolution.

2. Able to avoid or navigate the politics of the organization.
Understanding politics is not the same as being a politician, or using political clout. People who get things done don’t worry about building their own image, but they are politically astute enough to find alternate routes around the political and power bastions.

3. Recognize what it takes to get leverage, but don’t blatantly use it.
The key is to be open and listen to recommendations from those who have to be moved, and find a way to create win-win situations, rather than win-lose. They get things done by using their power to get recognition for key players, rather than for themselves.

4. Maintain a laser focus on narrowing the scope, rather than expanding it.
This means effective negotiating to eliminate sidetracks, combat opinions with facts and finding the glass half-full. It requires being able to accurately assess the position of others, find some common ground and snapping people back to reality.

Related: 8 Entrepreneurial Qualities That Contribute to Success

5. Able to negotiate agreements without committing to future paybacks.
People who get things done are driven by an insatiable desire to make progress and help others. They are not looking to build a cache of favors or special attention, and are not willing to make deals that compromise the solutions and can come back to haunt them.

6. See every problem as an opportunity to innovate, rather than a chance to fail.
Obstacles are seen as innovative and creative challenges, not barriers. All the reasons something can’t be done are replaced by better ways to get it done, quicker and at less cost. Nothing is immutable, even the culture of the organization or the business.

7. Able to balance the paradoxes of highly effective leaders.
People who know how to get things done can be analytical as well as intuitive, aggressive or patient as required, and confident and humble at the same time. They instinctively know when and how to escalate issues to the right level, without stubbornly entrenching their position.

To get things done more effectively, people need to really think about each element of their work before they make a move. By culture and habit, many of us expect most of our daily work and personal activities to be pre-defined, and we just go through the paces (the way it’s always been done). We need to practice overt thinking about desired outcomes to make them a reality.

If your desired outcome is to move up in the organization, or just to get more satisfaction from your daily efforts, now is the time focus on the attributes listed above, and emulate the people on your team who get things done.

If you are the entrepreneur or executive in the organization, make sure you are the role model in execution and in hiring. That’s the only way to win in the long run.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239944

The majority of Malaysians will likely struggle in the event of income emergencies as they have no financial assets and no banking or financial account of any kind, the Malaysia Human Development Report 2013 revealed.

More than half or 53% of Malaysian households have no financial assets, while one in three Malaysians do not have an account, the report commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said.

Rural households have the highest number of those without any financial assets (63%), compared to 45% of urban households, and by ethnic group, Bumiputera and Malays chalked up the highest figures as those without such assets.

“Among ethnic groups, about 57% of non-Malay Bumiputera and 55% of Malays have no financial assets, with the figure for the Chinese and Indians at 45% and 44% respectively,” read the report which was released in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

“In other words, roughly one out of two Malays, non-Malay Bumiputera, Chinese and Indians have no immediate liquid financial assets, making them vulnerable in the event of an income or employment shock.”

One in three Malaysians also had no banking or financial account, while among the bottom 40%, the figure was much higher, at 50%, said the report.

“In other words, one out of two low-income Malaysians do not have any financial accounts. Access to formal credit (or lack thereof) may also be the reason for the absence of financial assets,” it said.

The report stated that while Malaysia recorded a relatively high gross national savings rate, the bulk of the savings came from the corporate sector.

Citing figures from the Household Income Survey (HIS), the report also noted that nearly 90% and 86% of the rural and urban households, respectively, had no savings, while the majority of households at 88% had zero earnings from their savings.

Meanwhile, 57% of Malaysian households reported zero earnings from investments, with the figure for urban households at 50% and rural households at 66%, according to figures derived from dividend income earned.

The report did not take into account forced savings, such as the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), as households do not have access to such savings in the event of immediate income or employment shock.

But a breakdown of data from EPF savings as at 2013 showed equally worrying information: 90% of Malaysians nearing retirement age did not have enough funds to sustain a basic lifestyle for more than five years.

“Data from EPF shows that as at end of 2013, about one-fifth of Malaysians who are nearing retirement age (between the ages of 51 and 55) have less than RM20,000 in savings, while nearly 70% of those at the age of 54 have savings less than RM50,000.

“In other words, assuming a monthly expenditure of RM900 per month, the savings of the former could sustain their basic lifestyle for 1.8 years, while for the latter, the figure stands at 4.6 years.”

Though alarming, neither the low amount of financial assets or EPF savings were surprising, the report noted.

It also explained that the low EPF savings were due to the fact that the majority of Malaysians earned low wages.

“The monthly wage distribution from EPF shows that in 2013, one-third, or 2.1 million, active members earn less than RM1,000, slightly more than three-quarters (76.8%) earn less than RM3,000, and about 90% earn less than RM5,000 a month.

“As expected, the inequality in compulsory savings is rather extreme, where the top 1.7% of depositors in EPF has more savings than the savings of the entire bottom 57% combined,” added the report.

The authors said that the lack of financial assets, especially for the bottom 40%, severely limited their ability to borrow, invest, save and improve their economic opportunities.

The report was written by Tan Sri Datuk Dr Kamal Salih, an adjunct professor of Economics and Development Studies at Universiti Malaya (UM); Dr Lee Hwok Aun, from the UM Department of Development Studies, and Dr Muhammad Khalid of the Khazanah Research Institute.

The report was published for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and was sponsored by both the UNDP and the Economic Planning Unit which is under the Prime Minister’s Department. – November 26, 2014.

Source: The Malaysian Insider www.themalaysianinsider.com