It’s always easy to have a bad day in the office. If you feel like you’re doing it tough though, simply think about the HR directors of the following three companies and you’ll be sure to feel better.
Royal Bank of Scotland
In a massive overhaul of operations that began in June, The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) announced it would lose a significant fraction of its staff. While the numbers weren’t made clear for each branch, reports stated that the company would reduce its Asian workforce of 2,800 to a much smaller 200.
Layoffs are difficult to handle at any time but making so many staff redundant at the same time will be an absolutely horrendous job for even the most seasoned HR professional. Once the overhaul was announced, recruiters started snapping up RBS employees too meaning the firm had to struggle to hold onto the best for when the bank had finally finished scaling back its presence in Asia.
Prime Gold International
When the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) investigated Prime Gold International, a Singapore-based marine firm, in December 2014, they found the company had been engaging in discriminatory employment practices. Work Pass privileges were curtailed soon afterwards for a period of two years.
During this time, the firm’s HR director will be under real pressure to focus on sourcing each one of their workers from the local talent pool especially with the shortage of workers that the country is currently experiencing.
Kopitiam
This HRD has had to deal with not one but three cases of workplace health violations caused by serving staff. In June, an employee was filmed washing her shoes at Kopitiam’s National University Hospital outlet. In July, another worker at Sun Plaza Kopitiam was seen scraping dead skin off her hand with a knife. Finally, August saw a third employee washing her uniform in a Kopitiam sink at the Changi General Hospital outlet. All three were fired.
With three similar incidents occurring in rapid succession, the company’s HR director would have been under enormous pressure to create better awareness of the proper health and hygiene practices amongst their staff.
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HR survival guide: handling redundancies
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