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Wealth is talent, not just money
By Tseng Tan |
January 22, 2009, Thursday
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SOME years ago, an Englishman visited Hong Kong and when he went back, he reported that most of the shops and restaurants had similar names, Kong Hee Fatt Choy ?? the Cantonese version of Gong Xi Fa Cai (Wish You a Good Fortune).
Soon, the Lunar New Year will be upon us. Chinese all over the world celebrate the Spring Festival visiting relatives and participating in family reunions.
The underlying thought during the celebration has been the idea of prosperity in wealth.
By itself, wealth creation is not a bad thing. Money makes the world go round, and many of us can achieve our hopes and ambitions with it.
It is only when greed controls the individual, whose fervent pursuit of money without regard to values such as integrity and honestly, that many financial scams are hatched.
So for the year 2009, we should not concentrate just on hoping that the god of wealth would come to our doors, but also pondering the other cai (talent) - pun intended.
Qiu cai - the pursuit of talent - in a knowledge-based world should be an unending and all-important task for organizations and individuals.
Wealth can dissipate if not handled well or in bad times but "knowledge follows its own everywhere" as an ancient Chinese proverb says.
Many employees, who have been caught unprepared in the recent and past corporate upheavals and found themselves without the relevant skills have themselves to blame, partly.
Training and retraining of the employees should be undertaken jointly by organizations and employees to ensure their skills are updated and enhanced.
Singapore's WDA (Workforce Development Authority) has provided funding to some 800 courses to encourage companies to train their employees, including professionals, managers, executives and technicians.
Finally, the talent within an organization should be carefully utilized (yong cai) to its maximum potential.
Even when the output does not warrant the current complement of employees, attempts should be made to retain those talents who have been nurtured over the years and are still relevant.
Job sharing is one way to retain talent. To retrench, sending staff to other industries, would be a waste of talent.
Shanghai is doing a good job in attracting talents from all over the world by making it much easier for them to get a permanent residence permit that entitles them to Shanghai's social security benefits.
(The author is a senior consultant in Singapore. He can be reached at: teesstan@starhub.net.sg)
Soon, the Lunar New Year will be upon us. Chinese all over the world celebrate the Spring Festival visiting relatives and participating in family reunions.
The underlying thought during the celebration has been the idea of prosperity in wealth.
By itself, wealth creation is not a bad thing. Money makes the world go round, and many of us can achieve our hopes and ambitions with it.
It is only when greed controls the individual, whose fervent pursuit of money without regard to values such as integrity and honestly, that many financial scams are hatched.
So for the year 2009, we should not concentrate just on hoping that the god of wealth would come to our doors, but also pondering the other cai (talent) - pun intended.
Qiu cai - the pursuit of talent - in a knowledge-based world should be an unending and all-important task for organizations and individuals.
Wealth can dissipate if not handled well or in bad times but "knowledge follows its own everywhere" as an ancient Chinese proverb says.
Many employees, who have been caught unprepared in the recent and past corporate upheavals and found themselves without the relevant skills have themselves to blame, partly.
Training and retraining of the employees should be undertaken jointly by organizations and employees to ensure their skills are updated and enhanced.
Singapore's WDA (Workforce Development Authority) has provided funding to some 800 courses to encourage companies to train their employees, including professionals, managers, executives and technicians.
Finally, the talent within an organization should be carefully utilized (yong cai) to its maximum potential.
Even when the output does not warrant the current complement of employees, attempts should be made to retain those talents who have been nurtured over the years and are still relevant.
Job sharing is one way to retain talent. To retrench, sending staff to other industries, would be a waste of talent.
Shanghai is doing a good job in attracting talents from all over the world by making it much easier for them to get a permanent residence permit that entitles them to Shanghai's social security benefits.
(The author is a senior consultant in Singapore. He can be reached at: teesstan@starhub.net.sg)
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