HSBC Bank Taiwan Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) plans to adopt several approaches to build a happy workplace for its employees, chief executive officer Adam Chen (陳志堅) said yesterday.
Chen’s comment came after the bank ranked first among all domestic companies to win Chinese-language Global Views Monthly magazine’s Happy Enterprise Award on Monday.
“We can only be cheerful about winning the prize for a short moment, as creating a pleasant work environment is an ongoing journey and we cannot relax and stop,” Chen told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview yesterday.
Photo courtesy of HSBC
The magazine said that HSBC Bank Taiwan’s flexible working arrangements was one of the reasons it was a happy enterprise.
Chen said that the bank would continue its flexible working arrangement even after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.
FLEXIBILITY
“We allow employees great flexibility on where and when they want to do their jobs; they can start working early to get off early or choose to work from home. It is the quality of output that we focus on, not the process,” Chen said.
Although some entrepreneurs think flexitime reduces productivity, Chen disagreed, saying it is important to believe in the good of human nature.
“We have demands about the quality of their work, but we also offer business tools such as a computer for each employee so that they can reach each other using computer software, not phones. The staff has no problem in maintaining their productivity,” Chen said.
Another approach to creating a happy workplace is to make improvements based on staff proposals, so the bank has a staff engagement club and Chen routinely meets with employees to listen to their voices, he said.
Staff proposals range from the light-hearted ones, such as birthday celebrations for colleagues and snack choices for Friday afternoon, to serious ones, such as the need for office computer updates, Chen said.
To ensure that employees are satisfied with the bank’s policies, Chen also asks all section managers to find out if staff have any issues, and if they do, managers must report to him to discuss what can be done, he said.
The bank’s parent company, HSBC Holdings PLC, asks all of its units’ staff to file an anonymous employee survey once every six months, and compares the results across different countries and continents, Chen said.
The survey questions cannot be disclosed, but are mainly used to measure whether staff are confident or happy with the company’s policy and strategy, he said.
DIVERSITY
HSBC values its employees’ differences regarding their age, gender and cultural background, Chen said, adding that the bank aims to boost its LGBT-friendly policies.
The bank offers spouse benefits to employees’ partners and would be relaxing some basic rules to benefit staff more, he added.
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
RSS