Essay15

topwayer

Discuss a challenge in your life, why you consider it a challenge, and what you learned? (400)


Keeping people in my department turned out to be my biggest challenge soon after I took up the position of the department manager in 1995. That year, some young employees of our company left for new foreign trade companies that paid higher salaries. Although none of my fifteen people left, they were certainly tempted. Their performance was apparently affected. If my department, the most important export department, suffered a brain drain, the whole company's performance would be undermined.

At the time, we could not possibly provide the kind pay or positions that other companies were providing. I analyzed out situation, looking for our advantages that might offset our disadvantages. Compared with the newly emerged competitors, our department was much more established in business, staffed with much more qualified people and had a lot more financial assets. I decided to make full use of these resources to meet our people's needs to the best we could

First, I wanted to instill a sense of professional pride in our people. I laid down a rule of routine project review whereby project managers would report the progress of his project to the whole department as "case studies". I made English our working language and thus turned the offices into effective classrooms where people could learn and improve their command of the foreign language. I let everyone know I cared about their professional progress and their personal future. They began to appreciate the environment, which would not be available to them elsewhere.

Second, I changed the focus of the department's business to larger and more complicated projects that were beyond the capability of new foreign trade companies, which were usually small and inexperienced. This strategy successfully withdrew my department from the chaotic competition between foreign trade companies scrambling for business and personnel with connections.

Third, considering the company's bonus/profit ratio were dragged down by a large reserve set aside for possible losses, I proposed to the company management a method that incorporate the risk factors into bonus calculation. This method allowed a much higher bonus/profit ratio for "safe deals" such as most of our department's projects, which were financed by World Bank. Many managers in my department received a remarkable increase in their incomes.

The result was that my department gradually restored its stability and our export started to go up. Today, as the assistant general manager in charge of my company's export, I always keep in mind what I have learned from this experience -- human resources are the most important asset of a company, and, to retain such an asset, the management have to put people's needs before anything else.

ZZ:tol24.com