Big Observations from Small Potato - Hong Kong SME (1)

Small and medium enterprises(SMEs) refer to any manufacturing business which employs fewer than 100 people in Hong Kong, or any non-manufacturing business which employs fewer than 50 people in Hong Kong, by the Trade and Industry Department. They are the driving force of Hong Kong economy. At December 2010, there were about 296 000 SMEs in Hong Kong. They constituted over 98%of the territory’s business units and accounted for about 48% of private sector employment.

*the following story is based on real-life experiences, but without official proof and statistics. 

The peak for SMEs was in the 80s and 90s. However, they were seriously affected by the financial crisis in 1997. The rise of Chinese economy added vitality and gave great business opportunities to them. This is the story about the observations of an SME in Hong Kong, from the view of a small potato.

The key characteristic of the company is OLD. Old IT structure(old computer, heavy reliance on paper), old management mind set, old colleagues (who have worked there for long time) and old systems. Of course, it did have the time of prosperity. However, there is a high chance that it won't be able to move on with time and will be eliminated.

Old company exclusive 
In terms of compensation and benefit, there are something very typical:
1. 5.5 days work - after working there for more than 1 year, I still don't understand why they adopt 5.5 days working. Is there something that is so important that they need to work for extra 3.5 hours, on Saturday?
2. If you take an annual leave on Saturday, even it is half day, they regard it as a full day off.
3. Only when the typhoon signal is cancelled after 2:30pm (the office hour is till 5:30pm), employees won't need to come back. If the typhoon signal is cancelled at 2:00pm, they will need to come back and work for 1.5 hours.

Basically, most of policies are written based on the labour legislation, which mean, it is the minimum. All the policies are for employers' benefits.

They manage the company by punishment, by making the work environment harsh and by forcing employee to work hard. They don't have the mindset that employees will be more motivated to work in a better environment. They don't dare to provide something so as to gain more at the end. Instead, they need to protect their absolute power over employees.

What even worse is, they block website such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin in company's network because employees were to into using Facebook and didn't work. The implication to me is the employees didn't have many works to do that he/she was so free to use Facebook or they simply didn't want to work. And the way the management tackled it was by blocking those websites. Don't you think it was like in primary school?

In the following 2 articles, I will talk about the observations in management style and company systems.