Formenting dissent
I've been thinking hard how to provide 'feedback' about the unease (a gross understatement) my colleagues we feel about our big boss a.k.a. the empress, especially what happened here and here. In fact, I'm not even sure there's anyone higher than her who can intervene as technically she is considered equal to other big bosses.
Then a glimmer of hope appears...and please let it eventually brightens the future.
Ok, a little background: our department here in Singapore have both internal and external clients. Internal clients are our fellow colleagues in other departments, who need our expertise in certain areas. One area is to provide our opinion on the reasonableness of work performed by their own external clients. This matters because our colleagues are signing off certain forms/certificates that include, among other things, work done by their external clients.
Over the years, there were discussions, at times squabbles, about how this should be done but I can safely say that after 7 years, both parties are comfortable with the work we perform and the fees that we charged.
Enter the empress. Instead of checking reasonableness of the work, she is insisting that to provide proper assurance, we have to reperform the work! Naturally, this will mean a gigantic increase in fees (easily doubled), which is something that internal clients cannot pass to their clients as doing so will drive them to our competitors (who are already providing the same service a little cheaper).
Of course this caused an uproar among the big bosses of the other departments and inevitably some of them, including their senior managers, have touched on this topic with me and lamented that they are already comfortable doing the way of which my direct boss is advocating i.e. reasonableness check (and at most, some sample checking), rather than full reperformance. I agreed with them but said that it is out of my hands and it is something that all the big bosses have to work it out.
Later, I learned that the empress may just shift all such service to China and the reason given is because of lack of manpower (which is true). As we have already started discussing about this year end work with internal clients, we were given permission by our senior manager to forewarn them. This causes yet another uproar and I can safely say that all of them prefer the work to be here as even their external clients view this as an advantage over our competitors. Again, I agreed with them that we should just hire more (in fact, it's merely hiring to replace those who left) here, instead of shifting the work to China.
I really hope the big bosses of other departments can knock some sense into my big boss. Pray hard.
Then a glimmer of hope appears...and please let it eventually brightens the future.
Ok, a little background: our department here in Singapore have both internal and external clients. Internal clients are our fellow colleagues in other departments, who need our expertise in certain areas. One area is to provide our opinion on the reasonableness of work performed by their own external clients. This matters because our colleagues are signing off certain forms/certificates that include, among other things, work done by their external clients.
Over the years, there were discussions, at times squabbles, about how this should be done but I can safely say that after 7 years, both parties are comfortable with the work we perform and the fees that we charged.
Enter the empress. Instead of checking reasonableness of the work, she is insisting that to provide proper assurance, we have to reperform the work! Naturally, this will mean a gigantic increase in fees (easily doubled), which is something that internal clients cannot pass to their clients as doing so will drive them to our competitors (who are already providing the same service a little cheaper).
Of course this caused an uproar among the big bosses of the other departments and inevitably some of them, including their senior managers, have touched on this topic with me and lamented that they are already comfortable doing the way of which my direct boss is advocating i.e. reasonableness check (and at most, some sample checking), rather than full reperformance. I agreed with them but said that it is out of my hands and it is something that all the big bosses have to work it out.
Later, I learned that the empress may just shift all such service to China and the reason given is because of lack of manpower (which is true). As we have already started discussing about this year end work with internal clients, we were given permission by our senior manager to forewarn them. This causes yet another uproar and I can safely say that all of them prefer the work to be here as even their external clients view this as an advantage over our competitors. Again, I agreed with them that we should just hire more (in fact, it's merely hiring to replace those who left) here, instead of shifting the work to China.
I really hope the big bosses of other departments can knock some sense into my big boss. Pray hard.
Comments
Don't be like that leh...pray for me please :)
Well, hope it's already bad enough.