Singapore's flagship carrier and blue chip corporate colossus Singapore Airlines (SIA) should be lauded for employing innovative human resource management solutions such as voluntary no-pay leave to manage its excess capacity (SIA crew asked to take no-pay leave amid manpower surplus; Aug 4).

The alternative - job redundancies - would certainly not have been pretty.

The flexibility of no-pay leave, as opposed to job redundancies, also translates into cost savings for SIA, as it does not have to train new hires from scratch when activity picks up.

This, in turn, would allow the airline to stay nimble and proactively respond to changes in demand and operational needs.

On the other side of the equation, the initiative would allow SIA cabin crew who elect for no-pay leave to spend time with their families, sign up for self-improvement courses, go on sabbaticals, attend to their individual personal circumstances, or simply take some well deserved time off.

It is a win-win situation.

In this challenging economic climate, innovative human resource management solutions such as no-pay leave, when carefully calibrated and deployed, could serve as invaluable tools with which to manage costs and provide a company's most valuable resource - its employees - with customised work experiences.

Woon Wee Min