Singapore's flagship carrier Singapore Airlines (SIA) should be lauded for employing innovative human resource management (HRM) solutions, such as voluntary no-pay leave (NPL), to preserve jobs as well as manage and align excess capacity with activity (SIA freezes hiring, looking at asking staff to go on voluntary no-pay leave, Feb 26).
The alternative - job redundancies - would not be pretty. The flexibility of NPL also translates into savings on search and recruitment costs for SIA, and not having to train new hires from scratch when activity subsequently picks up.
This will permit SIA to be nimble and respond proactively to any changes in demand and operational needs.
On the other side of the equation, the initiative also allows SIA cabin crew who volunteer for NPL to make use of the downtime to, say, tap their SkillsFuture credits and upskill themselves with self-improvement courses, or to simply take some well-deserved time off to attend to their families and personal circumstances.
They would be energised and ready for work when activity and demand subsequently pick up again.
In the current challenging economic climate, with business conditions fluid and in constant flux, carefully calibrated HRM solutions such as NPL could be valuable tools for managing costs and excess capacity, and provide a company's most valued resources - its employees - with much needed flexibility and customised work experiences.
Woon Wee Min