Age: 48
Designation: General Sales Manager
Company Name: Champions Machine Tools
Qn 1) Briefly describe your job responsibilities as a manager.
Mr Tan: First of all, I’d like to give you a little background of my company. We are a machine tools trading company so we sell machines and equipments to the industry. My responsibility as a manager is to ensure that the overall operations of the company runs smoothly in terms of sales and and after sales service. I am also responsible for the sales and service departments as I overlook the operations of these 2 departments.
Qn 2) What is your management style? (How do you manage your staff as a whole?)
Mr Tan: I have a very open style and approach that I follow. The staff can approach me anytime. Usually, I will guide them and give them a guideline to follow. However, they are rather independent to work within a certain guideline and follow certain expectations. I would say it is a pretty open style system.
Author’s note: From what Mr Tan had said, I believe that he uses a mixture of Theory Z and Scientific Management in managing his staff. Reasons why I feel this way is because he encourages active participation from his staff to give suggestions on how to solve some problems. At the same time, he believes that it is important to have a good rapport with the staff (as seen in his replies for the coming questions) Mr Tan also ensures that he hires the right staff for the right positions. He also trains and guides them when they work. He also provides monetary incentives to motivate them to work harder.
Qn 3) How do you gauge your staff performance and how do you reward them?
Mr Tan: For the sales staff, it is pretty straightforward. Their performances usually depend on the sales that they bring in. Therefore, their rewards will be the commissions they get from the sales that they bring in. But, as for the service staff, a lot depends if they are able to solve the machines’ problems fast and independently. In addition, I will also gauge their performances based on the customers’ feedback and of course complaints, if there are any. For the service staff, we will reward them by giving more increment in their pay checks. We have different increments for different staff of different performance and also the extra bonus if they do well.
Qn 4) What are some difficulties you face as a manager?
Mr Tan: The most difficult to me is to find the right people, the right staff with the right quality and attitude and who are able to perform in the company. We do have difficulties of staff turnover. However, my staff and I are all able to multitask so that means when we have a shortage of manpower in certain areas, some of the other staff including myself will step in to help. All of us would take the initiative to get the work done. Overall, I would say that the most difficult part is to find the right people for the job.
Qn 5) How do you overcome these difficulties?
Mr Tan: First of all, I need to identify the right people, so usually I do not simply hire people from job applications through newspapers. I’d usually try to find the right people in the industry through recommendations or even through my own contacts during work. It could be people from the same industry, same customer, and sometimes, even from our competitors. So we try to identify the right people and we try to make them feel comfortable, guide them so that they will stay for the long haul.
Qn 6) In your opinion, what makes a good manager?
Mr Tan: To me, a good manager is someone who is able to motivate their staff. Be it when, the staff is in front of the manager or behind his back, the staff should be able to feel self-motivated and want to do well for the company. I treat myself as the owner of the company, so I always inculcate the same values to my staff. I’m very open to opinions and suggestions from my staff. Nobody knows everything and nobody is right every time. So, if the staff has a good opinion and even though its is different from mine, I am willing to accept and implement their suggestion. Also, I do not think money is everything that the staff is looking of, although of course they have to be adequately paid to survive the high living standards here. But, what is most important is that they feel a sense of belonging in the company. Our staff usually, if they are suitable, will stay for a long time and those who are unsuitable will usually leave in a year and we have no regrets if they do so. But for the good ones, we will always try to keep them and even when they have a personal problem, we will show our concern and give our support.
Qn 7) How do you retain your good staff? (Linked to what Mr Tan mentioned for Qn 6)
Mr Tan: We do have good staff who are sometimes offered better job offers with higher pays and want to resign. We do speak to them. If it is because of money, we are willing to compromise a little bit but we do have cases whereby some other company is paying a lot higher and we cannot match that company. Therefore, we did give the staff a raise and we discussed about the pros and cons of leaving. In the end, the staff decided to stay and she is happy working here till today. We are very close with all our staff. So, this, I believe is one of the reasons why we are able to keep our staff.
Qn 8) From that, how do you promote team spirit in your company?
Mr Tan: We do organise yearly trips around the region usually around neighbouring countries and the staff are allowed to bring their families along with them. We also have get-togethers,taking time to forget about work, and we just enjoy the holiday as we believe that when it is time to work, we work hard and when it is to play, we play hard. So, this is one of the things but as I said, we also have a very close rapport with all our staff and so this is how we maintain our team spirit.
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