Tough stages can act as binding force

It is natural and understandable for employees of loss-making organisations to be weighed down by the bleak prospect of losing their jobs.

But the management's commitment and the ability to honour its promises can help to unite them and push them to work harder toward reviving the company, True Visions human resources chief Pat Bhannasiri said. True Visions is a cable-television company, which recently turned around its fortunes after years of painful restructuring.

Formerly known as United Broadcasting Corp, True Visions was born in 1998 through the merger of International Broadcasting Corp and UTV Cable Network. After that, 55 per cent of its workforce was laid off and the remaining staff had to take salary cuts. The company came back into the black in 2003 and has remained profitable ever since.

"Holding us together was our chairman's promise of being here through the good and the bad, and he kept his promise. We were allocated shares recently as a token of gratitude," he said.

Hard times actually benefited the company. Despite having to imbibe different cultures from different companies, True Visions had not witnessed a culture clash because all workers came together over the common goal of survival. Lately, to show its commitment to the employees, the company introduced an individual bonus system, which ensures incentives are paid out to deserving, outstanding performers even if the corporate revenue may have dropped.

Pat said that while at the corporate level, customer satisfaction is the most important objective, his HR department sees the employees' satisfaction as its ultimate goal. He said the system encourages all employees to develop to their full potential.

Creativity has always mattered a lot in the ever-changing, highly-competitive entertainment business, where new, exciting programming has to be continually launched to maintain viewer interest. To meet this need, True Visions runs a Smart Think project, where all employees are encouraged to come up with innovative ideas that would reduce operating costs and increase corporate value. Rewards are forthcoming for any idea that is implemented successfully.

"We link performance evaluation to such ideas. Everyone is encouraged to express their opinions. They know that if they outperform the others, they will be suitably rewarded, financially or in other ways. Employees know that they can trust the company for that," he said.

Pat said coordination among employees is key in achieving corporate goals. Like in many leading companies, True Visions has adopted 108 key performance indicators to ensure success. All employees are welcome to the "cockpit", which Pat dubbed as a "war room", where all company data is presented to make employees aware of the current status of the company.

The war room, started in year 2000, serves as a reminder that all departments must work together to address problems.

To Pat's mind, no problem stems from a single department. When the company sees a drop in revenues, more than just the sales team is responsible for it. It could very well be that the marketing plan was poorly designed or the HR department is not designing training programmes that suitably support the marketing strategies.

If the number of complaints rises, that does not necessarily mean the complaint officers are not performing. Instead, the market team could have exaggerated product quality or the programming department has displayed poor judgment in the choice of programmes.

"Whenever a problem occurs, all teams must come together and brainstorm to look for solutions. Thus, we must know that the work structure supports the cross-team work as well as the individual skills and styles. More importantly, we all must have the attitude that either we all work together or the entire company collapses. In a way, this process creates a good work culture," Pat said.