Balancing passion with efficiency

When the economic crisis erupted late last year, DTAC, like most other companies, was given a mandate to cut costs and improve efficiency. But balancing efficiency with staff morale and passion is its ultimate goal.

"Normally, when speaking of cost-cutting, staff will be frightened off and they will be demotivated. They will start to moan about whether there will be lay-offs.They will have to turn off water and electricity, and so on…," Thana said.

"However, for DTAC, if our people lose their passion, the company can't perform well. We're a company driven by people and their ideas," he said.

Aware that it could not allow cost-cutting efforts to undermine employees' engagement, Potida, head of DTAC's managerial accounting division, said the finance unit, which was the primary unit tasked with the efficiency improvement target, initiated a discussion with the communication department. Consequently, the firm held a meeting of all division heads, numbering more than 100 people, to explain to them the company's need to become leaner and asking them to communicate further with their staff.

"Instead of thinking that the company wants to slash its costs to improve profits for shareholders, employees understand that if the company gets more healthy, later, when there is a disease, it won't fall sick easily, and then it can take care of the staff better," Thana said.

After launching the internal communication programme, DTAC kicked off the cost-cutting and efficiency project, billed as the "Fit Society" campaign, which included the weight-loss and idea contests.

The idea competition encouraged staff to send in their ideas to help the firm save costs or improve efficiency. Thana said normally junior staff would shy away from making their recommendations to help the company improve its work efficiency, even though they might have seen some loopholes.

"Previously, junior staff would think it was not their businesses to make a suggestion because that would look like they were exposing that their bosses were not doing well. The idea contest is a neat tactic to find possible improvements, because with this programme, when staff submit ideas, their bosses also receive a credit," he said.

To encourage participation, DTAC gave a notebook and pencil to every employee who submitted an idea, and specially made jackets to employees whose ideas passed the first round. It is currently on the second-round competition. The first-prize winner will receive Bt200,000.

Among the good ideas submitted was one from an IT staffer responsible for installing and maintaining software for DTAC's employees. The contestant suggested the firm run a program to check on the utilisation of software installed on the staff computers every six months, and to remove the programs that have never been used. This is because, the contestant said, most employees, when asked which software they would like to have installed on their computers, would tend to tick all the software products available, but in practice would use only a handful of them. This measure will help Dtac save on software licensing costs, which is charged per user.

Besides getting inputs from staff to help the firm slash its costs, more importantly, another objective of the idea contest was to change the mindset of the staff that cost-cutting was a positive thing to do, and it is up to them to do things better, Thana said.

"It's like a principle of Kaizen, which is to do it better today than yesterday. Because of this attitude, staff may turn off the light without being told, " he said.

To keep up the momentum, DTAC launched the weight-loss contest, adapted from the "Biggest Losers" TV show in America. More than 1,400 employees, or about one-fourth of the total staff, are participating in the contest.

 Like the "Impossible Race" marathon campaign DTAC held last year, the weight-loss campaign was designed to bring it close to the staffs' idea of Kaizen, or continuous improvement.

"Comparing cost to fat, if it's for yourself, reducing your fat is a good thing to do. We would like to encourage staff to think of reducing costs for the company as a good thing to do, as well. The main objectives are creating awareness, understanding and fun, and encouraging everyone to be careful with expenditures," he said.

The results are encouraging so far. Thana said despite the marketing and sales budget being cut by over 20 per cent, the company is doing relatively well as measured by indicators such as income, which increased by 2.6 per cent in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. Importantly, the marketing staff's morale and passion does not seem to be waning.

"No one is complaining or moaning [that the budget was cut]," he said.

pichaya@nationgroup.com