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How It Works?
A system that encourages the involvement of the subordinates in decision-making. It aims to stimulate the initiative of the employees in problem-solving. The participation of every team member in assessing alternative solutions is essential because the decision is highly connected to their work.

Implementation Framework

1. Information sharing through timely communication to keep every team member informed about the expected outcomes.

2. Training provided to nurture the talent and inspire their potential in idea contribution.

3. Reward system that includes both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to keep the employees motivated in their obligations.

Outcomes

Increasing level of engagement promotes commitment

Strong ambience in achieving company's goal

Proactive in giving ideas that generate innovation

Fostering collaboration between manager and subordinates

Boost up the ability to solve conflicts when discussing to reach a consensus

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Human resources management regarding new recruitment or promotion of employees in job position is sometimes a subjective question which depends on intuition, which may lead to bias. Data-driven talent management is the answer to hire and retain really talented employees.

As human resources are the most important asset in a company, leaders should come up with clear and fair data to guide them in hiring new employees or promoting a high-performance staff. Moreover, due to the unprecedented crisis (COVID-19), firms need to be wiser in recruiting new employees with excellent traits and talents. Besides, employers should give promotions or rewards to suitable employees to prevent demotivation as it is the most common factor causing a high-performance employee to resign.

To implement a data-driven HR management style, the HR department should adopt the Human Resources Information System (HRIS) which is software to store all the documents and information of the staff. Besides, the software has analytics tools to make a reliable decision based on the data we stored such as the staff background information, staff performance, customers feedback, complaints, interview performance, recruitments related information, and even the survey data we conducted with our staffs to know their moods, and satisfaction level.

Therefore, with the aid of data, the algorithm will tell us who should we hire, who should get a promotion, and who might quit due to demotivation.

By using data in managing human-related matters, the analytics will tell us :

Graduates from which institution suit our requirement the most?

On which social media platform normally we will get good employees?

Which human traits make an employee stay in a firm longer?

The well-being of the staff

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Data Driven Talent Management (16/4/2021)

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Data Driven Talent Management (16/4/2021)

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1. Praba Sambasivam (Leader)
2. Loke Mun Yen
3. Muhammad Irfan
4. Ng Bee Teng
5. Ng Wei Thung
6. Ong Win Hern
7. See Wei Chuan
8. Shahrir Aiman
9. Tan Wei Jie

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ezg8wBGsmKcJsJ6iKHlXOLBG0QMCoP8dumtxBN-OAe8/edit

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Initial Discussion - Whatsapp (12.04.2021)
Brainstorming - Padlet (12.04.21 - 15.04.21)
Discussion - Google meet (15.04.21)
(https://meet.google.com/ymj-dcne-nrt)

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Mergers and Acquisitions Management Style

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Mergers and Acquisitions Management Style

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Reason of Implementing Transformational Leadership into Quantity Surveying Practices

-        Lack of innovation (Resists to change)

-        Lack of collaborative culture (highly fragmented)

-        The need for change in construction industry is essential to either modernize or die.

-        Built Environment should learn the from others bombing industry such as IT and Fintech by implementing transformational leadership.

What is Transformational Leadership

A transformational leadership is a management style focuses on creating an environment that supports innovation. Leaders with this style often encourage, inspire and motivate employee as well as organizations to create substantial change that will help grow and shape the future success of the company.

Eg: Transformational leaders able to inspire followers to change expectations, perceptions, and motivations to work towards common goals. Thus, leader will set and reach stretch goals to push their employees out from comfort zone to motivate them to reach past their full potential and aim for greater professional growth.

Characteristic of Transformational Leadership

According to Bass (1985), transformational leadership can be classified into 4 components.

Idealized influence

-        Leaders serve as a role model for followers. Followers going trust, admire and respect the leader as they emulate this individual and internalize his or her ideals.

Inspirational motivation

-        Leaders provide a clear vision that energize, motivate and inspire their followers to go beyond self towards achieving the desired goals.

Intellectual stimulation

-        Leaders stimulate followers to be creative and think outside the box in exploring new ways of doing things.

-        Encourage followers to challenge assumptions and approaching old situations from new perspectives.

Individualized consideration

-        Leader acts as a mentor or coach to provide sufficient encouragement and support in helping to develop themselves further.

-        Pay attention to follower’s concern and offer direct recognition of the unique contributions of each follower.

Why Transformational Leadership

Inspire positive change and development

-        Employees willing to change, improve and always finding innovative ways to stay ahead and reaching their full potential.

-        Employees are open-minded and more adaptable towards drastic industry change. Eg: digitalization

Promote Independent

-        Encourage creative thinking, stimulate workers to try new approaches or methods to solve the old problems.

-        Workers usually high skilled and able to do well in problem solving and decision making without micromanaging.

How Quantity Surveying Business Benefit from Transformational Leadership

High retention of workers

-        Transformational leaders give support, motivate and attention to every individual in the company

-        All workers feel like they are the vulnerable part in the organization and strong engagement between leaders and employees creates a strong bond between them which help reduce in employee turnover.

Higher level of productivity

-             Transformational leaders train their team member to be energized, keep develop themselves to a greater accomplishment and act for the good of the company

-             Leaders ensure the workers and growth together with the company towards a singular and common vision for the future of the company which able to enhance the quality of the output and maintain long term productivity growth

Strong communication

-        Encourage open communication among team.  Every worker to have equal opportunity to voice out their idea and share their innovative opinion without criticism.

-        Increase business performance as the effective communication provide clear instruction to team member which can reduce unnecessary mistake and error when performing task.

Potential Treat of Transformational Leadership

-        Too focus on the bigger picture (not realistic vision)

-        Employees burn out (overstress employee)

-        Need continuous communication ( time consuming)

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Yes. It can be an elaboration for talent management.

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I agree with Beeteng's idea on open communication but rather than being a management style, I think it is more appropriate to be a criteria/point for a particular management style

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I think this can be the elaboration for Win Hern idea

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Yes I think can

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I think prestige management style is same as what is mentioned by Bee Teng in open communication where employees are encouraged to speak out their opinion. Maybe this point can be combined with open communication or open communication can be a management tool for prestige management style.

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Can training be a management tool or method for talent management?

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Can this point be combined with talent management proposed by Win Hern?
Because based on your explanation, the purpose of center-out management is to ensure every staff is well-trained so that the good trait of senior staffs can be inherited to the junior staff.
Correct me if I misunderstood. XD

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I agree with Wei Jie.
In my opinion, flat management can be combined with Laissez-faire management style. For me, flat management seems to be giving too much freedom for employees. Like they can choose which projects they are interested in, what if the boss undertakes a complicated project and no one willing to do?
But in Laissez-faire management, the employees are free to make decision on the tasks assigned instead of their job scope.

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Yes, I agree that decision-making should also be flexible in an organization.
I think this point can be a further elaboration for Toyyib's point, Laissez-faire management style. As he said in Laissez-faire management style, managers only exist to assign task and employees are free to make all the decision, which I think is almost the same as decentralized management structure.

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This structure is somehow a lil bit similar to Toyib's Laissez-faire management style

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Flat organization structure seems to be interesting and effective but it is more suitable for start-ups/small businesses and probably cannot be used any more once the company starts to grow.
Cons:
1. Easy to lose control as mid-level of management is removed
2. Power struggle and role confusion may occur due to improper clarification
3. Poor employee retention due to lack of job satisfaction as promotions are not available and steps to conquer are not sufficient
4. High possibility for errors to occur if necessary expertise is not available

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When speaking of flexibility, we shall not forget about decision-making power in a firm. Traditionally, decision-making is only involving the managerial level. A decentralized management structure is a more flexible structure in an organization, especially when making decision. As we empower the employees with more autonomy in making decision, we can build trust and teamwork indirectly.

Especially in our industry where firms are run in a project-based mode, decentralized organizational structure in a team engages everyone and improve information sharing.

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According to the survey report done by SurveyMonkey in 2020, the two key traits for successfully navigating the coronavirus crisis are curiosity and agility. Curiosity leads to innovation; while agility harness the innovative idea to adapt to the new paradigm.

As compared to the traditional management style in a firm, where employers command and employees obey, the firm will be missing out on great ideas or even more flexible ways to solve a problem from the perspective of employees. Remember, human resources are the assets in an organization. The employer should make good use of their intellect to really maximize the firm's performance.
Employers or leaders in an organization should always encourage or even reward the employees to speak out any creative ideas especially during a crisis.

Especially when AI and Internet Of Things are now becoming more popular in our industry, employers should be more open in accepting the opinions of the young generations or the new recruits.

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I agree with Mun Yen also. I think flexible management style will be the future trend as nowadays the employee’s family responsibilities will have a direct effect on the company’s productivity. When they are worried about their family members (elderly, children), it will cause them unable to pay full attention to the task at hand. Therefore, flexible management would be a better option and cost-effective way of dealing with the issues. However, employer must be open-minded to accept this type of management style and able to flexible to work with employees for a win-win situation. With this type of management style, it can gain loyalty from the employees and the productivity of the employees can be improved as well.

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The four "I" components in the concept can be aligned to the quantity surveying practice with the following explanations. Inspirational motivation (IM) is displayed through articulating expectations in achieving dynamic professional surveying institution status by the leader. Idealised influence (II) is gained when the profile of ethics is boosted through a role model. Nascent ways in performing cost estimation and risk management are encouraged among the subordinates by intellectual stimulation (IS). Mentoring attribute is presented in the individualised consideration (IC) by establishing supportive relationships to develop potential in each follower. This management type is vital to promote team effectiveness that gives a positive impact on the project's success.

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Client-oriented is vital to market the firm without much advertisement needed when the high level of satisfaction among the client is spread naturally. The client will feel worth to pay for our services and may deliver their satisfaction through daily communication. Besides hiring psychologists, experts from customer service may invited too in giving training to the in-house employees. Overall, it is a good strategy in establishing the reputation of firm.

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Good point there Toyib, but the responsibilities and commitment should be carried by all members of the organization. With a strong dedicated team, this style can be materialized in a small firm.
However, the cons will not be suitable for medium and large firms, it would be a challenge.

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Yes I agree too because in terms of service providing firms like QS, our main strength is human capital. The care and wellness need to be taken seriously. A happy staff could work more efficiently compared to those who are not. They tend to stay within the same firm where they feel that they have the opportunity to grow together with the firm.

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I also agreed with Bee Teng's point where open communication is a must in a firm. It is also important in order for a firm to grow further.
Open communication not only limited to employees but also company's stakeholders, peers, partners and even competitors. Sometimes competitors can also be our mentors. Open communication can empower people to speak up and debate around topic concerns. This gives an opportunity for employees and stakeholders to speak out their opinion or propose their idea which might benefits to the firm. Employees and stakeholders will feel belonging too.

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Flat organization structure has been introduced to us way back by Japanese manufacturing companies with the uniformity in the clothing, where everyone in the particular company  are complied to wear the same uniform, from top management to the lowest.
it is a very interesting and ahead thinking mode of management but I am not quite sure of the implementation and the effectiveness of the organization with this type of management. Can you briefly explain?

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Open communication is important to increase the relationship between the employer and the employee. In my opinion, gen z are know to be quite self centered and does not interact to each other but rather to have communications via online or social medias. This strategy would be a game changer if it could be materialized.

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Yes I agree with Mun Yen. Flexible management is the new norm. The new generation prefers to work in this type of working culture rather than the traditional 9-6, 5 days per week. In order to implement this, not only the employer but also the employee must be equipped with the latest technology and invest on the devices that could support the technology.

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Another new management style that I can think of is client-oriented management.

What is client-oriented management?
- In client-oriented management, the company will focus more on their customers instead of the company's internal benefit.
- Clients' wishes and needs will be observed, anticipated and acted accordingly.

Why client-oriented management?
- To achieve customer satisfaction and expectation
- To enhance company's reputation
- To promote satisfied, loyal and committed customers.

How to practice client-oriented management?
- Company recruits staffs from hospitality industry such as psychologists to study client's requirements and provide high-quality client service.
- Company can also train their technical staff in people management to develop professionals with the right blend of hard and soft skills.
- Insight into the wishes and needs of client as well as the working practices of other firms can quip the firm with tools for dealing with client orientation.

How it works in QS firms?
- With client-oriented management, client will feel more being cherished by his consultants. This will facilitate the relationship between client and QSs which will in turn increase the probability of QSs to be appointed by the client in the future.

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This is a good point.
This type of management can be known as mergers and acquisitions.

What is mergers and acquisitions?
- A type of management where all the professionals are gathered under the same organizations so that the organizations can provide services to a multitude of industries.
- This type of management will result in significant change to firm's structures and ownership models as there are too many professionals work under the same roof.
- This means that professionals have to adapt to more cross-functional teams and new business cultures.
- With mergers and acquisition management, the trend towards interdisciplinary working and the demand for generalist skills is growing.

Why Mergers and Acquisition?
- Before discovering new skills or new services, an organization can gather all the specialist to master their general skills so as to provide the best and the most quality general services to the client. With good basic services, it will improve the reputation of the company and good relationship with customers. This is so called focus strategy for a firm to last longer.
- By focusing on generalist skills, there will be more awareness of the work processes of fellow professionals. Based on the understanding of basic skills, professionals are able to innovate those general skills and develop new special skills.
- Many firms still require, and will continue to demand, specialist technical skill sets such as traditional quantity surveying competencies. Larger, more generalist organizations that
do not maintain such knowledge in-house will have to rely on the expertise of specialist organizations.

Benefit to QS firm
- If a QS firm begins to gather all the professionals in the construction industry and work under the same organization, the particular organization can undertake large variety of projects without fear as it can do everything with its ample resources.
- By working with others professionals, the services provided by the organization is definitely up to quality. For example, in terms of value for money, the QSs are there to advice the architect on the functionality of the design, whether the design the worth for money or not.

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Mun Yen

I agree with Win Hern.
Talent Management is a new management style to be adopted in the future QS firms.

WHY
- Employers need to learn to appreciate the employees' talent.
- In order to stand out in the consultant firms, employers have to make sure that their staffs are well equipped with both the hard skills in utilizing new technologies and software as well as soft skills such as negotiation, influencing, commercial awareness and collaboration skills.

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Prestige management styles

- The democratic style

This style involves the freedom of speeches between managers and employees in meetings or during working hours. The employees have a choice to voice out their opinions without any hierarchy judgement to create a variety of ideas in completing a work. This style is suitable and important especially for a firm with many millennial employees, as millennials’ idea are sometimes out of the box and can benefit the firm in many ways.

- Implementing this style in quantity surveying firms

Implementing this management style in quantity surveying firms will see many ideas to be voiced out especially from the novice quantity surveyor regarding the works and services that can be used in an ongoing project.

Pros

- Encourages open communication between everyone regardless of the roles in the firms

- Generates many great ideas that can be implemented on the works

Cons

- time-consuming as it can involve many meetings

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Training Programme

Sustainability in the built environment through resource management

Introducing Passivhaus Standard (little energy required to achieve high satisfaction level of comfort in air circulation)

National planning (to know which area will be bustling in the future and advise in the site procurement)

Desired Traits to Achieve

Capability to manage mega projects

Commercial awareness by understanding the way to earn business for the firm

Client-oriented by leveraging the firm's resources to deliver holistic service

Property acumen through comprehensiveness on the property life cycle which helps to reach the greatest value of money to the user as well as the client

Technology literacy through advanced software manipulation

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What?

To retain high-performance employees and talents

To maintain healthy labour turnover

Why?

To develop loyalty of employees

To save expenses in new recruitment

How?

Leaders need to understand employees’ needs and try to fulfil them to achieve their personal commitment.

Ensure their well-being is met especially during the pandemic where mental health is vulnerable due to uncertainties

Always provide regular training, education for professional development to maximize the employee’s value

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- Neither top-down nor bottom-up management styles
- Concerned with the development and training of employees who can in return develop and train others in the future

- Focus on nurturing a vibrant and supportive community that helps employees thrive

- Superiors are willing to share their expertise and knowledge with their subordinates – improve together

- Promote strong collaboration and communication within company – prevent silo working

- A loyal team of creative and talented employee united by a common mission will be generated – employees will be motivated by the managerial support provided by firm

How will it work in QS firms:

- Every employee is given the opportunities to increase own professionalisms and evolve to become an industry leader

- Departments/teams within company share information/knowledge with other colleagues they work with despite under different projects

Why center-out management is still uncommon:

-       Slow

-       Difficult

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In this style, management takes a hands-off approach to leadership.

Staff is trusted to do their work without supervision, and they are left to control their decision making and problem-solving.

Management is present at the delegation and delivery stages of work, but otherwise steps back and gives staff the freedom to control their workflow and outcomes. Management is only involved during the process if the staff requests their assistance.

1. Delegative management style

In this style, the manager is only present to assign tasks, although they still are responsible for tasks being completed successfully. Once the task is assigned, then the employees are empowered to do their work as they see fit.

After the task is complete, the manager steps back in to review the work and give advice about how to improve future projects.

Pros:

·         Innovation and creativity are fostered by this system, especially in organizations with highly skilled workers.

·         Problem solving and teamwork are strengthened, as staff are given space to handle their own issues and will work together to solve them.

·         Job satisfaction may be increased in those who crave autonomy in their workplace.

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Create a lead generation system.

Building leads is the fuel of your entire business. Without leads, you don’t get any projects. So, lead generation should be your #1 focus in running a successful construction company.

There are various ways of increasing your lead, such as using lead generation services, visiting method to find potential client and introduce your company or use media social such as linkedin.

Using this method also shall focusing on marketing. In order to do so, the owner should:

·         Change into optimistic way of thinking. If you think this will be a good year for business, then it will be. But if you think it will be a bad year, then it will be bad.

·         Hire good salespeople.

·         Market your company aggressively. Become the king of marketing in your area, and quickly stand out from your competitors. Sponsor seminars with your local chamber of commerce, write articles, speak to the local service club, redesign your website and frequently stay in contact with prospects and customers.

·         Teach all staff good customer service. More than one sale has been landed by a personable and well-trained receptionist after the official salesman had failed to close the deal. A sale starts when anyone enters your establishment.

·         Train your sales staff on prospecting. In business-to-business sales, the telephone should be your sales staff’s best friend. You will have more than enough prospects to turn into sales if you teach your salespeople how to find prospects in their everyday activities.( Prospecting is the first step in the sales process, which consists of identifying potential customers, aka prospects)

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-        Meaning that there will be no job titles like seniority, managers or executives within an organization but in a sense that every employee are seen as equal

-        With this management style, the employer not only focusing and put more efforts and training on those potential/talented employees, but every single employee within the organization. This mean that every employee has equal chance to learn, improve and give the best back to the company.

Why flat organizational structure/management

-        Improve communication because the level of management within an organization has been reduced and subsequently it enables fast decision making as the power and responsibility are evenly distributed within the organization.

-        Improve transparency in an organization as every employee have the equal opportunities to involved in every important meetings/conversation.

-        Improve employees’ motivation. This is because they can choose/free to do anything that they want as long as they use all their skills and knowledge in servicing the best to the company and able to achieve the desired results.

How to make this management style more practical in the industry?

a)     Implementing cross-generational mentoring

In an organization, there will be different employees with different background, generation and experiences. Under this management style, every employee is seen as equal. Therefore, in order to ensure every employees’ growth continuity on their knowledge, the cross-generational mentoring would be the best suit for this. The methodology of this method is that a person from one generation will be paired with the other person with different generation where both participants will act as mentor and mentee simultaneously. The objective of this method is to ensure both of them are able to learn from each other and growth together.

How it works in Quantity Surveying Firms

-        Since the organization do not have any managers or executives, meaning that there will be nobody to instruct the work to you. Therefore, with this management style, every employee can see what projects are being worked on currently and able to choose and join whichever projects that is interested.

-        If an employee wishes to outsource or handle other projects, he is allowed to do so and he will fully responsible in handling everything or maybe build his own team to assist him.

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Promote Open Communications

What is open communication?
An equal condition to share thoughts so that value-added services can be performed.

How to foster?

Be transparent in the relationship

Value input from the personnel's feedback

Demonstrate respect by showing attentiveness

Get to know others on a personal level

Team leader to be approachable

Effects

Helps the business run efficiently when opportunities arise

Save time to transmit the information when everyone gets involved in the discussion

Reinforce internal cohesion and a sense of belonging to strive through the crisis

Reduce the rumours circulation which can inflict impairment to the firm

To ensure the trust is at the heart of professionalism

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Flexible management style:
Flexible management style means the employers can provide whatever benefits or facilities to the employees and the employees are allowed to do anything they want during working hours, have their own time, do their own activities as long as they are able to complete the job and produce quality works before deadline. For example........
1. Employees are given flexible working hours. They are not necessary to reach the office by 9am and leave at 6pm to fulfill 8 hours working period. Instead, they can come at 12.00pm and leave at 9pm. Employees are allowed to decide their own working hour as long as they complete the total 8 hours working period and get their job done. It is because sometimes employees might have appointment with dentist or have stuff to settle at bank.
2. Employers can have a physical office but employees are not necessary to work in the office. They can work at anywhere they like.
3. Employers can provide employees with other facilities such as childcare area in the office so that employees can bring their children to the office and take care of them while working at the same time.
This requires trust among employers and employees.

Why flexible management style?
- A flexible environment would enhance output and productivity in the workplace. JLL’s 2013 report on Global Corporate Trends, claims: “Workplace transformation is the key to unlocking worker productivity and optimizing portfolios”
- Top-quality, modern and flexible office spaces are in high
demand.

How to create flexible workplace?
- Using occupancy planning data to deliver better management of space, improving design to promote creativity and collaboration, and using building automation to create comfortable and sustainable workplaces.

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A consortium of consultants

-   Various consultants (QS, Architect & Engineer)

-   Operate under the same roof but perform individual business and collaboration

-   This could save drowning small firm

-    The overhead can be shared

-    It would be a stronger team of professionals

-    One-stop service center for clients

-    The best way to export services overseas