Staff cuts can be a double-edged sword

SINGAPORE Airlines cabin crew will no longer be penalised for taking "casual" sick leave, according to reports.

Personnel grievances over this long-standing policy came to a head last year, when a flight attendant was found dead in her hotel room.

However, airline staff may not have been the only ones paying attention to workforce changes.

Investors were perhaps also watching: the flagship carrier's share price closed down by 1.41 per cent after the news broke on Tuesday.

To be fair, there is no way to directly join the dots between human resources policy and stock movements. After all, the counter went up - not down - when New York-listed Kimberly-Clark said in January that job cuts we…