Ensuring fair hiring and firing practices

ABOUT 10 years ago, a distressed Norwegian client consulted me. His company's Singapore office had a toxic employee who not only performed poorly and shirked responsibility, but was also habitually insubordinate to management and offensive to his peers. All attempts to get the employee to improve failed. He was causing a serious office morale issue, and the client felt helpless. "Is he employed under Singapore law?" I asked. The client nodded. "Then let him go," I said. The client was incredulous: "We can do that?"

Norway is known to be relatively employee friendly, but it is far from the only such jurisdiction. More recently, I advised an executive at a French multinational whose senior colleague in the Singapore office had manhandled her. The company swiftly packed the colleague off to Paris. It was not even the first time that he had to move offices abruptly either - the same thing had happened after he sexually harassed another female colleague in Hong Kong. Why was he not fired after either incident? Apparently, because he was employed under French law, and the multinational feared having to compensate him in the millions.

These anecdotes, likely unsurprising for employers in other countries, will sound strange to Singaporeans who live and work in our largely at-will employment environment, where just cause for termination generally does not need to be shown, and there is relative ease of hiring and firing (and importantly, rehiring). Coupled with our atypically facilitative labour movement, this has consistently proven attractive to foreign multinationals looking to set up Asia-Pacific operations here. These investments have in turn helped transform Singapore from a struggling ex-colony to a thriving regional hub and global metropolis with very low unemployment, falling retrenchment and continuing strong growth rates (a healthy 3.6 per cent last year). This employment environment might soon change though.