To survive under the financial crisis, organizations have to manage their finance cautiously, with more emphasis on cost control and trimming expenses. In fact, there are many good cost reduction methodologies recognized by the international community; if companies know how to apply them properly and in an organized manner, it could enlarge and speed up their cost reduction results.

This workshop aims to coach corporate executives on how to make use of the international best practices to effectively realize cost savings with no major investments, and to drive for results consistently via KPI setting.

Workshop Outline:

• Where are the reduction opportunities in an organization?
• How to capture the opportunities & recover the missing chances?
• How to master successful cost reduction factors?
• How to choose cost reduction programs that are suitable to all organizations?
• How to trigger reduction through policy changes (eg, KPI's)?
• How to make use of your existing resources to reduce your expenses and total cycle time?
• and to improve quality through a PVM approach?
• How to implement successful cost reduction programs (eg, using KPI's)?

• Successful case studies

Workshop Details:
Date: June 2, 2009 (Tuesday)

Time: 2:30p - 5:30pm
Cost: HK$600 (Regular), HK$550 (Before May 19, 2009)
Medium: Cantonese with English Handout

To register for this workshop, please click HERE.

 

To learn more on how HMI can help your company to enhance performance, please email to info@hmi.hk

 

Economic Overview

Different statistics all pointed to the recent economic slump.

European unemployment in February increased more than economists expected to the highest in almost three years as the recession forced companies across the continent to cut output. The jobless rate in the eurozone rose to 8.5% from a revised 8.3% in January, the European Union’s statistics office said. The February reading is the highest since May 2006. Employers are cutting production and postponing investments as the global slump cuts demand, forcing them to fire workers. Economist said eurozone unemployment is still rising at an alarming pace. The downturn in the labour market is already the most severe in the region’s history and there is a further downturn to come [Source: SCMP (B4), 2 Apr 09].

Meanwhile, the United States’ unemployment rate climbed last month to the highest level since 1983 and the economy lost more than 650,000 jobs for a fourth consecutive month. The jobless rate rose to 8.5% as forecast from February’s 8.1%, the labour department said. Employers laid off 663,000 workers, bringing total job losses since the recession began to about 5.1 million, the biggest slump in the post-war era [Source: SCMP (B1), 4 Apr 09)].
 

Moreover, the job less rate in Canada last month rose to the highest in seven years as employers fired workers for a fifth month, adding to evidence the country’s recession is worsening. The unemployment rate rose to 8% from 7.7% in February after employers p! ared a net 61,300 workers, Statistics Canada said. More than 2% of the country’s workers – a total of 356,600 – have lost their jobs since October, the fastest pace of job cuts since 1982. The manufacturing and construction industries led declines in employment last month, with factories cutting 34,200 jobs to bring losses since October to 134,400.

In Hong Kong, the jobless rate has risen to 5.2%, according to the figures released by the Census and Statistics Department. However, the 0.2 percentage-point rise in the first quarter of the year represents the slowest rate of increase since the financial crisis began. The 5.2% jobless rate is the highest since January 2006. But the increase was smaller than the four previous rises. About 15,200 more jobs were lost in the first quarter compared with the three months from December to February, pushing the total number of unemployed to 187,200. The construction, transportation, accommodation services and finance sectors lost the most jobs [Source: SCMP (A1)/ The Standard (P1)/ HKEJ (P5)/ HKET (A4), 21 Apr 09].

Besides jobless rate, inflation continues to slow amid weak global demand, with prices rising by just 1.2% last month compared with a year ago. This is down from the 2% inflation recorded for the first two months of the year. A government spokesman said falling private housing rents and food prices were mainly responsible for the more moderate inflation. One-off government relief measures, such as the electricity charge subsidy, also helped keep inflation artificially low. Consumer prices rose 2.6% last month without the concessions, down from 3.3% for January and February combined [Source: SCMP (A3)/ The Standard (P14)].

With a gloomy economic outlook this year, hiring expectations among companies in Hong Kong were at their lowest in 11 years, a survey of 612 executives by recruitment firm Hudson found. Only 14% of the respondents expected to increase hiring in the second quarter of this year, down from 18% in the first quarter. Those expecting to shed jobs doubled to 22% from 11%, the highest record since 2001. Meanwhile, the survey reveals over 40% of respondents cut staff as a measure to reduce cost, followed by reduction in bonus payment and only 4% of respondents implemented unpaid leave policy [Source: SCMP (A6)/ HKET (A26), 3 Apr 09].

Disclaimer: Should there be any different views in the interpretation, please always refer to the original media source as reference. HMI Consulting accepts no liability in respect of the accuracy and truthfulness of the materials included in this newsletter.