Summer As

Retrenchment at Tesco Malaysia

Tesco Malaysia has made a surprising announcement internally today. CEO for Malaysia, Mr. SH Do from Korea announce a plan to restructure, standardizing job grading and transfer of jobs to Tesco's global outsourcing hub, Hindustan Service Center (HSC). These 3 moves are then translated into streamlining structure, demoting and change in benefits, and finally, redundancies. As expected, the announcement is not welcomed by the management level with not a single question being raised. This announcement was made in support of Tesco's regional Human Resource Director, Ms Ann Bell, which was present as well. “This move will transform Tesco Malaysia to be more efficient to deliver its customer promises” said SH Do. While most industry player sees this as a step backwards for Tesco Malaysia, SH Do remain positive with the move. "The savings and efficiencies created enable Tesco Malaysia to deliver cheaper and better products to its shoppers" said SH Do. There is currently no details being provided till now on the personnel impacted by this drastic move nor has there been a number presented on the numbers of impacted personnel. It is rumored to be within 150 to 200 retrenchment or demotions. “Further details of the structure and work leveling will be made available on next Friday, 21st September" said SH Do. It is also rumored that no senior members or expatriate is impacted in this exercise. 100% impacted parties will be local Malaysian.

When I heard & read this news – I feel so Blessed, so Blessed.
Thank You GOD, Praise To The Lord, Bless You GOD. This year, on a personal level, I think I have achieved a lot, what I wanted to do in my Bucket List…but when it comes to my career & work…somehow, a lot of things turn up unexpectedly, was not part of my plan and I didn’t seem to have a firm control over it. I thought the French will be my last Buying stop, I told Stewart that I wanted to do Planning & SDD work after this…which Stewart also agree and will let me take up the position in 2013…but plans changed :)

If I had joined the English; whether it was last year or the year before or this year, I could have been affected badly. I consider myself lucky. For that, I will always be grateful. I see that the English has too many staffs; consequences when they took over M13. They even created new positions to fit in everyone. They were also on a recruitment spree for the best buyers in town a few years back; using money as the bait, thus creating an unequal salary package between the newcomers and the existing employees. But I also believe that the Hypermarket Industry has reached its maturity stage in its product life cycle. It has remained stagnant and finding positive growth will remain challenging. And I also don’t want to be a Buyer until the day I retire. I will still look out for Planning, SDD, Development, Branding kind of job, flexible working hours…but for now, I just feel very humble this week :)