Reflections…and Remembering Our Social Responsibility

Reflections





Happy New Year 2009 !





Another year has come and gone. I would like to take the time to reflect the year gone by and thank all our clients and readers of this blog. We are experiencing a change in the way customers think as compared to those days before I attempted to write this blog.





What changes am I talking about?





Before, we always meet customers who simply refuse to reveal budgets for fear that contractors will cheat them. There shouldn't be any need to fear. It's a free market out there. If one feels that a contractor is trying to take advantage or not fully trustworthy, one can just go on to the next one. We want to thank customers who have trusted in our approach enough to reveal their budgets so that our work becomes so much easier not having to guess and proposing all the wrong materials in the process. I remember a time a few years ago that I proposed melamine boards with the thinking that a particular customer may want to economise but got a rebuke for offending him instead.." You must see what kind of house I'm having! Why are

you not showing me the higher end materials! " Again, I would like to thank all those who have made our work so much easier not having to make wrong guesses.





Customers are also now coming prepared for meetings - equipped with layouts, list of electrical items for every room, list of their likes and dislikes and also their allocated budgets so that we could help them prioritise their spending.





Remembering Our Social Responsibility





While some people define "social responsibility" as caring for the poor and destitute, I personally think the definition should also include caring for our extended family members, friends and workers. In times of economic uncertainty like this, if we see people close to us who are suffering we should offer help in every little way that we could. Last time, Chee Hoong and I would just give some cash to people who lost their jobs and sympathised with them but now I realised we made a big mistake. By giving cash, we were perpetuating the cycle of poverty because the recipient does not know how to come out of it. What we should do if people were to come to us again is to teach them how to make money and where to start and then give them enough cash to tide them over for 2 days.





What we've been doing is to share our knowledge with our workers about upgrading their income and life through the pursuit of life long education. The whole concept is simplified as " Our income is in direct proportion to the value that we provide" . Our senior supervisory workers are paid based on a profit sharing basis so that they have the vision to move forward together with us. Unfortunately the saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks " holds true and very often we have to leave certain workers behind when stubborness makes them blind and refuse change their mentality and continue to carry detrimental attitudes.





I also want to remind myself not to forget the orphans, the old folks and the single moms. I personally feel that we shouldn't tighten our belts so much as to reduce giving back to society, from whom we've received our blessings. If we've not lost our jobs, no one in the family been retrenched so that our financial burden now increases, then there is no reason that we cannot continue in our giving. If anyone were to ask me which organisation to give to, I would like to suggest seeking out the small and lesser known ones simply because they have not been proactive or just do not know how to "market" themselves and solicit for funds. If you still do not know where to go to share some of your blessings, you might like to send a cheque to Desa Amal Jireh, a village set up for orphans and old folks in Semenyih.