Cancer Updates 2022 - Malaysia

More than 20,000 new cancer patients, with an average age of over 40 years, are detected in Malaysia every year. There were currently about 100,000 cancer survivors in the country who were living with various types of cancer.

NCSM is planning to implement the 'One District, One Screening' program in all states next year to encourage and facilitate the people in the country to do health screening, especially to detect cancer. It is aimed at detecting cancer at an early stage so that immediate treatment could be carried out, thus preventing cancer cells from spreading and saving lives.

Over the past two years, there were more new cancer patients aged between their late 20s and early 30s. The age of individuals diagnosed with cancer is now younger and the number of children with cancer is also high.

For men, there are 10 types of cancer that often affect them and the highest category recorded is bowel cancer, followed by lung, prostate, lymphoma, nasopharynx, liver, leukemia, stomach, skin and bladder. 

For women, the highest case involved breast cancer, followed by colorectal or bowel, cervix, lung, ovary, corpus uteri, lymphoma, thyroid, leukemia and skin.

However, he said, the number of cervical cancer patients had dropped in recent years, believed to be due to the administration of the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine for school students, especially among teenage girls as young as 13 years old. 

Singapore Insurance - A Gig That Does Not Fit

The General Insurance Association of Singapore's (GIA) alternative proposal for insuring gig workers is "not viable" because it would either lead to higher premiums for platform companies or lower work injury compensation for such workers, said Senior Minister of State for Manpower Koh Poh Koon.

“If it was so viable, why didn’t the insurance and platform companies suggest this earlier when there were workers who were injured or suffered death while on the job?” said Dr Koh. 

He was responding to a supplementary question by Mr Liang Eng Hwa, Member of Parliament for Bukit Panjang Single Member Constituency on the Government's response to the proposal by GIA, which represents some 40 insurance firms here.

Dr Koh’s comments come a week after the Government accepted several recommendations by the advisory committee on platform workers. These requirements will apply to platform companies, such as food-delivery and ride-hail firms. Taxi companies working on a street-hail model, however, will be exempt.

These recommendations include requiring platform companies to provide the same scope and level of compensation as employees’ under the existing Work Injury Compensation Act (Wica).

For example, if a gig worker works for three food delivery companies and is injured while completing a delivery, the company with whom the worker was doing that delivery for, will have to pay for the worker's total income loss across all three firms.

General Insurance Association - In a statement after the recommendations were announced, GIA chief executive Ho Kai Weng propsed an alternative which he said can be efficiently achieved through existing solutions. Instead of Wica, he suggested platform workers be given prolonged medical leave insurance and group personal accident insurance. 

If platform workers were to tap on their Medishield Life as well, the proposal — taken in its entirety — will ensure workers are protected for medical expenses, medical leave wages, permanent incapacity and death, said Mr Ho. 

Dr Koh pointed out that given that employees are covered for up to S$45,000 medical expenses for work injuries, there is no reason for platform workers to have to rely on Medishield Life, which is paid for using their Central Provident Fund monies or out-of-pocket cash.

The advisory committee’s position is that platform workers should receive the same level of coverage for work injury compensation as employees, he said. 

Self Insured In Disguise - “GIA’s suggestion is essentially asking platform workers to pay for their own medical expenses,” Dr Koh said. He added that GIA’s insurace coverage proposal for gig workers will lead to higher insurance premiums for platform companies given that the scope of coverage for their proposed policy is "much wider on a 24/7 basis". 

This would raise the business cost for companies, especially since they would have to purchase insurance coverage even for workers who do only an hour of work a day, he said. 

Dr Koh said that GIA’s proposal was contrary to what insurers had advised the advisory committee before the recommendations were published. 

“I will suggest that GIA members work closely with platform companies to offer financial protection and compensation for these workers at the level of Wica as soon as possible by the first quarter of next year," he said.

Zoom To Doom

Shares of Zoom Video Communications Inc have tumbled about 90% from their pandemic peak in October 2020 as the former investor darling struggles to adjust to a post-COVID world. The stock was down nearly 10% on Tuesday after the company cut its annual sales forecast and posted its slowest quarterly growth, prompting at least six brokerages to cut their price targets.

The company, which became a household name during lockdowns due to the popularity of its video-conferencing tools, is trying to reinvent itself by focusing on businesses, with products such as cloud-calling service Zoom Phone and conference-hosting offering Zoom Rooms.

Any turnaround in the business is still a few quarters away as growth in its mainstay online unit slows and competition from Microsoft Corp’s Teams and Cisco’s Webex and Salesforce’s Slack gets intense.

Zoom needed to spend heavily to keep hold of market share. Spending to cling onto, rather than grow, market share is never a good place to be and was a sign of trouble ahead. The company’s operating expenses surged 56% in the third quarter as it spent more on product development and marketing. Its adjusted operating margin shrank to 34.6% from 39.1% a year earlier.

Covid 19 - Opportunity Or Curse For Courrier Company

Nationwide Express Courier Services Bhd is set to become the latest last-mile delivery company to cease operations amid a challenging and competitive operating environment in Malaysia. The company said in a statement that it is currently taking steps to gradually cease its business operations, after a winding-up petition was filed against it. The company said it is ceasing its business operations effective Dec 15.

Nationwide Express, founded by the late businessman Tan Sri Basir Ismail, was one of the country’s leading courier service providers. Its roots can be traced back to 1985. 

Nationwide Express has 1,100 dedicated employees, a fleet of more than 300 vehicles, and 500 motorbike couriers. It has a network of 150 branches and agents in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, with the capacity to handle over 40,000 packages per day.

KTM Distribution Sdn Bhd - last month, KTM Distribution terminated its operations effective Nov 1, despite having a 38-year presence in the courier and logistics business. KTM Distribution said that the cessation of its operations was in line with a restructuring exercise.

CJ Century Logistic Holdings Bhd - another company that has exited the last-mile delivery industry is CJ Century Logistics Holdings Bhd, formerly known as Century Logistics, which sold its loss-making courier arm last year for about RM7.5 million.

Other players - such as GDEX Bhd and Pos Malaysia Bhd have suffered consecutive quarters of losses, despite on-steroid growth in demand for courier or last-mile delivery services in the past three years — fuelled by the Covid-19 pandemic — with many e-commerce platforms outsourcing their services to delivery companies.

The last-mile delivery sector is facing an extremely competitive operating environment in Malaysia. The country, with a population of 33 million, has granted 122 courier licences. In comparison, Thailand, with a population of 70 million, has granted only half as many courier licences as Malaysia, while Indonesia has 42 for a nation of 273 million.

Managing Group Project Effectively

When it comes to setting project goals, it is essential to keep the following in mind:

• Clear Objectives
• Team Buy-in
• Expectations
• Responsibility
• Tracking
• Positivity

Clear Objectives - Objectives should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART). This ensures that everyone is on the same page from the get-go when the team sets out to achieve a goal.

Team Buy-in - It isn’t easy to accomplish anything without buy-in from the team. If team members do not feel invested in a project or goal, achieving success won’t be easy. One way to ensure buy-in is to give employees a voice in decision-making. This could be done through something as simple as a brainstorming session or voting on project objectives.

Expectations - Setting expectations early on will help avoid misunderstandings and frustration down the road. It will also prevent employees or teams from working on projects or tasks that don’t align with the agreed-upon expectations. If expectations are not met, it can lead to conflict within the group. Set realistic expectations and communicate them clearly to avoid this situation.

Responsibility - Assigning responsibility for specific tasks or objectives is important to ensure everyone knows what is expected of them. (We’re looking at you, seat-of-your-pants employee!) In addition, responsibility will help keep the project organized and on track.

Tracking - Tracking progress is essential to ensure the team is heading toward the final goal. This could be done through something as simple as a status update or a daily stand-up meeting. Alongside check-in meetings, you should also track within a project management tool that allows for transparency and collaboration. For example, you can keep track of tasks, deadlines, and assigned roles within each project using Hive, a project management platform. Online project manageent platform provide project clarity and eliminate the need for micromanagement.

Positivity - Last but not least, it is important to maintain a positive attitude throughout the project. This can be difficult when things get tough or challenging, but it is essential to remember that every goal is attainable with hard work and dedication.

Following these six tips, you will be well on your way to set realistic and achievable project goals for whatever is next on your list. With these tips, you can build out a specific project roadmap to success. Then, you will naturally remove the seat of your pants, employee, or team by giving them clear expectations, responsibilities, tasks, and project buy-in. 

Trust & Teambuilding

The term Trust gets thrown around at work a lot. We use it so often that you’d think we all collectively understand what it is and why it’s so important. But it’s worth unpacking this concept a bit to make sure we really do know why it plays such an important role in teams.

Trust refers to an intersecting set of beliefs about the relationship between what other people say and do and what they mean and accomplish. Trust reflects that you believe that team members are telling you the truth and not omitting crucial information in their accounts. It reflects that people will follow through on their commitments. Trust also involves a belief that other people are capable of fulfilling the tasks they set out to perform.

Here are the three reasons why trust is so crucial.

FUTURE PLANNING

A critical part of planning for the future is having a clear sense of what is going on within an organization. A plan starts with knowledge of what is happening in the present. That means when someone gives you information about their capabilities and the current status of project, that information has to be accurate.

A lack of trust in the information you get from team members adds uncertainty to the planning process. You may no longer feel like you have an accurate sense of the current situation or the capabilities of the group. That can make it hard to get a project moving. As a result, you may feel like you have to verify information you’re getting from others before moving forward. Not only is that process time-consuming, but it may also make team members feel like you are checking on up them, which can further erode trust.

DISTRIBUTING WORK

Trust is also crucial for ensuring that every member of a team is assigned a reasonable share of the work. When you don’t believe that your team members will follow through on their commitments (or that they are capable of doing a good job with the tasks), then you shy away from giving them responsibilities. As a result, the rest of the team must carry more of the load.

In addition, when you are forced to rely on the teammates you do not trust, you end up micromanaging their work. You may find yourself telling them how to carry out key aspects of the job, checking up on each step, and asking for confirmation when things are completed. Not only does that take away from your own effectiveness, it leads to frustration from those being micromanaged.

YOUR MOTIVATION

At times, your supervisor has lost your trust. That can undermine your energy and enthusiasm to work. Lots of research suggests that your motivation to complete a task is influenced by whether you think the task can be completed as well as your sense of whether your efforts will be rewarded. When you don’t trust your supervisor, both of these facets of motivational strength are diminished. That can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which you believe that a job will fail, so you don’t put in much work, which then leads the job to fail.

Unfortunately, this pattern feeds on itself. Your mistrust of management increases the chances that a task will go badly. When the team does not achieve its goals, leadership loses faith in the effectiveness of the team, which affects the way they treat the team in the future. Likewise, the team members are reinforced in their sense that management is ineffective.

Toxic Bosses At Work

If toxic bosses are so terrible, why do people still follow them? It has a lot to do with the way your mind works. Many bad bosses are unfit to lead because they are often narcissistic, don’t genuinely care for their employees and would do anything to get the best results — even at the expense of others or basic morals.

Yet many of those managers have admirers and hold positions of power, from the business realm to politics. Take world leaders as an example:- 57 countries are currently led by dictators that are unethical, unstable or incompetent.

People can’t always know they’ll have a toxic boss when interviewing for jobs, but once they’re in the door, they can stay devoted to those bad managers for months or even years — largely because either they have the wrong idea about what good leadership looks like or because they’re trying to reap personal benefits from the relationship.

1. People confuse arrogance and narcissism for strength - Strength and confidence can be important leadership qualities. But people sometimes confuse arrogance and narcissism for strength. In 2011 - a University of Amsterdam randomly assigned a leader to different groups of participants, had each team complete a group task and asked each team to rate their leader afterward. Participants rated the most narcissistic leaders as the most effective, even if those leaders actually inhibited communication and harmed their group’s performance.

A bad boss’ narcissism convinces them that they’re always right, so they reject help from others and don’t learn from their mistakes. Many are drawn to these people who appear competent — like they can take charge and handle a leadership role. But they can be narcissists, and things can get out of hand.

2. People fall into ‘cognitive laziness - If you’ve ever had a bad boss, you’ve probably thought to yourself, “I don’t want to go through the effort of figuring out how to handle this situation. It sounds exhausting. Instead, you find ways to convince yourself that your boss is actually fine. Riggio calls that feeling “cognitive laziness.”

When a bad boss does something wrong, people often give them a “pass” instead of holding them accountable, because they think the boss is above the rules anyway. That can allow a bad boss to engage in even worse behavior with no consequences.

People also tend to trust others similar to them. If your coworkers appear to support your bad boss, you might feel compelled to follow the herd rather than take a stand, and your boss could stay in power without being questioned.

3. People equate good results with good leadership - To you, your boss might be a toxic manager. To someone else, they might be someone who delivers valuable results, like an increase in profits or a successful sales deal.

For those leaders, the ends justify the means. If they appear effective, people just don’t question how they got there. Bad bosses may seem effective at getting good results, but it often involves “collateral damage,” like creating a toxic workplace by treating employees poorly or making unethical decisions. 

4. People enjoy the power of association - Bosses often hold power within a company or group. Some people enable and assist a manager’s worst attributes in the hopes of getting rewarded for loyalty, like a promotion or pay raise. A bad leader attracts hench-persons who surround them because they like being connected to a powerful person.

People should learn to recognize these psychological tendencies, so they can recognize when they’re following a toxic boss. It also helps to understand what a good boss looks like, he adds: someone who achieves results while limiting collateral damage, shows genuine care for their employees and accepts help and feedback from others.