SINGAPORE: Several children’s products, including baby carriers, cots and strollers, were found to be unsafe after testing, Enterprise Singapore warned consumers on Tuesday (Nov 5).
Six baby carriers, five cots and five strollers were tested by the regulatory agency, which found 11 of the products to be unsafe. The 11 products did not comply with safety requirements by the American Society for Testing and Materials International (ASTM), the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), or the European Committee for Standardisation (EN).
The hazards identified by the regulator include choking, entrapment, falling, and laceration.
“Consumers are encouraged to pay a close attention to these safety issues when purchasing and using these children’s products,” Enterprise Singapore said.
For baby carriers, the unsafe products identified were the MINE 4 Position Baby Carrier, OEM Adapt 3 Position Baby Carrier, Sorbebe Airo Robic Hip Seat Baby Carrier and the I-Angel Miracle Hip Seat Carrier.
Sorbebe Airo Robic Hip Seat Baby Carrier – one of the products identified as unsafe by Enterprise Singapore. (Photo: Enterprise Singapore)
The key safety issues for the carriers were that the fastener broke because it was unable to support the weight of a baby and that there was a lack of instructions for proper usage, which may lead to improper use, “causing injuries and suffocation”, Enterprise Singapore added.
Four unsafe cots were also identified, including the SG Baby Shop (Model No: SX), Premium Baby Bed Set (Model No: Hope HP 810M), Puku Izzy Foldable Baby Cot (Model No: P30112) and Milano – Oxford 4 in 1 Convertible Cot (Model No: BD302).
The Milano – Oxford 4 in 1 Convertible Cot (Model No: BD302) – one of the products identified as unsafe by Enterprise Singapore. (Photo: Enterprise Singapore)
Enterprise Singapore said the key safety issues were that the cot slants broke easily and that the slants did not meet height requirements.
There were also raised surfaces or bumps and sharp ages in the cots. Some small parts were easily detachable, posing a risk of suffocation if swallowed by the baby.
The Baby YOYA Baby Cabin Travel, the Belecoo Compact and Seebaby Little Monster were the three strollers found to be unsafe.
Enterprise Singapore added that there were problems with the restraint system and that the fasteners were unable to secure a child in the seat.
There were also issues with stability, which could cause the strollers to tip over when parked on slopes.
“The product was damaged or collapsed when tested for strength, which resulted in the impairment of safety features such as locking mechanism, restraint system, and parking/braking devices,” the regulator said.
Seebaby Little Monster- one of the products identified as unsafe by Enterprise Singapore. (Photo: Enterprise Singapore)
REMOVED FROM SALE
Enterprise Singapore said all 11 unsafe products were available on e-commerce platforms, including Qoo10, Shopee and Lazada.
“The suppliers of these products have since removed them for sale following the notices issued by Enterprise Singapore to do so,” it said.
Consumers who bought the products are urged to stop using them immediately and contact the sellers or the Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) for information on redress options.
“Consumers should check that children’s products have undergone the necessary safety tests before making purchases online as it is not possible to check the product physically prior to the purchase.
“Those who may have bought similar products should note the above safety issues,” Enterprise Singapore advised.
As part of its retail reimagined strategy, Microsoft is debuting a new retail solution in Harvey Norman’s Millenia Walk Flagship Store in Singapore called Microsoft Synchronised Shopping.
With this solution, customers on Harvey Norman’s website interact with a customised conversational A.I. driven product advisor that asks a series of questions designed to help them identify the products that best meet their needs.
For example, a customer wishing to buy a laptop, would be asked questions like, “Will you be using the laptop for work or games?” or, “Is battery life or performance more important?”
From their choices, a ‘shopper pass’ is created and stored within their Apple Wallet or Google Pay app on their mobile devices with an embedded geo-location service that will direct them to their selected devices when they are in the store. If someone else is using the desired PC, Microsoft Synchronised Shopping will automatically recommend a similar device to try.
Chances are, we already know this saying by heart. But as humans, there is an unconscious bias. It is a natural thing for us to err and make prior judgements, even as adults.
What more for young children who has yet to learn how to be discerning for themselves?
A Singaporean dad hit a little too close to home with that in his recent Facebook post, on the Father and son page.
DAD’S EXAMPLES OF SHOWING EMPATHY THROUGH COMIC ON MIGRANT WORKERS
“What to tell your children if they say this,” wrote the Singaporean dad, Calvin Soh.
Subscribers of streaming and other digital services, take note.
Providing a fictitious overseas billing or residential address in order to game an account with overseas-based vendors may constitute tax evasion once the goods and services tax (GST) for imported digital services kicks in on Jan 1.
Announcing this and other changes to the law in Parliament on Monday (Nov 4), Second Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong said it was necessary to make the misrepresentation of information an offence for the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) to enforce the tax effectively.
This is because suppliers operating overseas will rely on information provided by customers to determine if they should collect GST, he said.
Dubbed the “Netflix tax”, overseas vendors of online services such as streaming music or movies will have to pay GST if they have an annual global turnover of over $1 million and make more than $100,000 in providing digital services to Singapore.
The tax, announced during last year’s Budget, is aimed at levelling the playing field for local retailers, which must pay GST.
Collection of Style (commonly known as Cos) has just expanded its shipping service.
Previously, its online delivery service only caters to a selected handful of countries, such as the USA, UK and several European countries like Spain and Italy.
Now, it offers international shipping to 65 different countries that includes Mexico, Malaysia and Singapore.
Since Nov 1, avid fans living in these countries are able to shop comfortably in their homes for highly quality wardrobe basics.
Standard home delivery costs US$20 (S$27.17), but will be complimentary if orders are above US$200 (S$271.68).
All orders will be shipped out within three to five working days (with the exception of peak periods like sale season or public holidays), and shoppers can expect to receive their goodies within the same time frame once it has been shipped out.
All orders will be shipped from its Tilburg warehouse in the Netherlands via UPS.
As we’re hardcore stans of versatile classics, we’re going to splurge our recent paychecks on these 10 items.
SINGAPORE: Job seekers are asked to be contortionists and masters of reinvention these days.
So much has been written about what job seekers need to do to adapt themselves for the age of disruption. But what about employers?
Does our entire approach towards hiring also need to be reimagined to deal with the demands of a future where not even the best futurists can predict which skills will be needed?
The old job description standard of “5 to 10 years of relevant experience” seems jarringly outdated when entire fields such as social media or big data analysis were only born a few years ago.
Most companies these days find themselves bewildered by an array of thorny new challenges – how to attract and retain millennials.
SINGAPORE STRUGGLING WITH RECRUITMENT
Singapore seems to be struggling.
Last week a senior leader in the biopharma industry sent me a one-liner email: “74 per cent of employees in Singapore plan to leave their organisation soon! What to do?”
Attached was a report by a Roffey Park Institute studying HR trends in four places – Singapore, China, Hong Kong and Australia.
Comparatively, Singapore came out the worst in many factors – diversity, lack of mental health support, and, of course, the dreaded employee turnover statistic, which showed Singapore having the highest percentage of employees considering moving jobs – 74 per cent, versus China at 67 per cent, Australia at 64 per cent, and Hong Kong at 63 per cent
But what is the root cause behind the high turnover?
A man in an office. (Photo: Pixabay/StockSnap)
One interesting nugget in the report was that the number one people challenge that HR professionals in Singapore said they faced was “recruiting the right staff”.
Singapore respondents viewed the ability to recruit as much more important compared to their counterparts in the region. In fact, in Australia, HR professionals did not even cite this factor as amongst the top.
It got me thinking – why is recruitment such a challenge in Singapore?
Companies routinely lament that the talent pool is too entitled, not hungry enough and lacks skills. There is no doubt some truth to some of these complaints. But on the other side of the coin, are companies investing enough thought and intentionality into hiring and developing talent?
Are we doing the best we can to attract, support and grow the talent, or are we as employers also being entitled and unrealistic with our expectations of having the perfect plug-and-play candidates?
Over the past few years, I’ve had a unique vantage point from dealing with thousands of employers and job seekers having run the career centre at a large university and talent development programmes around the world.
While everyone understands the importance of hiring well, these are the top five recruitment mistakes I see in the market today:
1. THE IMPOSSIBLE JOB DESCRIPTION
I often encounter job descriptions in ads the length of my arm that are complex to the extreme. Oftentimes these templates were created by some long-lost boss, with each successor just piling on more wishes, resulting in a long and improbable wishlist.
In my experience, someone qualified (most likely a HR expert), needs to screen all wishlists for sanity.
Working on a laptop. (Photo: lukasbieri on Pixabay)
Do we really need a hard cutoff of five years of relevant experience or are we narrowing the funnel too early? Some of my best hires had little relevant experience but were fast learners, self-aware and highly motivated individuals.
Another bugbear of mine is seeing “degree inflation”. Harvard Business School carried out a study that showed that two-thirds of postings for production supervisors called for bachelor degrees, while at the same time just 16 per cent of current production supervisors have one.
So much research shows that grades are a terrible predictor of workplace success, to the extent that many global organisations are scrapping college degree requirements, such as Ernst and Young, which conducted an 18-month study of employees in 2015 to find that academic success didn’t matter when it comes to how well new hires performed.
2. NO ANALYSIS OF RECRUITMENT TECHNIQUES, NOR TRAINING PEOPLE ON HOW TO HIRE
Employers routinely spend thousands of dollars on hiring each individual who fills their vacant seats, yet hardly actually bother to analyse whether their hiring methods actually worked or measure the difference between the success of their various approaches whether it is which interview questions are most correlated to success or which recruitment channels are most effective.
(Photo: Unsplash/rawpixel)
Many employers argue it’s impossible to measure job performance well, but even one or two follow-up questions can be useful. Prof Peter Cappeli from Wharton suggests two simple questions: Do you regret hiring this individual? Would you hire her or him again?
I once invited an expert on hiring, to conduct a masterclass for my team. I can honestly say it was one of the most eye-opening, humbling experiences to learn just how biased humans are at recruiting, and how important training is.
One key takeaway was the importance of structuring interview questions so that every candidate can be assessed on the same basis. It may sound boring, but interview panels who ask exactly the same questions in the same order allow organisations to aggregate answers and collect data properly on what works.
Unstructured interviews are the worst predictors of workplace success, mainly because we unconsciously tend to look for someone like ourselves in interview, and favour certain communication styles.
I’ve also encountered “school bias” in Singapore where hiring managers form snap judgements about candidates from certain schools based on stereotypes, which are downright unfair. Yet many managers have so little training in this very key area of leadership.
3. WHEN “CULTURAL FIT” BECOMES GROUPTHINK
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast every day” is one of the most overused corporate clichés. Culture is important, especially in the context of creating an inclusive environment and aligning mindsets.
But when people hire people who look and think just like the rest of the team, it reduces innovation and reduces psychological safety – because they feel that they can’t put forth a differing opinion without it being held against them.
Office professionals at work. (File photo: Unsplash/Mimi Thian)
One of the hidden culprits of groupthink is the well-loved employee referral programme. Research by sociologists Robert Fernandez, Emilio Castilla and Paul Moore found that people hired as referrals were actually not any better than other candidates.
The reason they performed better was because the referrers (their friends) were looking out for them in their early days and giving them useful information, essentially doing an excellent job with onboarding.
The study showed that if a referrer left before the new hire began their job, the new hire’s performance was no better than a non-referral. This is why some companies pay deferred referral bonuses and only if the hire is still there after six months or so.
4. NOT INVESTING IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN
Employers need to understand that the majority of Gen X and Ys typically leave jobs due to a lack of perceived growth and development; it’s not just about financial rewards or recognition.
This speaks to the important need for companies to invest in learning and training, develop a strong talent management programme, be disciplined about succession planning and measure engagement as an early warning indicator.
The top bread-and-butter leadership challenges aren’t about technical problems, they deal with handling pressure, motivating others, aligning stakeholder interests, managing politics and driving innovation.
All of these leadership skills of the future rely on deeply human social emotional competencies such as empathy, resilience and self-awareness.
Woman speaking to a colleague in the office. (Photo: Unsplash/Mimi Thian)
Yet these are hardly taught in formal education, which leads to many poor managers who have gotten where they are due to competent individual performance, but lack the ability to manage complex team and interpersonal dynamics, which is essential in today’s hypercompetitive and global environment.
5. DISCRIMINATING AGAINST “JOB-HOPPERS” AND SENIORS
I’ve written before about the value of having a diverse array of experiences, and how the future requires us to have broad skills and an open mindset.
So it is key that employers do not reject candidates even before the interview stage for having many different jobs (which may be due to a variety of good reasons, including having children).
Another valuable source of talent is our pioneer generation. Local businesswoman Janice Lim who set up PioneerCan, an social enterprise for people in their 70s and above, says that older members of the workforce have many advantages especially in the service sector, including higher emotional intelligence, a calmer disposition and more loyalty.
Not to mention that they are less likely to be glued to their mobile phones texting at work.
SINGAPORE: The suspension of the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System (RTS) Link project has been extended to Apr 30, 2020, said Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan on Monday (Nov 4).
This comes after Malaysia said on Oct 31 it would proceed with the construction of the RTS Link project, with a 36 per cent cost cut.
While the decision has been made to go ahead with the project, Malaysia was not yet ready to share the details of their proposed changes with Singapore, Mr Khaw said in a written response to parliamentary questions about the RTS by Member of Parliament Ang Wei Neng.
“Without the details, Malaysia’s proposal is incomplete and Singapore is unable to make a thorough assessment of the technical and commercial feasibility of the proposal.”
Mr Khaw said in his written response that on Oct 29, Malaysia had requested a further extension of the suspension period by six months to Apr 30, 2020.
“In the spirit of bilateral cooperation, Singapore agreed to Malaysia’s request to further extend the suspension period,” Mr Khaw said.
In May, Singapore and Malaysia agreed to suspend the construction of the RTS Link until Sep 30 at Malaysia’s request.
Both sides then agreed to extend the deadline for an additional month, until Oct 31, when Malaysia announced that the project would proceed.
“Singapore welcomes Malaysia’s decision to proceed with the RTS Link Project. This is a mutually beneficial project for both countries. The RTS Link will significantly ease Causeway congestion, facilitate business and tourism, and bring our people closer together,” said Mr Khaw.
“While we are not obliged to accept Malaysia’s proposed changes, we will continue to keep an open mind and assess them carefully and objectively.”
Mr Khaw reiterated that both sides are currently discussing changes to the project, which will require amendments to the RTS Link Bilateral Agreement.
TWO OTHER AGREEMENTS TO BE SIGNED
Apart from the re-stated Bilateral Agreement, two other agreements will need to be signed at the same time by the end of the suspension period.
The first is the Joint Venture Agreement between Singapore’s SMRT Corporation and Malaysia’s Prasarana Malaysia Berhad to constitute a joint venture Operating Company or “OpCo”.
The second is a Concession Agreement for the Singapore and Malaysian Governments to appoint the OpCo as the RTS Link operator.
“The discussions will take some time, and both sides are working hard on this,” said Mr Khaw.
Every week, an old lady sits by a makeshift stall, selling fruits and vegetables near a condominium in Thomson.
She makes no secret that her goods — bananas, mangos, and pumpkins among others — are more expensive than those found in the supermarket where she got her stock from.
But instead of haggling with the elderly woman, customers are willingly buying her produce at higher prices.
97-year-old Teo Suan recently came under the spotlight on social media after Facebook user Samuel Lee posted photos of her peddling her goods.
In a post on Nov 1, Lee encouraged people to support Teo and patronise her stall.
He wrote: “(She’s) still making an effort to come out every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, pushing a grocery trolley full of fruits, potatoes, etc, which is super heavy given her age. Just (to make) a living.”
BANGKOK: The international multilateral trading system must be updated to “reflect current realities” so that it can continue to work well, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday (Nov 4).
Speaking at the 14th East Asia Summit, Mr Lee said that this can be done by accounting for the “growing weight” of emerging economies as well as developing new rules to accommodate the “digital revolution”.
“On economic cooperation, international trade has been a key driver of global growth and prosperity since the end of World War II, ” he said.
“But the multilateral system must be updated to reflect current realities, to continue to function properly and in a politically sustainable way.”
PM Lee Hsien Loong attended the 14th East Asia Summit at Bangkok, Thailand, on Nov 4, 2019. (Photo: Ministry of Communications and Information)
Singapore has supported efforts such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) Joint Statement on E-Commerce initiative, and it also supports updating the WTO rule-book with like-minded partners, Mr Lee added.
The East Asia Summit, which has 18 members including Russia and the US, is an “integral element” of ASEAN-centred “regional architecture”, said Mr Lee.
“At a time the multilateral systems is under pressure, the EAS has been a useful platform for its 18 members to develop complementary, mutually beneficial relationships,” he added.
“And to work together on the strategic, economic and political challenges facing the world, including transboundary problems that no one country can solve.”
Mr Lee also spoke briefly about political cooperation, touching on four issues including the South China Sea.
ASEAN and China have completed the first reading of the Single Draft COC Negotiating Text. The agreement, set to finish in 2021, will lay out conduct guidelines for the waters along with conflict resolution parameters.
In working towards a binding South China Sea code of conduct (COC), Mr Lee said that it is vital that all parties exercise “self-restraint”.
“While we work towards a binding COC, it is important that all parties exercise self-restraint and avoid mishaps and miscalculations that could result in many unintended consequences,” said Mr Lee.
While Singapore is a non-claimant state, it has “fundamental interests” in maintaining regional peace and stability, preserving the freedom of navigation and overflight, and the peaceful settlement of disputes in accordance with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), said Mr Lee.
Speaking on the situation in Hong Kong, Mr Lee reiterated that it was a “difficult issue with no easy way forward”.
“I hope that the situation can calm down soon so that the issues can be progressively dealt with by the SAR (Special Administrative Region) government,” he said. “They will have to find solutions within the “one country, two systems” arrangement because Hong Kong is ultimately part of China.
“We wish Hong Kong all the best, because we are convinced that a stable Hong Kong is good for the region.”
In the 2001 Hong Kong comedy flick Shaolin Soccer, an amateur football team rises through the ranks thanks to the power of teamwork and a whole lot of kung fu. The primary opponents for Stephen Chow and his ragtag group of martial-art misfits? A team of superhuman soccer players enhanced by science — and drugs.
Nothing illegal or unsavoury is taking place within the Tanjong Katong Primary School (TKPS) football team though. Instead, the inspired commitment to maths, science and data has proven to be an assured method for scoring trophies. It certainly was a winning formula for the team who emerged as champions in the U10 Boys Cup Finals of the Singapore Pools-FAS Inter-School Futsal Challenge back in August.
The architect behind the achievement, however, does not resemble a stereotypical man of science. Good-humoured, easygoing and tremendously modest, teacher and football coach Shahul Hamid has been responsible for blurring the lines between jocks and geeks at the school, translating academic matters in class onto the football field.
