Safe berth for the ‘kings’ of Westports
Founder: Company highly values its employees
PETALING JAYA: The conventional wisdom in the world of marketing is that the customer is the “king”.
But it does not apply for Tan Sri G. Gnanalingam, the founder of Westports Holdings Bhd.
For the tycoon who built the port from scratch into one of Asia’s busiest container terminals, his employees are “the king” while the customer plays a lesser role of “queen”.
“At Westports our staff is the king and the customer is the queen. We hire people to learn and excel. They signed emotional contract with us instead of employment contract. At the end of the day, we prefer attitude over brains,” shares Gnanalingam with some 300 people who flooded the Menara Star theatre hall for the September edition of the Power Talks series organised by Star Media Group yesterday.
The 71-year-old executive chairman of Westports Holdings Bhd gets involved in every aspect in the life of his employees to the point of even helping resolve their financial woes.
As a means to resolve the financial problems of workers who had borrowed from lone sharks, Westports used to settle their debts and deduct the amount over a few years because the company wanted the employees to focus on their work.
“We would deduct the amount they owed to us in instalments from their salary. But at some point we decided not to continue with this ad hoc assistance as we noticed the same employees would get in same mess again,” said Gnanalingam, who kept the audience entertained with his witty remarks throughout the one hour session.
But, Gnanalingam admitted that Westports initially had to do a lot of nurturing to recruit and train the right people from a humble beginning of a greenfield port with only 550 employees in 1996 to a massive multi-billion company with over 4,300 employees today.
“Most people then wanted to either be doctors, engineers or architects and nobody wanted to work at a port. We started off with a sixmonth on the job training, military and police training as well as teambuilding. Today, we are proud to be the employer of 100% Malaysian employees,” he said.
Westports also extended computer loans, housing loans, vehicle loans and also up to two months no interest salary advance without any questions.
“Malaysian are shy people. So we don’t ask questions and we would gradually deduct the amount they owed over a period of time,” he said.
Reminiscing on his journey that led up to his involvement in the port industry, Gnanalingam who graduated from University Malaya in 1968, landed a job in Malaysian Tobacco Company (currently known as British American Tobacco).
He was with the tobacco company until 1988. By then he was the marketing director of the company and had gained prominence as the person who won the rights for the telecast of the 1986 football World Cup in Mexico.
Gnanalingam then saw the opportunity in the media industry when Radio TV Malaysia (RTM) was facing intense competition from TV3. He set up a company – G-Team Consultancy – that was given the mandate to boost the RTM’s revenue. They managed to raise revenue from RM50mil up to RM360mil over the years.
To a question as to why he chose to go into the port business, Gnanalingam said that he saw the threat coming from Astro.
“Astro had so many channels, I felt that they would overtake the free-toair TV stations which had limited channels,” said Gnanalingam.
The G-Team won the privatisation of Westports in 1994 and since then Gnanalingam has not gone into any other industry.
He said that one reason for him going into the business was because 95% of the world trade is by sea.