Beyond the black box

Unlike traditional reactive approaches to hiring, Harness.io champions a forward-looking strategy. Luan Lam, Harness.io’s Chief People Officer, emphasises a systematic approach: “We meticulously forecast future needs, factoring in interview times and market fluctuations, particularly in the dynamic Indian market.” This granular planning ensures a seamless recruitment experience, attracting top talent from India’s burgeoning tech hub.

The internship forge

Harness.io boasts a unique internship programme specifically tailored for the Indian market. This initiative isn’t just about filling temporary roles; it’s about nurturing future leaders. With an impressive 80 per cent conversion rate, the programme successfully integrates fresh graduates into the company, fostering a loyal pipeline of talent invested in the company’s trajectory.

“We meticulously forecast future needs, factoring in interview times and market fluctuations, particularly in the dynamic Indian market.”

Luan Lam, chief people officer, Harness.io

The antidote to job-hopping jitters

Despite India’s abundant talent pool, securing skilled individuals remains a challenge. Lam acknowledges, “Competition is fierce, and job-hopping anxieties can hinder movement.” To address this, Harness prioritises transparency. By clearly articulating the company’s mission, values, and growth prospects during the initial interview, they not only address candidate concerns but also ensure a strong cultural fit—a cornerstone for long-term success. This ‘sell versus buy first’ model prioritises mutual understanding, fostering a strong foundation for long-term success.

Streamlining the journey

Transparency extends beyond the initial interview. The entire process emphasises clear communication and setting realistic expectations. Harness actively listens to understand candidate aspirations and concerns, creating a two-way dialogue that ensures a smooth transition from initial contact to onboarding.

Onboarding goes beyond generic presentations. Tailored training programmes equip new hires with the skills necessary to excel in their roles. For instance, the recruiting team undergoes a boot camp, honing their skills through practical exercises and shadowing senior recruiters. This investment in continuous learning ensures a seamless integration and sets the stage for long-term success.

Metrics for talent optimisation

Harness.io leverages data analytics to optimise its talent acquisition strategy. Metrics play a crucial role, from headcount planning to measuring recruiter performance. Detailed analysis of attrition rates, team productivity, and projected growth allows for informed resource allocation and ensures the company is constantly adapting to market trends. This data-driven approach has yielded impressive results, with Harness.io boasting an offer acceptance rate of 79 per cent, significantly exceeding industry averages.

Building a culture of excellence

Recruitment isn’t just about filling positions; it’s about fostering a thriving culture. Harness.io seeks individuals who not only possess the necessary skills but also embody the company’s core values, such as a commitment to continuous improvement and a fearless approach to challenges. By prioritising cultural fit, the company ensures new hires seamlessly integrate and contribute fresh perspectives to the dynamic work environment.

Retention through investment

Retaining top talent is a strategic imperative. Harness.io fosters a culture of transparency and recognition, with programmes dedicated to employee development and career growth. Diversity and inclusion are paramount, with initiatives like the ‘Women in Tech’ committee and unconscious bias training actively promoting an inclusive environment. Additionally, the company prioritises internal career mobility, with a significant number of first-time managers being promoted from within.

Harness.io isn’t merely building a workforce; it’s building a community. By prioritising transparency, communication, and investment in its people, the company has cultivated a thriving ecosystem where exceptional talent can flourish. This unwavering commitment to fostering a culture of innovation and growth positions Harness.io not only to attract top talent but also retain them, ensuring continued success in the years to come.

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In the traditional model, where engagement often implies a unilateral interaction, a significant departure emerges with involvement. It propels employees from passive recipients of corporate initiatives to active contributors, empowering individuals to shape the narrative actively. This transformative approach establishes an environment where employee opinions and insights are not only valued but integral to the decision-making processes.

Furthermore, the paradigm of involvement surpasses the satisfaction-oriented scope of engagement. It instills a profound sense of ownership, compelling employees to take responsibility actively. When employees are pivotal in decision-making and problem-solving, heightened accountability ensues, acting as a catalyst for enhanced performance and unwavering commitment.

Another facet of this strategic shift lies in the harnessing of collective intelligence. While engaged employees bring enthusiasm to their roles, those involved contribute a wealth of diverse perspectives and ideas, fostering a dynamic synergy that transcends individual capabilities. This transformative dynamic turns the workplace into a crucible for innovation and continuous improvement.

In a business landscape where adaptability is paramount, involvement takes centre stage by integrating individuals into the broader strategic vision of the organisation. While engagement primarily focuses on personal satisfaction, strategic involvement ensures that employees are not just content but agile, ready to pivot and innovate in response to evolving challenges and opportunities.

Moreover, in a fiercely competitive talent market, organisations prioritising involvement become magnets for top-tier professionals. The allure of actively shaping the company’s direction emerges as a compelling draw. While engagement may attract talent, strategic involvement ensures that employees not only join the organisation but also commit to staying and growing within its ranks.

This seismic shift from engagement to involvement marks a transformative evolution in the perception and cultivation of workplace satisfaction. It is an acknowledgment that employees are not mere managed assets but indispensable partners in the journey toward organisational success. As companies navigate the intricate dynamics of the modern business landscape, those embracing strategic employee involvement are poised not only to weather change but to thrive and lead. In this redefined paradigm, involvement isn’t a mere buzzword; it is the linchpin unlocking the full potential of both individuals and the organisations they serve.

The author Namrata Tata is managing partner – Happyness.me 

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In the past two to three years, especially during and after the pandemic, the company’s methods of hiring have undergone a considerable transformation. Prior to the pandemic, most recruitment processes and touchpoints were predominantly managed offline, which was heavily manual.  This approach often led to an inefficient recruitment process. 

Navigating the post-pandemic shift in recruitment  strategies 

Challenges in data visibility and reporting were significant, resulting in an inconsistent candidate  experience. Additionally, effectively communicating the employer brand posed a significant  challenge, and the average time to hire was high. To concisely summarise, the following were  the firm’s primary pain points: 

Inadequate demand forecasting: They faced difficulties in accurately forecasting talent  requirements on a quarterly or yearly basis. This lack of planning often led to last-minute  hiring, which strained resources and potentially compromised the quality of candidates  selected. 

Manual, excel-based tracking system: Relying heavily on a manual, excel-based  application-tracking system meant a high degree of manual intervention. This method  was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors, leading to inefficiencies in the  recruitment process.

Dependence on traditional sourcing methods: Heavy reliance on traditional  sourcing methods, such as job portals — Naukri and a few consultants— was a limited  approach. This may have overlooked a broader talent pool, especially those not actively seeking new opportunities but who may be ideal candidates. 

Lack of a passive talent pool: The absence of a passive talent pool meant they were  missing out on potential candidates who were not actively job hunting but would be open  to new opportunities. This limited the reach to only those actively seeking employment,  thereby narrowing the candidate base.

Candidate drop-outs post offer acceptance: A significant issue they faced was  candidates dropping out after accepting job offers. This not only disrupted the  recruitment cycle but also led to a waste of resources and time spent in the hiring  process. 

The need for transformation was evident at every touchpoint of the recruitment process. This  period marked a pivotal point in Tata Steel’s approach to talent acquisition, prompting them to re-evaluate and innovate their strategies to better align with the evolving landscape of hiring and candidate expectations. The pandemic-induced shift to more digital and streamlined processes was not just a temporary adjustment but a fundamental change in how they approached talent acquisition. 

Integrating systems thinking and technology for enhanced talent acquisition 

In addressing its recruitment challenges, the company adopted ‘systems thinking’ principles, focusing  on solving each component while maintaining a holistic view.  

Systems Thinking is a holistic approach that considers the entire process and how each part  interacts with the others. Instead of merely solving one problem at a time in isolation, Tata Steel looked at how changes in one area of the recruitment process may impact other areas. The aim was to create solutions that are more effective overall and lead to sustainable improvements across the entire recruitment system. 

This strategy centered around improving three key areas or the 3E objectives: 

Efficiency: This involved streamlining processes, reducing manual interventions, and automating  repetitive tasks to optimise the end-to-end process turnaround time (TAT). This speeded up the recruitment cycle, ensuring timely hiring without compromising on quality. 

Effectiveness: This focused on the goal of hiring the right talent for the right role at the right time and ensuring they were set up for success. This required a better understanding of their talent needs, more precise targeting in their sourcing strategies and a robust evaluation process to ensure a good fit for both the role and the company culture. 

Experience: This area pertained to improving the user experience for candidates, business users and other stakeholders, a crucial part of the transformation. The focus was on creating a more engaging and seamless experience throughout the recruitment process, which included  improving communication channels, providing transparent and timely feedback, and using technology to enhance interaction at every touchpoint. 

Recognising the crucial role of technology in achieving these objectives, the company identified that the most important lever required was technological advancement.  

Ripple Hire TA Suite became a pivotal partner in Tata Steel’s journey of transformation.

By implementing technology at various touchpoints, it was possible to address specific  challenges effectively.  

For instance, an advanced Applicant Tracking System (ATS) by RippleHire replaced the  manual, Excel-based processes, significantly reducing errors and increasing efficiency. Artificial intelligence- driven tools were introduced for better demand forecasting and talent mapping, ensuring proactiveness rather than reactiveness in the hiring approach. 

Additionally, the company leveraged technology to build a passive talent pool, engaging potential  candidates through various digital platforms and keeping them interested in future opportunities. This not only expanded the talent reach but also reduced dependency on traditional sourcing methods. 

Tata Steel’s innovative four-Stage hiring process 

Tata Steel has redefined its recruitment strategy with a comprehensive four-stage process,  leveraging technology and innovative practices to streamline hiring and enhance candidate  experience. 

This transformation has not only improved operational efficiency but has also positively  impacted its employer brand.  

Here’s a closer look at each stage of its cutting-edge recruitment process: 

Stage 1: Demand planning and request raising 

Tata Steel simplified its recruitment process by consolidating multiple steps into a  single, user-friendly interface. What used to take two to three days just to start the process, can now  be accomplished in a matter of minutes with a few clicks. This enhancement has not only  improved the hiring experience for its business teams but also introduced greater  transparency, relying more on the system rather than individual recruiters. 

Stage 2: Talent sourcing & screening 

The integration of the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) with various job portals has made sourcing  much simpler. All applications now funnel into one central point. The launch of a Referral portal for internal employees further bolstered the sourcing pipeline, eliminating repetitive tasks such as posting the same job on different portals. Advanced features such as Boolean search, AI-enabled  CV-to-job matching, and generative AI for job description creation have reduced its sourcing efforts by 66 per cent. The company is also planning to evolve this area further by incorporating analytics to understand and engage passive applicants who visit its site. 

Stage 3: Candidate assessment and selection 

On the panel front, Tata Steel introduced a Recruiter Certification Programme to ensure structured  and effective interviews. Recognising the importance of candidate experience, it has used technology to provide timely updates and feedback after each interview round, keeping  candidates engaged and informed. This approach not only enhances the candidate experience  but also turns them into brand ambassadors, irrespective of the selection outcome. With  technological aids, everything from scheduling to assessment is now just a click away, cutting  down the entire selection process time by 50 per cent. 

Stage 4: Offer and onboarding 

Understanding that candidates value both tangible and intangible aspects of a job offer, Tata  Steel’s Ripple Hire Dream Offer module creates a memorable moment for candidates. It  features personalised messages from leadership, a glimpse into the company culture, and a  detailed outline of benefits and compensation. This approach has resulted in a 96 per cent acceptance ratio in the first half of the financial year. Additionally, processes such as documentation and  background verification have been greatly streamlined, with custom documentation functionality reducing completion time by over 70 per cent. 

Ripple Hire ATS drives remarkable efficiency and candidate satisfaction 

Following the implementation of Ripple Hire Applicant Tracking System (ATS), a remarkable  transformation in the recruitment process has unfolded. Key metrics indicate significant  enhancements in efficiency, candidate experience and overall recruitment effectiveness:  

Reduction in median job cycle time by almost 15 days: This indicates that the average  time taken to complete the recruitment process for a job position has been reduced by  approximately 15 days. This is a significant improvement in efficiency, indicating faster  sourcing, screening, interviewing and hiring processes. 

Closure of 48% all jobs within 30 days: Previously, only 22 per cent of job positions were  filled within a 30-day period. Post implementation, this number has more than doubled to  48 per cent! This shows a substantial increase in the speed of the hiring process. That means, nearly half of all open positions are now being filled within a month. 

Conversion rate of 95%: This refers to the success rate in converting job applicants to  actual hires. A 95 per cent conversion rate is remarkably high, suggesting that the vast majority  of candidates who enter the recruitment process are eventually hired. 

Candidate experience rating of 4.8: This is a measure of candidates’ satisfaction with the recruitment process. A score of 4.8 out of 5 is excellent and indicates a very  positive experience for candidates, which can enhance the company’s reputation and  attract more quality applicants. 

Managing sourcing ratio and reducing dependency on external consultants: This  improvement suggests that Tata Steel has become more self-reliant in sourcing candidates, reducing the need to rely on external recruitment agencies or consultants. This can mean better control over the recruitment process and potentially reduced costs. 

Referral portal and campaigns encouraging employees to refer: The implementation of  a referral portal and related campaigns has made it easier and more motivating for  current employees to refer potential candidates for open positions. Employee referrals  are often a highly effective way of sourcing quality candidates.

Reporting and Monitoring Around Various Metrics Have Become Quite Easy: With the  new system, the ability to track and report on various recruitment metrics (like time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, source effectiveness, etc.) has become more straightforward and  efficient. This ease of monitoring allows for better analysis and continuous improvement  in the recruitment process.

Overall, these improvements point to a more efficient, effective and user-friendly recruitment  process, benefiting both the organisation and its potential employees. 

Road ahead  

Talent management is a field that’s always changing and improving. Making a company’s brand  stronger is crucial for attracting and hiring the best talent. Tata Steel is now focused on making  sure candidates have a great experience and that it is hiring the right people for the job.  

In the future, it plans to use AI technologies and digital tools to better match candidates  with the right jobs.  

It wants to make the whole hiring process more fun and interesting for both the candidates and  its team. To make sure it is on the right track, it will keep an eye on key performance  indicators (KPIs) to ensure its brand is attractive enough to bring in the right talent, both in terms of quality and quantity.

The author, Sudarsan Ravi is the Founder and CEO of RippleHire and is known as a pioneer and category creator in recruitment technology.

The post Tata Steel: Journey through excellence in talent acquisition  appeared first on HR Katha.

Here’s a unique perspective from a key figure at the helm of this transformative endeavour:

Q. What initially inspired Tata Steel to venture into the consulting business and establish Tata Steel Industrial Consulting (TSIC)?

A. The creation of this platform is driven by the desire to disseminate information, share benchmarking practices and contribute to the growth of India, aligning with the ‘Made in India’ initiative. It serves as a means for industries to learn from one another, fostering collaboration and mutual improvement.

Our organisation is over a century old, and has undergone a significant transformation in process design as part of our digital roadmap, incorporating benchmark data and practices. Today, we take pride in being among the best in various aspects of steel manufacturing. With such an extensive portfolio, we have developed valuable practices over many years of operation. These practices can be effectively implemented or shared with industrial customers, both in India and internationally. 

One such practice involves our comprehensive digital platforms actively contributing to improving our business Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) compared to previous metrics. This requires strategic maximisation of our existing product line and processes through the integration of digital tools and analytics. By transforming these aspects into a cohesive platform, process and knowledge base, we have achieved the intended business results. This represents a crucial development over the past six to seven years, driving our transformation in this domain.

“Our organisation is over a century old, and has undergone a significant transformation in process design as part of our digital roadmap, incorporating benchmark data and practices. Today, we take pride in being among the best in various aspects of steel manufacturing. With such an extensive portfolio, we have developed valuable practices over many years of operation. These practices can be effectively implemented or shared with industrial customers, both in India and internationally.”

Asutosh Panigrahi, chief, Tata Steel Industrial Consulting (TSIC)

Q. In addition to sharing the best practices and experiences, was there any other motivation behind the establishment of TSIC?

A. Given the established foundation of a business-development team primarily dedicated to customer outreach, TSIC introduces a transformative approach that extends beyond the mere exchange of best practices and experiences. It’s crucial to recognise the pivotal role played by subject-matter experts (SME) stationed on the shop floor, actively immersed in the day-to-day operations of their respective businesses. Historically, these experts have been closely aligned with their own units or have gained exposure to multiple units over the course of their professional journey.

With the inception of TSIC, these experts embark on projects that push them beyond their accustomed territories and capabilities, and explore areas they may not have delved into within the confines of Tata Steel. This shift not only enhances their technical expertise but also broadens their overall perspective. The tangible result of this enrichment is the evident pride displayed by these individual SME, who now play a pivotal role in delivering solutions directly to customers.

As a consequence, a notable transformation emerges in the form of increased knowledge, improved communication skills and elevated confidence levels among the shop-floor personnel and officers actively involved in these endeavours. Beyond the immediate impact, this innovative model facilitates a continuous learning process, providing these professionals with valuable insights into the unfolding dynamics of business operations in diverse sectors. In essence, TSIC becomes a catalyst for the ongoing enhancement of their experiences, creating a dynamic and forward-thinking approach within the organisational framework.

Q. How does TSIC ensure effective dissemination of knowledge and best practices to the broader industry?

A. Our business model thrives on delivering knowledge rooted in the lessons learned from failures, providing customers with a wealth of valuable experience.

There is a robust process built on the strong documentation culture at Tata Steel. We follow a structured approach to document processes, which also serves as a solid platform for sharing with external entities through TSIC.

The evolution of these processes and documentation is marked by Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycles, where learning is implemented, refined and improved over time. These documents, considered the gold standard resulting from generations of hard work and continuous improvement, play a critical role in knowledge transfer to customer premises.

The benefits of this approach are evident in several ways. First, it significantly reduces the time required for implementation at customer sites, as the documented knowledge eliminates the need for relearning. Second, it enhances the effectiveness and reduces the risks associated with achieving Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) intended for the project. Lastly, the approach results in quicker cost reductions for customers, showcasing the efficiency gained from leveraging years of learning and avoiding the need for external entities to use their premises as a learning platform. 

Q. What specific benefits can the industry —large corporates, as well as small and medium companies — expect to gain from utilising TSIC’s expertise and knowledge?

A. TSIC’s expertise and knowledge offer specific benefits to both large corporations and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across various industries. The focus is on achieving four key performance indicators (KPIs). The first aim is to emphasise on enhancing productivity. The second is to reduce costs or optimise cost structures for product delivery. The third objective is to add value to clients by ensuring that cost reductions translate into increased product recovery and higher net realisation, thus elevating overall value. The fourth KPI involves structuring expertise in specific verticals to cater to the diverse needs of different industries.

Q. How does TSIC address potential concerns about strengthening competitors’ capabilities?

A. TSIC addresses concerns about strengthening competitors’ capabilities by uplifting the entire industry through knowledge dissemination. When providing solutions to customers, TSIC conducts competitive analyses to identify strengths and weaknesses, thereby contributing to the overall improvement of the industry. The sharing of knowledge and advancements encourages healthy competition, prompting competitors to enhance their capabilities and offerings.

While acknowledging the importance of competition, we currently face limited competition due to the comprehensive value chain and unique product offerings, which integrate mining to sales and encompass programme development. Despite the necessity and positive aspects of competition, the specific landscape in India is still evolving.

However, TSIC adheres to certain boundaries, in terms of limiting knowledge. There are defined ‘no go’ areas, such as not entering markets where solutions are unproven. There are also constraints related to intellectual property, with considerations for patented technologies and specific conditions that guide TSIC’s approach and market-entry decisions.

Additionally, we ensure collaboration and mutual benefit within the industry while safeguarding proprietary information through a strategic approach to delineating proprietary and non-proprietary information. We employ a robust process, including market and customer assessments, as well as approval systems, to safeguard proprietary knowledge. 

Q. How has the market responded to TSIC’s offerings across various fields?

A. We are actively working to increase our brand awareness in various fields such as safety management, human-resource management, digital transformation, organisation and excellence, manufacturing practices, mining and exploration. Although not yet widely recognised across India, we have made a notable impact in the market through a structured digital approach, including participation in conferences and exhibitions. The strength of TSIC lies in its association with the Tata Steel brand, making product selling relatively easier once introduced into the market. We consider our current status a journey, continually monitoring, improving and setting clear goals, with a focus on expanding our presence in the coming years.

Q. Are there any specific areas where TSIC’s consulting services are in higher demand compared to others?

A. We experience higher demand in specific areas, particularly in safety management, digital platforms and sustainability. Safety is a well-understood and actively sought-after service, with a healthy demand from customers. Digital platforms, including products for connected workforces, have garnered significant interest from many customers. Another emerging area of demand is sustainability, where TSIC receives numerous inquiries due to a relatively low exposure to this concept in India. Additionally, there is a growing interest in addressing cost, operational efficiency and productivity across various industrial belts.

The factors contributing to this disparity in demand are multifaceted. For one, the implementation of mandatory laws and regulations in the last decade has emphasised the need for certain minimum standards in the workplace, with a focus on safety. Secondly, environmental norms and regulations, such as those related to sustainability and the environment, are driving demand in these areas. Thirdly, the natural inclination of businesses to enhance productivity, reduce costs and improve margins contributes to the demand for consulting services. Lastly, the evolving landscape of the industry, particularly the need for increased automation and digitalisation, is expected to drive demand in the coming years.

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In this post, we’ll dive into the future of talent acquisition in the age of generative AI. We’ll explore how to harness this cutting-edge technology while staying true to our human instincts and values.

What is generative AI?

Generative AI is a remarkable branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on creating new and original content. Unlike traditional AI models that rely on pre-existing data to make predictions or perform tasks, generative AI has the incredible ability to generate entirely new and unique outputs.

Think of it as an AI-powered creative genius, capable of composing music, writing stories, designing artwork and even producing realistic human-like speech.

It’s like having an AI collaborator that can generate content that is not simply a replication of what it has learned but rather a creative expression that pushes boundaries and explores new frontiers.

Generative AI leverages advanced algorithms and neural networks to analyse patterns and structures in vast amounts of data. By learning from this data, it can understand the underlying characteristics and generate outputs that align with those patterns, all while adding its own touch of creativity.

Future of recruitment with generative AI

When it comes to generative AI in the talent-acquisition process, we can let our imagination run wild with the potential developments that lie ahead. Here, we explore a few speculative glimpses into what the future may hold.

Remember, these speculations are just the tip of the iceberg. The future of generative AI in talent acquisition holds immense potential for revolutionising how organisations identify and engage top talent. As we journey forward, it’s essential to approach these advancements with a thoughtful and ethical mindset, ensuring that technology augments human judgment rather than replacing it.

1. Predictive candidate fit

The evolution of generative AI can empower recruiters to predict candidate fit with remarkable precision. By leveraging advanced algorithms, AI systems can analyse vast amounts of data, including resumes, social-media profiles and online assessments. This analysis would go beyond surface-level qualifications and delve into the nuances of cultural alignment and team dynamics. Recruiters would benefit from predictive insights that guide them towards candidates who not only possess the necessary skills but also possess the qualities that align with the organisation’s values and contribute to a positive work environment.

2. Job performance projections

Imagine generative AI going beyond traditional candidate-assessment methods and providing projections of a candidate’s future job performance. By leveraging historical data on successful employees and correlating it with candidate attributes, AI algorithms could generate predictive models. These models would estimate how well a candidate is likely to perform in a specific role based on factors such as their past experiences, skill set and behavioral traits. Recruiters could then make more informed decisions, selecting candidates with higher potential for success, leading to improved organisational outcomes.

3. Personalised candidate experiences

In the future, generative AI can transform the candidate experience by offering highly personalised journeys. By analysing a candidate’s preferences, communication styles, and engagement patterns, AI algorithms could craft tailored interactions at every touchpoint. Candidates would receive customised job recommendations based on their interests, targeted content that resonates with their motivations, and even personalised interview processes that accommodate their individual needs. This level of personalisation would create a more engaging and positive candidate experience, fostering stronger connections between candidates and organisations.

4. Bias mitigation

Generative AI has the potential to address the long-standing challenge of bias in talent acquisition. Aartificial intelligence algorithms can be trained to detect and mitigate biases by focusing on objective criteria and reducing reliance on subjective factors. These algorithms would learn from historical data to recognise patterns and biases in candidate evaluation, enabling recruiters to make fairer and more unbiased decisions. By mitigating bias, generative AI can contribute to creating a more inclusive and diverse workforce, promoting equal opportunities for all candidates.

5. Continuous learning and adaptation

In the future, generative AI systems could continually learn and adapt based on their interactions with candidates and recruiters. By analysing feedback, performance data, and real-time outcomes, these systems would refine their algorithms and models over time. This iterative learning process would lead to increasingly accurate and reliable candidate assessments. As a result, recruiters would benefit from AI systems that evolve and improve, enhancing the effectiveness of their talent-acquisition efforts and ensuring they stay aligned with the evolving needs of the organization.

Synergy between AI and humans

The future of recruiting is a synergistic partnership between human recruiters and AI technologies, where strategic insights and human connection are blended with the efficiency and analytical power of AI. Together, recruiters and AI can transform the talent-acquisition process and shape the future of work.

In this evolving landscape, recruiters have the opportunity to elevate their role and become strategic talent advisors who guide organisations in making informed talent decisions. By embracing AI technologies and leveraging their strengths, recruiters can focus on building relationships, shaping talent-acquisition strategies, and ensuring that the right talent is brought on board to drive organisational success.

One of the ways AI can empower recruiters is by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. AartificiaI-intelligence algorithms can quickly sift through vast volumes of resumes, screening candidates based on predefined criteria and eliminating the need for manual resume screening.

This automation frees up recruiters’ time, allowing them to focus on more strategic aspects of talent acquisition, such as relationship building, candidate engagement and assessing cultural fit.

Moreover, generative AI can aid in the creation of compelling job descriptions. By analysing successful past job descriptions and candidate preferences, AI algorithms can generate language that resonates with candidates, ensuring the job posting stands out in a crowded market.

Recruiters can then allocate their energy to understanding the nuances of the role and organisation, crafting personalised outreach, and building a strong employer brand.

Generative AI can also assist recruiters in sourcing top talent. By analysing vast amounts of data, including social-media profiles, online portfolios and professional networks, AI algorithms can identify potential candidates who may not be actively seeking job opportunities.

This proactive sourcing approach enables recruiters to tap into a wider talent pool, providing access to high-quality candidates who might have been overlooked otherwise.

While AI technologies can augment recruiters’ capabilities, they do not replace the human element. Recruiters bring invaluable emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills to the table. They excel at building relationships, understanding complex organizational dynamics, and evaluating intangible qualities such as cultural fit and adaptability. Serving as powerful tools, AI technologies enhance recruiters’ abilities and enable them to work more efficiently and effectively.

Balancing efficiency and ethics

In conclusion, the future of talent acquisition in the age of generative AI is both promising and challenging. As AI continues to evolve and integrate seamlessly into the recruitment process, companies must strive to remain competitive by embracing these technologies. By harnessing the power of AI, organisations can streamline their talent-acquisition process, reduce human bias and identify the best candidates more efficiently, leading to a stronger and more diverse workforce.

However, the adoption of AI in talent acquisition should not be taken lightly, as it comes with a responsibility to ensure ethical and responsible use. Companies must prioritise transparency, fairness and accountability in their AI-powered recruitment systems. This entails regular audits and assessments of AI algorithms to prevent potential biases, discrimination and unintended consequences. Additionally, organisations must also focus on upskilling their HR professionals, enabling them to understand and manage AI tools effectively and responsibly.

As we look to the future, a successful talent-acquisition strategy will depend on striking the right balance between leveraging the capabilities of AI and preserving human values and ethics in recruitment processes. By doing so, organisations will not only attract the best talent but also foster a culture of innovation, diversity and inclusivity, positioning themselves as leaders in the increasingly competitive global market. The future of talent acquisition in the age of generative AI is undoubtedly full of potential, and it is up to us to harness it responsibly and ethically, shaping the workforce of tomorrow.

The author, Sudarsan Ravi is the Founder and CEO of RippleHire and is known as a pioneer and category creator in recruitment technology.

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With a presence across 18 markets in the Asia Pacific region, Tata AIA Life aims to provide effortless and rewarding financial-planning solutions to meet various customer needs.

The sheer scale and variety of its services provide a clear indication of the need for top-tier talent, capable of supporting and driving the company’s unique value propositions and ambitions. This should give you an insight into the significant recruitment requirements that shape Tata AIA Life’s talent acquisition strategy.

Enhancing talent acquisition in the insurance sector

Recruiting high-quality talent was one of the key challenges for Tata AIA. With a laser focus on improving the talent acquisition (TA) process for future growth, the passionate leadership and TA team aimed at digitising their manual tasks, improving candidate experience, and reducing attrition. Marrying the famed culture of a Tata company with creative referral contests helped build a referral sourcing engine. Intelligent use of technology to onboard thousands of new joiners annually delivered a 4.8/5 candidate experience score for candidates across various cities and towns of India.

Here’s what their numbers say:

Here’s the story of how Tata AIA Life truly transformed its talent-acquisition process into a well-oiled hiring machine. A story that earned them a Gold for excellence in talent acquisition from the prestigious Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards. 

Need for high volume, top talent in the insurance sector

With an average of nearly 600 new employees being onboarded each month across over 400 locations in India, Tata AIA’s hiring needs are substantial. This volume underscores the importance of efficient processes that target top-tier talent.

The need for high volume and top talent in the insurance sector, particularly within Tata AIA Life for its growth and scale, arises from several complex factors:

• Industry evolution: The insurance industry is swiftly transforming with technological advancements and regulatory changes. The blend of digital innovation with traditional methods demands specialised talent that can navigate this balance.
• Hiring challenges: Tata AIA faces specific recruitment obstacles such as competition for highly-skilled individuals, remote-location sourcing, high attrition rates and limited access to passive talent.
• Quality focus: Tata AIA emphasises not just quantity but quality. The company’s goal is to hire leading professionals who can contribute to growth and leadership. This involves rigorous background checks and a focus on finding individuals who align with the company’s vision.
• Employee onboarding and retention: The commitment to creating an exceptional onboarding experience (SWAGATM) is part of Tata AIA’s strategy to retain top talent. The company recognises that the initial experience can significantly impact an employee’s long-term success and loyalty.
• Alignment with business goals: By focusing on high-volume, top-talent recruitment, Tata AIA ensures that its workforce is capable of driving innovation, compliance and customer engagement in a competitive and ever-changing industry landscape.

Introspecting the talent-acquisition process

Tata AIA’s recruitment process has revealed several key areas — with scope for improvement in terms of cost, efficiency and access to top-quality candidates. The following details encapsulate the challenges they faced:

• Multiple steps with manual intervention: Numerous manual tasks reduce efficiency. These include posting job ads, screening resumes, coordinating interviews, performing background checks, and negotiating offers. This manual involvement made the process time-consuming and prone to errors.
• Low visibility on candidate funnel: Without a proper candidate funnel, there was no visibility of the larger talent pool. This reactive approach caused difficulties in attracting top talent and understanding recruitment channels, impacting future hiring.
• Governance and audit trail challenges: A lack of a centralised data repository and digital signature solutions meant higher reliance on manual tasks, consuming more resources on non-recruitment efforts.
• Poor candidate experience: Lengthy forms and mobile incompatibility frustrated applicants. This led to abandonment and possible deterring of future applications.
• Need for better social-media presence: Without leveraging social media, Tata AIA missed out on candidates who may not search traditional job boards, narrowing potential talent pools.
• No centralised sourcing system: An absence of a system for automated checks and validation created inefficiency and audit risks.
• No online portal for vendors: Lack of a vendor system led to delays and miscommunication, affecting productivity due to the reliance on offline conversations.
• No Insights and Dashboards: Without data-driven insights, decision-making became cumbersome, missing optimisation opportunities in hiring strategies.

Today’s talent pool navigates a micro-social world, interacting within smaller trusted communities. On top of this, the life-insurance sector continually grapples with attrition, particularly among front-line sales staff. 

Attracting and retaining quality talent is paramount so devising ways to reduce attrition and maintain an optimum headcount became a core objective. 

Hiring cost was another critical concern for the Tata AIA team. Due to attrition trends and the urgent need for replacements, the costs through vendors and job portals were substantial, especially when compared to direct sourcing or referrals. This issue underscored the importance of a well-structured sourcing strategy to create a ready talent pipeline across the country. The team also recognised the significant impact of the onboarding experience on a new employee’s perception. Creating a ‘WoW’ onboarding experience through the SWAGATM onboarding/ welcoming process and ‘EKTA’ cultural integration induction could differentiate Tata AIA and enhance its employee-value proposition.

In response to these multifaceted challenges, the Tata AIA talent-acquisition team embarked on a structured talent-acquisition journey. The aim was to provide a top experience for top talent, focusing on attraction, sourcing, onboarding, engagement and continuous improvement.  

Intriguing questions arose – Can their existing workforce act as brand ambassadors? Could they leverage this to reach passive talent? They realised that the lack of centralised referrals across branches hindered productivity. Digitising and revamping this process could unlock access to a broader talent pool, acting as a solution ripe for the picking.

Partnering with RippleHire, an intelligent end-to-end ATS with a built-in gamified referral portal, they positioned themselves to efficiently hire the right talent while delivering best-in-class experiences for recruiters and candidates alike.

The cohesive plan reflects Tata AIA’s commitment to adapting to ever-changing demands and ensuring long-term sustainable success in talent acquisition.

Let’s take a look at the plan they adopted. 

Transforming talent acquisition through technology

The Tata AIA talent-acquisition team, together with RippleHire, commenced by laying out their existing recruitment processes. They identified manual, redundant, repetitive, or time-consuming steps, spotting immense scope for digitisation. The RippleHire platform enabled them to automate and eliminate these inefficiencies, particularly in the candidate-documentation stage. They successfully transformed the process, reducing follow-ups and manual errors through the automation of notifications and validations.

Integration and collaboration:

• Seamless incorporation of the candidate-documentation process into the ATS.
• Facilitation of better communication and closure timelines through stakeholder integration at all touch points was also enabled. 

Driving adoption: Understanding the crucial aspect of adoption, the Tata AIA project team took steps to ensure success:

• Engaging key stakeholders such as regional HRs, zone HRs, HR services team and vendors to build a sense of ownership.
• Branding the new ATS as ‘EHire+ – Hiring the Right People’ to create a buzz.
• Holding in-depth training workshops and providing user guides and FAQs.
• Achieving over 95 percent adoption within the first month of launch, highlighting the effectiveness of their approach.

Innovation and engagement: In line with Tata AIA’s innovative spirit, the company partnered with RippleHire to create a gamified, cloud-based employee-referral platform. This new approach offers unique features:

• Employees can participate in contests, share jobs, refer people and track statuses.
• It supports innovative campaigns and special rewards for niche job openings.
• Creative experiential rewards were introduced to incentivise active referrers.

The combined efforts of Tata AIA and RippleHire to innovate and streamline the recruitment process represent a significant step towards efficiency, engagement and successful talent acquisition. Their collaboration serves as a testament to the value of embracing modern technology and thoughtful strategy in human resources.

Implementing the referral programme

Tata AIA, in collaboration with RippleHire, took a strategic approach to outbound referrals, enhancing the existing programme.

They identified specific communities based on various roles and reached out with captivating campaigns.

By creatively combining referrals with contests and aspirational rewards such as trips and gadgets, they built a buzz that increased hiring numbers. Employee motivation and effective communication fostered a sense of pride and ownership. The team streamlined candidate processing with a dedicated engine for first-level screening and quick response, ensuring a fast interview and offer process.

They also engaged employees through the journey with medals and badges, maintained transparency and personalised experiences for candidates. Recognising top contributors and regularly publishing a contest leaderboard encouraged a competitive spirit.

Overall, this reimagination led to a nearly five per cent increase in sourcing through employee referrals within a year.

Dynamic offer experience

Together with RippleHire, Tata AIA crafted a mobile-based visual experience to present an offer, going beyond the usual content around compensation — the Dream Offer. Dream offer includes the senior management —CEO, CDO and CHRO —message and also showcases some of the visuals of TATA AIA culture, engagement initiatives, benefits and perks. By showcasing the company’s unique culture and values in a visually-appealing way, they reduced dropouts, improved joining ratios and offered a premium and standout experience in a competitive industry.

Best-in-class onboarding experience

Aiming at retention and aiming a ‘WOW’ experience for all our new hires, Tata AIA implemented the ‘Swagatam/E-Swagatam’ onboarding, which included:

• Day 1 arrangements: Supervisor, HR colleagues and team members welcome the new joinee with a bouquet of flowers to foster the belongingness. Everything, from ID cards to seating space, laptops and welcome letters, was ready for a smooth start for the new joinees through a well-defined matrix of stakeholders.
• Induction & orientation (EKTA): A carefully designed programme to introduce the new joiner to the organisation’s values and culture.
• Personalised connection: Announcements of the new joiner’s background and follow-up engagement calls within the first 60 days.

These combined initiatives underline Tata AIA’s comprehensive approach to employee engagement, onboarding and continuous innovation in talent acquisition. The strategies emphasise the thoughtful integration of technology with human connection to create a robust and appealing recruitment experience.

Results and Evolution

Tata AIA, in collaboration with RippleHire, initiated a comprehensive revamp of their recruitment process. Key highlights of this effort include:

Early Stakeholder Involvement:

• Workshops for regional and zonal HR teams to increase awareness.
• Smooth transition, blending the new recruitment process with daily HR tasks.

Integration and Streamlining: Integration with other HR applications and incorporating HR user touchpoints facilitated the following:

• Streamlined onboarding, reducing manual follow-ups.
• Availability of vital data for processes like employee code creation and system access.

Onboarding Enhancements: The physical/digital onboarding process was made seamless by:

• Engaging the learning and development teams.
• Structured orientation programmes to familiarisze new employees with Tata AIA’s policies and culture.

Referral Focus: An increased emphasis on employee referrals brought:

• A strong sense of belonging among existing employees.
• Transformation of employees into organisational ambassadors.
• Enhanced brand visibility within a broader talent pool.

These combined efforts of Tata AIA and RippleHire have created a more efficient and integrated recruitment process, utilising modern techniques and emphasising the company’s culture.

Future Goals and Considerations

As Tata AIA progresses in its journey towards becoming the preeminent protection provider, they remain steadfast in their pursuit of talent acquisition excellence. The commitment of leadership and top management in adhering to policies, SOPs and guidelines has played a critical role in the success of talent acquisition initiatives. Investing time and resources in the latest technologies and building people capabilities has helped create a culture of continuous innovation.

From gamified referrals and ATS to an integrated HRIS and candidate screening engines, Tata AIA has made significant strides in deploying cutting edge technologies such as RippleHire to enhance its talent acquisition efficiency. Recognizing the dynamic nature of talent acquisition and its ever-evolving paradigms – embracing diversity, automation, technology, capability building and innovation remains at the forefront of the recruitment strategy.

As Tata AIA advances in the ATS implementation, they are targeting enhancements like a campus portal and tailor-made recruitment analytics.

The author, Sudarsan Ravi is the Founder and CEO of RippleHire and is known as a pioneer and category creator in recruitment technology.

The post Innovation in insurance recruitment: Tata AIA’s journey towards high volume, top talent acquisition appeared first on HR Katha.

Quest Global brings deep industry knowledge and digital expertise to deliver E2E global product engineering services. It brings together technologies and industries alongside the contributions of diverse individuals and their areas of expertise to solve problems better and faster. This multi-dimensional approach enables it to solve the most critical and large-scale challenges across various industries, including aerospace & defense, automotive, energy, hi-tech, healthcare medical devices, rail and semiconductor industries.

TL:DR Attracting & Retaining high-quality talent in a Competitive Market

As product engineering service companies such as Quest Global continue to expand and evolve, they face several challenges. One of the biggest challenges is hiring and retaining expert talent. The need for more highly skilled and experienced engineers combined with the intense competition not only drives up salary but also causes revenue drain. This situation compels them to actively seek passive talent.

The leadership at Quest Global took the challenge head on. They married their vision of building high-quality talent pipelines with systematic data-driven execution to drive the desired outcomes.

Here’s the story of how Quest Global leveraged technology to fuel its strategic goals and enhanced its employee-referrals programme. This story got them a Silver award for excellence in talent acquisition from the prestigious Brandon Hall Group.

Challenges in building a strong talent pipeline

A strong talent pipeline is a must in order to solve tough engineering problems. Realising this, the leadership at Quest Global took a close look at the process followed at the company to attract new and right talent. Their evaluation led to interesting discoveries, challenges and limitations.

Discoveries

Changing workforce: Millennial and Gen Z candidates who form a substantial talent pool prioritise social and digital engagement. They prefer companies with strong online presence and a positive reputation.

Traditional methods: Job fairs and conventional referral techniques fall short when it comes to attracting the desired quantity and quality of candidates. This can stem from increased competition and evolving candidate preferences.

Diversity and inclusion: Quest aims to enhance workforce diversity. This requires a fresh recruitment approach and concerted efforts to connect with underrepresented groups.

The biggest challenge faced by Quest Global was attracting top talent, especially passive candidates. The traditional methods were clearly not enough to attract top notch talent. That is when the talent-acquisition (TA) function started drilling down on their employee referral channel.  While this programme had proven effective in the past, it came with its own limitations.

Limitations with previous referral process

Technology & user-friendliness: Lack of a central tool for promoting, tracking and gamifying the referral programme. The manual process was time consuming.

Transparency & engagement: Communication delays, tracking errors and limited visibility dampen employee enthusiasm. Identifying duplicate referrals was complex.

Reward system: The entire referral process was reactive. Employees tend to refer candidates only when a new opportunity arises or when someone in their network reaches out to them for a job opportunity. Moreover, determining the incentives (monetary or non-monetary) for employees remained a bigger challenge.

Referral quality: Quest Global used to receive applications in huge volumes. However, the lack of data and actionable insights made it difficult for the TA team to handle this process efficiently. Identifying suitable candidates took longer, extending hiring cycles and costs.

Visibility: Employees lacked clear details about available positions. Even in cases where they managed to find out about vacancies, they lacked visibility on the status of referrals. All of this was leading to uncertainty within the organisation and reduced interest in the referral process. Inadequate guidance and confusion regarding whom to contact or how to submit referrals also contributed to the problem.

Reach: Choosing between a targeted referral approach for specific roles or opening every position for referral presents a dilemma. Selective referrals attract top talent for crucial roles but can narrow the programme’s reach. Conversely, opening all positions to referrals can create a broad pool of potential candidates, yet it may also result in more lower-quality referrals and a less focused hiring process.

Referral database: The talent acquisition or TA team was exploring ways to utilise their current employee-referral database for staffing various roles.

Referral definition: What qualifies as a valuable referral? How to ensure employees understand the programme clearly?

Quest Global recognised that solving this complex challenge, involving multiple stakeholders, required adopting smart and adaptable talent-acquisition technology.

Transforming talent acquisition by leveraging technology

To address these challenges, Quest Global planned to create a centralised and structured referral programme. The goal was  to tap into its vast employees’ network and attract high-quality candidates efficiently, leading to better retention rates and increased employee engagement. The company believed that involving employees in the recruitment process would foster a culture of collaboration and teamwork, driving the organisation’s overall success.

Quest Global partnered with RippleHire, a market leader in talent-acquisition technology to drive innovative campaigns and reward employees who referred potential candidates, thereby also boosting the referral culture within the organisation. By using RippleHire’s user-friendly interface, employees could participate in fun contests, easily share job openings through social media platforms such as WhatsApp, and refer candidates effortlessly. The referral engine provided the TA team with the ability to run special campaigns and reward employees for referring talent to niche job openings.

Building a dynamic employee-referral programme

The TA team initiated a comprehensive approach to build a dynamic employee-referral programme. They launched an employee survey to gather feedback. Employees voiced their displeasure over the complicated referral process on the ATS, the struggle to identify right roles and lack of regular updates on referred applications.

Here are a few steps they followed to ensure the programme was as effective as planned:

1. Launching the programme on the RippleHire platform, Quest Global introduced an intuitive dashboard with essential elements such as referral status updates, contests and gamification features to ensure a smooth user experience.

2. The TA team fostered active participation through engaging emails, and innovative referral contests. The team also promoted top referrers both on social media and internal channels.

3. Attractive incentives, including cash bonuses and paid weekend getaways motivated employees to participate.

4. The programme’s integration into employee induction and the appointment of a dedicated programme manager further enhanced engagement.

5. Targeted efforts in specific locations and the use of a business-intelligence dashboard allowed data-driven decision-making and optimisation.

6. Lastly, seamless integration with the larger talent-management strategy and Single-Sign-On (SSO) functionality improved the employee experience. Additionally, critical process improvements and leadership involvement, along with recognition for top recruiters, strengthened the programme’s impact and encouraged ongoing participation.

Goals achieved

Evolution into a reliable ally for the world’s toughest engineering problems

Quest Global’s employee-referral programme has surpassed all expectations. It has established itself as a resounding success by contributing to an impressive 23 per cent of the hiring, exceeding the initial goals set by the company. By leveraging the company’s strong culture and employer brand, coupled with its positive turn on investment (RoI), the employee-referral programme continues to play a pivotal role in shaping Quest Global’s talent acquisition and retention strategies.

The programme’s remarkable achievements align seamlessly with the organisation’s core objectives of building a high-quality talent pool, which helps them solve the world’s toughest engineering problems. Looking ahead, the programme has set its sights on an even more ambitious target of achieving 40 per cent of all hiring. To accomplish this feat, Quest Global is prepared to expand its reach to new talent pools in different regions, while remaining acutely mindful of cultural nuances.

The author, Sudarsan Ravi is the Founder and CEO of RippleHire and is known as a pioneer and category creator in recruitment technology.

The post Quest Global: Establishing trust as a go-to partner for the world’s most challenging engineering problems through talent-acquisition excellence appeared first on HR Katha.

Without skilled farmers, crops would fail to grow and harvest. Similarly, without TA professionals, organisations would struggle to build a skilled and motivated workforce, leading to a significant loss of productivity and revenue.

Unearthing hidden gems: The invaluable contribution of TAs  

Talent-acquisition professionals are always tirelessly working behind the scenes to source, screen and recruit the best talent for the company. Their job doesn’t end there. They also create a positive candidate experience, build relationships with hiring managers, and ensure the smooth functioning of the recruitment process.

Without TA professionals, companies would struggle to identify the right talent, leading to a significant loss of productivity and revenue. The role of TA professionals is critical to the success of the organisation, as they play a crucial part in shaping the company’s future. They also play a critical role in enhancing diversity and inclusion in the workplace, mitigating risks associated with hiring the wrong candidate, improving employee retention and developing future leaders.

They are often at the forefront of driving organisational change, advocating for diversity, inclusion and belonging, and working to create a more equitable and inclusive workplace.

Without TA professionals, organisations may need to rely on external recruitment agencies, which can be expensive. Additionally, the recruitment process may take longer, resulting in increased recruitment costs.

Dear TAs, you need to recognise the incredible value that you bring to an organisation. You are the backbone of any successful company. 

Talent acquisition treated as cost centre

How do talent-acquisition professionals fare during times of recession or unprecedented events like the pandemic?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations were forced to focus on cutting costs, which unfortunately resulted in layoffs, including talent-acquisition professionals. However, when the market bounced back, and organisations needed to fill positions urgently, they realised the critical importance of TA professionals in identifying, attracting and retaining top talent. The ‘Great Resignation’ also highlighted the importance of TAs as organisations had many vacant positions to fill but no skilled professionals to do so.

Organisations that let go of their TAs during the pandemic realised the mistake they had made, and as the job market became more competitive, they understood the value of having skilled recruiters on their team. Talent-acquisition professionals got a seat at the table, and their role was recognised as critical to the organisation’s success. The pandemic and the ‘Great Resignation’ have shown that organisations need to have a strong recruitment strategy and skilled TAs to navigate challenging times and remain competitive in the market.

Despite the critical role that TAs play in identifying and attracting top talent, organisations may view them as a cost centre and choose to let them go to reduce expenses.

TAs need a permanent seat at the table

The mere thought of losing one’s job can send chills down anyone’s spine. It’s a distressing experience that can take a toll on a person’s emotional and mental well-being. For talent- acquisition professionals, the possibility of being laid off during a recession is a particularly daunting prospect. They know that their role is critical to the organisation’s success, and the fear of losing their job can create significant anxiety and stress.

Amidst the fear and uncertainty of a recession, TAs must take specific steps to showcase their value to the organisation. They must find ways to prove that they are more than just a cost centre but a critical asset that is essential to the organisation’s survival. It’s not just about securing their job but also about ensuring that they continue to play a crucial role in the organisation’s success.

What steps can TAs take during a recession to demonstrate their value to an organisation and ensure that they are not laid off?

3 essential steps TAs can take to boost their value during (and after) a recession

Create a newsletter 

During a recession, communication is critical to ensure that the entire organisation is aligned with the company’s goals and objectives. Talent-acquisition professionals can play a crucial role in maintaining open lines of communication by creating a newsletter for employees. This newsletter for employees can serve several purposes and can have a significant impact on the organisation’s success during challenging times.

Benefits of creating a newsletter during a recession

• Keeps leadership team in the loop: The newsletter can help keep the leadership team in the loop on the recruitment process, any hiring freezes, or other recruitment-related updates. This information can help leaders plan and make informed decisions, avoid escalations and ensure that the organisation is well prepared to navigate the challenges of a recession.
• Promotes the referral programme: Referrals can be an effective way to attract high-quality talent, and during a recession, referrals can be a cost-effective way to fill open positions. By promoting the referral programme in the newsletter, TAs can encourage employees to refer their friends and acquaintances, which can help fill open positions quickly and efficiently.
• Keeping employees informed and engaged: The newsletter can also serve as an excellent way to keep employees informed about the latest company news, such as any changes to the organisational structure or any updates on the company’s plans and objectives. This can help employees stay engaged, motivated and aligned with the company’s goals, which can ultimately lead to increased productivity and success during challenging times.

By taking such proactive during challenging times, TAs can demonstrate their value to the organisation and ensure that they continue to play a crucial role in the organisation’s success. 

Create skill-based employee communities

During a recession, when the job market is highly competitive, it’s essential to find innovative ways to attract and retain top talent. One effective way that talent-acquisition professionals can do this is by creating communities of employees based on their skills. By doing so, TAs can foster a sense of camaraderie among employees who share similar skills and interests.

Creating communities of employees based on skills can also help TAs to segment their audience and send targeted referrals later on. For instance, if there is a job opening for a role that requires a specific skill set, TAs can refer to the communities of employees who possess those skills. This approach can help TAs to identify and target the right candidates, which can save time, effort and resources in the recruitment process.

Another benefit of creating communities of employees based on skills is that it can help to develop employee advocacy. When employees feel like they are part of a community, they are more likely to share job openings and refer their friends and colleagues. This can help to increase the organisation’s reach and attract high-quality talent through referrals, which can be particularly valuable during a recession when the organisation may have limited resources to allocate towards recruitment.

Creative rewards for referral

Recently, we asked around 500+ experienced TA leaders/managers to share insights on their referral programme. And the results are in! From the most effective referral programmes to the biggest challenges, this report is a valuable resource for the entire TA community to benchmark, improve and learn from the best practices in employee referrals. 

During a recession, talent-acquisition professionals may face unique opportunities to explore new and creative ways to incentivise employee referrals. With a more competitive job market, employees may be more willing to refer top talent to their organisation in exchange for non-monetary rewards.

By taking advantage of this opportunity, TAs can experiment with creative rewards for referrals that go beyond traditional monetary incentives. This can include offering unique experiences or professional-development opportunities, such as mentorship or skills training, as well as opportunities to participate in CSR initiatives or community events. By testing these types of rewards during a recession, TAs can gain valuable insights into what motivates employees to refer top talent and what types of rewards are most effective.

One way to give incentives that align with CSR is to allow employees to choose a charity or non-profit organisation that is aligned with the organisation’s values and goals. This approach not only incentivises referrals but also encourages employees to support causes that are important to them.

To implement this approach, TAs can offer a list of pre-approved charities or nonprofits that align with the organisation’s CSR initiatives. Employees who make successful referrals can then choose one of these organisations to receive a donation or grant from the organisation.

How can TAs execute their plan to stay valuable during a recession?

Talent-acquisition professionals can execute their plan to stay valuable during a recession by taking proactive steps to build and strengthen their referral system before the recession hits. One such tool that TAs can use is RippleHire, a referral-management platform that automates the referral process and helps to improve employee engagement.

While it’s true that during a recession, there may be fewer hiring needs, it’s still important for TAs to put systems and processes in place in preparation for when the economy rebounds. This can include identifying new talent sources, optimising the recruitment process to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and building relationships with top talent. By taking a proactive approach, TAs can stay ahead of the curve and ensure that they are ready to quickly fill open positions when they arise.

The author, Sudarsan Ravi is the Founder and CEO of RippleHire and is known as a pioneer and category creator in recruitment technology.

The post Navigating a recession: How talent-acquisition professionals can demonstrate their value to the company appeared first on HR Katha.

Something similar happens in recruitment when one goes out to find hundreds of candidates for one’s company, unaware about the number of positions one can close within a certain period of time. 

Not knowing the outcome can be very stressful, and the uncertainty causes anxiety. When putting a job description out there, one may feel more relaxed if one thinks it’s a long shot or if one is confident that it’s in the bag. 

The world of recruitment has become exceptionally uncertain, complex and ambiguous. When recruiters post for an open role, there’s no guarantee that a particular persona can be hired within a certain timeline. While there’s a rough idea based on an existing pool of candidates and the amount of money invested on job boards, there’s no certainty. 

On top of that, candidates interview with multiple companies at a time. Some even reject offers because of the recruiting experiences (long delays in response, poor interview quality, and so on!) 

This only adds to the uncertainty. Hiring managers are not sure if there will be enough people to work on the project in the coming month when their team members’ notice period ends and they leave. 

The levels of uncertainty vary with the changing market trends, as the recruitment demands change. 

The four main market scenarios that a company will experience are as follows: 

When growth is high, and attrition is also high, companies hire more people. Unpredictability increases.

When growth is high, but attrition is low, the recruitment process faces an uptick.

When growth is low, but attrition is high, the unpredictability factor depends on notice period duration. Longer durations make hiring more manageable.

When both growth and attrition are low, the hiring is less. There’s almost no unpredictability.

At each stage, one thing remains constant — people are required to keep the company running. At any stage, the goal of the recruitment team is to hire quality candidates faster and at a salary that’s in line with the company’s policy. Even during high-growth period, no company allows the hiring of low-quality candidates. Likewise, even during high attrition, no company goes beyond its budget to hire candidates. 

The price for quality talent keeps on changing as markets change. In a high-growth period, companies have to spend more compared to when there’s a downturn. Yet, companies strive to find the right candidate at the right price. 

The problem statement remains the same — how to hire quality candidates faster and at an affordable salary? 

Over the years, this question has been tackled in a number of ways — internal promotions, hiring through referrals, and such. Special attention has been specially given to trends in the technology industry. 

First, there was a run towards data. Everyone was advised to collect all kinds of data, analyse it minutely, quantify everything and then work solely based on the analysis. However, in recruitment, we deal with humans and not machines. Data only helped us go as far as checking if our direction was right or not. For instance, whether one is posting the job on the right channels or not. 

Then came the buzz about gamification. This entertained people for a while before they realised that while it could ensure engagement, it couldn’t necessarily translate into hiring. The rise of AI promised to solve all hiring problems. However, we know there’s a long way to go before AI can be solely responsible for hiring humans.

To hire people that join and stay, it is essential to build systems that give predictable results instead of fads or trends that go and come. Fads don’t do much to hire the right people. They simply create the illusion of progress. 

At RippleHhire, we call these systems — Recruitment Flywheels. 

What is a Recruitment Flywheel? 

Similar to the momentum created by a flywheel on a rowing machine, the flywheel effect occurs when minor wins for the business accumulate over time and eventually gain enough momentum so that growth almost appears to occur by itself.

So, a recruitment flywheel is a self-sustaining model that generates a steady stream of candidates that join and stay for the brand. 

For instance, if there are good people joining the company, they are going to perform better in all aspects. This will build a great company culture and attract good candidates. 

The wheel demands a lot of work to turn initially, yet the effort does not provide the desired outcomes. However, once the flywheel starts turning, the output significantly outweighs the exerted effort. 

A flywheel has many branches that allow several individuals to hold on and crank the wheel at the same time to produce speed. These branches are different steps in the recruitment process. 

The following diagram shows a simple recruitment process: 

Each step has its own inputs, and the output is to move the candidate forward in the recruitment process. The final output is to fill in the open role. Each stage in this process should follow a set of procedures and have a set of rules and tools to give predictable output. 

For instance, let’s take the first step. The input is the job listing, and the output is a bunch of resumes or e-mails from candidates who are interested (and potentially right for the job!). 

Here, even the use of AI, gamification, or any upcoming technology will not work if the job description is bad, or if there is no process to sort the data collected from applications, or no easy way to share the job description with others via social media, or email. 

The tactics may change, but the foundation systems remain the same. For instance, it is a known fact that employee referrals work wonders in filling up open roles. They bring quality candidates that know a bit about the company culture, and hence they stay for a long time period. 

Here’s how BYJU’s leveraged the referral system and created a dedicated account on LinkedIn to promote it:

New trends or fads are usually expensive. They require investment without any guarantee of the desired outcomes. Systems, on the other hand, are built step by step. One can dial down the inputs to one’s system or increase them based on the desired output. That’s why we advocate building recruitment flywheels that work and give predictable results. 

Utilise economic downturns to build flywheels 

Economic downturns are not great scenarios for either companies or candidates, but there’s a way to make this time productive and fruitful. Recruiting teams can use this time to build flywheels. 

This is the time when one can analyse the kind of growth that is estimated when the economic conditions get better. And based on that, they can estimate the number of people needed to hire. Once that is done, the recruitment process can be made predictable with flywheels. 

RippleHire: 10 years of building recruitment flywheels for progressive enterprises

At RippleHire, we have been the recruitment technology partner for numerous companies such as Axis, LTI, Hexaware and BYJU’s. We’ve helped them build a recruitment flywheel right from the application stage to the recruitment stage. The 10 years of research, speaking to both candidates and recruiters, and innovation have been used to build flywheels that help companies hire faster, better-quality candidates at a cost that’s in line with the company’s policies. 

As the business grows, it will become apparent that standardised and formal recruiting processes are much better than the ‘spray and pray’ methodology. The stakes would be high, and the business will not be able to afford not to hire people at the right time, at the right price, and before competitors snatch them. 

To build recruiting teams that can confidently take the responsibility of filling up critical roles in your company at scale, check out RippleHire here. 

The author, Sudarsan Ravi is the Founder and CEO of RippleHire and is known as a pioneer and category creator in recruitment technology.

The post Why trust systems over fads for predictable results in recruiting the right candidates? appeared first on HR Katha.

In an exclusive interaction with Zubin Zack, Managing Director, South Asia, Middle East and Africa, O.C. Tanner, we discovered some promising ways to build a culture where employees can thrive.

Making recognition a part of our everyday life

Can you share your thoughts on this statement & how you preach this within your organisation?

Recognition is the most underleveraged leadership tool. It is not only cost-effective but also can bring about the most significant organisational changes. When a recognition moment happens, the receiver, giver and audience feel the impact. They all feel valued and a part of the workplace community. Therefore, in my opinion, it is common sense to incorporate recognition as a part of everyday life. On the contrary generic recognition, or when it is impersonal, can have the opposite impact.

We have seen organisations across the globe, for years, put more effort and resources into improving recognition, but regrettably the numbers are far lower than expected.

Also, according to 2023 Global Culture Report, “Only 21% of workplaces worldwide have highly integrated recognition”. This brings me to integrating recognition into the organisation’s DNA. The new age task is integrating recognition in a frequent and consistent way.

To have highly integrated recognition incorporated in one’s company culture involves more than just plugging recognition tools into existing technology. Incorporating tools is just the first step in weaving this intricate fabric. What is truly essential is ensuring recognition is incorporated as a part of each employee’s everyday experience. From our past experiences, we know that tailored recognition moments, spread throughout the year, have a more significant, more lasting impact on workplace culture than singular company-wide, all-employee events, no matter how much organisations spend.

How can we improve these numbers?

The answer isn’t as simple as improving recognition programs or tools. Our O.C. Tanner Institute, through years of research, has developed eight specific measurements to determine the level of integrated recognition. This can help one align and prioritise activities which are most impactful.

But the journey doesn’t end at that, and there are underlying discoveries which will make it challenging for any organisation to achieve a high level of integrated recognition culture, especially memories of recognition experiences from prior workplaces as they have a profound and enduring influence.

Do you believe that past recognition experience amplifies the current ones?

Of course! Any experience becomes the foundation on which the next experience or the perception of the new experience gets built. You begin by setting the example one at a time. One person watches the experience and builds on it, and then the second duplicates the recognition moment, starting a wave which is hard to stop. Eventually, it becomes a way of living and gets incorporated into life. The ripple effect is higher when leaders do it and do it right. Hence I can safely call recognition a ‘people see, people do’ scenario.

Please share your thoughts on power & impact of symbols

By representing stories of achievement in tangible form, symbols help enhance recognition experiences. The best example is what medals do when you win something. It is not the monetary value of the medal but the meaning and what it stands for. There is a message behind that medal. Same with any symbol. It tells you a story, in addition to telling you about the effort and learnings. It takes you back to memories of the process in which you earned the symbol. All symbols tell stories and the more unique, the better.

So yes, symbols are impactful. Symbolism has the power to build connections. When a career recognition experience includes a symbolic award, it increases the employee’s connection with their team, leader, and organisation. Our research says that employees are three times more likely to remember a recognition experience when it includes a symbolic award. Conversely, when a career recognition experience omits a symbolic award, the probability of connection to each decreases.

Read O.C. Tanner’s Global Culture Report 2023 to get more insights on the eight key measurements for achieving a high level of integrated recognition and a quick guide for creating an appreciation culture where employees can thrives.

The post How to build a thriving workplace culture by integrating recognition and leveraging the power of symbols appeared first on HR Katha.

Organisations are hiring vigorously these days as they’ve realised that they need good talent to scale business, reduce the time taken to complete projects and grow the company. However, at the same time, they are not able to convince candidates to accept the offer or retain them for long.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the recruiting landscape. Companies have figured out how to create systems and workflows such that people can work from home and companies can recruit from anywhere.

You would think that with a wide geography to recruit from and a lot of talent in marketing, finding people to fill positions would be easy. Alas! That’s not the case.

Before the pandemic, the joining ratio was 70-80 per cent (as reported in the RippleHire circle). Post-pandemic, these ratios have plummeted to 15-55 per cent. If you have strong employer branding, you may enjoy 40-55 per cent joining, but if your employer branding is weak then you can expect lower than 40 per cent joining ratio.

When companies get the joining right, the attrition rate starts creating problems. A study by Gartner found that an organisation could face a turnover rate as high as 24 per cent in 2022 and the years to come. That means, a company with 25,000 employees would need to prepare for 10,000 departures, plus filling up new positions.

Having experienced working from home during the pandemic, people are now reluctant to return to office. They have tasted flexibility and autonomy. Many of those who were otherwise okay with working from office are now looking to change their expertise and switch to fields that don’t require them to come to the office every day.

Who is to be blamed?

In most organisations, getting the candidates to join and retaining those candidates are the responsibilities of two different departments ?mainly recruitment and talent management.
These teams look at their metric, and analyse data in silos. Recruitment and retention are two different problems, but they have the same goal — to get talent to stay on with the company for a long time.

Both teams end up blaming each other for not being able to build a strong talent pool that can compete with any competitor in their market.

Let’s explore some of the strategies that recruiters can adopt to hire talent that joins as well as stays with the company for long.

Analyse your sourcing channels

When you hire a 100 people, or 500, or even a 1000 per week, you cannot rely on just one channel or even the company’s brand name to attract resumes from candidates. Therefore, if you have multiple sources of obtaining suitable candidates, you are on the right track.

Are you aware of how your recruiting channels are performing in terms of getting candidates that accept the offer and stay in your company? Do you know which recruiting channels are most effective in hiring for critical roles?

Simply analysing the number of candidates from each channel can be deceptive in showing which sources are most effective in delivering high-quality hires to the business. You need to look deeper and check which sources can get you the candidates that join AND stay for long.

If candidates from a particular source fail to join, or underperform, or tend to leave within the first few months, you may be over-relying on a source that looks good only by the volume of candidates. A channel that gets you 10 candidates of which five join is better than a source that gets you 100 candidates of which only 10 join the company.

Analyse each source with respect to joining ratio and retention rate. Do not go just by the volume of candidates.

Build referral programmes

If you analyse the sources of candidate applications that join the company and stay on, you will realise that candidates who come through referrals have the highest joining rate and lowest attrition rates.

That’s a great thing! However, the pitfall happens when companies try to get referrals without any strategy in place. Simply shooting an e-mail to employees asking them to refer or requesting them to introduce their talented friends to recruiters while you chit-chat in the hallway is not enough. What’s worse is a well-prepared referral plan that’s not supported by technology but by paper, spreadsheets and memory of the recruiter.

These things may work when a company is hiring one or two people, but not when 100-500 people are hired per month or when 1000+ people are referring their friends.

Employees get motivated to refer when they are offered incentives to do so; are assured that their contribution will be valued; and when it’s easy to know the status of a referral. Our customers typically see a 10 to12 percent increase in the offer to joining ratio through employee referrals, as compared to other sources of hiring.

Checkout this post to find out how you can avoid the possible problems you may face while getting referrals from existing employees.

We hope this post will help you create a fresh strategy or tweak your existing strategies to hire people that accept your offer letter, join, stay in the company for long and add value to your business.

Gather qualitative data

To gather insights that data can’t reveal, ask the candidates questions about their decision to switch from their current role to your company.

Find out what motivated them to join, what they are looking forward to in their new role, whether there are any deal-breakers, and how excited they are to take up the new job, and so on.

Answers to these questions will help you craft an overall experience and message that will resonate with your candidates. Let’s say they are excited to work with you because of the bonus policies you have, then you should highlight those in your job postings.

Create the right offer experience

Make sure the candidates fully understand what to expect when working for your company. Most employee expectations fall into one of these categories:

• Responsibilities: Mentions the specific tasks as a part of their position. If the role requires aggressive work — whether it’s on the floor of a retail store or in the office of a bank — you should be very clear about it right from the start.

• Working hours: Let the candidates know if they are expected to work fixed hours, fixed timings every day or whether it would be more dynamic based on the day-to-day needs of the company.

• Leadership: Inform the candidates about what to expect in terms of mentorship, supervision, team, and so on.

Show career-development journey

Ensure that the candidates feel that their value is being recognised. They should realise they will be joining a company that is as invested in their development as they are expected to be in the company’s.

It would be naive to think that employees are solely responsible for their own career development. Companies are expected to offer career pathways, training opportunities, and more because ultimately an employee is going to add value to the business only.

Highlight your commitment to career growth in the very first touch point with any candidate ? your job posting. Don’t bury course reimbursement, coaching or training in your benefits. Put all the career-development paths you provide in the main section of your listing.

When you show that you’re ready to make an investment in a long-term hire, the right candidate who’s looking for a long-term position will recognise that and apply.
Build &showcase a successful internal mobility programme

Attracting talent and getting them to join is a difficult task. Once you have someone on board, the last thing you want is for them to leave.

That’s where an internal-mobility programme can come into the picture to help you.

Internal mobility refers to staff members moving within the same organisation (both vertically and laterally) to take advantage of new career and development chances. This includes job exchanges, work shadowing, mentorships, cross-team or additional projects, promotions, demotions and new positions.

By fostering their ability to take on new responsibilities and keeping them motivated and productive, a strong internal-mobility programme may help you keep your staff.

Here are some quick tips to help you create a successful internal-mobility programme:

• Focus on people at all levels, not just the middle management or the senior folks
• Communicate transparently
• Give feedback on performance
• Recommend training or shadow opportunities

Internal hiring makes your organisation agile and more adaptable. You’ll be able to quickly respond to hiring challenges, leverage skills and save cost on recruitment. Checkout our handbook on internal mobility to know more about the topic.

Detect &prevent recruitment fraud

A lot of time, effort and money is lost when an organisation faces recruitment fraud. At five per cent frauds per 500 –1000 positions in a month, a company is at risk of admitting 25 –50 fraudulent hires.

That leads to talent that wastes your time and could not be retained at all. This talent adds no value and steals the chance of hiring an actually qualified person. However, you cannot rely on human judgment to make the basic checks before hiring people when you have to scan hundreds of resumes every day.

Find out in detail how innovative technology can solve damaging recruitment frauds.

The author, Sudarsan Ravi is the Founder and CEO of RippleHire and is known as a pioneer and category creator in recruitment technology.

The post How recruiters can hire talent that joins & stays appeared first on HR Katha.

Let’s say, 100 people joined your company in the past 90 days but 20 of them quit in the same 90-day period. Here’s how you will calculate the early attrition rate —
Early Attrition Rate = (No. of employees that left / Total of employees) x 100
Early Annual Attrition Rate = (20/100) x 100 = 20%

The different kinds of attrition are as follows:

The most common type is voluntary attrition, followed by involuntary and internal attrition. Demographic-specific attrition is the least common type.

Employee retention rate is a big challenge that HR departments face, in volume-hiring companies.

A high attrition rate indicates that employees are leaving the company too quickly. This rate will vary based on the size of the company and the industry. In banking, BPOs, insurance, financial institutions, retail, and so on, the early attrition is usually high. However, that doesn’t mean it is accepted as a norm.

Reduction of attrition leads to:

• timely delivery of projects, resulting in company growth
• boost in employee productivity, as less time is spent training new hires
• attraction of new and talented employees because a low attrition rate will build a positive reputation in the industry
• increase in employee satisfaction as a result of correct expectations, proper goal setting, etc.

In this post, we’ll discuss ways to reduce the attrition that doesn’t involve throwing more money at the problem.

Top 5 ways to ensure low or no attrition (without raising compensation!)

1. Relying on referrals

Here are three interesting stats about referrals that relate to retention:

• 45 per cent of referral hires stay longer than four years, compared to only 25per cent of job-board hires.
• Employees who refer others also stay 20 per cent longer than employees who don’t refer.
• 88 per cent of employers rate employee referral programmes as the best source of applicants they want to retain for the long term.

If you are hiring via only job boards, agencies, or campus drives you are losing out on the benefits of referrals. Referred candidates usually fit your culture very well as they know about the company through their friends beforehand. Hence, they are already excited to work with their friends and usually don’t want to disappoint them by leaving the company quickly.

On the other hand, people who refer others, stay for as long as they believe in the company’s mission, values and work. That is what prompts them to refer others. To stay consistent with their ideology, they tend to stay with the company longer than the people who don’t refer others.

Setting up a referral programme is not complicated if you use the right technology and create excitement amongst employees about it. RippleHire’s gamified employee-referral system can help you leverage your workforce as ambassadors to bring in quality talent.

2. Setting the right expectations

Misalignment of the candidate’s expectations with what the work actually entails and looks like leads to distrust and high attrition.

When your company is trying to hire hundreds of people per week, the process is rushed. This leaves no room for setting the right expectations. The information generally flows one way — from the candidate to the employers. Employers are so busy collecting the information that they forget to talk about the company, job type, working culture, and so on. Regional HR (RHR) systems of handling recruitment also create dissonance between expectations and the actual job.

To manage candidate expectations better, hiring managers should reserve some time in the interview to give a clear, honest picture of what the job requires. It’s beneficial to highlight the not-so-great aspects of the job that have demotivated others in the past. Write the goals associated with the role and what it would take to achieve those. Hire only the candidates who align with achieving those goals, without shying away from hard work.

If the candidates pass through the hiring manager interview stage, you can educate them once more at the offer letter stage. It would be a great opportunity to talk about the company’s culture, demographics, locations, remuneration, leave policy, and so on, so that other expectations beyond the actual work are also aligned.

3. Creating assessment kits for hiring managers

In most cases, it’s the nature of the job that compels people to churn rather than the pay scale, location or perks. Most people will not enjoy doing the work they don’t like again and again. If they do, then at some point they will feel like they should get out of it and figure out something else (which may appear more enjoyable or easier to them!).

Letting the candidate know the nature of work, style of communication, time shifts, engagement with customers, and so on, is the responsibility of the hiring managers. They are the best people to judge whether the person is suited for the role in the long term or not. Simply filling the position once, only to see it being rendered vacant in a few weeks is a waste of time and resources.

To ensure that hiring managers match the candidate with all aspects of the job, create an assessment kit for them. You can include questions such as ‘Did you ask the candidate how long they plan to stay with the company?’, ‘Is the candidate okay working night shifts?’, ‘Is it okay for the candidate to travel to at least 3-4 locations every day to collec information?’ and so on. These can be based on the industry and type of role.

4. Verifying background before interview

Doing background verification is a huge task requiring employment verification, reference check, educational check, confirmations, going through records, and so on. Additionally, it’s not very economical to hire third-party agencies for background verification when you are hiring at scale. A huge number of fake candidates in your system also creates the risk of losing out on talented candidates who get lost in the sea of resumes.

You may think it makes no sense to do background verification on hundreds and thousands of applications received every day. And that’s where most companies leave a crack in the system for people who are highly likely to leave in a few weeks.

But what if people & technology can work together to filter fraudulent candidates quickly? Using AI-based fraud-detection systems, such as the one provided by RippleHire, you can flag duplicate or suspicious applications. The system parses through millions of records to spot fabricated details and bring them in front of you to take action (reject, delete, or block). This saves time, resources, and effort for everyone in the recruiting team and also the hiring managers.

RippleHire is the ideal solution for a busy CEO, HR leader, or People Team that wants to scale their distributed workforce hiring without facing the burn of early attrition.

5. Embracing technology

To solve early attrition, it is important to have a tech ecosystem that connects all the stakeholders in the process of hiring and retaining an employee. This will give a clear picture to everyone of why employees leave, what type of employees stay the longest and at which points changes can be made to check attrition.

Usually, the talent-acquisition folks are blamed most of the time, which is wrong and unfair. They are involved in the process of hiring from start to end but don’t have control over all the steps such as expectation setting, offers, and so on. Attrition is a problem that can’t be solved by one department alone. It needs collaboration for deeper and complete understanding.

At scale, collaborations are messy, confusing, and almost impossible to execute efficiently. That’s where technology can help. Systems such as RippleHire, are designed for markets such as India where hiring, attrition, referrals, everything needs to be done at scale and efficiently. Request a demo to see how RippleHire can help you lower attrition without having to increase any compensation package or offering unnecessary perks to candidates.

Sudarsan Ravi is the Founder and CEO of RippleHire and is known as a pioneer and category creator in recruitment technology.

The post Early Attrition Affecting Company’s Performance? Avoid It With the Right Hiring Practices appeared first on HR Katha.

Today, CHROs and directors of HR in top organisations — such as Microsoft, BCG, Deloitte, PwC and McKinsey — have clocked this necessity and are investing heavily in corporate alumni programmes, to enhance employer branding. In fact, they are using the alumni as a post-exit helpdesk for all employees leaving the company. However, building a platform with so many moving parts is not easy, and hence, companies lacking the facilities for such an endeavour often turn to third-party vendors to do this trick for them. Not only does this resolve issues in the system, but also adds in benefits for the organisation — reduced cost & training efforts, alumni survey, inclusion, diversity initiatives and so on.

Creating valuable environment for alumni

How important is alumni engagement? This question can have different answers, depending on whom you ask. Some may say it is absolutely essential for employer branding, while others may argue that it is rather a necessity for good return on investment (ROI). However, it’s evident that engaged alumni show up and stand up for the organisation, not only because they were paid once upon a time, but because they’re invested emotionally or otherwise.

Mastering the art of alumni engagement is no easy feat, especially when every workplace is different. Alumni engagement is a bit of a complex idea that describes the emotional connection they have with their ex-organisation. However, there are some sure-fire ways to keep our alumni involved and engaged.

It is important for the companies to communicate and become more emotionally intelligent to stimulate alumni engagement. In this era, where lifetime employment is no longer the norm, the companies must and should focus on maintaining a relationship of mutual trust, investment and benefit with their former employees. After all, they are the treasure trove of future business partners and top-notch rehires, potential clients and many more. Establishing a well-structured corporate alumni programme is paramount in maintaining a great relationship with ex-employees.

We, at Vaave, analysed the best practices one should acquire in order to build a highly efficient alumni programme. There are nine key drivers a workplace should maintain in order to drive a successful corporate alumni programme. You can find a detailed article on the same here

The boomerang programme

There could be multiple reasons for alumni to be motivated to join back the organisation — they may be looking for opportunities that were absent during their tenure, they may wish to be part of the same company culture and avail those same benefits, and so much more. One example could be the corporate alumni programme that fosters gender diversity for women, who take career breaks due to multiple reasons. Many women tend to take career breaks due to personal reasons including relocation, wedding plans and childbirth, and to take care of children or the elderly. Many a time, these short breaks turn into un-intended career-ending gaps.

Research has proven that the feeling of guilt that possesses women on a career break, never really does go away. While they are happy with their children, they are sceptical and anxious about resuming their career. Many others put their wedding / childbirth plans on hold, as they worry that it may impact their career. Yes, the struggle is real for women, but we can help them ride the wave. The benefit of rehiring employees is that they are likely to be more engaged and committed to the organisation upon their return. Boomerang employees exhibit a more positive attitude after they are rehired.

Boomerang employees are simply those who leave the company they work for, only to later return to work for the same company once again. To better understand ‘boomerange employees’ and whether it is a good idea to rehire them, let us take a closer look at this cohort.

These days, HR professionals and managers are realising that loyalty doesn’t necessarily end when employees move on to other opportunities or areas of focus. There are many working years in a lifetime and people desire the flexibility to pursue other options without burning their past employment bridges. Plus, with the benefits that boomerang employees can bring to the business, it can become a win-win situation for everyone.

Why should workspaces consider boomerang employees?

– It takes less time and costs to onboard them.

– They are likely to fit better into the company culture.

– Rehires are already familiar with the role, duties and job expectations.

– They bring back new skills, experiences, connections, viewpoints, and customers with them.

– The already established employer-employee relationship adds to the company loyalty, and hence, increased retention.

At Vaave, we have been helping corporations build meaningful and everlasting relationships with their ex-employees. If the above post did raise any willingness or concerns in respect to building your corporate alumni programme, please feel free to reach out to us at hello@vaave.com or visit our website Vaave.

The author, Paresh Masade, Founder & CEO, Vaave, started with a belief to solve the challenges of employability & quality in the education sector and spent over a decade building Alumni Communities. A graduate of NITIE Mumbai, he currently helps both corporates and educational institutions drive meaningful alumni engagement.

The post Why it is important to build a strong corporate alumni network appeared first on HR Katha.

Programme objectives: These programmes aim to groom and develop HR leadership capabilities and competencies by integrating HR and business issues emerging from a dynamic and disruptive environment. They help participants apply behavioural tenets to harness human values in organisations. They also encourage an analytical orientation to create sustainable and innovative value-creation frameworks.

Programme takeaway: Participants will be empowered to draw upon psychometric instruments and applied psychological tools in shaping human relations within organisations. They will be introduced to techniques using which they can deploy an analytic orientation in understanding human behaviour in organisations and shaping evidence-based interventions. Participants will be sensitised to a deeper understanding of human behaviour in organisations based on philosophy and social theory. Eventually, they will develop capabilities to shape human relations inside organisations for creating value.

Program Details – https://bit.ly/3aH8p76

Programme highlights

1. Developed by the OB and HRM area at IIM-I; evolved through industry programmes offered over the past two decades

2. IIM Indore Executive Education Alumni status on successful completion

3. Insightful case and discussion-led hands-on learning

4. Introduces participants to behavioural lab, psychometric instruments and assessment centres

5. 3 days (12 sessions) of intensive sessions at IIM Indore campus atop a scenic hillock, for contemplative learning

6. Networking with industry peers

Eligibility: HR professionals with at least eight years of work experience.

Pedagogy: Lecture series, case and discussion methods, learn by doing assignments and projects. Programme will introduce participants to behavioural labs, psychometric Instruments and assessment centres.

Convenient session timing: Saturday 2:00 pm to 4:45 pm, through live two- way interactive lectures delivered by IIM Indore faculty over a high-definition video conference direct-to-desktop platform.

Duration and Campus: The 11-month programme includes three days of intensive learning at the IIM Indore campus situated atop a scenic hillock, ideal for contemplative learning.

Interested candidates can register for the new IIM INDORE programme here 

Certification and alumni: Evaluation and examination conducted by IIM Indore. Executive Alumni status will be awarded at the Valedictory Function held at the Institute after successful completion of the programme.

Fees payable in 4 easy instalments: INR 2,50,000 (includes INR 12,000 campus fees) + 18% GST (payable through easy instalments)

Coverage straddles across new-age topics and content?

1. Talent acquisition – Psychometric instruments and assessment centre

2. Talent management and competency-based approaches

3. Organisation behaviour – Behavioural labs

4. Negotiation and conflict management

5. Organisation development and change management

6. New-age organisation design & structures

7. HRMS

8. HR / people analytics

9. Labour law & HR compliance – New-age policies

10. Employee counselling, coaching & mentoring for leadership development

11. Strategic HR management

12. Role of HR as a business growth enabler

About IIM Indore

IIM Indore is amongst the Top 5 IIMs in the country and is amongst the top one per cent MBA schools globally to be bestowed with the prestigious ‘Triple Crown’ by Global MBA Institute accreditation bodies – AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS.

For more information, speak to academic advisors on 7428290704

The author, Darayus Mehta, is the Founder Director of Unified Collaboration Services which offers executive education programmes from top IIMs as well as managed VC, webinars and virtual event services under the brand of VCNow. He and his team counsel senior working executives for senior and advanced management programmes, HR and leadership courses.

The post Develop new-age future-ready HR leadership skills and competencies appeared first on HR Katha.

India is the largest market for smartphones and other electronic devices in the world, with the total value increasing from $125 billion to $250 billion in just three years. Thus, in a country with more than 637 million Internet users who will increase to 829 million in 2021, it is not surprising that sale of electronics products is expected to grow about 7 to 9 per cent during Diwali in a typical year.

In addition to electronics goods, retail, e-commerce companies and logistics partners servicing the big e- commerce companies are another key segment that usually experience a peak in demand and have all geared up for the ongoing festival demand. Though this year, traditional retail has been experiencing some challenges on account of the coronavirus pandemic, overall, the year has been particularly good for the consumer electronics and home appliances companies, with many of them having reported over 30 per cent increase in year on year sales during the festival season.

“Clearly, 2020 has been a challenging year so far, because of the Covid-19 epidemic, but we have none the less had the usual peaks of demand during the current Diwali Festival season – comments Marcos Segador, India General Manager at Gi Group– We usually register an increase in hiring demand of about 8-10 per cent from our clients in the electronics and consumer durables sector from September onwards. These hiring peaks require high time and resources investing processes for companies. For this reason, many companies look for support from staffing agencies, such as Gi Group. Indeed, our role is to be the candidate “GPS” in the complicated labour market, from recruiting to onboarding and workforce management. Our mission is to find the right people for companies by understanding their needs, and to ensure those complementary aspects that clients are looking for. Flexibility is surely the first and most important one, being able to offer a service that is customisable, and developing trustworthy and long relationships with them. In few words, we aim to be the HR business partner that helps to reach companies’ goals.”

How does an organisation deal with such extraordinary sales peaks?

How can a company manage the consequent increase of the workforce in an organised and flexible way?

Sonal Arora, staffing executive director, Gi Group, highlights four competitive pre-requisites for being prepared and getting the most from Diwali and other typical consumption-peak periods:

1. Counting on a professional sales force. Being able to attract the most competent and effective sales promoters in the market is an excellent plus. They will interface with customers and ensure they have an excellent shopping experience.

2. Managing workforce effectively. During a demanding period, a company should manage its staff in an effective and organized way, saving time and resources without losing efficiency.

3. Forecasting and monitoring. Companies should implement an effective manpower control system both in planning (of necessary human resources) and operational phases, monitoring each phase carefully.

4. Being ready on time. Starting the recruiting processes on time allows an organization to attract the best talent and to complete staffing and onboarding processes in time before the festival begins.

While many companies this year are also choosing to bring back the employees they had furloughed or laid off in the wake of the pandemic; with economy bouncing back and anticipating a steady increase in demand, a lot of companies are hiring additional temporary staff to manage the peak in their staffing requirement. Like every year, this year too Gi Group has partnered with several clients to onboard additional manpower to handle the peak period demand. These include companies from retail, apparel, e-commerce and consumer durables sectors. The typical profiles which have seen a surge in demand are sales, logistics and warehouse workers, delivery agents and customer service agents. For many job seekers too this is a good opportunity to show case their capabilities to an industry leading organisation and get a foot in the door.

The post Gi Group helps manage talent supply during festival / seasonal hiring peaks appeared first on HR Katha.

In this situation, business leaders should do three things at once: 1) manage the so-called  ‘return to work’ properly, 2) understand and leverage the activity put into practice during the crisis, and 3) redefine their strategy and way forward, with all the fluid information available. 

Organisations have experienced and learned an amazing number of things in the past few months. In a way, the COVID situation was (and is) an unexpected catalyst for the ‘future of work’ in multiple ways… and organisations should learn from this and capitalise on all that they have experienced. Just preparing the ‘return to work’ properly and safely is not enough to succeed in the ‘new normal’. 

First things first

The ILO assessment mentioned earlier estimates that in the second quarter of 2020, around 10 percent of working hours is expected to be lost compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 (the last quarter prior to the pandemic). This is equivalent to 305 million full-time jobs. The effect of this crisis is transnational and transversal. Immediate and urgent action is needed to protect jobs while parallely maintaining health and safety at the highest levels. For this, it is crucial to maintain links between employers and employees, keep large and small employers afloat and provide ways for income support and other safety nets, directly to workers and households of the less favoured.  

In other words, we need to be sure about the present in order to think about the future. Therefore, proper management of ‘return to work’ should be the first priority.

Companies, and in particular, the HR service industry— specifically the staffing organisations — should play an important role in this urgency, together with the rest of the stakeholders who influence the job market. Among others, three areas will set the right foundation for a successful exit from this situation:

Re-employment: Active support to both at-risk and unemployed workers will be critical for businesses and governments. Staffing organisations can play a pivotal role in providing support in the short term to rapidly redeploy workers from low-demand roles to high-demand roles, across companies and industries.

Upskilling and reskilling: It is critical that employers understand the importance of retraining workers. Governments should also support upskilling and reskilling directly or via fiscal stimulus to best prepare workers for the post-pandemic economy. 

Dialogue and collaboration: employers, governments and workers should do everything under the umbrella of dialogue and collaboration. Only their joint efforts, both nationally and globally, will ensure recovery. Initiatives in this direction will be fundamental to the creation of the right momentum, while keeping everyone included, laying the foundations of a more resilient labour market ahead. 

Understand what happened

While organisations have been busy dealing with the unprecedented crisis that COVID19 has created, managers and teams have creatively found ways to maintain business fundamentals and revenue streams, while simultaneously dealing with the health priorities of the moment. We are doing things, which, in January, would have been considered ‘impossible’, and this is not only about sending entire organisations of hundreds or thousands people to WFH without a prepared plan, in just a matter of days.  Many organisations did this and at the same time speeded up projects with projected duration of years, finishing them in just months. They empowered team members to take decisions, flattened structures, engaged their teams and gathered feedback like never before!

It would take time to understand everything that happened, and most importantly, how these things happened the way they did. As said before, if you want to utilise this crisis and get catapulted into the array of possibilities available for the future, it is not enough to just prepare for a safe return to work. 

It is essential to understand all the changes and adaptations that happened in this very short time and possess the capability (at the same time) to chart a new path forward, including all these new learnings. Only by keeping this in mind will we be able to lay the foundations for the ‘future of work’ for our business.

This learning will of course be different for each organisation, but from the experience with our clients at the Gi Group, we find some common experiences that a majority of our clients confirmed:

1. Work-from-home to  flexible work

The definition of the word ‘office’ and ‘workday’ has changed a lot since the beginning of the year for the ones able to WFH. It has gone from the desk in the office to kitchen tables and couches; from nine-to-five to a highly fluid and flexible continuum – especially for parents – where ‘workday’ has become ‘whatever slot you can fit in’.

Many organisations embarked on a massive experiment of shifting their entire teams to WFH (when it was possible) mode, in most cases, without a security net of any advanced planning. Considering the conditions, the results for the majority do not look too bad:

First, the classic fear of some managers that this flexibility will lead to reduced productivity has been proved (in general) wrong. According to a recent study1 54 per cent of respondents said that working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has had a positive effect on workers’ productivity. The reasons for this, they said, were time saved in commuting (71 per cent), fewer distractions from co-workers (61 per cent) and fewer meetings (39 per cent).

Second, another research says that 48 per cent of employees will likely work remotely, at least part of the time after COVID-19 versus 30 per cent before the pandemic.

Managers need to understand their experiences with WFH, in terms of both benefits and potential risks, to improve their capabilities in managing their new remote employees in the best way possible. COVID has proved that WFH can potentially work. We simply need to find the right ‘flexible work’ balance for our organisation. 

2. Relation-based to data-based metrics

One of the unwritten rules of most organisations is “try to always arrive before and leave after your boss”. This, despite most managers understanding rationally that the hours spent in the office cannot be a measure of success.

The recent WFH period showed clearly that to manage a remote workforce (and in general, to manage the workforce better, regardless their location) managers need measurable metrics of success for each employee and share them with the team clearly. More importantly, managers need to develop trust in their employees. They need to trust in their teams and believe that they will continue to do the work for which they are compensated. With metrics alone, and in the absence of this trust, it is not possible to develop a successful remote culture, during the pandemic and beyond. 

3. Organisation culture

The exceptional situation in the last months created a defining moment to test the culture of organisations and managers. An array of primary emotions, mostly fear, was experienced by all. Naturally, eyes turn to the leaders of the organisation during such situations.

While some organisations have recognised the humanitarian crisis of the pandemic and prioritised the well-being of employees, treating them first as people rather than as workers, others have pushed employees to work in conditions that are high risk with little support — treating them merely as workers rather than human beings. This leaves a long- lasting impression on the organisational culture and values, stronger than any effort made by any business. 

It is not an easy situation and many businesses are in extreme financial stress— sometimes there are not many choices. However, considering the long term, there is a need to be mindful of the effects of actions on employee experience. Employees may not remember their managers very well when they were 25, but surely they would remember the manager they had through the COVID crisis.

4. Communication. Communication. Communication.

Leaders should ensure that people feel safe, engaged, informed and useful. However, actions are just the first step. It is equally important for managers to communicate and connect with their teams and for teams to trust managers in a challenging situation, especially one where they are uncertain, scared and not in the office.  

There is no magic formula for this, but the most successful organisations are those that are  transparent and authentic.

Prior to COVID-19, organisations were already facing increased employee demands for transparency. The current situation — where employees are not only insecure about their jobs but also their own and their families’ health — is only making this demand stronger. 

On the other hand, authenticity in relationships, especially with the younger members of the teams (and clients), has clearly proved to be very useful to bridge the communication gap that a WFH scenario creates. The term ‘business casual’ has taken on a new meaning, with people getting a peek into each other’s homes and getting to meet each other’s partners, pets and children. What used to be ‘unprofessional’ is now ‘just another day at the work’. This has led to workplace interactions that are more authentic and relaxed. 

However, there is much more to transparency and authenticity than this. Without water coolers or lunch breaks, employees may feel as though they only hear from bosses and colleagues when something is required. Transparency and authenticity are also shown when managers encourage more meaningful connections, not only based on to-do lists, but genuine concern for the teams, their situation and challenges. 

If the situation is managed in alignment with appropriate values and culture, and decisions are proactively communicated, the trust of the team in the managers/employers — and probably vice versa — will increase exponentially.  

Jump into the future

The speed and depth with which this situation will impact organisational strategy and the way forward will depend on myriad elements— sector, size, location, investment capabilities, and so on. Every manager should smartly apply the learnings from the past few months to their vision to create their own ‘future of work’. 

To create a clear plan for the organisation, strategic thinking, scenario planning—plans B, C, and D—and willingness to adapt quickly are essential. Remember, hope is not a strategy. This is a time to make a difference. Treat this COVID-19 crisis as a defining moment for the self, for the organisation and for the country.   As the Japanese say, ‘Vision without action is only  a dream,  while action without vision is a nightmare’. 

——————————————————————————

1. Study from USA TODAY and LinkedIn
2. Gartner

The post Three steps for the future of work appeared first on HR Katha.

In its endeavour to be successful, in the true sense, House of Cheer has launched Happyness.me As the name suggests, this happiness-measurement tool helps measure the happiness quotient of corporates and their staff.

The consulting division of House of Cheer will help companies reimagine the future of their business and growth strategy.

Specifically, the aim is to help organisations create a happiness journey and with the help of the happiness tool, enable them to visualise their company culture and implement strategies to create a happy and flourishing working environment.

The Company has partnered with one of the world’s leading human insights companies, The Happiness Index, hoping to ring in a new era in Indian business, focusing first and foremost on the backbone of any organisation, it’s people.

This tool is designed to measure people’s happiness quotient, using behavioural psychology, neuroscience and data-analytics, along with inputs from experts in the field, combined with the team’s extensive experience leading large-scale operations.

Commenting on Happyness.me, Namrata Tata, managing partner, House of Cheer, says,  “With over three decades of experience working in business and industry, we have learned that emotions drive, motivate and inspire us. They energise us to be productive and take control of our professional lives. We believe that happiness is the primary emotion that can maximise potential and that has not yet been truly leveraged in the Indian workspace.”

House of Cheer is full of gratitude towards the UK Government in India for helping them identify the right partner from the UK in its Happiness Journey project.

Commenting on this launch, Tony Latter, co-founder & head of innovations, The Happiness Index UK, says, “The future of work will look very different in terms of when, where and how people are working. Whether it is more employees working remotely, flexibly or in a globally-distributed model, the challenges of effectively engaging and communicating with your people are increasing. That means, leaders require a new set of emotional skills and insight.”

House of Cheer was founded by Raj Nayak, former Viacom18 COO and prominent media personality.

The Happiness Index has a global footprint with offices in New York, London and Shanghai. It gathers feedback from over 80 countries in 23 different languages and has built its own neuroscience-based platform, using the best of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The post House of Cheer launches ‘happiness tool’ for employees, corporates appeared first on HR Katha.

Blending an incentive-based-pay component into the structured incentive offers is the way forward.

This model carries enough potential to revolutionise business approaches even during the long haul. As a business practice, Performance-Related-Pay (PRP) or ‘incentive-based pay’ started in the UK in the 1980s and is still prevalent today.

THE BUSINESS CASE FOR VARIABLE PAY

Variable pay schemes can vary – from incentives to bonuses, to profit sharing to ESOPS and to in-kind and a host of innovative ideas.

The benefits of an elastic pay scheme first came to light in 2004, when the economic framework of Terry and Burke demonstrated that a reduction in operating leverage essentially translates into a percentage gain in profits.

Variable pay — when deeply integrated with the organisational ethos and purpose — reduces profit volatility and enhances earnings stream for shareholders. The new VUCA is a big push forward — causing even industries and niches that are not traditionally associated with the idea — to give it a serious thought.

“Sectors, such as FMCG, e-commerce, pharma, financial services, IT and fintech will spearhead a ‘near-mass exodus’ to a pay-for-performance paradigm,” Arvind Usretay, director of rewards, Willis Towers Watson

Turning processes to be ‘stretchable and malleable’ helps teams stay agile and adaptable to change.

“The crisis has highlighted the inelasticity in compensation costs and there will be a move towards making these more variable over the coming years,”  Anandorup Ghose, partner, Deloitte India

BENEFITS OF ELASTIC PAY

1. Turns mediocre performers into rock stars

Despite having the best resources, it is possible that your organisation is operating at a fraction of its potential. The trick is to turn a ratio of the compensation structure variable – and sync it with a ‘performance loop’.

The performance loop is a cycle where performance drives pay, and, equally by extension, pay drives performance. There is no readymade formula for how much variable should be there in a compensation structure and each company needs to find its sweet spot — a ‘signature ratio’.

According to Deloitte, the proportion of fixed to variable will hover around 85:15 in general, touching 50-75 per cent of fixed pay at CXO and senior levels.

2. Stops competition from poaching your best performers

An elastic pay structure not only lets you retain top performers but also gets them to perform ‘miracles’, turning your business into a happy aberration.

No wonder companies across sectors, such as retail, BFSI, chemical, FMCG, IT, e-commerce and telecom are hiking their variable component by up to 25 per cent.

3. Survives on leaner resources, thrives on thinner margins

Variable pay matrices lighten the yoke of fixed costs on the company’s coffers – often significantly.

A strategic, reward-first approach to productivity lets teams take a big step towards the ‘Holy Grail’ of businesses in the #NewNormal age: DOING MORE, WITH LESS.

By footing only those bills that bring in value, leaders can eliminate unnecessary operations, re-channelise resources better and amp up efficiency across the ranks.

WAYS TO BUILD CAPABILITIES FOR AN INCENTIVE-BASED MODEL

Following is a framework to implement and institutionalise a performance-based incentive programme during – and after – the crisis phase:

Steps to shifting to a incentive based model

1. CHANGE THE MINDSET

A variable-heavy compensation structure delivers its full benefit only when everyone is aligned with the vision and equally kicked about the possibilities.

‘Memories’ and ‘Inertia’ of the status-quo may pose challenges while implementing a new incentive system.

There will be resistance from a slice of the team that is comfortably settled in the old way. A few ways to ease the transformation are:
a. Workshops and demos of new technologies
b. Practices being introduced to facilitate change
c. Hand-holding during micro-moments at work
d. Testimonies by first-adopters

2. FIND THE RIGHT OPERATING-MODEL FIT

Your business must decide on the right ‘fixed: variable’ pay-out ratio in the accounts books and the WHAT-WHO-WHEN-WHY-WHERE of it. Avoid incentives that are ‘one size fits all’. Instead, map incentives to ability, motivation and personality. Your processes must be sufficiently flexible – especially during the first months of the transition.

Xoxoday’s COMPASS helps engage your in-house as well as extended workforce for higher employee performance via incentives

3. IMPLEMENT SLOWLY, BUT FLAWLESSLY 

Ensure that the new system is integrated into existing systems seamlessly, and involves every stakeholder optimally.

Also, consider a Beta Test and Preparation Period for the long haul. An elastic and incentive-inspired style of functioning can help businesses reboot quicker. Future-facing HR leaders expect the current disruptions in payouts and disbursement systems to be long term (if not permanent).

Optimise costs and get more out of your teams (sales workforce, distribution channels, gig and freelancer force, BPO associates and support folks) with the power of rewards and incentives. Manage the entire process with a few clicks. Schedule a Demo for COMPASS today. For details, visit www.xoxoday.com

The post Reduce fixed costs with incentive-based pay appeared first on HR Katha.

What’s a Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan is a well-thought-out process that details what actions an organisation can take in the face of a crisis, and how it will continue to operate. In this sense, a business continuity plan goes beyond firefighting and recovery, and aims to prepare contingencies for every aspect of the business that can be potentially affected.

India findings of PwC’s first-ever Global Crisis Survey reveal that 80% the senior executives have experienced at least one crisis in the past 5 years. This gives them an edge when it comes to handling a crisis better with a documented crisis management plan than those who have little experience and have a no crisis response plan in place.

So how can organisations prepare?

Have a Plan, Test and Refine it

Preparation, at the outset, needs a plan. A well-thought-out holistic plan includes a process for declaring a crisis, allocating responsibilities, handling communications — both internal and external — along with managing all relevant stakeholders, such as customers and employees. The first step employers need to take is to ensure the safety of their employees and lay down the remote working policies. By testing the plan, organisations get a chance to review it, fix any loopholes and make it more flexible.

Employee Engagement Should be a Top Priority

The second part of the preparedness involves keeping your workforce engaged. The sudden shift towards working from home needs to be supported with right tech tools, setting expectations, providing well-being programs, policies and constant support. Additionally, the ongoing learning needs of your workforce must also be considered.

Employees should be encouraged to take certifications, courses and upskill themselves to be better prepared for the future of work. Organisations need to begin to embrace and pilot virtual models of working, distributed collaboration and contingency models beginning now. This will ensure that in the future, they are not forced into a disruptive transition.

In these unprecedented times, there’s an immediate need for organisations to rethink their processes to ensure the safety of their employees and successful continuation of the business. The Business Continuity Plan courses from this channel will help companies lead through crisis

Each crisis is unique, as each organisation’s needs are different. For instance, blocked roads and transportation channels can spell doom for a logistics company, but for the IT industry, it can be business as usual. It is important for businesses to do a pilot run, evaluate their needs and design strategies accordingly.

The best line of defence is good planning, which needs to begin right now. In doing so, organisations will be well prepared to adopt to any crisis with minimal disruption and maximum output.

The post The Show Must Go On: Need for A Business-Continuity Plan appeared first on HR Katha.

Some of us may have to continue to go to work, especially those of us involved in providing basic services, and those in the medical profession, security forces, food-chain workers, and so on.  Ensuring our own safety and minimising any health risk to oneself or any member of the community should be our prime responsibility.

For those going to work

Here are some ways to fulfil your responsibility:

• Abide by rules: Follow all official directives and recommendations by relevant authorities
• Wash up: The most common way to contract the virus is through contact with other people infected or touching surfaces with virus presence. During the time you are out, wash your hands as frequently as possible for at least 20 seconds and DO NOT touch your face!
• Protect the home:Follow a protocol to minimize chances of bringing the virus home.

For those working from home

Many of us will be able to work from home (WFH). Our efforts are also important. We need to do the best to minimise the social and economic impact of this situation on not just ourselves, but our organisations and our respective countries. This is an unprecedented pandemic with an uncertain duration. Therefore, if this is going to be the new normal, we need to institute sustainable practices, which allow us to stay sane and possibly even thrive in this new context. I am sharing below some best practices we are implementing at the Gi Group India or which I have witnessed in or learned from different organisations and/or individuals.

Positive beginning: The most natural thing to do on waking up is to grab the phone and see what’s happening in the world. This is particularly the case in a moment of rapid change and high anxiety. Even before we get out of bed, we end up opening the doors to outside influence, which impacts our thoughts and emotions. Instead, on waking up, quickly glance at your messages to make sure everybody is ok, and then put down the phone. Do not let news manage your mood at the start of the day.

Balance: Start the day if possible with exercise or spiritual practice. Consistent exercise, not only increases immunity but serves as a mood booster. Do not procrastinate when it comes to meditating or praying. Begin the day with these activities. If it cannot be done at the beginning of the day, find a proper slot and follow it every day as a ritual.

Clean up:  Get out of your pyjamas and shower. Getting dressed for work actually increases productivity among other positive benefits.

Plan, schedule and structure: Plan the day and the week, by creating a structure

Being in a WFH situation, we need to create alternative ways for all the structures and communication paths that we naturally have by being in office with our colleagues. At Gi Group India, we build up a structure of virtual meetings during the day for each business unit, together with cross-functional interactions for all our team members. Everything is planned week-by-week. Invites are sent out to team members well in advance, and agendas and links are prepared to get the Skype or Zoom virtual rooms going.

The most important of these team calls are the ones at the start and close of the day. It is important to identify each team member’s focus projects for the day, prioritise them and evaluate the results of the work at the end of the day. Evaluation is the key to managing the job proactively, rather than reacting to other people’s priorities or to the general anxiety situation.

Focus: Staying focussed in a workspace that includes kids, family and an infinite number of other distractions can be tough. It is important to keep distractions at bay and boost productivity while working from home. Some basic productivity improvement approaches can be tried, such as the Pomodoro Technique.

Personal time: After work, it is important to enjoy your free time and focus on the good. Spend quality time with your family, try your hand at cooking, take a walk in your home if you have the space, read a book , play with kids or pets if you have. Inform yourself about the situation only from trustful sources (please do not trust all your WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram news) and switch off from social media/news/Internet at least two hours before sleep time and sleep well.

While some of these ideas will work for you, some will not. Implement what makes sense for you and think about other ideas that may make you stronger, healthier and more productive during this period. Your work and contribution to the community is needed more than ever.

Stay healthy.

The post Working in the times of COVID-19 appeared first on HR Katha.

India is the second fastest growing economy in the world and the collective goal of our government, policymakers, companies and people is to become an economic powerhouse producing a five trillion dollar economy by 2025. The McKinsey Report further states that we can add up to $770 billion—more than 18 per cent—to our GDP by 2025, simply by giving equal opportunities to women. This is indeed a huge opportunity to boost India’s GDP by increasing the participation of women in the workforce, raising the number of hours worked, and including them in higher-productivity sectors, such as IT services. India’s economy also has the second-largest potential in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region for improving gender parity. More than 70 per cent of the potential GDP opportunity comes from increasing women’s participation in the labour force by 10 percentage points.

However, this requires us to bring an incremental 68 million women into the mainstream formal- sector workforce.

What keeps women from joining the workforce?

The reasons behind women falling out of India’s labour force are both economic and cultural.

Indian society has not been able to create labour-intensive manufacturing jobs that can provide large-scale employment opportunities to women. In addition to the significant economic benefits from higher participation of women in the workforce, women’s employment is usually linearly linked to their financial well-being and socio-political empowerment, improving their overall life quality. Researches demonstrate that working women have greater power and voice, while poor participation in workforce has negative consequences for their bargaining power within their households and society.

What is the solution?

The solution, doubtlessly, requires a systemic change in the way the role of women is perceived by society, and therefore, the economy. Huge investments in upskilling and educating women since birth, financial inclusion, encouraging women entrepreneurs, and strengthening legal provisions for safety and security of women, are initiatives that need to be driven by policymakers and the Government. More than anything else, this process should allow women equal access to employment opportunities, providing them the support system required for them to stay within the workforce.

An ILO Study March 2018, shows that women make up 42 per cent of new graduates, and almost 25 per cent of entry-level professionals. But, of these, only ten per cent reach senior-level management roles and only one per cent reach the CEO level (SCOPE ILO Study, March, 2018).

Women at Gi Group

Gi Group internally employs more than 5000 people globally. Of these, 72.5 per cent are women. In Gi Group’s India workforce, women constitute 50 per cent of the total workforce. If we take into consideration the percentage of women in managerial roles, Gi Group India has 60 per cent women in mid- and senior-leadership roles.

“At Gi Group, our mission is to provide work as a means for individuals to fulfill themselves. We are committed to providing people opportunities that allow them to experience a future that abides by principles of equality, as well as protection of personal dignity and safety against all forms of discrimination. Helping women find and sustain meaningful employment opportunities is, therefore, only a natural extension of our corporate mission and goals,” says Marcos Segador, country manager, Gi Staffing Services, India.

As a part of its services portfolio, Gi Group partners with 400+ corporate clients facilitating their talent acquisition and management goals both in temporary and permanent staffing. It actively works with employers in India to sensitise and address their diversity and inclusion agenda, and have in place a more gender-balanced employee base.

Swapna Reddy, who was placed by Gi Group to its client Coromandel Agro, says ”Gi Group gave me the opportunity to learn and upgrade my skills and career. I was given a very good team to work with and grow positively. Working until I was completely happy with what I’ve accomplished made me understand I absolutely was in the right place.” Although an agri-industry company is not a typical choice for women, Swapna quickly realised how rewarding the experience was, in terms of both personal growth and economic independence.

In addition to all standard benefits, Gi Group also has well-defined and employee-friendly policies, such as structured remote working options, to ensure quality work-life balance and career growth at the same time. These policies are not just specific to women employees, but can also be availed by male colleagues, creating a gender-neutral work environment that fosters a supportive atmosphere for all employees and helps face and fight outdated socio-cultural customs.

Since almost 40 per cent of the women in the corporate sector usually do not return to work after maternity leave or quit within six months of returning, Gi Group India is developing a programme to help them positively reintegrate at work. The goal is to ensure they find the right balance between personal and work life.

Vasudha Johri, who has recently completed 10 years at Gi Group India, sums it up eloquently — “Gi Group gave me a platform to grow in my career based entirely on my performance, value addition and integrity towards the organization, while giving me a safe and supportive working environment.”

The post Women at Work: How Gi Group is enabling and empowering its women appeared first on HR Katha.

Moreover, CEOs are leading the change like never before, demonstrating a need for the recruitment process to be instant, precise and accurate. In addition, they want it to provide a fulfilling experience to all stakeholders of the process.

HRKatha speaks to Bipul Vaibhav, an alumnus of IIT Guwahati 2014 and CEO of Skillate and asks him to throw some light on how a company that outsources its recruitment process chooses a partner basis the technology on offer.

“Companies first need to fix the basic problem, which is, to structure the process and handle the scale. The legacy systems have a few challenges, which can be broadly identified as:

• Complex UI and UX
• Processing time
• Lack of flexibility
• Lack of new-edge technologies

At Skillate, we integrate seamlessly our AI model with that of an organisation’s existing products, thus adding value to their existing systems and making them more efficient by leveraging technology. We have a suite of solutions, from sourcing the profiles to engagement with the candidates.”

“Recruitment has become similar to the sales function today where you have to convince an external person about the company, work, culture and a lot more”

One may think that digitisation has made the process complex, but only at the backend. For the end-users, that is the recruiters, it is all about a few simple clicks. In the absence of a digitised recruitment process, finding the perfect matching candidate to join the company is challenging.

Vaibhav says, “If implemented properly, ATS makes the process structured and solves these problems.”

Some of its advantages are the following:

• Defined stakeholders and good communication platform between recruiters, hiring managers and candidates.
• Manages agencies, employee referrals, careers page, all in a single dashboard.
• Tracks, reports and analyses the entire recruitment process and guides the management regarding the scope of improvements.

At Skillate, artificial intelligence (AI) is thought of as an enabler to solve various business problems, such as reducing hiring time. The solutions offered have been able to reduce the resume screening time by about 95 per cent so that recruiters can focus on quality candidates. Skillate bots help interact with the candidates automatically as per their convenience and capture details that are beyond resumes but very important for the role. The system is cost efficient as it is helping companies leverage the resume database to close the positions faster, making the process less dependent on agencies and job boards.

“Recruitment has become similar to the sales function today where you have to convince an external person about the company, work, culture and a lot more,” opines Vaibhav.

“One size does not fit all!” Recruiters are adopting creative strategies and each vacancy is considered as a separate project and requires a unique plan.“The recruiting process is modified with respect to each generation, function, remote/contractual workers or the industry in question,” shares Vaibhav.

The new process engages candidates on LinkedIn and establishes relationships with a long-term perspective. Profiles, such as data scientists, and UI/ UX designers are in demand in the market and good profiles get attracted very soon.

Chatbot engages with the candidates to make the system transparent, and engage them automatically even after the offer letter. The bot interacts with the candidates and tells them about the company, incentive, culture, and so on.

For experienced profiles (above 10 years of experience), Naukri and Referrals are the main sources of hiring. Voice bot chats with the candidates and sends the information back to the platform automatically.

Recruitment has become candidate-centric, and organisations are competing to attract the best talent.

In Vaibhav’s words, “It starts with the job description, as that is a candidate’s first impression about the organisation’s culture, work, responsibility and people. Skillate has released an important feature called JD Assistant. It analyses the entire job, and gives a score between 0-100, which shows its robustness. It also recommends the pointers that recruiters or hiring managers can use to modify and enhance the JD. We have trained this model with about three lakh jobs and is working fine across industries.”

Skillate uses AI-enabled chat bots at various stages of the recruitment cycle to enhance the experience of candidates. Be it auto-screening of candidates, auto-interview scheduling or candidates’ status updates, there are extensive offerings to enhance the employer branding and ensuring a great candidate experience. Previously, a recruiter’s job was done when a candidate accepted an offer, but not anymore.

One of the major problems that the industry faces today is that of the ‘Offer to Joining Ratio’. In some industries, such as IT services and BFSI, it is as high as 60 per cent, but in others not so. The challenge is to comprehend the intent and desire of the candidate. One way to do the same is to engage with the candidates regularly. It is possible via a bot, which will interact with the candidates at certain intervals and will figure out the intent of the candidate for the job and the company— whether the candidate is happy with the offer, looking for a better opportunity, and so on.

Research shows that there is a gap in skill-sets that candidates possess and what is required for the job. Though one cannot negate the fact that expectations have gone up on the part of business leaders, but they are also doing their share to nip the problem in the bud.

“They are setting up R&D units inside the colleges at their own expense. Even with all this, hardly the top one per cent of the people are getting the opportunity they deserve. We need to do much more in terms of collaboration between academia and business organisations, to bridge the gaps,” says Vaibhav.

The recruitment industry is maturing in an all-new avatar and there is no stopping here. In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the rules will change but the game will remain the same. Some jobs will become redundant, but hundreds of new jobs will be created. Moreover, with the Internet penetrating into tier-II and tier-III cities, the industry is all set to become bigger.

The post Making Recruitment easy, fast and transparent appeared first on HR Katha.

In the world of work we are once again back to the drawing board. We are once again defining the outer limits of human capability and what machines and algorithms can do. When I was thinking of who I should invite for the first episode of Dreamers & Unicorns, I could only think of Anita and Harsha Bhogle. They run a workshop called The Winning Way where they speak of sports as a metaphor for life.

Sports is one arena where people of different backgrounds come together to give their best. To meet their individual ambitions and make the team win. The leader has every chance of failing at exactly the same task that they are demanding from the team.

Anita and Harsha Bhogle have had a ringside view of the world of sports and have had successful corporate careers. They have been employees and gig workers. They were the perfect choice for episode 1 of my podcast

Anita Bhogle

I know Anita as the founder of Bizpunditz – a digital learning platform. She wanted me to record a few episodes for her. Here is one of the episodes
An entrepreneur, Anita Bhogle started the consulting firm Prosearch, with husband Harsha Bhogle – a sport-based consultancy where she brings in her business expertise. An alumna of IIT-B and IIM-A, Anita started her career in advertising. She attained the position of Director—Account Planning and Research at FCB-Ulka, before leaving it all to set up Prosearch with Harsha. She is also Director (Content) at Bizpunditz, India’s first digital learning content library for managers.

Harsha Bhogle

Harsha Bhogle started commentating at the age of 19 with All India Radio, while living in Hyderabad. In 1991–92, he became the first Indian commentator to be invited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation during India’s cricket series before the 1992 Cricket World Cup. He has since worked for ABC Radio Grandstand during India’s Australian tours, and for eight years worked for the BBC as part of their commentary team in the 1996 and the 1999 Cricket World Cups. The Australian tourism uses Harsha’s commentary to entice Indians to visit Australia. That is the power of 8.4 million followers of Harsha on Twitter.

Since 1995, Harsha Bhogle has been presenting live cricket from all around the world for ESPN STAR Sports and was part of the ‘Few Good Men commentary team that included Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, and Alan Wilkins along with Geoff Boycott and Navjot Singh Sidhu, for a few seasons, and later, Ian Chappell and Sanjay Manjrekar.

Here is the first episode of Dreamers and Unicorns where Anita and Harsha Bhogle speak about the lessons from sports, the way they have reinvented themselves, their struggles and what makes them tick as business partners.

You can listen to the podcast on any app here.

The post Abhijit Bhaduri speaks to Anita & Harsha Bhogle appeared first on HR Katha.

The answer lies in the fact that most people don’t leave a job, they leave their managers. This means, amongst all external and internal factors that may impact a person’s performance and existence in a job, the human or team dynamics is the strongest one.

All of this ultimately boils down to one thing – mindset! For years, experts have been suggesting hiring for attitude and training for skills. Why so? SV Nathan, partner and chief talent officer, Deloitte, says, “Mindset is really important. While certain aspects are trainable, set minds cannot be altered.”

In their struggle for getting the best talent onboard, most organisations focus largely on the availability of skills and miss out on other aspects of their personality at times. Most believe that this may still not make a sky-size difference when hiring freshers or filling junior-level vacancies, but it surely impacts the entire business when it goes wrong at the leadership levels. However, the reality is that toxicity can flow from any level in an organisation and that for each role in a business there’s a certain kind of mindset that’s required in order to perform the job well.

Alok Kumar, managing partner, SRKay Consulting Group, tells us how he, through his own experience as the MD at Sears, over the years realised how mindsets mattered to issues, such as attrition and hampered productivity. Later, this led him and his team at SRKay to think about mind-match in hiring. “For years, recruitment has only been about skill mapping, whereas mindsets make all the difference when it comes to productivity and performance,” he says. This is how SCIKEY, SRKay Consulting’s hiring platform, was built on a strong foundation of the psychology-backed mind-match feature.

“While hiring leaders, it is important to know whether the person has the ability to deal with uncertainties, multitask, adapt to newer environments and fill in the blanks whenever required. Someone who comes with a set mind cannot do all this”

Kumar says, “No mindset is good or bad, wrong or right. It is situational.” In line with the same, Nathan explains how different mindsets are required for different jobs. He says, “The service industry requires employees to have a service-oriented mindset. On the other hand, the product industry needs people who are curious, imaginative and full of ideas.”

Read here to find out the answer – How HR can identify the behavioural skills along with the job skills of the candidate to determine whether he/she is the best fit.

Nathan further shares that mind-mapping becomes even more important as the level or position being hired for increases. “While hiring leaders, it is important to know whether the person has the ability to deal with uncertainties, multitask, adapt to newer environments and fill in the blanks whenever required. Someone who comes with a set mind cannot do all this,” he clarifies. He also believes leaders should have compassion, as well as the ability to inspire, support and develop others.

“For years, recruitment has only been about skill mapping, whereas mindsets make all the difference when it comes to productivity and performance”

In line with the same, Gautam Srivastava, vice president and head- talent management, Apollo Munich Health Insurance, explains that human attributes, behaviours and attitude are demarcated from the age of 8-14 years and these are hard wired for the rest of our lives. These get strengthened basis people’s life experiences and future interactions. These are also dependent on their career choices, academic choice and types of decisions they have made in the past.

“All these are relevant when we assess a candidate for a particular role. Beyond technical skills, it’s really important to assess candidates on these behaviours and how they are wired to react to situations. While skills can be taught, their behaviour and decision-making abilities are hard to change,” Srivastava asserts.

The existing hiring methods do not guarantee revelation of these aspects of a person’s personality. These are unveiled only when the person has spent a significant amount of time in the workplace. Consequently, when the human dynamics don’t fit and people start moving out, all organisations see is attrition.

“All these are relevant when we assess a candidate for a particular role. Beyond technical skills, it’s really important to assess candidates on these behaviours and how they are wired to react to situations”

To alleviate these issues and nip them in the bud, Kumar suggests that recruitment be based on these few critical aspects. “While hiring, it’s important that we look at behaviour, skills, and mindset match with the team or the immediate manager’s expectations and establish the employer brand through the process of recruitment,” he says.

Talking of the mind-match, Kumar shares that creating this feature in SCIKEY involves an intense study of different behaviours and the science of psychology with the help of some experts. “There are more than 36,000 ways in which people think, and based on that, there are 1600 kinds of mindsets,” he shares. He further explains that the algorithm used by the hiring platform studies four skills amongst candidates —creativity, control, empathy and logic. While everyone has a combination of four of these skills in some way or the other, according to Kumar, it is the proportion that determines the kind of jobs they would fit into.

Through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), the algorithms keep getting better as candidates are required to answer a set of questions. The responses are then mapped with a set of pre-defined requisite behaviours for the respective job.

All said and done, despite realising the need and importance of studying mindsets while hiring, most organisations miss out on doing it. Those that do it, do so towards the end of the hiring process. However, when done at the very beginning itself, it would certainly prove to be more effective in terms of saving cost, time and precious talent!

The post From skill-match to mind-match: Redefining recruitment with AI appeared first on HR Katha.

Organisations seeking to attract and retain millennials, and meet the needs for continual learning across the workforce, will have to shift from traditional training methods to more dynamic and collaborative learning formats. They will also have to deliver content in a fun and engaging way, with relevant facilitation tools in small, easily-consumable bit-sized chunks.

Nurturing facilitation skills in your learning programmes will ensure increased learning, better results and engaged participants. It will involve and engross people, delight customers and improve retention.

It’s time that we start measuring our training metrics on the following two fundamental criteria, which can give big return on investment:

·      Number of hours facilitated (there is a difference between facilitating and training)
·     Transfer the learning to work, with relevant action learning projects, and measure the impact.

The best way to monitor the impact of the projects is to co-create with the learners and with all key stakeholders using design thinking. Simply put, get each of the learners to understand what’s in it for them.

From our experience, when it comes to learning transfer, we have the following challenges to overcome:

·      Managers do not support the learning
·      Processes do not support learning
·      Lack of opportunity to use the skills
·      Paucity of time to implement the skills
·      No relevant learning that can be applied to work
·      Dearth of resources to implement the skills
·      Absence of need to implement
·      Lack of enthusiasm for the change

All the above factors can be addressed using the appropriate facilitation tools and methods during the discovery, design and delivery phase. The discussion questions should be with reference to ‘results’ and not ‘activities’.

Three discussion questions to help you start the conversation with your team are as follows:

1.      Identify the programme linked to specific business needs.
2.      Ensure the environment is prepared to support the programme.
3.      Measure the reporting of the programme as output focused.

We at 60 Bits Consulting, feel that small changes can make a big difference. Just by asking the above three questions, you can make your learning more impactful and enjoy better results.

We all know adults prefer self-learning, learning from peers and learning by doing. To address adult learning, we use processes and creative facilitation tools for learning, engagement, application and retention at the workplace by simulating 70:20:10 in the programme.

The key is to create opportunities that simultaneously address high-priority business needs and provide personal development opportunities. The ability to push participants to reflect, while giving them actions that are doable in their real work context, and to apply new approaches and hone their skills, is a valuable combination that you can explore using facilitation tools and methods!

As the famous saying by Robert Kiyosaki goes, “If your business is to grow and prosper, as a leader, you need to focus on people development.”
After all, facilitation skills help speed up and enhance both the design and learning processes. The right facilitation skills can ensure increased learning, better results and more engaged participants.

The post Right facilitation tools for better ROI on learning appeared first on HR Katha.

The role of HR functions has undergone a tremendous change in the last few years. On one hand is the growing importance of understanding business and being aligned with it. On the other is the increasing importance of being the driver of culture and a person who enables employee engagement and commitment / ownership across the organisation, especially when changes happen.

Are we there yet?

The HR professional needs to be able to influence managers across levels in the organisation and be able to intervene appropriately in various situations, so as to enable shared commitment and alignment to a common goal / purpose. The outcome is high organisational performance and enhanced employee engagement.

The skill to be able to get collective engagement and alignment is what facilitation is all about. Being facilitative is a different way of interacting with co-workers and viewing a task. According to Webster’s dictionary, “facilitate”, from the root word “facile”, is to “make easy or easier”. It means, functioning with a mindset of serving others, allowing the group and the situation to ‘be in control’. As an HR leader, this emphasis on people skills is powerful. Instead of having to ‘know’, you need to build the capacity for more people to ‘be in the know’.

For inclusive participation to work, effective facilitation skills and processes are needed. Without processes, ‘participation’ simply slides into a situation where anyone and everyone can say and do whatever they individually want to do. This often means that little is accomplished and many involved feel their precious time, money and energy have been wasted.

Several factors are converging that should make reinventing HR a critical priority for companies around the world.

How is human resources changing?

• It is being forced to redefine its role from ‘service provider’ to an enabler and builder of talent. HR’s traditional operations are now handled through modern technologies, and easy-to-access online and mobile applications. The rapid evolution of cloud technology is encompassing even more HR activities than traditional models. This will allow HR to devote the majority of its time to advising and consulting executives on people-related strategies.

• It is shifting from being a group of generalists to a team of highly-skilled business partners. Leading organisations today have many HR specialists who operate at the local business-unit level to help deliver better results, act locally to facilitate leaders solve problems and enhance operational efficiency.

• Traditional HR practices, such as performance management and L&D are undergoing radical change, forcing HR to throw away the old playbook and deliver more innovative solutions.

• A highly competitive global talent market with the new millennials has shifted power into the hands of employees, forcing HR to redesign programmes in the face of a much more demanding workforce.

Create credible differentiation for your organisation by transforming your HR from a ‘process developer and maintainer’ to an ‘experience architect’.

What are the expectations from HR?

Once designed primarily as a compliance function, today’s HR must be agile, business-integrated, data-driven, and deeply skilled to attract, retain, and develop talent.

These business imperatives demand not only a new HR model for HR itself, but also a massive reskilling of HR professionals around the world. They also create an unprecedented opportunity for HR to play a preeminent role at the highest levels of business strategy.

HR needs an extreme makeover driven by the need to deliver greater business impact and drive HR and business innovation.

Has HR undergone a makeover?

Research shows that nearly 40 per cent of the new CHROs come from the business, not from HR. Instead of simply managing transactions, implementing policies, and developing programmes, the new HR organisation aims to focus on understanding the needs of the business and delivering value-added solutions.

Where can companies start?

Design the HR role to deliver solutions: For many businesses, it is time to redesign HR with a focus on consulting and service delivery, not just efficiency of administration. HR business partners must become trusted business advisors with the requisite facilitation skills to consult and resolve critical business issues.

Invest in HR development and skills: HR professionals at all levels need continuous professional development to make sure the HR team constantly sharpens its own saw and develops the necessary skills to survive. Focus on capabilities, such as facilitation of skills for process consulting, organisational design and HR analytical skills

HR needs to raise its game by aligning its skills and capabilities with the organisation’s overall business goals. As HR pursues its own makeover, its strategic role must also change to meet the intense pressures of today’s business environment.

HR personnel need to master the art and science of facilitation to play the role of HR business partners and sharpen their process-consulting skills.

The post Does HR need a makeover in today’s business scenario? appeared first on HR Katha.

What if this wasn’t the case? What if, there was a way to avoid all the paperwork and employees could not only enjoy receiving the various benefits but also the ease of utilising them?

Sodexo, in partnership with NPCI, has just launched the Multi-Benefit Pass to solve these issues. This 2-in-1 card can be swiped on any of Sodexo’s 100,000-strong proprietary meal network to avail meal benefits and the chip on the card can also be inserted to avail a plethora of non – meal benefits like fuel, telecom, books and many more on RuPay’s 3.6-million strong network in India. All these benefits can also be accessed through a state of-the-art mobile app.

Talking of how the Multi-Benefit Pass will ease out the process for both employees and employers, Anish Sarkar, CEO, Sodexo BRS India says, “It is a unique solution that enables organisations, go fully digital for employees claims and expenses. With such automation of employee benefits, the employers don’t have to worry about any duplication or human errors anymore. They can focus on delivering a seamless employee experience, both inside and outside the workplace.”

Enhance your employee experience with India’s most-innovative employee benefit solution.

From an employer’s perspective, some of the outstanding benefits of Sodexo Multi-Benefit Pass are; the cost-effectiveness that makes the entire process paperless and saves time and efforts.  It’s easy- to- administer single digital platform allows the user ease of access manage all Employee Benefits. Additionally, Sarkar shares, “It is 100% tax-compliant, where the card can be swiped across Sodexo’s proprietary network for all meal benefits and also brings in the freedom of choice for employees to avail their non – meal benefits across RuPay’s wide network.”

On the other hand, from the employee perspective, by eliminating the tedious task of submitting paper bills, it improves workplace productivity. Moreover, employees don’t need to carry the card in the pocket – the mobile app helps them track transactions, discover deals, find nearest meal outlets and much more. That’s not all.  Through this, employees can benefit from an annual tax-savings for up to Rs. 75,000/-

Nalin Bansal, Head of RuPay, NCMC and NFS at NPCI says, “RuPay issuers can issue all variants of the cards like Virtual, Contact and NCMC. As part of our strategy we have increased our focus on the non-bank Prepaid issuers and have developed a fast-track, seamless and cost effective on boarding process. With this partnership we have opened doors in digitizing traditional gifting through a superior digital solution of “Multi-Benefit Card”.

While Sodexo consumers can now experience the convenience of making seamless payments through RuPay network across the country, along with availing offers and benefits of owning a RuPay card, this solution certainly offers equivalent benefits to both employees and employers, when it comes to employee benefits.

The post One solution to all challenges in employee benefits appeared first on HR Katha.

Every organisation has well-documented policies/procedures guiding leave and time-offs. Yet, the fact remains that the summer months, when a large percentage of corporate India goes on vacation, are the times for the management to realign and juggle priorities. Optimal management of resources and workload, challenging even during normal times, becomes especially complicated and demanding during this season. During such times, ensuring that customer relationships, productivity and business do not suffer, while simultaneously keeping the well-being of the staff in mind, can be a daunting task.

However, with a little foresight and pre-planning, it is possible to effectively manage vacation periods so that work does not suffer and deadlines are met, without any last-minute change or cancellation of plans.

Here are a few tips to help your employees take time off, smartly:

• Being proactive and planning ahead

This is paramount. Adopting a portfolio approach, along with division of business verticals, with a clear, unambiguous portfolio for each team member, will ensure organisations/team heads can easily determine likely gaps and plug in the same with minimal disruption/dissonance. Plugging gaps often involve some amount of reallocation of work. Knowledge/awareness of the interests, aptitudes and strengths of individual members makes reallocation/delegation of work during vacation breaks easier. Since most vacations are sanctioned well in advance, identifying a suitable, albeit temporary, replacement for a crucial team member beforehand and grooming them with requisite training/knowledge will ensure continuity.

• Assigning clear business objectives

Align the teams in a manner that they don’t get affected when people take off on holidays. Definite, unequivocal goals not only enable prioritising of work, but also allow for factoring in for disruptions, if any, which may be caused by vacations. Collaboration and team work are a must, and by getting the team on board, well in advance, through judicious alignment of objectives and priorities, it can be ensured that disruptions are minimal.

• Designing roles smartly

Ensure there is back up always, especially in areas considered crucial. The strength of a team lies in its ability to not just fill up for a member’s absence, but also ensure that deadlines are met and the work is unaffected. With cross-functional teams, organisations don’t just fill up gaps, but also challenge employees to push their boundaries with new roles and thereby achieve greater satisfaction at work.

Partner with Sodexo, the leader in employee benefits for an enhanced employee experience.

• Anticipating and planning your sales/marketing campaigns in advance

While campaigns are planned and executed with seasons and festivities in view, the same rigour needs to be put in place to account for the summers as well, when there is scarcity of resources. With advanced planning, such campaigns can easily be executed and implemented in a manner that does not affect holiday plans!

• Encourage advance planning

Advise team members to not wait till the last minute to apply for leave. Not only are tickets, hotels and other elements booked in advance more competitively priced, but it makes better economic sense for the employees. And what is more, the organisation also has enough time to make necessary arrangements for reallocation of roles and temporary staff, and so on. A rotational, staggered system of leave-taking gives every employee an opportunity to take a vacation when they desire and ensures adequate availability of staff at all times.

• Equitable sharing of vacationer’s workload

Preparing for an employee’s absence by ensuring that co-workers/colleagues covering a vacationer’s job have access to relevant files and are aware of the priorities and work to be done, and so on. The replacement employee(s) should be equipped with suitable resources/knowledge. Realigning/resetting priorities is yet another crucial measure if organisations are to work productively without disruptions during summer months.

Vacations and holidays are indispensable, benefiting both the individual and the organisation, albeit with a price in the form of extra workload in the interim. But with some foresight, planning and proper strategies, the period can be easily handled with minimal disruptions. And, when one knows work would not have piled up in one’s absence, getting back to work, especially after a rejuvenating break from the scorching heat, will be equally welcome!

The post Effective Planning for a stress-free vacation appeared first on HR Katha.

In 2014, Sodexo launched an internal study to explore and understand the correlation between gender-balanced management and performance. Part two of the same was released in 2018.

We now have over five years of data, covering 50,000 managers in 70 entities worldwide, that suggests gender-balanced teams outperform those that are not gender balanced, and the optimal mix of gender is 40 per cent to 60 per cent women.

Gender, race, age, language, religion and culture have, for long, been obstacles to a diverse workforce. Diversity of ideas, perceptions, viewpoints, economic/educational background and so on transforms workplaces into vibrant, in-demand spaces, where success and growth are inevitable.

Promoting and implementing diversity and inclusion

Successful D&I involves not just having policies in place, but implementing them in word and spirit. Continued process, empathy, involvement of all, open and transparent culture, are just some of the factors that ensure the spirit of D&I is embodied in the culture.

The ‘Spirit of Inclusion’

Sodexo Benefit and Rewards India is proud of a gender balance of 32 per cent representation of women employees across levels and roles, from Individual contributors and people managers to the leadership team.

At Sodexo, we believe that merely promoting numbers to prove diversity, without the spirit of inclusion is meaningless. Sodexo not just prides in having a number to promote its gender diversity, but also in truly living by the ‘Spirit of Inclusion’, by having women in important roles that impact the future of the brand and contribute to the success of Sodexo.

• It should not surprise you to know that the efforts of digitisation at Sodexo, the leader in digital employee benefits and solutions, is led by a woman.

Partner with Sodexo, the leader in employee benefits for an enhanced employee experience.

• At Sodexo, 46 per cent of the roles in sales and marketing are represented by women. These impactful customer and stakeholder management roles contribute immensely to the differentiation of the brand and make us the leader in the industry.

• ‘Excellence in customer service’ is a key differentiator when it comes to other players in the market that Sodexo BRS operates in. Here again, we happily leverage the natural customer centricity competencies associated with the women professionals.

The ‘Spirit of Equality’

• Equality in policies: Women-friendly policies, such as need-based work from home, co-sharing of child care benefits, condensed working hours, need-based sabbaticals, have been introduced with the intention of retaining and providing a conducive environment for our women employees. However, the same has been extended to all employees of the firm, regardless of their gender.

• Equality of generations: The oldest employee of Sodexo BRS India is a baby boomer associated with us for the last 10 years and the youngest is a Gen Z, giving us a variety of diverse views and a strong foundation of experience vs a young energetic set of employees with bright futuristic ideas.

• Equality in pay: Sodexo prides itself in being a firm that promotes the culture of meritocracy and performance, while being neutral to the gender of the employee.

• Equality to perform and grow: A healthy percentage of promotions, 37 per cent were bagged by women employees, which not just embodies our faith in their contribution to important roles that make a difference, but also the value of diversity of thoughts and capabilities to lead and manage.

Respect, openness, transparency, listening, ensuring equability in remuneration and benefits, and an environment which offers equal opportunities for professional and personal growth are indispensable for an inclusive workplace.

From generational demographic diversity, to higher representation of women at all levels of hierarchy, diversity is embedded in all functions and levels. This fosters an inclusive culture with higher employee engagement and talent retention.

These are just a few examples and facts that support the philosophy of managing the expectations of employees and are critical to creating the ‘perfect’ environment at work. Adapting and embracing these changes will help organisations become open, transparent and fluid. Because they help create workplaces which are diverse, accessible and inclusive; places where the diversity of the talent pool is central to the overall growth and success of the organisation.

The post Diversity and inclusion: A business imperative and a differentiator appeared first on HR Katha.

Problems arise when organisations rush into purchases without performing due diligence or properly understanding what the impact may be. This happens when organisations are stuck in the ‘here’ and ‘now’, crossing off things on their generic checklist. We need a platform: check, got that. We need to buy content: check, got that. We have staff working on our LMS who can upload stuff: check, got that…and so on. This is just short-term thinking. Instead of taking this approach, there needs to be a focus on the really important stuff, such as the experience of the learner, how learning can drive engagement and the real value that great learning offers to both learners and the business, now and in the future.

Step1: Be aware of the technology lifecycle

This means taking a step back and thinking beyond the next procurement cycle. Work on a five-year plan keeping in mind the current and future needs of the whole business.

A future-proofed, flexible tech solution is crucial when considering long-term value. While it’s important to think about the look and feel of a digital product, it’s more important to choose a flexible solution that can keep pace with the ever-changing rhythms of business and learner needs.

Step2: Understand the total cost of ownership

This part of the decision-making process is often overlooked. Organisations need to balance the cost of buying, maintaining and updating a solution against the value that solution will bring. Calculating that value is very hard when organisations aren’t sure what it is they want to measure their value against. A good starting place is to understand how much it costs to provide digital learning to each staff member and then how effective that learning is at achieving the desired improvements. Hemsley Fraser focuses on what it calls ‘digital engagement’, which is a measure of how staff members interact in a meaningful way with the content. You’d be surprised at how low the digital engagement score is across the industry as a whole — it’s usually less than10 per cent, which means that less than 10 per cent of the people with access to digital learning are accessing it, with potentially even fewer benefiting from it. With the right platform and communication strategy, this engagement score can increase significantly up to 35 per cent.

For an organisation of 10,000 learners, that means an extra 2,500 people benefiting from a digital solution. And if both solutions cost the same, the one with up to 35 per cent engagement is giving at least 25 per cent better value!

Step 3: Create a five-year vision for learning

Organisations need to create a strong, clear vision of what great learning looks like over the next one to five years. Know what will drive real value to learners and the organisation. Communicate with people all around the business and get their perspective on what great learning can and should look like. Think about what they see and use as consumers in their leisure time. They’re used to personalised, intuitive, user-friendly content and functionality — YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, and so on – and they’re going to want that in the workplace too. The painfully low engagement scores quoted above are symptomatic of ignoring this crucial element.

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Step 4: Use data to make better decisions

Take what tech has to offer— collect and use data to identify what the learning challenges are, where engagement is strong and where it is weak. Data is a fantastic resource that L&D must use more. For instance, analytics can show us how well a piece of learning or a piece of communication landed. Here, at Hemsley Fraser, if the Board sends out a message on our engagement hub, we can see how many people have watched it and engaged with it. That’s really useful information because it means we can carry out additional actions if we need to follow up and engage with our employees, based on that information. Technology can help us make smarter decisions. It can also help us communicate those decisions more effectively. Meaningful data is a great communication tool and can really help L&D get the business on board with its vision.

Step 5: Develop your communication skills

Communication is key to implementing a successful digital learning strategy and the communication needs to be two-way. You listen to what learners and the business say and you explain how learning can meet their needs, using the data you have. As a modern-day L&D professional, you have to be an excellent communicator — an influencer and a facilitator. You have to use all the communication channels at your disposal to drive support for and excitement around the solutions you are implementing. The more buzz there is, the more people will use it. Tell people why they should use this new platform and sell it to them. Be clear on what they will gain from using the platform. If they will gain more insight into what the organisation is trying to achieve, tell them that. If it’s the skills and behaviours needed to achieve those goals, tell them that too.

Step 6: Call out the technology fads

Senior leaders may be unwilling to make the investment just yet and you may have to break your journey down into phases. If your organisation isn’t ready to commit to your transformation vision, then make sure that any step(s) you take, or any purchase(s) you make, support where you want to end up. Don’t be seduced by shiny new toys and fads that will only be a short-term fix. Make sure your phased investments help get you to your destination.

Gamification is a good example. Many organisations love gamification and it can be brilliant, but you have to use it properly to get results. What is the value to an organisation if 200 people have a gold badge, for instance? Will it make a difference to the bottom line? There has to be a balance between trying to get people engaged and understanding what the drivers for engagement are in your organisation and how that engagement turns into value.

It comes back to knowing why you are doing something and how the learning will drive learner engagement and performance and thereby, business performance. Ensuring all your procurement decisions are aligned to the longer-term plan, rather than the one-budget cycle, means you hopefully won’t end up down a blind alley or spending twice as much for something than you intended.

When procurement is tied to the overall vision, that’s when you get real results. Technology should be scalable. You need to make sure everything is future-proofed and will help you deliver on your vision over the next five years. And when the business starts to see the difference the learning is making, then it becomes easier to win them over to your way of thinking.

The exec team often wants to fit digital into the same mould that the organisation has occupied for many years.

Digital solutions should drive pace and efficiencies in a business.

It is the same for L&D. Learning has to be different now, as learning is more holistic and isn’t just about learning soft or technical skills. It needs to be broader to include communication of key information and a sense of its organisation and its culture. Technology enables us to do different and really clever things. Sometimes, the business needs nudging in the right direction — you need to get them to think differently by showing them the real future.

The post Into the future of learning in 6 steps appeared first on HR Katha.

The advent and increasing predominance of the tech-savvy millennials and the transformation of organisations as they adopt the latest technology have necessitated a paradigm shift in traditional business concepts and practices. The question that’s often posed is, ‘Is conflict management with millennials different? If yes, how and why?’

The answer lies in understanding the difference between generations. Every generation, invariably, has had to deal with the so-called ‘generation gap’. The main challenge lies in the inherent differences in the nature and outlook of the generations. Millennials are identified with the tendency to question, the ability to collaborate and work in teams, their innate aptitude for technology, their inclination to text rather speak, and an informal approach to work, especially working hours, dress codes, and so on. Millennials tend to view, (and probably rightly so), hierarchy, inflexibility in authority, as well as age-old practices and procedures as archaic. The root of why conflict management with millennials should be different lies in the fact that, unlike the older generations, millennials are not content to comply with directives because they are told to do so. And their ability (and tendency) to use technology to communicate reduces their ability to handle discord.

Once the ‘why’ is understood, the ‘how’ of conflict management with millennials becomes simpler. From providing forums and technology-enabled platforms to voice concerns, to encouraging face-to-face conversations, conflict management with millennials needs not just a pro-active but also a more transparent and flexible approach.

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Some of the main points/aspects to be kept in focus are as follows:

Dialogues and conversations are vital. Poor, ineffective communication, absence of clarity, especially regarding expectations or insufficient feedback are often causes of conflict, which can be diminished by seeking opinions or exchanging views/information.

Listening with an open mind is important if conflicts are to be minimised. Listening does not necessarily imply agreement. Rather, it conveys that due importance is being paid to differing opinions and all viewpoints are equally valued and appreciated.

Considering various perspectives makes it easier to appreciate the issues involved in the conflict, and build a holistic view to help make informed decisions. Questioning assumptions, seeking information, and viewing issues from the other person’s perspective are important for effective conflict management, where millennials are involved.

Clear, candid communication leaves little room for ambiguity. Frequent two-way feedback not only enhances engagement, but also reduces the possibility of future conflict. Voicing expectations clearly, and encouraging honest dialogues and constructive criticism pave the way for cooperation and collaboration, which millennials thrive on.

Texting is okay, but can lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication. Face-to-face conversations over a cup of coffee can facilitate conflict management faster and more efficiently than that chain of e-mails ever can.

The fundamentals of conflict management remain unchanged even with a multigenerational workforce. Stereotyping conflicts as age-related or inter-generational issues is akin to squandering away valuable resources. Instead, the right approach and right perspective, tempered with respect, empathy, an open, unbiased mind and a flexible attitude is all that is needed for a harmonious and efficient workplace.

The post Conflict management with the millennials appeared first on HR Katha.

Identifying and grooming worthy talent within the organisation comes with its set of benefits for the company that cannot be ignored. One most important fact is that the potential resource is well aware of the working conditions. There is little to no time needed to adapt to the working culture.

Sundara Rajan, co-founder, Thomas Assessments India makes more valid points as he gets into specific details.

“We recommend building from within except for specific functional or technological skills which are in short supply. Such a policy sends a positive message to the employees about future growth with the company. Often, a leader who rises from within triggers aspirations about growth across the organisation,” he says.

“When a leader comes from within, the organisation sends two messages to the employees the company has headroom for growth, and that all employees have a future in this company”

Sound grooming further motivates existing employees to believe in the organisation’s future and in their own growth opportunities in the company.

“When a leader comes from within, the organisation sends two messages to the employees — the company has headroom for growth, and that all employees have a future in this company. This is apart from the regular benefits of being in synch with the culture, hitting the ground running, and so on,” says Rajan.

With Thomas Assessments India that works with leading companies in the country offering them talent development and hiring solutions, Rajan notes that many organisations he works with do have extensive programmes to nurture and build leadership pipelines. Some provide clear visibility and runway from the time an employee moves to the middle-management level.

“An area of concern, which many organisations face is the rise of many functional leaders and lack of business leaders or leaders with cross-functional experience,” he says.

Expert Opinions

Sunil Singh, chief human resource officer, Cadila Pharmaceuticals agrees with the points Rajan makes, noting that developing leaders from within has a long-lasting impact. What he further notes is that to reach a stage where a company can look for leaders within its existing resources, it first needs to be at a mature stage with a worthy pool of talent.

“I always recommend building leaders from within the organisation. To reach the stage where you can develop leaders within the company, you need to have a very robust talent pipeline. If the quality of your stock across levels is not sustainable, then the organisation has no option than to hire from outside. However, is this a model that is sustainable for a long period of time? Is it a model that will make an organisation a great place to work? The answer is no!

It takes a period of three to four years for a company to reach a stage where it can first build a robust talent pipeline,” says Singh.

“I always recommend building leaders from within the organisation. To reach the stage where you can develop leaders within the company, you need to have a very robust talent pipeline. If the quality of your stock across levels is not sustainable, then the organisation has no option than to hire from outside”

He clearly illustrates the benefits saying building leaders within the organisation helps motivate employees who see there is scope for growth.

“For a person to really become the company’s ‘insider’, it takes two years and not less than that. By this I mean, in two years, the person is able to understand every single relationship within the organisation. It becomes automatic. Once the person reaches such a level, she/he becomes much more efficient and productive.

You have proper insurance coverage if you are building leaders from inside the company. A person like that does not have to decipher the culture; as she/he is already a part of it. That extra effort isn’t needed. This is one of the biggest advantages when developing leadership from within the organisation,” Singh explains.

Emmanuel David, director, Tata Management Training Centre weighs properly the pros and cons of both developing talent as well as external hiring.

“In the process of succession planning management, people may pass the title to the successor but not always the assets. In conventional succession planning, where the physical asset is there, both the title and the assets pass to the successor”

“My role essentially is to develop talent internally as the director of Tata Management Training Centre. We need to do that because there is shared ethos and shared history, which one can leverage,” he says.

David, while advocating grooming leaders within notes that succession planning management must be done carefully.

“In the process of succession planning management, people may pass the title to the successor but not always the assets. In conventional succession planning, where the physical asset is there, both the title and the assets pass to the successor. Assets here are information and insight. People say business continuity but I don’t think it is done with a certain amount of care. There is also a trend where the outgoing person continues as a consultant (with the company). It is not in his interests then to pass on all the insights,” he explains.

According to him, while development programmes should definitely be invested in, sometimes, if an organisation is foraying into a new area, for instance, it is better to get someone from outside.

“Hire for that competence then and not just experience,” he says.

Among other things, a clear tangible benefit of grooming talent within is lower costs when promoting internally over external hires.

The post Should leaders be hired or developed internally? appeared first on HR Katha.

What are the factors that limit women?

Women being natural care-givers, place their family on priority. On many occasions, they may tend to prioritize domestic responsibilities, responsibilities towards spouse, child care and elderly care, over their career aspirations and financial independence. While being the strong pillar of the family, they juggle with multiple roles and strive to bring their best, in every role they play. Multiple responsibilities often lead to a forced choice, between their career growth and their family. Independence and Career Growth, automatically, take a back seat and leads to them quitting the workforce, thereby increasing the gap in representation at leadership levels.

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Here, the diversity and inclusion principle of an organisation assumes importance. Companies must structure their culture and drive change across the entire employee pipeline to encourage more women to be a part of their workforce, and progressively climb the corporate ladder into the C-suite.

How is Sodexo women-friendly and gender-inclusive?

Diversity and inclusion have been the DNA of Sodexo since its inception. Regardless of the country we operate in, our work culture is attuned to interacting with the local communities, getting the best local talent onboard, nurturing promising talent and streamlining the system. Sodexo believes in extending opportunities to all employees, that help them discover themselves and bring their whole self to work. Women, along with minorities, are recognized and rewarded for their diverse ideas, perspectives and attitudes that contribute to the growth of the company. 31% of the workforce at Sodexo BRS India already consists of women and we are constantly striving to achieve a better ratio and attain the perfect balance.

In 2014, Sodexo launched the internal study to explore and understand the correlation between gender-balanced management and performance. Part two was released in 2018.

We now have over five years of data, covering 50,000 managers in 70 entities worldwide, that suggests gender-balanced teams outperform those that are not gender-balanced, and the optimal mix of gender is 40% to 60% women. A gender inclusive work culture scores much higher on key business performance indicators; hence, our efforts are aggressively directed towards achieving this goal in the minimum possible time.

Many concrete steps are being taken internally, to ensure progress on this aim.

1. Extending Maternity Benefit – Motherhood is a wonderful and enriching experience, be it through natural birth, adoption or surrogacy. New born babies need maximum time and care from their mothers. Sodexo recognizes this inherent need and allows every female employee to avail maternity leave benefit according to the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 and its subsequent amendments. Women can avail this benefit twice during their service in the company. Women employees are also granted pre-maternity and extended unpaid maternity leaves, on a case-to-case basis, depending on the complexity of the situation.

2. Co-Sharing of Child-Care expenses – Sodexo is empathetic to motherhood and we understand that a woman can only work with complete motivation and sincerity when she is confident that her baby is well taken care of, while they are at work. We offer financial assistance for availing crèche and daycare facilities for children up to the age of 8. This assistance covers 2 children of every female employee.

3. Condensed working hours – For resolving complex situations that may occur in life, Sodexo offers condensed working hours, so that an employee can optimize his/her time at work and at home, for best possible results and enable greater flexibility in time, to ease responsibilities. This offer can be utilized by employees who have been in continuous service for more than 12 months. Working hours can be reduced upto 4 hours/day and has a subsequent proportionate reduction in annual compensation between 20% to 50%. The maximum period an employee can avail this arrangement is, two years.

4. Work from home – Employees in support functions can work from home, one day in a week. That helps enhance productivity and manage work – life balance. Under this policy, employees who have served continuously for 12 months can avail this offer.

5. Sabbatical – Incase of personal exigencies, demise in the family, need for parents to take time off work to focus on their education of their adolescent children, medical care etc, employees on a need basis have been granted an unpaid sabbatical and the organisation has extended support, to ensure their personal responsibilities are taken care off and employees can return to normalcy and resume work with enhanced motivation.

The International Women’s Day is a constant reminder every year of the progress that we have made towards achieving women empowerment and gender balance at the workplace and beyond. While the journey has begun, there is still a lot more to be achieved. With a firmer resolve and better commitment, organisations can certainly challenge the status quo and build a more gender inclusive and diverse environment for a healthier future.

The post Women at the Work – old work policies, administered differently ! appeared first on HR Katha.

Hiring right should be at the heart of every successful HR strategy. It probably is a rather broad term that is thrown around casually, but the fact remains that a bad hire can lead to disastrous results for an organisation. Are you sure you have the right strategies in place? Are your talent management tools sound enough to ensure you choose just the right person for a job?

While organisations and HR leaders have their own ways and means to judge the perfect candidate for a role, a people-assessment tools provider often makes the job easier. One such trusted organisation is Thomas Assessments. HRKatha spoke in detail with Sundara Rajan, co-founder, Thomas Assessments India who shared his thoughts on the significance of hiring the right resource.

“Typically, bad hires impact the organisation in two ways. The direct impact becomes visible quickly in the form of poor performance. But there is also a more insidious indirect impact, in the form of ignoring or violation of company values. These lead to interpersonal issues amongst colleagues causing the morale of the team to dip. Apart from losing opportunities, lowering revenue and missing deadlines due to poor performance, the time taken from entry to exit of such bad hires drains other team members and the manager. The real risk is the negative impact on the team and organisation’s morale,” Rajan says.

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The company’s budget suffers the most because of a wrong hire. According to an article on an international job site, the cost of a poor hiring decision can be as much as $240,000 per person. The covers not just the person’s salary, but it can and will include loss of sales due to the inefficiencies of the concerned employees, unfinished work, legal costs and the beating the brand may take. Add to it the cost of hiring, training and bringing on board a fresh resource!

“Typically, bad hires impact the organisation in two ways. The direct impact becomes visible quickly in the form of poor performance. But there is also a more insidious indirect impact, in the form of ignoring or violation of company values. These lead to interpersonal issues amongst colleagues causing the morale of the team to dip”

The troubles don’t end there. You also risk ruining the customer experience and the culture of the company. Is it worth it? Clearly not. Hence, a lot of effort needs to be put into better scrutiny of a candidature before signing on the dotted line.

According to Rajan, the following three check points should assure you that you have ‘hired right’:
• Candidates have the technical/functional skills required to do the job they are chosen for.
• Candidates inherently have the behaviour that is demanded on the job (being communicative, being attentive, being a self-starter).
• Candidates have the emotional intelligence required to manage the demands on them on a regular basis. (This is especially important for those who are in customer-facing roles).

Why hire right?

Zeroing in on the right person is something that is on the minds of every HR professional. Experts today leading the function in various organisations agree that it is critical that the hiring process is carefully looked into, otherwise the repercussions can be telling.
“Hiring right refers to a cultural fit, a technically-sound fit, a person who is a subject matter expert; if the person is a leader then she/he should have sound leadership qualities. Some jobs require good communication skills. Personally, I will prefer a person with energy and drive and initiative for such a position. These are the traits to look out for. If the candidate scores high on these aspects, you are hiring right,” says SV Nathan, partner and chief talent officer, Deloitte India.

“People hyperinflate their resumes often. When you get into some level of detail during the interview process and notice a gap, then it should be a clear no-no”

“The price of a bad hire has far-reaching consequences for any business including cost of recruitment and training as well as impact on staff morale. It jeopardises the future of business. It is imperative that you put in the right efforts in your hiring channels to ensure that you get a good fit for the role. Organisations need to design their hiring processes to make sure quality talent is hired. What is most important is that organisations define their talent strategies. You need to look at a strategy determining what you really want in terms of talent coming into your organisation,” says Pradeep Varghese, HR leader – talent acquisition, Cargill India.

Behavioural assessment

When investing, one is often warned about how ‘past performance may not be indicative of future results’. With hiring though, the opposite just may be true. Before making an offer to a candidate, often a thorough reference check is done to ensure the person to be hired is best suited for the role. Fair! Similarly, if careful attention is paid to some behavioural instincts of a potential hire, a lot can be deduced about her/his future capabilities in a company. This eventually can help avoid a lot of heartburn later.

“When you’re hiring people, it is very important to ensure that you are hiring for the culture of the organisation. It is not just about filling in a role or a number or getting a person on board. Each organisation is very unique in terms of its value proposition and the aspects that will help the organisation and the person grow. This is where behavioural assessments during interviews play a very important role,” says Varghese adding how the interviews and assessments at Cargill are tailored around the company’s values.

“By making behavioural assessments a part of your hiring process, you are determining the applicants’ behavioural traits to predict their future performance. The specific traits that you will assess will determine the success of the candidates in their job. The challenge for employers is to identify and hire employees who fit their work culture. You will only want to hire candidates whose beliefs and behaviour systems align with your organisational culture,” adds Varghese.

The Thomas Solution

Rajan from Thomas Assessments India agrees the points raised by both Nathan and Varghese are valid and must be paid attention to. He further throws light on how behavioural tendencies displayed by a candidate can prove to be very critical for the selection process.

“While recruiting, our urge to fill the position tends to override some critical considerations, such as inherent behaviour and behaviour under pressure, which are not easy to detect. Often, we tend to focus on the functional skills and past experiences and arrive at a decision,” he cautions.

“When you’re hiring people, it is very important to ensure that you are hiring for the culture of the organisation. It is not just about filling in a role or a number or getting a person on board”

Thomas’ behavioural-profiling tools can help the recruiting team and managers to have prior knowledge of the candidates’ behaviour. The team then is armed with information that can be probed during the interview to identify the behavioural reactions of the candidates. With questions that focus on how the candidates will behave and handle commonly-occurring situations at work, one can get an insight into their ability to calibrate behaviour at work.

Talking further about the tools that can be of help, Rajan says, “Thomas’ Personal Profile Analysis along with Human Job Analysis can help the recruiting teams identify the extent of fit in the candidates’ behaviour with the job demands. The Thomas Report provides a detailed set of questions to ask the candidates, which can help the recruiting teams to select the candidates with the right fit”.

Pitfalls

Skills undoubtedly are important, but so are values. A candidate may have all the requisite skills for a particular role. However, during the course of the interview, if any aspect of the candidate’s behaviour raises a red flag, it cannot be ignored because it may lead to serious repercussions going forward.

Here is where sound interviewing skills come into play.

“If I find a person is lying, it is an immediate red flag. If there is a gap between what is written in the resume and what a candidate says in person, then it is a concern. People hyperinflate their resumes often. When you get into some level of detail during the interview process and notice a gap, then it should be a clear no-no. I am hiring let’s say, for a technical job. The person may claim to have skills but actually does not; if I bring them on board, it is a bad hire. The person needs to have initiative and drive too,” explains Nathan.

Herein, Rajan lists some of the quick and easy red flags to watch out for:
• Arriving late for the interview
• Difficulty in making eye contact
• Difficulty in explaining gaps in education or work history
• Inability to explain one’s contribution in a past job
• Complaining about past colleagues, managers
• Lack of any memorable event in the past jobs
• Moving jobs within a year of joining repeatedly
• Never having faced failure

The significance of hiring right can never be overstated in an organisation. It is eventually the human resource that will contribute to the company’s success. Hence, it is critical that HR invests the time and effort into hiring the right person for a particular role, whether using external available tools or one’s own fine judgement. In the end, it is a person’s values that will determine her/his and the organisation’s performance and growth.

The post Hiring right: Is HR doing enough? appeared first on HR Katha.

With new and advanced technologies at hand to render help now, it has become possible for HR personnel to invest more time in understanding the business of the company and contribute towards producing quantitative results— in terms of increasing the productivity level of employees and keeping them motivated to perform better. HRMS software have really made the life of HR professionals very easy by automating most of the repetitive, time consuming and non-productive tasks.

It is high time the companies updated their HR technology policies, to allow their HR department to be more agile and capable of contributing to the direct growth of the organisation. Generally, smaller enterprises feel that everything is going fine as long as the organisation is small and so is the workforce. But that may not be wise. As the business grows and more employees are hired, it becomes essential to adopt new technologies to stay ahead of competition.

An HRMS software is exactly what is required to give organisations the edge over their competitors. It takes care of all the day-to-day tasks of HR— maintaining the payroll cycles, managing leaves and attendance of employees, and so on. Platforms such as Kredily also provide other useful features, such as an ESS system and a social-interaction platform for employees, called Machax.

Companies face a number of issues while using conventional systems, but here’s how a new-age HRMS technology helps them overcome all of those as follows:

Securing and storing data: The traditional method of storing employee and HR data was in the form of files and papers. Naturally, this required a lot of storage space. With time, this practice got replaced by spread sheets, which were prone to human errors. A good HRMS offers an answer to all these problems, allowing you to store unlimited employee data with security features that prevent sharing of the data with any third-party client.

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It also allows you to create documents and store them safely, which saves a lot of time that would have otherwise gone into sorting piles of files.

Securing and storing data: The traditional method of storing employee and HR data was in the form of files and papers. Naturally, this required a lot of storage space. With time, this practice got replaced by spread sheets, which were prone to human errors. A good HRMS offers an answer to all these problems, allowing you to store unlimited employee data with security features that prevent sharing of the data with any third-party client. It also allows you to create documents and store them safely, which saves a lot of time that would have otherwise gone into sorting piles of files.

Employee self-service: The ESS systems allow the employees to post queries to HR on the server and apply for leaves and holidays. The staff members can also check their salary structure and manage their leaves. Earlier, the HR had to spend a lot of time attending to various employee queries, but now they can use this time to focus more on strategic planning.

Complying with statutory guidelines: Non-compliance with statutory guidelines can have major implications for the company, in the form of fines and penalties. Now the HR does not have to take care of all the legal implications. Kredily’s HRMS has simplified most compliances such as PF, ESI, PT, and TDS.

Payroll management: Payroll processing is the most important task of the HR. It involves calculation of wage, bonuses and reimbursements, and also appraisals. The manual way of managing payroll processing involved use of pen and ink, calculators and spreadsheets. All of these were prone to mistakes and consumed a lot of time. Wrongly paid wages can lead to employee dissatisfaction and chaos. Kredily’s HRMS helps manage payroll processing in compliance with all statutory guidelines.

Leave and attendance management: The days of using classroom registers and spreadsheets to manage attendance and leaves are over. Kredily’s HRMS provides the web clock-in and clock-out feature to take care of the same. It also has a biometric system to manage attendance and gives real-time information about the number of leaves of each employee.

Making lives easier for HR, HRMS allows you to focus more on planning a roadmap for the skill building of the employees. By letting technology handle the repetitive, mundane and monotonous work, it ensures an increase in employee productivity and creates a better culture, where everybody can grow and achieve bigger goals.

The post Five ways modern HRMS solve traditional issues faced by HR appeared first on HR Katha.

Sundara Rajan, Co- founder, Thomas Assessments India, a global provider of people assessment tools and the only provider with bespoke Education and Sport divisions, is of the view that failing to foresee changes is a major factor that causes a team leader to lose focus.

These changes could be in the business cycle, technology, societal and by extension employee aspirations, hyper-competition or government inclinations towards the business. It is the sign of a good leader who foresees the changes and acts to pre-empt the challenge and prepare the organisation for appropriate measures well in advance. “No change comes with a prior announcement. The good leader senses the changes ahead of others and prepares his company to face them,” Rajan says.

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These challenges are faced by every possible sector in the country today. Whether telecom, auto, financial services or retail, every organisation needs to identify leaders not just on the basis of their talents to oversee the execution of business mandates but also the ability to understand scenarios and plan accordingly. The onus, Rajan believes lies a lot on sound HR departments in organisations. “The evolved HR teams monitor the business environment in which they function and take changes quite seriously. Some of the employee-friendly policies of past few years emerge from such understanding of factors and the need to protect employees from the negative impact of external changes,” he says.

It is up to the HR function to also ensure, he believes, the mental well-being of employees that will eventually make able leaders. “Many sectors in the industry are witnessing the start of a hyper-competitive era. This change in the business environment increases the demand on the mental abilities and emotional intelligence of the employees to cope with extra demands that come along with. While most companies focus on the physical comforts, few give attention to the mental well-being of the employees,” says Rajan. Herein, he emphasises the need for leaders to be high on Emotional Quotient.

“No change comes with a prior announcement. The good leader senses the changes ahead of others and prepares his company to face them”

A leader sensitive to his team’s needs will only motivate his or her colleagues to push the envelope and set higher benchmarks.

Expert Speak

The issues Rajan raises are well-agreed by HR leaders who take very seriously the idea of a capable leader. They agree there could be situations when the best of talent might get distracted and emphasise on the need for HR to be more sensitive to warning bells. They add how yet another major reason for leaders to derail is when there is a mismatch between a role and the competencies and passion of the candidate chosen to take up the particular responsibility.

“Leaders require different kinds of competencies to succeed. Potential is not only about any functional competency. It is about certain leadership behavioural competencies, which need to be demonstrated at different stages of business lifecycle, which lead to a successful outcome & generate value for the enterprise,” says Amit Das, Director – Human Resources, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Das further adds that there could be situations when the strategic imperatives and the related business ecosystem are not aligned with an individual’s aspirations or when leaders are not able to have people in their teams who can think differently. “While I have seen leaders being successful in one organisation, they have failed in others. This happens when the core values of the leader are not aligned with the organisational culture. Also, the best of business strategies fail due to lack of right cultural alignment within the organisation leadership team,” he explains.

Deepali Bhardwaj, Head – HR, Cushman & Wakefield has a simple point to make about the issue – “we don’t allow them to fail”. “For us, leadership development for a particular role starts at the management trainee level; when we hire candidates from the campus. Typically, when you have such a fast-track career, it tends to get to people’s heads very quickly. This is the point of check. The moment you sense something like this, you step back and offer them constructive feedback,” she says.

“While I have seen leaders being successful in one organisation, they have failed in others. This happens when the core values of the leader are not aligned with the organisational culture”

Bhardwaj believes in providing opportunities to potential leaders in the form of interim roles before they can be given a larger responsibility. She insists on experiential learning that will build better leaders. Put employees in difficult and challenging situations and let them learn from them. Let them be managed and directed by a mentor if need be and build them to be better leaders, she believes.

The Thomas Solution

Rajan is of the view that an external solution provider can help HR teams get the better of such challenging situations. HR experts agree to the need for such solutions that will eventually help individuals be more excited about a role and be driven towards common goals of the team and the company. It is extremely critical, he thinks, the need for an organisation to know its employees better, both in terms of their capabilities and need. On the need for external HR tools, Rajan explains how such solutions help companies to stay focussed on larger goals while building a better understanding of their employees.

“By their nature, organisations focus on business and profits and tend to consider all employees capable of taking care of themselves, irrespective of the impact from working in a particular company. Tools and expertise which are created to understand people, their motives, emotions and their ability to cope with change help these organisations to understand the unique characteristics of each employee and identify the need of each employee,” he says. Talking particularly about Thomas Assessments, he vouches for the several tools that can help organisations achieve this purpose.

“We don’t allow them to fail. For us, leadership development for a particular role starts at the management trainee level; when we hire candidates from the campus”

Rajan says, “Thomas Assessments have a series of diagnostic tools that help companies understand the cognitive, behavioural and emotional intelligence of each of the employees and identify the right measure to build them in their careers. At times, these diagnostic tools indicate the need for special attention to an employee on a specific area that helps the company to focus their efforts.”

The post Your team leaders can perform much better. Are you listening? appeared first on HR Katha.

Right on top of my list is your comfort with respect to two critical aspects of everyday life for us today—social media and technology. I mention them together because I increasingly see comfort with one is linked to familiarity with and ability to learn the other quickly. With almost every employee on social media today, an HR professional who expresses disdain at say, LinkedIn, can be in serious trouble. You may not be a fan of social media, but unfortunately, being ignorant is still not an excuse. Similarly, with the spread of HR Information Systems— which have the potential to make your life really simple if you make the effort to familiarise yourself with them— cutting yourself off is a very bad idea for your HR prospects.

The best HR analytics tools free you up from admin work to add real value to your organisation, be it in the area of performance analytics, capacity analytics, capability or even employee churn. And all these happen to be critical areas with the potential to make a real impact on your contribution.

Employee engagement using gamification: Your employees are also consumers, and it is increasingly obvious that consumers love winning. Simple everyday tasks with a small prize, be it swag or even an announcement over the intranet, can make a major difference in terms of response and engagement. Understanding and developing applications for gamification are activities everyone will give an HR professional full marks for, today. However, you must remember that setting targets is not gamification. Making the employee love the idea of how to get there, is.

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Onboarding: This is an old virtue, but surprisingly, one we still get feedback on. Blame it on higher turnover rates, or even the higher cost of hiring. Firms increasingly value a solid onboarding process. It is a great way to make a new employee get comfortable, as well as deliver a resource that starts contributing faster. With inductions crunched to an ever smaller window of weeks if not days or less, an onboarding process that is able to drum in the key aspects of a firm’s professional, operational and cultural aspects effectively, is very valuable. Increasingly, this is also a cost issue, as some firms realised that their onboarding costs were simply too high. That means, you as an HR professional, must be right on top of the process. There is nothing bosses dislike more than an employee clueless about a key aspect of the organisation after say six months, despite an elaborate onboarding. Let us look at the case of the employee who missed realising how critical the firm’s offsites were to the CEO of a small firm, where he used to have a detailed one-on-one with every employee. He assumed they were all fun and games, going by the pictures he saw, but was caught unprepared at the first one. The CEO blamed HR. Poor onboarding is said to be responsible for as much as 20 per cent of early leavers in key sectors, such as IT, BFSI and more.

Data sanctity: This is another very interesting quality we have observed. Yes, in this day of information overload and sharing, understanding the need for protection of data and information is highly important. Just as CXOs hate to get any big news after their subordinates do, an HR skill that gives importance to data protection over sharing will generally be valued. Data can be of a personal nature, from employee backgrounds to salaries and even specific incidents. We have all seen how the most innocuous ‘leaks’ can lead to disastrous outcomes, including employee attrition. For HR personnel, everything is professional, and needs to be treated as such.

Comfort: If you wish to be good at HR, make sure you can handle the really uncomfortable situations well. It can be something as simple as a fear of public speaking, to something as technical as learning the best negotiation tactics. But an HR skill you simply cannot miss is to be unflustered in all situations. Employees really do look at the HR department and people for cues all the time, and you should never forget that. My favourite HR professionals have aced this single quality. Be it good news or poor tidings, it’s a skill to ensure that the same is communicated clearly, leaving little doubt for misinterpretation, and keeping the doors open for any clarifications. So, maybe getting comfortable does mean mastering more than one quality. But remember, this is one quality that defines you, even after you get back from work.

The post Five best ways to future-proof your HR skills appeared first on HR Katha.

Carrie Beckstorm’s exclusive interview with HRKatha, this ‘Women’s Day’

What is Power Speaking Inc.? Can you explain its over-arching goal in brief?

At Power Speaking, we are all about transformation—and the journey it takes to make it happen.

Our organisation is a global, women-owned business that delivers presentation and communication skills training for people at all career stages. For over three decades, our dynamic training and coaching teams have helped 300,000+ individuals around the world elevate their success by becoming better communicators.

Our conference speaking, presentation, and communication skills workshops are steeped in research, and delivered by skilled, dynamic master facilitators. The workshops are designed to fulfill the needs and demands of the target audience.

Via executive videos, participants benefit from the advice of C-level executives, which lend credibility to the strategies and best practice techniques taught in our programmes.

From our high stakes, Speaking Up: Presenting to Decision Makers sessions to our exclusive Confident Speaking for Women workshops, we meet people where they are and give them the training, coaching, tools, and inspiration they require to shine.

We’re passionate about the proven value of highly interactive, personalised training. Whether it’s a large-group workshop, a small-group class with individualised coaching, or a one-on-one personal coaching session, participants will learn how to use our step-by-step techniques to engage audiences, connect with clients, and get buy-in from decision makers.

How does power speaking help to create leaders and influencers and how has it been adapted to suit Indian markets?

Power speaking helps create leaders and influencers at all levels of an organisation, and is at the heart of what we do. For instance, when we teach individual contributors how to deliver their core message quickly, clearly, and coupled with storytelling narratives, we set them on a path to influence the outcomes in their organisations.

When we convince an engineer or scientist that the business imperative or meaning behind their data is more important than the data itself, we clear the way for brilliant ideas that make for profitable business.

When we show a mid-level or senior manager how to think like a C-level executive when asking for support for a promising project, we groom more leaders who can move the company forward, faster.

Thinking globally and acting locally is key to ensuring our programmes are adapted to the various markets, such as India, in which we do business. We have certified master facilitators in India who have immense expertise in the local community and business, and are therefore skilled at tailoring our programmes to the Indian culture.

In the Indian context, how can we connect power speaking with women leaders in particular?

Any woman looking to become a more powerful communicator at work, and use those skills to build a successful career, will benefit from our new Confident Speaking for Women workshop.

As we developed this workshop, we interviewed dozens of women leaders in the fields of high-tech, the sciences, nonprofit bodies, education, government, and the arts. Their insights and stories confirmed what our research revealed— If women want to lead, be heard, and move people to action, they need to be Clear, Confident, and Courageous with their communication.

Balance drives a better working world. That is our theme for International Women’s Day, and it’s a campaign we intend to celebrate not just today but for a long time to come.

For more information on our Confident Speaking for Women workshop and other programmes, contact Power Speaking Inc. master facilitators and senior business leads in India: Payal Gandhi Hoon – payal@powerspeaking.com, Anshu Arora at anshu@powerspeaking.com

Please share more about the Confident Speaking for Women workshop. What are its goals, objectives and overarching values?

The ‘3 Cs’ – Clear, Confident, and Courageous – are at the heart of Confident Speaking for Women.

It is a three-hour workshop, wherein we focus on the following outcomes for women:
• Learn in detail how to be clear, confident, and courageous.
• Listen to advice from successful women executives featured in a series of video clips.
• Understand how “talk traps” undermine conversations.
• Practise increasing impact through direct verbal language.
• Comprehend how body language and vocal power project authority (or not).
• Evaluate your communication strengths, and walk away with a plan for improvement.

Throughout the programme, participants get opportunities for rigorous practice of these skills, and receive feedback from our master facilitators.

How do you bring in the agility factor in you programmes to suit individual needs?

You’ve hit on an ingredient that is critical to the success of our programmes and ability to transform people into more powerful, effective communicators.

In addition to group facilitation and coaching, many of our workshops include one-on-one coaching sessions with verbal and written feedback. The feedback is highly structured and tailored to each individuals’ strengths and opportunities for improvement.

Multiple personalised sessions are provided throughout the workshop, which gives participants an opportunity to immediately apply the coaching and enhance their skills and impact.

You use research to develop a deep understanding of the market needs. Please elaborate on this and share some insights.

Steeping ourselves in the literature is the foundation of all that we do—but our research practice goes far beyond mere academics. Through individualised video and audio interviews of leaders in the field, which are featured throughout our workshops, we capture the pulse and the first-person narrative of their career journeys with focus on the topic of communication.

How does the academic research square with their experiences? What is their personal statement regarding the content? How would they mentor and guide the next generation? What is their advice from the trenches?

Let us point to a specific example with Confident Speaking for Women. We have heard for years of women’s desire to explore articulate communication within a safe environment. We spoke to dozens of women, and analysed and bucketed information into the three themes that now serve as the basis of the workshop – clarity, confidence and courage.

To understand the Indian context, we captured the insights from three credible sources:

Starting more than 10 years ago, Bindu Garapaty, a valued client and senior director at Gilead, started teaching a variety of women’s courses in India.

Payal Gandhi Hoon, who has served over 15 sectors and 36 clients with an experience of 16 plus years is a former mentor to the Cherie Blaire Foundation for Women. She has specialised in cross-cultural communication and women’s programmes.

Anshu Arora holds an advanced degree in communication studies and has 18 years of experience facilitating her train-the-trainer courses.

Payal and Anshu continue to inform our work by serving as master facilitators and business development leads in India for Power Speaking, Inc.

Why is upskilling important for all employees irrespective of the industry and function?

Given the rapid rate at which technology is reinventing the workplace, employees must continue to develop and evolve their knowledge and skills in order to remain relevant.

Key skills employers seek in employees continue to be social capital skills —verbal and written communication skills, the ability to work collaboratively in teams, and to influence others.

So clearly, refining one’s communication skills can benefit any employee regardless of industry and role. And the case is strengthened by the fact that ineffective communication within the workplace can be very costly. For instance, a US survey has found miscommunication costs businesses with up to 100 staff members an average of US$420,000 per year.

We at Power Speaking Inc. are pacing with the times and have introduced digital workbooks and a vast library of on-demand microlearning videos, which support the ongoing development of programme alumni anytime, anywhere.

How do people identify the need for taking a course, and how does it help develop their careers?

Simply put, better speaking means better results.

However, speaking success means different things to different people.

To some, success may be advancing up the corporate ladder by becoming a composed and influential spokesperson. To others, it can mean learning how to truly impress decision makers, or how to present dense technical material in a way that’s actually compelling. Or it can even mean presenting as a key note speaker at a conference. Then again, success can simply be developing the courage to stand up in front of others.

That’s where Power Speaking Inc. comes in. We help employees and leaders become the presenters they’ve always wanted to be—focussed, relaxed, natural speakers who can engage others and get results.

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From being a human judgement-led process, which generally starts with looking at CVs and calling the candidates, hiring decisions entail a lot more today. In these times of startup culture, where talent has an upper edge in deciding where to move, with plenty of options to choose from, hiring has become a tricky process. One cannot just afford to rely on the CV or the intuition alone and risk getting a wrong fit for a position.

There is abundant data and relevant information out there, which can enable hiring managers to make better hiring decisions. However, unfortunately, despite the availability of enough data and information about the candidates, most recruiters either lack the interest or the competency to make the best use of it. This data, if utilised and analysed well, can provide insights that can ensure effective hiring decisions.

There are three aspects that together ensure the best hiring decisions—talent intelligence, intuitive technology, and job classification. Here’s what each of these entails:

Talent intelligenceEffective hiring decisions largely depend on how much information and data about a candidate one can get. It is important to enrich the candidate profile as much as possible. This can be accomplished by getting information from multiple sources, in addition to the resume, such as, social network websites, job portals, past experience, projects and referrals. The additional information helps a recruiter or hiring manager validate what may have been gathered through assessments or one-on-one interviews.

When there are multiple job positions and multiple profiles, ensuring that the recruiter and hiring manager spend their time with the right profiles becomes extremely critical. With PeopleStrong’s ‘Alt-Recruit’ platform experience, the power of unified recruitment can be enjoyed, which helps boost your recruitment engine at a single place. Thanks to its integrated sourcing to digitally map the profile with the job; verification on the basis of data available on 23+ social media websites, seven major job boards, and its candidate pool maintained over the last decade; it provides the most relevant profiles to hiring managers. This has improved hiring mangers’ efficiency by over four per cent and has also resulted in a seven per cent reduction in the time taken to fill positions for few of the major clients.

Intuitive technologyYour hiring can’t be efficient if it’s not backed by strong and new-age technology solutions. Right from sourcing to offer generation, recruitment can be redefined at every stage in the following ways:

1) Automated assessments combined with employability, cognitive and psychometric tests

2) Feedbacks via mobile app making it simpler than a pen and paper feedback

3) Video interviews and everything being accomplished with a few clicks on the mobile phone

Job classificationAn important step to finding the best fit is to clearly define one’s expectations from the job, unlike simply providing the job description and experience required, which is what happens in most cases. Instead of the traditional job description, it’s time we look at each job in terms of the kind and amount of work we do.

This is why, in PeopleStrong’s job taxonomy, every job is essentially looked at in terms of the five different kinds of work one is expected to do:

1) Technical

2) Logical/decision-making

3) Conversational

4) Design

5) Emotional/sensory

For instance, the job of a database administrator involves technical work, such as SQL programming, managing servers and databases, managing the project overall and implementing best practices. These make up the logical part of the work, while grievance handling and vendor relations form the conversational part. It is in the work with respect to contextual understanding that the design part comes in; and lastly, to manage people and teams, one needs to have emotional and sensory abilities.

Every Job is divided into work and type of work, and every work input skill is mapped to its neural network, to get all the relevant skills for the job. The following illustration depicts how:

The best hiring decisions are a factor of the three essentials as explained above and neither of the three can be ignored. These three aspects together form the thumb rule for deciding on the best. So, keep these in mind the next time you set out on a hiring spree and revel in the resulting positive outcome.

PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

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Successful business ideas are conceived long before they are actually implemented, and HR Anexi is a classic example of how ideation, planning and careful execution of an idea can make a business successful and sustainable. The human resource consulting organisation was founded in 2007, but its actual journey started much earlier.

Having completed 10 years in the business, Ashish Arora, founder and managing director, HR Anexi, shares that the idea was conceived long back in 1993, when he was working with the Otis Elevator Company in an HR role, and had to liaise with various service providers for different HR processes. “I wondered why one should have to deal with so many vendors; why there can’t be a one-stop solution to all HR processes, right from recruitment to retirement,” he says.

It was then at the age of 26 that Arora decided that by the time he turns 40 he would start his own HR consulting company that caters to the entire gamut of HR requirements. He was also aware that establishing a firm of that kind required multi-disciplinary skills and, vast knowledge and experience in not just HR but finance, sales and business management.

With that in mind, Arora sharpened his axe for the next few years, as he took up a sales responsibility in a tech company in year 2000 to gain exposure in sales and marketing. He then headed the executive education at the Indian School of Business at Hyderabad, which provided him valuable experience in managing P&L. Before founding HR Anexi, Arora started a recruitment consulting company in 2004, which grew into a temporary staffing firm by 2005.

“Until a decade back, SMEs or family-run businesses were mostly closed to the idea of hiring HR expertise to manage their people well. Now, with the second and third generation entrepreneurs taking over those businesses, mentalities are changing. However, these companies, although rapidly growing in revenue are still stuck in the rut of their operational processes as they also face conflicts between the old and the new ways of doing things.”

“In 2007, when I turned 40, I founded HR Anexi after having gained experience in sales, P&L and managing a business, as I had planned years ago,” Arora shares. HR Anexi was conceived to be a one-stop-solution for all HR requirements, because, according to Arora, despite the existence of so many global HR service specialists, there were hardly any service providers who could offer a bouquet of all that comes under the HR domain, ranging from talent acquisition, talent development, performance management, payroll, learning and development and so on.

The company now has two major business units— one caters to family-owned businesses or SMEs offering them end-to-end HR management solutions, and the other provides leadership development services to global businesses.

Until a decade back, SMEs or family-run businesses were mostly closed to the idea of hiring HR expertise to manage their people well. Now, with the second and third generation entrepreneurs taking over those businesses, mentalities are changing. However, “These companies, although rapidly growing in revenue are still stuck in the rut of their operational processes as they also face conflicts between the old and the new ways of doing things,” Arora explains.

Identifying their need for an external partner, that can provide them end-to-end HR support and expertise, HR Anexi came out with holistic HR management offerings for small businesses. Not missing out on large organisations and global conglomerates, HR Anexi also forayed into providing leadership training with a strong focus on learning applicability in the real world.

Identifying a strong need for getting a real-world touch in the academic or training programmes, HR Anexi partnered with the global consulting firm, BlessingWhite. Arora shares that “Our leadership development programmes are based on research and experiences from the real world, such that the learners get access to both theoretical and practical aspects. We have ensured that our full-time trainers have all gained a significant hands-on experience in the areas, which they are training people for.”

The company partners with various HR technology companies for HRIS and analytics, and has also started work on an e-learning portal now, for which it is developing easily consumable in-house content in the form of short videos.

Having sustained the business for a decade now, Arora looks back at the ride through its inception and growth and gives the credit for its success to his formative years. Recalling his school days , he admits that,  “Whosoever you are today is deep-rooted in your childhood. It is embedded in the values and experiences you gained from your peers, parents or teachers.”

Arora recalls that during school he was fascinated by the game of table tennis and wanted to join the school group for the sport, but he was always shooed away by the seniors. His father told him that if he wanted to play the game well, he should learn from the best. With strong conviction, he went on to learn from the school table tennis champion.  He continued to practise the game with perseverance and gradually even beat the school champion, replacing him as the Number One.

Having shared this anecdote from his early years, Arora beautifully concludes, “Go play against the best. You might lose but your game will keep improving.”

 Promotional Feature 

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Money is often called the fuel for living. No wonder it is an important part of employment. But if it was that simple, no HR strategies would have had to exist. A lot of things that do not involve monetary compensation can also affect an employee’s will to work. Here are a few things that employers can do:

Offer cool job titles
ob titles endow every employee with a sense of importance, while making their position unique in the organisation. It is also what employees would identify themselves as, inside and outside the country. Assigning a job title they love to be associated with goes a long way in boosting employee pride and zeal to work.

Provide encouraging work environment
An encouraging work environment has a positive effect on every employee, right from the top of the pyramid, to the bottom. Making your office a place your employees would love to spend time in, is key to ensuring that they put those extra after-hours to work. Gaming corners, pantries and sleeping pods serve as additional bonuses to attract talent in droves.

Avoid shifting blame
No one likes being blamed, especially in front of their team. If the problem is not something that grievously injures the reputation or operations of the company, pinning the blame on any employee should be avoided. Instead, they should be made to realise what went wrong. This will make sure they feel more responsible about their performance.

Encourage and appreciate
A pat on the back is always the best catalyst to hard work. It makes the employee feel like his work is being noticed and recognised and motivates him to work better. The scale of the accomplishment is not a priority as every small bit contributes to building a better organisation.

Develop transparent work culture
A transparent company culture is imperative to retain employees. If the employees feel out of the loop with the vision and goals of the company they are working for, there can be a potential loss of synergy between how the employees carry out work, and how the management wants them to perform. Each employee is a part of the company and knowing how their work affects the company as a whole goes a long way in allowing them to perform smarter and better.

(The author is a member of the Product Marketing team at Mettl, one of India’s fastest growing assessment platforms and skill measurement company. Along with writing articles for HR, he has a tendency to tinker with gadgets in his free time and is also vocal about his love for Android.)

(An HR Promotional Initiative)

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Friends has earned its place as one of the most successful and iconic sitcoms of television history ever since it started airing in 1994. Each character in the series has a unique personality, presence and relevance in the show. From immortalised quotes and lines, to significant lessons in life, the show has inspired many. Here are a few personality traits envisioned in the show that we can directly relate to in our professional lives, in terms of workplace culture and ethics.

Chandler’s wit and creativity
Wit and creativity go hand in hand. Chandler’s witty responses have been instrumental in winning our hearts over. Creativity works wonders at the workplace. Let’s face it — not everyone is lucky to have an interesting job role. Witty personalities light up the atmosphere, making the job more fun. It is also an indispensable part of various job roles like marketing and media creation.

Monica’s management skills
Monica is probably one of the best examples of efficient management, and her culinary skills serve as the icing on the cake. Management qualities are one of the primary requirements for any one at the workplace, even those involved in the technical sphere. Being multi-talented is slowly becoming a deciding factor for job interviews, and good managerial qualities show up quite often in a fast-evolving work environment.

Joey’s helpfulness
‘How you doin?’ The iconic line made immortal by Joey conveys a lot of emotions, primarily the feeling of familiarity, friendliness and the willingness to help others. This is critical to teamwork and productivity at any workplace. A helpful attitude goes a long way in creating a strong bond among colleagues. A helpful person can be depended upon and trusted without second thoughts. More so, because team effort always reaps better results than individual attempts.

Ross’ sincere passion
Watching Ross evokes a feeling of sincerity. Everything about him – from his role to his pride in being a paleontologist screams passion. He could talk about his job continuously without getting tired. This is the kind of passion employees at today’s organisations, especially startups, should possess. A company can only flourish when all its employees work with great enthusiasm. Organisations can promote this by encouraging entrepreneurial traits and being open to new ideas.

Rachel’s style and confidence
An immaculate sense of style evokes confidence, and Rachel is probably its best example. Along with being confident, Rachel also knows how to put her point across. This is very important at the workplace as it defines one’s place in the flow. A good presenter is always favoured, as articulating a point clearly is a trait high in demand, especially in jobs where one has to constantly interact and deal with clients.

Five characters; five iconic personalities; a treasure trove of qualities and lessons for life! No wonder this seminal TV show has redefined generations and inspired workplace cultures, earning a special place in the hearts of many.

(The author is a member of the Product Marketing team at Mettl, one of India’s fastest growing assessment platforms and skill measurement company. Along with writing articles for HR, he has a tendency to tinker with gadgets in his free time and is also vocal about his love for Android.)

An HR Industry  Promotional Initiative

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The landscape of human resource management (HRM)has been changing at a rapid pace with the onset of new technology. And there is no sign of a slow-down as technology changes the way HR personnel have dealt with things, to make processes more streamlined and recruitment more refined.

So how has technology affected HRM? Technology has always had a unique answer to the need of the hour, and efficient management is critical to today’s world. Technology has changed the hiring process, selecting more appropriate candidates for each job, increasing efficiency and decreasing attrition.

How HR tech affects existing system
Dozens of innovative new technologies have been developed to help the entire human resource workflow, ranging from recruiting and shortlisting candidates, to talent management, tailored training procedures and workforce management.

Innovative software and platforms now help one select the suitable candidate for a job, with a skill-set that complements the profile and a psychometric assessment that suits the culture of the company. Cognitive test tools have been developed to cater to a wide range of skills, each having various requirements.

What HR Tech offers
A small business might require a small-scale scheduling tool, while large organisations will need full-scale HRM suites to manage their workforce.

These technologies have a wide variety of features built and customised to cater to the needs of the organisation and provide additional value to the HRM team.

Also, the support and information provided by the human resource tech companies also go a long way in improving the understanding of HRM, and how to make the most out of available resources.

Categories of HR tech available
Core human resource management: This involves shortlisting potential employees from a large pool of candidates, to find the best match through cognitive assessment, psychometric assessment and skill test, thus reducing time and cost per hire.

Talent Management: Talent-management software goes a long way in developing a comprehensive performance analysis report of every employee and suggesting training and employee development programmes along with compensation management.

Workforce Management: After the hire comes the process of integrating the new employee with the existing system, assigning roles and approaching the big-picture goals to achieve yields. Workforce management software enables the human resource team to manage attendance, payroll, scheduling and leaves with ease.

(The author is a member of the Product Marketing team at Mettl, one of India’s fastest growing assessment platforms and skill measurement companies. Along with writing articles for HR, Debarshi has a tendency to tinker with gadgets in his free time and is also vocal about his love for Android.)

(An HR Industry Promotional Initiative)

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“Hire character, train skill”. These are the words of Peter Schutz, former CEO of Porsche. It is often the topic of debate within human resource management circles, and for all the right reasons. What qualities do you look for in a fresher you are about to hire?

What is that one quality you can’t do without when you make the decision to recruit a new candidate? Is it the ability to write perfect bug-free codes? Or is it the capacity to solve algorithms at a breakneck speed? Or would you rather go for the gift of convincing people to buy your product without having second thoughts?

Would you prefer the ability to learn; to absorb every skill that you need him to acquire? Would you look for a passion to work towards the end-goal of the company? What are the pre-requisites? Often, the character and culture of the candidate go a long way in deciding the suitability of a hire for a particular company.

Personality, demeanour, creativity, experience, adaptability and the ability to learn are metrics you can’t change in a recruit. So how do you measure them? How do you objectify these traits into actionable figures which you can use for hiring?

Psychometric assessment is the key to that question. The candidate might have the perfect skill set for a company, but his values and ethics might not be in tandem with the culture of the business.

Personality, demeanour, creativity, experience, adaptability and the ability to learn are metrics you can’t change in a recruit. So how do you measure them? How do you objectify these traits into actionable figures which you can use for hiring?

There are two types of fresh graduates applying for a job.

Those who have their focus entirely on completing their degrees and acquiring the skills required for the profession they want to be associated with;

And those who use their time while studying to work in various places and gain a first-hand experience of the corporate world

The approach of the each type of candidates will be significantly different from that of the other. Which one would you prefer while hiring? The one who already has some experience in the field or the one with the technical know-how to tackle problems but without any idea of the culture and workflow of a corporate environment? Preliminary assessments go a long way in helping take this decision.

Remember, a gap in skills can be filled with training, but attitude is something you can never imbibe in someone. One either has it, or one doesn’t. It is beneficial to hire people with the right mindset and train them to acquire proper skills to be of additional value to the company. In Warren Buffet’s words, “in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”

(The author is a member of the product marketing team at Mettl, one of India’s fastest growing assessment platforms and skill measurement company. Along with writing articles for HR, Debarshi has a tendency to tinker with gadgets in his free time and is also vocal about his love for Android.)

(An HR Industry Promotional Initiative)

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Organisations have often strived to create conditions in which employees offer more of their capability and potential. In the modern age, we call the process – employee engagement. It is something based on trust, integrity, two-way commitment and communication between an organisation and its members.

It is held in such high esteem, primarily for the benefits it brings to the table. Also, the approach increases the chances of business success, contributing to organisational and individual performance, productivity and well-being. Varying from poor to great, employee engagement can be nurtured and increased phenomenally, or lost and thrown away.

Employee Engagement: What it means to you, me and everyone else
Engagement is an attitude. Employee engagement is waking up and thinking, “Great, I’m heading off to work. I know my action plans for the day. I have a couple of great ideas on how to do it well. And I’m looking forward to seeing the team and working well with them today.”

All in all, the engagement one seeks from his or her employees is directly derivative of the organisational leader at the time. For any head, it is important to ask, “Am I engaged myself?”

After all, it’s a bit much to ask for engagement, if you as a leader are not engaged.

There is a reason why engaged organisations, not merely employee-engaged organisations, have strong and authentic values. They present a clear evidence of trust and fairness based on mutual respect, where two-way commitments, oaths and promises – between employers and employees – are understood and fulfilled.

If people see that the leader is very closely attached or very closely engaged to the job that she or he is trying to deliver, they are more likely to come and join in the effort.

Employee engagement: What it means to employers
While the term itself is human resources, treating human beings like commodities never bodes well for anyone. Think of how slavery is scorned upon. Employees have often complained about their organisations dismissing their needs over rules, often viewing them more as contracts for their respective jobs.

Be hard and steady when you discuss numbers, yes. Allow leeway when you discuss humans. After all, numbers don’t react to decisions in a positive or negative manner, humans do.

Here, employee engagement is about drawing on our employees’ knowledge and ideas to improve product lines and services; come across as innovative about how we work.

Employee engagement will always be about our employees feeling loyal and proud to work for the organisation, and being great advocates of the organisation to our clients, users and customers. It is about going the extra mile to finish a piece of work.

Employee Engagement: What it is not
Employee engagement is not and cannot be achieved by a mechanistic approach. Here, ‘mechanistic approach’ implies a discretionary effort by manipulating employees’ commitment and emotions. In the modern age, employees tend to see through such attempts quickly and can often become cynical and disillusioned towards an organisation.

It’s best to not treat engagement that way; after all, it may very well be an organisational lifeboat that gives you a competitive edge someday.

(The author is senior associate – insight marketer, at Mettl. He is currently developing content around psychometric assessments and has previously published a book in the fantasy genre titled ‘Tempestatem’ in 2015.)

(An HR Industry Promotional Initiative)

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In 2014, a Deloitte research concluded that 78 per cent of business leaders rated retention and engagement as urgent or important. With the onset of the digital age, everybody simply knows everything. Some even call it social stamina — the ability to stay up to date via digital channels.

There’s also that bit about brand. Businesses across the globe are all trying to build an inclusive, energetic and multigenerational team. With a world moving into a new era, ‘engaging people’ emerged as one of the biggest competitive differentiators in business.

However, just as the world changed, so did the term, ‘engagement’. To understand that, we most definitely need to review what it once defined.

Traditional definition
Roots of employee engagement date back to as far as the late 1800s when Fredrick Taylor, a pioneer industrial engineer, studied how people’s attitude impacted their productivity in the steel industry.

This has taken the form of surveys in the modern era, and today, there are hundreds of different providers. The technology behind it uses analytics and benchmarking tools to help assess an employee’s level of engagement.
1. Sugar-coated version? It’s good, but the process fails to keep up with generational shifts.
2. Truth? It’s dead.

Ask yourself two questions
1. How frequently do you conduct an employee engagement measurement in your organisation?

In a Mettl survey, the result settled at 60 per cent of respondents citing it as an annual affair— a startling percentage, considering how annual appraisals are now revealed as a weak measure for anything. In fact, several pioneers suggest a push to a more continuous learning, appraisal model.

2. What new-age measure do you use to gauge employee engagement in your organisation?

By popular vote, several organisations choose work hours as a metric. This was an applause to the many unnoticed employees who may have, on occasion, stayed beyond the hours defined, including evenings and weekends. This is a great parameter to ascertain organisational alignment, albeit a flawed one.

Why? Simply because metrics differ within generations. While the baby boomers and gen X measure performance in hours, the millennials prefer productivity in spite of hours. Other metrics include networking within and outside a team. Of course, several other effective new-age metrics continue to surface.

While the first point really is moot to discuss, the second is one of vital importance. In a similar Mettl survey, not more than 10-15 per cent recognised the new-age metrics for engagement as viable.

Organisations have evolved. Economies have evolved. Why then do we continue to replicate methods of the past with engagement? That sounds an awful lot like North Korea and their limited access to the Internet. Never become an organisational North Korea.

(The author is senior associate – insight marketer, at Mettl. He is currently developing content around psychometric assessments and has previously published a book in the fantasy genre titled ‘Tempestatem’ in 2015.)

(An HR Industry Promotional Initiative)

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Workplace diversity is always a topic much talked about — diversity in race, diversity in culture, diversity in ethnicity. However, there is one kind just as important, if not more — diversity in generation.

Understanding the workforce is an organisational imperative; understanding the likely four generations — traditionalists, baby boomers, Gen X and millennials — that exist within organisational walls at once is of greater importance.

Can a multigenerational workforce co-exist? The following do’s might just help you crack this question:

Clarify the organisational DNA
Ask yourself what you want your organisation to look like, because hybrid workforce cohesion is impossible without clear vision. What kind of culture are you trying to bring to life? What kind of values are you trying to seed? What are the fundamental tenets you would like to bring to your organisation? These are questions that require answers.

More importantly, understand that the values that work for other organisations may not necessarily work for your own. This is because there is a blend of factors, and the identification of your organisation’s DNA is the key to answering those questions.

Strengthen communication
Strong and powerful communication does not merely imply a strong force of communication within the organisational ecosystem, but a consistent and clear vision. Ensure that the workforce is attuned to that vision — one the organisation is focussed on.

This is only bolstered by a couple of simple facts, including all levels within the organisation being extremely collaborative, highly approachable, and very articulate. ‘Articulate’ here implies cooperative solutions at the workplace.

Break the barriers of the mind
While mentoring programmes are great within any organisation, reverse mentoring needs to be encouraged too. Peer-to-peer learning is fairly ineffective because of the mindset of direct competition, while the senior-to-junior form of learning is just slightly more effective.

What if we reverse the latter? Since there is no direct form of competition between a junior- and senior- level employee, learning can and should be both ways — especially with the generation gap and new knowledge that successive generations bring into play.

There are always two sides to everything, and with a multigenerational workforce, even more. To forge a delicate layer of co-existence, it is imperative to understand different views. For example, the older generation might prefer mentoring by shadowing, while the younger would prefer a method of e-learning.

Harmonising the two views and reaching a form of mutual agreement will always be the key to a multigenerational co-existence.

(An HR Industry Promotional Initiative)

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By nature, human beings are social animals, and what has transformed us since the primitive ages is, learning.

By ‘learning’, we are not talking about classroom learning or the structured way of learning. What we are referring to is the natural way of learning, or rather, the social and informal way of learning.

For instance, do we need to teach a newborn how to cry? No, it’s a natural process. As babies grow, they ask questions to acquire knowledge and understand behaviour.

The same rule applies to an organisational environment as well.

Yes, organisations follow a structured way of learning, be it seminars or employee gatherings. While we are in no way discounting these traditional methods of learning, the impact of social learning is immense.

In an organisational setup, social learning always existed, but now we have added a new meaning to it, thanks to technology. In fact, social learning technologies have had a huge influence on several enterprise core processes — from recruiting, to training and developing talent. Besides, results are quickly measurable because social technologies have a direct and obvious effect on performance.

Latha Raj, transformation leader, IBM Analytics is a strong advocate of the same. She uses a Mettl-powered webinar platform to spread her share of insights on something we have come to call social learning.

“We’ve all heard of the 70:20:10 model,” Raj states. “For me, however, 100 per cent of my learning was derived from my interactions with peers and leaders.”

There is no denying the fact that organisations need to shift to newer forms of learning. A software or an app, for instance, comes quite handy. Developers will need to understand:

1. Who they are addressing in the market

2. Who their clients are

3. What user experience will be derived from the product

These are commonly known points, true. But these are also inspired from delving into the mind of the consumer. This form of learning is often more interactive than traditional, and a lot meatier in terms of satiating the hunger pangs of knowledge.

Of course, transformation lies in the core of our DNA, and social learning more than extends beyond the organisational walls of a particular geographic location.

Raj mentions how she extensively replicated some of the best practices from their Irish team in Canada, and those from Canada into India, creating a network of learning primarily through socialisation.

This gene, however, is only triggered via organisational culture. Raj stressed that it is important to empower employees, to help them think more like entrepreneurs than ordinary salaried professionals.

However, for any change to trickle down generations, as with ‘social learning’, there is an imperative need to start young. When global enterprises, among other organisations, begin to connect with students and ideate their plethora of opportunities . . . that is when the ball starts rolling.

Harness that potential with zest, and we’ll soon have in our hands a strong army of entrepreneurs leading the march.

(An HR Industry Promotional Initiative)

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