Some of the world’s largest organisations have resorted to layoffs in lieu of an economic downturn this year. Companies such as Amazon, Meta and Twitter have laid off more than 52,000 employees since May 2022. In all practical sense, these organisations have not handpicked each and every employee to lay off. Rather, they have resorted to using vast performance metrics and AI systems to distinguish the high performers from the underperformers. In India, Infosys and Wipro carried out performance tests for campus recruits to thin out the intake. If performance metrics and AI systems can detect underperformers, organisations must surely…
Author: Mitodru Ghosh | HRKatha
Organisations today are investing heavily to ensure their employees are at the top of their game. They are restructuring work environments, adding more benefits and experimenting with the traditional work week, in an endeavour to make the modern-day employee feel happy and productive. Taking into account the state of the economic environment today, such measures have started to look impractical from a monetary standpoint. Organisations want to find a solution that is cost effective and efficient. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems can be the one solution to most of the inefficiency and high costs issues faced by organisations today. The onset…
The new-collar worker is an individual who develops the necessary technical and soft skills to work in an organisation without the prerequisite educational qualifications. In India, the new collars have been a reality for quite a while now. In fact, they have existed for over three decades. Organisations in the manufacturing and retail sectors have been bringing in large numbers of people onto their shop floors and skilling them to take up vital roles in entry-level positions. In some cases, these very employees have been able to move up the corporate ladder to take up managerial roles and even work…
Numerous organisations have laid off this year, creating a gulf in the way talent is spread out within these organisations. The dearth of talent has paved the way for corporate trends such as ‘quiet hiring’ to weave themselves into the corporate landscape of 2023. One way in which organisations have coped with their internal demand for talent is by hiring from third-party services, in other words, ‘external’ quiet hiring. Cost is one of the key reasons behind hiring employees from a third party. Organisations can save between 15 to 20 per cent of the hiring costs by utilising third-party services.…
In large organisations, the role of centres of excellence (CoE) are quite well defined. They take up certain specific tasks from the HR department, key in on them to align them specifically to suit the organisational priorities. Centres of excellence generally tackle crucial functions of HR such as talent acquisition, learning and development (L&D) and talent analytics. They are staffed with employees who specialise in those domains. As more organisations utilise CoEs to diversify the HR function, many have found certain pitfalls in the system. Complacency and complexity in execution have come up as the major drawbacks of the department.…
As new skills emerge, organisations find it increasingly difficult to come up with new ways to move talent internally and discover new roles that suit the latest corporate needs. Our workforce today is constantly evolving. Roles that were unheard of a decade ago are an essential part of our corporate make-up today. In contrast, roles and skills that may have seemed absolutely necessary in the past may not be as vital in the present. Figuring out how to evolve with these demands and cope with new skill requirements is now an integral part of a solid HR structure. Unfortunately, in…
Technology has come a long way in the last few years. Since the start of the pandemic, one of the key focuses of the tech industry has been the metaverse. In its essence, the metaverse is an alternate reality in virtual reality (VR). The first major Domino fell when Facebook renamed itself ‘Meta’ in an event hosted by CEO Mark Zuckerbeg. At that event, Zuckerberg delved into the present day uses of the metaverse and its future to justify the immense investments the company had made in VR development and other metaverse platforms. Since then, the metaverse has remained an…
Lately, ChatGPT has taken over news forums everywhere. Its emergence has triggered conversations about the utility of artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in our lives. In the open market, AI is still in its early stages. While people are still trying to figure out how to respond to its functions, they do seem to be optimistic about its future. Big corporations such as Microsoft and Google seem to be in an AI cold war of sorts. What with the former buying a larger stake in Open AI, the creators of ChatGPT and Dall E, and the latter upgrading its…
Mass layoffs have been at the forefront of most news networks today. Companies of all shapes and sizes have been letting go of their talent to cope with fluctuating markets and economic downfall. India’s largest conglomerates seem to be unaffected by these circumstances, though. Since 2022, we’ve seen multi-billion dollar companies such as Google, Meta and Twitter lay off huge chunks of their workforce. An estimated 28,500 employees have been laid off from these three companies alone, accounting for eight per cent of the total layoffs last year. In India, the top 10 largest companies, ranked by market cap, laid…
Quickplay media is a company that specialises in OTT (over-the-top) platform solutions. The organisation provides three product classes to better OTT client experience, mainly focused around cloud-transformation services for streaming and live sports content. We sat down with the Company’s vice president of people, Krystal Brendel to discuss some of the corporate practices in the organisation related to the people function. Brendel and her team take care of a broad range of responsibilities at the Company. Starting all the way from recruitment – internships and employee branding, agency partnerships, labour contracts— to onboarding responsibilities such as learning and development, performance…
Rage applying, the latest corporate trend, has taken Gen Z workers by storm. Similar to quiet quitting, rage applying started off as a TikTok trend and now seems to have become the talk of the town. Disgruntled young Millennials and the Gen Z workforce have started applying for new jobs out of fits of rage and feelings of distress in their workplace. Employees who feel like they deserve a raise or a career progression opportunity but aren’t being given one, have begun exploring other opportunities elsewhere and are seeing positive results. “Employee trends make no sense in the present market.…
Adding to the quiet corporate trends, Emily Rose McRae predicts 2023’s new silent corporate phenomenon, ‘quiet hiring’. Not a new occurrence, quiet hiring has been present in the corporate world for a long time now. It referred to the practice of organisations hiring talent discreetly, with covert job opening announcements so that their competitors were not notified. In the new Gartner report, McRae re-establishes what it means in the present context. Quiet hiring in the context of 2023 is the process of filling gaps organisations face in skills, without taking on full-time talent. Jasmeet Bhatia, CHRO, Thermax, understands the organisational…
Given the large and diverse working population in the country, Indian organisations have to deal with a range of issues at the workplace. One of the primary ones is the problem of groupism – the tendency to conform to the cultural pattern of a group at the expense of individualism and cultural diversity. In India, language plays a huge role in culture. With most Indian states having their own unique language and culture, it is understandably easier for those who speak the same language to relate to each other better. When some in the workforce enjoy such an advantage, the…
Talent hoarding often begins with the best intentions, and many managers do not even realise that they may be exhibiting signs of the same. So what is ‘talent hoarding’? When managers either intentionally or unconsciously retain their best employees to fulfil their short-term goals, they are said to be hoarding talent. In doing so, they eventually end up damaging the personal development of their employees. Jaikrishna B, president – group HR, Amara Raja Group, admits, “It is human to hoard one’s best talent and be possessive about them.” However, when employees are not encouraged to expand their skill set, or…
The most successful brands and top organisations are known for their brilliant strategies, blockbuster products and breakthrough technology. However, rarely are organisations exceptional at execution. To execute a project well, it is essential to take extreme care of certain processes. In a survey of 1.2 lakh profiles, one out of every five employees rated their organisation as weak at execution. When asked if they agreed with the statement, ‘Important strategic and operational decisions are quickly translated into action’, the majority answered in the negative. Several studies have been attempted to find out why organisations fail to execute their strategies at…
HR analytics plays a crucial role in today’s corporate world, allowing organisations to better understand intricate details on employee behaviour and trends, organisational weaknesses, and aid in essential contract negotiations. However, the question that arises today is whether it has taken away from the role of an HR professional. Many in other fields of work describe the onset of computerised analytics to be detrimental to the ‘human aspect’ of analysis. A key instance of such would be in sports, namely basketball. In the National Basketball League (NBA), players are judged on their plus-minus (+/-) performance per game. A statistic measured…
Companies employ different strategies to retain people but it certainly can be a challenging task. Retention depends on varied factors ranging from external market conditions to employee satisfaction and happiness. Religare Broking, a financial services company established in 1994, enjoys a good reputation among employees vis-à-vis other companies in the sector, as is evident from popular employee review websites. Today, it’s one of the preferred companies in the sector. Besides, as Hina Dhamija, HR Head, Religare Broking, claims, the average tenure of an employee is 5.5 years. In addition there are also team members who have been working for more…
Talent mobility is a key element of talent management, it describes an employees ability to move between positions within their company. Encouraging talent mobility allows for tasks such as recruitment, hiring and workforce training to go on smoothly. The end goal for a successful talent mobility strategy is to align skills, motivations and backgrounds of its employees to better suit company needs, allowing leaders to retain and develop talent simultaneously. As companies continue to fail to retain their employees, a solid talent mobility strategy can help save costs that would have gone towards new hires and recruitment programs. Companies that…
A staffing solution and recruitment services website released its ‘Employment Outlook Report’ for Q4 (January to March 2023) for the services sector. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the hiring trends across industries, functions and regions. The report indicates that India is leading with the highest hiring intent despite the ongoing global inflation. Close to 77 per cent employers (as compared to 73 per cent in Q3) are keen to increase their resource pool in the services sector. In comparison to Q4 2021, intent to hire has risen by 27 per cent. Overall, across services and manufacturing sectors, an average…
A study by an American anthropologist talks about the birth of a new theory from the commonly known VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) acronym to the now newly coined BANI theory. BANI suggests that the world today has become brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible. With climate change, the end of the pandemic and the start of a new war and economic downfall, this new theory talks about the world losing its linearity and moving to a stage where people, and for our purpose, organisations, have to brace for constant change. Jaikrishna B, president-HR, Amara Raja Group, cites this theory…
HR without technology is unimaginable today. New technologies are being developed and upgraded that make life easier, not just for HR but also employees The complexity however lies in selecting the right partner for these technologies, especially when there are several players in the same domain claiming to be different and having an edge over the competitors. “How flexible is the technology’s ability to adopt new trends in HR and also incorporate the experience gained from clients over a period of time?” Reena Wahi, SVP HR, tecnology & sustainability, Tata Realty and Infrastructure Reena Wahi, SVP HR, technology & sustainability,…
Are employers paying a hefty premium to attract new employees post the Great Resignation? A study by Gartner seems to suggest so. Employees have a better understanding of their needs and are aware of the current depleting talent market that companies are faced with. Better work arrangements, a more balanced work-life as well as ample compensation are some of the demands of the post-pandemic workforce. Employers understand that the most effective way to pull in new talent, fast, is to pay them more, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. According to a survey by Gartner, 57 per cent of the…
Mass layoffs were quite rampant across the globe in the second half of this year, that is, 2022. The India story was no different. Leading the layoff race was the edtech sector with 46.5 per cent of the total layoffs as documented by layoffs.fyi. In total, 14,224 layoffs have been documented in the whole year, as of 9 December, 2022. Following the edtech sector is the retail marketplace and the online used car marketplace with layoffs accounting for 14.2 per cent and 12.9 per cent, respectively. Among cities, the maximum layoffs happened in Bengaluru, where 59.7 per cent of all…