Monday, December 11, 2006

Sapphire weekly News from HR world


SAPPHIRE Weekly
News from the HR World
School of Business & Human Resources


Editor’s Recommendations

Sapient achieves 'Best Place to Work' recognition in all countries of operation
Burning Within-The Influence of Organizational Respect on Burnout
Attracting Top Talent Via Employment Branding Tactics
TCS unveils 'science-to-software' transformation program
Can the Internet Be Your HR Department?

NEWS

Work Force Management

Sapient achieves 'Best Place to Work' recognition in all countries of operation

Sapient has been named number 5 in the "Ten Best Companies to Work for in India in 2006" ranking by Business Today magazine, Mercer Human Resources Consulting and TNS India. This recognition, which marks Sapient's third consecutive year as a best place to work in India, builds on the company's numerous workplace awards in Canada, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Multiple institutions around the world have recognized Sapient for its distinctive culture and use of career management mentorship programs to accelerate development and growth. The company has been ranked recently in such workplace lists as Canadian Business' "Best Workplaces in Canada," Capital magazine's "Germany's Best Employers," Businessworld and Great Place to Work Institute's "Top 25 Great Places to Work in India," and Consulting magazine's "Top 10 Best Consulting Firms to Work For."

To find out more click on the title


Burning Within-The Influence of Organizational Respect on Burnout

One of the biggest complaints employees have is they are not sufficiently recognised by their organizations for the work that they do. Respect is a component of recognition. When employees don't feel that the organization respects and values them, they tend to experience higher levels of burnout.

Disrespect is experienced across industries; disrespect for individuals may be particularly problematic in the helping professions where concern for individuals is paramount.

A company's culture plays an important role in burnout. The more they feel respected as a member of the group, the more likely they are to have a sense of identification.


To find out more click on the title

IBM Settles to Pay $65 Million In Overtime to IT Workers

Technology giant IBM agreed to pay $65 million to settle allegations that it failed to pay overtime to technical services and information technology employees, according to a preliminary settlement filed Nov. 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

According to the complaint filed in the case, the employees alleged that their primary duty was to install, maintain, and support computer software and hardware for IBM and its customers, but that they were misclassified as exempt employees and ineligible for overtime.

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Recruitment
Measuring The Success Of Hiring Managers

Who were those managers who picked the applicants who went on to succeed? How did they make their hiring decisions? Could the criteria they applied be adopted by other hiring managers throughout the company? These are good questions that most HR professionals don't ask. Because of that, experts say, they are missing out on a golden opportunity to tap and duplicate a valuable resource in their organizations, best practices of successful hiring managers.

Until recently, HR's metrics in recruitment and talent selection have been concentrated on efficiency, measuring cost-per-hire and time-to-fill data. Now, experts maintain that efficiency is only part of a winning formula; quality must be the other part.


To find out more click on the title


Attracting Top Talent Via Employment Branding Tactics

While assessment enables you to make such distinctions among candidates once they have applied, it is your employment brand that ensures you have the right quality candidates to evaluate, in the first place. In other words, assessment is useful only if your organization can:

1. Attract the top talent who will fit in and
2. Persuade them to apply

How does an employment brand accomplish those tasks? It must address the issues that matter most to the people you most want to hire. It must focus on the key motivators for the unique cohort of the workforce that is right for your organization.


To find out more click on the title.

Performance Management

Taking Some of the Dread Out of Performance Reviews

New software promises to make the annual performance review easier and faster, while assuring top executives that employees are being rated consistently on skills and objectives that are in line with overall corporate goals. The tools, usually part of a suite of performance-related applications, can coach bosses through the appraisal process, help them calculate scores and offer tips for writing reviews. At the same time, they provide reports on who has and who hasn't completed their reviews, along with a full picture of the capabilities, experience and accomplishments of the entire work force.




Training and Development


TCS unveils 'science-to-software' transformation program

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has unveiled its latest initiative to enlarge and develop the suitable talent pool available to the IT industry.

The TCS Talent Transformation (TCS T2) aims to transform science graduates into global software professionals and is the first scalable program undertaken to draw graduates from disciplines other than engineering into the global technology services industry. With lack of suitable, trained talent identified as a key potential barrier to growth, the TCS science-to-software program is designed to be a hi-tech, hi-touch learning module that aims to transform B.Sc./BCA degree holders into best-in-class IT professionals.

The TCS Talent Transformation program is designed to spread the economic benefits of employment in the IT industry to wider base of science graduates across India. This will be done through a fast, scaleable model that has been designed to reach out to the large mass of science graduates in the country, irrespective of locations.

Designed as an intensive 7-month residential transformation program, the curriculum will include formal lectures, projects and assignments, quizzes and interactive sessions. The selected graduates will undergo courses in the principles of software development and IT, develop an understanding of core technologies underlying IT systems as well services like package implementation as well as new technologies like Java, .Net as well as TCS' proprietary tools, frameworks and quality processes.

To find out more click on the title

The State of Training and Development: More Spending, More Scrutiny

As investment in training continues to rise, with resources migrating away from in-house programs, employers are demanding better accounting to ensure that their development dollars go toward furthering strategic goals and bolstering the bottom line.

Technology and global competition, the two driving forces of economic change in today’s business world, haven’t bypassed the once-staid world of training and development. Companies seeking to gain advantage through better-trained and better-developed workers are employing everything from e-learning delivery systems to multicultural and polyglot training solutions. They are hiring chief learning officers to deal with the increasingly complex field. And they are demanding better accounting of results.

Yet despite the focus on efficiency and cost control, overall spending on training and development continues to rise, a reflection of the fact that companies are ratcheting up the amount of training they require of their workers in the ceaseless drive for a competitive edge. Companies clearly subscribe to the belief that smarter, better-trained workers increase chances for success.

To find out more click on the title.


Compensation

Thousands of BPO jobs that pay BIG


Business process outsourcing lives. Initially, it was driven by foreign companies that shifted work to India to save on labour costs. But with time, it has thrived and evolved. Now, a number of Indian companies too are farming out work to specialist outfits to keep expenses down. These outfits comprise the 'domestic BPO' sector. In terms of employment, it is still a relatively small part of the BPO pie, but it is booming.

According to National Association of Software and Service Companies, during 2002-05, the domestic BPO sector saw employment grow at a compounded rate of 60 per cent, to touch 352,000.
But, it expects employment to rise only marginally in 2006, to 365,000. IT research and consultancy company Gartner, however, expects employment in the sector to grow at about 50 per cent annually.

Some of the bigger players in this market are IBM-Daksh, MphasiS, TeleTech and Hinduja TMT. While they have a sizable chunk of foreign business, their domestic business is substantial too. Third-party players like Orion Dialog, Sparsh, Magus, Infovision, Solutions, Customer First and Mobilink have a sharper focus on the domestic business.


To find out more click on the title


Technology

Can the Internet Be Your HR Department?

Typically, the single largest expense for a company of any size is the cost of payroll and managing personnel issues. As companies grow, headcounts increase and so does the process of maintaining payroll, benefits administration and other corporate policies, such as vacation schedules, sick time, hiring, etc. The good news for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) is that they no longer need a dedicated department to manage human resources (HR) activities.
The Internet is playing a pivotal role in this change.

By leveraging Web-based HR technology platforms, SMBs can now offer “big business” services to employees while enjoying the time and cost efficiencies associated with a centralized system.
While these methods and systems have their merits, the Internet has enabled SMBs to realize greater efficiencies by utilizing hosted HR platforms. These systems eliminate the need to purchase and maintain applications and servers, are extremely easy to use, and are accessible via standard Web browsers and an Internet connection. They are also secure and very affordable with pricing models typically scoped on a per employee basis.

To find out more click on the title.


Letters to the Editor
Regards,
Aditya VS
Jhumur Thakur
Team SAPPHIRE
PS: Pls send in your feedback at sapphire@xlri.ac.in

1 comment:

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