Sapphire Weekly HR News

SAPPHIRE Weekly
News from the HR World XLRI Jamshedpur
25 January, 2007 School of Business & Human Resources

NEWS-OPINION

Work Force Management

Job hoppers go absconding

Easy job openings, desperate employers coupled with young workers and their frequent job hopping are bringing in a new kind of casualness about jobs and resignations in corporate India. Absconding workers - workers who do not resign, but just disappear - are becoming common . As a result resignation is losing its value. Some simply SMS and move on. Some do not even bother to inform. Some fall ill and never turn up. Submitting formal resignation letters is becoming rare. Serving notice period? Even rarer.


Growing India needs a right mix of work & play

It's been a ceaseless endeavour for India Inc for the last couple of years — to bring down costs, boost efficiency and raise productivity even as it moved up the value chain. While it meant revamping production processes and bringing in new technologies, perhaps no other facet of an enterprise has been pushed, stretched and tapped as much as the human capital.

Perhaps, by constantly benchmarking itself with the western world, India Inc may have swerved to the other extreme — where employees across sectors complain of vanishing work-life balance and a very high incidence of burnouts at workplaces



Flexi timing a compelling biz imperative

Initiatives to help retain talent and increase diversity rule the roost in HR circles today. Flexi-Time is one such initiative – a brilliant concept to help employees keep their personal commitments and at the same time contribute as regular employees. More and more women are opting for such initiatives to help balance their professional and personal lives.



Accenture speeds up AI, IA merger

Air-India has 15,416 employees and Indian Airlines has over 18,300. The merged entity will be headed by a group CMD and have a board of directors. One-third of the board will be independent members who will be neither from Air-India nor Indian Airlines. The board will oversee six different business units for commercial passenger operations, MRO, cargo, ground-handling and in-flight services.


IBM work force thrives on diversity

Big Blue also has been touted as one of the most diverse companies. Last year, the company made the National Association for Female Executives' list of top 30 companies for executive women, Black Enterprise's 40 best companies for diversity and Hispanic magazine's list of top 100 companies offering the most opportunities for Hispanics. Last summer, Ron Glover was named IBM's vice president for global workforce diversity. Glover, who grew up in Boston and has been with IBM four years, recently visited the company's Research Triangle Park campus - which with more than 11,000 employees is the company's largest single site in the world - and sat down for a question and answer session.

Yes Bank recognized for HR Strategy

YES BANK, India’s new age private sector Bank, received the Continuous Innovation in HR Strategy award at The Indiatimes Mindscape Employer Branding Awards 2007 held on January 13, 2007 in Mumbai. These awards were instituted to recognize the pursuit of excellence in Human Resources across the Indian Corporate Sector.

On this occasion, Mr. Rana Kapoor, Founder / Managing Director and CEO, YES BANK, said, “This award is a reflection of the progressive and innovative HR practices followed to grow and nurture Human Capital at YES BANK. This recognition validates our core objective of building an entrepreneurial organization based on the value proposition of ‘Creating & Sharing Wealth’ with all our executives.”



Compensation

Esops invaluable in retaining talent

Peer pressure would be an element as employees grumble to HR about how their compatriots in other companies are raking it in. Esop is an invaluable weapon in the fight to retain and attract talent , as long as markets don’t give way.

IT companies have been typically the main issuers of options and stories abound about how engineering graduates who joined Infosys in its initial years are now millionaires. Even in the recent i-flex open offer from Oracle, the Indian company’s employees will walk away with fat sums as a result of the offer. But this trend has spread to other sectors.


Recruitment

Retaining talent, the TCS way

How does Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which accounts for the largest workforce among IT companies in India, also enjoys the lowest attrition rate — 10.8 per cent — in the sector? A peek into the strategy the company has adopted to retain its workforce, at a time when there is frenzied recruitment by not only domestic companies but also foreign players establishing roots in India,


IT firms gear up to recruit, retain women

Men have always outnumbered women in the IT workforce. The ratio of men to women was 76:24 in 2005 and has balanced out marginally. It is likely to be 65:35 (men:women) in 2007. Given the bias, Nasscom recently announced it would institute awards for companies to recognise outstanding practices promoting gender empowerment. While the percentage of women in the IT talent pool is steadily increasing, a majority of women are still at the bottom of the pyramid and there are few women in senior leadership positions. However, many Indian companies and MNCs are taking proactive steps to rectify the skewed numbers .

India Inc 'mix n match' on hire ground

This is the placement season at B-schools and graduates are being wooed with multiple offers and astronomical salaries. That has never been the case with Hari Raghavan, solution specialist, banking, IBM India, who passed out of NMIMS, six years ago. The reason: Raghavan is blind and despite great academic credentials, it’s a huge challenge for him to find employment. “Someone had to really stick his neck out for me to give me a job,” he says.

That changed when Raghavan applied to IBM India a few months ago. “IBM was the only company which asked on its form if I had a disability,” says Raghavan, who earlier worked at GE Money and Tata Finance. Not only did Raghavan get the job at IBM purely on his merit, but the company also provided him with a screen reading software and a talking computer. IBM has also provided office transport for Raghavan to get to work, though he chooses to travel on his own. “A lot of companies mean well but lack the system and policies to hire people with disabilities,” says Raghavan.

Labour Relations

Forward To Bigger Class Struggles

THE 12th all India conference of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) got off to a rousing start with a colourful march of red shirt volunteers to the venue and CITU president M K Pandhe giving the call for further intensification of class struggles .

A total of 60 fraternal delegates from 30 countries are participating in the conference. Indian fraternal trade union leaders – Gurudas Dasgupta (AITUC), V Shankar (AICCTU), G R Sivashankar (UTUC), Adyantaya (INTUC) and Radha Krishna [UTUC(L-S)] – greeted the delegates in the inaugural session. BMS sent a letter greeting the conference


Letters to the Editor
Regards,
Aditya V.S.
Alvin Raskina
Team SAPPHIRE
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