Salary Compression – A HR Nightmare?

If there's one thing that's tipping the scales for fresh employees and leaving the veterans out in the cold, it's salary compression. There's no room for loyalty to the company when market conditions have to be taken into consideration and new hires have to be paid according to industry standards. With the internal annual rate of increase between 4 and 7 percent and the industry annual rate of increase touching 10 to 15 percent, there's a huge disparity between what more experienced workers earn and what their fresh-faced counterparts just setting foot in the company make.

The situation is compounded year after year, as those with the company for a longer period of time continue to earn comparatively less than those who've come after them. HR professionals and managers have been put in a bind by salary compression – they're forced to pay the going rate for the best of the new talent to hit the market even as they risk the ire and resentment of individuals who have slogged for the company for more than a few years, but who are earning a significantly smaller amount than those coming in, even with the annual hike in their salaries.

Older employees are forced to change jobs then, since they are likely to be paid the higher market rates by new employers, which means that more new employees have to be hired at current market rates, and more money has to be spent on recruitment and training costs and on higher salaries. This leads us to the questions - Isn't it more rational to increase the salaries of older employees on par or at slightly higher rates than those of their newer colleagues? Is it worth the low morale, frustration and reduced productivity that older employees exhibit when faced with the news that their juniors, people they have to take under their wings and train, are taking home more money than they are? Does this make for a workplace conducive to harmony and cooperation?

Employers are struggling to address these issues without emptying the company's coffers on salary alone. In an attempt to retain valued and experienced employees, they are offering perks like the use of company transport, phone bills at the company's expense, access to health clubs and paid vacations. Some companies are restructuring their pay levels in a new attempt termed broad banding where employers assume more flexibility in defining job descriptions and adjusting pay scales accordingly. Others offer bonuses and incentives on a performance-based model.

A job market with a limited amount of skilled labor and a large number of jobs that require highly skilled professionals gives employees the upper hand – they are able to dictate terms and threaten to quit if they're not paid what they think they're worth. But then, too much of job hopping is seen as a sign of instability in industry circles, unless the employee has something really special to offer in terms of skill and ability. At the end of the day, it's up to organizations to affect the trade off between retaining experienced employees at a higher pay or spending more to bring in new ones and train them well.

This article is contributed by Heather Johnson, who regularly writes on HR manager. She invites your questions and writing job opportunities at her personal email address: heatherjohnson2323 @ gmail.com

HR benchmarking and systems

Recently my interview appeared in SCOOP an online HR magazine, it covers industry news , analysis and features the latest from the HR world. The interview covered wide ranges of issues ranging from HR strategies, processes and various other issues which organizations are grappling today. Here is the first part the interview.

On Benchmarking in the field of HR.

Benchmarking in today’s business environment has different context for different organizations.HR practices have also been keeping pace with ever dynamic business environment and every industry presents unique challenges for HR professionals. There are two important aspects which every HR team must try and benchmark against:

Innovative HR Practices: HR practices needs continuous change and innovation, it is key to the competitiveness of any industry. HR teams have to lead in setting new trends in attracting and engaging talent. Today the best places to work are those which have Innovative and engaging HR practices. If you are looking at benchmarking HR practices you need to review the existing practices and then indentify high impact areas which you think are critical for the execution of your business goals and long term employee philosophy.

Humane Processes: I have deliberately used the word humane as we tend to standardize and reduce the human touch in the name of standard HR processes. This is especially true for large organizations as they find it difficult to resolve unique situations through their HR processes.HR teams must set up processes which are more fungible and responsive to employees need rather than just operation ease.HR process benchmarking should focus on creating unique employee experience, in this regard small upcoming companies can provide valuable examples to emulate.

On successful HR system and its implementation?

In my view it’s not just the successful “system” per say which makes the difference. It’s all about the people you have in your team and the way they go on to do their daily job with great excitement and enthusiasm which is the mantra for any successful system. Some of the best organizations have doomed after their best leaders and team members have quit while some of the very ordinary organizations achieve remarkable results by sheer team effort and promoting a culture of co-operation and collaboration.

At present HRIS (Human resources Information System) is the critical backbone of any HR system. In most the of the organizations ccurrently Human Resource Management Systems covers following functions:

• Recruitment & Selection(Applicant tracking and short listing systems)
• Training & Learning Management system
• Talent Deployment
• Compensation and Benefit administration
• Separation and feedback process

HR solutions like client-server (distributed system comprised of both client and server software), Application Service Provider, and SaaS(software as a service) Human Resource Management Systems has enabled HR processes to be structured and streamlined. The manual effort has reduced considerably and helped HR operations to scale their services effectively. These HR systems have helped HR teams to focus more on engaging and developing employees more effectively.

HR Challenges -Time to act

Prioritizing key activities and focusing on strategic areas of concern continues to be a challenge for majority of HR professionals. Most of the studies which focus on challenges faced by HR professional continues to highlight the ever increasing pressure of attracting, engaging in retaining talent.

In a recent study by i4cp when respondents were asked about the main barriers facing HR in 2008, 44% of the 355 responding companies rated lack of time as having a high or very high impact on HR’s ability to achieve its goals.

“HR professionals are singing a familiar refrain,” said Donna J. Bear, senior research analyst at i4cp. “They’re citing not enough time, talent or money and too many conflicting priorities as top impediments to accomplishing their employers’ goals.”

Besides not having enough time, nearly four in 10 respondents cited “conflicting organizational priorities,” “scarcity of workforce talent” and “financial resources” as having a high or very high impact on achieving their goal of filling their employers’ ranks with high-potential workers.

Regarding their own ongoing development, HR professionals recognize the need to develop competencies that are both broad and high-level. The study’s respondents ranked leadership first among all the competencies needing further development, with 55% of all organizations ranking it as high or very high in importance. Also, 50% of organizations ranked change management as a high or very high priority, and innovative thinking is also a competency that HR professionals must develop, according to the 47% of respondents who said it ranked high or very high in importance.

HR links for the week

Here are some of the interesting posts from the HR blogosphere for the week. I’m sure readers will enjoy going through the posts.

Career bright on working from Home and how it is important to be self-directed and self-motivated to be able to work from home completely.

David Zinger has an interesting post on Employee engagement where he illustrates through this video on the concept of learned helplessness that contributes to disengagement at work.

Heather Hughes shares her personal experience of how she escaped her newspaper job to start her own Business -- and how others can leaern from her experience as well.

Rowan hosts the Carnival of HR 30 .

A Bob Brady post on no I-PODs at work has most of readers disagreeing to the idea.

Alltop list and HR Guru

The new layout of this blog got some good news as well.HR funda got featured in the ALLTOP list under careers section. Guy Kawasaki took less than a minute to confirm the inclusion after my request.

I also joined the HR Guru community (part of Monster group) and got the invite from TessaT to contribute as a featured blogger. Looking forward to share and connect with the HR community on HR Guru.

HR @ Web 2.0

The evolution of web based social and professional networking has been quite interesting over the years. On an average I spend almost 40% of my time on net on many of these networking sites. In the early days we all started with Ryze and then linkedin, face book and today I get almost 2-3 invites every week from different networking sites. Although as a user I clearly distinguish between a social and professional networking site but now the lines between the two is getting blurred. So be it orkut or its own desi cousin Big adda our generation is increasingly getting hooked to web based networking.

Linkedin recently launched its new version which has more upgraded features and better integration options and even access via mobile phones and PDA’s. Increasingly I see more and more recruiters using web based networking tools for hiring middle and senior level managers. Members are also directly approaching employees from different organizations to explore options in the organization of their own choice. This is an interesting tread as more and more people are using the networking tools to directly get in touch with the prospective employers. LinkedIn is supposed to have more than 20 million registered users and with the new users joining every day it has a user base which allows plethora of options. Unlike facebook which started as a tool for connecting to campus buddies, LinkedIn is seen as a professional and no-nonsense application.

Web 2.0 and hiring philosophies have been widely used by small and starts up as it gives them the depth and breadth to choose the selected few as they have some niche roles to offer. It’s interesting to note that Facebook hired many of its early employees through LinkedIn. E&Y has a page on Facebook, through which it interacts with prospective employees

Consider this survey, entitled Recruitment Advertising: Moving in New Directions, from companies ranging from $5 million to $5 billion in annual revenues (and from a variety of industry segments) -- said they would spend more on business-networking sites, social networking and employee-referral programs in 2008 than in 2007, but less on print and traditional job boards.

On the other hand some argue that your social profiles on these sites may even backfire in case your prospective employer, client or even business partner decides to search your web footprints using goggle or social networking sites. This interesting conversation on Business week has some interesting observations.

A public profile is a vehicle for casually interacting with others in an informal setting, on personal free time. When companies use these profiles to find not only a professional but also an ideological match for a job, they’re misleading themselves and building ill will with talented prospective employees, who might decline to apply for a job for fear a comment about China on their blogs makes them persona non grata.

Meanwhile organizations are finding it increasingly difficult to make out the difference between and social and a professional networking site. It often seen a waste of time when people spend hours spending time on social networking site. Some sites like Linkedin have clearly articulated that it’s not meant for social loafing. LinkedIn vice president Patrick Crane told Portfolio.com in an interview "Because we're professional, we're not about having people waste time; we’re all about people saving time."

A recent survey of 700 HR executives found that 64 percent said their companies block access to social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, while 63 percent block access to blogs and nearly 70 percent prevent their employees from accessing video or photo-sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr. The study, conducted by Redwood City, Calif.-based security firm Clearswift, also found 54 percent of the HR professionals have had to discipline employees for "wasting time" on the Internet.

While the use of these technologies in the open talent market is wide spreading I’m not aware of many organizations which also using these features of Web 2.0 to engage employees inside the organizations.

I was just wondering how a twitter, facebook or linkedin will help organizations in creating a passionate community of niche users within the organizations. Bulletin boards and blogs have been tried but engaging them through intranet portal will be something really interesting. Given the size and spread of huge big organizations it may be a good tool for creating a more diverse and better connected workforce.

This HRE article has some interesting examples on the latest web 2.0 tools used by organizations.

Some companies that have implemented Web 2.0-type tools in the workplace have found they're a useful way to spark creativity among employees and increase engagement and interaction among -- and between -- employees and customers. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard recently launched HP Uncut, a YouTube-like
system that lets HP employees make their own videos that demonstrate best practices for using and maintaining HP products and then upload them to the corporate Web site.

Taleo has built its Taleo Business Edition application on Facebook Platform, which enables companies to integrate their recruiting applications with Facebook, giving them access to millions of users (and potential job candidates).

Penny Davis, head of HR operations at mobile phone operator T-Mobile says “ it's time for HR professionals to take a fresh look at Web 2.0, and how it can help them tap into new talent pools, encourage staff to collaborate, and build their employee brand”.

In the past year, for example, Davis and her team have used Facebook to help new graduate recruits make the transition to the world of work. "We set up a group on Facebook in May for the 2007 intake so that they could network informally with each other and the T-Mobile recruitment team before their September start date, enabling them to get to know each other and air concerns in a friendly, supportive environment. ."

Management consultancy KPMG, for example, the Royal Bank of Scotland, or data storage giant EMC. All three held careers fairs in Second Life during 2007.

Exciting times ahead for HR professionals as they will find these tools really handy to overcome the challenge of attracting and engaging people.

Top 100 Career blogs

It was a nice surprise to find HR funda blog in the Top 100 Global Ranking of English-language Career Blogs. Currently the blog is ranked 47th and if you take 5 seconds of yours to vote for HR Funda it will help in improving the blog rating :D.

Thanks and Wishing you the very best for the New Year ahead.

Talent hiring and retention

Interesting thoughts by Sullivan in his recent article on employee retention.Folks who are focusing on the monetary aspect of the new job are more likely to quit in near future even if you have hired them at a higher than market levels salaries.

Incidentally, individuals hired from executive search firms can fall into this "money first" category. If they left the last job because an executive search professional presented a "better money" offer, don't be surprised when they leave again when the next executive search professional calls with slightly more money to offer.

This makes me wonder, what is the validity of employee current salary as an indicator of his actual competency level?

Sometimes recruiters and head hunters even create a “Talent vacuum” in the market for certain niche skills. This talent vacuum is especially seen in the Senior and middle managers levels as employees are not always on move and tend to be little reluctant to switch jobs easily. However thanks to the marketing skills of our head hunters and the growing talent crunch one always tends to get what he aspires for.

Growing salary levels for a role create a bigger pressure on current employers and most likely a less competent person (as per the role requirement) will fill the same role at a similar or even higher salary level. This creates a vicious circle in talent market and the salary levels head north due to this trend in war for talent. Talk to any seasoned recruiter today and he will tell you how they moan the fact that majority of decisions regarding change of job has to do with the high pay packages.The focus has sihifted from role and job content to the salary components and benefits,perks which the new job may offer.

As a HR professional you often wonder is this shift due to markert factors ,peer pressure,or just changing times.

How long this will trend will continue?

What about the “hiring philosophy’ ?

Top 100 blogs on HR

HR Funda has been featured in the top 100 blogs on HR by Laura Miligan.

She rightly says that as your small business grows you will undoubtedly find that one of your biggest challenges is finding smart talented people to comprise your staff. Even if you’re lucky enough to land great employees, however, there are a whole host of other human resources challenges that startups and small companies must overcome. In this article we highlight what we believe to be the top 100 HR bloggers, listed in alphabetical order by category.

So take a look at the top 100 HR blogs.

HR News Links

Some of the interesting links in the past week on HR issues.

How training programs helps in employee retention.

Know when you are getting old in HR

The painful divide between Generation X and Boomers.

HR talent crunch

Madhukar’s views on HR transition from backroom to Boardroom

Flexibility at work : Good or bad

Know Your Gossip Quotient :)

Employee communication through informal means works fastest and rumor mills always reach faster than any formal channel of communication. Grapevines has been always considered as a powerful communication network and as per wiki a study quoted in Forbes magazine concludes that 75 percent of employees hear about matters first through rumors on the grapevine.

Robbins states that rumors flourish in an organization because of three elements. They are a response to situations that are important to employees, where there is some ambiguity, and under conditions that arouse anxiety. From a management perspective, the grapevine acts as a filter and a feedback mechanism to identify issues that employess consider important and relevant.

The Political Calculation blog has come up with an interesting tool which can help you decide if, and also how, you should join in the guilty pleasure that is office gossip at your company.

HR as Leading Indicator

I'm sure some of us have seen or heard it before in our profession.

Makes me wonder how many of us come forward and take ownership of our actions.

Accept failures when things go wrong.

Come forward and say yes this is my idea and I have a plan to achieve this result and have this target in mind for this action plan.

One can't expect HR to be a leading indicator unless we have leadership which is driven by metrics and linked to bottom line results of the organization. I’m sure we need more HR leaders who lead by end results rather than mere thoughts.

In case if you are doing this then you need to share your experiences and train the rest of the HR folks around. I’m sure we can do better as a professional community by sharing our learning and experiences on this account and raise the levels of HR benchmarking and best practices.

Talent Retention Challenges

As organizations grow they face the challenge of attracting and retaining top talent. Talent strategies may work fine when the organization is small and has the space to offer challenging and fast growing opportunities. It becomes difficult to sustain the organizational growth and continue to offer the same kind of challenge and career growth for talents.WSJ reports how the Google is also facing this challenge of attracting and retaining top talent.

Google had more than six times the number of workers at the end of the first quarter than it had at the same point in 2004, which some former employees say tends to slow decision-making and make it harder for individuals to feel like they're having an impact.

Google stock option are beginning to finish vesting for thousands of employees brought on during a big Google hiring spree in 2003 and 2004, lessening the financial incentives to stay.

On top of all this, a new generation of Internet start-ups has matured enough to attract top technical talent and offer a real possibility of riches from a stock offering or sale to a bigger company. In contrast, Google's shares hit a record level this week, suggesting the stock simply doesn't offer the same potential gains it once did. The concentration of many of the start-ups within a few miles of Google's headquarters, which Google itself has exploited in the past, can make poaching staff a faster and easier pursuit.

Still, Mr. Bock says Google executives spend a lot of time thinking about how to attract and retain top talent as the company grows in size. "We don't want to become a victim of our own success; we're aware of that risk," he says.

The company acknowledges that creative and entrepreneurial people are the core of its success -- that's one reason Google lavishes them with extravagant free food and other perks. "If we do not succeed in attracting excellent personnel or retaining or motivating existing personnel, we may be unable to grow effectively," Google has acknowledged in regulatory
filings.

Best talent continues to aspire more as they achieve success and try to repeat the same experience at a faster and more ambitious pace. Organisations typically find it difficult to keep pace with the growing aspirations of its top talent and this is when the point at which companies needs to rethink the ways they plan to engage employees. As this article clearly outlines that when it comes to human resources, one size no longer fits all.

One set of rules dictated everything from the kinds of benefits and rewards the company offered to how employees were trained and evaluated. That approach made things easier for the human-resources department and ensured a degree of efficiency, equality and fairness. Now some executives are finding that this model isn't adequate for getting the most out of existing talent or attracting and keeping new people. To be competitive in the marketplace and in the race for talent, companies must understand and address the diverse needs of their work force. In fact, they must treat each employee as a "work force of one."

Following this efforts are being made by HR folks to ensure more flexibility, create more opportunities for career growth ,allow individuals greater space in deciding and planning different career paths within the organization .

Sun Microsystems Inc. asks employees to identify the type of physical setting that suits them best -- a private office, team room, satellite center or their home office. Microsoft Corp. goes so far as to ask certain types of employees to design their own career paths. The company offers software engineers both a management-focused and technical-specialist career track and allows them to move back and forth between the two.

Surely this indicates a marked shift in the way talent is being retained and developed in organizations. Career decisions are not just being made on the challenging role and compensation and ESOP’s being offered but how one gets the opportunity to plan his career and try different things in the same organization.

Global HR Transformation

“The definition of HR transformation has evolved out of a number of perceived and real pressures on the HR function. The function is expected to support the business, provide the right direction for the people management strategy and then execute the strategy. It also has to demonstrate an improvement in value, yet at the same time carry out cost-heavy administration.

In response to these challenges, the transformation process that many companies have embarked on involves examining the HR strategy and how it supports the business strategy, and then changing the HR operating model to achieve optimum delivery.”

According to the 2006 Global HR Transformation Study by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, half (50%) of organizations are in the midst of transforming their HR functions, while 12% completed a transformation within the past year and another 10% plan to begin the process within the next year.

HR transformation is the process of recreating or reinventing the HR function with the specific intent of enhancing HR’s contribution to the business.

Technology and service delivery improvements were the focus of the first wave of transformation activity, 5 to 10 years ago, coupled with an expectation that this would enable HR to transition into a more strategic role," says Mike Theaker, principal in Mercer's HR Effectiveness Business. "HR functions are now challenged with delivering against the expectations set--to deliver human capital strategies and initiatives that demonstrate a significant contribution to business operations and the achievement of business goals."

HR leaders reported that their top challenges are: acquiring key talent (43 percent), driving cultural and behavioral change in the organization (40 percent), and building leadership capabilities (40 percent).

Just as HR activities have remained traditional, so has its skill sets. According to Mercer’s survey, 53% of organizations worldwide list skills and competencies of the HR staff as one of the most significant obstacles to enhancing the overall role of the HR function. The capability of line managers to supervise staff and the business’ perception of HR’s value are other leading barriers holding back the development of HR.

“In order for the HR function to move forward with its transformation, organizations must implement a talent strategy that arms HR with a range of skills, especially those that relate to finance and business, so that they can be more effective business partners,” explained Ms. Piercy

HR and Nobel Prize

Can HR ever win Nobel Prize? Joseph Rasquinha and Mohammed Zaheer Hussain opine that the problem with HR is that the overdose of irrelevant jargon and a lack of objectivity, measurement and empirical study.

What HR desperately needs is a new body of thought which should be termed quantitative HR.’ This should be independent of what present practitioners and theorists of the subject are doing. Quantitative HR should look to take a leaf out of the Economics’ book and start by incorporating ‘measurement of the residual’ which is a major part of econometrics.

Today, everyone accepts that HR is important. But very fewcompanies actually practice what they preach and put HR people in strategic positions. If Quantitative HR is in place this will happen automatically, as the statistics will show that the HR people have made a difference to the company. Finally, it is people who make a difference to a subject. The Nobel prizes have been given to people. The possibility of larger numbers of people being attracted to HR due to quantitative theories or measurement will be strong. A lot of these people could be from other disciplines (like mathematics) as is happening in economics. This would be the best indication that HR has really arrived on the ‘science’ scene.

It would also be the best chance for HR to become a Nobel prize for the 21 century. Effective ways of measuring these people processes will ensure that these people processes are credible. Logically, we must accept the assumption that one per cent measurement of a situation is better than no measurement at all.

I really didn’t know how to react to this article. I don’t think the authors are aware about the quantitative practices which have been the adopted over the year by HR students and practitioners to bring more objectivity and predictability in HR practices.

I am not sure if we as HR professional have ever considered Nobel prize as a way benchmark for recognition of HR as a body of knowledge and acknowledging its social impact. HR is a discipline has evolved from multiple subjects and efforts to compare it will traditional social sciences may be futile.

The comparison with economics is also inaccurate as it’s a common error which people make while comparing beahvioural and social science. Wiki defines it as “The term behavioural sciences is often confused with the term social sciences. Though these two broad areas are interrelated and study systemic processes of behaviour, they differ on their level of scientific analysis of various dimensions of behaviour.

Behavioural sciences essentially investigate the decision processes and communication strategies within and between organisms in a social system. This involves fields like psychology and social neuroscience, among others. In contrast, Social sciences study the structural-level processes of a social system and its impact on social processes and social organization. They typically include fields like sociology, economics, history, public health, anthropology, and political science.

Also, Behavioural sciences include two broad categories: Neural-Decision sciences and Social-Communication sciences. Decision sciences involves those disciplines primarily dealing with the decision processes and individual functioning used in the survival of organism in a social environment. These include psychology, cognitive organization theory, psychobiology, management science, operations research (not to be confused with business administration) and social neuroscience.

On the other hand, Communication sciences include those fields which study the communication strategies used by organisms and its dynamics between organisms in an environment. These include fields like Anthropology, Organizational behaviour, Organization studies, Sociology and Social networks.

Human Resource as a field of study has evolved from both these aspects of behavioural science and also relies upon statistical and mathematical analysis as much as economics.Herbert Simon who won the Economics Nobel Prize in 1978 for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations has also made considerable impact in the field of HR /OB and there’s no way HR can be considered as an independent field of enquiry as it draws its origin to other behavioural and social science.

Offshoring in Reverse

There’s always this great debate on the outsourcing of jobs to India and other Asian countries from US and European countries, but the times are changing and we are seeing the reverse of brain drain as Indian IT companies are hiring more locals in US. The growth of IT industry has truly lead to flattening of global talent marker as well, we now see talents across different nations are being employed by Indian MNC’s. So with the likes of IBM’s and Accenture’s ramping up fast and increasing talent strength at an all time high pace the war for talent also getting interesting.

Business week reports on offshoring in reverse.

In the past, Indian companies almost always transferred Indians to work in the U.S. on temporary visas. But now Infosys and other Indian outfits are hiring aggressively in the U.S. The Indians are recruiting a combination of fresh college grads and experienced vets who have worked at American companies. They're especially active at campus job fairs, and unlike a few years ago students know who these companies are and respect them. In fact, the Indian connection has become an attraction. "I thought this would be a fantastic opportunity, especially because they send you abroad for training," says Brian Oswald, a 23-year-old Rutgers University graduate with a 2006 degree in industrial engineering who joined TCS in February.

The U.S. hiring by the Indians echoes the strategy Japan's auto industry devised after soaring levels of imports sparked political outcry in Washington in December, 2000. "The Indians are doing to the world's IT processes what the Japanese did to manufacturing," says analyst John McCarthy of Forrester Research Inc (FORR). And now, like Japan's carmakers before them, the Indians are becoming major employers in the U.S. as well.

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


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