Managing Performance of Workers

By: Maj. Gen. B.K. Bhatia
Date: July 12th, 2010

Introduction

Organizations in the manufacturing sector and also those in the service sectors such as hospitality, infrastructure, Security, logistic & retail services have a large component of their work force below the supervisor levels.

In general, the work force below officer / supervisor level may be called ‘Workers’ –the blue collared workforcein the organizations. This article discusses issues related to performance management of workers. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Human Resources | 3 Comments »

VALUE SYSTEMS IN LIFE

By: Maj. Gen. B.K. Bhatia
Date: June 22nd, 2010

PREFACE

Value Systems exist in different forms such as social values, organizational values, human values & personal values. Often these are defined in Citizen’s Charters, Code of Conduct and as Leadership Attributes. All forms of value systems are largely based on ethics, morality and virtues. Over the years, values have been corrupted by over-ambition. This trend needs to be arrested.

I have attempted, in the form of a poem below, an expression of my observations & beliefs. It calls for an introspection (PEEP WITHIN) to understand what has gone wrong.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Human Resources | 6 Comments »

Managing Non-Performers

By: Maj. Gen. B.K. Bhatia
Date: June 7th, 2010

Introduction

Organizations focus mostly on managing high performers, probably as a risk mitigation measure.

After all the high-performers are considered as the drivers of business and their retention is a high priority for the organization.

This article, however, examines how to manage non-performers which may sometimes be 10-20% of your employee strength. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  HR Best Practices, Performance Management | 19 Comments »

Utilizing Employee Performance Appraisal Systems optimally?

By: Maj. Gen. B.K. Bhatia
Date: May 24th, 2010

Introduction

An employee performance appraisal process runs a few times during the year. If designed appropriately, significantly more information can be captured and analyzed by organizations. This may require some modifications to the appraisal instrument such that it can be used for employee feedback, self development and studying the rating patterns of supervisors besides a host of other analytics.
What more can be done by organizations in utilizing this important process is a focus of this article.

What most organization currently do!

Employee performance appraisals are generally being used by most organizations to:

• Evaluate employees contribution to the organization based on the goals assigned to them.
• Determine employee ranking in terms of ‘Excellent performer’, ‘good performer’, ‘average performer’ and so on.
• Know the current ratings of an employee in competencies and skills related to their job positions & identify development plans.
• Capture information about training needs.
• Finalize incentives such as performance bonus and annual increments.
• Manage promotions and transfers.
• Identify succession plans.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Employee Appraisals, HR Best Practices | 22 Comments »

Checklist for HR Effectiveness

By: Maj. Gen. B.K. Bhatia
Date: May 21st, 2010

This survey is a self-help tool that can help you gauge the effectiveness of your HR function. The following steps need to be followed to use the tool.

• Select the size of your organization.
• Check the statements that you believe are applicable and leave the others blank.
• Click on the ‘Calculate HR Effectiveness’ button at the bottom of the page. Results would be displayed immediately.

This survey does not record any data and is available when you Click here

Posted in:  HR Best Practices | 4 Comments »

I Interviewed and the Recruiter Won’t Get Back to Me

By: Tushar Bhatia
Date: May 14th, 2010

I recently read a great blog post by Suzanne Lucas at the URL I Interviewed and the Recruiter Won’t Get Back to Me

What Suzanne talks about is the suspense a candidate faces post an interview. In todays job market where jobs are scarce, each person wants to hear the results and then make choices or move forward. Not hearing anything adds to the negativity already present. In Suzanne’s words, there is nothing worse than a silent rejection and it can lead to a bad reputation for the recruiter and your company. Who knows, you may need to talk to the candidate again in the near future! Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  HR Best Practices | 3 Comments »

Employee Training: A Management Perspective

By: Maj. Gen. B.K. Bhatia
Date: May 10th, 2010

How does the management view employee training and what do they expect from it? This was a question which intrigued us; we wanted to understand how senior employees looked at the training function from a strategic perspective.

This article captures our discussions with employees in Operations, Management, HR & Training departments. We wanted to understand what companies did post the employee evaluations, during succession planning, manpower planning, recruitment and training budget allocation process.

The rest of the article discusses our approach and insights gained. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  HR Best Practices, HR Technology, Human Resources | 19 Comments »

Carnival of HR

By: Tushar Bhatia
Date: April 28th, 2010

Its Carnival time again! The Talent Junction blog is delighted to host this edition of the carnival. Thanks to all who contributed a post. Before we begin here are some tributes:

First, thanks to all of you in the HR community who continue to share your thoughts in how to improve the greatest asset for organizations – their people;

Second, to hundreds of our customers who share so much with us and allow us to continuously learn and apply;

and Last to my sweet daughter, who would have turned 12 today….we miss you Sayeesha.

So let the carnival wheel start to roll now……. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Human Resources | 43 Comments »

Getting the Performance Appraisal Right

By: Tushar Bhatia
Date: April 19th, 2010

Most companies want to appraise their employees on a periodic basis and their Human Resources department is generally responsible to manage this process. I have often seen that the buy-in and participation from the Line managers is not as much as one would expect. Based on my meetings with a large number of HR managers, Line Managers & Senior Level Executives, I have come to realize that there is much more to a Performance Appraisal than what is truly understood by all stakeholders.
This article discusses how HR Managers can create a Performance Appraisal System that adds true value to the organization and becomes a useful and strategic employee development tool. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Employee Appraisals, HR Best Practices, HR Technology, Human Resources, Performance Management | 32 Comments »

Variable Incentive Plans: A Motivation & Retention tool

By: Tushar Bhatia
Date: April 6th, 2010

Since the past two years Variable Incentives did not work very well since most employees wanted the security of a high base-pay and meeting targets was largely unpredictable. The economy is on an up-swing again and employers & employees see new opportunities for increasing incomes.

Organizations want to curtail their fixed costs, hence salaries may not increase dramatically and immediately, but Variable Incentive Plans are coming to the fore to retain high-performers and encourage achievement.

As soon as we think of Variable Incentives, our thought goes to the employees in the sales department, but in my recent research I have found that each employee, irrespective of their department can be included in the company Variable Incentive Plan. Although the goals, their relative importance and the expected achievements may vary across job roles. The rest of this article explores the various categories of Incentives that can be applied to employees in different job roles and how HR can use this tool to motivate and retain employees across the entire company. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Compensation Planning, Employee Rewards, HR Best Practices, HR Technology, Payroll, Performance Management | 18 Comments »

ROI on automating the Payroll Function

By: Tushar Bhatia
Date: January 6th, 2010

It is difficult to anticipate the benefits of taking your payroll online. This was a challenge faced by one of our recent customers where the HR department found it challenging to estimate the ROI derived from implementation of an integrated Payroll software.

This article describes some of the benefits analyzed and presented to the senior management such that critical purchase dollars were allocated for the procurement.

The exercise which started as a small initiative actually helped me dive deeper into how a CFO or CEO perceive their human resources department and what are their expectations from an HR platform.

What I will share here is a small part of the study in how organizations are managing their human capital assets and the challenges being faced versus what are the best practices. In this, I will share what are the different metrics and how can organizations save costs in this critical area.

Elements of ROI

To determine the ROI, we had to first understand how the payroll process works in a manual environment. Our interactions revealed that there are three distinct steps in the successful processing of a payroll which are:

1. Data gathering
2. Processing
3. Disbursement and Reporting Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Compensation Planning, HR Best Practices, HR Technology, Payroll | 34 Comments »

High Performance Companies Focus on Performance Management

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: December 31st, 2009

We often listen from the successful business leaders that “People are our strength”. Recently I read the book “The High Performance Entrepreneur” written by Subroto Baghchi. He is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Mindtree Consulting, one of India’s most admired software companies.

Mindtree has grown from 0 to 3500 people and crossed $ 102 Million in revenue, all in six years, making it one of the highest performing companies in India.

Based on Subroto’s personal experiences, the book is all about entrepreneurship and how an organization can achieve high growth. Being involved in development and implementation of Performance Management Systems, one paragraph caught my attention. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Employee Appraisals, Employee Rewards | 5 Comments »

Happy New Year 2010

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: December 31st, 2009

Posted in:  Human Resources | 2 Comments »

Case Study: Performance Management System for Educational Institutions

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: November 5th, 2009

As the need for talented workforce is growing worldwide, so is the need for faculty & staff with requisite skills in the educational institutions to produce the base for generating such a work force. Businesses are continuously demanding fresh talent which can meet challenges of twenty-first century through innovative and out-of-the box thinking. Business leaders are counting on educational institutions: schools, colleges, universities and other training establishments for infusing well-qualified fresh talent into industry.

In turn, educational institutions are continually striving for improving their output both in terms of numbers and the quality of talent offered for varying jobs in different types of organizations. The excellence of output from an educational institution depends on the quality of their faculty, support services and infrastructure. To achieve higher levels of excellence, institutions need to set high performance goals for their academic and non-academic staff. These goals should be effectively measured at frequent intervals to bridge performance gaps, if any. Institutions which can effectively manage the performance of their faculty and other employees can leave their mark on industry.

Thus, having the best of class performance management software is not only a need of the hour but an enabler of excellence in an educational institution.

EmpXtrack team has published a case study on Performance Management System for Educational Institutions.

Download Case Study: Fill this form to download the case study:

Posted in:  Case Study/ White Papers, Employee Appraisals, Goal Setting, HR Technology, Human Resources | 32 Comments »

What Web 2.0 and SaaS Software offer that Legacy ERPs do not provide?

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: October 27th, 2009

In the last few years, Web 2.0 and SaaS have captured a significant portion of the market led by legacy ERP systems. Even large enterprises (which only showered their love on ERPs) are now accepting the value of SaaS application over legacy ERPs.

A survey about SaaS conducted in August 2009 by Business Week Research Services found that four out of five managers and senior executives in North America are either interested in, or in the process of, adopting the Software as a Service approach to information technology. In fact, roughly a third of the 326 respondents’ companies have already fully or partially adopted the SaaS approach for at least one application. Read more … Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  HR Best Practices, HR Technology, HRMS (HRIS) | 7 Comments »

Post-Recession Challenges of Talent Management

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: October 12th, 2009

Recovering Economies

After a year or so the news on recession is taking a U-turn (not a V-turn though). Officially, analysts are reporting that recession is over, including Google CEO. While it will take some time for recession to pave the way for prosperity and growth for business in general, the prosperity is already on its way to certain economies such as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

HR May be Caught Off Guard

Although this is good news for business operations, including marketing and sales, it poses new challenges for human capital. Businesses would no longer run on the old rules, but new out-of-the-box solutions, more comprehensive efforts, innovative thinking, and new skills and competencies would be required to grow and prosper. Needless to say, the demand for both the quantity and the quality of talented employees will grow worldwide. Companies that have fired employees in the past are already feeling the pinch, as they do not have enough bandwidth to execute.

Bloggers like Jon Ingham, who champion the cause of Human Capital Management, are being invited to speak on performance management. The need for performance management is pressing. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Compensation Planning, Economy, Employee Appraisals, Employee Rewards, Performance Management | 11 Comments »

Difference between the SaaS and Perpetual License Structure

By: Talent Junction
Date: October 7th, 2009

HR Managers and CTOs often ask us the benefits of SaaS over Perpetual license of EmpXtrack.

Here is a comparison chart:

Posted in:  Human Resources | No Comments »

Employee termination or firing – HR’s role is critical!

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: September 22nd, 2009

Termination or firing employees at work is a not-so-liked but mandatory process at business. All businesses big or small at time terminate or fire employee because of business compulsions. However, the recent downturn has accelerated the employee termination largely due to financial and performance problems.

Decision to fire an employee is never welcomed, however, there are some acceptable reasons for terminating an employee:

• For poor performance at work or low productivity.
• Being indisciplined or showing unethical behavior at work.
• Not conforming to the company policy.

Above reasons are well accepted by other employees, business community and also by the legal framework of the country and states for growth of business.

Unfortunately, we also witness incidents of “unethical and unacceptable” terminations. These are neither acceptable by the communities nor by the legal framework. It is needless to mention that law has reprimanded such actions of the employers severely, whether they were intentional or unintentional.

It is unethical and legally unacceptable to terminate an employee -

• On basis of sex, race, color, ethnicity;
• On basis of medical disability;
• On basis of religious faith;
• On basis of pregnancy;
• On base of age, etc.

The law says says that it is “illegal to discriminate in any aspect of employment, including hiring and firing”. Read more information on Unethical Discriminatory Practices.

Firing employees also exposes the organization to potential risks ranging from motivational to legal. Here are some of the common risks:
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  HR Best Practices, Human Resources, Performance Management | 3 Comments »

Web-based HRIS helps in FMLA Compliance

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: September 1st, 2009

Introduction: This blog post mentions the benefits of using an HR Software (also called recordkeeping software) in maintaining compliance with FMLA, a law in United States about family and medical leaves. It is important for HR, CEO and CFO to know about FMLA law as employers in US have lost millions of dollars in FMLA violations.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is an act in United States that provides certain employees of an organization with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year. It also requires that employers maintain the group health benefits to the employees during the leave period. FMLA is designed to help employees balance their work and family responsibilities by allowing them to take reasonable unpaid leave for certain family and medical reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  FMLA, HR Technology, HRMS (HRIS), Human Resources | 15 Comments »

Importance of HR Data for a CEO

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: August 9th, 2009

I used to believe that HR Data was useful for HR Departments only since the department was responsible for employee development & management activities. Alternately, the CFO and CEO were only interested in metrics such as cost of hire, total compensation, cost for training etc which were more oriented towards financial goals and treated employee costs as a “cost-center”. My perception changed in a recent customer interaction.

It was during an EmpXtrack training session for one of our clients in India, when their HR Director asked that we provide extensive HR dashboards to their CEO. While these reports were available for the HR Managers, I wasn’t sure if it could benefit the CEO in any way and hence I resisted.

Since the HR Director seemed to be a nice & patient gentleman, I thought of arguing a little and also better understand why he believed that the CEO would want to look at all this data. There were over 25 crucial dashboards already available for the CEO and what could be the benefits of having access to 100s of additional reports. Many questions came in my mind like –

• Will the CEO have time to go through the reports,
• What will be the implication of training him in using these?
• What if one of the reports doesn’t work correctly? (It does happen!!!)
• Was the CEO from an HR background or believed in Jack Welch’s theory of HR Management etc. etc.

The HR Director was obliging and I got some deep insights into how CEOs think and work. This also helped me better understand the needs of an effective HR department – especially for a company that has global ambitions and aggressive growth plans.

The HR Director said that they are into a Knowledge Intensive Business Services and their core strength lies in the quality of their people. While meeting potential investors and even large customers, our CEO is often asked following questions:

1. What is it about your management team / people that makes them uniquely capable of executing on this business plan?

AND/OR

2. Do you have the Right Leadership?

AND/OR

3. Does the team have passion for the business? Have they done it before: experience; market experience; intimate contact with potential customers, partners, and suppliers; etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Employee Appraisals, HR Best Practices, HR Technology, Human Resources, Motivation, Performance Management | 1 Comment »

Strategic Benefits of Online Leave Management System

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: July 23rd, 2009

Leave Management is one of the most important HR processes, that consumes a small but significant portion of managerial time. While managers are usually overloaded with projects & hunger for resources, approving subordinates leaves is a tight rope walk. On one hand HR has to ensure compliance with leave policy & ensure availability of sufficient resources for business continuance; while on the other hand it has to improve employee satisfaction. Most of us have witnessed bitter manager-employee relation on issues of leaves. Thus, leave management becomes an important strategic task for the organization.

Strategic Value of Leave

While many companies may take the leave management “not so seriously”, research shows that poor leave management has had bad impact on business performance. It can impact project deliveries and employee morale negatively. Here are some of the critical business issues, that are directly related to leave management. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  HR Best Practices, HR Technology, HRMS (HRIS), Human Resources | 19 Comments »

Web 2.0 and SaaS for Human Resource Managers

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: July 6th, 2009

Recently we were asked by “People and Management” a popular HR magazine in India to explain Web 2.0 and SaaS to their readers who are mainly senior HR Folks, CEOs and other management profiles. Our thoughts were published in the magazine as an article titled “Web 2.0 and The SaaS Factor for HR“. Here is the summary of this article. (Full version PDF available at request.)

If you visit Internet often, you will have, most certainly, come across the two buzz-words, Web 2.0 and SaaS. Let us discuss what these two actually are, how these are redefining the workplace and why as HR experts, should we be interested in these technology issues. It has to be borne in mind, however, that Web 2.0 and SaaS concepts apply to several domains. Here follows its application in HR Management.

The Web 2.0

This Web 2.0 is a specific type of design of a web site that allows “communication, and information sharing” amongst the owner of the website and visitors. Unlike previous forms of websites which only allowed one-Way Communication (apart from filling a contact us form), Web 2.0 websites allow visitors to communicate with the owners about the content and also enables them to communicate with each other.

The Free Factor

The most significant thing about Web 2.0 is that it is free. Unlike yesteryears, when you needed to pay to create a web site, Web 2.0 works on the concept of free utilization of this powerful resource. Now anyone who has access to Internet can create a blog or website or open an account for free. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  HR Best Practices, HR Technology, Human Resources | 33 Comments »

Free Human Resources (HR) Software Download Facts

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: April 22nd, 2009

Free HR Software

Many visitors on EmpXtrack’s website come to look for Free HR software. Because there are many softwares in different domains that come for FREE, they expect that there can be a Free Human Resources Software too. This post will discuss “Is there any free lunch (software) at all?” for Human Resources Management. I will also try to bust the myths about the softwares that are available for Free.

Why HR Software is NOT free?

Let me begin with why there can’t be free software in HR Domain.

My first argument is that it takes lots of efforts to develop an HR Software, because an HR Software is not merely a plain database of employees information fields (like in an Excel Sheet or MS Access) but a large collection of various types of information which are linked to each other in a logical way so that an output can provide a Common Sense View about the employees.

If I need to define HR Software I will say “HR Software is a process for the collection, analysis, interpretation and presentation of employee’s data. It can provide tools for prediction and forecasting based on data. Thus it can be used for a wide variety of management decisions, financial decisions about manpower, performance of people, succession planning and removal of non-performers.” Such an important software, which provides a total MIS on human resources has to be created with great care. How can you get it for Free. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Employee Appraisals, Goal Setting, HR Technology, HRMS (HRIS), Human Resources, Performance Management | 38 Comments »

Writing SMART Goals (also called KRAs) from Job Descriptions

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: April 14th, 2009

Many Managers (Including HR managers responsible for writing others Goals) often ask to help them on creating Goals (Key Responsibility Areas) for different designations, which they can use for setting Goals and/or conducting performance appraisals. While most of these managers are completely aware of their job profile, they find it difficult to shape it in a written form.

Knowing your Goals and writing them effectively is an all-together different game. To describe your Goals (KRAs) you need to have effective writing skills and sound knowledge of terminology. Unfortunately, some executives/ managers may not have a flair for writing and thus unable to write their Goals (KRAs). This is true for HR also. So here are some tips that will help Talent Junction users to write Goals (KRAs) from the Job Descriptions.

SMART: A Smart Goal (KRA) is one which is:

1. Specific : Clearly stated what to do and how to do?
2. Measurable: States how the performance for this goal will be measured.
3. Achievable: It can be achieved by employees if they work really hard (You can draw this conclusion by talking to employee, manager or someone who has done this job successfully).
4. Relevant: The KRA (Goal) is relevant to the job and the performance on this goal will improve productivity of the employee.
5. Time Frame: States a time frame to achieve the goals.

How to WRITE SMART Goals (KRAs)?

Here are the steps how anyone can write Goals (KRAs) from Job Descriptions: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Goal Setting, HR Best Practices, HR Technology, Human Resources, Performance Management | 29 Comments »

Employee Appraisal Scores can be DECEPTIVE

By: Gireesh Sharma
Date: March 30th, 2009

Recession has done at least one good thing for organizations. Shifting the FOCUS from Gut-feelings to qualitative and quantitative analysis of business performance and decisions.

“I think Steve is a great guy.” doesn’t work anymore. It has to be “Look at John’s sales performance report. It says he is doing great job.”

The next thing that comes into picture is Employee Performance Appraisals. More than ever organizations are looking to set SMART goals and conduct performance appraisals honestly. But does HONESTY itself gives accurate results?

Consider the case of three managers in the same department of an organization in Year 2007. The performance of the teams of these managers was at par with marginal differences.

Manager A: Ram is one of the youngest managers and hails from Generation Y. He is very optimistic and looks for positive side of the employees. He believes in motivating by carrots.
Manager B: Sonia is in the middle of her career. She has high career prospects in the company and looking for promotion in 1-2 years. She likes to play safe.
Manager C: Johnson is an ex-government employee. For him discipline and loyalty come foremost. He cannot tolerate any deviation from policies and authorities. He believes in the stick.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Employee Appraisals, Human Resources, Performance Management | 11 Comments »