Engaging a New Employee

 

Recently I came across this interesting article/practice at Patni Computers:

 

On his first day to work at Patni Computers, 23 year old Arshad Shaikh had sweaty palms and an itchy neck. The mild apprehension of how his first day at work would be was worrying him. But, surprise surprise! A badge with a smiley face and ‘Just Joined’ stamped on it was given to him. “I can’t tell you how good I felt that day. There were unknown faces coming up to me and offering help. This practice we have, called ‘Just Joined’ is a great HR practice,” gushes Shaikh, senior analyst, Patni. “Moreover, all the process related information was shared with me right on day one to make things easier. I felt settled from the first day itself,” he adds.

 

There are numerous reports that would tell us how 70% of employees leave within the first 1 year of joining. People who stay on for more than a year have a high likelihood of completing a good run with the Company. Knowing this fact the entire period of pre-joining formalities, induction program and post joining first 1 year of engaging employee becomes extremely important. Having said that most of the companies have a ‘standard’ induction manual that’s delivered like work as usual in first week of joining etc and else everything just operates as usual for all employees. There isn’t much to differentiate between programs or ways of engaging employees as far as new employees are concerned.

 

While I have come across some very interesting practices in various organizations, I found this something very interesting….small initiative but interesting. Might be bordering more on a IT/ITES (BPO) environment though.

 

Have you come across any interesting practices in Service Industry in particular….???

 

~~Rohit~~

Business Ahead in Financial Year 2008-09

 

As the country waits to see how political events turn out over the next few weeks there is a lot at stake for the industry and business community as well. The next two weeks in my view would have a strong impact on how economy and industry fares over the next year or so. It’s not just about whether the current UPA government survives the vote of confidence in the parliament or not.

 

While many of us with years of indifference might be neutral to events of the past few months and coming weeks, lets look at the possibilities from a business point of view:

 

Possibility A: Government fails to survive the vote of confidence and the country is faced with early elections. In all likelihood this will result in increase in inflation rate, free fall on stock exchange due to uncertain economic environment, fall in GDP by probably another 0.5 percentage points, long wait for elections result which will decide the future course of thinking on economic issues and reforms, and ofcourse the fact we will yet again get into a situation with no clear majority and permutations combinations of UPA numbers against NDA numbers.

 

Possibility B: Government survives the vote and continues for the entire term. Now given next year is election year anyways they will try and go all out for creating a positive image for themselves in the intervening period. Since inflation is not something they have immediate and absolute control on, in all likelihood with support of SP in place of stubborn Left, they will go all out for reforms. Possibly many of the pending bills in parliament: Banking reforms, Insurance reforms, Pension reforms etc would get the nod. Also the likelihood that government might just have enough time to push the deal before US government finishes its term, would create a possibly very positive environment.

 

My own intuition is that government will survive and we will see some interesting positive movements in the next year or so. If that happens, inflation and stock market might start showing signs of good recovery by end of this year or maybe Diwali….well it often requires a positive sentiment and positive environment to start pushing things.

 

~~Rohit~~

Consulting Life…

 

There are just as many myths about consulting as there are innumerous intriguing facts. One gets interesting and divergent view points when you talk to people connected to consulting in various capacities: young aspirants, experienced consultants, consulting firms and clients.

 

Check out my article on life in consulting from eyes of these different stakeholders by clicking here J

 

~~Rohit~~

Increase in Cost of Hiring Vs Increase in Efficiency Rate

 

We are undergoing at the moment a twin phenomenon of tremendous growth rate in the economy and acute mismatch of demand-supply of skilled talent/manpower. Owing to this twin phenomenon there has been tremendous salary increments for the last 3 years in a row.

 

In the last 3 years India has had the highest rate of increment in Asia, constantly clocking an average of close to 14-15%. This translates to almost 20-25% increment in highest performing organizations in their respective sectors. While due to inflation and other global factors have attributed to certain slow down in growth by 0.5-1.0%. We are now looking at close to 8% growth in short to medium term. However that itself is almost a tremendous rate by any global standard. Given such rate and ofcourse inflation itself we are likely to witness double digit average salary increments in the next 2-3 years as well.

 

The key question now is are these tremendous increments proportionate to increase in efficiency levels of these people; hence do they actually deserve this. Honestly my view on efficiency is these increments are hugely disproportionate to improvement in efficiency. This is driven very strongly by demand and supply situation in the economy today.

 

Some interesting aspects of this situation today are:

 

·         Demand supply relation and would take time to settle down. IT industry for example is already signs of slowing down, rather must I say settling down. We are hearing of single digit salary increments in the industry this year. This is driven as much by slow down from US, as on the fact IT industry over the past few years has invested heavily in creating skilled talent and hence increasing the pool size available (which by the way is ONLY ultimate answer to this madness anyways)

 

·         Whilst organizations might not be necessarily able to control increments completely, they are looking at alternate actions like reducing administration cost of hiring, cost of hiring, internal referrals, eliminating non value adding roles, re-looking at skill set required for doing a certain role etc.

 

·         Some organizations would yet grow at higher rate than industry average and so would the employees grow at disproportionate rate

 

·         Key safeguard for most organizations is however the fact revenue per employee in most of these organizations is growing, even though not attributable to efficiency. It’s in all probability just an outcome of current business environment and bigger business opportunity than before. In such environment if organizations would benefit with higher growth than previous years, so would its employees.

 

In summary I think increments for the next few years would continue to outrun delta improvement in employee efficiency. As organization would invest in creating larger talent pool and various industries would reach stage of consolidation, this phenomenon will settle down. We are likely to continue our leading position in Asia as highest salary increments J

 

Hence we will continue to see increments in proportion to growth in business but not necessarily similar increase in efficiency.

 

Have you seen similar trends? Have you come across interesting ways of managing this situation?

 

~~Rohit~~