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Current Affairs - Corporate Employment Trends Entrepreneurship Human Resource Industry Evolution Leadership Uncategorized

Democracy – Strength or Weakness??

India is suffering from a disease called ‘Democracy’. 

Everyone can’t be a speaker. Some have to be listeners. Because listeners are the Doers. And doers are the change-makers.

So democracy or dictatorship? 

India has a better chance to grab the business opportunities from other Countries as an alternative to China. Since China has created a paranoia with minimal justification, the forecast is, many countries depending on China for their’ manufacturing support will move to India. The other option the world has is Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia.

India might seem a lucrative option compared to any other country to the Investors. We might win the competition over any other country due to the statistics our country shows – 130 cr population, 68 million graduates,  43% of the total population in the age group of 18 to 44 yrs ( the highly productive phase of the age) and nearly 10 % more in the age group of 44 to 54 yrs (still the employable group) keeping the average age of an Indian to 29 years according to 2011 census , (rightly called – Young India) , which has grown proportionately now, 7th largest country in the world, ranking 4th in the world in natural resources. What else?  But, how will we sustain?

How will we accommodate these countries and the business opportunity? How will we prepare to accommodate them?

What is the transformation we need to undergo? 

A country with a mindset of the population – ‘Degree is the criteria for getting a job’. 

Companies are always on the hunt for good resources. Industry is suffering due to unavailability of the right resources. Higher rates of attrition are causing project delays. Here we have headlines stating unemployment as a burning issue. Resource availability, Skill issue or will issue? What is the underlying truth? 

Designations are more attractive than the quest for knowledge and zeal to deliver. 

Resource approach: Everybody wants to be a Manager, dictate terms, enjoy the luxury of the authority and higher pay package, not understanding their contribution to the system from their current role. 

The way we revolt….

We have a voice, so we will voice out everything coming to our mind through revolution, strike or with the support of media. Everyone’s pain needs attention by blowing it out of proportion. Resolution isn’t the only aim. Noise is also the aim. ‘You need to stand for yourself, no matter what’. But the way we do it is so ridiculous. We revolt in a way which yields to our own long term damages. These revolts cause irreversible damages. Any fair chance of recovery takes years and decades. 

No one wants to follow the right leader. Everyone wants to be one. We follow a leader with destructive ideologies rather than constructive ones. There are very few leaders – wise and selfless. Else most of them are keen on making a statement, irrespective of the chaos the statements may create. Leaders need to be orators only or strategic thinkers? 

Most of them think adversely or momentarily than aligning to the benefit of the Country and Community. Too much wisdom about unnecessary and nonproductive things exhausting the bandwidth further delaying the growth of the country. Personal and individual gains are priority as compared to community gains. 

Only one set of people is in alignment with law making and law abiding process. Rest of the majority are only commentators. These people can debate for days and months, to prove the law or the rule as wrong. Such approach lead to delay in Implementations. This delay results into non availability of data to measure the outcome of amendments made. It dilutes the purpose of amendment by the time data is available.

The definition of hard work means number of man-hours, quality and quantity of work. Management of resources is on extreme sides at both ends. Either the management is too ruthless or the workers are too dominating, lazy and take advantage. Laws do not give an upper hand of control to the victim in any case either, in a defined time period. 

Industry suffers from attrition, underperformance, lack of  accountability and  ownership in the deliverables. No yardstick to measure and record workers’ performance or integrity.

No common forum by Govt or a central body to define the benchmark and SOP of any technical, non-technical  activity. 

Industry is slowly reducing the efforts in the development of the employee. Either by means of training or any other investment on employee’s development. The reason is eventually the investment on resources is a loss, when the employee leave without adding value to the organization.

Government’s  changing decisions and processes with every new party who replaces the earlier. Every Govt coming to power within 1,2 3 or 5 yrs at state level have different agendas. These leaders push behind the running projects to the backstage creating fear for the MNC’s by keeping their projects on status quo for longer duration delaying their ROI schedules. Time overrun takes the project cost higher. There is no audit mechanism of projects to secure the investment and complete projects on time irrespective of which Govt is in power. 

The Grants, licenses and documentation are time consuming. Its complicated because of people’s non cooperative approach, is another roadblock. Superficially every process seem like ‘one window support’ as written and published. But ground realities vary drastically. 

There has to be a platform which will give control to the Govt rather than the Employees. The Corporate Governance need better rules. On the other hand develop an attrition control method. Devising compulsory fixed tenure for employees in each organization. Introduce automated evaluation mechanism to measure employee performance giving the Employer better confidence to develop the Resource. Save time and money of the Industry, lost in all this transition of resources leading completion of assignment or projects without hassles. 

Our Country’s financial strength is visible in times of pandemic, recession or any other natural disasters. Our turnaround-time to come back to normalcy will portray  the strength of our Economy. We ought to redefine the meaning of ‘democracy’ in India to reduce the impact of such a scenario benefiting every single person in this country.

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Current Affairs - Corporate Employment Trends Human Resource Industry Evolution

Industry trends during COVID and Post-COVID

According to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy 27 million youth in the age group of 20-30 years lost their jobs in April 2020 following a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Further, 33 million men and women in their 30s lost jobs in April, out of which 86% of the job losses were among men, it said.

In addition to the job losses, pay-cuts, and furloughs, the other trends Industries are adapting are:

  • Deferring any incentives, appraisals to employees.
  • Laying off roles where there are repetitive jobs.
  • Performance-based layoffs due to skill or will issues.
  • Layoffs due to the non-adaptability of employees to post- COVID scenario.
  • Layoffs considering resources on the bench even for 15 days as a burden for the organization and shedding overheads.
  • Decrease of numbers in Support functions.
  • Laying Off Senior People in Senior positions in the age group of 50+ yrs addressing cost and as perceived by the Industry – limitation in the utilization of such resources due to mobility, multitasking, adaptability, rigidity, etc.,
  • Promoting Junior resources to Senior roles due to resource availability at a lesser cost, maximum utilization, flexibility, more accommodative, etc..,
  • Hiring resources across geographies due to Work from home model.
  • Doubling the expectations in terms of deliverable’s and accountability.
  • Transferring Permanent resources to contractual employment – this will reduce the overhead cost for the Companies and retrenchment cost based on future Industry uncertainties that can be well accommodated at lesser cost and no brand defamation.
  • Out-placement of retrenched employees.
  • Engaging skilled white – collared resources on assignment/ day/ month basis is the new trend.
  • Hiring experienced resources at the cost of an entry-level resource.
  • Deferring all Campus hiring offers to infinity.
  • Expanding the job description of new and existing employees.
  • Measuring performance only on results delivered and not on the engagement time.
  • Work from home, not limiting working hours to 9, 10, 11, or 12 hours.
  • Major Companies adopting to Work from home trend due to the cost saved on infrastructure.
  • Expecting Industry ready resources minimizing training time and training cost.
  • Human Resource engaging more in virtual employee engagement platforms.
  • Adopting Project-based engagement through contractual hiring.
  • Building effective virtual platforms of communication to make the Work from home model better.
  • Reducing trial time and adaptability time of any new resource joining the organization.
  • Transfer of employees to the most challenging locations or work area.
  • Bidding with extremely Competitive rates to gain business and sustain.
  • Keeping only the primary and lean benefits to the employees active.
  • Emphasizing on survival than growth.

Every aspect of the industry has undergone substantial modifications. Should it be called New -Normal or New World? But change always is initiated, implemented, adapted, and better successful in chaos.

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Current Affairs - Corporate Employment Trends Industry Evolution Outsourcing Model Sectors

How will Resource Outsourcing/Staffing help the Industry Post –COVID?

How will Resource Outsourcing/Staffing help the Industry Post –COVID?

India has generally seen a trend of engaging blue-collared, support staff resources on third-party/ off-roll/outsourcing/ staffing engagement. Post-2008 recession, the pattern of engaging white collared, skilled resources widespread by the IT Industry but still was limited to IT Industry alone. Post-COVID, the trend of engaging white collared, technical employees into Contractual engagement excluding few Senior Management and strategical roles is envisaged as a necessity and is in demand now irrespective of any sector.

IT Industry shifted to this trend after the 2008 recession based on the following observations.

  • Bench cost was consuming revenues of the Organization affecting the financial health of the Company,
  • Having resources on bench based on the projection of growth didn’t turn out to be a wise decision.
  • Expansion plans delayed due to many factors
  • Competition,
  • Pricing,
  • Clients’ Approvals,
  • Licensing,
  • Global Economic trends,
  • Currency conversion,
  • Downtime between projects,
  • Mapping of the maximum capacity of each resource
  • On the other hand, holding back employees with no complete engagement led to the attrition of resourceful employees, leaving behind only the average people in the stream.

Why is the Non-IT Industry ( Construction, Infra, Energy, etc..,) following this trend 13 years later?

Non-IT Industry, on the other hand, has been most apprehensive about this model. And there have been justifying reasons for the same.

The reasons for non-acceptance were many concerns.

  • Accountability and Integrity of skilled resources on contractual engagement.
  • Gauging of work in manual ways and not digital ways which make it challenging to monitor the process
  • Empathy towards fellowmen for the insecurities in contractual jobs
  • Comparatively smaller players in staffing with an unclear or obscurely defined scope
  • Payroll agencies with only documentation capabilities or partial responsibilities.

Development and transformation was slower owing to

  • Multi-level external challenges
  • Delay in deliverables where the line of activities got disrupted without a possibility of back up or control
  • Support from all departments on time
  • Inventory availability
  • Govt approvals
  • Fund shortage due to delayed receivables from the end client,
  • Change in instructions from management/client since this Industry has been extremely dynamic in nature.

All the above reasons led to resistance to change or non-prediction of uncertainties or inability to collectively assess the cost and business benefit.

In the current scenario, ambiguities are intensified to the extent of the uncertainty raising questions like “IS THERE A TOMORROW? IF YES, WHO ALL WILL JOIN US AND BE A PART OF TOMORROW?”

Limited visibility to the future by even big giants of the Industry, failure of long term plans, long term plans being replaced by short term plans have forced every Company to lie low and sustain. This, in turn, has led to Pay cuts, Lay-offs, Furloughs, increased pressure for people to perform. In such a scenario, the Human nature of sympathy, empathy towards fellowmen, bothering about developing people for long term returns, consideration towards others’ jobs, feeling stressed due to workload have taken backstage. What has been more critical is working towards sustaining the Organization (a foundation which houses employees) through the chaos irrespective of all reasons – genuine, significant, logical or fake, insignificant, illogical.

This situation has led Industry to adapt to staffing/ outsourcing as a stop-gap to cater to the active projects, or newly acquired projects for the next three years. Approximately three years expecting all the cascading effects, chain reactions, transitions, transformations, adaptations to be completed in three years, and implementation of new normal to start functioning successfully.

Hopefully, this opportunity should transform the staffing industry with a place in the Industry as an organized sector- breaking barriers, inventing, innovating, and leading to great opportunities and aspiration to the youngsters to step in this Industry by choice and not by chance. Because decisions are made out of interests, and interests lead to innovation.

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Industry Evolution Uncategorized

Chain-Reaction across Industries, across the globe…


Work from home will hit the retail Industry, and the repercussions will affect the garment factories, and this, in turn, will influence the lives of lakhs of people associated with the Industry developing chaos further.


Generally, we groomed ourselves or embraced a lifestyle to influence and impress people around us. Now that the audience will decrease drastically, the things we’ve purchased till now will last all our lifetime, if the same lifestyle continues.


The economy will prosper because of our spending on luxuries and not necessaries. So what luxuries to be promoted by our marketing folks to support the economy.


People are losing jobs; schools aren’t entirely functional. Since there are online classes, the fee is reduced. But the staff and Infrastructure cost cannot be circumvented. Schools are forced to declare pay cuts for teachers. So, a series of outcomes on various Industry and professionals due to three reasons lockdown, job- loss, and social distancing.


Many such impacts are passing down from our post-COVID lifestyle, which will impact a series of industries passing down from one tier to another.


How do we safeguard these industries?


All our focus is on Industries, which are having an immediate effect- Airlines, Aerospace, Automotive, etc.. Our level of thought process hasn’t reached to the extent of different industries in a row which will be impacted due to the result on one Industry.


We generally have pursued an approach of post-mortem or analysis limited to a specific area, timeline, department, Industry, business, set of people, or society for most of the problems. COVID has forced us to collate all of the issues and find solutions at one go with zero downtime.


We need to analyze the Industry, which will initiate a chain reaction to many other industries involving most populations and affecting the economy the most. Prioritize them. Find addressal towards the same.


Let us see the unseen, envision beyond visibility, and initiate solutions for the forthcoming issues sooner with a seven-dimension perspective.

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A viewpoint which will include collective analysis of impacts on all the associated departments, industries, demographics, geographical areas, culture, Governing authority rules and regulations at all layers. A blue print for predictive progress every year and decade for next five decades has to be put forth by the Thinkers from all Industries, area and at all levels.

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Employment Trends Human Resource Sectors Uncategorized

Evolution in Employment trends.

Evolution in Employment trends.

How to have a productive work from home model yielding to a win-win situation for both employees and employers?

The industry is figuring out every possible way to accommodate this model since we aren’t left with any option.
Employee’s safety, Client Service, Company’s Survival are all equally important.

But, for Work from home model to be successful, employees need to accept that this is going to be a permanent solution for many of their problems of past and present. Personal, professional problems like travel time to the workplace due to traffic, pollution, uncertain food schedule, family time compromise, work-life balance, COVID Infection, social distancing; and Organization’s problems of today which have enormously increased due to COVID – Economic crisis, Opex, Company’s sustenance, Competition, Cashflow, Governance problems, Communication problems, Adherence to Compliance and Rules of Govt.

How should this be structured?

Every employee has to work to overcome the problems of their Company. All these years, risks belonged to the Company alone. The volume of people facing the uncertainty and directly affected by the risks in an Organizations was majorly the Senior fraternity. They had to risk a significant share of their salaries as a performance incentive – a performance incentive based on the Company’s performance and not just individual performance. The performance, which was at risk with every right or wrong decision since the right decisions and erroneous implementations, also impacted the Organization negatively. The remuneration or incentives of these Senior leaders were dependant on the whole crowd of people working in the Organization. Additionally, their credibilities also were at stake.

One of the possible initiatives could be passing nominal risk downwards. The industry has anyways announced a pay cut as a precautionary measure as a preparation for the uncertain scenario Companies might face in the next two years. The revoking of this decision isn’t having a definite timeline either, as on date. Why not convert the same to incentivize the resource against their performance monthly. This eventually would shift some risks of the Organization to the employee and also focus on the theory’ Survival of the fittest.’ There are ‘n’ number of people who have lost jobs due to this pandemic. Why not allow them to be paid proportionately to their performance.
Making an opportunity of every disaster has been a boon to the thought process of humankind. Why not the employees and employers make an opportunity to survive and thrive towards success following this theory?

We have had consulting engagements for specific roles in most of the organizations. How about increasing the ratio of people in these roles, passing down more accountability for most of the functions?