- Treat Your Employees As You Treat Yourself: This is the fundamental principle that you have to bear in mind in retaining your top talent and the rest is just supporting factors. You can do justice to your employees if you really know how to manage properly. Managing people is also not rocket science, in these days of inequality, it's best to treat your employees as you'd like to be treated. See things in their shoes – they won't like to be treated as expensive entry level personnel or secretaries if that's not what they're hired to do.
- Maintain A Proper Performance Appraisal Management System: Employees need to be appreciated. Realizing that management values their work is the most important thing leaders can do. They would be more likely to continue working for that employer. Based on the accomplishments of employees' job responsibilities they should be getting a consistent pay increase. Appropriate rewards of course increase productivity and innovation. If you're increasing their salaries or if their pay-for-performance is just a couple of dollars, it's not worth it and it can back fire. So think of a concrete system and implement it. May sure you keep track of their performance and that your managers know how to manage it.
- Employee Engagement: Reviewing and monitoring their employees, managers can easily recognize when the employees feel connected to their work and when they lose interest? Accordingly, they can make them engaged. An engaged employee will be enthusiastic about his work. As a result, productivity will be high and therefore you can maximize ROTI (Return on Talent Investment). Either rotating job responsibilities or having cross functional teams or getting a personal career growth system in place will make them engaged and afresh. You can also ask them what they need and what they want. They'll even be more engaged if they have a say in the matter.
- Effective Training Management System: If you want to keep your employees up to date in their skills you have to create an effective training program for employees and also development opportunities such as tuition reimbursement programs for college courses, onsite training classes and personal skills development sessions. Otherwise, there is a chance to leave the jobs because of limited employment opportunities.
Every organization typically wants to retain its employees for as long as possible. However, employees stay with the employers who pay well and treat them fairly. There is only one sure-fire way and one golden rule to accomplish this and here are a couple of pointers:
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Performance appraisals induce strong tremors as aftershocks which have known to cause cracks in the mental state of employee’s. These cracks soon transcend and escalate into wide gorges, which cause rifts between the employee and his company.
Majority of the company’s employ an appraisal model, irrespective of its effectiveness and even its implementation. But no matter its finesse in execution, the truth remains that the factor of subjectivity will play spoilsport in maintaining an impartial and unbiased appraisal review. The factor of subjectivity is bred in our human nature, and the outcome is directly proportional to the vibes between the manager conducting the review and the employee being reviewed. Companies have learnt to pause recruitment drives post immediately after their performance appraisal, as they are expecting resignations form employee’s, who have fallen victim to the cracks from their appraisals.Therefore it’s essential to practice damage control which perhaps may mend and prevent the loss of an employee which may cause a talent deficit in the organization.The best antidote is to invoke a fair feedback system immune to character assassinations of managers due to the rage of employee’s. Indian corporate has established a dogma which is far fetched from the fact of introducing these feedback systems. This is due because, feedbacks systems turn volatile as they need to find balances between being negative or constructive irrespective of it being the truth. And the skill of diplomacy is not something everyone bags. The best remedy is to create an anonymous feedback system which confines the feedbacks in an enclosure as options given and to provide a quality and fair canvas to the employee’s. Prominent measures need to be taken by the HR to provide testament to the worthiness of the feedback which may in turn be a reassurance to the employee’s. Job satisfaction has a direct impact upon the manager and employee relationship, its the prime ingredient in cooking up resignations and causing alarming talent deficits. Good performers fall victim to subjectivity and often cause a large void in the talent pool of the company upon their withdrawal. Upon introspection it can be noted that the performance of an employee is a complex equation harnessing the variables such as motivational factors, training, expected outcomes, resources, delegates and the extent of empowerment. If an employee fails to meet the relevant and required competencies it’s rather absurd to blame the employee unless it is a case of voluntary underachievement. The crucial litmus test of an organization in an employee’s mind lies in the way the company treats its departing employees. Therefore the outcome of this test is what defines the rate of corrosion in the employee pool. Employwise is a complete HR Software for the life-cycle of an employee including Leave and Attendance software, Employee Database, Travel and Expense Management. Start your free trial for 30 days.... Performance appraisal has always been deemed as part of performance management, due to the fact that it was the only window a company could employ to understand the performance and manage resources bestowed on its employees. But rather than posing itself as part of performance management, the fact remains that’s its only a tool to manage performance. Performance appraisal is known for its inflammable nature, which might turn relationship between the manager and his subordinates into ashes. It proved a hostile environment for talent recognition and earned itself a contemplation to extinguish it completely from the pages of performance management. But recognizing talent remains a crucial aspect in a company’s step towards its growth, it’s imperative to seek out an employee’s forte and reference it with the competencies required. Therefore it’s apt to label performance appraisal as necessary evil. In retrospect, a survey done among fifty firms concluded that all of them adopted some model of performance management, while it had worked for some but others had to rethink their model or to discard the appraisal system. Performance management lays out the canvas to paint a more efficient organization. It sets the goals and provides the talent and workforce requirements with a great deal of specificity. The success of the model adopted relies on the way it’s sold in the company. The theme is to be objective. Goals need to be transparent and clear and should be conveyed to the employee’s without any degree of ambiguity. Lately conventional review systems are being discarded and a more employee friendly reviews are being conducted. It’s religiously followed and the cycle continues every year. It helps the employee to understand their strengths and aids the company to align these strengths towards the betterment of the organization. When a working model has been discovered, the company switches gear and takes off in stealth mode towards the destination of growth. When competencies and employee strengths are aligned, a profound sense of worthiness blooms within the workforce which yields more productivity and harvests a better profit for the company. Therefore rather than criticizing and curbing the appraisal system it’s advisable to make it in a way that covers all the facets of performance management system such as goal setting, performance feedback and goal based appraisals. Altering Performance Management into a Process of Nurturing Talent | performance management8/21/2014 Performance management and nurturing talent are both very critical aspects for an organization’s quality of performance and growth. The term performance management can be defined as the specific approach for getting successful results in organizations by improving the capabilities and skill set of the individuals.
However, the process of performance management in the current business environment does not solve the requirements of the current market trends. Basically, performance management is all about managing the workforce as a whole for ensuring maximum output for the organizations. The most critical part this procedure lags is the effort for nurturing of individual talent. There are reasons why performance management procedure doesn’t prove to be fruitful in today’s business environment and one of the main reasons is the consistent transformation of the industrial workforce into knowledge workforce. The process of performance management only follows one way which has been decided upon by the management but individual nurturing provides room for multiple ways to approach various organizational situations. Moreover, the performance management is only directed upon maximizing product output and does not concentrate on competitive environment. Lack of creativity, collaboration, self-motivation and autonomy over important decisions are some other areas where the idea of management directed performance management process fails in the current market. Practical Ways for transforming Performance Management into Talent Development
In a world dominated by Facebook and LinkedIn, there is no doubt that the Human Resource department, as we know it, needs to evolve. HR mainly comprises of two important objectives – personnel management and business execution. Personnel management has become completely automated, as a result of which, the services that needed face-to-face interactions earlier are now online anywhere and anytime thanks to web-based HRMS which offers ‘self-service tools’. Business execution has also become a round-the-year continuous process as it is easy to map individual goals and align it with the company’s strategic goals with the help of an effective employee management system. HR, as we know it, is dying a slow death? No instead, it is slowly becoming a more powerful, significant and strategic unit for any company as the various processes are getting streamlined and updated data is available to the HR manager 24/7 for informed decision-making process to drive employee as well as company growth. High-performing companies can now free their Human Resource team from transactional functions to focus on processes that support business execution like re-planning company goals, organization design, career progression, succession planning and goal alignment. These areas have been traditionally neglected in India till now but with the benefit of HR software, managers can accurately plan the training, development and coaching activities. They will also get more time to monitor employees through continuous activities and three sixty degrees feedback which can assist in identifying the right candidates for rewards and promotions. One of my previous blogs dealt with the importance of applying technology in HR functions and I will say it again- “Technology has made it impossible for the Human Resource Manager to function the same way it did ten years back”. But technology in itself is not enough. It needs to be driven by the HR manager to make it more relevant and effective. Chuck Palahnuik, American journalist, once said, “right now, getting killed would be redundant”. I don’t know about him but it certainly holds true for HR in India right now. While many companies are turning to a more relaxed, casual work environment, a majority of companies in India have a strict dress code policy although there is very little employee acceptability for such enforced rules. Clothes have a way of reflecting a person’s personality traits and at the same time there is a definite psychological influence on the wearer as well as the audience. Harvey Specter and Don Draper; two powerful men with good looks and important clients have a knack for closing business deals by their sheer presence. What else do they have in common? A love for suits! The two best dressed men of our times have a fetish for impeccable designer suits and not just because the dress code is so. Even Barney Stintson, America’s favorite lady killer chose his suit over a hot girl. Suits, the epitome of power dressing symbolizes confidence, success and ambition, all at one go. In India, power dressing is reserved for once-in-a-month events like big-client meetings, conferences and ofcourse job interviews. While many companies are turning to a more relaxed, casual work environment, a majority of companies in India have a strict dress code policy although there is very little employee acceptability for such enforced rules. Clothes have a way of reflecting a person’s personality traits and at the same time there is a definite psychological influence on the wearer as well as the audience. Appropriate dress codes are important in a workplace as they reflect the company’s intention to stay focused on serious about their business. A compulsory dress code helps in enhancing and maintaining the company’s public perception and image. This holds true especially when there is a lot of consumer interface like in banks, educational institutes, retail or consultancies. There is no direct link between dress code and productivity, but surveys point to the fact that casual clothes have a negative influence on the employee’s attitude and energy level. Many firms in India are flexible in their formal dress code attire and do not insist on female employees wearing suits, trousers and shirt or formal skirts. Indian formals (i.e sari and kurti) are also equally acceptable as long as they are not accessorized.. Quite a few firms in India even give out extremely detailed dress codes defining the appropriate heel size for shoes, necktie style or the acceptable jewelry designs. These restrictive policies do not work well in India as employees refuse to accept these given parameters most of the time. To avoid the hornet’s nest many companies just ask their employees to ‘dress professionally’. Then there are firms that encourage their employees’ uniqueness by simply asking them to ‘wear something’ like Google India does. Infact until a few years ago, employees of IT firms, dotcoms and even advertising firms could walk in to the office in tank tops, shorts and flip-flops. While such casual clothing attitude does encourage informality and a heightened level of casualness, employers should be proactive in creating and circulating a list of non-acceptable cloth items also. Specific dress code standards should be set up so that employees can differentiate between relaxed, casual and informal dressing styles. Also, the employer needs to lay equal stress on neatness and orderliness as things like unpolished shoes, dirty nails, uncombed hair are also a big no-no in the work-place but in India these things are pointedly ignored as they are too personal in nature. It is imperative to have a definite dress code in the office so that employees know what is expected from them and what is not acceptable. It should not follow a specific fashion trend but instead focus on the business environment as it should be appropriate. The employer needs to remember that the employees need to be comfortable in what they wear or productivity will suffer. EmployWise is the only HR Software delivered in the HR SaaS Software model that provides total employee life-cycle management capabilities. Start your free trial for 30 days.... HR management is perhaps the most intricate aspect of business management and it encompasses lots of organizational functionalities like development, wellness, safety, benefits, employee motivation, administration, communication, and training. However with changed dynamics of business management, HRM is now expected to support efficiently and prolifically to the general accomplishment of the organization's aims and business objectives. HRM now plays a pivotal role in strategic directions, metrics and measurements for demonstrating a roadmap of business success by using its human resource asset. The supportive use of Employwise, Online HR Software, helps an organization to reach at the success base, and coordinates the overall HR solutions concerning an organization. It has a unique plug and play module which you can shape up according to your business requirement. Employwise is effective for vast employee network no matter wherefrom they are working. Its HR support is extended for offshore and onshore employees with the support of comprehensive HR Management Software. As a unique Employee Management Software, Employwise helps an organization to gain the ultimate trust of its employees. With this efficient interactive platform employees can be more assured and served well. With Employwise an organization can streamline their recruitment management system in a better way. You can work with better efficiency in the selection process of your workforce and will get better productivity at quick turnaround time. Employwise is a cost efficient online HR system solution that is equally helpful for strategic planning for HRIS solutions. The uniqueness of this management solution provider software is its adaptability and its easy customization with a specific company infrastructure. Here as a user you have no liability to buy and pay for any hardware or software. You can take the modules you need and accordingly you have to pay for it. It is a non-expensive way to take care and implement well planned HRM strategies for overall growth of your business. Payroll management is one of the vital jobs of HR management, and it is intricate too. With the supportive HRMS Software from Employwise you will be able to manage attendance, the calculation and integration of leave and leave related benefits and payroll issue with optimum transparency and with right control without employing extra effort on them. If HR management is a multifaceted responsibility, Employwise is a multifunctional solution provider. With new updates available every year and user friendly product features, it is easy- to-implement software platform for all sorts of business environments. In one word it’s worth investment as a comprehensive HR management solution. The face of the Human Resources department has changed significantly and it is now being seen more as a contributor to the profitability of an organization. Organizations have made a paradigm shift towards viewing HR as an innovative business partner, which will help in building the core competence of the organization leading to sustainable growth. The reason for this change is the competitive pressure in an extremely volatile business market place, where everyone is competing to better their sales, increase profits and grab the best talent in the market. To have a crucial department like Human Resources as a purely administrative body seems like a waste of the sea of talent and scope available within this realm. Most of the administrative tasks that HR was earlier ‘expected’ to perform are just as easily outsourced or better still digitized to save costs and better utilize the human potential. With this change of focus in mind, companies are investing in Apps for HR to make life easier and faster paced for all in question. Let’s take a look at some of these Apps and Software deliverables. Managing Employee Information: The Employee Information Portal is the Employee Self-service management software. It is a central location for all employees to be able to view and update their personal data for accurate records. This centralized portal allows employees to apply for leave, view current leave balances, review attendance records and other benefits attached to their employment. This helps the HR teams by:
Managing Learning and Development: Training Management Software helps the HR team drive change and help employees pick up new skills or sharpen the existing ones. This software helps to deliver training programs with a focus on enhancing employee performance and efficiency. Managing Exit and Succession Planning: Managing exits and planning towards replacements of exiting employees and having a clear stance of how an employee will move up the corporate ladder, are indispensable and crucial functions for HR. This has a direct bearing on how employees and others view the company’s culture. Exiting employees must be able provide their reasons for leaving in a non-threatening environment and their employment payment claims must be settled quickly and efficiently. The outgoing employee must be given as much respect as the person chosen to fill the vacant position. Also a consistently well performing employee must know that reward will come in the form of a step up and or an increase in earning. Both Exit handling and succession planning are delicate subjects that must be managed with kid gloves. Despite the importance of this feature it is provided by a very small percentage(34%) of human resource management software as suggested by a software research team. EmployWise is one of those few providing this feature. Benefits of Exit Management are:
Software solutions for HR that integrate cohesively with the business and other software within the company, create a robust armor that protects the interests of the business and gives a boost to employee performance. The overall and combined efforts of HR and other business practices create a collaborative network leading to sustainable growth and increased financial returns. With so much technology around, it is ‘apps’olutely certain that HR will remain a value added function rather than just to support or provide administrative help. Employee motivation is a tricky subject for most managers and organization heads. Yet it is imperative for them to handle employee motivation diligently since it forms the core for organizational success. Employee Motivation essentially means developing effective ways to recognize and applaud the contributions of your employees whereby they are encouraged to perform better and contribute more productively to their organization. According to entrepreneur.com, employee motivation is “using both tangible and intangible rewards to keep employees enthusiastic, loyal and interested in continued improvement”. One way organizational heads can improve the level of employee motivation in their organization is by first ensuring that there is a definite structure or setup that is well implemented within their organization for understanding, assessing, measuring and rewarding employee activities and achievements. J P Maroney, the founder of People Builders has listed down five success keys to effective employee motivation. According to him, the key factors for employee motivation are satisfaction, appreciation, recognition, inspiration and compensation. Satisfaction: When employees are happy at work, they are always motivated and productive than those employees who are unhappy with their work. Therefore, organizations must increase and innovate ways to keep their employees happy. There are different ways to improve satisfaction at work. Organizations must understand what the workforce needs – may be flexible hours, rewards and recognition scheme, opportunities for career growth, open-door policy or anything else – and “satisfy” these needs. This way, when you have satisfied employees, you are also likely to have satisfied customers. Appreciation: Employees like to be recognized for their efforts and their contributions to the organization. Therefore, managers and organization heads must make honest attempts and take every opportunity to openly praise and appreciate their employees. Appreciation is an effective morale booster. The more frequent it is, the better it motivates employees. A pat on the back, a few encouraging words, a thank you note, a mention in a meeting, a write up in a weekly newsletter are all simple ways to convey to your employees that you care for them and hold high their services to your organization. Recognition: Employees like to learn that their work in the organization is taken note of, and that they are considered as assets of the organization. Managers and organization heads must honor this innate employee attribute and have a sound rewards and recognition system in place. They must find ways interesting ways to motivate their employees to perform a task and when the said task has been accomplished successfully, it must also be rewarded appropriately. Work and non-work related contests, in-house rewards for various contributions and even recognizing their contributions outside of work will increase employee motivation by leaps and bounds. Inspiration: Employees always look up to their seniors and the organization head for inspiration. But more importantly they also look for inspiration in their organizations and the values it stands for. Keeping this in mind, organizations looking for improved employee motivation must have a strong mission statement and the heads of the organization must sincerely abide by these values and missions. When leaders lead form the front, employees will be inspired to follow them. Employees will be happy to work for an organization that is true to its beliefs and works towards realizing its dreams. Since every employee aspires the same, he will take inspiration from the organization itself. Inspired employees are also motivated and loyal. Compensation: Monetary rewards or tangible rewards are one of the important factors of employee motivation. Therefore, organizations can use this means well to their benefit. Performance bonuses, promotional raises, salary hike, enabling profit sharing, giving gifts and distributing reward coupons are some of the effective means of compensation. Employwise is a complete HR Management Software for the life-cycle of an employee including Leave and Attendance software, Employee Database, Travel and Expense Management. Start your free trial for 30 days.... A desire for increased productivity and a more connected company culture has prompted companies like Yahoo!, Best Buy, Bank of America and Zappos to scale back their flexible work arrangements. A decision like this would definitely impact the women workforce, but it is naive to believe that it would have no impact on today’s aspirational men. In fact the report presents some findings which actually expound all these beliefs and more. I was going through Harvard Business Review last week when I came across this article by Anna Beninger and Nancy Carter of the Catalyst research team. Catalyst is an international nonprofit organization with an aim to expand opportunities for women and create more inclusive workplaces. The finding from their latest report - Catalyst's flexibility research couldn’t have come at a better time. A desire for increased productivity and a more connected company culture has prompted companies like Yahoo!, Best Buy, Bank of America and Zappos to scale back their flexible work arrangements. A decision like this would definitely impact the women workforce, but it is naive to believe that it would have no impact on today’s aspirational men. In fact the report presents some findings which actually expound all these beliefs and more. Catalyst quizzed 726 MBA graduates around the world working full-time in both for-profit and non-profit firms across industries —about their experiences with, and perceptions of, flexible working arrangements. The responses were astounding. 81 percent of those surveyed reported that they were currently working at a firm that offers flexible work arrangements of some kind. In addition to telecommuting, this includes flexible arrival or departure, flexi time, compressed work weeks, reduced work/part-time, and job sharing. Flexible work options are in fact the rule, and not the exception, at organizations today. Their research also revealed that women and men were using flexible work options like flexi time and flexible arrival and departure to the same extent throughout their careers. However, the study did confirm that women were significantly more likely than men to telecommute i.e. work outside of the office over the course of their careers. So while men and women are equally likely to use some flexi work options, women are more likely to telecommute. But women pay for that. Lack of access to flexible working arrangements damages high potential employees' career aspirations, and is especially harmful to women's aspirations, thus impacting the number of women raising their hands for stretch assignments and promotions. The report also discovered that women working at a firm without flexi work options were more likely to downsize their aspirations. According to Catalyst, flexibility is not just about being flexible with time. It is also about being strategic, which requires employers and employees to be open and creative in questioning the process of how work should be done, and why. In a scenario where virtual meeting is possible from any place, any time, it is hard to imagine a company doing away with work-from-home. Needless to say, offering flexible working arrangements is critical for organizations intending to maximize their talent pool with high potential employees and become employers of choice. In fact a 2011 study by nonprofit Human Resources Association World at Work found that companies with stronger cultures of flexibility experienced lower turnover and increased employee satisfaction, motivation and engagement. Employwise is a complete HR System for the life-cycle of an employee including Leave and Attendance software, Employee Database, Travel and Expense Management. Start your free trial for 30 days.... |
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