Blog By Sanjeev Himachali

Lean HR is the future of HR. Eliminate waste from your processes. Keep your procedures simple. Communication must be clear and easy to interpret. This is the only way HR can add value to business and to bottom-line. At its core, Lean is about the identification and elimination of waste through a structured approach to problem solving. It focuses on reducing the complexity of each process and identifying areas of improvement.
LEAN HR

It’s been TWO years since Rohit and Sheetal got married and she is still looking for that one elusive job offer, even though she is willing to work at half of her last drawn salary package or even like to be considered as fresh graduate. Now, she is exploring opportunities in other professions to be able to support her husband and keep that “professional” in her alive.

This is not an isolated case. There are many Sheetal’s out there whose career has been killed prematurely by the ‘so called matured recruiters and prevailing corporate culture’.

• How ethical are interviewing managers to ask personal questions to candidates about marriage or family planning or change of surname?
• How marital status of an individual does affect her commitment, professionalism and ability to deliver quality work?
• Do you think Sheetal should have lied about her plans of getting married and thereafter about her marital status?

http://www.hrtales.com/talent-management-story-of-career-aspiring-women/

You decided to have an exotic holiday in Bahamas with the person you love the most. But destiny had something else in store for you. On the fateful day, your plane crashed over an island. Except two of you, everybody else died in crash. This island has no life or vegetation. All you see here are rocks and sea. You have no idea about your location. You have nothing to eat. You tried every possible way to get help but without any success. Without any food, you have managed to survive for one week but now your health is deteriorating. One of you must die for the other person to prolong his hope for survival. What will you do? Who will survive? Can you think about any other action plan?

There is another corollary to it.

You are working in an organization. You have SEVEN people in your team (excluding you). Your organization is going through market slowdown. There has been no new hiring in last ONE year. All training programs have been suspended. Non-statutory benefits have been withheld. Salary increments have been frozen. Now, the management has no other choice but to lay-off employees. They have already laid-off 10% of total manpower in last SIX months. You have been asked to reduce your team size by THREE people. You need to act quickly. If you delay it by ONE month, then next month you will be required to remove FOUR of your team-members. What will you do? How will you proceed? Here is a brief background of your team-members.

T1: Male – Newly married. Wife is not working.

T2: Male – Pregnant wife, who is due for delivery in next month.

T3: Male – Retired parents, who are staying with him. He is the only earning member of the family. Marriage of his sister is scheduled in two months from now.

T4: Female – Single parent. Have no family support. She is having school going son.

T5: Male – Father died few years ago. He has working mother. He is repaying for his education loan which he took to complete his MBA. Salary of his mother is just enough to manage household expenses.

T6: Male: Have two school going kids. He is repaying his car loan. Last year he took new house on loan, repaying the loan.

T7: Female – Only child. She has retied parents, who are staying with her. Few months ago, she bought a new car on loan.

You have grown-up kids, who are in college. Your parents are staying with you. Your father is going through medical treatment.

How you will plan to reduce the team-size? Who will you ask to leave and why?

THREE reasons why Gratuity must not be part of CTC?

Whether gratuity should be included in CTC or not is a debatable subject. However, here are THREE reasons why it must be included in CTC –

1) Objective – The phrase Gratuity has been derived from Graciousness, which means, courteous, kind, and pleasant, especially towards someone of lower social status. Here, employer has been considered as someone with higher social status. Gratuity is a reward to be paid to employee for his loyalty, honesty and sincerity. If it is included in CTC, it doesn’t become graciousness.

2) Continuous Service – Unlike other components of CTC [Performance Based Variable, Transportation, Cafeteria/Food, Contribution towards Provident Fund and Pension, Health Insurance, etc.], Gratuity is not paid annually.

3) Computation – Gratuity is not calculated on the basis of annual basic salary [plus DA and retention allowance]. Gratuity is calculated on the basis of last drawn basic salary. For example, if “X” employee has worked for SIX years and his basic salaries for last SIX years are – 10,000/- INR; 12,000/- INR; 15,000/- INR; 18,000/- INR; 20,000/- INR and 22,000/- INR. His payable gratuity will be 76,154/- INR [Calculated as – (15/26)*6*22,000] and not 55,962/- INR as might have calculated and deducted from CTC on the basis of annual Basic Salary [5,769/- INR + 6,923/- INR + 8,654/- INR + 10,385/- INR + 11,538/- INR + 12,692/- INR].

Therefore, unless organizations are willing to pay the amount deducted from CTC at the time of separation [instead of after completion of FIVE years of service], gratuity shall not be included in CTC.

What do you think? Share your views.

Sanjeev Himachali
[www.hrtales.com]

There appears to be basic flaws in management lessons which we have been taught and hence need to be relearned.
On public forums, organizations call their human resources as assets and capital however in profit and loss statement and in balance-sheet; they are shown as costs, expenses and liabilities. Why this flawed conceptualization? Why the most important asset of organization, the competitive differential, is shown as liability or expense?

Sanjeev
Your question is interesting.
The salary to the Human Asset is the cost of retaining the asset.
Therefore salary is shown as an expense.
It is not the asset which is shown as a liability or expense.

This is only an accounting norm.HR is traditionally considered as adding up to the cost of mangling a company as it incurs expenses in hiring, training, caring and retaining employees..We need not be unusually worried about the accounting perspective of HR.If HR is really seen as a cost center adding no value, then why organisations are not dispensing with HR as a cost cutting measure ? Similarly inventory department can also be considered as a cost center in terms of accounting norms but can company dispense with it ? But HR has a business perspective which is now being increasingly highlighted.It may not directly generate profits but provides human capital to the company that creates wealth for it It is looked up on now as a strategic business partner in the organisational growth by managing,developing,engaging talent and succession planning.Having said so, HR can still explore avenues of directly generating revenues by saving hiring and training costs by rationalizing it's hiring process to focus on candidates with right competency and cultural fit which can minimize attrition and save expenses on training them.It can also lessen hiring costs by developing proper succession planing.It can develop metrics to measure ROI on training, for example, the reduction in rejections and improvements in quality after a specific skill training which it can quantify.This revenue is tangible.However the benefits on productivity emerging from a peaceful industrial relations and a great culture of bonding and gratitude in the form of reduced absenteeism ,negligible conflicts and industrial disputes and greater synergy are intangible and unquantifiable. Therefore HR is a business function in true sense.

B.Saikumar

Navi Mubai

“Why does your organization need to hire fulltime Human Resource (HR) Team? You can outsource HR activities of your organization to domain experts. It will be more cost effective to your organization”, I asked a CEO of an organization.
He replied, “Look Sanjeev, Every day so many things so wrong. We cannot blame client, customers, competition and government for all our failures. We need someone in-house to be blamed for our failures and wrong doings, someone who can be held accountable for every (wrong) thing in organization”.
How true is that?
- Sanjeev Himachali

Job Interviewer: “Alex, what is your current and expected salary”?
Alex: Sir, you can offer me as per your budget for this role.
Interviewer: “But you must be having some figure in mind, right”?
Alex: No, Sir.

Now, this scenario begs a question, do you hire employees and offer them salary based on their current or last drawn salary or you offer them salary as per your budget for the role? If you are offering them salary on the basis of their last drawn salary then I am sorry to say but your HR and Management Team is not doing a good job. There is something called Manpower Planning, which takes inputs from Annual HR Budget and Annual Compensation Plan. I am not sure how someone can hire without Manpower Plan in place. This is suicidal. By offering salaries on the basis of last drawn salaries of candidates instead of salary budget for the role, you are creating imbalance in internal equity and as a result cropping disengaged and unhappy employees.

Let’s remember this. If your organization is a brand that candidate wants to associate himself with or if the role is very challenging, giving an opportunity to candidate to push his limits and be creative, a candidate won’t mind accepting an offer from an organization even if the offered compensation is 10-15% less than his current package.

On the contrary, if the candidate is having required education, experience, skills, and competencies and if he has cleared all rounds of interviews, and if his psychometric assessment report verifies his candidature for the role plus he have favourable reference check report then why he should not be offered two times of his current or last drawn salary if that is your salary budget for that role?

Can you explain and share as why compensation and benefit details cannot be published with job description? What is the purpose and agenda of creating ambiguity and complexity?

Link to Complete Article:

Share your thoughts.

Sanjeev Himachali [www.hrtales.com]

Having read and heard lot many positive reviews of the movie – JOY (starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Edgar Ramirez and Diane Ladd), the other day I get a chance to watch this movie. And what a movie it is. It is very inspiring and a must watch for all budding entrepreneurs. However, that is not my purpose of writing this note. There are a few wonderful learnings in this life which can be applied into our personal as well as professional life.

1. Your product and your organization are your babies. No one can understand them better than you. Take care of them. Don’t let anyone else represent you.

2. Relationships are important…know who loves you and who is taking advantage of you. At the end, you might decide to keep both but knowing the difference is important.

3. When you are in competition with others…big players will bully you, shatter you, block you and sabotage your growth. Opportunists in your team might backstab you, harm you and might oppose your ideas or plans. Don’t let any of them take away your dream or question your passion and beliefs. Stay firm. Take control of your life.

4. Life doesn’t give second chance. Opportunity doesn’t knock the same door twice. If you are fortunate enough to get second chance…make best use of it.

5. Respect your customers and clients. Take care of them. Go out of your way to accommodate them. They will play an important role in your success story.

6. You create your own environment and value-system. You decide how you want to be treated by others. You show them that you cannot be taken for guaranteed, and they will respect you. You let them by-pass you, overstep you or overpower you and they will use you as doormat.

7. Lastly, don’t let success get into your head. Stay grounded. Stay humble. Help people. Be approachable.

In the movie, there are TWO screenplays that reaffirm the importance of friends and friendship in our life and must be mentioned here –

1. In one scene where Joy was demonstrating use and benefits of the mop created by her company to passing customers of K-Mart in parking area. No one really shows interest in mop. Then her childhood friend steps-in as a demonstrator and Joy becomes customer and the role-play they create to attract customers…is simply awesome. Great friends don’t hesitate to walk with you that extra mile. They believe in you when no one else does.

2. There is another scene where Joy was given a second chance to present her product. She get freeze on stage…struggling with words and her confidence takes a nosedive. Once again her childhood friend call her as a customer, engaging with her in an interactive conversation, asking her questions and building her confidence and thereby helping her make a great sales pitch. Sometimes just one call makes all the difference.

I am not promoting this movie. However, I feel there is something in the way of story-telling of this movie which is really inspiring and has something for us to reaffirm and relearn.

There is only ONE PERSON who can make you SUCCESSFUL or a FAILURE.
There is only ONE PERSON who can make you FEEL HAPPY or SAD.
There is only ONE PERSON who believes in YOU, YOUR DREAMS and can HELP YOU REACH YOUR GOALS.
There is only ONE PERSON who can take you from WHERE YOU ARE TODAY to WHERE YOU DESIRE TO BE TOMORROW.
That one person is YOU. You can be WHATEVER YOU WANT TO BE. You can be WHOSOEVER you want to be. Believe in yourself. Believe in your dreams.

Link to the Article:

I hope this small note will be of importance to you. Your feedback or comments will be highly appreciated.

Take very good care of yourself.

Composed By: Sanjeev Himachali