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Dinesh Jain , VP (HR), Flex Industries Limited
shares his HR vision for the company.
What is the recruitment ideology at your company?
Ours is a 23-year-old company, which puts a great amount of emphasis on people relations. While recruiting people, our accent is not just on qualifications, but more on the mindset. We prefer people who have functional experience, and who have worked in various line functions

What is the selection process like?
Ours is a four-pronged selection process encompassing a written test, psychometric test, group discussions and interviews. Freshers are inducted into the company within one day, while for senior professionals, interviews and group discussions are held and candidates are finalised within 2-3 days.

What kind of training is imparted to fresh recruits?
For new employees, our company has a two-month induction program. Further training imparted to fresh recruits is need based, and on-the-job training is provided to recruits who are inducted in specialised areas. Technical and soft skills training is also imparted from time to time to our employees. The training modules thus conducted are either in-house or carried out by specialised agencies.

What are the appraisal and evaluation systems adopted?
Our organisation has a quarterly HR appraisal, which includes a 360 degrees evaluation for senior management. Besides, there are regular appraisals for all employees, including executives and those on the shop-floor.
Tell us about some of the motivational techniques adopted by your company.
We have a generous incentive programme, which has helped us increase productivity by 30-40% as well as minimise wastage by 2-3 %. Incentives are offered to all genres of employees, and we have seen that they have greatly helped in raising morale as well as performance. Besides, every employee gets a chance to work abroad at our unit in UAE on a rotational basis, which acts as a major motivator. In fact, we have found that our motivational programmes have not only helped us reduce absenteeism, but also reduced attrition levels from 12% to 8%.
What makes your organisation different from competition?
Professionalism in our work environment and direct involvement of management in ensuring employee welfare, are among the key aspects that make us different from our competitors. Besides, the investments that our organisation has made for the future as well as the technology that our employees work with, make our organisation distinct from others.
Finally, what is the vision that you have for the future of your organisation?
Our objective is to help maintain our organisation as a quality organisation, which not only recognises and nurtures talent, but also helps retain it. We also aim to lower resignation rates as well as endeavour to follow world class HR practices, for our organisation. We hope to achieve our objectives by the end of the current year.

(Content Courtesy: The Economic Times)


  A magical relationship - HR Consultants and Companies
 

Headhunters are increasingly working towards providing more than the average fare and in letting them do so, companies need to engage them in their strategies and keep them in the loop about their future plans.

Does this quote sound familiar to you? “Recruitment consultants need to word as in-house consultants and not merely as resource providers. Companies should share with them, their future goals and ambitions and not just their recruitment needs.” Well, all the biggies in the global recruitment space have been chanting this for ages. All these idealistic opinions may sound overwhelming, but the million dollar question is, have Indian companies actually evolved to the extent that they would share their future plans with their recruitment consultant? In some cases, YES!

The New Role

Unlike an average barber who is just expected to give you a haircut or a shave, recruitment consultants are acquiring a more meaningful and diversified role, with no intentional disregard to barbers. Traditionally, headhunters were informed regarding the number of people that were required and the basic academic and professional background that the said people were required to possess. The company would hang up on that call expecting no further interaction, till the point the prospective candidates were directed to the company, after being screened by the headhunter. The purpose was served and the relationship was transactional. ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you, when I need people that is’. It doesn’t work like that anymore.“Search firms must transform themselves from transaction-based vendors to trusted advisors, and develop close relationships with their clients,” explains Marta Grutka, Regional Director, Marketing & Communications, Asia Pacific, Korn/Ferry International, Singapore.

What’s the scene?

It is largely about ‘what do I get for free’ or ‘what would be thrown in with this’. And it is that value add that will help you retain a client or acquire new ones in the recruitment business as well. So, now, consultants don’t ask their clients what are their manpower requirements, they ask them where is your company headed or what is the scale of expansion and then device a strategy about the kind of manpower that could assist them in reaching the set goal. “Understanding a company’s long-term growth plans, as well as the competitive landscape and business culture, enables search consultants and recruiters to develop talent strategies that will help organisations secure and maintain competitive advantage well into the future,” adds Grutka. So, what is the capacity that consultants occupy in the scheme of things? “EmmayHR has the distinction and privilege of working with clients in the capacity of a talent acquisition strategist. This means assisting start up operations of MNCs to identify what location is suitable in India to how they must build their recruitment systems to how to message and position these opportunities to actually supplying manpower through outsourced recruitment processes. In case of existing operations, EmmayHR is included as a strategist on a quarterly to bi-annual basis in meetings with HR and management to determine talent acquisition pipelines and processes. This type of an involved business approach is a response to two current phenomena - one that deals with the needs of the client for receiving tactically sound advice from a credible source that monitors the market and the other being the clarity of information and expectation that enables more accurate fulfillment for recruiters,” explains Monisha Advani, CEO, EmmayHR, a Randstad company.

Terms of Engagement

Considering the apprehensive nature of Indian organisations, it shouldn’t be surprising that we believe in clearly defining the nature of every relationship that we seek to get into. So, we clearly define who has access to how much information and what is not to be disclosed. But in the business of talent hunting, it is essential to know what the business is about and what is the final objective, in order to do a good job of it. So, what is the ideal relationship that one should share with its recruitment consultant? “The competitive recruitment business requires us to work as partners with our clients. The client has a plan, we give them inputs to help them evolve the plan and tell them whether it is possible to realise it or not and also the way they need to implement it,” explains Ajay Mallapurkar, General Manager, Ma Foi Management Consultants. He keenly adds, “Our role has diversified a lot, as we not only help our clients select a location but also determine the kind of talent that would be available at that location and also whether that location is equipped with the necessary infrastructure. We keep a track of the number of students that pass out each year in each stream and in each city and hence we can help clients take an informed decision.” Having heard the consultant’s side of the story, let’s turn the tables. “The consultant must understand what we are trying to do here. With high-level consultants, we have a long-term relationship, they understand the organisation and they interact with senior management and are well clued in about where the industry and the company is headed,” believes Milind Jadhav, Vice President-HR, Patni Computers.

Outsourcing the Function

Outsource it and you feel at ease as it is no longer your responsibility. But what could be the functional agenda behind this? Ensure that HR is able to attribute more time into tasks other than recruitment! RPOs (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) can be onsite or offsite. As the name suggests, it literally means the entire process of recruitment is handled by the consultant. “The global trend today is to outsource one’s recruitment related functions. There is a company in Singapore where we have one of our people working in the company handling the company’s recruitment needs. The first step is to perform a diagnostic, which is to say that we would study the process as it exists in the company. We would then do a complete process re-engineering, to make the process more efficient and we would do that by getting an expert into the process (in a BPO situation, we get an quality expert to suggest improvements to an existing process),” explains Asim Handa, Country Manager, FurtureStep, a subsidiary of Kornferry.

(Content Courtesy: The Economic Times)


Telecom, retail to see churn in ‘06
It is the talent attrition season of the year and HR managers are scratching their heads like never before. With bonus and increments being paid across sectors and management cadres, movement of talent has caught on big time. While last year, aviation and media were the flavours of the season, this year financial services, telecom, consumer goods and retail followed by real estate and media are expected to clock the biggest employee churn. HR managers say February-June is the period when there is maximum employee movement. While, the prime reason is the payment of bonuses and increments during this time there are also other factors. For instance, many executives wait for their kids’ school session to end (during March-April), if they are planning to change jobs as it may need a change in location as well.

The biggest churn this year is expected in the banking & financial services sector. Sources say people are waiting for lakhs, and in some cases even crores in bonuses and other compensations to be paid before signing on the dotted line.
Wipro’s staff strength crosses 50,000
Wipro has crossed the 50,000-employee mark and is looking at expanding its footprints across the country. For the fourth quarter of 2005-06 fiscal, its total employee strength stood at 53,742 of which 37,655 constituted IT services and 16,087 in BPO services. Without specifying the exact numbers in terms of employee addition in the current fiscal, Wipro chairman Azim Premji said, “We will be adding people all over India in places like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune etc.” It has already added 2,000 people at its Kolkata centre.

Mr Premji said it would be Wipro’s strategy of moving into the Tier-II cities and the overseas expansion would be limited to a 100-seater centre at Bucharest in Romania. The Wipro chairman said its expansion of manpower would exceed the industry growth targets which stands at 25% for IT services and 30% in BPO activity. Wipro which made a net addition of 1,029 people in IT services in the fourth quarter of 2005-06 fiscal has seen its attrition being at 14-16%.
Big Four IT Cos Create Record 56,000 Jobs In 05-06
Infy, Wipro, Satyam & TCS Expect Bigger Expansion In FY07
It’s getting bigger and bigger. FY06 has seen the largest amount of hirings by the big four of the Indian IT in the past six years. The four IT giants namely Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and TCS, together added close to 56,000 employees in the previous fiscal. This has been the highest number of employee additions, and the numbers have multiplied by more than three times since March, 2001. Clearly, the rapid rate of growth in global IT spending is behind the recent spurt in employment in the sector.

Employee numbers in these companies have been growing at an average of 42% since FY03. The number of trainees and fresh graduates in their portfolio has also increased dramatically. In FY06, the ratio of freshers to lateral employees was roughly 70:30. In the case of Infosys there were more than 5,000 trainees as on March, 2006, compared to just 903 during the same period last year.

The number of employees in these four IT majors increased to two lakh by the end of March, 2006. Individually, while Infosys, TCS and Satyam witnessed their highest number of net employee additions in FY06, Wipro added a slightly lesser number of employees in FY06 compared to FY05. What is noteworthy, however, is that last year nearly all of the employee additions in Wipro were in its IT services segment, while in the previous years more than 40% of the increase was in its BPO segment.
Corp communications to create 1-lakh jobs by ’10
If an ISB passout earns the fattest pay package in the country, it ensures that the country is revolutionising the benchmarks of not only salaries but also integration of business education and industry. Perhaps this is quid pro quo for the industry that is currently facing a shortfall of nearly 80% with only 46,000 workforce specialising in marketing and corporate communication available.

Says one industry insider: “Mass communication institutes just provide textbook knowledge with no industry experience. We need people who are polished and ready.” This is reason enough for the industry to bridge the demand and supply gap across verticals of IT, retail, infrastructure, hospitality, automobiles etc. “An MBA, even if from the top institutes of the country, is not enough. I would like to hire people who have been trained for the job and can start from day one. By ’10 the industry will require nearly 100,000 professionals equipped to deal with the MNC corporate culture,” says Shiv Shanker, CMD, Convention Infrastructure India (CIIL), the Rs 113-crore parent company of Event Engineers, a Delhi-based event management firm.
Dell to double count
Dell plans to double headcount at Bangalore R&D centre to 600. It will also scale up operations at its new contact centre in Gurgaon. Dell International Services MD Romi Malhotra said Indian centre was involved with high-end work. “It is an extension of our US centre.”
Timesjobs.com Big Leap Jumbo Job Fair – 5th - 7th May
Get ready for the largest job fair in the country coming to Delhi. India’s largest career and education fair, Big Leap Jumbo Job & Professional Education Fair 2006, will be held from May 5-7 at Hall 7, Pragati Maidan. Organised by Timesjobs.com, India’s fastest growing job portal, in association with the ITPO for the third consecutive year, the fair is set to outdo its last year’s figures.

This year, more than 85 corporates including blue-chip companies from hospitality, airlines, HR consultancies, retail, insurance and finance and banking will be participating in the fair. With an expected 1 lakh job aspirants making a beeline for the fair, it promises to provide a platform to high-profile business entities. From companies like Jet Airways, Airtel, American Express, HDFC-Standard Life, EXL, to the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force, everyone will be a part of the fair.
Randstad to double temp count in ’06
Having stamped its entry into the Indian market with two back-to-back acquisitions in the booming recruitment and staffing industry, Randstad is now talking big numbers to expand its Indian operations organically. The Dutch staffing giant is aiming to double the number of temps on its rolls in India from its current strength of about 15,000 during 2006. It also expects 100% plus growth in the number of temps working under its latest acquisition Team4U in the next two-three years.

The fourth largest staffing company in the world, Randstad, has just closed its acquisition of 57% stake in Team HR Services, which operates under the Team4U brand. Last November, Randstad had acquired 51% in recruitment firm Emmay HR. While Emmay HR is into permanent recruitment space, Team4U is a temporary staffing firm. As per the deal, Randstad would be acquiring the remaining equity of both the companies over the next two years to make them wholly-owned subsidiaries in India.
UTI AMC CEO Sinha invites talent back
For U K Sinha, CEO of UTI AMC, the process of attracting talented people, who had left the organisation, has begun. Ashish Ranawade, the former head of UTI MF’s portfolio management division, is the first man in. Last October Mr Ranawade quit to join ING Vysya MF “out of frustration” and listless working environment at the country’s largest fund house. He joined as head of UTI AMC’s PMS division.

“Two-to-three people will come back and join us,” says Mr Sinha. UTI AMC had seen quite a few resignations last year and Mr Sinha, who took charge last November, had launched a slew of initiatives to boost employee morale, align salaries with market and make the company more performance driven. HR consultancy firm Hewitt Associates had been asked to work out details for a performance-linked incentive plan.
Flextronics’ net profit low, to hire 80,000
Flextronics International, the leading contract electronics manufacturer, posted a net profit that fell from a year ago due to restructuring and other charges. Its net income for its fiscal Q4 ended March 31 was $43 million, compared with year-ago net income of $74 million, or 12 cents per share. Revenue from continuing operations was $15.3 billion.“We’re looking for 80,000 new employees worldwide to get us to a targeted $25 billion (revenue) number,” Flextronics Asia president Peter Tan said. Analysts expect Flextronics to earn 16 cents per share, on an average, on revenue of $3.79 billion.

(Content Courtesy: The Economic Times)


Infosys’ CFO quits, moves to run HR
In a surprising move, Infosys Technologies announced that its long-serving CFO T V Mohandas Pai would step down effective April 30 and take over the functions of human resource development, education & research and administration. He will continue to be both on the company’s board and as chairman of BPO arm Progeon. Mr Pai has been CFO for the past 12 years. He will be succeeded by V Balakrishnan, presently senior vice-president — finance and company secretary. But Mr Balakrishnan will not be a board member. Considering that CFO’s position is seen as a more powerful one than a HR chief’s in most company set-ups, this move has indeed raised eyebrows. The former HR chief of Infosys, Ms Hema Ravichandar used to report to Infosys COO Kris Gopalakrishnan. In Mr Pai’s case, he will directly report to the CEO.
ITC Infotech MD Verma resigns, Puri to take over
Sanjay Verma, managing director of ITC Infotech India (I3L), a wholly-owned ITC subsidiary, has put in his papers. Mr Verma is learnt to have cited personal reasons behind his decision to quit I3L. Sanjeev Puri, who now heads another ITC subsidiary Surya Nepal, will be Mr Verma’s successor as new MD of ITC Infotech.
Satyam appoints new global IMS chief
Satyam Computer Services has appointed Sreenidhi ‘Nick’ Sharma as senior vice-president for its Infrastructure Management Services (IMS). Mr Sharma would build the company’s competencies in the IMS space around information and network technology applications. He will operate out of Boston, according to a company statement. Mr Sharma has over 20 years of leadership experience. Prior to this appointment, he was with Unisys.
Coke India Marketing head Gupta to quit
Coca-Cola India marketing head Vikas Gupta is quitting. Sources say he is leaving to join a media house. This would be the third key executive flight from Coca-Cola India in past six months. Earlier, its franchisee head Jaspal Singh, who had been with the company for last 10 years, had quit to join a private equity firm and Coke’s north India head (operations) Amit Jain had quit to join MTV India as its MD.

Coca-Cola India spokesperson said: “Coca-Cola has a rich pool of professional talent, who in the changing economic scenario are constantly approached by companies with interesting career options. This does not necessarily mean that they accept these options.”
Sanjeev Sharma to step down as MD of Nokia
Nokia India MD Sanjeev Sharma, who was slated to move to Singapore as regional head of marketing for the world’s largest handset manufacturer, has decided to quit the company. “Yes I have decided to move on after 11 wonderful years at Nokia,” Sharma confirmed his decision to TOI, which first reported on the possibility of such a move on March 8. After the report, Nokia’s Singapore office had issued a press release announcing the appointment of D Shivakumar as Nokia India V-P and country GM, stating that Sharma would move to Singapore after April.
N Shridhar to be CFO of Pantaloon Retail arm
N Shridhar, CFO, Britannia Industries is expected to join Pantaloon Retail’s financial arm, Future Capital Holdings (FCH), as CFO in May. Mr Shridhar has put in his papers at Britannia and will be signing his papers with FCH next week.
Dabur appoints Sikandar Tiwana as CEO of its Pakistan operations
Dabur India has appointed the former head of Best Food Pakistan, Sikandar Tiwana, as the CEO of its Pakistan subsidiary, Asian Consumer Care Pakistan. This is the first instance of a large Indian company inducting a Pakistani national to head its operations in that country. His main responsibility will be to build the Dabur brand name and a strong distribution network, launch new products, as well as examine manufacturing options in Pakistan.
Ramesh N Shah WNS board chief
WNS Global Services has announced the election of Ramesh N Shah as chairman of the board of WNS (Holdings), its parent company. Mr Shah, who joined WNS in July, 2005, as chairman, North America, succeeds David Tibble. Based in New York, Mr Shah mentors the company’s North American sales team and manages key external stakeholder relationships.
Top-level changes at DSP Merrill Lynch
DSP Merrill Lynch has announced top-level changes. Amit Chandra will now be MD of the company and will head GMI division in India. Nozer Shroff and Kaku Nakhate will serve as co-heads of equity business in India. Andrew Holland will now become head of the strategic risk group in India. Rajiv Garg will head global asset backed financing group in the country.
Radhakrishnan TVS prez
TVS Motor Company has announced the appointment of K N Radhakrishnan as president of the company. He joined the company in September, 2000, as GM of business planning and was promoted as V-P. In September, 2004, he was promoted as executive V-P of business planning, and has now become the youngest president of TVS.
Ravi Venkatraman appointed director of Xerox Global Services
Xerox India has announced the appointment of Ravi Venkatraman as director for Xerox Global Services (XGS). Mr Venkatraman will be responsible for growing the XGS business in newer geographies and build strong partnerships with the top 100 large Indian enterprises. Mr Venkatraman comes on board with more than 18 years of sales and business development experience. Prior to this appointment, he was the national business manager of CMS Computers.
Deepak Mangla is Nipuna COO
Nipuna Services, Satyam’s BPO subsidiary, has announced the appointment of Deepak Mangla as its chief operating officer. Prior to this appointment, Mr Mangla was the global delivery head at Nipuna. In his new role, Mr Mangla would be a thought leader and facilitator of strategy and delivery at Nipuna. He has over 16 years of cross-functional leadership experience in Accenture Services, Wipro Spectramind and International Travel House.

(Content Courtesy: The Economic Times)