Insights on Exit Process

How often do organizations not analyse and look at their data on attrition to improve their retention ability?

Here are some of our thoughts on how organizations can actively manage the exit process.

HR in the SME Sector

Businessworld focused on HR challenges for the SME sector in India:

Shockingly, over 99 per cent of India’s 3.57 million SMEs don’t follow contemporary HR practices. Either they don’t have HR heads, or HR is a one-man set-up dealing with labour relations. According to HR Anexi’s Arora, just Mumbai and its surrounding industrial belts have 1,800 SMEs who don’t employ HR heads. But SMEs have a genuine problem. HR professionals with 5-20 years of experience aren’t excited about working for unknown entities and senior executives are beyond their capacity to pay. Their only hope lies in outsourcing their HR functions to external consultants. But given the lack of consolidation, the HR consulting industry works like a cottage industry of over 5,000 firms. The SME market is clearly looking forward to leadership, consolidation and standardised services.

(Yeah, I am sure things would improve. We at Tvarita Consulting are working towards it )

In a Darwinian play of development, growth-hungry large companies are scouring the market for human resources (HR), leaving only crumbs for SMEs who can never outpay the biggies when it comes to salaries. Sometimes the new players also queer the pitch for SMEs when they offer
sky-high salaries to push their way into the market.

the bulk of attrition had shifted from the knowledge-based industry and services sector in the first half of 2007 to SMEs in the latter half. This was because rupee appreciation had hugely eroded SMEs’ paying capacity.

Due to cost constraints, SMEs usually have to hire young professionals with little or no work experience and train them on the job. But young professionals are also more prone to job-hopping.

Realising that the way to an employee’s heart may not necessarily be through his pocket, these SMEs are offering the employees what money cannot buy — the right atmosphere, scope for personal growth, lateral movement, and an organisation they can call their own.

Indian BPOs outsourcing their HR

According to this news in Mint WSJ:

Companies aren’t just outsourcing hiring. They’re outsourcing the entire human resource department. It’s still not something mid-size and large companies do but for start-ups and small companies HR Outsourcing outfits makes business sense. The HRO’s typically have consultants who have a wealth of experience.

Anurag Gupta, director, DGM India whose company has outsourced its entire HR recruitment says, “In terms of cost, its also beneficial, if I were to hire a similar expertise, it would cost me an arm and a leg. Here I can get that at a cost that is comparable to hiring a junior HR executive.”

Nearly 50% of small businesses and 70% foreign companies like to outsource their human resource needs. They feel it is completely different compared to RPOs.

Says Sairee Chahal, co-founder, SAITA Consulting: “RPO is a high-volume-low-value business, HRO or strategic HR is diametrically opposite. It’s a low volume game in terms of number of things you process or engagements you get into. You can get an RPO for 50 companies but doing a strategic HR for 50 companies means a lot. It’s a much wider engagement.”

There is no uniform payment structure that exists for these RPOs or HROs. The terms and conditions may vary from client to client. Also, in the case of HROs who provide complete solutions from hiring to payroll management to transactional work to induction,the structure may not be a simple per-employee basis. It could be based on the number of manhours the HRO puts in and the quality of resources that are deployed for a particular client.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: hroutsourcing, news, HR

HR Outsourcing set to take off in India

According to the Telegraph:

Big scope

HR outsourcing covers all functions relating to recruitment, assessment of new candidates, sourcing candidates, background checks of candidates, and talent branding, which is a lot like media planning and deals with where to advertise for candidates and through which channels.

According to Mercer, a global consulting, outsourcing and investment services firm, human resource outsourcing (HRO) has come a long way since mere payroll administration or recruitment channel. It has moved up the value chain from tactical HR processes to managing business critical HR.

Client base

There are basically three broad classes of companies that are looking at HR outsourcing. First, there are large companies such as TCS and Infosys which have an employee base of close to 1 lakh each. These companies are looking to outsource HR to save costs.

The second group comprises mid-size service as well as manufacturing companies with 2,000 to 5,000 people such as Microsoft India and Cisco. For such companies, it is a combination of a need to get the best talent and cost that is leading to the outsourcing of HR activities, says Das.

“Then there are the small companies who have ambition but simply do not have the strength or the expertise to hire big time. So they outsource their functions to companies like ours,” he adds.

Consultancy firms such as KPMG are also seeing a spurt in HR outsourcing contracts especially in the case of financial services.

“We have seen an increase in outsourcing activity from our end recently. Earlier, we were only outsourcing our payroll functions, but now we are doing a bit of learning and development function outsourcing as well,” says Sangeeta Singh, executive director (HR) at KPMG. “This is being done to mainly to tap specialised talent,” she explains.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: hro, consulting, india

Looking for a Head of HR for India

A client of ours is looking for a Head of HR for India .

The organization is a leading third party BPO services provider

It operates in India from centers in Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai and the candidate can be located anywhere in these cities depending on their flexibility.

Job Requirements:

1. 12-15 years experience in HR. Experience in the BPO industry for a sizable duration would be preferred.
2. Premier B School education

Job Responsibilities

The person would be responsible for leading and managing the overall HR function across the organization. Should have developed and implemented effective organizational strategies, payroll, succession plans, training and developing needs, integration and implementation of best HR practices.
She would develop and deploy Human Resources practices and processes that will provide an employee-oriented, high performance culture and lead a team of HR professionals.
she should have excellent interpersonal and communications skills and should have the experience of working with all layers of the organization.

Interested folks can send me their resumes at gautam@tvaritaconsulting.com

Warm Regards,
Gautam
Mobile: +91-98665-11236
Blog: http://gauteg.blogspot.com
Webpage:http://gautam.ghosh.googlepages.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: hr, recruitment

Subprime Crisis hits ACS UBS HR Outsourcing pact

This is interesting news

UBS has canceled its plans to outsource a number of its HR processes because of financial problems related to fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis.

The Swiss financial services company had signed a deal with Affiliated Computer Services this year under which the Dallas-based HRO provider would oversee benefits administration for UBS’ 3,000 investment banking employees in the United Kingdom.

UBS had planned on adding a number of HR processes, such as payroll processing and stock option administration for U.S. and U.K. employees, but scrapped those plans, according to the source. If the deal had been completed, it would have covered 7,500 employees in the U.S. and U.K., said a source familiar with the deal.

“ACS does not comment on speculation or on business we may, or may not be pursuing,” said Kevin Lightfoot, vice president of corporate communications for ACS.

The financial services company also decided against going forward with an e-learning contract with IBM, sources said.

Tags: hroutsourcing

Interesting insight on HR consulting and Outsourcing

According to the 2008 workplace trends by SHRM (pdf file of 4 MB) the following trends are some of the ones that are interesting for the HR consulting and Outsourcing industry. Have highlighted some of the trends related to our nature of work:

1. The role of HR professionals has changed due to the increasing prevalence of outsourcing, consulting and globalization. The shift has allowed HR to focus on the more strategic, high-level activities of the organization.
2. Increasing weight of non-cost drivers as decision criteria for determining the use of consultants and outsourcing.
3. Just-in-time work functions, demographic shifts, growing diversity,etc., are increasing organizations’ needs for outsourcing and consulting services.
4. HR professionals are demanding increased customization of products and services from consultants and outsourcing partners.
5. Increasing need for specialized niche HR consulting. One-size-fits-all approach no longer acceptable. HR professionals hiring boutique HR consultants.
6. Greater reliance on metrics to justify HR activities.
7. Increased consolidation and competition are reshaping the outsourcing and consulting industry.
8. HR professionals are reevaluating and scrutinizing outsourcing and consulting activities due to past failures. There is increased scrutiny over service-level agreements and key performance indicators to mitigate security and risk to the organization and its employees.
9. HR consulting is expanding due to increased need for international/global services.
10. Increasingly, small organizations are outsourcing their entire HR function.
11. Small organizations are turning to Professional Employer Organizations(PEOs) to provide all benefits for their employees.

We moved to Google Apps

No, not this blog, but at Tvarita Consulting we moved to Google Apps for our email and hopefully will start using other apps at Google along with it.

Earlier we were at Web.com and paying a small fortune to them, and when Google Apps came out and offers the same things with the price of free, then it makes a lot of sense to go with them.

Personally, I am only using the gmail app and don’t really open my Outlook email program. Well I only use it in the morning and evening once to download all my mails if I need to work offline on my notebook later.

So for small and medium businesses going the Google Apps way is a great option.

On that note check out the new article in Wired magazine on why 0 is the future of business!

HR Outsourcing is a trend to watch out for

So says Pallavi Jha in an article in the Deccan Herald:

HR outsourcing is
a growing trend. Today HR professionals are hardly hired for their
ability to process employee information, sort resumes or process
payroll on time. Instead, HR is expected to deliver value in areas like
organisational effectiveness, talent management, change management,
leadership development, succession planning, merger integration,
strategic compensation, etc. The primary benefit of HR outsourcing is
that it will allow the leaders to tackle these more strategic issues.
HR needs to embrace outsourcing to reduce costs and get access to
higher levels of service.

Small businesses and the Internet

Ok, this is not a service offering we currently offer from Tvarita Consulting, but on my other blog I have a post on how small businesses can leverage the internet, specially by setting up their pages.

And here is the Tvarita Consulting page on Facebook, in case you want to become a fan