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WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY
INDIA 20126
Key HR Challenges Faced Today
Hiring and retaining the right talent Building a leadership pipeline Employee engagement and Improving productivity
Importance of Talent Challenges
Leadership planning and development Improving talent development strategies Improving productivity of the existing workforce Planning the workforce efficiently Managing salary costs Managing diversity at workplace Adherence of employees to their staffing schedules Managing & tracking leaves of employees
Factors Affecting Employee Productivity
There are a range of factors that influenceproductivity in an organisation :
Nature of the industry and the maturityof the business Stable and automated is the process Working conditions that affect the overall quality of work and the output The level of employee engagement that drives how much of discretionary effort
people are willing to put in their jobs. As synthesized by Gurmeet Singh, Area
Director of Human Resources, Marriott Hotels; work culture is in the driving seat,
training is fuel, work practices and processes are the engine oil and
infrastructure enables speed.
Inaccurate manpower planning & deployment Lack of employee training Lack of visibility & control Employee absenteeism Lack of access to data to track productivity Labour unrest Othrs
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Manpower Planning Key to Productivity
Manpower planning happens at the business level and it is aligned to the culture and
approach of the organisation, whether the company wants to invest in technology or in people
or a mix of both, it is a business decision after all. If the business plans to increase output orchange the product mix, then the manpower planning happens accordingly, says Prabir Jha,
Senior Vice President & Head- Human Resources, Tata Motors
The Absenteeism Factor
Sanjay Rawat from Aegis, shares employee absenteeism affects productivity
significantly as it increases the workload on others. It also has an effect on meeting client
commitment and produces anxiety for people working on the project. For example, if a
trainer reports sick at the 11th hour somebody who has to substitute him/her undergoes a
stressful experience. The quality of program to be delivered gets affected and hence, the
probability of repeat business gets drastically reduced.
Metrics, Processes and Systems for Measuring
Productivity
Metrics
Metrics to Measure Employee Productivity
Individual accomplishment of targets and goals Adherence to time deadline for tasks assigned Ratio of employee cost to revenue/ profit generated Ratio of tasks completed per unit of time Unplanned absenteeism
Processes & Systems
Formal process in place but systems are manually managed Formal process along with automated systems place Formal process but no systems to measure No formal process in place and no system
Some of the practises carried out12
Dr. Ritu Anand
Vice-President & Deputy HeadGlobal Human Resources, TCS
Employee utilization is measured by person hours deployed on billable engagement/person
hours available for billable engagement. Productivity is measured through Revenue per
Person, Operating Margin per Person. Entire Work Force Management is digitized throughsystems.
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Anoop RawatHeadLearning & Development, Fortis Healthcare India
There are four essential metrics we track:
Customer patience, Developing People, Developing processesand Financial.
We adapt the balanced score card approach. All employees are measured on the four aspects.
Sangeeta Singh
Executive DirectorHR, KPMG India
The manpower planning is done on set metrics. A manpower planning pyramid is drawn and
followed for each department, based on their target revenues. We have a scientific projection
done and believe that it is crucial to have the ability to get the projections right and align with
the projections.
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Challenges in Measuring Productivity
Lack of integration of processes & systems to provide consolidated information Lack of coordination between different departments, resulting in erroneous data Limited or no use of technology & systems Lack of processes in place Budgetary constraints in terms of investing in technology Others
The Way Forward: An Integrated System?
Benefits of having an Integrated Solution
Reduced error as human intervention is minimized Easy availability of data for top management Reduced opportunities for unfavourable practices Faster processing of employee dues Eliminate leakages while leave encashment & reconciliation
Suresh Dutt Tripathi from SRF shares,This year we are integrating all the plantsthrough an
HRIS at the group level. We already have an integrated HRIS for managementlevel but with
completion of the HRISfor non-management levels, we will have anelaborate system, which
will help us in ourstrategic decision making.
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Experts Views
1.Dr. Ritu AnandVice President & Deputy HeadGlobal Human Recourses, TCS
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Speed learning and avoid reinventing the wheel
The factors that affect productivity are firstly,
Work culture, learning environment and knowledge management, Competencies and performance ethics Effective utilization of available talent.
The key workforce challenges are
Costs control with focus on levers like controlling and managing attrition andbalancing ratios of experienced to trainees joining the organisation.
Competency enhancement of talent through training and job rotation. Creating a sustainable talent pipeline in terms of maintaining optimal bench but also
ensuring healthy leadership pipeline to fuel a companys growth.
Challenges at Tata Consultancy Services, are achieved through Integrated Competency
and Learning Management System (iCALMS) and Knowledge Management System
(KnowMax). Competency development happens in the areas of domain, technology,
process, language and culture and leadership development.
2.Saikat ChatterjeeManager HRM South East & South West Asia, Inter Continental Hotels Group
Provide the right environment for people to develop and grow
In order to align people to the business strategy, we have adapted the Balanced
Scorecard approach. We call it the SteeringWheel, which has clearly defined measurable
matrices under four quadrants namely, Our People; Guest Experience; Responsible Business;
and Financial Returns. At the planning stage, every business identifies actions that they will
need to take to deliver on the above 4 quadrants. The business priorities are then linked to
functional, departmental and individual priorities, which helps employees understand their
role in helping the business achieve its objectives. Our people philosophy is about giving
people the right environment where they can deliver and grow.
3.Judhajit DasChiefHuman Resources, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance
Workforce management must run like a process
Comprehending & Measuring productivity
In ICICI Prudential, we measure workforce productivity through
Revenue per employee / branch, New business profits per employee/branch, Percentage of mis-selling complaints by employee/branch,
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Customer service scores by branch, etc. In analyzingAt a conceptual level, workforce productivity needs to be understood in terms of attitude or
willingness and capability or ability. For attaining high productivity, both motivation and
capability needs to be high. However, we need to drill down deep to understand the factors
that cause low motivation or low capability. This root cause analysis is important asotherwise one will treat the symptom and not the cause.
The way out
We have partnered with education providers to create a supply chain of job ready profiles.
This reduces the time and cost spent on training post hiring and more importantly, the person
has the motivation to do the job as he has opted for the career and has been trained for it.
4.Pankaj N. GursahaniAssociate Director, Sales Training, AstraZeneca Pharma India
Connecting with Gen Y employees is a challenge
The employee productivity can be affected by two kinds of factorsinternal and
external. It is tough for supervisors or the immediate manager to develop and connect with
Gen Y employees. The industry also faces a challenge in keeping the employees engaged.
We are making conscious efforts in engaging our employees. The induction programs for our
new hires focus on employee engagement.
We have Delta, which is an automated system to track all analytics for all front level
employees. For managers, we have C-Cal, an automated system to track their team members
on all aspects. There is an automated system for manpower planning. If the market is going
down, then planning is automatically re-done on the basis of the prevailing market
conditions, making our systems completely dynamic.
5.Prabir JhaSenior Vice-President & Head -Human Resources, Tata Motors
Larger metrics can camouflage some of the more critical issues
Metrics: definition, processes and challenges
The most utilized metric in manufacturing is output per employee. Others are cost as
percentage of net profitability. My favourite is the value added by employee added cost thismetric really helps you making the skill mix and product mix more effective. These metrics
are very important as they are the conversation point for headcount planning. We have an in-
house team that collects and tracks productivity data and it is linked to other systems in the
organisation. For example, if there are union settlements, these are then connected with the
HRIS and payroll. Absenteeism can be regularized with grant of leave, though leave is never
a matter of right! Certain segments of the workforce may actually be incentivized on 100%
presence at work and if absent without grant all for the month typically
will get impacted. The challenges we face in tracking employee productivity are of three
types.
The first challenge is to define employee
productivity. While many routine operationscan be easily to be tracked this
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way, but then what about managerial
productivity and if you put it all under
one larger metric, it can camouflage
some of the more critical issues. The
second issue is that they are collected
by a group of people so the humanintervention poses a challenge in terms
of identifying deviations and problems
with the data. The third challenge is that
these measures most often than not, are
lag indicators so it does not really help
us in planning ahead but in explaining
the problems.
WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
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There must be role clarity across
lower levelsEmployee productivity is greatly linked
to the employees association to
the bigger picture. If there is lack of
alignment with the organisational goals, it
leads to loss of energy and subsequently
leads to loss of productivity. He needs to be
aware of what he is doing in the organisation.
And how does his work contribute
towards the organisational goals. Additionally,
other factors could include if there are
adequate training tools / resources available
to do the job.
The role of the immediate manager in
workforce management is the most crucial.
The manager needs to be supportive,
available, and should be able to guide and
provide feedback and coach/mentor them
if required. The rewards and recognition
process needs to be streamlined especially
for the front-level employees. It should
happen at shorter intervals and their incentivesshould be delivered on time. For the
senior staff, the time intervals can be larger.
The employee needs to be aware of
what he wants to achieve from the job he is
doing. Despite availability of all tools and
technology, people do not know what they
need to know. The employee services should
be easily accessible and available to all. The
work life issues are gaining importance.
With different generations coming to
work, and the difference in experience andexpectation levels amongst all generations,
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the work life balance is really not there. It is
equally important to have a safe, comfortable
and joyful work environment. There
should be role clarity across lower levels
and their growth path should be adequately
defined.This industry is going through regulatory
changes. Initially, people saw a faster
growth, but in the race, good management
practices have not fore-seeded. We might
have been good at the frontend, but we
did not get the time to put these practices
into picture. To manage the challenges,
we constantly look at the input and output
parameters. These measureable parameters
could include number of calls made per
agent, quality of agents, quality of businessAnuraag Maini
Executive VP - HR and Training
DLF Pramerica Life Insurance
generated, number of policies issues and
number of renewals done amongst others.
There is lot of focus to educate and
train people around this as it is important
to set the right input parameters so
that the right output is achieved for the
business. The different areas through
which workforce management affects
organisational performance include the
quantity versus the quality of goals/
targets met by the employees / teams. We
have a customer satisfaction survey and
a distributor satisfaction survey, which is
another crucial area. Other areas include
the engagement level of the employees
and the extent to which the organisational
goals are being met. It is all about managing
rightly engaged employees at theright time at the right job. An insideout
approach is adapted.
For example, it is a mandate to have
background verification done for all our
employees, which is very unlike other
organisations in this industry. Initially,
people did not believe us, but we had to
take tough calls of asking people to leave
on this ground. It is only then, that people
started believing that we actually consider
this factor so crucially. End of the day, ouremployees are going to handle financials
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of our clients, so they need to have high
integrity.
Employee utilization and productivity
is measured through number of documents
processed, and each function has its
own metrics. The head office to field officeratio, the quality of business generated,
new business generated, renewals done,
number of people paying on time, etc., are
important factors.
We try to track the business made,
which is more important in this industry.
Leverage is also given because of the fact
that our employees meet clients at their
convenient timings, which include late
evenings, early morning, weekends, holidays,
etc. Attendance management systemis in place, but more important is the fact
that how productive is the employee in his
business.
WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
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Focus on intangible benefits to
retain people
The key challenge, which our industry
faces, is of acquiring and retaining
the right talent. This situation is likely
to remain for a longer period of time. The
easiest way to address it is by focusing on
the tangible factors like compensation and
perks. Further, intangible factors like training
and development (skill development &
job orientation) will help enhancing skill
levels in employees and help them to enjoy
their job while delivering desired level of
performance. However, in todays fast paced
work life with intense focus on immediate
and short term results, the key challengeis to get employees engaged and aligned
with the organisations business philosophy
and values. The lack of alignment and
buy in from the employees on the organisational
values and philosophy, creates a
significant challenge for the future. To drive
the organisation for an exciting future, in
addition to focusing on the current results,
a lot of employee energy should be directed
towards creation of the future. Thoughts
for the future are clear at the top in mostorganisations, however percolating it down
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to employees at all levels is a challenge.
The challenge further is in developing an
employee mindset that looks beyond the
compensation and benefits package and
focuses on alignment with the organisation.
From the era of protectionism for thework force, today the industry is faced with
shortage of right talent. The relevance of
unions has been greatly reduced. Today,
increased opportunities and options
K. V. Raambabu
Managing Director
Pulse Pharmaceuticals
outside of the pharma industry have seen
employee expectations change. Further,
there is a change in employer expectations,
with increased focus on numbers andexpectation of higher returns per employee.
This has led to a situation wherein good
employees are difficult to retain. As opportunities
are abundant, employees tend to
hop jobs when they are unable to meet the
short term goals. This leads to a situation
of higher base level packages with limited
skill sets in the employee pool. Hence, the
challenge is in creating a work environment
that sustains and promotes organisation
building for the future without loss
of focus on short term results. Towards
this, the development of skills in the
middle management is critical. The middle
management interacts routinely with the
work force and they need to be trained to
create the right balance of result and future
focus in the work environment.
Currently, we use regular metrics to
measure employee productivity and there
by establish employee utilization. Movingforward, we will be initiating more detailed
employee utilization studies. The results will
help us in better resource allocation and
utilization.
Unplanned Absenteeism is not a serious
concern for us. Technology has evolved over
the past decade and has resulted in reduced
lag time in realizing absenteeism in sales
force. Systems are therefore in place to
quickly identify and resolve the few cases of
absenteeism that occur.WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
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Focus on having the right people in
the right roles
When we look at productivity, we
aim to constantly upgrade the
skills of our employees. We takeinto account how often they are undergoing
the process of upgrading their skills. The
aim is to provide the right set of training
opportunities to our employees. We also
put conscious efforts in removing any
activities, which can be done away with on
a regular basis, and thus saves the employees
time and effort. We strive to give our
employees a satisfaction level with respect
to their jobs. This includes taking care of
their rewards and recognition, giving themample opportunities to grow within the
organisation, amongst other initiatives.
It is very necessary to have the right
people at the right place to make sure
that employee productivity doesnot get
hampered. The intrinsic behavior of the
employee also plays a crucial role.
The major challenge across industry
is acquiring the right talent and retaining
it. This is primarily because the number
of opportunities available in the market
is immense. There is shortage of talent in
healthcare and we still have talent drain,
which is prevalent.
Training and development is an area
where we focus on. The issue faced here is
that there are a lot of soft skills trainings
available but one needs to concentrate on
the bigger picture, which is people career
growth. We focus on people to grow across
roles and training opportunities are avail-Anoop RawatHead - Learning & Development
Fortis Healthcare India
able for the same. In nursing, for example,
one can grow in to a nurse administration
role or a physician assistant, as also nurse
can get into nursing education.
We have revamped our performance
management system, which is now on the
basis of the goals that one derives out of
the organisational focus areas. We arealso trying to develop ourselves into a fun
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place to work in our own manner and the
organisational commitment in this regard
is high.
There are four essential areas that we
track to measure productivity at the individual
level: customer patience, developingpeople, developing processes and financial
impact. We adapt the balanced score card
approach. All employees are measured on
the four aspects. We are trying to implement
a standardized system of reporting
data across the organisation. The way of
reporting data across hospitals is different
currently. Metrics that we track very
closely are patient to bed ratio, doctor to
patient ratio, etc.
In terms of how we manage employeeutilization, each unique role is clearly
defined in the system and the performance
management system appropriately
measures the performance across all
levels. This enables us to know potential
gaps and improvement areas for our
employees. It also helps us focus on the
fact, if the right employee is in the right
role at the right time.
WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
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Role clarity will ensure employee
productivity
The major factors that affect employee
productivity are role clarity, micro
management, lack of internal
customer centricity and employee absenteeism,
which affect employee productivity
when not addressed. The key workforce
management challenges for our business
include keeping employees engaged andimproving workforce productivity.
Improving productivity in our existing
workforce is surely a challenge and we try
to overcome this through both empowerment
and dipstick of performance at periodical
interval.
In the education and consultancy by
and large, people have to be self-driven as
too much monitoring is counter-productive.
Employee absenteeism increases the
workload on others also meeting clientcommitment and anxiety on people present
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increases. For example, if a trainer reports
sick at the 11th hour somebody who has
to substitute undergo a stressful experience.
This drastically impairs the quality
of program and hence, the probability of
repeat business is reduced.Distribution of workload and growing
the person in the role are some of the
principles applied for measuring utilization
and productivity is measured in terms of
repeat business and customer satisfaction
achieved. Since the manpower requirement
is small, use of tools is neither necessary
nor effective in our business.
Sanjay Rawat
Associate Vice-President,
Aegis Academy, Aegis Ltd.WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
36
Emotionally connected employees
will give 100% to the job
The factors that affect employee
productivity vary in nature and
degree of impact based on the career
stage as well as individual aspirations.
Some of the common factors include the
employees emotional commitment to the
role, connect between organisational vision
and employee aspiration, credible commitment
of leaders towards talent development
and thereby its impact on ones growth,
the overall organisational culture, and the
market competitive compensation patterns.
I would classify the factors into direct
and indirect factors. Some of the direct
factors are financial contribution, strategic
initiatives delivered, span of control,
customer per employee and delivery ofoperational KPIs. While the indirect factors
are revenue/ employee, HR cost as percentage
of gross revenue, HR cost as percentage
of total opex, teeth to tail ratio and the
number of layers between CEO to front-line
to name a few.
The key workforce management challenge
that we are facing currently is the
upgradation of people capabilities given
that technology, communication and
media (TCM) as industries are convergingand the shift from data to voice. Another
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crucial challenge is talent retention, being
the market leader and the given preferred
poaching ground. We are also constantly
under the pressure to be able to build
global perspectives and experiences.
In order to overcome these challenges,we are continuously looking at job enrichment/
job rotation and multi-skilling,
enhancing the quality of roles through
process automation, organisational design
change resulting in empowerment, continu-
H.C. Ruben SelvadorayGeneral Manager - HR,
Bharti Airtel
ous training and certification, leadership
and competency development through
partnerships with some of the globallyrenowned leadership development organisations.
The top five areas that workforce
management impacts organisational
performance are continuous availability
of quality leaders in order to ensure a
heightened team performance and talent
bench strength for critical positions. The
effectiveness of talent acquisition and its
impact on speed of individual delivery,
new leader/recruit assimilation process
and its impact on continued execution of
business goals and internal talent movements
and its impact on customer centric
culture continuity. Given the unique nature
of telecom circle based licensing, we have
decentralized business units, wherein
each business unit inputs market specific
strategies, formulates and is accountable
for budgets and overall is measured on its
P&L. This unique construct of the telecom
industry has helped in building an entrepreneurialculture and empowered jobs/
roles, which demands from our workforce,
business acumen, entrepreneurial spirit,
and decision making capability, commitment
to quality talent acquisition and
talent engagement/retention.
Given the empowered culture and
entrepreneurial spirit resulting in passion
for the role/performance, we have the
problem of large number of leaves accumulated
by employees. We have beenlimiting carry forward of leaves beyond a
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particular limit and encouraging employees
to plan for leave so as to ensure
healthy work life balance and rejuvenation.
WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
37
Work Couture is in the driving seat,training is the fuel, work practices and
process are the engine oil and infrastructure
procures the speed
There are three key factors that affect productivity,
training, process and infrastructure coupled by
work culture. Work Couture is in the driving seat,
training is the fuel, work practices and process are the
engine oil and infrastructure procures the speed.
The major challenges we face in our business in
terms of workforce management is the geographical
location of our hotels for example. Other challengeis of course, the talent scarcity and the options that
candidates and employees have today, while the hospitality
industry is not at the same compensation level
as the other service industries. Finally, this is a very
people intensive industry and the people are the key
success for our business so, getting the right person
with the right attitude to provide a consistent customer
experience is always a challenge.
Improving productivity of our workforce is always
a challenge. As per our strategy and benchmarks, we
believe that the focus on associate engagement is the
key for productivity and customer satisfaction/delight.
Our associate activities and HR process revolve around
driving engagement and as part of Balance Score
Card, we measure worldwide each year via an external
agency. As part of our business plan we rely a lot on
benchmarking tools internationally based on business
drives.
We measure our productivity based on how
delighted our customer is and his/her intent to come
back to our hotel. For us to sustain our growth, he/shemust come back. Our front-line or first touch starts
from the airport, the pickup experience; check in, etc.
The complete process is designed to create a delightful
experience for our client.
We use productivity tools and measures to fuel
business projects like (budgeting and planning). We
also have many intangible measures that are important
for guiding and controlling.
Gurmeet Singh
Area Director - HR,
India, Maldives, MarriottInternational Inc.
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WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
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Monitor and address changing
employee expectations
There are many cultural factors that affect
productivity at the workplace. For example,India is culturally very different from the
west as in the Indian workplace, relationships are
important. People at work want to spend time on
relationship building (cups of tea, dinners) and there
are positive effects of these, like team bonding and
engagement. Other external factors that are unique
about India include commuting and infrastructure,
which has a huge negative effect in productivity.
People need to commute to work for long hours,
which impacts employees productivity significantly.
Talent retention is the most important challengebeing faced currently. Market competition and
increasing employee expectations is pushing people
to change jobs every two years. Attaining the right
talent and then retaining it is a tough task now.
We are re-organizing and refurbishing our entire
tool kit. All employees need to be aware of and clearly
understand their KRAs and KPIs. They should be
aware of what they are going to be measured upon.
We are refurbishing the KPMG brand both internally
and externally. We have re-invented the existing
performance management system and also changed
the learning and development process for our
employees. We are constantly looking at our organisational
culture and policies.
Each department has clear and well defined roles,
from which capabilities and behavior expectations are
drawn. Time sheets are captured and each employee
necessarily needs to undergo 120 hours of training in
3 years subject to a minimum of 20 hours in a year.
We measure a managers capability to handle
attrition in his team. Unplanned leaves or absenteeismis not a rampant problem unlike in the manufacturing
industry. Further, manpower planning is
done on set metrics. A manpower planning pyramid is
drawn and followed for each department, basis their
target revenues. We undertake a scientific projection
and believe that it is crucial to get the projections
right and align with them.
Sangeeta Singh
Executive Director, KPMG India
WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
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level affects organizational performance
The primary factors that affect employee productivity
are motivation (level of engagement), ability (how
well they have been trained), working conditions
(work environment, for example, bigger screens, dual monitors,
online help tools, etc.), and expectations (how well arethey measured, whether targets are defined correctly, etc.).
In our business, the key workforce management challenges
are attracting talent and being able to get the right
talent with the relevant skills at the right time. Employee
retention is another important challenge especially in the
context of emerging markets where demand far outstrips
supply. Further, making the right decision on whether one
should make or build talent is a challenge that the organisation
needs to address as the industry matures.
With respect to the existing workforce, we have a fairly
robust performance measurement system and rewards(compensation, bonus, increments, etc.) are closely linked
to performance. We also use the 6 sigma methodology to
identify and reduce variation amongst teams that helps
improve productivity. All our managers and team leads are
encouraged to do green belt projects.
The overall employee engagement and satisfaction level
surely affects organisational performance. Having a robust
performance management cycle, starting from setting goals
to appraisals to session C to rewards, ensures that individual
performance is clearly aligned to overall organisational
performance. Also, as an industry we measure productivity
and quality (accuracy, CSAT, etc.) of front line associates
pretty granularly and a part of compensation (Variable
Incentive Compensation) is linked to it.
At a process level, output is measured by employee, time
on system, etc., and variable incentives are linked to these.
At the time of transition, the key is to do an effective and
realistic base lining of employee productivity, ensure that
volume fluctuations are predictable (especially the ones
that are cyclical), so that staffing in the process is appropriate
- else you could end up with bench, which impactsprofitability. Once the process stabilizes, we measure the
variation in productivity; apply six sigma principles and
tools to reduce variation.
Anju Talwar
Senior Vice-President, Genpact
WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
40
Centralized process and system
brings you flexibility
In SRF, three types of manpower planning
are required depending on the stage atwhich the plant currently is instable
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plants, which is running efficiently and
stabilized plants that are in expansion mode,
to enhance capacity or add new technology
and green field projects, where new plants are
coming up. Each of these plants has a different
approach towards manpower planningand workforce management.
Established plants have an annual
manpower plan prepared at the beginning of
the year, based on forecast of the manpower
requirement for the projected production,
estimated attrition and mobility of people.
This gives us the manpower plan for the year
and also includes changes based on efficiencies
planned. Here, the focus is on skill mix
and not on the numbers. For plants that
are undergoing an expansion or backwardintegration, the manpower plan reflects
requirement of this project in addition to the
stable part of the plant. This plan will state
the requirement of the project, ramping up for
commissioning and skill as well as age- mix.
For new plants, the manpower planning is
slightly complex as we do not have a reference
point when the project starts especially
in our Fluoro - specialties plants where we
have R&D to commissioning handled internally.
Here, the projections are based on our
past experience.
The key factors that lead to productivity
are: clarity of role (what is expected from
the person), ensuring that the person has
the right skill set that is required to perform
that role (continuous investment on skilling
is essential), and the work environment both
in terms of satisfying the physical needs and
psychological needs of the employee (i.e. how
effectively are we able to support the person,both at work and in his personal life).
For our business, productivity is not
measured in terms of revenue or sales (which
fluctuates significantly) but in terms of
volume. We track volume per employee. For
different functions we measure differently
also for example, number of persons in a
function per person in manufacturing, etc. We
also look at units manufactured vs. units sold
so we can track quality and wastage. We track
the effectiveness of our management team bylooking at the ratio of number of white collar
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employees for blue collar employees.
There are two types of absenteeism,
authorized and unauthorized. Authorized
absenteeism is when a person has taken
Suresh Dutt Tripathi
President - HR, SRF Ltd.leave with prior approval or intimation, while
unauthorized is when no prior intimation is
available and the employee does not turn up
for his job on any particular day.
Authorized absence is generally planned or
can be planned due to prior information from
the person availing leave of absence. Therefore,
we maintain it at a particular level based
on the permitted leave to employees and the
manning pattern of the plant.
It is the unauthorized absence, whichcauses disruption to work and leads to issues
of productivity. We look at past trends and
monthly patterns to manage this absence,
since it depends on location, culture, season,
age-mix and other local factors. Lot of
effort is put to reduce it to very low levels.
We educate employees continuously about
adverse impacts of unauthorized absence on
the organisation, on their own performance,
teams performance, productivity and their
earnings. Chronic absentees are counseled
and their families too are enrolled in solving
this problem as they are worst sufferers of the
reasons of chronic absence. We review our
absenteeism figures regularly to keep an eye
on issues, which may affect other employees
too. While we try to reduce the unauthorized
absence, we have processes to ensure that
the leaves are mostly planned and they are
properly manned all the time and there is least
disruption in work.We have elaborate processes to tackle the
issue of absenteeism as mentioned above. The
data regarding absenteeism is mainly maintained
at the plant level because it is most
useful there. All actions as well as decisions
are taken at the plant level but we keep an eye
on the pattern through our reviews. This data
is also used to check the trend across units
and provide them support through horizontal
deployment of good practices. We receive this
data through MIS, which is generated throughthe HRMS at the plant level. This year we are
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integrating all the plants through an HRIS at
the group level. We already have an integrated
HRIS for management level but with completion
of the HRIS for non management levels,
we will have an elaborate system, which will
help us in our strategic decision making.We have built this system in-house as we
believe that our group is diverse and complex
and if we have to buy a system off-the-shelf,
it would require lot of customization not only
at the time of buying but also continuously, as
we are growing rapidly and we need a system
that evolves with the organisation.
WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
41
Defining efficient Workways for key
roles to improve productivityLava is a two-year old organisation.
Our organisation has a total of 500
employees between the R&D center
in China (around 75 people), the software
team in India (around 20 people in Bangalore)
and the rest at the National Headquarters
and the sales and distribution team
spread across India. In our two years of
existence, we have consolidated our operations
and reached revenue of 750 cr. in this
last financial year.
If you ask me what affects employee
productivity in our industry, it starts with
hiring the right people with the right skills
and the right attitude. Secondly, organisations
should be able to give clarity on
the role and objectives that the person is
supposed to achieve and then, we should
give clarity on the process and support the
person to achieve his/her objectives. Finally,
creating a mechanism to give feedback,coach and give regular reviews is also
crucial for people to learn and improve, and
that has tremendous impact on productivity.
In order to improve employee productivity
we focus on the following activities;
setting role based, productivity benchmarks
for all our field roles, defining efficient
Workways for key roles, ensuring process
efficiency, implementing a phased plan of
automating operational processes, and
fully leveraging our SAP system, focusingon capability building in key areas- people
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management, product knowledge; and
finally, fostering a culture of regular feedback
and review of performance.
The key challenges we face in our
organisation, are aligned to the challenges
in our industry and our life cycle as acompany. First is about attracting talent. As
a young organisation, attracting top talent
is a challenge as our brand is still young
and this is a very competitive market for
talent. As a result of the first also, we need
to focus a lot on communication, once the
person comes on board to ensure that he/
she is engaged with the brand, we spend a
lot of time and effort in communicating the
vision, business results and business objec-
Vivek TripathiChief Human Resource Officer
Lava International Ltd.
tives. Thirdly, we also face the challenge of
getting good people managers. As we grow
and expand, we need people at the middle
layer to manage teams. We are investing
significantly in developing talent internally
to manage people. Finally, retention of
key talent is of course a challenge, again
aligned to the talent competition. We operate
in a crowded market so attrition is a key
area of concern.
Manpower planning happens groupwise,
based on geography and population.
For our largest group, that is, the sales and
distribution team, manpower planning is
done based on population and geographical
spread. There are some rules/guidelines
for us to define how many people are
required for every region. Our distribution
team is divided by regions and eachregion is an independent business unit. We
follow a similar model as FMCG companies,
wherein our branches (45 of them as
of today), manage the distributors (800 of
them today), that in turn offer lava products
in 30,000 retail outlets across India. For the
R&D center, the manpower requirement is
decided based on the models that we are
planning to bring out in the market and the
pipeline of models.
Today, most of our employee relatedprocesses run in a manual mode as we
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do not have an integrated system as yet.
Business planning is linked to manpower
planning and it is an annual exercise. This
becomes the base for hiring and training
needs. In terms of manpower tracking,
leaves, payroll, etc., it is mostly done inexcel today. For staff that is office going,
we have a digitized attendance tracking,
and email based leave application and both
of those get tallied manually for payroll. For
the field staff, we use the sales and stock
reports to track attendance. Employees
from the field need to submit their reports
as proof of their attendance for the day, and
managers are very strict about this process.
We know that as we grow, we will
need to bring in technology but today, thisprocess works well for our level of maturity.
WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY - INDIA 2012
42
People Matters
306, 3rd Floor, DLF Galleria
DLF Phase IV, Gurgaon 122 009
Tel: 91 124 414 8100/02
Kronos Systems India Pvt Ltd
Tridib Level 2, Unit 1,
Bagmane Tech Park, CV Raman Nagar
Bangalore 560 093, India