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Work From Home has taken a lot of management time over the years, right from the middle of 2010s, when it was discussed, to COVID and now post-COVID when it has seen various kind of dimensions. In fact, it has now reached alarming proportions, and many influencers and people who can influence decisions are now taking sides. Whether it is A side, B side, whatever, now people have views on Work From Home, strong views. So let us try and give a fair discussion to this topic, to try and see whether it's relevant, it's not relevant, or will it stay, or will it not stay?
Mentoring and coaching are certain topics that are used quite interchangeably, and they are also an important buzzword that are necessary. From an organisation standpoint, they are necessary. Why? Because in the organisation journey of building future people to take care of the organisation, or in the organisation journey of succession, or the CEOs or MD's personal journey to succeed and take the organisation from one level to the other, the roles that the mentoring and the coaching programs, or the role that a mentor and a coach plays, is one of the most fundamental and paramount essential topics that needs to be looked at.
Bell Curve and Forced Ratings have been discussed for a very long time, and at least for the foreseeable five to ten years, we see that the discussion will continue. So we are going to talk a little bit about whether a Bell Curve and Force Rating is really adding value to the organization, or they have outlived their utility. Let's start by talking about the necessity of performance differentiation. We are of the view that differentiating rewards, differentiating punishments, differentiating treatment to employees on the basis of performance is a relatively acceptable aspect, both to the employer and the employee. This is something that everybody expects. Not only people who are high-performing, but people who are average and underperforming.
Like most countries, India too has a lot of shortage of talent, what we call, a lot of shortage of trained talent. And like most of the countries globally, India too is putting in a lot of effort to see how people from the armed forces can be assimilated into the corporate life. So, today we are going to spend a little time trying to understand, do people from the armed forces really add value to the corporate entities, specifically because the goals that the corporate entities are trying to achieve and what the armed forces are trying to achieve are not in similar lines.
Providing medical insurance, life insurance, or accident insurance is a decision that an organisation needs to take, whether to give it to the employees or not. One of the rationales this would be based on is whether you want to use this as a benefit to attract or retain talent. That's a decision that you could take. But today, we are going to not talk about that. We are going to more talk about the risk factor. So what is the risk factor?
Worker unions or employee unions is something which we assume to be a very dangerous topic to talk about, a very stressful thing to have in an organisation, and a very troublesome thing to know that a union has been established in an organisation. But the fact of the matter is, a union, whether you have it for employees or workers, is a group of individuals, is a group of people coming together and saying that we are going to work in a certain fashion, or we want certain negotiations, certain benefits, certain way of treating us to be done.
The labor codes have been in the domain for some time now, and it is expected that whenever the government does notify that the labor courts are effective, organisations should have already done their homework or their preparatory work, and should be able to implement them within a reasonable time. So what is it that we should have done as an organisation? What is it that is required to be done if we are still not prepared for making sure that we are ready for the labor codes implementation.
Maternity benefit is a very sensitive topic. I could also go to the level of saying that it's a very touchy topic, because there are two strong views on maternity benefit. Right or wrong is not a choice we have, but the point is, there are two strong views on maternity benefit. First, let us talk about what is maternity benefit governed by? Maternity benefit would normally be governed by three broad laws in India.
Labour laws in India are a group of laws which govern the employer-employee relationship or the employment conditions. There is no specific law with the name Labour Law (Act) or the Labour Law, but it's a group of laws, multiple laws, which we club and only refer as labour laws. Sometimes certain laws are included in that group, sometimes they are not. Therefore, to explain in a better fashion, we would say when we are talking about labour laws, any law which you feel is governing the employer-employee relationship or the terms and conditions of work, that we should consider is what we will use for this article.
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Frauds are a very interesting aspect of any organisational set up, and one in every three organizations faces some kind of employee fraud.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Predominant frauds that happen in India, our study shows are around,</p>
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<li>Travel, A travel fraud is one of the most common frauds that happen</li>
<li>The other fraud that happens is in terms of your educational qualification or the qualifications to get into a role. That is the second highest fraud that happens in terms of fabricating experiences or education or exposure to get into a job.</li>
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Finding good talent has always been a problem, and in the foreseeable future also it will continue to be a problem, irrespective of whatever we believe that AI will help us do in finding talent.
The recruiters will continue to flourish, because they are the ones who help find great talent. AI can only assist in the screening side of the process, but we will still need great talent.
So, as a manager, what can be done to get great talent?
Salary increment is nothing but a result of a negotiation.
And negotiation is predominantly, not based on the grounds of what the market is paying, or what is the worth of the skill that an individual is bringing on the table.
Neither is the salary increment a result of what kind of budget the organisation has.
The need for an HR function arises primarily as a result of two important factors.
One, when the leaders are not able to devote time in managing people issues or people systems or people processes. And second, when the leader feels that they have reached a stage that an expert is needed to manage complex kind of issues people issues.
HR policies, also referred to as human resource policies, are a set of rules and guidelines along with a set of processes that are required to run the management of people in the organisation.
If we try to answer a question, are HR policies really necessary for an organization? or at what stage should we, as an organisation be introducing HR policies?
AI is a very important tool, and ignoring AI is going to be not the right thing to do for a human resource professional.
Needless to say, that the introduction of AI is not going to change the human resource profession is going to be wrong. AI is already changing a lot of human resources functions roles and responsibilities.
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<p class="ember-view">There are a lot of HR tech, or what we call as the HRMS solution providers available in the market in India today. Quite a lot of them are overseas based, and you can subscribe to them sitting in India.</p>
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The term decision-making a result of certain steps can be explained by an example, an employee wants to apply for leave, the HRMS can itself take a decision whether the leave should be approved or not based on certain principles.
No AI is needed in this, it will itself take a decision based on factors like does the employee have a leave balance, do the other employees (of the same team) have working in the same team are on leave or below a certain threshold of headcount so that one group does not have too many employees on leave.
These principles are applied by the HRMS, and it approves or rejects it.
Implementing an HRMS (Huan Resource Management) solution requires a lot of resources to be allocated by any organization.
For example, one of the prominent resources that needs to be allocated is the financial resource, which means what amount of money do we need to spend to acquire either the license or the product, which is going to provide the platform.
The second which is a necessity and often ignored, is the management time that is going to be required, for the effective implementation and the effective development of the solution, because the reason for getting an HRMS, is to obviously get some business advantage.
An interesting aspect about the Prevention of Sexual Harassment, or also known as Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, is the understanding that organizations have, since we do not employ women, we are not covered by the Act, or since we have less than 10 employees, we are not covered by the PoSH Act.
the understanding that organizations have, since we do not employ women, we are not covered by the Act
The real person who gets benefited out of any training program is not the individual who is attending the program, the individual does get an opportunity to upgrade their skill, they do get an opportunity to get more knowledge, but the actual output or the real benefit is supposed to be taken or enjoyed by the organisation that in the first place decides that these employees are going to be sent to certain specific kind of trainings.
Salary benchmarking is nothing but a comparative study that any organisation would undertake to try and understand what is the market salary or what is the market paying for an individual who is performing certain level of skills in the company or the organisation.
The market we referred in the above definition, is the market we define ourselves, on the basis of certain factors which make us feel that the stated organisations are a competition to us either for business or for talent.
For this discussion, I would not like to combine loyalty to tenure. I would like to state that employee loyalty is more about an employee doing what they have to, and doing that with their utmost sincerity. That is what we say employee loyalty is.
If we have this one single clarity, then we can communicate with any employee in terms of how their performance has been and how that performance has actually contributed to the organisation in achieving the overall objective.
If we have this one single clarity, then we can communicate with any employee in terms of how their performance has been and how that performance has actually contributed to the organisation in achieving the overall objective.
And, if we can do this alignment or just show the employee the relationship, then it's going to be very easy for us to have conversations with the employee, whether they are difficult conversations, whether they are easy conversations, or whether they are, as a fact of a matter, just simple discussions informing about how things went.
Now, leaves, per se are controlled by law.
Like, we have the Shops and Establishment Act for organisations which are non-manufacturing, and manufacturing organisations have the Factories Act, and there are certain other laws which control leaves, like national festivals and other such laws on holidays.
But, we are going to discuss about leaves in this newsletter and not holidays.
It's a very pertinent question to be asked whether, it is necessary for an individual who is resigning or leaving an organisation to forcefully serve the notice period, or they should just leave the current employer, as per the whims and fancies of the new employer and their joining dates.
There is no right or wrong answer to this.
What is culture and how does one imbibe the culture, why is it necessary to understand the organisation culture. Does culture add value to the organisation.
Successful recruiters are strategic listeners, relationship builders, and tech-savvy professionals who act with urgency and resilience. They master multitasking, uphold integrity, and continuously improve while marketing opportunities with precision. From engaging passive talent to navigating complex hiring needs, they bring clarity and confidence to every search.
The traditional model of loyalty and stability has evolved into a dynamic partnership driven by culture, benefits, and mutual value. Today’s employees seek purpose, flexibility, and recognition, while employers expect performance and alignment with company vision. This shift has given rise to the Employee Value Proposition (EVP), where culture, policies, and communication define success.
How did Indian companies approach salary increments, promotions, and bonuses in 2021? This insightful report by HRhelpdesk® analyzes responses from over 600 organizations, revealing a strong positive sentiment toward salary hikes-especially among companies with fewer than 100 employees. Interestingly, nearly 1 in 5 companies planned aggressive increments above 15%, while MNCs with large headcounts led the way in bonus outflows. Promotions were widely supported, but opinions varied on whether they should be subdued or performance driven. The report also explores how payroll budgets shifted post-pandemic and what formal mechanisms companies used to decide compensation. Click to read more and download the full report-it’s a must-read for HR professionals and business leaders.
What did Indian companies really do to manage their workforce during the COVID-19 lockdown? This revealing report by HRhelpdesk® uncovers how over 1300 organizations responded to the crisis-from salary cuts and unpaid leaves to outright retrenchments. While 58% took extreme measures, sectors like textiles and e-commerce were hit hardest, with insurance and telecom showing more restraint. The data also highlights how salary reductions varied by level, with senior management facing cuts up to 50%. Some companies even paused hiring, revoked offers, or gave zero salary. If you want to understand the real impact of the lockdown on workforce policies, click to read more and download the full report.
