Expressions 2014

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OPEN SOURCE BOOK
OPEN SOURCE BOOK
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
EMERGING TRENDS IN TALENT MANAGEMENT
We are happy to present this open source book which is an outcome of the 6 th XLRI National conference organized during 1920th of December 2012. This edition of the conference was conceived and implemented my Sapphire the HR student association
of XLRI and the Centre for HRD, XLRI.
ABOUT XLRI
XLRI was founded in 1949 by Fr. Quinn Enright, S.J. in the Steel City of Jamshedpur. Fr. Enright visualized XLRI to be a partner in the liberation and development journey of the independent India with a vision of "renewing the face of the earth". Fr. Bill
Tome joined hands with him to bring that vision to fruition. Both, together with the other Jesuit companions, worked tirelessly
towards translating the Vision "Renewing the face of the earth" into action.
The 6th HR conference was unique in very many ways. The first ever national talent management survey was done by XLRI and
the same too is incorporated in the book. It may be noted that around 50 organizations with sound Talent management practices
have participated in the survey and their unique talent management practices are made available in the book. We hope to repeat
similar surveys in the future ytoo to build intellectual capital and share the same with organizations across the country.
Over many years XLRI has developed its own identity. The hallmark of this identity is, not to walk on the beaten path but to
strike new routes; not to benchmark bvut to be benchmarked, to be second to none but to be the first to respond to the needs of
the people and the nation, by taking up the tasks which are bold but necessary which nobody has hitherto taken up. This enterprising and pioneering spirit can be witnessed throughout the history of XLRI.
This book is the outcome of a lot of researches done prior to the conference, deliberations and reporting during the conference
and consolidation after the conference. Papers as well as case studies have been written on talent management and the same
were presented and deliberated during the course of conference. I would like to acknowledge and congratulate each every author
for the contributions made through their papers included in this volume. I would also like to congratulate XLRI students especially the Sapphire group who assisted the authors in coming out with the papers
Its vision is inspired by the Jesuit spirit of 'Magis' and aims at being a management school with a passion for academic excellence, uncompromising human values, sensitive social conscience, abiding commitment to improving the quality of life in organizations and society, and integrity.
The conference participation from industry practitioners and Academia was by invitation. Thank you very much for accepting
our invitation making it into the conference. The conference was also unique because of the participation of the students from
various colleges and B Schools.
The B-School prides offers various courses including a full-time 2-year post graduate program in Business Management and
Human Resources Management, 15 months full-time General Management program (GMP), doctoral fellow programs (FPM),
Global MBA and many executive education programs.
The conference had the following outcomes:

Unique and Benchmarking practices on Talent management: The conference deliberations have thrown open unique and
benchmarking organizational practices on talent management.

Courseware on Talent Management: A possible courseware on talent management was evolved from the papers, conference
deliberations and from the survey results. We hope to come out with comprehensive courseware on talent management.

Contribution to intellectual property: This volume, survey report etc. are the ways we hope the conference would have contributed to the intellectual capital on talent management.
ABOUT SAPPHIRE
Providing a strong thrust to the domain of human resources and industrial relations knowledge at XLRI is SAPPHIRE, the Students Association for the Promotion of Personnel Management, Human Resources and Industrial Relations at XLRI. SAPPHIRE
is a student’s body aiming to integrate the experiences of practitioners with the theoretical knowledge of academicians in the
area of human resource development.
Once again thanking all those who have contributed towards the publication of this volume. Happy reading.
Dr. MG Jomon
Faculty coordinator, HR Conference 2012
SAPPHIRE’S Mission: To enable development of world class, well-rounded HR Professionals who are capable of delivering
and creating value in the emerging business environment and make meaningful contributions to the field of Human Resources.
SAPPHIRE, over the years, has acted as an interface between the industry and the academia and provided a forum for discussion
and debate on the prevalent HR concepts and best practices. Throughout its 23 years of existence, SAPPHIRE has organized a
consortium of events, which have served as platforms for debating and discussing state-of-the-art HR and Industrial Relations
practices.
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Madura Fashion and Lifestyle | Excellence in Talent Management and
Employee Engagement
Contents
Title
Madura Fashion and Lifestyle | Excellence in Talent Management and Employee Engagement
Page No.
6
Hand preference: Investigating ways to utilize employee diversity
23
Emerging Trends In Talent Management In SEMAC Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
26
(A) Head in the Cloud
41
Employer Branding and Social Networking
52
Creating The Eudaimon Employee
57
Employer Branding through Social Networks
60
ENGAGING CONTRACTUAL EMPLOYEES THROUGH SKILL - POOL DEVELOPMENT
70
A Roadmap to successful Employer Branding through Social Networks
83
Employee Engagement in Contractual Employment
94
Business Context and HR Challenges
In the last two years, we at MFL have experienced a paradigm shift from being brand and product centric organization to being retail led.
While traditionally we were focusing on product excellence, in view of our strategic shift, we needed to focus on consumer experience with
product excellence being a critical enabler.
This shift, therefore as a natural consequence, also created ripple effects on most of the central business processes including that of Supply
Chain, Sourcing, Product Development, and Manufacturing. Added to it, the macro economic uncertainties of 2008-09, created lots of turbulence in the retail industry at large. While, our employees were always proud to work for MFL, in view of the prevailing market conditions and
the internal changes in our organization, the morale was low. It was therefore very critical for us to relook at our business drivers to become a
successful apparel retailer. A change of this magnitude brought with it associated people challenges which include the following:

Acquiring and building new retail specific capabilities which did not exist earlier

People Systems and processes to aid rapid retail expansion
Talent Mobility: Managing Expectations of Young Talent - A perspective of Indian Employees
102

Reengineer our back-end functions’ capabilities to deliver consumer value and not just product excellence
Global Talent: Managing Immigrants
110

Sustaining a change initiative in an environment which had high pride and low morale was a challenge
Women in Workforce: Changing Dynamics and Performance Implications
117
These challenges brought upon us a clear need to do the following:

A vision for the organization to bring about alignment amongst people and teams

A consequent people vision, which should be internalized in all of our people related service deliveries

A holistic approach to Talent Management, which leverages the strong foundations laid down in the ABG Talent Management process
and provides strategic inputs on talent strategies to enable business growth

An unambiguous approach to employee engagement, with the OHS being the guiding force and anchor, to build a culture of high performance, transparency and morale
MFL Vision and Mission
While the strategic focus was on consumer experience tactically our focus as an organization was to stop bleeding, get fit, increase the performance and productivity, unlock potential and generate cash to become a sustainable organization keeping in mind our strategic focus. The
cornerstone of our success story was when we crafted our vision and communicated to our stakeholders. “To passionately satisfy Indian consumer needs in fashion, style, and value, across wearing occasions in Apparel and Accessories by anticipating trends and creating markets with
the ultimate purpose of delivering superior value to all our stakeholders” is the vision of MFL and it gave rise to the mission objectives, which
are:

Create the most valuable apparel company in India, Rs. 6,000 Cr Revenue and 8% market share by FY16

Growth at 30%+ and EBITDA of ~15%, PBT of ~12% by FY16
The vision and mission gave a strong sense of purpose to the employees, larger goals to strive for and to achieve. Subsequently, brand and
functions also created their vision statements and mission objectives. As an HR function, we also crafted the shared vision, which is “To build
a high performing organization by engaging employees in a culture of meritocracy and providing them an opportunity to realize their ambition.”
The mission objectives were to:

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Create robust communication, Rewards and Recognition systems, aligned toward superior performance and differentiation of high per-
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formers from average.

Provide visibility to employees regarding their career and growth in the organization, to engage them with the present and future plans of
the organization.

Implement and institutionalize employee engagement and development system and processes in retail, aimed toward supporting the
growth plans of this channel.

Increasing the productivity of our workforce in manufacturing and retail, enhancing employee performance at corporate to achieve the
30%+ growth envisioned in the mission objectives.

Develop people managers across the board through the Q12 methodology, so that they can act as key influencers and be our partners in
change.

Measure and monitor the change and impact at a process and result level, using monthly HR dashboards and scorecards.
OPEN SOURCE BOOK
“Borrow” tactic to improve capability levels of the Visual Merchandising (VM) function, by partnering with Liganova, a reputed VM consulting firm, who helped in defining VM processes and provided knowledge in latest VM trends.
However, since the scope of this document is on Talent Management and Employee Engagement, we will be focusing on initiatives in those
areas. As illustrated in the model above, “Build” decision has a logical impact on the development and engagement processes. At MFL, using
the B3 model, we have created holistic and sustainable philosophies around employee development and engagement thereby resulting in impactful Talent management process execution.
The MFL Employee Engagement Philosophy
Traditionally, at MFL, Pride is an important element of our culture. For sustaining the organizational change, it is important that we reinforce
this element of our culture in various forms with our employees. Since Pride is an outcome arising out of rational and emotional human behavior, we therefore believe that engagement as a concept is to ensure that employees are involved and aligned with the organization both emotionally and rationally. The following are the elements of our engagement process which reinforce rational and emotional employee behavior

Careers | to provide visibility and transparency to employees on career paths, thereby enabling Individual Career Planning aided by organizational tools and systems.
To address the challenges listed above, we needed a framework to manage
talent, which:

Communication | to use both top down and bottom up communication, enabling employees to have a clear line of sight and greater alignment

Aids realization of our business strategy

Care | to manage employee morale and motivation, by rewarding and recognizing consistent exemplary performance, focusing on their

Takes cognizance of our market realities and internal capabilities

Leverages the principles of the ABG talent management process
MFL Talent Management Framework
As a consequence, we have developed and implemented a holistic and a very
unique talent management framework. It is referred to as the Build-BuyBorrow (B3 Model). The B3 Model not only provides a structured approach
towards deploying the group talent management process at MFL, it also
helped in translating our HR Vision and Strategy into execution, thereby creating the desired impact. The model takes inputs from various sources viz.:
the ABG Talent Management process, business strategy and the market realities. Basis the inputs, one or more of the following HR decision is taken using
the framework:

Buy Decision | Here we look at “Buying” a talent from external market.
Generally “Buy” decisions tend to affect recruitment, EVP, employer
branding and compensation processes.
mental well being by providing “life beyond work”, focusing on physical well being through “wellness” programs, rewarding and reinforcing exemplary display of ABG values
MFL Employee Development Philosophy
At MFL, we believe that development is a change management process and it not only involves changing the behavior of the individual but
also changing the environment in which the individual operates. We also believe that development as a process is holistic and should happen
in various forms to create, sustain and help employees to manage change. The main tenets are:

Formal Learning | enable employee learning through formal class room/training programs.

Non-Formal Learning | assist employee learning through stretch assignments and on the job projects/work.

Informal Learning | enable employee learning through various diverse development experiences/exposures.
Dimension and Context of Achievement
MFL had witnessed a dramatic growth in its people strength to support

Build Decision | Here we look at “Building” a talent internally through various career planning, succession planning and Talent management and development interventions. Generally, “Build” decisions tend to affect engagement and development processes.

Borrow Decisions | Here we look at “Borrowing” a talent from outside typically through a consultant or an expert generally for a short
duration. This is normally done for critical market winning capabilities that we may not have internally and this approach is used to leverage the capabilities on a time bound manner.
of development and engagement to be robust, scalable and sustainable.
Though these decisions are conceptually stand alone and have their own merits, in reality most of the people decisions generally tend to be a
combination of two decisions (i.e. Buy and Build, Borrow and Build etc)
the major portion of this growth came in our retail channel, which is
Scope of this Document
management processes which not only help us acquire high quality
Each of the B3 decisions or the combinations of decisions, tend to have impact on various people processes like recruitment, engagement,
development, performance management, compensation and organizational design.
talent but also help improve productivity and retention levels. The table
Last year, we had used the “Buy” tactic to create a new central function called “Central Planning and Supply Chain”, whose primary role is to
plan for inventory (demand and supply) centrally and provide inputs to brands to optimize inventory levels. Similarly, we had also used the
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its rapidly growing business. To aid this growth, and support the large
employee base, it was critical to have people processes including that
The figure to the right, illustrates, the growth in employee base that we
have witnessed over the years. Most importantly, it is noteworthy that
largely distributed. The challenge therefore was to build robust talent
below summarizes the journey that we have undergone in many of the
people processes over the last two years to realize our stated vision. It
showcases milestones which in turn demonstrate the scale of success in
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terms of the effort and impact.
central supply chain function by acquiring/recruiting (Buy decision) new talent, bringing in Visual merchandising (VM) (Borrow decision)
consultants to strengthen our VM processes, partnership with XLRI Jamshedpur (Build decision) to roll our exclusive retail training programs
Ü Time Frame
Þ Milestone
Pre [2010]
To [2012]
KRA Goal Setting and annual
appraisal
è
Talent Mgt.
ABG Talent Management process
è
Integration of B3 framework into ABG Talent management
process
Communication
Email based and mostly top
down
è
Face to face [One-On-One], Bottom up and top down
through Town Hall, Communication Meets, Brand Meets
Care
Low Employee Morale and
Motivation- (OHS Mean: 23rd
percentile)
è
Increased OHS engagement mean at corporate and High
OHS engagement scores at Retail and Manufacturing (OHS
Mean: 50th Percentile)
Retail Staff Development
Once a year training programs
è
Structured and layered training approach | Hygiene, Basic
and Advanced Training
Staff Engagement
Not measured in Retail and
Manufacturing
è
Creation and implementation of [1] Retail OHS and [2] Employee Satisfaction Survey for manufacturing
Retail Employees
Database
Excel sheet based data management
è
Integration of Employee data into Ramco HR ERPSampoorna (Retail HRMS)
Employee Learning
Needs based on Appraisal
Document
è
Structured need based training model through Career Dossiers and formal and informal exposures.
Few measures reported quarterly and annually
è
Performance Mgt.
HR Analytics
Excellence in Talent Management
MFL uses the ABG talent management process
to systematically assess potential and perform
KRAs and Goals based on Balanced Scorecard based approach and review discussions
Creation of monthly scorecards and dashboards to report
process and result indicators
for our retail operations function. The unique initiatives under
Function
Design
Product
Retail Operations
Retail Buying
Retail Planning
VM
Sales
Sourcing
Supply Chain
Manufacturing
General Management
HR and Admin
Finance
PDQA
IT
RBD
Business Excellence
Perf (%3)
33%
28%
54%
28%
33%
29%
44%
19%
58%
22%
55%
47%
20%
21%
0%
22%
22%
Talent Management (numbered TM-1
High on Performance,
Low on Potential BUILD
to TM-6) are mentioned in the subsequent pages.
Pot (%A)
13%
12%
13%
13%
100%
0%
11%
2%
0%
22%
29%
26%
11%
7%
0%
0%
11%
Medium Performance
Zero Potential BORROW and BUILD
High on Performance
Low on Potential BUILD
Low on Performance
Low on Potential BUY &
BUILD
High on Performance Zero
Potential BUILD
Zero Performance, Zero Potential BUILD & BUY
Medium Performance, Zero Potential BUY and BUILD
The successful integration of ABG Talent Management process and B3 framework was evident in various past instances such as creation of a
central supply chain function by acquiring/recruiting (Buy decision) new talent, bringing in Visual merchandising (VM) (Borrow decision)
consultants to strengthen our VM processes, partnership with XLRI Jamshedpur (Build decision) to roll our exclusive retail training programs
for our retail operations function. The unique initiatives under Talent Management (numbered TM-1 to TM-6) are mentioned in the subsequent
pages.
TM-1 | IDP PROCESS – PREPARING MFL FOR TALENT MANAGEMENT

Initiative | We put in place a very structured, detailed and actionable IDP process focusing on
talent segmentation using the 9 box talent matrix.
holistic talent development. It includes creation of IDP champions who are trained to read and
However, to leverage the power of the process
interpret DAC reports and identify developmental action plans, partnering with leading B
for our business, we identify clear action tactics
schools to roll out focused developmental programs for talent pool members, systematic track-
for each of the boxes in the 9 box matrix as illus-
ing of IDP implementation through function-wise IDP dashboard.
trated in the adjacent diagram.

Process | The process is clearly illustrated in the adjacent flowchart. We improved the Group
We also perform this talent segmentation process
process by putting in a structured system which helped in creating actionable IDP’s. The devel-
for each of the function and levels, and create
opmental budgets for KT are comparatively higher than the routine training and tracked sepa-
function wise talent dashboards and action tac-
rately.
tics using the B3 Talent Management Framework.
The successful integration of ABG Talent Management process and B3 framework was evident
in various past instances such as creation of a
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
Impact | The structured IDP process and the systematic tracking of IDP implementation has
enabled our businesses to focus on KT development and launch initiatives around it.
TM-2 | TALENT DEVELOPMENT | HOLISTIC APPROACH TO BUILD KEY TALENT (KT)
Given our strategic business needs, our developmental solutions, need to result in superior experience and value for our consumer. It is therefore critical for us to specially focus on the KT with impactful developmental interventions. Realizing the importance of key talent, we con-
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stantly keep track of KT attrition and their career movements through job rotations. We also have identified the future roles for the next 2-3
jointly developed by MFL and
years for all of our KT members. We are currently in the process of institutionalizing a formal mentoring process for all of our KT members
XLRI. The Retail Next Practice
this year. We have deployed a KT development approach that is holistic and focuses on learning through building perspectives, creating a
program follows the stringent eval-
change (both individual and the environment) and creating awareness of latest trends. It follows the following three approaches to learning:
uation guidelines laid out by XLRI

and follows the grading system
Formal Learning: consists of learning that occurs within an organized and structured context. It may lead to employee recognition and it
defined by the institute. While the
is clearly intentional learning from an employees’ perspective. At MFL, we use formal learning method to address developmental needs
quality of the program is monitored
of KT at all three levels of the organization, Organization, Brand and Individual. The individual developmental needs are captured
by feedback of the participants and
through the IDP process, brand needs through a structured template and the organizational needs through B 3 framework.


managers, the learning of the par-
Non Formal Learning: consists of learning embedded in planned activities/on the job training for KT that are not explicitly designated
ticipants is evaluated through tests,
as learning, but which contain an important learning element. Non-formal learning is intentional from the employees’ point of view.
real life projects and assignments
after every module in the program.
Informal Learning: consists of learning resulting from experiences that KT goes through with various exposures including seminars,
conferences, international travel and other networks. It is also referred to as experiential learning.

formally launched in May 2012,
The following table summarizes the various talent developmental initiatives that we have deployed across all forms of learning for our KT to
the design process began in May
address their individual developmental needs identified in their IDPs:
Method
Scope/Coverage
Impact | While the program was
2011 and the construct and the
Initiatives
B-Schools MDPs, Gyanodaya Programs and In house training programs
(E.g. On Becoming a Leader (OBL), Finance for Non Finance Managers),
Retail Training for Front end associates
Formal Learning
Classroom Training
Non Formal
Learning
On the job projects
Project Gold, Project 10/100, Project Cosmos I and II
Informal Learning
International Exposure, conferences workshops and
seminars
Visit to global fashion fairs (e.g. to Paris, Berlin, Shanghai), Retailers
Association of India (RAI) conferences, CII summits etc.,
design was completed in Feb 2012.
The program has already started
creating change in the organization - one of the examples being redefining the store logistics process of MFL supply chain system to minimize stock in transit being a direct outcome of the course design and participant interaction.
TM-2B | CREATIVE COMPETENCY BUILDING PROGRAMS FOR KEY TALENT IN DESIGN

Initiative | Since the competitive advantage of MFL lies in its product design/creation, it is imperative that considerable amount of efforts
are spent in the development of its design and VM function talent We conduct a very unique creative competition called the “CRAZE”
The brand and the organizational specific needs for KT are addressed through various flagship developmental interventions some of which,
for design and VM functions. The objective of this competition is to provide a platform for VM and design talent to visualize and create
specifically those that are unique (Retail and Design) are described in the subsequent pages under headings TM2A, 2B and 2C. While the spe-
their dream ensemble and present to the outside world. This competition helps the designers and visual merchandisers unleash their crea-
cific impacts of these initiatives are mentioned separately, the overall impact of this development approach was as follows:
tive potential and provide a forum for informal learning.

Our attrition of key talent last year was zero

20% of Key talent had career moves last year

These visits, help in providing exposure to latest fashion, product, fabric and style trends.
TM-2A |MFL XLRI RETAIL NEXT PRACTICE PROGRAM FOR RETAL KEY TALENT


Process | CRAZE happens once a year; the schedule is finalized basis the business seasons and cycles. The themes for the competition are
chosen after intense and deep discussions with our Design and Visual Merchandising heads. As a process, nominations are invited from
3
Initiative | Basis our talent segmentation and our analysis of talent using the B framework, we decided to build our internal capability in
all design and visual merchandisers. The participants are expected to submit their design documents and present their final ensemble to
the retail operations function. We have tied up with XLRI Jamshedpur, one of the top B-Schools in India, to offer a very unique, one of
the jury for assessment. The competition gets adjudged by top design professionals in the country. In addition, the competition also has its
its kind, Advanced Retail Management Program - Retail Next Practice Program for our retail key talent. This flagship retail training pro-
glitz and glamour, by culminating in the form of model ramp walks with these designer costumers during Madura Annual Day.
gram seamlessly blends Retail management fundamentals with MFL retail way of working.

In addition, with a view to build perspectives, we also provide opportunities for international visits for design and sourcing functions.
The design function team members visit all leading global fashion shows in countries like, Italy, Germany, France and China, twice every
Process | The program is an intensive 25 day, 6 month long program leading to joint certificate by MFL and XLRI, conducted at both off
year. Some of the leading shows they visit include, Pitti Uomo, Florence in France, Milano in Milan, Italy, Premiere Vision in Paris, France,
and on campus at XLRI Jamshedpur. The program has a unique methodology of pedagogy, having active involvement of XLRI faculty
Bread and Butter in Berlin, Germany, Intertex in Shanghai, China. These fairs operate in the form of road shows and they offer significant
and in house faculty (retail leadership team at MFL). While the Retail management concepts are taught by XLRI faculty, application of
amount of learning opportunities. Additionally, the sourcing team also visits China every year to participate in the global sourcing fair in Hong
these concepts in MFL retail processes and their consequent impact are taught by in house faculty at MFL. The program uses a case and
Kong.
simulation based methodology to enable better learning, all cases and simulation for this program are MFL specific and exclusive and are

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Impact | Close to 20 nominations are received each from the design and visual merchandising teams every year to participate in this pres-
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tigious event CRAZE. Competitions like Craze are very unique and aren’t conducted by anyone else in this industry. Participants get
plex operation is broken down into small skills so that operators can learn them and be proficient. On achieving 80% performance, they
good opportunities to learn and understand perspectives through feedback from the expert panel of judges. In view of the learning oppor-
are graduated and placed in the production line in 2 weeks. A Graduation test is also done with the active involvement of the production
tunities that we provide for designers and visual merchandisers, we are always considered the best company to work for by designers.
team and they certify the trainee’s performance level. Trainers were motivated and trained to introduce this method, continuous feed-
This has ensured that, despite the arrival of international brands into India, we still remain the “dream” company to work for various
back was taken from them on the implementation of this initiative to ensure success.
young designers passing out of National Institutes of Fashion Technology (NIFT) across the country.
TM-2C | CROSS FUNCTIONAL PROJECTS FOR KEY TALENT

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Initiative | From time to time, we revisit our strategic position vis-à-vis the external environment and identified key focus areas internally. The following are the key initiatives that were done over the last few years:

Impact | The training program after its introduction saw the training lead time reduce from 10 weeks to 2 weeks for the worker to be
productive thereby enhancing operational efficiency and manufacturing throughput. MFL has also converted this into a certificate program in
collaboration with IGNOU, thereby creating a benchmark in the industry. We further extended this training concept, towards rural community
building, by collaborating with IL&FS, a leading skill development organization, under SWARN JAYANTI GRAM SWAROZGAR YOJANA. This has further enhanced our employer branding in the community. For all these path breaking efforts in on the job training, we were

Project Gold: Project to make the Louis Philippe and Van Heusen brands the leaders in the suits category.
awarded the prestigious Golden Peacock National Training Award last year.

Project 10/100: Project to bring in cost consciousness in the organization and address non value adding costs
TM-5 | iLERA - PROVIDING CAREER OPPORTUNITIES TO RETAIL FRONT END TALENT

Project Cosmos II: Project to improve product availability, customer service and inventory turns

Initiative |With the availability of quality retail talent becoming scarce and expensive in India, it was imperative that we focus on promoting our Customer Care Associate (CCA) talent from within by providing meaningful career opportunities. We introduced the Leader-

Process | All these strategic projects with the intent of promoting learning and sharing knowledge consist of cross functional teams across
brands and functions. The individuals to participate in these projects are identified will be key talent members identified after a careful
selection processes using talent segmentation. Each project has a clear reporting structure including an apex committee in the form of a
ship Program from Retail Associates, a unique process to identify high performing, high potential CCA ready for the next career move,

steering committee and category leads handling various sub charters in each of these projects. With such a structured approach, these
 Tenure with MFL
projects also help in building leadership capabilities in employees across levels

 Performance Rating
Impact | These projects enabled the employees learn and appreciate other employees’ function perspectives and helped them to have a
 Performance in Regional Round Retail Aptitude Test
holistic understanding of the business and drivers. Since most of the participating members were from the members of the key and leadership talent, these projects also helped in building strategic leadership capabilities at all levels in view of the experience gained by working
 Performance in National Round Development Assessment Center (DAC)
in diverse teams, managing and influencing each other towards getting results.
TM-4 |ACCELERATING LEARNING CURVE ‘EMPLOYABILITY TRAINING’ FOR WORKERS

Initiatives | At our factories, we created a transformational training program using an innovative approach which helped crash induction
lead times for workers from 10 weeks to 2 weeks . This was brought about using two principles:

Changing the recruitment criteria from finger dexterity to ability to learn.

Removing fear from the workers minds by focusing on speed and not on accuracy
This unique program had the following benefits:


To transition unskilled operator to skilled operator in 2 weeks

Flexible Responsive manufacturing due to shorter training lead time

Faster career growth for employee

Improving cost efficiency and employee utilisation

Rational base for new recruit grading
Process | iLeRA is a structured and elaborate process, where the high potentials are identified after looking at the following parameters:
It may be noted that the aptitude tests and the DAC are very retail specific and developed fully in house. The employees who have cleared the
iLeRA get promoted as Assistant Store Managers and get trained under an experienced Store Manager. On satisfactory completion of training,
employees are given independent charge to handle stores.

Impact | The program, every time, since its launch has witnessed participation from at least 30% of the total retail frontline workforce,
with a final selection ratio of 30% of those who had participated in the process This has always ensured that store manager staffing is
always consistent at 100% and has kept the retail attrition levels at around 34% as of FY 12, one of the lowest in the industry compared to
the industry average of 50%
Excellence in Talent Engagement
We use the ABG’s OHS framework for measuring and managing
employee engagement. As outlined in our philosophy earlier, we
believe engagement involves both rational and emotional engagement. It is established by research globally that 1% increase in
employee engagement results in 2% increase in customer satisfaction. Given our low morale existing in pre 2010 and that of our
focus on consumer, it was important for us to have an engagement
approach that is not only consistent with our vision but also builds
Process | Unskilled operators are selected by administering multiple tests and are graded and allocated to the various operations. Com-
Page 13
local engagement within teams using “Manager as a Coach” Phi-
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losophy. We use the Q12 framework of Group OHS very extensively for this. The following are therefore approaches that we have taken to

Process | Entire jobs of MFL were
promote employee engagement in the organization. The three tenets of our Talent Engagement framework are:
mapped and competencies required

for each role were articulated by
Careers | It is every employee’s basic need is to know “How would I grow, How fast would I grow, What does it take to grow ?” to ad-
Subject Matter Experts (SME’s).
dress this, we have designed and implemented specific initiatives around providing visibility on careers such that employees are aware of
The SME’s also identified the
the choices they have and can make an informed choice. At MFL we have put in place a robust career management framework which
movement options from one role to
starts with career identification, after which we facilitate the career through in-house developed tools line Career Lab, Career Coaches,
another such that a movement ma-
DACs and IDPs. Career facilitation and focused development go hand in hand and in this process we develop the employee to set for
trix was defined. This enabled the
success and eventually through the career movement tools we facilitate the transition.
employee to be aware of their career
movement
options within
MFL with the click of a mouse. The portal provides different support systems for employees like [1] Career Coaches – Senior managers of the organization who would be able to guide employees,
should they be facing a career dilemma [2] Resource material –

Communication | An aware employee is an engaged employee. This has to provide opportunities for interaction at all levels on matters
Assessment tests and reading material to provide clarity on employ-
that concern the employees; we have articulated an integrated communication framework which has been designed with involvement of
ees’ careers [3] Career Lab –A program which is designed especial-
senior leadership to develop a culture of open communication, high performance and people engagement.
ly for middle managers to help bring about an alignment between their strengths, career anchors, their aspirations and their current role.
Communication Event
Engagement Survey
Branch review
CEO’s Town Hall
Employees Speak
Brand Meet
Meet the Brand Head
Listen Kaizen
Branch communication
Regional meet with top mgmt.
Strings and Wooqer [Internet]
One on one with HR

Frequency
Annual
Quarterly
Quarterly
Quarterly
Monthly
Monthly
Monthly
Monthly
Monthly
Daily updates
Ongoing
Details
Engagement and satisfaction assessment
Updates on Performance and Recognition
Business updates, Reward and Recognition
Grievance Resolution
Communication and Celebration
Recognition and Grievance Resolution
Sharing of Kaizens, Reward and Recognition
Business updates
Grievance Resolution
Updates
Engagement and Query Resolution
This aims to provide greater clarity on career orientation.

nally over the last 2 years got filled through internal talent
TE-2 | COMMUNICATION | LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY TO SHARE AND COLLABORATE
Considering the diversity and spread of employees, it is imperative that we leverage technology to communicate effectively with employees.
The following initiatives were implemented to facilitate the same:
TE-2A | COMMUNICATION | MFL STRINGS – ONLINE COLLABORATION TOOL

Care | In order to enhance the morale of employees, we have designed and implemented
unique initiatives which helps the employee de-stress and feel recognized and appreciated.
Rewards and recognition focuses on appreciating employees for superior performance, loyal-

Process | Through FGDs with employees, an easy to use A-Z
framework was developed capturing all needs and requirements. Risk of employee feeling lost in the entire framework
through active support we have series of wellness initiatives. We also provide opportunities
was mitigated by constant education mailers on what to locate
to employees to participate in community service and to de-stress at work by following their
where and direct links were facilitated to ease navigation
passion at work.
deployed these systems through our people managers (Q12 managers) and this therefore helps in
Initiative | MFL Strings is an online platform where employees get business updates, discuss various topics, collaborate, share, network
and have fun. It facilitates bottom-up and top-down communication for employees just by click of a mouse.
ty and celebrating value behaviors. To nurture the physical, mental and social well being
It must be borne in mind that though these tenets form part of organizational initiatives, we have
Impact | Number of employee career moves in MFL almost doubled from 57 in FY 11 to 105 FY 12 and 90% of critical positions inter-
thereby making MFL Strings – a way of life at MFL.

Impact | Strings has witnessed a total of 3,22,024 hits in the
their sustenance. The unique initiatives under Talent Engagement (numbered TE-1 to TE-8) are
last 4 months, average of 300 unique visitors (employees) per
mentioned in the subsequent pages.
day which indicates that it has become a preferred forum for
TE-1 | CAREERS | CAREER PATH VISIBILITY THROUGH CAREER PORTAL

Initiative | Career Portal is a tool that helps employees be aware of the various career movements possible from one role/ function to
top down and peer group communication. Since Strings is a
one stop platform, it integrated numerous employee service IT
platforms in the organization
another and the competencies required in each role. This helps in advocacy and stability.
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TE2B | COMMUNICATION | WOOQER – AN ONLINE RETAL “INFORMATION HIGHWAY”
operators and the staff category employees to measure their satisfaction




Initiative | Wooqer is an innovative online platform which acts as an
Process | Pulse was designed exclusively for retail,
information highway between the MFL HQ and all the retail stores. Is
keeping in mind the needs of the specific set of employ-
helps in sharing information, bottom-up and top-down communication
ees after spending considerable time on the ground by
and more importantly in collaborating, just like a social network.
talking to cross section of associates, taking into account their needs and aspirations. The survey was con-
Process | Almost all retail processes were studied and were mapped
sciously kept very simple yet comprehensive, and was
on to the Wooqer platform. A detailed training to use the system was
administered in English, Hindi and other regional lan-
given to all store staff and the central teams at HQ. Brand specific
guages. One of the biggest challenges was that of ad-
Wooqer portals were launched so as to ensure clarity and focus in
ministration of the survey as the stores were distributed
brand specific communication to stores. Various systems to track ef-
and there were logistical and reliability related challeng-
fectiveness including usage/store, no. of uploads and downloads were
es associated with online administration. Hence we had engaged a neutral third party who went physically store to store to capture em-
tracked as KPIs.
ployee responses.
Impact | Wooqer has today enabled simultaneous communication
At manufacturing, employees were grouped into various batches and the WCM and HR teams administered the survey in regional languages,
across all the 900 stores across the country. What is heartening is that
considering the employee diversity.
more that 80% users are engaged in the FY12 a total of 21,000+ learning hours were clocked. Wooqer has ensured that the associates in

store feel connected and belonged to the larger MFL family and has
Impact |

helped in instilling pride.

Close to 86% of the employees participated in the Pulse survey
Since it was probably a first of its kind initiative in the retail and apparel manufacturing industry, there was enormous goodwill generated amongst employees
TE-2C | COMMUNICATION | RETAIL BUZZ – THE RETAIL NEWSLETTER


and 84% of retail employees advocated MFL as the best place to work. ensuring people, business continuity and for sure creating supe-
uted by store associates, small doses of retail concepts and knowledge, appreciating ex-
rior experience and value for our consumers as evidently reflected in our mystery shopper scores
emplary work and performers, recognizing ABG values display at work


Process | Every month, store associates, send their knowledge, learning, insights, appreciation to the Retail HR team which is collated and published in the form of newsletter by
the 15th of every month.

The company for the first time ever, quantitatively assessed the engagement levels of retail associates which was at a staggering 86%
Initiative | RETAIL BUZZ is a monthly retail news letter which contains articles contrib-
Impact | Retail Buzz has become today the most anticipated news letter for our associ-
TE-4 | COMMUNICATION | ALIGNMENT & COLLABORATION AT FACTORIES THROUGH LSIP

Initiative | Sangama is a unique, one of its kind, Large Scale interactive process (LSIP) rolled out at our factories, aimed to build a shared
understanding of the organizational Vision and each employee’s contribution towards the
ates. From contribution that used to come just from key stores, metro cities and Regional
Vision.
managers, now articles pour in from all major and minor stores from all over India by all
categories of employees. It also provides a good opportunity for non retail functions to
In ESS at factories, the participation rate in FY 11, when it was launched, was at 90% and 84% respectively for staff and workers
which increased to 91% and 98% respectively in FY12.

understand the latest happenings in retail and align their processes towards retail needs.
Process | The senior leadership team got together to brainstorm the objective of this event.
After rounds of discussions and clear articulation of the objective, 2 cross functional teams –
TE-3 | COMMUNICATION |OHS- PULSE FOR RETAIL STAFF and ESS IN MANUFACTURING
Design team and logistics teams were formed on the max mix principle (maximum mix of

Initiative | Since most of the retail associates are on contract payrolls, they aren’t covered under the Group OHS. Moreover the group
event lies in the planning with which 500 diverse participants are engaged in identifying the
OHS needed to be customized for the retail business. Hence we designed an engagement survey called “Pulse” internally modeled around
SWOT and the future of their manufacturing unit. They also co-create the future and commit
the Group OHS. The framework for Pulse is provided in the adjacent diagram. (REDUCE ESS/OHS IN RETAIL AND MANUFAC-
to action plans as a team and as an individual to achieve the same.
TURING) – UNIQUE FIRST IN INDUSTRY
Similarly, at manufacturing, we implemented an “Employee Satisfaction Survey” (ESS) on the lines of the Group OHS framework for the
Page 17
hierarchies and functions) to design and implement the mega event. The uniqueness of this

Impact | As a direct impact of Sangama, the teams were motivated to take on stretch targets
and started working with the perspective of how their actions impacted the Vision of the unit.
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TE-5 | CARE | NAMMA DINA – ‘OUR DAY’ AT FACTORIES
es by various employees and felicitation of the Olympics winning teams.

Initiative | An employee engagement event which aims to build team orientation and effectiveness, instill a sense of belongingness to the

team, factory and the organization thereby creating an engaged workforce.
leadership team. MFL Olympics promoted the competitive spirit amongst our teams constructively and played a big role in team building.

Process | Multiple game stalls spread across the factory engaging small homogeneous group of 28 - 32 factory workmen per group are
installed. Simple games are prepared for the ease of participation and involvement – activating the body, mind and spirit of employees.

Annual day, has helped the employees take pride in working for MFL, and has provided a good opportunity for families of employees to know
MFL and each other very well.
The games are conducted in identified factory spaces esp. such spaces which the employees would have never gone before. Throughout
TE-8 | CARE | MFL RETAIL OSCARS | CELEBRATING ACHIEVEMENT
the day, the participants win loads of prizes and gifts and enjoy their day off from routine work.

as an employer, the fact which is very evident from the fact that there are long queues of people waiting outside our factories every day to

individual in the store for that month basis-target achievement. [2] Value Champi-
TE-6 | CARE | “RETAIL EMPLOYEE DAY” FOR RETAIL EMPLOYEES

Process | Exceptional performances in retail get recognized on a monthly basis in
the following categories: [1] Star Awards (CCA, SM, Store) - Best performing
join as tailors.

Initiatives | MFL Retail Oscars is an annual awards function to recognize exemplary performances at the retail frontline. The event is
modeled around Aditya Birla Awards for Outstanding Achievement and the Academy Awards, popularly referred to as the “Oscars”.
Impact | Namma Dina has energized the team because it facilitates inter team competitiveness and intra team (workplace team) bonding.
Since the workforce community and local community is very close knit, this initiative has also significantly enhanced our attractiveness

Impact | Close to 100% of the organization participated in MFL Olympics in one form or the other. This includes even members of the
ons - Individuals and Teams which display the ABG values
Initiative | In the spirit of thanking the front end staff for their
Consistent monthly performers are selected for the Annual Retail Oscars and final list
important role of representing our brands to the consumers,
of nominees are drawn by the respective brands. Final jury selects the “Oscar” winner
MFL celebrates December 12th every year as Retail Employ-
basis fair and unambiguous criteria under the following categories: [1] Best Customer
ees Day. The concept of this event is very simple- “Thank Our
Care Associate (brand wise) [2] Best Store Manager (brand wise) [3] Best Existing
Retail Associates”.
Store (Brand wise) [4] Best New Store (Brand wise) [5] Value-Able awards
Process | Every store and the associates are visited in person

Impact | Retail Oscars is first of its kind engagement initiative in the retail indus-
by one of the members of the senior team from H.O. and per-
try and has helped us tremendously increase employee engagement and our employer brand. Close to 100% stores participate to enter the
sonally thanked for their efforts and contribution on this day.
Oscars and have played a huge role in promoting a culture of high performance
Impact | This event has in the past, generated enormous
amount of goodwill amongst retail associates and promoted
Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
The Key performance indicators that we use to track the performance of the above initiatives are given below:
the spirit of respect and gratitude amongst the MFL retail fra-
Employee Engagement
Talent Management
Employee Development
OHS Scores (Corporate)
Job Rotation
Training Man days/employee
Pulse Scores (Retail OHS)
Key Talent
Training feedback score
Initiative | The annual mega sports event of MFL, with numerous sporting events played during a span of 60 days competing for the final
ESS Scores (Factory OHS)
Leadership Talent
Training needs fulfillment
crown – Madura Olympics Champions. The rigor of the sporting event and professionalism involved in conducting the event is as good as
Overall Attrition (Corporate)
IDP Completion
HR Feedback survey
Talent Pool Attrition
Positions filled Internally
Retail Training Effectiveness
Absenteeism (Factory)
Career Dossiers Completed
Induction lead time in factory
ternity.
TE-7 | CARE | MFL OLYMPICS and ANNUAL DAY | BUILDING CAMARADERIE

any premier sporting event in the globe.

Process | Each year, 6-7 teams are identified, which would be typically a combination of
brands and functions. Team captains are identified whose role is to identify team members for all sporting events and strategize the team’s game plan throughout the event. The
schedule of the event along with the rules for every game is chalked out along with the
Value Driven Growth
team captains. This is done to have fair play and ensure greater acceptance amongst the
While implementing these initiatives all Group values were promoted, it was ensured that they are not violated at any level or stage. For exam-
playing teams. All games are played on a fair ground and officiated by external umpires/
ple, stringent disciplinary action process was put in place to track and act against ABG value violations. Since most of our interventions fo-
referees to avoid any clash or bias to any team and their judgment is considered to be
cused on sustaining “Pride” and “Team Effectiveness”, one can see that consciously the values of Commitment, Passion and Seamless were
final and binding on all teams.
promoted across many of our initiatives. Though, Integrity as a value largely was monitored for violations, at MFL, we did look at promoting
The event culminates in MFL Annual day, which is a cultural extravaganza, with performanc-
Page 19
organizational integrity through creating fairness and transparency in all of our people processes. Speed, was critical for us as an organization
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as it is not only a value but also a direct business driver. We promote and reward consistently, exemplary display of ABG values, through
“Value-Able” awards competitions both at individual and team categories every six months. The stories get scrutinized very carefully by a
panel and the shortlisted ones are put to vote and assessed by the leadership team of MFL. At the factories, the Value stories are identified
every month, presented in the “Listen Kaizen” meeting and inspiring stories are identified, rewarded and published in the common areas in the
factory. A
Sustainability
Our talent Management and Engagement initiatives have been integrated with the Strategy Map of the organization. The map objectives of (a)
Continuously Develop Leaders (b) Develop Strategic Competencies and (c) Define and Nurture Madura Culture ensure that these initiatives
are reviewed regularly at the highest level. These have also been identified as success factors for the MFL strategy. The strategy map gets reviewed every month by our leadership team and this therefore ensures sustenance of our initiatives. Further as an organization, at MFL, we
Results and Outcomes
have embarked on a Business Excellence journey using the ABG WCM framework of which people management is an integral part. The
The following tables show the trend across various KPIs of the development and engagement process. As it can be seen, it is evident that the
results of the initiatives described above have resulted in creating impact one most of the key process dimensions. It’s noteworthy to mention
that similar trends are evident both in process and outcome (effectiveness) indicators, therefore validating the strong planning and execution of
these processes and ensuring the sustainability.
framework not only helps build process excellence, but also helps sustain and continuously improve the maturity and capability levels of our
talent management and engagement processes.
To continuously challenge ourselves and benchmark ourselves with the best in class, we have decided to participate in various group wide
competitions. Further we will continue to participate in external prestigious competitions like Lakshya, Golden Peacock.
Finally, this achievement was designed, developed and deployed by the internal team without any external help. This has helped in building
Key Measures
FY 11
FY 12
% Change
Training Man days per person (Corporate)
2.00
3.67
84%ã
Training Man days per person (Retail)
2.00
3.00
50%ã
Development Effectiveness (OHS Scores)
3.47
3.85
11%ã
Training Satisfaction (Corporate)
85.00
88.00
04%ã
Mystery Shopper Score (Retail Training Effectiveness)
64.00
76.00
19%ã
Engagement Mean (Corporate)
3.56
3.72
04%ã
Engagement Percentile
26.00
50.00
92%ã
Engagement Mean (Factory Staff)
4.45
4.60
03%ã
Engagement Mean (Retail-Store Managers)
NA
4.21
Engagement Mean (Retail-Associates)
NA
4.11
Attrition (%)
15%
10%
competence within the team and the capability to diagnose future problems and solve them. Their ownership for the processes is also high
which increases the chances of sustainability
33%ê
Key Learning
The following are the key learning from our journey of our experiences in rolling out the aforementioned talent management and engagement
interventions at our organization:

All HR interventions, systems and processes including that of development and engagement, need to be aligned with the business goals.
Non-alignment creates conflicts and retards business growth.

Customization of ABG processes of talent management and engagement is crucial to leverage the full potential and capability of these
processes.

Success and Sustenance of talent management and engagement depends crucially on line managers’ involvement. Building people managers using Q12 framework is therefore very strategic
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Hand preference: Investigating ways to utilize employee diversity
-Dr. Tanusree Dutta, Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi
(2011) right-handers are cognitively inflexible when compared to left-handers. These elements basically add a valuable edge in team efficacy
or group performance.
researchers have included handedness as a variable (Shore, et. al., 2009). Statistics point out that around 2500 left-handers die annually using
Further right-handers are left brain dominated individuals. People with left hemisphere dominance are logical, analytical, analyzing,
observing and good at making decisions based on facts and figures. Left-handers who have right hemisphere dominance are more governed by
emotions and feelings. The right brain also makes a person more intuitive, sensitive, visualizing, creative (art and music), spontaneous flexible
and having a holistic way of recognizing patterns and similarities and then synthesizing them into new forms (http://goodpal.hubpages.com/
hub/Whole-Brain-Better-Than-Two-Halves). Now if you have a brainstorming session or decision making in a group comprising of both left
and right-handers you can safely ensure that every detail has been worked out, which would not be there in a group of homogenous righthanded group.
products designed for right-handers. Diversity may be at the surface level or at a deeper level. According to Roberge and van Dick (2009)
Thirdly, it is no doubt an established phenomenon that a unanimous group thinking pattern over rides many cognitive errors. Some
differences that are visible and have a stigma attached quantify for a surface level diversity whereas attitudes, beliefs and values, which are not
amount of conflict is essential to increase group performance. And what better way to achieve this than having a left-hander as a group mem-
easily detectable and are learned over time through team interaction quantify as a deep level diversity (Horowitz & Horowitz, 2007). Keeping
ber. Left-handers bring with them the element of diversity. Left-handers are more hesitant in beginning a new task then right-handers (CTV.ca
in view the prejudices, bias and stigma associated with left-hand preference, it qualifies for a consideration as a surface level diversity. Again
News Staff, 2008). So they probably tend to question many things thereby breaking the unanimity.
[email protected]. | Contact No. +91-9939135277
Variables contributing to employee diversity include race, gender, physical abilities, fitness, ethnicity, religious orientation (Jabbour, et. al.,
2011), skill, experience (Bleijenbergh,et. al., 2010) and the list is exhaustive as identified in various researches. But interestingly none of the
attitudes and beliefs of others towards a left-hander qualify for a consideration at a deep level diversity also. Thus hand preference as a whole
qualifies to be considered as a factor influencing employee diversity, but unfortunately as Shore, et. al., (2009) has correctly documented researchers have overlooked this variable.
Fourthly, according to one of the observation of Coren (1992) left-handed individuals are either very gifted or very dull. So any lefthander who is able to clear the stringent selection criteria set by the organization ensures that he is likely to fall in the gifted group. Now it is
entirely upon the managers as to how they utilize or let it become one among many.
Left-handers are probably the unorganized minority without having any collective power or common identity. At the same time they
are the ones who are most discriminated against. However there are other visible minority groups which receive more attention in research and
even in the workplace (Coren, 1992). Thus left-handers should also be considered as a visible minority in terms of group diversity and design
perspective (Read & Klarner, 2012).
Once established that left-handers should be considered as a distinct group, the question that now remains to be answered is about
the unique feature of this group which if catered to will enhance organizational productivity.
Left-handers are usually more flexible in their hand use as they have to continually adjust in a right-fit world (Halpern & Coren,
1991). Read and Klarner (2012)
have identified two reasons supporting the same. Firstly they point out that left-handers choose to learn to use the tools and implements with
their right hand, which is a difficult task and secondly left-handers may hold a right-handers tool according to their convenience with the left
According to Harrison and Klein (2007) the “odd person” within a diversity characteristic is very crucial in a group, and that is exactly what has formed the platform for this article.
more robust application would evolve if knowledge about cognitive differences is made aware to the HR department who is responsible for
hiring and training people. They would understand better how to deal with the particular problems encountered by a left-handed or righthanded individual and how to get the best out of each.
Conclusion
Based on the above documentation of facts it may be advocated that the emphasis should be to include hand preference as a variable affecting
individual or group diversity as these individuals have their own uniqueness. And one thing that needs to be remembered is:
‘Lefties have a right brain’
hand.
Another related aspect to this is ergonomics and lack of thinking of plurality while designing a workplace. As pointed out above lefthanders have to adjust to a right-fit world where things of everyday use to complex machinery are designed to get the best out of a righthander. Physical discomfort leads to loss of efficiency. Let’s take a simple example of a computer, which has become synonymous with work
References

use. The new Operating Systems have many advantages of re-configuring the mouse for left-hander's use. But it depends on if the person uses

the same machine every day. Again, there is no possibility of doing so with the keyboard. The numeric pad is on the right side and if there is a
lot of numeric data to be processed, the left-handers silently try to adapt to the situation and face the inconvenience. The designers in the past
have tried to design keyboards with detachable numeric pads, but they didn't gain much success. So in order to get the best out of a left-hander
in the existing situation is not to burden him with jobs of a numeric nature while working on the computer. In this we can get the maximum out

Coren, S. (1992). The left-hander syndrome. NY: The Free Press

Coren, S. (1995). Differences in divergent thinking as a function of handedness and sex. The American Journal of Psychology, 108, 311325.
serious, both physically and mentally. This can only be resolved if one acquires knowledge about the cognitive differences between leftcertain hand preference.

Halpern, D., & Coren, S. (1991). Left handedness: A marker for decreased survival fitness. Psychological Bulletin, 109, 90-106.

Harrison, D., & Klein, K. (2007). What’s the difference? Diversity constructs as separation, variety or disparity in organizations. Acade-
Secondly due to differences from their right-handed counterparts as a result of hemispheric lateralization pattern, left-handers may
contribute differently. Left-handers due to a different hemispheric lateralization pattern have proved that there is a positive correlation between
left- handedness and creativity (Coren, 1992, 1995) and divergent thinking (Coren, 1995). According to a very recent study by Christman,
Bleijenbergh,I., Peters, P., & Poutsma, E. (2010). Diversity management beyond the business case. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An
international Journal, 29, 413-421.
of the individual concerned. If not then the long term effects of working in any unfavorable, non-convenient workplace of any sort are really
handed and right-handed individuals, then only this will enable designers to customize an interface to make it more amenable to a user of a
Barney, J. (2001). Is the resource-based view a useful perspective for strategic management research? Yes. Academy of Management
Review, 26, 41-56.
efficiency. Left-handers experience inconvenience in using the computer. This would of course require modifying it to suit to a left-hander's
Page 23
According to Barney, (2001) left-handed individuals are tangible asset which may
be used strategically towards a specific goal. Thus organizations should identify, manage and capitalize on a diverse workforce. A possibly
my of Management Review, 32, 1199-1228.

Horowitz, S. & Horowitz, I. (2007). The effects of team diversity on team outcomes: A meta-analytic review of team demography. Jour-
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nal of Management, 33, 967-1015.

Jabbour,C., Gordono, F., de Oliveira, J., Martinez, J. & Battistele, R. (2011). Challenges, benefits and the role of human esource management in Brazilian organizations. Equality Diversity and Inclusion: An international Journal, 30, 58-74.

Read, M.J.B., & Klarner,T. (2012). Including handedness in group diversity research and practice. Journal of Business Diversity, 12, 27-
OPEN SOURCE BOOK
Emerging Trends In Talent Management In SEMAC Consultants Pvt.
Ltd.
-N Mallikarjuna, Head H R Manager,
Revanasiddappa. S, Assistant H R Manager,
Saket Kumar Singh- Head Operations
40.

Roberge, M. –E., & van Dick, R. (2009). Recognizing the benefits of diversity: When and how does diversity increase group performance? Human Resource Management Review, doi: 10.1016/j.hrmr.2009.09.002

Shore, L.M., Chung-Herrera, B.G., Dean, M.A., Ehrhart, K., Jung, D., Randel, A., & Singh, G. (2009). Diversity in Organizations: Where
are we now and where are we going? Human Resource Management Review, 19, 117-133.
1. About our company:

Structures, Electrical, PHE, HVAC, Fire protection, LEED certifications and Energy audits.
Web links:

http://goodpal.hubpages.com/hub/Whole-Brain-Better-Than-Two-Halves
Semac is among the leading Architectural & engineering design firms in the construction domain, with end-to-end capabilities across

A strong track record of over 43 years, which has established itself as a leading professional consulting company with an esteemed set of
customers and a great talent pool.

It is a formidable name, with over 750 engineers spread across 10 offices – It is not only amongst the largest in our domain, but also a
highly respected engineering consulting company.

Provides consultation to 34 of the Top 50 Indian companies, 17 of the Top 25 Developers, almost all major MNCs, and all Major Indian
and International architects and enjoy the highest rate of recurring business in the industry.

Our steady growth and expanding list of satisfied clients reflect our ability to execute challenging projects and stands testimony to our
dedication towards customer satisfaction.
2. Talent Management:
“Acquire the talented employees for challenging roles, develop their leadership qualities, make them well equipped to achieve the organization goals”
“Organizational effort to attract, selects, develop & retain the Key talented Employees in Key strategic positions”
The purpose of Talent management is to ensure that right supply of talented workforce is ready to realize the strategic goal of the
organization at present and in
the future.
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Need for talent management in the organization:

Social media has become popular, yet to make the difference in talent acquisition.

To compete effectively in a complex and dynamic environment to achieve sustainable growth.

Consultants are the costliest option hence, not so attractive.

To develop leaders of tomorrow from within an organization.

To maximize employee performance as a unique source of competitive advantage.

Developing confidence, commitment and minimizing attrition.

To develop and enhance the communication skills.

To develop more effective work groups.

To reinforce positive values and transparency as beliefs among employees.

To improve over all organization culture towards “Great Place to Work”.

Challenges in Talent Management:

Recruiting talent

Retaining Talent

Learning and Developing

Developing Leadership Talent

Creating talented ethical culture

Lead time to Talent Acquisition:
FY13 (in Days to
release the offer)
30
Probability FY14 (in Days to
release the offer)
35
Internal Reference
20
15
15
Social Media
Nil
35
35
Consultants
60
90
90

Lead time through job portals is increasing due to lot of competitions & lot of options to candidates

Lead time through internal references is the best to close the positions quickly.

Social media and consultants require more lead time than the other options.
Offer to Joining Conversion:
Recruiting Talent
The recent economic downturn saw job cuts globally. People who were most important to the organization in their understanding were re-
Job portal
FY12 (in Days to
release the offer)
25
FY12 (% of accepting
the offers)
FY13 (% of accepting
the offers)
Job portal
90
80
Probability FY14 (%
of accepting the offers)
80
Internal Reference
100
95
95
Social Media
Nil
100
100
Consultants
90
90
90
tained, others were sacked. Similarly huge shuffles happened at the top leadership positions. They were seen as crisis managers unlike those

Resection of offer has been increasing which has become one of the important factors in talent acquisition.
who were deemed responsible for throwing organizations into troubled waters. It is the jurisdiction of talent management to get such people on

Comparatively internal reference is the best option to increase the joining ratio.
onboard, who are enterprising but ensure that an organization does not suffer for the same.


Talent Acquisition Trends in our organization:
FY12 (in %)
FY13 (in %)
Probability FY14 (in %)
Job portal
80
60
40
Internal Reference
15
30
40
Social Media
Nil
5
10
Consultants
5
5
10

Job portal is one of the best sources for talent acquisition which continues to give the best options.

Internal references has become need of the hour, it gives quick response to the junior positions especially.
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Level wise Talent Acquisition:
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FY12 (% of accepting
the offers)
FY13 (% of accepting
the offers)
Junior Level
60
60
Mid Level
30
40
Senior Level
10
Nil
Probability FY14 (%
of accepting the offers)
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Learning and Developing
The downturn also opened the eyes of organizations to newer models of employment - part time or temporary workers. This is a new challenge to
talent management, training and developing people who work on a contractual or project basis. What’s more big a challenge is increasing the stake
of these people in their work.
Retaining Talent
While organizations focus on reducing employee overheads and sacking those who are non-essential in the shorter run, it also spreads a wave of
Manpower Planning:

The Manpower plan is prepared annually, during the budgeting exercise.

Manpower requirements from each Department are consolidated by the HR department, in the template prescribed. The same is reviewed by
the Chairman, Regional Head and the HR. Then the final manpower numbers for the year is decided.
demotivation amongst those who are retained. An uncertainty about the firing axe looms in their mind. It is essential to maintain a psychological
contract with employees those who have been fired as well as those who have been retained. Investing on people development in crisis is the best
thing an organization can do to retain its top talent.

Talent Retention Analysis:
Grade Slab
Junior Level
Mid-Level
Senior Level
FY12
75%
70%
85%
FY13
80%
92%
90%
Raising Manpower Requisition:

The recruitment process starts with the receipt of an approved manpower requisition.

Respective HODs raise request for manpower, triggered by one or more reasons – new projects, business growth, attrition, etc.

The HOD sends the duly approved manpower requisition and job description to HR. Then the same is reviewed and confirmed by HR if the
manpower requisition is in line with the manpower plan.

Based on this, HR starts an initiation to source either internally or through external sources.
Sourcing Profiles:

Toughest challenge in talent management is the talent retention

Comparatively junior level retention has become more challenging

Depending on the position to be hired, recruitment team sources profiles from any of the following channels:

Developing Leadership Talent
ment. The database would be constructed of profiles sent in / collected from various sources over time.
Leadership in action means an ability to emerge out of crisis situation, extract certainty out of uncertainty, set goals and driving change to ensure

that the momentum is not lost. Identifying people from within the organization who should be invested upon is a critical talent management chal-
Creating Talented Ethical Culture
Setting standards for ethical behavior, increasing transparency, reducing complexities and developing a culture of reward and appreciation are still

Job Portals: The recruitment team also partners with leading job portals to source profiles to meet its hiring needs

Employee Referrals: The recruitment team may communicate the list of open positions to the organization and invite employees to send
in profiles of their acquaintances who they believe meet the requirements of the position. Please refer to the Employee Referral Policy for
more challenging and aids in managing talent.
more details.
3. Talent Management Practices

at Semac
We have defined recruitment process

for more than 40 years. We follow the

The Recruitment team checks any potential candidate’s interest level for respective position, reconfirm his/her experience level, compensation
details and check out the willingness to relocate (If out station candidate), during the screening interview.

Once the Recruitment team is satisfied with the suitability of a particular candidate, they forward the resumes to the respective HOD, for technical short listing.
below mentioned process for attracting and
retaining talent work force.
The Recruitment team creates an initial list of profiles meeting the position requirements and conducts screening interview with the potential
candidate.
lished name and reputation in the market
for our outstanding service performance
Social networking Medias: LinkedIn, Facebook
Resume Screening & Short-listing
which can attract the talented work force
towards the organization. We have estab-
Placement Consultants: Placement consultants are one of the major sources of recruitment for critical positions in our company. The
company has partnered with a set of empanelled consultants on pre-defined terms for sourcing suitable profiles.
lenge.
Recruiting Talents:
Existing Database: The Recruitment team checks their internal database of profiles to see if any of the resumes meet the current require-

The HOD reviews the resumes for technical appropriateness (If Job Fit or not) and provides feedback to the recruitment team. The Recruitment team categorizes the resumes, posts feedback, as:

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Shortlisted (Job Fit)
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

Hold (who do not match the present profile but could be used for future requirement)

Rejects (who do not match any requirement)
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Authorized Signatory
CM1 – CM5 and M1 – M3
Manager HR
CM6 and M4 and above
HR
All applications to Semac have a life of 6 months; after which they are purged from the database.
Interview Authorities:

Recruitment Team schedules interviews for shortlisted candidates.

Recruitment Team provides the interviewer with an updated resume of the candidate, the completed candidate registration form and blank
interview assessment form. For further rounds of interview, an assessment form, from the previous interviews is also shared.

Recruitment team shall conduct the technical written test for selected candidates.

For out station candidates HOD/ Senior Design Manager first conducts a telephonic interview or a video conference, while for local candi-

All interviewers are required to complete the interview assessment form after their discussion with the candidate and return all documents to
The offer letters is handed over to the selected candidate in person, if the candidate is local. If it is an outstation candidate, a scanned copy of
the offer letter is sent to the candidate through email, and then followed with a copy through courier.

The candidate indicates his/her acceptance of the offer by signing and returning a duplicate copy.

The Recruitment team then communicates to the HOD and BUH/COO the selected candidate’s proposed date of joining.
Post offer follow-up

The recruitment team keeps in touch with the offered candidates till they join, checking on their continued interest and providing any clarifications as required.
dates, interviews are always conducted in person.

Grades

In case of outstation candidates, the recruitment team also provides support for relocation of the candidate. New hires are eligible for relocation benefits as per the Relocation Policy.
the recruitment team.
Joining

Candidates may go through more than one round of technical interview.

Once the candidate has successfully cleared technical round of interview, candidate is interviewed by HR team and final round of interview

A manpower requisition is considered closed once the selected candidate joins the organization.
with regional head.

All new employees are required to join on a Monday of the given week, for completing their joining formalities.

The levels of interviews and the interview authorities for various levels are given in the below table:

All new employees are required to submit necessary documents, at the time of joining

Rejected candidates are informed of the results verbally or by email.

All new employees undergoes a detailed induction program within one month of their joining the company. The induction program familiariz-

In case of outstation candidates Semac will reimburse travel expenses, as per policy. (This is applicable for all Middle and Senior level posi-
es them with the organization and its policies and processes.
tions).
Reference Check: (Applicable to middle and senior level and critical positions)


4. We use various channel to recruit the talent in our organization.

Employee reference: Through employee reference we try to acquire an employee who equals our employees skill set and it may help us to
retain the talent for a longer duration.
Once the Middle level and senior level candidate clears all the required interview process, he/she shall have to produce three references, of
reporting managers from his/her current and previous companies.

Job posting on the website
For Middle level positions, the reference check is done by HR Manager. For senior level positions and for critical positions, the reference

Using job portal

Through Vendors

Social Networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc)
check is done by HR.

HR team conducts the reference check over the telephone or through email, and document the same

Once HR realizes the positive feedback for the candidate, Recruitment team sends the offer letter to particular candidates.
Salary Offer:
5. Performance Management system:
There are no free meals in this world, so we have performance Management system to review the performance of the employees to know the per-

The Recruitment team makes the employment offer to the selected candidate with details of salary and benefits as per Semac policy.

All salary negotiation are made on the Total Cost to Company basis. This includes monthly Basic Salary, HRA, Conveyance allowance, LTA,
formers &non-performers in the organization. We follow our own simple process to review the performance of the employees. Process of the PMS
is as follows.
Special Allowance, Medical Allowance, PF Contribution, Gratuity, Incentives and other allowances applicable.

The recruitment team collects the following details from a selected candidate to prepare a salary parity sheet:

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2 Months’ salary slips from the current employer
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
Performance based retention rewards

Rewards in cash for specific actions/ behaviors/ efforts and contribution/ results

Public and sometimes even personal recognition/appreciation for desirable actions/behaviors/efforts and contribution/results

Wide range of benefits & perquisites (particularly the ones which are beyond those statutorily mandated).
Retaining the talented work force
We have our own activities to retain the talents in our organization, some of the activities as mentioned below:

Induction

Buddy Programme

Birth and Marriage anniversary celebration

Employee engagement activities
ees rated” C” are on PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) for 3 months.

Learning and development
Promotion to Next Level:

Performance appraisal
Appointment to a position requiring higher qualifications such as greater skill or longer experience and involving a higher level of responsibility, a

Rewards & Recognition

Career progression
We have rating system in our organization i.e. A, B, B+ & C, A stands for Excellent, B stands for Very Good, B+ stands for Good & C stands for
Average. Here we concentrate more on A & B+ Talents for further improvement and providing an environment to reach to the next level. Employ-
higher rate of pay, and a title change is considered a promotion.
According to the PMS result, we consider A & B+ Rated employees for the promotion from last two PMS cycle. We follow our own internal process to promote the employees to next level as a career growth plan.
6. Current Trends in the market to manage the Talent

During the mid-year and the annual appraisal cycles, HR requests HODs to send in promotion recommendations for their teams.

Developing Existing Employees

HODs sends in the promotion recommendations from their teams to Regional Head, ensuring that the eligibility criteria of performance and

Redeploying employees as per talent

Retaining Best Talent in House
tenure are met, and the candidate has demonstrated an ability to take on higher roles

Regional Head reviews the promotion recommendations put up by their HODs to satisfy themselves that all criteria for promotion are met and
then forward the recommendations to HR.

HR consolidates all recommendations received, check against budgets and present the same to the Promotion Committee for approval.

Promotion Committee consists of HR Manager, Location Head and Chairman. All promotions need to be approved by the promotion committee, to be made effective

All promotions are associated with a compensation increase and a grade change. The quantum of the compensation increase would be decided
Current markets are expanding and changing, thereby making it difficult for our organizations to predict their staffing needs with any degree of
certainty. Of course, this constant ambiguity also provides a perplexing environment for employees as they strive to seek successful career paths.
Talent management is now looked upon as a critical HR activity; the discipline is evolving every day. Let’s analyze some trends for the same.

Talent War: Finding and retaining the best talent is the most difficult aspect of HR management. We are facing a dearth of talented employees and it’s often more difficult to retain them because of limited skilled people in the market who are always in demand.

Technology and Talent Management: We have an internal ERP system which allows the employees to showcase their talent and work by
uploading and sharing ideas and innovations to all the employees.

Promoting Talent Internally: An individual is hired, when there is a harmony between his abilities or skills and the requirements of the organization. The next step is enabling learning and development of the same so that he/she stays with the organization. This is employee retention. The entire process helps in empowering the organization and benefits the talent.
considering internal and external equity and parity.
Rewards &Recognition
Rewards and recognition is a wide concept and is increasingly being redefined not just the traditional way of thinking and compensating employees,
but also newer areas like physical, and emotional well-being of people. Some of the areas included under rewards & recognition are:
It is also of interest to organizations to know their skill power and then develop the right individual for succession planning internally.

Assured Compensation

Special or annual increases in assured compensation.

Increases in compensation and benefits on account of promotion Change enhancement
Talent Management to rescue HR: HR has been compelled to focus on qualitative aspects equally and even more than quantitative aspects
like the head count etc. Through talent management more effort is now being laid on designing and maintaining employee scorecards and employee surveys for ensuring that talent is nurtured and grown perpetually.
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
Communicate positive feelings.

Stay focused on the customer.

Be fair and honest.

Cultivate a feeling of family.
We have to focus on the following area to improve the Talent Management in our organization:

Promote integrity.
Recruiting talent

Do not tolerate sub-par performance.
Below are Five Key Talent Acquisition Strategies our organization should incorporate into your Talent Management program throughout the new

Insist on workplace safety.

Reduce the number of meetings.
1. Social Media

Make work fun.
Social media has become one of the most powerful sources for news, Talent Acquisition, updates through platforms such as Face book, Blogger,
These employee retention strategies all relate in one way or another to corporate culture. More than ever, employees want a culture of openness and

Increase in Employer of Choice Initiatives: An organization’s perceived value as an employer as helps improve its brand value in the eyes
of its consumer. Most importantly it helps it attract the right talent.
7. Focus Areas to improve the Talent Management:
decade:
Twitter, Word Press, LinkedIn, & Google+. We have our company links in all the above mentioned social media sites
Our Organization shall focus especially in the area of Social Media to attract key talents, Employer visibility, taking competitive edge in this niche
shared information. Today employees want to know where the company is going and what it will look like in the future. How is the company doing
financially? Where does it stand in the marketplace? For this a town hall is conducted in our company every month.
Employee relationship strategies
area.
Taking this new trend is a challenging tasks, this requires concentrated effort to acquire the talent and sustaining the global competition. Future
decade will be a complex web and social media, in talent management; we intend to leverage this as the key indicator of our talent management
process..
Employee relationship strategies have to do with how you treat your people and how they treat each other. Developing effective employee relationship strategies begins with three basic steps:

work for their Reporting mangers -not you , their primary work relationship is with their Reporting manager. If your supervisors have the
2. Corporate Responsibility & Going Green:
knowledge, training and sensitivity to work effectively with people on an individual level, you'll probably get the bonding you need to retain
employees.
Our company main products are our design which form out as hard copy drawings. We can save lot of paper and energy by reducing prints. This
achieves both corporate responsibility and green concept. We have increaded our revenue by 15% this year and reduced by 40% on printing cost.

of expertise.
Ask employees why they work for you. There are various kinds of people who work for you. Few work only for money, few work for gaining knowledge, few work to establish their career, few work for the peace of mind , etc So we need to ask people why they want to work for
3. Search Engine Optimization
Today clients demands best and talented people to work on their project. Fluctuating market does not allow any company like ours to keep all kinds
Give your managers and supervisors plenty of relationship training. Recognize that (in all but the smallest companies) Like ours- people
us, then compare companies mission and values with the same.

Ask Employees what they can do for the company to Improve the company: is always good to listen to others as change is the only constant in life. New people who have worked in different companies may know how things can be improved from the present form. Internal peo-
Whenever there are specific requirements of experts in Oil and Gas, Bridges, Under sea contruction,Dams etc, It becomes very challenging to get
ple who have been in the system for long may also come up an suggest solutions to various problems existing in the company. We need to ask
on board skilled people.
our employees about these things
Search engine optimization helps in finding the Job fit candidates and thus empowering the company to be confident is getting challenging business
from the market.
Retaining Talent:
Working environment
Company has to develop and environment that attracts , uplifts and retains skilled and talented people.For this the development of Company mis-
Some top employee relationship strategies:

municate more effectively.

ing in your organization, they will think twice before going somewhere else to work.
tion
Clarify your mission.

Create a values statement.
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Help employees to set life goals and get focused on where they want to go. Then help them to see how their goals match up with company
goals and that they can achieve their goals by staying with the company. If people believe they can achieve their goals and objectives by work-
sion, values, policies ,culture and clear and logical procedure along with safe working environment finally forms the strategy for Employee reten-

Use behavioral style assessment tools, such as Myers-Briggs or DISC, to help people better understand themselves and each other and com-

Whenever possible, get the family involved:

Write a letter of commendation and send a copy to the family.
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
Write a letter to the family thanking them for supporting your employee.

Encourage, recognize and reward creativity and innovation.

Have an open house. Invite the families for a tour to see what the spouse/parent does.

Avoid micro-management.

Hold social activities such as family picnics, holiday parties, special events.

Reduce reporting requirements.

Celebrate birthdays.

When possible, offer job flexibility.

Take people out to dinner to celebrate an achievement.
Employee growth strategies

Hold public celebrations when the company hits major milestones.
Employee growth strategies deal with personal and professional growth. Good employees want to develop new knowledge and skills in order to
improve their value in the marketplace and enhance their own self-esteem.
Other employee relationship strategies that impact employee retention:
However, don't just "throw" education and training at your people in a random fashion. Instead, organize and structure your training so that it makes

Build mentoring relationships with people to increase their emotional ties to the organization.
sense for the company and the individuals who work for you.

Be firm and fair. Avoid second-guessing employees.
Training and education can include:

Celebrate longevity.

in-house curriculum for skills training and development

Encourage humor in the workplace.

outside seminars and workshops

Focus on building individual self-esteem.

paying for college and continuing education

Stick up for your people.

CD/DVD, podcast and online learning

Give recognition strategically and deliberately.

cross-training
Employee support strategies

having employees present workshops in their areas of expertise
Employee support strategies involve giving people the tools and equipment to get the job done. When people feel they have what they need to per-

Bringing in outside experts to educate employees about subjects that affect their personal lives.
form, job satisfaction increases dramatically. All employee support strategies stem from three basic principles:

People want to excel.

People need adequate resources to get the job done.

People need moral and mental support from you and your managers.
Other employee support strategies include:
When you offer these kinds of learning opportunities, it sets you apart from other employers and shows that you truly care about your employees. It
is one thing to provide training that helps them to do a better job because your company benefits from it. It's another thing altogether to offer education on how employees can improve their lives. They don't expect that. It shows that you care about them as people, not just as workers who can
make money for you.
Other recommended employee support strategies include:

Establish a learning culture.

Give people productive work to do.

Create individual learning plans.

Provide challenges.

Encourage people to join professional and trade associations.

Remove obstacles and barriers to getting the job done.

Invest in career planning.

Adjust jobs to fit strengths, abilities and talents.

Operate a corporate mentoring programme.

Keep the promises you make.

Provide incentives for learning.

Establish effective communication systems.

Take advantage of internet learning.

Clearly define job responsibilities and accountabilities.
Employee compensation strategies

Encourage people to take initiative.
Effective employee compensation strategies stem from one fundamental principle: money alone will not retain most employees. In the old days,
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companies essentially paid people for their time. Today, more and more companies pay for performance – in every position, not just sales. To retain
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as for customers and vendors) need to become a part of daily life. These should reflect authentic gratitude for any and every job well done. “Most
employees, your compensation plan needs to incorporate this trend.
Valuable Player” awards promote an “all crew and no passenger” workplace philosophy, which ultimately serves the customer.
Pay-for-performance plans come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they all involve two basic activities: defining the job and checking perfor-
6.
mance against expectations.
interpersonal support promotes: problem solving, quality improvement, brainstorming, think tanks, and effective post-mortems when a project con-
When people exceed expectations, give them a bonus. It helps to lay the plan out ahead of time so that employees understand your expectations and
Collaborative Environment: Support a truly collaborative workplace, both physically and emotionally. This kind of workplace design and
cludes.
know what they have to do to get the bonus. But make sure you base it on predefined profit goals, so that you don't pay out if the company doesn't
7.
make money.
list of responsibilities isn’t as important as your team members seeing, and experiencing first-hand, the positive experience they are supposed to be
If you're not offering some type of incentive or pay-for-performance plan, you're putting your company at a terrible disadvantage.
Smart employers use a variety of hard (monetary) and soft (non-monetary) employee compensation strategies to make it difficult for other companies to steal their people away. These include:

Discuss total employee compensation (salary, benefits, bonuses, training, etc.).

Design reward systems to stimulate employee involvement.

Use flexible employee benefits to respond to a changing workforce.

Offer stock options.

Offer time off, sabbaticals and other forms of non-financial employee compensation.

Provide childcare and/or eldercare.

Provide employee assistance programmes.

Arrange for discounts on purchases.

Arrange for professional services.

Fund fitness club memberships.
Representative of Fun: Appoint someone as “Representative of Fun”. Whether it’s a full-time position or an addition to someone’s current
delivering to the customer. Find new reasons to celebrate and new ways to enhance enjoyment of the job!
8.
Creative after-work events: Create after-work events that involve direct personal contact with customers. These kinds of events amount to a
fun, collaborative team effort that improves all aspects of customer service. A few suggestions include: Bulls, Hawks, Cubs and Kane County Cougar games, as well as small group activities like golf, table games and picnics.
9.
Community Service Events: Give something back to the community. Doing this as a group improves team cohesion, gives you a great P.R.
opportunity, and helps customers understand your values. A few ideas to try: helping out with local homeless support groups, food pantries, PADS
and adopting a needy family each holiday season.
10. A Healthy Ergonomics Workplace: Ensure that each employee’s work space makes good ergonomic sense. This reduces stress, improves
morale, and improves the quality of our interactions with customers (and everyone else)!
11. A Learning Organization: Invest in ongoing education and personal development for all employees. This pays off for everyone (Thomas
University or Learning vs. Training).
12. Employee Feedback and Evaluation: Give employees regular feedback (recommended evaluation/review time: every six months). Evaluate
them against your organization’s core values first and against performance metrics second.
Keep in mind that employee compensation constitutes only one piece of the puzzle. If all the other pieces – the environmental, relationship, support
and growth strategies – don't fit together into one interlocking whole, you won't be able to pay people enough to work for you.
Great Place to work
Creating a great place to work is becoming more and more important as new generations enter the workforce with new priorities, values and goals
for their career. Growth-oriented organizations will need to plan new ways to engage their employees in challenging, creative and worthwhile tasks.
In The Great Workplace Revolution, we lay out 12 essential strategies for creating a great place to work in detail, but here’s a start:
1.
Core Values: Identify the organizations’ core values and talk about them frequently with customers and employees. These are the customer-
focused values you will hire employees for . . . and fire employees for, if they consistently deviate from those values.
2.
Creative Work Place: Design and refine a creative work space. This will attract and retain creative problem solvers and people who care.
3.
Human Resource Right Fit: Put the right person in the right job. Use the personality tests at Kolbe.com as a resource to help you accomplish
this goal.
4.
Understanding employees: Giving constant attention and understand the needs of the whole employee as well as being intentional about
learning their hopes and future career aspirations. The result: greater buy-in to the mission, deeper loyalty, and more intense commitment to the
customer. Other needs could include: flex time, shift swapping and extended leave when necessary.
5.
Awards and Recognition: Build public recognition for a well done job into the culture. Thank you cards and e-mails for colleagues (as well
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(A) Head in the Cloud
<< stats on recruitment numbers with source acknowledged ( 2-3 yr data on industry wise contribution to graduate re-
-B Mohan, Excellere
cruitment >>
Introduction
The universal rule in corporates when hit with an economic slowdown, is to reduce/ slash the training budgets. In such times, training / skilling
spend is usually prioritised for those activities which have a direct bearing on new business or growth. Economically, this does makes sense, a
dollar saved is an additional dollar in the bottomline.
It is a fact that most innovations on cost effective training have their origins during such periods. The last time this happened in 2002, there
was huge interest in e-learning as an ‘Anytime, Anywhere’ approach that was cost effective as well as scale-able. However, e-learning continues to remain in large part (particularly in India) experimental and is only adopted with reluctance by the Training Manager. In other words,
unless there is a powerful internal Sponsor, suitably high up in the hierarchy, these initiatives usually end up as mere gestures, “We tried it, but
While the massive surge in Outsourcing globally was clearly a major reason, the sustained levels of hiring despite the recent downturn is not
it didn’t work!”
just due to the diversity of IT services now available, but also the relatively high attrition rates compared to other sectors. In the second half of
Fortunately, such pessimism has not halted the progress of technology. Today information technology on the web allows us to do a lot more
than merely viewing and interacting with content. Early experiments in e-learning was focused on the question, ‘How can we make a learning
2011,
attrition
levels
in
the
IT,ITES
sector
have
been
at
55-60%
(http://www.assocham.org/prels/shownews-archive.php?
id=3630&month=&year=2012), though it has reduced significantly in HY2012 due to hiring cutbacks
module interesting and engaging?’. That stage is over. The question asked today is ‘How can we make it practice oriented, directly relevant to
The organisation structure of a typical mid sized IT company ( 5000+ employees) would reveal anywhere between 70 to 75% in bottom 2 tiers
the job and cost effective’. The CLOUD is the answer!
of the pyramid, typically people in the 0-4 yrs experience group. Incidentally, this is also the group that has the highest attrition rates.
This paper seeks to present a working model of web based learning that is not only effective from a skill building perspective but also has the
To meet the legitimate demands of growth, the backfill for attrition while at the same time keeping the pyramid stable, the industriy’s tradi-
potential for tremendous business savings, along with the ability to handle scale efficiently. This is not a theoretical proposition, but a solu-
tional response has been to hire fresh graduates in large numbers, mostly from a pool of over 5.5 lakh engineers who graduate each year.
tion that is already changing the landscape of technical training in the IT sector in India
Employability: Here, of course, is where the problems begin. While numbers vary, NASSCOM estimates that less than 25% of these graduTo understand how this works, we will be looking at a case study from the IT industry from among the top 5 IT companies in India. The paper shall discuss in sufficient detail the following-

The IT industry context and challenges in skill building

Technology led revolution in training approaches and mindsets

Conditions for Success

Use Cases and Summary Statistics
ates are readily employable. An independent study conducted by a well known consulting firm puts these figures at 4.22 % in Product Companies and 17% in IT services. (http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-04-07/news/29392668_1_engineering-colleges-employability
-study-nasscom) The reasons for this are by now well documented and beyond the scope of this paper.
Whatever the numbers, the stand up fact is that simply recruiting warm bodies was not enough. Something more was needed to be done to
make them deployable in Projects. New Hire Training (NHT) is now a byword in the IT sector, one that has also spawned an entire subindustry by itself.
Technical Training for New Hires: This realization forced the bigger players to set up or upgrade their own training facilities in order to
This methodology has already registered over 3500 unique student-courses over 11 months
The rest of this paper is entirely within the context of the IT sector. While the approach described can be utilised in all corporate domains, such
a discussion would be digressive
New Hire Training in the IT Industry- A Context
Over the last decade, the IT and ITES sectors in India have grown to become among the largest recruiters of graduates
strengthen concepts, build practical skills and professional work practices. This usually took the form of huge inhouse investments in training
infrastructure – dedicated facilities with multiple classrooms, fully loaded IT infrastructure, hostels to lodge and board new hires in some
cases, also a large team of dedicated staff. Infosys, at Mysore alone, has the capacity to handle over 4000 trainees in a single batch. Just as a
Maruti spawned the revival of the auto components market, this model was supported by a ubiquitous network of training institutes and freelance trainers to either augment capacity or provide specialized skills. This has worked very well….in good times!
A typical training cycle is anything from 6-10 weeks in duration, during which period the candidates were paid a salary (stipend more recently
due to margin pressures), had access to or were provided residential facilities, were the target of a rigorous drill and subjected to a battery of
tests. Almost like boot camp. In actual learning hours, this was the equivalent of 2 semesters in an Engineering college.
Such a model is inevitably and significantly infrastructure investment heavy, both physical, IT and human, in addition to having to deal with
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ballooning costs of logistics and other operational costs. The earliest tactical move to bring in efficiency was to try and reduce the duration of
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
the required training through interventions in the college itself. In other words, immediately after the placement season was over, companies
The ability to build real skills and not just impart conceptual knowledge- or the difference between describing how a car works vs actually driving it.
would send their staff to colleges to train their offered candidates in foundation skills from the regular inhouse curriculum. But this could only
have limited success, since the opportunity for such interventions had practical limits.

they reach out if they need help , who will provide feedback on their submissions
Impact of Economic slowdown on NHT: Inevitably hiring numbers went down, training budgets were slashed, training capacity was
underutilised, as were the training staff themselves. it was not unusual for a ‘Pass’ candidate to wait 6-8 months on the ‘Bench’ before being
assigned to a client project.
On the flip side, engineering departments (usually very demanding internal customers),were demanding ‘Project Ready’ candidates from training teams, a term that meant training graduates who could contribute meaningfully to projects and could be ‘billed’ to clients.
This is a familiar cycle. But even this cloud had a silver lining. As a significant fallout, this brought a renewed interest in e-learning as a potential cost effective alternative. Unlike the early experiments at the turn of the century, the preparation was a lot more thorough, thoughtful and
the implementation, phased. There have been significant breakthroughs since 2007 in integrating e-learning with the regular training curricu-
The support environment for the learner- does he/ she feel part of a wider community, do they get answers to their questions, whom can

The organisational commitment to see this through across atleast 3 cycles
The good news is, there are organisations that have had the foresight to explore this. With the breakthrough in cloud computing technology
and the consequent growth in cloud infrastructure over the last 2 years, there is now a way to make online training highly practical and
‘learning by doing’ oriented.
A Working Model for New Hire Technical training
This model is based on the following business and technological premises
lum or what is called Blended Learning. In practical terms, foundation level training content was ported onto a Learning Management System
(LMS) for students to access courses online and learn on their own, more often than not, even before they actually joined the organisation. Pre

-joining training was quickly becoming the way forward.
However successful Pre-Joining interventions may have been in reducing training durations, adoption was still limited to the top 5 or 10 companies in any significant scale. Detractors pointed out the absence of a controlled environment, lack of real-life practice opportunities and low
ing dates and other monetary and non-monetary recognition

base/ Unix Administrator or Infra Support Engineer.
multimedia and interactive simulations. From a learners standpoint, it was certainly easier than reading an academic publication but still a far
change a model that worked well, for all intents and purposes.

tion just cried out for a technological breakthrough!
A Compulsive Argument for a different approach to New Hire Training
gestions on improvement.

An infrastructure light and op-ex effective means to onboard new hires in the shortest time possible

In the author’s opinion, there are five factors that make an e-learning program a sustainable and successful option
There exists a standardised, reliable and robust assessment and reporting mechanism that can gauge the skill levels during and post training. This should further allow the use of advanced analytic tools for tactical decision making.

There is a well articulated policy of multi-stage gating, that will progressive filter out candidates who are low on either aptitude or inclination. This is to ensure that everyone who finally joins the company, truly deserves to be there.
An effective approach to Online training that guarantees a clear and measurable degree of technical competency
An operational model that could size itself flexibly to handle the lean years as well as the good ones (in other words scale up /scale down
based on demand environment)
A 360 degree support environment is available to students to seek help during the self-learning process. This could be in the form of
email support, group chat mechanisms, discussion forums or an on-line community of peers.
The IT industry then, is looking for the following things



The Online platform provides access to a ‘LAB on the Cloud’ for all technologies. The cloud labs enable the students to systematically
practice writing code in professional development environments. Submissions made on the cloud lab are scrutinised by experts with sug-
But despite all odds, it is clear now that e-learning is here to stay! Such is the nature of irrevocable change. The BIG question now is, how elearning match can or exceed the effectiveness of a face to face, hands on, richly interactive, practice oriented classroom training. The situa-
The long lead time (4-5 months on an average) between an offer and the joining date can be effectively utilised for building basic skills.
This means that post joining training effort can be focused around higher level courses and specialist roles such as Test Engineer, Data-
levels of student motivation. The emphasis on e-learning content was still on presenting and explaining concepts in innovative ways using
cry from actually getting ones hands dirty. Not without justification, the corporate training fraternity themselves were less than enthusiastic to
There is a strong motivation for students to access and complete the courses. Ways to incentivise participation would include, earlier join-

Strong overall Program Management encompassing timely student communications, support processes, co-ordination with learning and
infra service providers as well as an objective and periodic review for mid course correction in procedures or policy.
This paper presents an outline of one of the earliest cases in India of a truly On-Line, integrated approach to new hire technical training in the

The motivation for the student. What’s in it for him/her?

The quality of the instructional content- Relevant, Interactive and Retentive
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Case Study – Tier 1 IT Company (hereafter, the ‘Company’)

The Company is one of the leading names in the Indian IT sector. On an average, the company recruits anywhere between 5000 to 7000 fresh
Though the Spartacus program was an acknowledged success inside the Company, this period also threw up some drawbacks as well opportu-
engineers every year. The Company visits engineering campuses (or through off-campus drives) each year to make job offers to candidates.
nities for fine tuning
Better preparedness of candidates to handle the tougher advanced courses
The candidates so offered typically have a waiting period of 3-6 months before a joining date and location is communicated to them.

During this period, there will be drop-outs, either because of dis-enchantment with the waiting period, alternative career options or earlier
There was no opportunity for students to practice exercises in a professional development environment. Since practical assessments were
held only after the candidates joined, by which time it was too late to re-route them back for a refresher
joining dates from other IT companies.
In 2010, the company launched an ambitious initiative called Spartacus** to streamline new hire training efforts.
Spartacus was an online learning platform (indigenously developed) that enabled candidates to get access to courses on fundamentals of programming, databases and Operating Systems. An understanding of these basic concepts is considered a pre-requisite for specialisation in any
one technology for software development. (It is a telling commentary on our education system that the bulk of our professional institutions
cannot provide this assurance in their alumni)
The operational parameters of the program methodology is summarised here

Candidates who were given offers in college campuses were split into batches in chronological order of expected joining dates

About 10 weeks prior to joining, candidates were provided access to Spartacus and assigned a series of 7 foundation modules, which
included Programming techniques, DBMS, Software Engineering, OS Overview and Unix Fundamentals.

The Learning Material comprised interactive e-learning content and a set of practice exercises to be done on local machines by the candidate.

As a result, no ‘readiness’ or ‘merit’ driven gating criteria could be implemented. Therefore, the potential of the Spartacus program as a
filter, was limited

There was no guarantee that a candidate would complete all the courses before joining due to a lack of re-inforcing incentives

The program needed a more robust student support mechanism. Quality and timeliness of support are key determinants in a student’s
sustained interest
Spartacus- Phase II
In the February 2012, the Company, in collaboration with 360 degree** (hereafter, the Partner), an external e-learning partner, re-launched
Spartacus. The difference was that this time, the program also included a complete end to end software development course, Core Java, which
was hitherto part of the inhouse training curriculum.
The Core Java program was offered on the Partner’s company’s learning platform. The unique feature about a patent pending technology for
enabling labs hosted on the cloud infrastructure of telecom service providers. The technology made it possible to provide professional quality
coding environments and tools on cloud infrastructure on commercially available broadband connections.

Inhouse trainers provided e-mail and weekly group chat services to address learner queries.
But that was not all. The Learning Engine built around the lab infrastructure included

At the end of each module of predefined duration, candidates were administered an Objective MCQ test online (unproctored)

Interactive learning content developed by practitioners

Candidates were administered practical Assessments on coding skills immediately on joining the company.

A comprehensive assessment for each sub-skill within a course through MCQ and a set of graded complexity lab assignments.

Skill gaps were identified based on test results and a short refresher session held to bridge the gaps

A team of subject matter experts to support learner queries in both synchronous (chat sessions) and asynchronous modes ( email )

The batch joins mainstream training curriculum for courses on specific development technologies (eg. Java) and other professional devel-

Evaluation and feedback to the students for practice assignments
opment courses
360 Degree also provided the overall Program Management in terms of tracking progress, issuing updates, alerts and analysis of student perPerceived Benefits:
formance metrics.

Net reduction of approximately 20 days in inhouse training duration
Note: The earlier set of courses continued to be available through the Spartacus platform

Though precise numbers on business savings are not available, one may safely assume a figure of $600 per candidate/ month, on salary

and logistics alone.
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This pilot program was for a batch of 96 engineering graduates who belonged to the 2011 recruitment season. These candidates were
spread across 3 joining locations, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai.
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3.

The Core Java online course duration was approx. 2 weeks or 15 calendar days.

End of course assessments were also conducted online on the platform using cloud labs.

In addition, the Company also conducted an independent assessment after the candidates joined. The candidate results against this assess-
Course Completion vis-a- vis Company Assessment
Pass
ment were juxtaposed with their progress and performance on the course itself.
Avg.=7
The focus of this analysis was twofold. First, to calibrate end competencies as measured by the final assessments vis- a vis student perfor-
Fail
86
%
47
%
mance on the course itself. And second, to identify what needed to change - in terms of content, nature of support, lab facilities, student communication etc. In other words, identify practical blocks to learning and develop the next steps.
Course Com-
Analysis Summary
Avg.=
40
2.
7
Methodology

The Validated database was split into Pass and Fail views along with Assessment scores and Course Completion data

Lower and Upper thresholds were identified based on the Pareto principle

Count of candidates on either side of the threshold levels for each parameter
Avg.=7
9
0
%
(2
6)
Percentages indicate candidate
numbers out of 90
PASS and FAIL refer to results of
Company Assessments
Fail
43
%
Excellere Assess50%
0
Avg.=
33
%
(1
4.
Lab Exercises Completion vs Company Assessment
Observations
70%
For Pass candidates , high corelation between
Excellere scores
and results
None of the candidates who scored < 50% on Platform AssessPage 47
28
%
(1
For Pass candidates , high corelation between
completion and
results
89% of the candidates who completed < 40% of the course
Platform Assessment Scores vis-a- vis Company Inhouse Assessment
Pass
Observations
60
The following section gives a summary of this analysis

Percentages indicate candidate
numbers out of 90
PASS and FAIL refer to results of
Company Assessments
Averages refer to average course
completion of Pass and Fail
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Pass
Avg.=7
83
%
(2
4)
Fail
Percentages indicate candidate numbers out of 90
PASS and FAIL refer to results of
Company Assessments
Averages refer to average course
Observations
60%
40%
7
Fine-tuning calibration of Platform and Company assessments including scoring criteria

Student Feedback based enhancements on specific areas where indicated.
Steps taken after the Pilot
The course content and coverage was reviewed, mapped to the company’s inhouse curriculum, the end of course assessments were re-
48
%
Practice Exercises Com-

Avg.=5
33
%
(2
For Pass candidates , high corelation between
Excellere scores
and results
91% of the candidates who completed < 40% of the exercises have
calibrated. This period also also the addition of a host of new features that enhanced the robustness and reliability of the cloud lab access in
addition to enhanced dashboard views. A significant new feature was the ‘Closed Path’ implementation for courses, which ensured that learners followed only the prescribed sequence of modules for completion.
For candidates of the 2012 hiring season , the Company has introduced the following changes in process and policy

Completion of Spartacus courses is now mandatory for candidates

80% of the original Spartacus set of courses have now been ported onto the 360 Platform. Practice sandbox environments with integrated
assignments on Cloud labs were

All end of course assessments on the 360 degree platform using the cloud lab feature

Gating criteria have also introduced for assessments. So, unless the candidates get a minimum score of 60% on the assessments, they
would not be given joining dates immediately. Such candidates would be given an extension to review the course and take the assessment
again.
5.
Key Inferences

The data is indicative of a strong positive relationship between Course Completion, Attempted Practice Exercises and Company assessment results , though consistency will have to observed for more batches

360 degree Assessment Score > 50% and Course Completion > 60% are recommended as gating criteria for joining and
post joining action

Completion of Project Assignments will have a strong influence on practical coding skills.
6.
Recommendations made to the Company

Platform Assessment should be made mandatory.

Proctored Assessment should be held for all candidates. There are 2 options


Either at Company locations on joining OR

Through 360 degree partnerships with Pearson/ Pro-metric centers at key locations nationwide
Alignment of Course Coverage to Company’s skill requirements
Current Status of the Spartacus Program
As of January 2013, the program has now covered nearly 2000 candidates across all group companies in the IT space.

The Spartacus program is in the process of being formalised as a defacto standard for new hire technical training

In addition to Core Java, the following courses from the 360 degree portfolio , namely, PLSQL-Fundamentals and Advanced, .Net Frameworks and C#, Advanced Java have also been added to the program. These modules would now be removed ( except for short remedial
sessions) from the post joining training.

Overall, in a period of 12 months, there have been over 5000 student-course instances on the 360 platform, each of them with it’s own
customised lab and support environment

Program parameters are in the process of being extended to cover competency base-lining and benchmarking across group companies
Closing Remarks – Crystal Ball
If we look back over the decade gone by, there is a strong inference that all e-learning technologies are but an attempt to emulate the physical,
sense rich, interactive classroom. In the early years, innovations have focused on form, presentation, visual messaging etc, however, the single
biggest breakthrough in learning effectiveness was the possibility of hosting multiple labs in varied technologies on a remote server in the
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cloud. Now, end to end Online programs could not just be effective but also cost efficient. Potential for business saving will drive the change
among corporates , but learning effectiveness is what’s going to keep them invested.
Lest we assume that this is only for the big players, small and medium scale organisations are going to particularly happy about the fact, that
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Employer Branding and Social Networking
-Tanvi Lathia
Introduction
they can virtually have ‘On demand’ training programs without the trouble of building batches OR hiring external trainers and rooms at market prices.
“Every sector, every job, every function, was, is or will be disrupted by Internet” stated Kalika in 2000. Since 2009 there has been a 209%
increase by companies using social media to communicate their employer brand according to 2011 Global Employer Branding Results in
E-learning is here to stay. The model is available. Penetration of broad band services into the Plan B and C class towns has thrown open a
Global Recruiting Roundtable. The official website of Facebook reports one billion monthly active users as of October 2012. As of Septem-
portal of opportunity. There will come a time when companies in the IT sector will clearly be looking at coding assessments as a short listing
ber 30, 2012, LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 187 million members in over 200
mechanism prior to offer. But even earlier in the pipeline, graduate institutes and engineering colleges offer a potential market to augment or
countries and territories. Twitter has gained popularity with over 500 million registered users as of 2012 generating over 340 million tweets
replace poor curriculum, lack of trained faculty or industry relevant specialised courses.
daily. The statistics of You Tube, the popular forum for showcasing and viewing videos boast of over 800 million unique visitors each month.
The cloud lab engine has seen interest from many other Tier1 and Tier 2 companies. Some of the varied uses in the launch stage or under active consideration

These statistics are enough evidence to serve as a wakeup call to employers across the globe that a majority of their talent has already become
active on social networks. Employers also have to do the same to reach them.
Meaning and Scope
Inducting science graduates (non- engineers) into the pool of engineers to increase hiring base reduce hiring costs
A social networking site (SNS) is an Internet site based upon a traditional social network (Snyder, Carpenter, and Slauson, 2007). A social

Validating the skills database of software engineers (0-7 yrs work ex) through coding challenges, remedial training
networking site is an online service which provides a platform for building social network or social relations among people. A social network
site comprises users’ profiles, social links, public testimonials or comments and other services. (Donde, Chopade, Ranjith, 2012). The official

Cross skilling software engineers to reduce the bench workforce

Skills up gradation and refreshers part of the continuing development agenda of the technical work force
website of Facebook, the leader in social networking, states that its mission is to make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.
Boyd and Ellison (2007) have defined Social Networking Sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their
Technology will be the primary driver, but the front runners are already leading the way
list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.
In this context, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube can all be said to be social networking sites. Other players such as Google+,
MySpace, Xing, Yammer also can be included in this.
Ambler and Barrow (1996) gave one of the first definitions of employer branding as ‘the package of functional, economic and psychological
benefits provided by employment and identified within the employing company.’ The main theoretical analysis was generated by Richard
Mosley (1990), who is credited of originally creating this concept. In addition most of the research focusing on employer branding is based on
the work of Backhaus and Tikoo (2004), Barrow and Mosley (2005) and Moroko and Uncles (2008;
2009). Chartered Institute of Personnel
and Development (2010) has defined Employer branding as “a set of attributes and qualities (often intangible) that makes an organization distinctive, promises a particular kind of employment experience, and appeals to those people who will thrive and perform best in its culture”.
Employer branding is based on assumption that human capital brings value to the firm, influencing performance levels which is the foundation
of competitive advantage in the modern economy (Berthon et al., 2005).
Relevance / Importance
The war for talent is still impacting companies worldwide as talent acquisition teams all over try to find the right people with the right utilization of resources. Employer branding as an activity hence becomes crucial in sustaining such promises made to the employees that would be
unique and convincing. The organization’s human resources are its core assets. Numerous studies have pointed out the relation between employee engagement, empowerment, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and retention. These are not in the scope of this paper. Nev-
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ertheless, there is significant data showing that a good remuneration strategy, a challenging job profile and facilitative work environment do
framework, so an employee can still have a personal Twitter handle, for example. In the age of social media and with sites like Glassdoor out
not suffice when it comes to talent retention. The company has to constantly deliver its promise to its internal employees as understood in the
there, ensuring brand authenticity is all the more critical. Candidates and employees no longer tell one friend about their recruitment experi-
psychological contract between them. According to the 2011 Employer Branding Global Research Study, 41% of the companies have devel-
ence with Company X; they broadcast it to everyone they know instantaneously.” Expedia, the online travel site plays up its brand and show-
oped an employer brand strategy and 33 % of companies plan to increase their investment in employer branding.
Employer branding can
cases its employees’ testimonials on its LinkedIn career page. The SNCR Excellence Award recognized Sodexo for creative use of Twitter to
play a major role in acquisition as well as retention of talent, employee engagement and organizational commitment. Because employer
identify and recruit talent. The food and facilities management company has overcome hurdles that trip up complex, decentralized organiza-
branding has received much attention in practitioner venues, but little in the academic arena, the underlying theoretical foundation
tions and built a rich talent network complete with an informative careers site, blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube presences.
for employer branding has not been fully developed. (Backhaus, Tikoo, 2004).
How Social Networks can aid Employer Branding?
Mandhanya and Shah (2010) have said that employer branding can be internal as well as external. Some organizations take the ‘outside-in’
approach and focus on creating visibility for their companies in the target talent markets through a multi-faceted approach including well designed websites with content on the company culture, compensation practices and career opportunities and why they are a great place to work.
(Mandhanya, Shah, 2012) By building a strong employer brand, any organization can come into focus of the prospective talent out there. Talent acquisition thus becomes more efficient with the availability of a wider and richer talent pool. (Srivastava P., Bhatnagar, J., 2010)
Some others have adopted an ‘inside-out’ approach whereby they create powerful branding internally through employee experience and turn
their employees into brand advocates. This is key, particularly if organizations want to leverage employee referrals as a way of attracting candidates (Mandhanya, Shah, 2012). This paper talks more about the ‘inside-out’ approach where employees act as the brand ambassadors for
the company. Strong employment relationships get formed at every stage of encounter of the employees with the companies. Employer
branding thus becomes a very crucial construct in strengthening the psychological contract between them. If the employees perceive that the
organization has failed to deliver its employee value proposition at any stage, there is a breach of this psychological contract. The impact can
be on their levels of productivity, motivation, engagement, organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Such employees would use various available means to express their dissatisfaction. If the company has convinced them with a sound employer branding strategy reinforcing
the value proposition at every stage, these employees would act as beacons to potential talent out there to join such a company. Also an engaged and happy workforce is definitely more productive than a dissatisfied and disgruntled one.
With the advent of technology and increased penetration of internet, a majority of the workforce of today has developed affinity towards social
networking. Social networking gives a ready and instant platform for anyone and everyone to voice out their opinions. It could be on sites
such as Facebook or Google + or Twitter or platforms like Yammer and Glassdoor. Social networking has swiftly risen to become one of the
most noteworthy developments of this age. Communication has received a whole new dimension with such services. The workforce of today
is very active on such social networking sites for personal and professional purposes. Explosion of innovation has facilitated the workforce to
access such networks anywhere from a Smartphone to a Tablet PC to a computer. A survey conducted by Holos Research and commissioned
by MySammy, 62 % of the respondents said they allow the use of social networking in the workplace. Social media has made a visible impression on almost all functions of HR including recruitment, selection, talent management, building organization culture, retention, and engagement. Increasing number of HR professionals have started using social networking platforms for networking and talent-hunting. Like
their counterparts in marketing, business development and marketing communication, even HR professionals have realized the potential of the
phenomenon called social media. Google’s Vice President of Enterprise for Europe, Middle East and Africa revealed that businesses and their
leaders are getting over their initial fears about using social tools in the workplace and are recognizing that they have strategic value based on a
study conducted by them to inspect the impact and popularity of social media for business use. Huge organizations such as Unilever have used
LinkedIn extensively for employer branding. In the words of Paul Maxin, Global Resourcing Director, Unilever, “We see the enormous benefit of tools such as LinkedIn because they enable employees to interact with their networks while representing Unilever. The overriding principle applicable to all media is not to say anything that will bring the individual or company into disrepute. But there is freedom within the
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The above process flow can be used to create an employer brand. Social networking sites can be used at various steps in the process. A company can connect with their employees on Facebook and Twitter to see how they perceive the employer brand. This will add transparency and
communicate the interest of the company in being there for the employees. Having designed the communication strategy, the organization
can accelerate its efforts to make its presence felt on social networking sites to leverage their employer branding. Google posts videos of ‘life
at Google’ on YouTube to give a glimpse to potential employees about their value proposition. Real employees of Google feature in the video
and talk about the benefits of working in Google. This gives a sense of solidarity and camaraderie to the existing employees as well. Accenture has created a Facebook page for Accenture Alumni who form the group of employees who have worked with Accenture. Their approach
is to keep in touch with them since they have been instrumental in building the brand that Accenture is today. Other approaches can include
having a blog that is open to employees to write about their experiences, stories and accounts of what goes on in the office. Companies that
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are confident about the engagement levels of their employees can definitely make a strong online presence felt as well. Social network sites
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Websites
can be used to connect employees who span across geographical boundaries and be given a common platform to share their views by the company. Online events, competitions, e-learning modules can also be a method for the company to reach out to its employees online.

http://talentminded.com/4-facebook-recruiting-tips-inspired-by-sodexo/

http://www.globalrecruitingroundtable.com/2011/10/17/2011-global-employer-branding-study-results-
Challenges
Organizations who want to stay connected with their employees through social network have some concerns to think about as well. They need
to be assured that encouraging such informal means of communication will not be treated undesirably by the employees and the productivity
incl-infographic/
levels cannot be affected by being online. Also, there might be a need to moderate some of the content that the employees may put on such
forums so as to not malign the name of the company. This is a delicate issue since the employees should not be made to understand that the
employer is not ready for a honest feedback.
Conclusion
There has been an unprecedented impact of social networking sites on the business side. Sites that were earlier considered to be ‘online
hangouts’ have become virtual touch points and warehouses of information for all businesses. In such scenario, further research can be done
to see the impact of social networking site on employer branding. Also, practitioners need to come up with solutions and strategies to aid organizations to create sound employer brands on social networking sites. In the words of Dale Carnegie, ‘you can make more friends in two
months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.’ Employers also need
to connect to the employees to know what are their concerns and demands. Only then will their employer brand sustain and deliver value.
References
Journals

Ambler, T., and Barrow, S., (1996), "The Employer Brand," Journal of Brand Management, 4.3, pp.185-206

Barrow, S. and Mosley, R. (2005) The Employer Brand: Bringing the Best of Brand Management to people at work, West Sussex: John
Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Bennett, R. and Rundle-Thiele, S. (2005) The brand loyalty life cycle: Implications for marketers, Journal of Brand Management, 12 (4),
250-263.

Berthon, P. et al. (2005) Captivating company: dimensions of attractiveness in employer branding, International Journal of Advertising,
24 (2), 151-172.

Cafolla, Liana, How to build an effective employer brand China Staff 14, 9 (Oct 2008): 23-26

Chambers Elizabeth G, Foulon M, Handfield-Jones H, Hankin M S, Edward G (1998), “The War for Talent”, The McKinsey Quarterly,
No. 3, pp. 44-57.

Eveillian Suikkaen (2010): How does Employer branding increase employee retention, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences

Ployhart, R.E., (2006), "Staffing in the 21st Century: Challenges and Strategic Opportunities," Journal of Management, 32.6, pp. 868.

Snyder, Carpenter, and Slauson (2007). MySpace.com – A Social Networking Site and Social Contract Theory. Information Systems
Education Journal, 5 (2). http://isedj.org/5/2/. ISSN: 1545-679X.

Srivastava Pallavi, Bhatnagar Jyotsna (2010), Employer Brand For Talent Acquisition:

An Exploration Towards Its Measurement, VISION-The Journal of Business Perspective, Vol 14, Nos. 1 and 2
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Creating The Eudaimon Employee
-Yashaswi (Alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur, BM-08),
Archana Dhakappa (Senior Manager, HR, Hinduja Group)
creative approaches, perspectives, and expertise, in the lower and middle management positions should represent the organization in various
conferences and industry events. The company which makes each employee feel great will gradually become great.
Let them Shout-it-out: The realization that a man is far from his full potential and in-fact moving in a direction away from it leads to frus-
Human beings are rational and reasonable. We do what we do because it is a means to some end we seek. You spend most of your time in your
tration. This ‘steam’ can’t be let off by being counseled or interviewed at the workplace. Give him a sound-proof hall with a big mirror where
workplace, sometimes even working on monotonous tasks and routine jobs. The question we want to confront you with is “How does it fit in
he can go and shout his lungs out. Then he will stand before the mirror and feel at peace with the world. Man is the measure of all things. Eve-
with the greater goals of your life?” You will probably answer, “This I am doing only for the time being – very soon I will move on to bigger
ry man realizes it, but most of us avoid facing it. Let the man face the man.
stages in life and at work”. You know that you are a work in progress, and the best is yet to come. It is this hope of the best being ahead of us
that keeps us going even through the rough patches of our lives and careers.
Enable Individual Arête: According to Aristotle, eudaimonia is closely bound with arête, which means virtue. Eudaimonia means striving
toward the summit of excellence based on one's unique talents and potential. The effort to know and realize one's most golden self is the cen-
All of us secretly feel that we deserve much more from life than what we have already got. We are designed to attempt divinity. Every act we
tral concept of eudaimonia. Understandably, the organization can’t devote the entire time to cultivate individual talents. But it can create con-
do is only instrumentally valuable to this quest. It is the reason why Apa Sherpa has scaled Everest twenty one times. It is the very reason why
ditions to transfer even one hour of her day from the regular activity to the one she likes. Let her raise money for a charity, let her sketch for
a few entrepreneurs go serial; a few CEOs seek early retirement to write books. The very opportunity to flourish our faculties to chase god-
the company advertisement, let her teach music to colleagues, let her read just for the sake of it. When the organization respects the individual
hood leads to eudaimonia. The eudaimonistic theories of the ancients can unleash miracles for organizations.
desire, the individual respects the organizational goal.
Mentioned first by the Greek Philosopher Aristotle, the word eudaimonia is tough to translate. It literally means “human flourishing”; but it is
Diversify to glorify: The brain’s natural dimming effect guarantees that the work which seemed exciting in the first month doesn’t generate
often misinterpreted as “happiness”. A process is confused with a state, and the difference it makes! Most organizations are guilty of seeing
the same pleasure a year after. Eagerness to use the reason and excitement to see the results of it are essential to eudaimonia, which is why the
employee satisfaction as a state and not a process. Hence, they come up with intitiatives which produce temporary results in a limited number
average work-life should be full of novelty, even if it’s about just trying a new activity for a limited time. We believe that the organization
of employees.
through this practice, in the long run and on an average, will unearth talents in a few employees who will generate value far greater than the
cost involved.
The synonyms for eudaimonia are living well and doing well. Aristotle takes the exercise of logos (reason) to be the most important constituent
in eudaimonia but does acknowledge the importance of external goods such as health and wealth. Extending this to the workplace, the employee will be happy when he gets the creative satisfaction of using logos to make a visible difference in his workplace. Logos is unique to human
beings and the ideal ergon (work) of a human being is the most perfect exercise of reason. And this should be the foremost endeavor of all
organizations – to enable every employee to use his rationality towards an organizational goal, within or without the normal work requirements.
That which has a degree has a maximum. All of us sub-consciously work towards reaching the maxima of our talents. Eudaimonia implies a
positive prcoess through which we strive forward towards attaining divinity. The organization can’t create Gods out of employees; it can only
start the process of creating minor deities. Let the employee work well, live well and think well. Need for eudaimonia pervades all the levels of
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Indeed it is the substratum of the levels, the very reason why we have needs at all. Man, realizing the short life
span he has, tries to rush through or even skip the lower order needs.
We are not denying the temporal needs for passive and hedonic contentment, which are satisfied by a good salary and pertinent perks. We are
only emphasizing the constant need for divinity, latent in every individual and manifest only in a few. Modern organizations try to nourish the
employees – while the aim should be to flourish them. Performance incentives and perks are important but not central to flourishing the employee. We recommend the following in the pursuit of eudaimonia at an organizational level -
Murder mass motivation: The employee relations managers should refrain from organizing mass motivation activities. An important part
of eudaimonic process is to feel individually important. Respect for the individuality of every employee is needed to take the organization to
the highest level of performance. The ‘bursting birthday balloons’ and organizing trips to somewhere for everyone type attempts at mass motivation insult the idea of the individual. The employee should be individually and creatively engaged. For example, if an employee in the Oper-
De-emphasize teams: Let’s experiment. Pick up a team (let’s call them Successful) in any company. Give every member of the team the
same appreciation letter, let each of them get a personal ‘pat on the back’ by the CEO, give each of them 100% salary hike. Whenever their
success story is highlighted, no names are taken. They are all collectively referred to as Team Successful. Repeat this the next year. We predict
that Team Successful will soon see the flight of its members. The team had everything, except respect for individuality, which is a core constituent of Eudaimonia. All of us want to be singled out as an achiever. Teams are inevitable; they are based on utility. Don’t destroy the team, but
de-emphasize them. Don’t treat a group of employees as a herd of animals who are collectively rewarded or reprimanded. Teams are catalyzed
by a common sense that the work is important and that doing it well is worthwhile. Let’s face it – we are in teams because we want to rise
above the team. Hence the constant race to be the leader of the team. The authors of this paper have demonstrated teamicidal tendencies, but
realize that with the current level of technology, teams have to be formed and maintained. Thirty years from now, we risk predicting, there will
be no physical teams. Even now, we have to respect the need to name that silent individual in the team who does the back-end work, and
doesn’t seem bothered about recognition.
Tear away the posters: The motivational accessories - slogan coffee mugs, plaques, key chains, diaries and posters concretize victory of
form over substance. They seem to exalt the significance of Quality, Creativity, Teamwork, and a crowd of other organizational virtues. But
they do so in such naive ways as to send an entirely different message - Management here believes that these qualities can be enhanced with
posters rather than by hard work and talent. The presence of the posters is a sure sign of the absence of respect for the individual. It is perhaps
the crudest attempt at mass motivation. “Quality is doing it right the first time, every time” – O I didn’t know that. Thanks to this slogan, I am
sufficiently enlightened to not do it wrong deliberately the first time!
ations team is known as a good writer, request him to review and update the website of the company. Even though he will be doing extra work
Time out over-time: We believe that the urge to do over-time is grounded in the reality of teams. Employees usually don't work overtime
for the company, the satisfaction of seeing his words reflect on the website will be great. On certain occassions, deserving employees, with
so much as a way to get the work done on time as a way to shield them from blame when the work inevitably doesn't get done on time. Over-
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time eats into the personal time of the employee. Eudaimonia can’t be created merely by the workplace – life outside the organization is equally important. If over-time affects the personal time, then the effects finally permeate the work-life and in the long run over-time is counter-
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Employer Branding through Social Networks
-Preeti Dave
Amresh Sharma
(Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar)
productive. Time is not important, days are. The aim should be to make Monday mornings as exciting as Friday evenings.
Superannuate seniority: Seniority remains a poor proxy of experience in most firms and it creates a kind of corporate socialism that wants
employees to be comfortable and quiet and wait for ‘their turn’. As mentioned earlier, in the quest for eudaimonia, man wants to expedite the
lower levels of need-hierarchy. If, inspite of the right talent, the employee has to wait for his turn, he will get frustrated and quit. Talent should
be rewarded instantly. And the right reward for real talent is to promote it to a level where it gets challenged more. Moving towards mastery,
improving his skills day by day, the employee feels divine.
Do we choose work because of pleasure, or pleasure because of work? The two appear to be yoked together, and that is only logical; for pleasure never arises without activity, and, equally, it completes every activity. We don’t recommend the pleasant work-life (monetarily beneficial),
nor do we suggest the good work-life (recognizing one’s strengths and recrafting work to use those strengths). We advocate the meaningful
work-life, which involves using the signature strengths of the employee in the service of something that he believes is larger than him.
This purpose-driven work allows employees to feel as if they are both important now and will leave traces later. If they feel they're contributing to something beyond themselves or somehow making the world a better place -- that's even better. The pursuit of such a work-life will
create the Eudaimon Employee. The Eudaimon Employee will create a lasting and ever flourishing organization.
Abstract
The term employer brand was introduced to the management audience in 1990 and was defined as "the package of functional, economic and
psychological benefits provided by employment, and identified with the employing company". In simple terms, an employer brand represents
the corporate identity to all, past, current and prospective employees and other stakeholders. It consists of 3 dimensions: 1. Value proposition,
2. Internal Marketing, 3. External Marketing.
Traditionally the employer used to create their brand through push messages but due to the changing consumer and employee behaviour they
have now adapted to the change by building relationships. And here comes the role of social media which is all about establishing relationships. It can be divided into 6 categories: Collaborative projects, Social Networking Sites, Virtual Games, Blogs, Communities, Virtual Social
worlds. It gives the employer a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a common understanding by leveraging the biggest strength of
the company, employees, as brand ambassadors. It creates credibility, transparency and the ability to meet the company at the eye level. In
short, it is an umbrella for all the traditional HR practices. Recruiting can become more interesting by tweeting a job opening, allow employees
to blog about the organizational image (with a restrictive policy), thus enhancing the brand image.
This paper will cover the importance of employer branding through social media and the future of this emerging trend. It will try to link all 6
dimensions of social media with 3 dimensions of employer branding. The paper will also focus on different strategies adopted by the employers, for example the latest use of Instagram, a social media photo sharing application owned by Facebook, by Starbucks to build the employer
value proposition.
And lastly, Rome was not built in a day. Employers should build a long term social media strategy, inspired by the fact that efforts put in today
will reap benefits in future. However, there is a need of innovative, open as well as restrictive social media policy which can prove to be a
potential tool for building the employer brand image.
Introduction
The world is changing fast, with 1.01 billion active users on Facebook (September 2012), 500 million registered users as of 2012 on Twitter,
generating 340 million tweets daily, more than 175 million registered users in more than 200 countries(June 2012) on LinkedIn, and the count
is increasing faster than the tick of the clock. “One out of every five minutes online is spent on social media related sites”-Neilson. Threequarters of the world’s heads of state have a Twitter presence, according to a new survey from the Digital Policy Council. With these changing
times where 53% of active adult social networkers follow a brand online, 57% of the marketers acquired customers via blogging, companies
are focussing more on the social network for their employer branding. In a recent Kelly Global Workforce Index survey, it is showed that 53%
of the North Americans considers a strong employer brand to be a major force for selecting a particular employer. This growing interest and
power of social media, its viral and transparent nature, is being utilised by the employers for their branding and recruit prospective employees
using tools and techniques that are used by the professionals, job seekers (active and passive) and students. It is bigger than we think.
Branding in True Sense
Brand is not only what others feel about the image of the company but also the emotional quotient that people attach with the company. The
employees are the breathing, living ambassadors of the company. The brand can be a true competitive differentiator if there is congruence
between the message what the employer conveys and the message what the employee gives. A strong employer brand has several advantages
which include:
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Larger pools of interested candidates who are a perfect fit for the organisation, people and culture.

Success in attracting top quality talented passive candidates.
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
Higher employee engagement and low turnover.

Higher referrals from satisfied employees.
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In 2021, nearly one in five employees will be 55 or older as compared to one in seven in 2005 (Statistics Canada, Labour Force Projections for
Canada, 2006-2031). This means there will be a complete shift in the approach the way employers brand their companies. Days of organic
growth, traditional “POST and PRAY” approach is over. Companies will thrive to become an employer of choice to source, recruit and retain
the talent. This is the juncture where the employer branding plays a major role. It is about delivering an authentic and enriching experience to
various stakeholders within and outside the organisation, living and breathing the values and the culture of the organisation. It is about positioning your company to attract, recruit and retain the best of the talent for your organisation.
All organisations want to employ preferably the top 20 % of the talent pool. Therefore HR professionals and
strategists have been expending enormous amounts of time, energy and other resources to earn the “employer
of choice” tag for their organisations. It is not about product positioning but “employer positioning”.
Employer Brand is actually a comprehensive strategy for recruiting the positions, the company in the world in an attractive way and in the
minds of the most talented candidates. It is a focussed corporate message that it conveys to the future and the current employees in a compelling manner. It is a vision that encompasses the values, policies, systems of the organisation which makes the organisation an employer of
choice. It is not about a catchy tag line or a wish list, but an emotional connect that is established between the brand and people.
Thus, we can see Employer Brand from 3 dimensions:
1.
Internal Marketing: Building a workforce difficult to imitate to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.
Even the employees in the organisations feel that utilizing social media makes the employer an “employer of choice”. 58% of the respondents
2.
External Marketing: Putting forth the value proposition to reach out the target audience, allowing the potential candidates to picture
felt that they would rather work with a company that utilizes social media tools. This can be proved by the below report from APCO World-
themselves in the company to acquire distinctive human capital.
wide and Gagen MacDonald, survey on the State of the U.S. Workplace.
3.
Value Proposition: Demonstrating clearly what the brand offers, what are the organisation culture, values, and the benefits that the
company can offer to its current and potential employees.
Social Media Importance
For successful employer branding, employers leverage social media for maximum return on investment and to gain competitive edge over their
competitors. What began as a medium to interact on a social level has evolved to give businesses a place to connect and grow their network,
changing the dynamics of the industry.
Companies that don’t embrace social media as a recruitment tool might risk losing quality candidates to their competition that is focussed on
such outreach, said Carisa Miklusak, media consultant for Career Builder.com. “Your candidates expect you to be there”, he said, “Other companies are doing it, and if you are not, you are missing out on a large candidate audience and top talent”. The below graph suggests the current
usage of social media as a form of communication. More than 50 % of the world is using social media in one form or the other, whether it is
Social Networking Sites, Blogs, Multimedia Sharing or Microblogs.
There are 6 types of social media that organisations use for their branding:
1.
Collaborative projects: Collaborative projects are the most popular, renowned manifestation of user generated content and allows the
joint creation of the content by many end users. For example, the most popular collaborative project is WIKIPEDIA. It allows the registered users to delete, add and modify the content.
2.
Blogs: It is a form of social media which will provide a channel to express opinions, facts and thoughts. It is one of the earliest forms of
social media that grew from personal web pages to interactive form of blogs. Think of a blog as a launch pad for your organisation. They
should be dynamic and informative encouraging users not only to return but distribute the content to others as well. This is the first thing
that a company can do to position the brand.
3.
Content communities: These have the main purpose of sharing content between users, including text (BookCrossing), photographs
(Flickr), videos (youtube).
4.
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Social Networking Sites: It enables users to connect by creating personal information profiles. It enables them to invite colleagues to
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have access to the profile, send emails and instant messages. Emphasis should be laid on consistency and engagement. It should be a
Value Proposition
combination of original updates, shares from other sources, replies from customers and inspirational quotes which positions the company
as authentic and sought after.
5.
Virtual Games: These include platforms that replicate 3- dimensional environment in which users appear as personalized avatars and
1-Collaborative
Projects
1, 2, 4, 5
interact with each other as if in real life. Example: World of Warcraft.
6.
Virtual Social Worlds: These are the extensions of Virtual Games wherein the avatars have a little more freedom of action and move
without any other restriction.
2-Blogs
These portals have become effective tools for head hunting, sourcing and relationship management with both present and prospective employ-
2, 3, 4, 5
ees. There are specialized professional sites like LinkedIn and Ryze which cater to the needs of professionals only.
TechTribe, the career networking site is aiming to be the professional avatar of Orkut for
Indian IT/BPO/KPO professionals.
Blogging is another good way adopted by recruiters for employer branding and thus recruitment. It can be a powerful tool for attracting likeminded and knowledgeable talent that understands the business of the organisation.
Indian corporate giants such as Tata Group are happy with the returns from Branding. They use blogging as a tool
Internal
Marketing
3-Content Communities
2, 5
4-Virtual Games
and Worlds
External
Marketing
providing insights for the company and for the company. Software giant Infosys has a blog named “Think Flat”
with postings from top leaders.
5-Social Networking Sites
Places like Second Life and Entropia Universe provide opportunities to interact and communicate with users which could not be achieved
through the traditional methods.
Value Proposition
For example, Coke Studios are a place where teens can mix music in a virtual studio. Whether you are on a studio or answering quizzes, the
Internal Marketing
External Marketing
red and white wave (Coke logo) adorns the surroundings as an active brand builder.
Linking Social Media and Employer Branding
1. Collaborative Pro-
Creation of objective company
jects
image and content
2. Blogs
Now we try to link the 6 dimensions of Social Media and 3 dimensions of Employer Branding as follows:
-
-
Knowledge Sharing, Advertis-
Accessible to every individual,
Low cost contact with large audience,
ing, Feedbacks
advertise company through its
posting job vacancies
employees
3. Content Commu-
-
-
Uploading videos to promote the com-
nities
4.Virtual Games and
Creation of own virtual compa-
-
pany
Synchronise the real openings with the
Worlds
ny to showcase the culture,
virtual ones, virtual interaction with
values of the organisation
customers.
5.Social Networking
Creation of a trustworthy im-
Formal and informal communi-
Representation of the company, reach
Sites
age, Knowledge Sharing, Crea-
cation within employees, in-
larger and specific target groups, timely
tion of organization profiles,
stant messaging
and direct customer contact.
peer to peer communication
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Internal marketing through social media
1.
Analysis of pattern and
frequency of sharing:
Posting, Sharing, Mes-
Organisations can create internal social networks using social networking apps like LinkedIn as personnel directory to know skills and
Personality Dimensions
Big 5 Model
experience of employees.
2.
Extracting behaviour
information
Encourage employee participation to know what people actually think about the company and share information through a two way communication process.
3.
Selection of Social
Network Type like
SNSs, Blogs, Virtu-
Take advantage of different tools like iPads, smart phones, conferencing tools like Skype, project management tools like Wrike and Zoho
so that the employees can interact and function from different locations.
4.
HR Analytics
Motivational Dimensions
Employee Life Cycle: Recruitment, Performance,
Take risks of social media in to consideration and have a clear social media policy to encourage employee engagement, at the same time
mitigate the ill effects of social media.
HR processes: Hiring, Engagement, Branding
Let us now see how companies use the most prominent social media business recruiting networks:
Feedbacks and surveys
LinkedIn: Building a presence on LinkedIn is an integral part of brand strategy. Using status updates and keeping everyone informed about
Sentiments and predictive
analysis
the company helps build a strong brand which is then leveraged to tap the top most talent reducing costs and attrition. Allowing the employees
to access LinkedIn in office hours helps tailor internal communication and engagement. It allows companies to have employer branding sites
with complete video links, marketing material and testimonials from current employees.
Facebook: While Facebook is more of building relationships, companies use it to promote employer brand and excite people about working
at their companies. Apart from communicating corporate culture, companies use it for posting jobs and linking users.
Twitter: Twitter offers a special guide called Twitter 101 for businesses on how to use the site to their advantage.
Implementation Examples
1.
Starbucks: They are actively involved in social media. With 700000 followers on Twitter, they answer questions, retweet what people
The above framework describes how a successful social media strategy can influence some key decisions within the organisation which will
lead to increased ROIs and thus lead to higher organisation success and employee satisfaction. This in turn will strengthen the employer brand
image. Thus it is very important for organisations to have a clear and wise social media strategy to gain the maximum return on its investments. It can be used:
1.
To analyse the behavioural pattern of employees
2.
To analyse what motivates the employees the most
3.
Throughout the employee life cycle from recruitment to performance to development
4.
In a variety of HR processes like, Branding, Engagement
5.
To analyse the customer behaviour and act accordingly
say about the brand and engage in real conversations. They manage 18 million Facebook fans and upload and update content on the same.
2.
Coca-Cola: With nearly 20 million fans in the world, it has a strong presence in the social media world. They had launched their social
media strategy last year. It includes ensuring a “Certified Online Spokespeople” complete a certification programme prior to representing
the company online.
Applications of successful Employer Branding through Social Media
Future of Social Media for Employer Branding
Having understood the relationship between the employer branding and social media, let us now discuss the applications of a successful employer branding through social networks. Apart from talent acquisition employer branding through social media can be viewed from a differ-
Current vs. Future Intentions
ent perspective. Successful employer branding should aim at using social media analytics for behaviour analytics, HR and customers. It is like
a vicious circle of employer branding leading to information for behaviour analytics and positive behaviour of employees leading to successful
As per the latest review by the Harvard Business Review magazine, organisations are keen on investing on social media for various purposes
employer brand.
as shown below.
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brand of the employer. Employee use of social media raises several questions like, decreased employee productivity, inappropriate or disparaging comments about the employer or the employees, disclosure of confidential information. Social media legislations blocking the employer
access to employee social media accounts is gaining traction in US. California is the latest state to pass legislation which forbids employers
from requiring /requesting employees or job applicants to provide their social media user names and passwords (Assembly Bill 1844, sponsored by Nora Campos (D-San Jose)). In addition to this the law also restricts employers to access employee’s personal social media in the
presence of the employer or divulge any personal social media information. The bill also states that it is unlawful to threaten, fire or discipline an employee who refuses to disclose this information. California is the third state to regulate employers’ access to social media after
Maryland and Illinois. These kinds of laws must be taken into account while framing the social media policy to keep the brand image of the
company. Employers should carefully read the statute and then resort to the social media restrictions or leniencies.
The control of information on social media by the employer is a very sensitive issue which can hamper its brand image. The National Labour
Relations Board (NLRB) in U.S. had recognised the some employers have violated NLRA in recent years by terminating employees who were
engaged in unfavourable discussions of the terms and conditions of their employment on a social networking forum. Any rule that asks or
suggests that employees should report social media postings to management clearly violates the NLRA.
NLRA compliance is complicated and employers that wish to implement a social media policy must have it crafted by an attorney else it
would land them in trouble.
Recommendations
The emergence of Social Networks has compelled the organisations to redesign the way they communicate their brand to present as well as
Source: Harvard Business Review Analytic Services surveyed 2,100 Harvard Business Review magazine
future employees. The organisations should refrain from committing the following mistakes:
Challenges
1.
Inconsistency: Organisations should invest a great deal of time and research before embarking on the social media journey. Organisations should convey the same message on all the channels so that there is little room for ambiguity for the prospective employee.
Although the importance of social media cannot be denied for getting good talent but it has its limitations and it should be recognised as a tool
not as a wholesome replacement for every other activity required to attract and retain potential and current employees. It is a database, a finite
2.
Inauthenticity: Many organisations tend to portray what they think is good and not the reality. Being true to the organisational core is the
distinguishing feature that gives the organisation a competitive edge over others.
resource which is compiled in a certain order – a subset, not a whole. Although social media helps to cut down costs of background screening
and avoid the applicable laws like the ‘Fair Credit Reporting Act’ which imposes strict requirements, by providing free and quick information
but employers should be cautious when reviewing and using such information during the recruiting and hiring process, as it may expose them
3.
Lack of Planning: Organisations should have a concrete social media strategy with specific, tangible and measurable objectives.
4.
Not a job advertising campaign: Branding on social media should not aim solely on recruitment. With more emphasis on the relevant
to claims of discrimination. These claims could seriously tarnish the employer’s image and can attract legal actions.
and distinctive content, organisations will be able to attract passive employees as well.
This is because the information about the prospective employees available on social media sites generally is not apparent from an application, such as information regarding race, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, other protected information or use of lawful products
5.
Respond to what people in the outside world want to convey so that there is a long term relationship with the people.
which should not be used to make employment decisions and the risk of lawsuit under these circumstances cannot be underestimated by employers.
Conclusion
The social media strategy of the employer could turn away the applicants. According to figures from Hays Banking 20% candidates would
There is no stopping of two way communication in social media. Thus there should be a strategy to safeguard the corporate networks by focus-
turn down a job that did not permits "reasonable" access to social media sites such as Facebook at work for personal use.
sing on 3 aspects: People, Process and Technology. Thus there should be a program aimed at raising security awareness, behaviours of all
those concerned and then balance technology and process.
Legal Aspect
Since evidence shows that from year to year the numbers are increasing as regards to the usage of social media for branding, there is still little
Employers should not only consider their use of social media but also monitor the way employees use social media as it can affect the internal
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research that tackles the future of these issues.
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In our opinion, employer branding through social networks is just one facet of the many. Completely relying on the social networks would be a
grave mistake that the organisations may commit. On the contrary, not leveraging social media for the employer branding would not be rosy
either. Thus social networks do play a major role in positioning the employer brand to the target audience. It will remain an integral part of
company’s recruitment tool, but will not remain on the top. As a channel it is more effective in the urban locations. Therefore, other modes of
recruiting and branding will continue to hold their importance.
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ENGAGING CONTRACTUAL EMPLOYEES THROUGH SKILL - POOL
DEVELOPMENT
-RAVI PRAKASH & SHIVAM BHATTACHARYA
2011-2013 Batch, Master of Personnel Management & Industrial Relations (MPMIR), Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi
ABSTRACT
References
In the wake of the rapidly increasing demand – supply gap and global competitive arena, it has been quite imperative for the organizations to
1.
“THREE THINGS EVERY EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA.” By: Ray, Augie. Baylor
ensure an adequate supply of skills and optimize their utilization among the contractual employees. Skills and knowledge are the engines that
Business Review. Fall2012, Vol. 31 Issue 1, p22-23. 2p.
drive the growth of the economy, in order to remain competitive the contractual employees are needed to get acquainted with the engagement
2.
“How Social Media Can Spur Organizational Transformation.” By: Savitz, Eric. Forbes.com. 12/17/2012, p31-31. 1p.
policies.
3.
“FINDERS KEEPERS: SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES HELP FIND TOP TALENT”. By: Hunt, Kristin Gunderson. Journal of Prop-
The relation between the contractual employees and the employer has always been a topic of discussion for a long period. There is a need for
erty Management. Nov/Dec2010, Vol. 75 Issue 6, p36-40. 5p.
the general forum at the industry level to facilitate the interactions between the contract employer and the workers. The sole core competency
4.
“Social Media Privacy Laws Stymie Financial Firms.” By: Mont, Joe. Compliance Week. Dec2012, Vol. 9 Issue 107, p16-17. 2p.
of an organization is its talented and skilled man-power. Their organizational effectiveness and commitment towards the organizations is must
5.
“Social Media, the Law, and You.” By: THOMPSON, MIKE. EContent. Dec2012, Vol. 35 Issue 10, p8-10. 3p.
for the principal employer as well as the contractors. With adaptation of technology in every field of business ability, engaging specialized
6.
“Views on Applying NLRA Principles to Social Media Shared.” HR Focus. Dec2012, Vol. 89 Issue 12, p10-11. 2p.
skilled workman on contract for installation, maintenance and servicing of machines, equipment and computer systems is the need of every
7.
http://linkhumans.com/blog/how-sodexo-does-recruitment-and-employer-branding-on-social-media-case-study
business establishment.
8.
http://www.defence.gov.au/pathwaytochange/docs/socialmedia/1.%20Social%20media%20and%20its%20origins%20SM.pdf
Moreover, it is high time for government to prevent the subterfuge done on the behalf of the principal employers through amendments in pre-
9.
http://www.brandchannel.com/papers_review.asp?sp_id=1269
sent legislation to achieve the goal for availability of skill-pool in the outsourced and contractual worker before they turn into Frankenstein.
10. http://www.sas.com/resources/whitepaper/wp_23348.pdf
This paper attempts to analyse the various engagement policies through which the contractual employees get their best out of the employment
11. http://www.randstadtechnologies.ca/downloads/072711_Build_your_employer_brand-Technologies.pdf
and the feasibility in concern with the cost effectiveness at the organizational level.
12. http://thesocialskinny.com/216-social-media-and-internet-statistics-september-2012/
13. http://www.intel.in/content/www/us/en/legal/intel-social-media-guidelines.html
INTRODUCTION
The biggest contribution to an organization’s success derives from its people – be it the senior leadership, the middle management, the frontline or the contractual one. This contribution takes a whole new meaning in today’s business environment thus making the war for talent intense at a global level. Today’s leaders understand the sole importance of the talented and skilled human capital. However, they are uncertain
when it comes to the repercussions it will have on business reality. Engaging the contractual employees in the organization has turned to be a
very crucial & debating issue in the current competitive era of business world. Questions like, does the organization have sufficient talent supply chain? Are the contingent employees getting advantages at par with their regular counterparts? Are we agile enough to deal with the constant inflow and outflow of employees? Are we keeping track of the changing nature of work and the skill sets required to address this change?
What are the alternatives to bridge the contractual employees’ work-life gaps with their regular counterparts? What are the new sources of
talent and how do we make the most of them?
These questions have become increasingly important as the demands of globalization, recovering economies, changes in talent demographics,
and even the nature of work itself have made Talent & Skill level an organization’s quite imperative competitive asset and differentiator. The
contingent employees as well have to be well engaged through the various methods to make their skill-pool enhanced. Engagement becomes a
make or break phenomenon as without discretionary energy at work, employees cannot create the ethereal experience for the customers so
very critical for success in the experience economy known for memorable offering.
Today’s top-performing companies are moving to a new workforce model that combines a core group of permanent employees with a contingent workforce of temporary employees, independent contractors, and consultants. This new blended - workforce model is significantly based
on the skill – pool enhancement among the employees through the contemporary employee engagement parameters viz. “Communication:
Continuous Employee Dialogue”, “Quality Talent Acquisition & Development”, and “Skill Pool Enhancement”.
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The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), a Public-Private Partnership in India, is aimed to promote the skill development
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penses.
through catalysing creation of large, quality, for profit vocational institutions. It provides viability gap funding to build scalable, for-profit
vocational training initiatives. Its objective is to contribute significantly (about 30%) to the overall target of skilling / up skilling 500 million
In the software development organisations (IT companies), brand image of the employer by ensuring higher salaries and continuous employ-
people in India by 2022, mainly by fostering private sector initiatives in skill development programmes and providing viability gap funding.
ment is very important to attract and retain talented people. But all the work they do is not necessarily either of high paying or of continuous
nature. Hence, they hire the software engineers through the contractor for shorter periods and at lower salaries, and for all practical purposes
Contractual Workers: Present Status
they are shown as employees of the contractor. Many of the IT companies have more number of contract employees and less number of regular employees. In the research and development organisations, the research projects are tenure-based and thereafter, the organisation may not
The labour unrests and their demand makes it amply clear that corporate India is increasing its reliance on casual and contract labour to get
get another project or they may get the project which may require an altogether new skill set. Hence, this sector prefers contract labour.
routine operational job done at cheaper costs. This is one of the primary reasons for the increase in labour strife and violence. These workers
do pretty much the same work as their ‘permanent’ peers, but are paid a lower salary. It is also argued that contract workers who virtually have
Many organisations prefer to engage the services of contract employees watch them on the job for about six months to one year both for high
no job security are usually denied benefits like gratuity, provident funds and health insurance. They are the vulnerable lot as they do not have
performance and good behaviour and thereafter, consider employing them on company roles, by paying one month salary as recruitment
their own effective unions in spite of their heavy numerical strength. Add to this, disparity in the pay structure and socio economic status;
charges to the contractor.
these are the perfect ingredients for discontent and have been used disenchanted groups to incite labour disputes and labour violence.
While it is obvious that companies opt for contractual workers for reasons of cost competitiveness, the ideal use of temporary or contract
LEGISLATION SUGGESTS:
workers is to manage spikes in demand. But manufacturing companies in India have often been accused of going overboard. Started initially as
contract workmen being engaged in tertiary, non-core activities of the enterprise have now become all pervasive across operations even in the
Essential Requirements to be observed by both principle employer and the contractor on Contract Labour Engagement as per The Contract
core areas of the organization’s operations.
Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970: -
Activists put forth the view that companies hire contract workers for exploitation rather than bringing any flexibility to their production, just
because they come cheap. Despite The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 stating that companies cannot hire a tempo-
1.
The Contractor should possess a valid license to take up the works in an establishment or organization.
2.
Every establishment which engages contract labour should obtain a Certificate of Registration under the Contract labour (R & A) Act,
rary worker to do a permanent worker’s job, but with state governments quite happy to overlook this, companies use temporary workers for
just about anything. Contract workers end up sharing the same work space with and doing the same jobs as permanent ones.
1970.
Out of the current workforce of about 450 million, only about 7%-8% are engaged in the organised/formal sector. In India, only about 5% of
the workforce has marketable skills, as compared to 50% to 60% in other countries. The magnitude of the challenge is further evident from the
fact that about 12 million persons are expected to join the workforce every year. This emerging socio-economic scenario is poised to drive the
3.
The work of the contractor should never be supervised or administered by the officers of the principal employer. In other words, the element of supervision, control and direction should only be from the contractor and not from the principal employer.
demand for skilling India.
While archaic Indian laws have been more of a deterrent for companies from retrenching permanent employees in volatile times, the absence
of government intervention encourages companies to opt for contractual labour. Besides having to pay less, hiring and firing the contract
4.
The establishment in the first instance must ensure that they have got a registration certificate from the competent authority as provided u/
s 7 of the Contract Labour (R & A) Act, 1970 before proceeding to engage the contract labour.
workforce is easier than doing the same with permanent workers.
The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 is woefully inadequate to meet the challenges of the present day eco system. As a
matter of fact, the necessary amendment drafted by the labour ministry is yet to see the light of the day. The end result of the government’s
5.
The establishment must ensure that they issue certificate in Form – V to the contractor for obtaining license as provided u/s 12 of the Act.
6.
It must be ensured that the contractor who is employing more than 20 persons has a valid license issued in his name by the competent
apathy in coming out with proper reforms is that workers end up suffering because of the fall out of laws originally designed to protect their
interests.
authority as provided under the Act.
It is true that flexibility and liberalization of laws are needed; at the same time contractualization of workforce should not be taken by the companies as a means to deprive workers of their legitimate benefits. It is important to look at ways to encourage employment of contract labour
without making the employees feel that they are losing out in terms of important benefits.
7.
The payment of wages to the employees employed by the contractor is disbursed to his employees by the contractor himself or his nominee and principal employer has to depute his representative to be present and sign the payment register in token of having disbursed the
salary in his presence by the contractor.
Contract Labour in various Organizational Sectors & Industries: -
8.
the obligation of the contract.
Contract labour today is employed across several sectors and industries right from government departments to software industries. It is no
more confined to worker level jobs; rather there are scientists, doctors, business managers and chartered accountants working on the roles of a
labour contractor. In the government departments, the recruitments are mostly frozen for the past twenty years and getting the increased work
There should not be any supervision and control by the principal employer in respect of employees employed by the contractor to fulfil
9.
The work for which contract labour is engaged is not of perennial nature.
load completed with regular employees is difficult. Hence, the departments can have contract labourers by showing it as miscellaneous ex-
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10. Discipline of the employees of the contractor in the discharge of duties must be regulated by the contractor and not by the principal em-
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
ployer.
11. Contract should not specify the number of persons required but must quantify the work itself.
12. Leave to the employees of contractor must be sanctioned by the contractor and not by the principal employer.
workers’ compensation, severance packages, and other expenses tied to permanent employees.

Contingent workers can provide access to scarce skills needed for special projects or peak periods.

Contingent workers provide an opportunity to “try before you buy.” It is estimated that 10% of contingent workers convert to permanent
hires.
13. No advance should be paid by the principal employer to the contractor’s employees directly. Only contractor must regulate the same.
14. Maintenance of all type of record in respect of the employees employed by the contractor should be his own responsibility and principal
When using contingent workers, employers can realize a savings of 30 to 40% in health care, unemployment insurance, life insurance,
Employee Engagement Model
employer should not intervene in such matters.
A model produced by the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development in 2006 and presented in the organization’s Employee Atti15. If the establishment is covered by the Employees’ Provident Fund & Misc. Provisions Act and the Employees’ State Insurance Act then
the preference should be given to those contractors who have their own code numbers under these Acts.
tudes and Engagement Survey’ of 2006, brings various elements of employee engagement together in one overarching model. The model,
shows the linkages and important factors in each of these elements, is provided below, with arrows indicating directions of influence:
16. To ensure to submit annual return to the prescribed authority in the prescribed form under the Act.
17. The contractor should submit the printed bills and sign under the Rubber Stamp.
18. The contractor should maintain records through his staff and not by the staff of principal employer.
19. The contractor’s labour should do only the specific work agreed by the contractor.
20. The contractor should issue the photo identity card to his workers under his name, trading style and signature.
LEVERAGING BEST PRACTICES: SKILL - POOL DEVELOPMENT
Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development for any country. Countries with higher and better
levels of skills adjust more effectively to the challenges and opportunities of world of work. As India moves progressively towards becoming a
“Knowledge Economy”, it becomes increasingly important that the country should focus on the advancement of skills and these skills have to
Figure No. 1: Employee Engagement Model
be relevant to the emerging economic environment. This requires significant progress in several areas, including infrastructure development,
[Source: CIPD (2006c)]
agricultural growth coupled with productivity improvements, financial sector growth, a healthy business environment, ably supported by a
skilled employee workforce.
Contingent workforce (also referred to as contract labour) management programs are long-term, strategic relationships in which the staffing
firm takes responsibility for the effectiveness of all aspects of the overall contract labour program as defined in Service Level Agreements

Individual factors are those such as gender, age, ethnicity and disability.

Working life describes factors such as occupation, hours of work and pay, as well as important issues such as bullying or workplace harassment.
(SLAs). These contractual relationships provide a single point of contact, overseeing the efforts of all suppliers. This document provides a
guide to applying “best practices” to all elements of a contingent workforce management program.

Management, leadership and communication refers to how employees view their managers and leaders, how much opportunity they have
to participate in organizational decision making and levels of trust. As CIPD highlights, these factors have been found in research to be
There are many benefits to this blended workforce model of Contract labour management: -
very important in determining levels of engagement. This is also the area where managers can have an important influence.

A company can expand or contract a contingent workforce as needed, minimizing the impact of industry fluctuations and providing a
buffer zone for permanent employees.
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
Attitudes to work refer to employees’ perceptions of their jobs and include levels of well-being, satisfaction, enthusiasm, commitment
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and loyalty. It is important to note here the contingent workforces are to be provided better facilities for work life balance.
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tion. Engaged employees spend a lot of their discretionary energy in delivering performance. This discretionary energy is not something that
organizations can mandate or demand. Not even the most inspiring leaders can get this, if employees choose not to offer.

Two-way interaction in this model between attitudes to work and engagement whilst satisfaction, commitment, stress and loyalty factors
feed into levels of engagement, it follows from the model that organizations that successfully engage their employees will engender great-

er levels of job satisfaction and loyalty, for example.
Talent Pool Enhancement by 4Ds
The engagement box itself refers to the CIPD’s (2006c) three types of engagement: - cognitive, emotional and physical.
Accenture research has revealed that those companies that multiply talent among both the contractual as well as the regular core employees by
increasing the contribution of individuals, teams, work groups and entire workforces are more likely to become high performing organizations.

Finally, in the model above, engagement and attitudes to work lead to outcomes for the organization, in terms of individual performance,
intent to quit and absence levels.
It is imperative to have a profound and systemic commitment to a holistic system of talent multiplication based on four capabilities viz. Defining, Discovering, Developing and Deploying skill pools acronym of which stands as 4Ds. When talent multiplication is integrated into an
organization’s strategies, processes and operations, it morphs from a key competitive mind-set into an important and unique source of competitive advantage. In order to create a talent – powered organization, the organizational framework and its core competencies are to be well effectively augmented.
Advantages to the Employer:
Contract workers are generally not unionised, hence, industrial disputes are minimal, salary bills can be minimised since they can be hired just
by paying minimum wages, if there is indiscipline, they can be sent home immediately by informing the contractor, if there is excess workforce due to economic recession their services can be withdrawn immediately by informing the contractor.
Disadvantages to the employer:
The cost of employing contract labour is in fact dearer by 10 per cent because of the service charges payable to the labour contractor. Certain
industries like Apparel Manufacturing do not encourage contract labour because the industry works on thin profit margins and cannot afford to
spend 10 per cent more towards the service charge payable to the labour contractor. Apparel industries are generally non-unionised and free
from industrial disputes.
There is zero tolerance for indiscipline and employees not following norms are forced to exit immediately. Same is the case with industries
owned by powerful politicians. In every organisation, certain activities are most important which are required to be carried out only by regular
employees. The advantages of contract employment will back fire if such activities are entrusted to be carried out by contract employees.
Challenges to the Employer:
Every job seeker prefers to work in the roles of a reputed company as a regular employee that gives him job security, social status and career
growth, none of which can be expected in any contract employment. As a result, attracting talented people into contract employment is a great
challenge. Contract employees can be sourced only in the sectors which have abundant supply of manpower against the demand.
Obligations
The contractor is responsible for payment of salary, allowances, benefits and ensuring the facilities required for health and welfare of the contract employees. However, principal employer cannot absolve from these responsibilities if the contractor fails to do so. Section 20 and 21(4)
of the above Act stipulates that principal employer should provide the above amenities if the contractor fails to do so, by recovering the cost
from the later.
Figure No. 2: Various Ways of Contractual Employee Engagement
Due to the social and emotional differentiations among the employees, it makes sense that purchasing processes, workability and responsibili-
Is it beneficial ?
ties might vary with different skill sets. The human resources staff may play a more significant role when sourcing highly skilled technical
There is an important issue which needs to be analysed about the cost and benefits of contract labour or whether it is economical to engage
resources, while procurement may lead the effort to source high-volume, less-skilled workers.
contract employees instead of hiring regular employees on company roles.
In simple terms, employee engagement refers to a state of heightened sense of ownership and commitment to goals and plans of an organiza-
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YES
Contractual Worker Engagement in current day Scenario: A Case Study: -
NOT APPLICABLE
NO
A Case related to the Contractual Employee Engagement in a reputed Public Sector Organization has been done during the summer internship
program concerning actual observance of Statutory Compliances.
Observations: 1.
Most of the workers have reported that their wages is according to the 1997-2002 wage revision and it has been more than 10 years, their
wages has not been revised so they have not got their due. As per the contractual unskilled workers, the wages they are receiving is in the
range of Rs. 75 to Rs. 90 per day which is much less than the prescribed minimum wages (Rs. 150 per day). It is to be noted that contract
workers (retired) are those section of workers who are rehired by the management on contract basis.
SATISFACTORY
NOT SATISFACTORY
Figure No. 4: Whether contract workers are being paid wages on time?
3.
Workers of job trainees and retired workers category are not prohibited to do jobs of regular workers as they have enough competence of
performing the job without any causality. Only Unskilled workers are prohibited to do regular and perennial jobs.
YES
All workers including the apprentice workers receives their wages timely from the management of the company except some of the contractual unskilled workers to whom the contractor delays the payment to 22nd to 25th of the month.
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NO
Figure 4: Whether contract workers are allowed to do regular and perennial jobs?
Figure No. 3: Whether contract workers are satisfied with their remuneration?
2.
NOT APPLICABLE
4.
There is mixed reaction among contractual workers regarding welfare measures. Some of the welfare facilities like Canteens, First Aid
etc. have been complied partially but other facilities like Rest Rooms etc. has not been complied at all.
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YES
NOT APPLICABLE
YES
NO
NOT APPLICABLE
NO
Figure No. 7: Whether Essential Amenities regarding Health and Safety is being provided to contract workers?
Following recommendations can be owned by the management for improvement of Contract Labour Engagement: Figure No. 5: Whether Canteens, Rest rooms & other employee engagement facilities are provided to contract workers?

The management should conduct awareness program to make aware to the workers of what formalities are there to be presented before
the competent authority such as ESI Offices to avail all the benefits in least time so that contractual workers can receive the benefits.
5.
The contractual worker both retired and unskilled do not get bonus though their salaries are not in accordance to the exemption as per
Bonus Act and they are every part eligible for bonus.

The distribution of Safety kits and Uniform should be even to all categories of workers because accidents do not recognize categories but
recognize loss to the man and material.

The welfare facilities should be ensured that it is made available in all lines or sections of all workers especially to casual workers can
avail it likewise first aid box etc.

The fringe benefits such as Bonus etc. should be distributed to every category of entitled workers.

The management should make ensure that the contractor distributes or disbursed the appropriate wages to Contract Labour in time and
also provide the essential amenities.

The management should make ensure that personal protective equipment’s should be worn by every worker otherwise strict action should
be taken.

The fringe benefits of Employee Deposit Linked Insurance which company pays the premium should be made aware to all the contractual
workers.
Figure No. 6: Payment of minimum bonus Eligibility of Bonus
6.
Concluding Words:
Essential Amenities is a critical issue for contractual workers as they are not provided with personal protective equipment unlike regular
While a solid strategy is a requirement of an effective contract labour program, performance gains and costs savings result only when every
workers. The contractual workers (retired) have to continue with the uniform and other safety equipment which they have availed during
element of the program is based on best practices through the employee engagement activities. It is high time for introspection of the organiza-
regular tenure. Unskilled contractual workers are only provided with gloves.
tions to remove the incompetency of system. Savings that result from a master supplier skilled in process streamlining, leveraging the skillpool expenditure, and actually “minding the store” improve the business, enhance the speed to market, and help employee morale.
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REFERENCES
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from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, UP. He has undergone industrial internships in organizations like Scooters India Limited and Oil
India Limited. Having an MBA in Upstream Asset Management from University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun Mr.

MHRD, Ministry of Human Resource Development, 1998-2008, Annual Report. New Delhi, India.
Bhattacharya has also successfully completed 14th Executive Program for Young Professional (EPYP) from IIM- Calcutta with specialization
in People Management through Hughes Onsite Learning Program.

National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) – 2009-2010.

UNESCO (1999), “New Trends in Technical and Vocational Educational Series”, Getting the Stakeholders Involved, Partnership at work
in Three Countries from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, ISBN: 92-803-1181-6. Paris.

“Leveraging Best Practices in Contract Labour Management”, Advantage Resourcing, Tokyo, Japan.

Kaushik, Anil (2011), Important Clarifications On Contract Labour, Chief Editor, Business Manager - HR Magazine, New Delhi.

Padhi, P. K. (2012), The Contractual Labour (Regulation & Abolishment) Act, 1970. Second Edn., PHI Learning Private Ltd. New Delhi.

Mejia, Robin (2008), “Taking the industry road”, Nature, Vol. 456, (June 19).

http://www.cipd.co.uk/communities/forums/employeeengagement

www.siescoms.edu/images/pdf/reserch/.../employee_engagement.pdf

www.hrreview.co.uk/.../employee-engagement...factors...employees/..

www.scribd.com/doc/.../Factors-Leading-to-Employee-Engagement
About the Authors
RAVI PRAKASH
The author Mr. Ravi Prakash is currently pursuing Masters in the field of Personnel Management & Industrial Relations (MPMIR) from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, UP. He has undergone 8 weeks of summer internship at AIRCEL Patna, the circle head office of Bihar & Jharkhand. Having a strong background in the field of personnel management, Mr. Prakash has submitted & presented papers in various national
HR Conferences & Summits. As an engineering graduate in Biotechnology from Allahabad Agricultural University, he pursued several industrial summer trainings, and participated in various seminars and workshops.
SHIVAM BHATTACHARYA
The author Mr. Shivam Bhattacharya is currently pursuing Masters in the field of Personnel Management & Industrial Relations (MPMIR)
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A Roadmap to successful Employer Branding through Social Networks
Area of employer and
employee branding
-Ajit Kumar , XISS, Ranchi
Abstract
The paper deals with the concept of employer branding through social networks, which is very important to follow in the current scenario, as
an employer, brand represents the core values of an organization. Organizations which are considered good employers have a strong brand
Employer branding objectives
Direction of branding
Activities
Branded entity
External and internal
Internal
The organization
The employee
Target of branding
Current and potential employee
Roots
Personnel/ HR management
Marketing literature
HR activities
Recruitment and selection
Advertising
External and internal
communication
Benchmarking
To ensure the company attracts
new recruits of quality and retains
existing employees
Winning the war for talent
High quality, motivated and high
performing work force
Having the competitive edge
Customers who interact with
brand employees
The management of culture
literature
Organizational socialization
literature
Marketing literature
Induction
Training and development
Performance management
Competency-based HR systems
Internal communication
To ensure employees act „on
brand“ and share the values of
the organization’s brand
Increased employee
commitment and identification
Increased customer satisfaction
and loyalty/identification
identity and a positive brand image in the marketplace. To be successful in this cut-throat competition, organizations need to attract the best of
talent market. Marketing tools associated with Brand Management have been applied by the HR (Human Resources) in order to attract, engage
and retain employees in the same way, as marketing applies such tools to attract and retain customers.
To succeed in the abridging world, marketers must create abridging brands: brands that continuously engage with people when they want,
where they want, and how they want — particularly through social media. To do so, they must first reconcile the furrow between modern con-
Employee branding objectives
Aim
sumer behavior and outmoded marketing tactics.
Intended outcomes
The paper will answer so as to “Why Social Network based Employer Branding is required along with a roadmap to successful Employer
Branding on Social Networks?”
[Table: 1]
It also deals with the challenges raised by the use of social network, which if untreated can not only damage the employer brand but can hurt
According to Keller (1993) brand equity elevated the importance of brand in marketing communication strategy and is often used to persuade
Talent retention efforts.
customers to buy a product or service. However, in recent years, especially in today’s competitive market, employer branding is used to recruit and retain good employees from a diverse work force.
Introduction
Turban and Cable (2003) have argued that firms higher in corporate social performance (CSP) have more positive reputations and are more
attractive employers to employees than firms lower in CSP.
The term “Employer Brand” was first used in the early 1990s to denote an organization’s reputation as an employer. Employer brand is understood as a one which differentiates it from other competitors in the employment market. The term also includes long term strategy that
This is where Social Networks comes into picture when you need to spread a Word of Mouth (WOM) or a Buzz to emphasize and highlight
establishes an organization’s identity as an employer in the employment market. Ambler and Barrow (1996) defines employer brand as fol-
the recent developments as well as any sort of communications with internal, external and potential stakeholders that have an impact on key
lows: “The package of functional, economic, and psychological benefits provided by employment, and identified with the employing compa-
brand elements of the company.
ny”. Minchington defines employer brand as “the image of organization as a great place to work in the mind of current employees and key
stakeholders in the external market (active and passive candidates, clients, customers and other key stakeholders). The art and science of employer branding is concerned with the attraction, engagement and retention initiatives targeted at enhancing company's employer brand. Employer branding is central to the concept in HR Marketing. It defines the personality of a company as a preferred employer. The employer
brand is the most powerful tool for attracting, engaging and retaining the right talent/culture fit that will help leaders grow their organization.
Like any brand, employer brand is about perception. As mentioned above, branding has moved into the field of Human Resources from the
discipline of marketing. In principle, brands can be seen as a set of symbols which represent a variety of ideas and attributes, the net result of
which is the public image, character or personality of an organization. As such, branding activities involve constructing particular attributes
(e.g. the values on an organization) that are considered to represent the image that a company wishes to communicate to potential employees,
current staff and the public.
Figure 1: Employer branding and its determinants
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Social Networking Sites
Monthly visit by the Users
Facebook
7012.90 M
Twitter
182 M
Pinterest
104.4 M
Linked In
85.7 M
Google+
61 M
Table 2: Monthly traffic to networking websites.
Age demography of Social Networkers:
Figure 2: Employer Branding Model
Social Media broadly does 3 things:
1.
Provides platform to connect and communicate to internal and external Talent Market.
2.
Amplify the Branding efforts of the Employer/Company.
3.
Magnifying the Brand Visibility.
Why employers should not ignore the Social Networks???
Chart 2: Distribution of User on networking websites based on age.
i.e. your current employees [Top, Middle, Lower management & Executives] as well as your prospective employees are already on these networks.
[Source: http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/social-networking-user, Facebook, Twitter user statistics journals].
Social Media Affects Every Stage of the Employers’ and Targeted Audiences’ Journey:
Chart 1: User Base with networking websites.
Employers’ have always had the ability to talk about brands and influence target audiences’ perceptions and choices about those brands. But in
the connected world, word of mouth travels faster, spreads in more unanticipated ways, and reaches a global audience. As a result, target audience have become increasingly influential in the brand-building process — not just at the point of consideration, but throughout the five phases
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of the Connected World as they learn about investigation, purchase, and interaction & to be loyal with brands (Figure 3).
Points to ponder:

Before: Cumbersome, high cost per contact.
Target audience learns about brands through social media. Forrester Consulting (2012) estimates that consumers generated more than 500
billion impressions about products and services through social media in 2011, approximately one-quarter of the number of impressions
created through all forms of online advertising. Those earned media impressions help people learn about products. In a survey of more
than 1,300 people conducted by the CMO Council and Lithium, 80% of consumers said that they are more likely to try new things based
on friends’ suggestions made in social media and 74% are more likely to encourage friends to try new products. More importantly, advertising that integrates word of mouth is proving to be effective. In a recent study, Nielsen found that Facebook users are over 50% more
likely to recall an ad when their friends are featured in it.

Now: Amiable, low cost per contact.
Consumers utilize social media to investigate brands under consideration. Forrester Consulting (2012) classifies 36% of US online adults
as “Critics” — people who contribute to ratings and reviews, blogs, or other social media channels to voice their opinions at least once
per month. Consumers are increasingly turning to the advice of Critics through social networks as they compare products. For instance,
the percentage of consumers who use ratings and reviews to inform their decisions about online purchases increased from 12% in 2009 to
57% in 2011.

Target audience increasingly consults social media as they purchase. Social media is still in its early stages of affecting retail sales, but
social networks did have an influence on 2010 holiday purchases. Soft goods retailers experienced a 45% lift in orders from social media
links during Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday. Smartphones will make social shopping a more portable and realistic scenario.
The National Retail Federation estimated that over 52% of smartphone users would use their devices for holiday shopping in 2011.

Consumers expect brands to interact with them through social media. Consumers are highly willing to interact with companies and brands
on social networking sites, but they expect something in return: 56% expect to receive exclusive deals, 34% want to hear about new prod-
[Figure 4]
ucts and services, and 22% want to be heard by the company. Additionally, listening and responding within social network is essential to
interact with fans and followers. For instance, 72% of consumers expect companies to respond to positive comments made on Facebook,
How to Brand yourself on these Social Networks???
while 57% expect them to also do so for negative comments.
Social Media provides a platform for creating awareness thereby allowing internal and external stakeholders to interact and learn about the
brand, which they investigate if it strikes them and subsequently frames their purchase decision leading to loyalty on satisfaction achieved
from the brand.
To win in the connected world, Employer must:

Articulate the brand’s social identity so the brand communicates with a unique,

Connect with your best and most likely customers by giving them a reason to like or follow the brand in social channels.

Engage people by making brand communications more participative and personally relevant.

Influence people by inspiring and enabling people to share messages about your brand with their networks.

Integrate social into the brand and product experience to make it more cohesive and useful.

Rejuvenate the brand by using insights from social channels to monitor the brand’s health and improve the brand experience.
Figure 3: Five Phases of the Connected World.
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Articulate Your Brand’s Social Identity:
Integrate By Using Social To Create A More Cohesive And Useful Experience:


Adapt brand positioning to the connected world - Social identity should be a reflection of Brand positioning like Coca-Cola uses social
media as its primary method to bring to life its brand promise of sharing “happiness.”
Integrate social technology into online and offline product experiences - Ford identified an opportunity to leverage people’s Facebook
connections to make its vehicles more social. The automaker is working on integrating the Facebook platform to create social elements
that give people the ability to listen to their friends’ music via voice command and to message with friends via voice while driving so they

can take their conversations seamlessly across their use of the Web, mobile devices, and the vehicle itself.
Create a voice for the brand’s social identity - Use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, as well as company blogs, to
express your brand’s personality in ways that can’t be delivered through brand communications but are authentic and consistent with the
brand’s positioning. Starbucks has extended its brand voice to the digital space in an authentic and organic way.

Incorporate social into customer experience management and core business processes - Walmart is pushing social network into its
online and in-store customer experience through the My Local Walmart app it developed in partnership with Facebook. The app will
tailor marketing and promotions based on factors like local weather and events and have the ability to integrate social marketing function-
Connect By Establishing A Presence In Social Channels:

Establish a gathering place for brand connections - Brands need a place for people to congregate and for conversations to aggregate.
Pedigree used Facebook throughout the
ality like check-ins and product likes.
Continuously Rejuvenate The Brand With Insights From Social Channels:
year for its Dog adoption campaign, increasing the number of fans from 55,000 to more than 1
million.

Use social channels to monitor brand health - Capitalizing on social intelligence to understand how well consumers really perceive its
brand communications, product assortment, and interaction experience.

Motivate people to form a connection and join the conversation - Red Bull began its climb to the top of the energy drink market through
grassroots marketing at college campuses and sporting events to attract people who have a zest for life. The firm continues that tradition
of building the brand one person at a time by sparking online conversations about the offline world through social media.

Listen for opportunities to improve the brand experience - AT&T is always looking for ways to stand out from the crowd. It was one of
the first companies to have a fully dedicated customer care team monitor its Facebook Page. By making its marketing, customer support,
and product development more social, the company has been able to build strong relationships with its more than 1.8 million fans on Facebook, leading to increased brand perception and sales. What’s more, the firm is over-delivering on all measures of customer service.
Engage By Using Social To Make The Brand More Personal and Participative:

Get consumers involved in the campaign - Marketing communications are built to elicit a response, whether that’s emotional, mental,
Consumer giant Proctor & Gamble also feeds consumer insights gathered via social sites back into their product and brand building process to ensure they continually delight their consumers.
The “Earned Buzz” Top 10:
or physical. Through social media, consumers are able to participate with the brand and even become part of the message itself.

Rank
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Create more personally relevant content - Employers need to use the information people share to offer a better, more personalized
experience.
Influence By Inspiring And Enabling People To Share Your Brand Messages:

Inspire people to share the brand message - Getting people to talk about brands with their friends and their followers is one of the biggest opportunities for employers.

Category
Facebook
Google
Apple
eBay
Microsoft
Sony
Amazon
Samsung
HP
Disney
Buzz Index(Average 100)
1,331
1,229
1,093
475
442
437
425
301
282
280
Use paid media to increase the distribution of stories people are sharing about your brand - Paid media is critical to building momentum in social media. Paid media helps make people aware of a new product or get them engaged in a brand campaign so that they
have a reason to use social media to tell their friends about a brand.
[Table 3] (Source: Brandz 2012 report)
Learning for Employer Brands: A Socialbakers Customer Case Study:
[Source: www.socialbakers.com]
Fortune Global 500 Company Henkel Deploys Socialbakers to Maximize Return on Integrated Social Media Campaigns.
Founded in 1876, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, an international company, makes branded products for laundry and home care (Persil, Purex, Pril),
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cosmetics and toiletries (Schwarzkopf, Fa, Dial), and adhesives (Loctite, Ceresit, Teroson). Most of Henkel's operations are centered in Eu-
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
rope, although its ownership of The Dial Corporation gives it access to the US market. Henkel serves customers in more than 125 countries
Negative Word Of Mouth (WOM)/ Rumors’ - Intentional rumors and negative WOM can be easily tackled by having a social presence
on that media. All sorts of counter-communications can be provided on the respective platforms to avoid confusion.
from offices extending nearly everywhere but Greenland and Australia.
Challenge:
Henkel is serious about its social media initiative. With 10 Twitter accounts, 45 Facebook pages and 8 YouTube channels, not to mention
Flickr, LinkedIn and several other networks and blogs, the company has a substantial investment in social networks to engage with customers.
Henkel also has been diligent about integrating all of these social media accounts for each of its brands for consistent branding. The company’s Laundry & Homecare Business unit sought to understand into how each of its brands were performing on social networks—not only
looking at analytics for its own pages but also how the brands and the business unit is performing against competitors.
Solution provided by Socialbakers:
Henkel’s Laundry & Homecare business unit will use Socialbakers Engagement Analytics Pro to monitor and track all Facebook brand pages.
Conclusion:
From these discussions we can conclude that Employer branding is an indispensable tool in today’s scenario and so is the Social Network,
time is ripe when employers need to harness the immense potential of these Social Networks, the pioneers stand to gain first movers advantage
and establish a mark that differentiates it from other rivals.
We can also address the issues pertaining to retention of quality human resource through branding and connecting to your employees apart
from attraction of new talent. We saw factors that make Employer Branding on Social Networks a vital tool along with a roadmap beginning
from articulation, connection, engagement, influence, integration & rejuvenation of the employer brand on these networks. The challenges &
opportunities are immense even in the Indian scenario.
References:
Benefits of using the analytics tool:

AMBLER, T and BARROW, S The employer brand. In The Journal of Brand Management, 1996, Vol. 4, pp. 185-206. ISSN 1350-231X

Track and monitor Facebook performance to identify trends for informed decision-making.

BACH, S. Managing Human Resources. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 452 p. ISBN 978-1-4051-1850-7

Analyze how competitors or other leading brands are performing.

BARROW, S. and MOSLEY, R. The Employer Brand: Bringing the Best of Brand Management to People at Work. Chichester: John

Identify top fans and how many interactions they have with Henkel’s Facebook pages.

Find the most engaging content with in-depth analysis of Henkel’s and competitor content.

Monitor what Henkel’s brand fans are saying to determine what they like or dislike.

Generate customized PDF reports to distribute internally.
Wiley & Sons: 2005. 207 p. ISBN 978-0-470-01273-4
“Social Media is another tool in any marketer’s kit for expanding brand awareness and for initiating campaigns. It makes logical sense that we

Aaker, D.A. (1991): “Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name”, The Free Press, New York, NY.

Peters, T. (1999): “The Brand You 50: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an Employeeinto a Brand that Shouts Distinction, Knopf
Publishers”, New York, NY.

Sutherland, M. M., Torricelli, D. G., & Karg, R. F. (2002): “Employer of choice branding for knowledge workers”, South African Journal
of Business Management, 33(4), pp.1320

Keller, K.L. (1993): “Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer based brand equity”, Journal of Marketing, 57, pp 122.
needs to look at Socialbakers if they have not already.”

www.socialbakers.com
-Felix Schmidt [Global Digital Marketing Manager for Henkel, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA]

www.facebook.com

www.linkedin.com

www.twitter.com

http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/social-networking-user
need to track and analyze how these programs are performing through Facebook, Twitter, etc. Socialbakers has developed an application that
makes it easy for us to get sophisticated metrics on our performance through Facebook. I think any company with a social media initiative
Challenges raised by Social Networks for Employer and their Brand Image:

Rival firms are also getting a platform to make offers to your current Talent base as well as interact with your employees’ easily
without disclosing their identity - Managing your Branding efforts to some extent helps to inculcate loyalty among your workforce and
periodic interaction/communication with the workforce can help you effectively understand these trends.
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
Brandz 2012 top 100 report.

Forrester Consulting (Feb 2012)
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Employee Engagement in Contractual Employment
-Gnana Prakash Reddy,
Achintya
PGDM - HR, Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar

Collins, C.J. and Stevens, C.K. (2002): “The relationship between early recruitment related activities and the application decisions of new
labor market entrants: a brand equity approach to recruitment”.
If one thinks about it, for the last 30 years or so employee research has been a critical component of organizational strategy. Over the last
three decades we have migrated from employee satisfaction to employee commitment levels, then over the last decade to employee engagement. There has been significant recent research that states engagement will only take an organization so far. Our experience and the research have proven another key element to sustainable organizational results is enablement. Meaning, giving your front line the right learning, flexibility and support to solve customer problems and operate at high performance levels. Why should a C-Suite executive care about
adding enablement to engagement?
A recent study of 41 multi-national organizations which found those with high engagement had 2-4% improvement in operating and net profit
margin. The same study revealed those with low engagement showed a decline of 2% in operating and net margin. In this article , we have
tried to find out the reasons for the employee engagement. Then we have tried to explain what is employee engagement, what are the types
and drivers for that .Any engagement will face certain challenges that has been explained and lastly we have tried to find out new trends of
employee engagement.
Introduction
Employee engagement" is one of the popular concepts in HR these days. It has of late been the buzzword in HR corridors. The organisations
are realising that nothing can be more damaging for any workplace than disgruntled or disengaged employees- and hence, the increased stress
on employment engagement. Gone are those days when job satisfaction was the ultimate choice of the employee. With the passage of
time ,satisfaction has changed to engagement. Earlier organisation measures only contentment but for competitive advantage they require
something more than contentment, that is commitment which drive to go beyond the call of the duty to work towards organisational goals. KA
Narayan, president HR, Raymond Group states, “The difference between a happening workplace and an uninspiring workplace depends on the
levels of employee engagement. The success of an organisation revolves around the percentage of engaged employees.”
Why employee engagement
1.
Age factor and generation issues:- Talent management was top of the list of business concerns before the world economy took a
nosedive. And we should not forget the lessons learned from previous recessions that the underlying skill shortages and demographic
changes will come back to bite us on the upturn from the prevailing problems. There are areas of both similarity and difference between
individuals from the different generational cohorts. It is assumed that there are four generations in the workforce – Veterans, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y. Building a culture that fully engages employees of varying generations will serve to ensure that as
the economy turns, companies are able to retain their future leaders. With baby boomers filling most executive positions, there is a disproportionate amount of leadership talent and knowledge vested in employees who will soon be leaving the workforce. Not only are younger
employees insufficiently prepared to fill the knowledge and leadership gap—there simply aren't enough to fill the shortage. This shortfall
is coming because the number of baby boomers born within an 18-year period, from 1946 to 1964, was so huge—78 million people. And
U.S. birth rates have been on a steady decline since the late 1970s. Citizens of child-bearing age just aren't having enough kids to meet the
country's need for future workers.
When it comes to generational diversity, the risk of inaction is significant:

Corporations stand to lose more employees through lack of engagement in the short-term and head count attrition over the long term
as the economy stabilizes.
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
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Corporations will lose opportunities to capture experiential learning and institutional knowledge buried in the minds of our veterans,
talent left organizations, and productivity suffered. Skilled employees were not willing to put in overtime and extra effort, and employers
before they retire.
started to see increases in productivity slow down. This situation created the need for something new, and at least one of the initiatives
Our future leaders, Gen Y and Gen X will not develop and remain focused on their careers at their current companies - instead their
focus will be around where to go for their next job.

Veterans – or more significantly – the experienced boomers who reach their late 50’s and 60’s - will spend the last of their years
waiting to retire, collecting a (big) pay, and yet, by Gallup terms, are disengaged or worse, and companies will lose out on the oppor-
was employee engagement.
3.
Increase in competition level :- Employees are pivotal to the performance of any organisation. As some of the most influential business
research around the balanced scorecard, service-profit chain and organisational performance drivers has found, employees are the first,
vital link in almost any corporate profit chain:
tunity for these folks to mentor, teach, learn from, and engage with the younger generation to develop a new and improved corporate
culture.
The changing work force
The recession and its aftermath has heightened the need for organisations to understand their employee engagement levels. Markets have
tightened, redundancies have been widespread and restructuring has been the norm rather than the exception. This has changed the relationship between employees, their employers, their customers and the performance of their organisations. Trust in leadership has plumFrom the above graph it is quite evident why the attitude of the employees are changing with changing time. Greater variation in age within a company actually has a negative impact on satisfaction of the individuals. They have more tendency to switch over to other companies. A greater According to a 2012 MetLife report, "more than half (54%) of Gen Y workers agree that given the choice they hope to be
meted; competition for customers has rocketed; and relative efficiency, productivity and performance are even more important differentiators for investors. Attracting, engaging and retaining talent is, therefore, vital to creating customer engagement and, in turn, driving profitability, growth and shareholder return.
working for another employer in 2012, compared to 37% of Gen X workers, 27% of younger boomers and 21% of older boomers. Thus
organisation needs to understand them as an individuals and do not concentrate to satisfy them on one or two parameters, they should try to
What is Employee engagement ?
bring more commitment in their employees. Thus to bring about commitment they need to be engaged.
Employee engagement has its roots in business psychology. For both businesses and employees to reap the full benefits of engagement, people
must be connected to the business on all three levels that are rational emotional and motivational
2.
Change in attitude :- A review of recent history helps to clarify why it is so popular today. Prior to the 1980s, employers expected loyalty to the organization, and in exchange for that commitment, they offered lifetime employment. Then in the 1980s organizations started to
change that contract. With increased global competition, employers needed to be more flexible in their deployment of employees. Plants
were closed and then reopened in countries where wages were lower, and as business became global, leaders needed more control over
wage and benefit costs to compete effectively. Employees learned the hard way (through layoffs) that loyalty was no longer rewarded.
The business benefits of an engaged workforce are far reaching. The more engaged employees are the greater their belief that they make a
measurable contribution to customer satisfaction, product or service quality and cost effectiveness. Employee retention is also likely to improve, 54% of fully engaged employees say they have no plans to leave their organisation, compared to just 13% of disengaged employees.
College seniors were told they could no longer expect long-term employment, and career progress became viewed as a spiral instead of a
Recent research by Towers Perrin-ISR has proved that there is a link between employee engagement and financial performance, and it pro-
ladder. The rules of the game changed, and leaders in business initiated the evolution. The workforce has changed. Employers wanted it
vides some compelling evidence.
to change; however, in many cases, they did not quite want everyone to change. The new employment contract backfired. High-quality
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In a study, it was found that organisations with high levels of employee engagement outperformed those with below average levels of employee engagement on all three financial measures:

Operating income: Companies with highly engaged employees collectively saw operating incomes rise by $389.95 million or 19.2%, but
companies with below average levels of engagement collectively saw it fall by $664.14 million or 32.7%.

Net income growth :The group of companies with highly engaged employees saw net income grow by 13.7% or $121.38 million but it
fell by 3.8% or £33.67 million among companies with low levels of employee engagement.

Earnings per share: Organisations with highly engaged employees collectively saw earnings per share increase by 27.8% compared to
companies with low levels of engagement which saw a fall of 11.2%.
Higher levels of employee engagement in an organisation can clearly help improve business performance. But where should companies begin?
To foster a sense of engagement in a workforce it’s vital to have leaders that motivate employees and win their respect.
Leaders should act as role models and inspire employees. However, in the UK, employees think there is a disconnect between what leaders do
and what they say. The 2007 Global Workforce Survey highlights some areas for improvement. To foster a sense of engagement in an organisation people need to believe that their senior management is sincerely interested in their well-being, but only 29% of UK employees think that
this is the case.
Communication and transparency are two other areas that require a greater focus from business leaders. Only 31% of employees currently feel
that their senior managers communicate openly and honestly. Moreover, only 41% agree that senior managers try to be visible and accessible.
In this behavioural engagement may be more beneficial to firms from a productivity perspective, whereas state engagement creates a pleasant
A sense among employees that they are trusted and respected by their senior leaders also helps inspire employee to be engaged. Currently only
environment for people to work in.
3% of employees believe that senior managers treat them as if they are a key part of the organisation. In addition, too many employees say that
they think they are treated as if they don’t matter, with 60% reporting that they feel that their senior managers treat them as just another organi-
Now in today’s scenario most of the employee engagement depends on drivers which are different for different organization. Following are
sational asset to be managed.
most common divers across organization’s employee engagement surveys are as follows
Overall the benefits of fostering engagement in a workforce are far reaching for both organisations and their employees. Businesses that successfully reach this goal are likely to see significant improvements in performance, a rise in profits and a greater ability to attract and retain the
best employees. Employees will be more likely to feel motivated to work hard to ensure the success of their company and have a greater belief
that they are making a significant contribution to that success. Furthermore, they will be less likely to look for opportunities elsewhere. The
workforce in many UK companies represents an untapped reservoir of competitive advantage. The rewards for companies that successfully
engage their staff are multiple and are clearly worth the investment.
Broadly, employee engagement divides employees into engaged, not engaged and disengaged. An organization should maximize engaged
employee and reduce disengaged employee. It is very imperative to note that disengaged employees are not only affects the growth but also
digresses the growth of organization.
Types of engagement
Let us see the types of engagement.
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These can be divided further into sub dividers which would depend on organization to organization.
Presently how do organization do it ?
Most common way of employee engagement is engagement survey which happens once every year. After the surveys a detailed statistical
analysis is done to get know what divers affect the engagement most, what are strengths and weakness and what are threats and opportunity
that organization can work on to improve the employee engagement.
Following are the Steps to conduct Employee Engagement Cycle:
1.
Decide the objectives of engagement process.
2.
Conduct focused group discussion of top managements and important stake holders to decide on the divers.
3.
Prepare the survey, conduct and drive the survey to be taken by most of employees.
4.
Analyse the results of survey: like factor loading, sensitivity analysis and preparing dashboards.
5.
Develop action plan, clearly mention the roles and responsibility of stakeholders(top management and middle level management) executing the plan and then facilitating the process.
6.
Feedback of all the stake holders to improve the whole experience of employee engagement.
Challenges faced by organization to implement employee engagement



Support from top management is necessary: more 70% of companies do Employee engagement but fail to execute the action plan suc-
New trends and future scope
cessfully. It should not be just a mechanical process rather results of survey should be used to improve the employee engagement. For this
1.
top management support is required because they are the one to lead the initiative of change and action plan decided to improve the En-
strategic value. The brand identity of a services organization is established and reinforced by the employees, who constantly engage with
gagement.
customers and understand their business pain-points. Rethinking traditional organizational hierarchies and in many ways inverting the
It should be clearly understood that engagement levels depends on different diver in different companies that too with different weight
management pyramid, making managers and those in enabling functions as accountable to frontline employees as those employees are to
ages to divers.
their managers. It means empowering employees with knowledge, resources and infrastructure in a work environment that nurtures inno-
Taking care of employees sentiment while changing things around : One need to make sure that change is done taking employee into
Confidence.

Employee first and customer second:- At HCL Technologies, they have shattered the myth that management is the primary creator of
One more biggest challenge is confidentially of the surveys taken: Employee need to be assured that whatever they put on survey will be
vation and it means maximizing returns for our customers. After all, empowered and motivated employees tend to offer better value in
their engagements, directly influencing customer satisfaction .
Employees First is more than a philosophy, it’s a growing set of processes designed to further that philosophy:
confidential as they would be also giving opinion about their superior and top management

Understanding how culture plays important role in Employee engagement as it would directly decide some of the divers engagement
would depend on.

Wrong interpretation of statistical analysis and working on wrong divers would lead to reducing employee engagement rather than increasing it.
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Talent Mobility: Managing Expectations of Young Talent - A perspective of Indian Employees
-Sidharth Panigrahi
T.A.Pai Management Institute
Introduction
Allen et al. (2010) utilized the evidence based understanding to bridge the gap between the theoretical concepts and practical applications in
the domain of talent retention, and focused on guidelines for evidence –based retention strategies. The study also focused on cause-effect relationships, understanding of turnover and application of knowledge. Determining a turnover involves assessing three parameters: turnover rates,
turnover costs and functionality of employees leaving the company. Turnover rate for a specific period of time can be calculated by dividing
the number of employees leaving the organization by average number of employees (Heneman & Judge, 2006). Retention of certain employees is much needed for an organization, might present diminishing marginal returns (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2007).
The cost of selection, recruitment and training of new employees usually exceed 100% of annual salary of replacement (Cascio, 2006). Talent
exodus not only drains out money, but also time. Previous studies (Mitchell et al., 2001; Cascio, 2006) have estimated the total costs to range
from 90% to 200% of annual salary. Estimation by PriceWaterhouse Coopers (2006) found that costs associated with turnover usually comprise 12% of pretax income for average company, and approximately 40% for organizations companies with 75th percentile rate of turnover.
2.
Story telling method :- Stories are the best things that enables the employees to work for the mission and vision of the organisa-
Significant issues related to talent retention comprises of direct costs, organizational memory loss, loss of experienced mentors and work dis-
tion .Different stories motivate different employees , which helps to reach to individuals and make them understand the essence of the
ruptions. Retention strategy can be either short term: retaining talents whose skills are urgently needed for short term projects, or long term:
goal of the organisation. Employees can't be engaged by peripheral interventions they need to be looked as individuals with distinct
the high performers who also are the run of the mill person. The requirement of external talent raises the bar of this hurdle further, as social
needs. What is most important is that they need to be linked with the broader organizational goals. Meaningfulness in work need to be
and demographic landscape keep changing every day. The study comes at the backdrop of aggressive recruitment which still occurs (Smith,
created and resources, tools and procedures should be made available to employees so that they can add their best to the organization. The
2009). An interesting observation was studied by Trevor & Nyberg (2008) who found that survivors of large-scale layoff pursue aggressive
defining feature of employee engagement is 'discretionary effort' put in by the employees. If employees have to get motivated to put in the
hiring strategies.
'discretionary effort', just speaking to them and telling them what is happening in the organization (and even just listening to them) won't
3.
be sufficient. To get discretionary effort, both the hearts and minds of the employees have to be engaged .
Trevor (2001) found that high unemployment have a little impact on the turnover of demanded talent or high skill performers. Underlining the
Continuous rather than annual :-Most of the organisation treat employee engagement as an annual event , i.e, once a year and the
former statement, we find an impetus of understanding the subject of talent retention better. Despite myriads of study in the domain of talent
whole essence of employee engagement is lost. One should understand that employee engagement is not a discrete event rather it is a
management, managers hold several misconceptions about turnover.
continuous event. By continuous event, we meant that employees have to be engaged throughout the year, So we need to have a platform
One of the misconceptions within managers is that all turnovers are bad. However this might not be always true. To understand the perspective
wherein there will be a continuous feedback of how employees feel. This will ensure that employee engagement becomes a lead indicator
of viewing a turnover, Girffeth & Hom (2000) classified turnover into three dimensions: 1. Voluntary Vs involuntary, 2. Dysfunctional Vs
rather than a lag indicator, which in turn will help the top management to take quick decisions or actions to maintain the employee en-
functional, 3. Avoidable Vs unavoidable.
gagement healthy.
While voluntary turnover is exercised by the employee, involuntary turnover is organization driven. Talent flooding out through voluntary
turnover is the one which the strategists and human resource personnel at organizations target to retain. Dysfunctional turnover (Todor &
Krackhardt, 1982), such as exodus of high performers or people with difficult to acquire/replace skills, hurts organization more than functional
turnover (exit of employees whose skills can be replaced easily). Avoidable turnover (Abelson, 1987) occurs for reasons that are in control of
the company; where as unavoidable turnover occurs for reasons beyond the purview of the company.
Organizations need to have a clear understanding of benefits accrued and costs incurred with turnover and retention. The need of the hour is a
shared consensus within the leadership and managers, so as to reach a common decision on talent retention.
The benefits of arresting turnover range from improvement in employee moral to growth in revenues (Huselid, 1995; Batt, 2002). Additionally, it erases negative impact which rises of exodus during turnover of employees with high social capital (Gupta et al., 1998; Gupta et al.,
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2005). At the same time demographic evolution, social changes, rising entrepreneur ventures, lack of education programs and such other issues
Purpose of study
continue to pose challenge to organizations to retain right talent. All these issues coupled with evolving technology and borderless world (i.e.
As per study by A.T.Kearney, it was found that the number of resource searches undertaken by its clients in 1997 was 15% higher than that of
globalization) makes it imperative for companies to retain and recruit talent with the right skill-set. Predicting individual turnover has turned
1996, which was a record. Joh R. Sibbald, St. Louis head hunter, found that of 150 upcoming employees 80% had changed employers.
tougher as studies by Griffeth et al. (2000) found pay level and pay satisfaction to be weaker predictors for turnover decisions.
A prime reason for increased luring of employees is cross recruitment by companies in today’s evolving a competitive world. For instance
information technology companies recruit leaders from various non-IT domains (banking and capital markets, energy, supply chain, etc) to not
Employees continue to engage in organizations as long as the inducement offered to them are greater than the contributions provided by them
only bring experience to table, but also leverage their expertise to better synergize with their client partners. The truth which prevails today in
(March & Simon, 1958). Inducements can be specific and tangible (such as pay) or intangible (better working conditions, etc). The induce-
the world of talent retention is that market, not the organization, ultimately decides the movement of employees. However, this reason should
ments play a major role when employees evaluate various alternatives. In evaluation of various alternatives, employees engage in various kind
not stop organizations from coming forward and formulating various talent retention strategies. As Capelli (2000) noted “the objective is not to
of job search behavior such as developing intentions, evaluating alternatives and engaging in searches (Hom & Griffeth, 1991; Mobley, 1977;
prevent water from flowing out, but to control its flow.” Companies today have realized this observation and shifted their focus on various
Steel, 2002). Satisfaction of all employees turns out to be an Achilles heels for companies. As a consequence, organizations today focus on
talent management programs.
retention strategy of specific employees.
Talent poaching gives company a one-stop shop for expanding into regions. Companies have been prudent to consider retention in a positive
A third myth among managers is that people quit because they are dissatisfied with jobs. While job dissatisfaction is an important factor, it is
sense (i.e. not disrupting the organization harmony or synergy), but also are making calculated decision by optimizing the cost of employee
driving force in fewer than half of individual turnover decisions (Lee et al., 1999). Instead path to turnover are initiated by shocks (Lee &
turnover. Apparently the use of outside hiring as a strategic tool is expected to grow in future (Capelli, 2000). This comes at the backdrop of
Mitchell, 1994). Shocks vary from expected, unexpected, job-related, and non job-related, negative, positive and neutral (Mitchell et al., 2001).
various organizational theories cases which emphasizes the positives of selection carried out by company itself. The war for talent in labour
Retention strategies would focus on understanding the shocks (whether it is organizational or non organizational) and eliminating it, offering
market is intensifying. Unfortunately, the skilled labour pool is shrinking in number.
incentives (such as partnering or sabbatical for higher education) , making the workplace more competitive and common retention manage-
Companies have understood the message clearly that retaining a talent is beneficial than poaching new talent. The cost of acquisition, training
ment activities (workplace conditions, attitudes, etc).
and then losing a newly acquired employee is multiple times the cost of losing an existing employee, both in terms of money and time. Organizations rely on various mechanisms to retain their talent: compensation, job design, job customization, social ties and location (Capelli, 2000).
Managers often fall in the tap of standardizing the retention strategies. As described earlier, each type of turnover needs a specific strategy to
cater with. Work of Briner et al. (2009) noted that an effective evidence-based management needs integration of multiple sources of data in a
Compensation has witnessed a serious attention by employees and employers as both parties continue to negotiate in order to complete the
particular context. Job embeddeness involves multiple approaches of engaging employees in jobs (Mitchell et al., 2001). Allen et al. (2010)
deal. Today, poaching talent is nonetheless equal to signing superstars or marquee players, with heft packages (golden hellos), heavy compen-
classifies retention strategies into two types: systematic strategies and targeted strategies. While systematic strategies comprise of general prin-
sation (golden handcuffs) and other such lucrative mechanisms popping up periodically in employment contract agreements.
ciples of retention management, targeted strategies focus on organization specific drivers of employee turnover. When combined together, the
By carefully designing the job profile (tasks and responsibilities), employer can exert substantial influence on retention rates. Resto(2008), for
manager gets a prowess to strengthen the retention strategies and tighten the loose screws.
instance, mentioned his experience of how clarity and simplicity helped him in getting engaged with the job. Initially perceiving his profile to
Additionally managers become myopic of the efforts needed to influence the turnover decisions by constraining their available knowledge
be boring, he was quick to change his affinity after a healthy discussion with manager (who outlined the roles, responsibilities, expectation
(Larrick, 2009). Making employees clear about organization process, the expectations from them and of them helps in not only broadening the
from, and employee’s expectation in the job). A typical example of job design is the United Parcel Service (UPS). By identifying loading
knowledge in the domain of employee turnover, but also helps in taking more informed decisions.
operations as the one bothering its critical workforce (i.e. drivers), UPS segregated the task, isolated it from the existing task and increased the
retention rate of drivers. The task was assigned to temporarily employees, where the turnover was high. However, the low criticality of task
did not bother the company much while losing its employees performing that task.
Employee Utility
Long Term
Short Term
Possibility
Diffi-
Focus on providing customized
Milk the talent. If possible look
of skill set
cult
incentives
for transitioning the skill set
predictability to the element of employee turnover, and in turn, device strategies accordingly. Job rotation also helps in increasing employee
satisfaction and filling up the shoes during turnover.
Besides job designing (through contracts and conditions described above), companies can tailor jobs to suit the needs of employees. But mak-
procurement
Having set contract, clear agreement, fixed termination conditions and minimum commitment period agreement also helps companies to add
Easy
Utilize them as the run of the
mill person
Hire and fire
ing the incentives flexible (such as allowing picking up child from school at a particular time, etc), companies can forge strong relations with
employees and help retain their skilled employees. However, the prospect of job design should be carefully calibrated and monitored, as it may
also stick those employees who do not add much value to the company.
Figure 1: Employee Utility Grid underlining the retention/layoff strategies for different set of employees
We often assume that a loyal employee is committed and a non-loyal employee isn’t. However, study (Capelli, 2000) found that commitment
and loyalty doesn’t go hand in hand. For instance, it was found that having short term project, which warrants low loyalty, helps employee be
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clear of roles and engage in project and thereby demonstrate a higher level of commitment than otherwise.
Methodology
While compensation package showcase the tangible aspect of employee retention strategy, strengthening the social ties of the employees is an
The first phase involved the use of depth interviews of respondents at random to assess the key parameters for the study. Respondents mostly
intangible aspect which helps in employee retention. This factor has its share of drawbacks as strengthening of social ties can also pull back
comprised of people from Information Technology industry in India and aged 21-30 years. The results of the primary research were confirmed
those employees whose contribution to the company isn’t substantial. Proving favorable location is another way of retaining employees. Loca-
to be in accordance with the demographics of the region. Based on the secondary research followed by focused group discussions, we arrived
tion, however, may lead to increased bias, with larger employees moving to opportunity favored location.
at 21 variables: Role Clarity, Role Conflict, Promotion Opportunities, Job Scope, Work Overload, Routine tasks, Pay, Rapport with supervisor,
Supervisor satisfaction, Coworker satisfaction, Team satisfaction, Stress Level, Communication, Participative decision making, Tenure, Age,
The topic of employee turnover and retention is subject to the labor availability in market, with appropriate skills. For instance, a large number
Personal responsibilities, Education, Competition, Organization Commitment, Job Satisfaction. We administered the survey to 100 working
of companies in Ireland recruit fresh talent from Irish universities. While this initiative has several benefits such as lowered cost of hiring and
professionals and ex-employees of organizations. The results of the survey were then checked for data consistency. Eighty five responses were
influx of fresh ideas, it comes at the cost of experience and broken relationships with talents (which goes with the exodus of seasoned employ-
finally filtered for analysis.
ees).
The final number of variables(considering the factor loading and communalities) turned out to be nine: Promotion Opportunities, Job Scope,
Simplification and standardization of jobs are also some of the ways of retaining talent. When coupled with cross training, they help employee
Work Overload, Routine tasks, Pay, Rapport with supervisor, Education, Competition and Job Satisfaction. While promotion opportunities
to understand end-to-end business, fill the gap of seasoned employees, groom themselves, rise and clinch the opportunity.
refer to the available platform for intangible reward of promotion, job scope explains the focus of the task. Work overload provides the proxy
A company can shift its gears from choosing from a sought-after-labor pool to hiring some of the risky employees. While this initiative does
of whether the individual employee is overloaded or not by tasks. Pay, rapport with supervisor, education level of employee, competition in
have a huge risk, it brings in prospect of recruiting gold out of garbage (i.e. get the best talents at low cost). Additionally, it also helps in forg-
the organization, job satisfaction and routine fashion of assigned are the rest of the variables. The KMO sampling adequacy rate of .66 validat-
ing loyalty with those employees who do not find lucky enough to be considered by organizations.
ed the study, as top three factors were able to explain 65% of variance.
Organizations have also understood the power of collaborations and shared resources. A prime example is aerospace manufacturing industry.
The company winning the contract often hires the specialists from its competitors on a temporary basis. Additionally, the example of collabo-
Results and Discussions
ration between stakeholders(such as corporate, government, labor, etc) such as Wallmart India illustrate the emerging strategy of forging part-
The factor which accounts for highest level of variance of thirty one percent was discovered to comprise of five variables: Promotion Opportu-
nerships and honing the skills of labor market to make it industry ready( Milligan and Nalbantian, 2012).
nities, Job Scope, Pay, Rapport with supervisor, Job Satisfaction. The second factor, which accounted for 22 percent variance, comprised of
Education and Competition as variable. The third factor was able to explain 11 percent of variance, and comprised of work overload and rou-
Study (Millligan and Nalbantian, 2012) in the field of talent acquisition and retention have also discovered a gap between the skill require-
tine tasks.
ments of companies and the lack of those skills in the labour pool. As a result despite of high unemployment, many places are unable to provide companies the necessary human capital that it needs to sustain its business. Companies have identified this gap and are working to sharpen the skill-set of the labor pool.
1
Various collaborations today are forged to bridge this gap: intra organization collaboration, inter organization collaboration, regional level
collaboration and global level collaboration (Millligan and Nalbantian, 2012). Intra organization collaboration includes collaboration across
functions, units and geographies and is usually vital in designing and implementing of talent retention strategies. Inter organization collaboration involves partnerships within organizations to address the issue of talent scarcity (for example the aerospace manufacturing industry). Recollaboration includes partnership with government, international organizations, sectors and other stakeholders.
Objective of study
Various studies (Phillips, 1998; Griffeth et al., 2000; Bodner et al., 2007) have tried to explore the drivers of employee turnover. While the
strongest turnover is associated with withdrawal process (such as job search intentions, turnover intentions, job search behaviors, thought of
quitting workplace and perceived alternatives), leadership and relationships (supervisor satisfaction, leader-member exchange, co-worker satisfaction and work group cohesion) essays the opposite side of the story. Other predicators such as on-boarding(weighted application blanks,
specialization tactics, realistic job previews), job characteristics(role clarity, role conflict, promotion opportunities, job scope, role overload,
.857
-.004
-.085
JobScope
.667
-.105
.039
-.098
.112
.766
.688
.014
.061
.740
.220
.083
-.031
.299
.871
.836
.128
.799
.862
.069
-.183
.119
.192
.111
Table 1: Rotated Component Matrix
routinization, pay and pay satisfaction), work environment(stress, communication, participation & decision making and distributive justice),
individual characteristics(tenure, children, age, kinship responsibilities, education, married, sex, cognitive ability and race) and key attitudes
(organizational commitment and job satisfaction) also drive the employee turnover in organizations.
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PromotionOpportunities
WorkOverload
Routinetasks
Pay
Rapportwithsupervisor
Education
Competition
JobSatisfaction
gional level collaboration includes public-private partnerships intended to foster talent mobility and development of skill-set. Global level
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The above mentioned implications provide an impetus for organizations to focus firstly on promotion opportunities, job scope, pay, rapport
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
with supervisor and job satisfaction, and can look into these variables to assess level of morale within employees. However, the variables must
be looked from the perspective of employees, which makes the job of leaders a challenging one in retaining talent.
We identify the first factor as the organizational dimensions, as the variables are influenced within the parameters of organizational aspect.
The next factor, which comprises of Education and Competition, speaks about the two tenants of environmental dimensions. The last factor,
my of Management Executive, 15, 96–108.

Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C., Lee, T. W., Sablynski, C. J.,& Erez, M. (2001). Why people stay: Using job embeddedness to predict voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 1102–1121.

Trevor, C. O., & Nyberg, A. J. (2008). Keeping your headcount when all about you are losing theirs: Downsizing, voluntary turnover
rates, and the moderating role of HR practices. Academy of Management Journal, 51, 259 –276.
comprising of work overload and routine tasks, indicates the dimensions associated with tasks in organization.
Limitations
Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C., & Lee, T. W. (2001). How to keep your best employees: Developing an effective retention policy. Acade-

Smith, R. C. (2009, February 7). Greed is good. Wall Street Journal, p. W1.

Trevor, C. O. (2001). Interactions among actual ease of movement determinants and job satisfaction in the prediction of voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 621–638.
The results, although are statistically relevant, still might not reflect the real world scenario. The three factors do not completely explain the
100% variance in talent retention and warrants further study. Additionally, the study was conducted for ex-employees and current employees

Dalton, D. R., Todor, W. D., & Krackhardt, D. M. (1982).
of Information Technology companies. The issue of talent retention being prevalent across all industries needs to be focused on other indus-

Turnover overstated: A functional taxonomy. Academy of Management Review, 7, 117–123.

Abelson, M. A. (1987). Examination of avoidable and unavoidable turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72(3), 382–386.

Huselid, M. (1995). The impact of human resource management on practices, on turnover, productivity, and corporate financial perfor-
tries too.
Conclusion
The study was aimed at understanding the prime variables impacting employees in India. We derived three factors which helped us explain the
perception of respondents towards talent retention in view of nine parameters. The paper sets a platform for organization and researchers to
mance. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 291–313.

45, 587–597.
continue studies on similar lines which would help decipher the perceptions of employees on the impact due to various parameters ultimately
impacting the retention strategy of organization.
Batt, R. (2002). Managing customer services: Human resource practices, quit rates, and sales growth. Academy of Management Journal,

Shaw, J., Delery, J., Jenkins, G., & Gupta, N. (1998). An organization-level analysis of voluntary and involuntary turnover. Academy of
Management Journal, 41, 511–525.
Scope of further studies

Real-time simulation exercises carried out at workplace would bridge the gap between the statistics and real world. It would be interesting to
see if these same results are reflected in study carried out in other industrial domains. A multi geographic (within India) study could be carried
out involving larger number of target audience.
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ABSTRACT
-saratoga/assets/saratoga-improvingretention.pdf.
Better management of the international migration of highly skilled people may provide a way to expand the global talent pool as well as to
allow existing talent to be used more efficiently. Two broad trends distinguish economic life in the early twenty-first century: globalization
and rising knowledge-intensity. More people from more diverse places are interconnected more fully through markets than was the case in
previous centuries. The products that they are exchanging derive more of their value from skills and ideas than from brute labour and raw materials than they used to. These trends could be mutually reinforcing. Globalization may continually create larger markets and new niches for
knowledge-intensive products; knowledge-intensive producers may gain access to a greater number and variety of skills and ideas as the new
century wears on.
Any international system for managing highly-skilled migration should be designed to facilitate knowledge spill over from the receiving countries back to the source countries. Such spill over may occur through return migration; educational, commercial and scientific relationships;
and investment and entrepreneurship. Ideally, these benefits will come to outweigh the very real costs imposed by the departure of highly
skilled people from countries that are already short of talent. We should not assume that the benefit-cost ratio at the national level will shift in
this fashion without policies and governance processes that nudge it along.
The biggest challenge for the companies is how to manage this pool of talent from diverse nationalities into a homogenous whole? Talent management is one of the most burning issues facing most organizations today. It is not just about acquiring the right talent but also retaining this
talent in order to achieve the strategic objectives of the organization. For effectively managing a global talent pool in India companies have to
streamline their talent management strategy. Organizations have to develop a culture of adaptability so that people of different cultures can be
easily assimilated within the system. Also as already discussed generally foreign expatriates work at the top level positions in the organization;
so for them it is question of how effectively they can provide leadership and execute the action plans chalked out by the management. Apart
from the amalgamation of organization culture with the individual culture and emotional bonding; any talent management initiative traditionally needs to address two important aspects: employee learning and development, and performance management. Given the current economic
scenario companies have started to increase their focus on other critical areas like: leadership, succession planning and career development.
GLOBAL TALENT-MANAGING IMMIGRANTS
Why global talent management? The answer to this question is the very fact that there are an estimated 214 million migrant’s world over.
Together, they would make up the world’s fifth-largest nation. To sustain the current growth most of the developed countries will need millions of skilled workers, as the local market is not sufficient to supply the desired number they need to look at the global market. Because of
the uneven quality of education systems, only 25% of Indian and 20%of Russian professionals are currently considered employable by multinationals. The global talent risk is growing. In the years to come staggering talent gaps will appear in large parts of the world stifling economic
growth. There will be an unprecedented competition for talent among companies while economies struggle to stay competitive.
Talent mobility is inevitable. Despite protectionist attitudes that have intensified during the downswing, worker migration can rise over the
years. Globalization is fuelling mobility, as more and more companies expand abroad and people consider foreign postings as a natural part of
career development. Transcending the positive effects that talent circulation brings to both developed and developing countries, the major
issue is that mobility will persist in inclusive societies, enabling equal opportunities .For being employable in 2020, graduates need to be technologically literate and acquire transferable, cross-cultural learning skills. Any country or company that continues to rely on conventional
learning and routine, soiled work without fostering a culture of continuous learning will face an ever-deepening talent gap.
This is the reason global talent management, whose function it is to draw in, grow, reward, and retain the organization’s human capital, is now;
more than ever, such an important function. Several organizations seek to make global mobility more strategic, but perhaps what they should
really focus on is how to make global talent management more strategic. To do this, employers have to leverage and blend the opportunities
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that already exist in the organization these days. Making efficient use of these rich opportunities is a matter of getting just a few things right,
countries and the brain exporting countries. In addition, the latter must create, maintain, or attract sufficient absorptive capacity, in terms of
things that entail systems thinking with a global outlook.
physical, human, and organizational capital, in order to benefit from the knowledge that flows between the parties to these relationships.
One such prospect exists in the many, typically unrelated, functions in the organization responsible for some facet of global leadership devel-
These conditions are to some extent favoured by the dynamics of international migration in an era of globalization and improving information
opment. HR, diversity, global talent management, and learning and organization development each have an important piece of the global lead-
and communication technology. Emigrants are better able to maintain strong relationships with friends and colleagues in their home countries
ership development puzzle and yet, in most organizations, labour independently and unaware of one another’s great works. This silo effect in
than in the past. Organizations that employ them are in a better position to disperse their operations internationally and build forward and
organizations is the outcome of these various disciplines’ degree of complexity, which in most large organizations requires a level of technical
backward linkages among them. The pre-existing social relationships and cultural knowledge of their expatriate staff may incline these organi-
adeptness and productivity not easily or quickly mastered. However, that does not preclude the possibility of bridging these silos for the pur-
zations to site operations and build linkages in the countries of origin of these staff members. This potential may, in turn, induce investments in
pose of building a concerted global talent management strategy. Indeed, any effective organization development initiative looks to revisit,
absorptive capacity within those countries.
recalibrate, and reconfigure the association of internal functions with one another in order to adapt to external pressures such as those brought
about by globalization.
Another opportunity that employers can leverage to make global talent management more forceful involves the way in which global leaders
learn and grow. This is an issue that borders on many concepts and theoretical disciplines. It also must be considered in the framework of culture, because what is considered leadership competency and the ways in which people learn are both heavily influenced by cultural values,
beliefs, and assumptions. These are essential caveats to the fact that most of what global leaders need to learn, they learn on the job; a phenomenon that many employers presently do not recognize, support, or properly leverage. This is particularly true as it concerns the learning that
occurs on expatriate assignments. Due to the transformational nature of the culture shock experience, the duration of the global business and
cultural immersion, and the sheer amount of resourcefulness that an expatriate must exhibit to be successful while working in another country,
the expatriate assignment is considered the consummate developmental opportunity. There is no surprise that research indicates global assignments are two of the five most effective methods for global talent development.
As stated, global mobility as an instrument for developing talent can lead to somewhat interesting, complex, and sometimes contested topics,
including adult learning theory, transformational learning, intercultural intelligence, double loop learning theory, and the learning organization,
to name but a few. Though all these are vital elements, for the sake of simplicity we will stick to some of the fundamentals which, when
properly executed, will go a long way towards leveraging global mobility as a means to developing global talent.
At the moment, however, the gap is wide between those who have the potential to contribute to the global knowledge economy and the actual
contributions of the privileged few who currently comprise its talent pool. A vast amount of human talent is wasted, due to the vagaries of
access to the basic necessities of life, to education, and to social and organizational settings that facilitate continuing creative endeavours. Narrowing this gap and reducing the waste of talent would not only benefit those individuals whose creative potential is thereby realized, but global society as a whole, as the value that those individuals create spills over to the public at large.
Better management of the international migration of highly skilled people may provide one way to address this challenge. In addition to allowing existing talent to be used more efficiently by allowing organizations that need talent to draw from a wider base, effectively managed highly
-skilled migration (HSM) may induce larger domestic investments in human development in developing countries to expand the talent pool for
the future. HSM may also catalyse international resource flows to support such investments if it strengthens financial, organizational, and intellectual relationships across borders.
Aligning Global Vision and Goals
Every year, organizations put in enormous efforts to build strategic plans and budgets. Supporting functions then go off and make structural
and resource decisions that will serve these goals in the best ways possible. Apparently, everyone looks aligned to the overarching goals of the
organization. But, in reality organizations move quickly, in many diametrically opposite directions, into diverse regions, needing to serve evermore sophisticated customers, legal, regulatory, immigration, and other masters. Various supporting functions, swamped in their own red tape,
rigid structures, policies, hierarchies, and conventional thinking cannot keep pace. No wonder then, when global talent development timelines
clash with the timeline of the quarterly financial review cycle, the best-laid talent development plans fall apart on the budget cutting room
floor. Systems for developing talent, therefore, must be opportunistic, flexible, and able to meet the organization’s unpredictable strategic
changes. This flexibility and morph ability requires a new way of thinking about designing and developing the leadership curriculum to better
match up with the experience of the global leader. The content taught in the training room must provide frameworks for leaders to make sense
of their experiences and for continual learning outside the classroom, where global leaders are sinking or swimming in the “white waters” of
globalization.
What’s Different About Global?
How is global leadership different? Recent research with expatriates tells us that to develop innovative strategies, bring value to customers,
and spur growth for their organizations; global leaders must be able to build collaborative and innovative solutions that can be brought about
only by recognizing and leveraging differences, according to the 2008 “Global Leadership Study”.
For even the best of them keeping pace with the global business environment, capitalizing on opportunities, and even knowing who the ever
emergent competition is, are complex challenges. The research also establishes that for sustainable talent management strategies, global leaders must be change agents who are able to expand their own and others’ bandwidth at every level and location in the organization.
Notwithstanding, global leaders are learning their expertise in far flung corners of the globe, often without organizational support to help
“operationalize” this tacit knowledge and unconscious competence. The issue of lack of support is accentuated by the fact that knowledge
transfer back into the organization is lost, as well. Realising the difference between global leadership and recognizing that it requires a different kind of organizational support is where the dialogue between global mobility and global talent management begins.
The Evolving Economic Geography of Knowledge: Appropriability and Spill Over
Supported Learning
Recent work in economics and geography has undermined a number of long-established and widely-held assumptions about the knowledge
As research confirms that the greatest opportunities to develop leaders are happening outside of a fixed set of policies or classroom curriculum,
economy. This work opens new possibilities for interpreting the consequences of HSM. What was once viewed simply as a brain “drain” from
employers need to find ways to support this kind of development. These developmental opportunities, as outlined before as short- and long-
developing countries to developed ones is now variously labelled brain “strain”, brain “circulation”, and even brain “gain”. These more opti-
term assignments, global teams, and projects, are the fundamental materials of the global mind-set curricula. These learning experiences, when
mistic assessments (from the developing country perspective) remain, however, possibilities whose realization depends on policy choices that
backed by the organization, are the most effective ways not only to develop global leaders, but also for knowledge transfer and subsequent
are far from certain.
organization development to occur.
The geographical constraint on knowledge spill over is thus relaxing, providing one conceptual keystone in the argument that “brain gain” is
It is imperative for us to note that there is a substantial difference between experiential learning and supported action learning. The former
mitigating or even outweighing “brain drain.” However, for an expansion of the international scope of spill over to occur, two conditions must
happens often by default and is unpredictable, while the latter is intentional and, as it is supported by design, has a positive effect on people
be met. Spill over can only occur where personal and organizational relationships span the boundaries between the knowledge-producing
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and the organizations it serves. An unfortunate evidence for this argument is when expatriate learning goes bad, which occurs because leaders
organization as a whole. These are the stellar organizations that also have a clear vision as to how global their C-suite should look like some-
were often sent without proper selection, training, and organizational support when the going gets tough.
day and fill the leadership pipeline accordingly.
Policy and Practices
Let us return to alignment for a moment. For employers to reap what is being sown in the everyday work-a-day world of expatriates and global
leaders at large, it is not enough for the respective functional silos to have strategic plans that line up nicely with organizational goals. These
functions also must have a shared, single strategy, with specific, departmental objectives that align with these goals. These objectives distil
into tactics for recruitment, retention, learning and development, compensation, mobility, and succession planning. Therefore, global talent
management, HR, learning and development, OD, and mobility need to understand what is different about being global and what is different,
therefore, about global leadership. This shared understanding then allows these functions to coalesce around a unified vision and strategy to
develop their global leaders.
Supported learning, therefore, goes beyond learning and development interventions and gets into performance goals, metrics, coaching, and
other means of guiding and reinforcing the expatriate’s learning. This is why a strategic view of expatriation is so important. When global
mobility and global talent management are aligned, the expatriates are chosen for their growth potential in the organization, given a chance to
build intercultural skills in a formal instructional setting, coached during the assignment, and their knowledge and newly-built skills are valued
enough to be transferred to the organization. In other words, the assignment cycle itself is viewed holistically as the expatriate’s learning experience, and supported as such.
The Assignment Cycle
The assignment cycle from selection, to cultural training, to on-the-job support, to repatriation and reintegration takes on elevated importance
when viewed as an integral part of global talent management. Practitioners of all sorts have been banging this drum for years, but it never really has been more than an echo in the hallowed halls of corporate policymaking. Many more assignment cycle elements could be added to those
mentioned above, however, for the purpose of bringing the global talent management and global mobility into focus, we will take a look at just
the following four.
Selection
Because global leaders learn through special assignments such as the expatriate experience, deciding who gets this opportunity is akin to deciding who gets nominated for executive education programs. Meaning, in the old world, getting “nominated” to an executive education course
Figure1: Global Talent Management Model
was a pretty good indication that the organization was investing in you as a high potential and had great hopes for your future in their leadership ranks. In a more strategic view of the expatriate experience as a means to grow future talent, who we select for these “stretch assignments” becomes critically important.
Cultural Training
As a result, the measuring stick that we use to determine the candidate pool really needs to become a global ruler. This means two things. First,
The latest trends in cross-cultural training are to include: training for the host office staff on how to work with the expatriate leader that they
we cannot continue to use the same old methods for selecting who goes on assignment (i.e., urgent business needs and technical skills). Like-
will be receiving; and ensuring that in addition to the cultural dimensions, the expatriate’s training includes specific attention to the global
wise, we cannot use the same assessment instruments and criteria that historically we used for talent management opportunities. These only
leadership competencies required for the job.
will ensure that we are excluding valuable candidates who do not fit our parochial viewpoint of exemplar leadership, and it means that we are
Cultural training for the office hosting the expatriate is most useful because organizations can use this type of group training opportunity to
not getting candidates with the right skill set for the expatriate assignments for which they are being selected. The short story on assessment
talk about corporate culture, skills for working globally, functional cultures, the long-term plans for the local office, and other useful expecta-
and selection, therefore, is to choose people who qualify using global leadership competencies as a guide and to be sure that the assignment
tion-setting and communication strategies. Training the expatriate on the competencies that are specific to global leadership is an excellent
fulfils an important step in their career paths and for the globalization needs of the organization. These global leadership competencies, along
way to weave the “soft” interpersonal skills of cultural intelligence and adaptability with the “hard” skills of the global business environment.
with the traditional selection instruments that determine cultural adaptability, round out the selection criteria to include not only technical but
Hands-on classroom simulations that blend intercultural theories and models with other business skills that the expatriate needs to do the job
behavioural skills and knowledge, as well, according to Vladimir Pucik, in “Selecting and Developing the Global Versus the Expatriate Man-
has not been the traditional approach to this type of training. This is a huge missed opportunity to provide useful models and frameworks on
ager: a Review of the State-of-the-Art,” published in Human Resource Planning.
which the expatriate builds global leadership skills outside of the classroom.
Some organizations have career planning practices that clearly make global assignments prerequisites to entering the senior leadership ranks.
These employers use the organizational review as a checkpoint to ensure that the leader’s career path is closely managed and supported by the
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On-the-job Support
References
The preparatory steps of expatriate job descriptions, learning objectives, performance metrics and milestones all serve as the foundation for

Sands D. Temporary movement of labor fuels GATS debate.” Migration Information
supported, action learning to occur. Action learning is effective when the organization actively aids the expatriate manager to effectively use

Source (migrationinformation.org); June 1, 2004.

Hollifield JF. The emerging migration state. Intl MigRvw 2004; 38:885-912.
fied and codified as learning opportunities. This mapping, when accompanied by learning objectives and performance metrics, becomes the

Slaughter AM. A new world order. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2004.
actual action learning sequence.

Global Commission on International Migration. Migration in an interconnected world: newdirections for action. SRO-Kundig; 2005.
the assignment to hone their global competencies and develop as leaders. This is done by carefully assessing the leader’s competency gaps and
mapping these to the specific work they will be doing while on assignment so that the occasions to practice and improve these skills are identi-
Organizationally supported learning means that this process is monitored by a coach, formal mentor, and/or qualified line manager whose job
it is to assess the leader, give feedback, and mark and reward their progress. This is a far different learning intervention than what occurs in the
classroom curriculum and takes a good deal of planning and commitment on behalf of the organization. However, because these expatriate
leaders are tagged as high performers and responsible for developing other leaders, this type of investment has exponential returns. This is
another important facet of on-going support. For the expatriate, developing local talent most certainly should be considered an important performance metric with attendant rewards. This concept is critical to developing the organization’s global mind-set. The expatriate must be able
to engender local ownership and develop local leaders while they are on assignment. This ensures that the leadership pipeline is stocked with
individuals who come from all office locations, and this confluence of talent is essential to the organization’s development and growth as a
global enterprise.
Knowledge Transfer
The last of our assignment cycle considerations is the organization’s value and use of the expatriate’s learning. Knowledge transfer is given
short shrift in many organizations, especially by those for whom technology is next to godliness. Unfortunately, no one has yet discovered a
way of getting global leader learning into the DNA of the organization via high tech alone. There are still a number of low-tech ways that
come into play, all of which require, once again, a cohesive plan among the HR, diversity, and learning and organization development functions.
The plan can have myriad tactics, and indeed it should, but leader-led action learning in particular is gaining a good deal of attention lately as a
sustainable way to develop a global mind-set. As mentioned earlier, successful expatriates need to develop succession plans while on assignment, as well as have an active role in developing others on their return or when they move on to their next assignment. Training sessions,
workshops, and other interventions are excellent frameworks for building the foundation for global leadership competency; however, newly
acquired knowledge and skills often are not sustainable in the long run if they are not reinforced on the job. Leader-led, individual or team,
action-learning interventions are effective ways to galvanize the expatriate’s learning and transfer it to other would-be global leaders. With the
design of these “learning networks,” the organization is seeding its ability to develop global leaders in a way that generates long-term payoff
for the talent investment they have made in the expatriate. This is how the organizational global mind-set gets developed.
A Welcome Change in Strategy
Many employers now are heeding the clarion call and formally including global assignments in their blueprints for global talent management,
a change in strategy that is welcomed by most global mobility practitioners with a standing ovation. Though the basic building blocks toward
this integrated approach seem quite simple, they are hampered by the Catch-22 of needing a global mind-set to build a global mind-set. Largescale changes, such as those wrought by globalization, require breakthrough thinking to be dealt with effectively.
The same logic that necessitated organizations to silo their thinking to deal with the complexities of the early stages of globalization now calls
for them to think across the silos in order to harness the opportunities that come from globalization. Thinking across these silos means viewing
the assignment cycle for what it is: an expensive but highly effective way to develop global talent.
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Women in Workforce: Changing Dynamics and Performance Implications
Women in the Professional Workforce
Women make up a majority of the professional workforce. However, they still struggle to reach parity with men in certain occupations and on
issues of pay. Union membership has been one way some women have moved closer to a level field and smaller wage gap. In the future, wom-
-Ribhanshu Raj &
John T Mathew
en will continue to dominate the professional workforce. This will mostly be done through continued attainment of advanced education and
ABV-IITM, Gwalior
In 2011, there were nearly 66 million working women in the U.S. Women make up a majority (57 percent) of the workers in professional and
training.
related occupations. Over the last several decades, the number and percentage of women working in these occupations has increased signifi-
Introduction
Women in the workforce earning wages or a salary are part of a modern phenomenon, one that developed at the same time as the growth of
paid employment for men; yet women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce. Until modern times, legal and cultural practices,
combined with the inertia of longstanding religious and educational conventions, restricted women's entry and participation in the workforce.
Economic dependency upon men, and consequently the poor socio-economic status of women, have had the same impact, particularly as occupations have become professionalized over the 19th and 20th centuries.
Women's lack of access to higher education had effectively excluded them from the practice of well-paid and high status occupations. Entry of
women into the higher professions like law and medicine was delayed in most countries due to women being denied entry to universities and
qualification for degrees. Women were largely limited to low-paid and poor status occupations for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, or
earned less pay than men for doing the same work. However, through the 20th century, public perceptions of paid work shifted as the workforce increasingly moved to office jobs that do not require heavy labor, and women increasingly acquired the higher education that led to better-compensated, longer-term careers rather than lower-skilled, shorter-term jobs.
Choice of occupation is considered to be one of the key factors contributing to the male-female wage differential. In other words, careers with
a majority of female employees tend to pay less than careers that employ a majority of males. This is different from direct wage discrimination
within occupations, as males in the female dominated professions will also make lower than average wages and the women in the male dominated occupations usually make higher than average wages. The occupational dissimilarity index is a measure from 0 to 100; it measures the
percent of laborers that would need to be rearranged into a job typically done by the opposite sex in order for the wage differential to disappear. In 1960, the dissimilarity index for the United States was measured at 62. It has dropped since then, but at 47 in 2000, is still one of the
highest of any developed nation.
cantly. However, women tend to be heavily concentrated in health care and education occupations and traditionally underrepresented in engineering and some science occupations.
In 2011, women made up only 13.6 percent of architects and engineers, 4.3 percent of airline pilots and flight engineers and 33.8 percent of
physicians and surgeons. In contrast, more than four out of five librarians, registered nurses, and elementary and middle school teachers were
female.
The largest concentration of female professionals is among registered nurses and non-college teachers, while the largest concentration of male
professionals is in engineering and computer-related occupations.
The annual growth rate for women in the labor force is expected to be 0.7 percent between 2010 and 2020. Even though this is slower than
previous projections, it is still faster than the projected annual growth rate of 0.6 percent for men. Men’s share of the labor force will decrease
from 53.3 percent to 53 percent between 2010 and 2020. In 1900 only 20.4 percent of all women worked, between 1997 and 2008, almost 60
percent of women worked.
Women have been earning more Bachelor’s degrees than men since 1982 and they have been earning more Master’s degrees than men since
1981. Women earned 51.7 percent of all doctoral degrees in 2010, while in 1961 they earned only 10.5 percent of all doctoral degrees.
Women in professional and technical occupations — as well as working women in general — still face discrimination in pay, job advancement, and career opportunities. Unions, through collective bargaining, are helping address these problems, but more must be done to cultivate
women leaders — especially those in the professional and technical fields who are accustomed to taking responsibility and making decisions.
Facts about Women in the Workforce
1.
Workforce participation by sector
Women and men often participate in economic sectors in sharply different proportions, a result of gender clustering in occupations. Reasons
for this may include a traditional association of certain types of work with a particular gender. There is a wide range of other possible economic, social and cultural variables that impact the gender distribution in different occupations, including within a region or country. An averaging
of statistics gathered by the United Nations for 2004 through 2012 reflects these differences (totals may not add up to 100% due to rounding):
Women are now the majority of the workforce in all the fields.
This occurred in the first half of 2010 for the first time in the history, and now women make up fifty-one percent of the professional workers in
the world. Seventy percent of American women with children under eighteen are earning a paycheck while raising their children. According to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women now hold 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs—up from 26.1 percent in 1980. Women are
fifty-four percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. Women are about one-third of the physicians and
forty-five percent of the associates in law firms—and both percentages are rising fast. And, in the EU, women have filled six million of the
eight million new jobs since 2006.
Sectored distribution of employed persons, by sector and sex (2004 through 2012)
2. Women now earn almost sixty percent of university degrees
Region
Agriculture
Industry
Services
Africa
43% women / 42% men 11% women / 20% men 46% women / 39% men
Asia
32% women / 26% men 12% women / 25% men 56% women / 49% men
Latin America & Carribbean
7% women / 22% men
13% women / 27% men 80% women / 51% men
Europe
6% women / 8% men
15% women / 36% men 79% women / 55% men
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Women’s education is changing to more marketable subjects. In 1966, forty percent received a BA specializing in education and two percent
in business and management. Now it’s twelve percent education and fifty percent business and management. Women earn only twenty percent
of the degrees in engineering and computer science. Women are fifty-one percent of those enrolled in medical school and nearly half of those
in law school.
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3.
Only three percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women.
Unfortunately, even though women’s influence has grown in other areas of business and management, the percentage and number of Fortune
500 CEOs has never risen much above three percent. We know many of the names—Meg Whitman at eBay, Carly Fiorina at H-P, Anne Mulcahy and Ursula Burns at Xerox, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo, etc. Female CEOs may be rare in America’s largest companies, but they are highly
prized. Last year, they out earned their male counterparts by forty-three percent on average.
4.
Women are increasingly opting to become entrepreneurs rather than languish in stalled careers.
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population. The declining presence of women in the workforce accounts for half of the drop in India’s overall labour participation rate from
62% in 2000 to only 57% in 2010. Today, India’s participation is significantly below China’s at 70% and even that of Sub-Saharan Africa at
67%.
However, this income driver is not the major issue. In rural areas, it has been estimated that only one-quarter of the decline in prime working
age female participation is due to households moving into higher income segments. Participation has been dropping within income segments,
too, and this seems to reflect a shortage of job opportunities for those with low or medium levels of skills outside agriculture. India needs to
create more low- and medium-skilled jobs to give women a route out of subsistence work.
Organizations need to focus on retaining the female half of the workforce to keep the talent pipeline full at all levels and avoid the enormous
costs of retraining and recruiting new replacement talent. Over seventy-five percent of workers say their company has implemented gender-
In rural areas, there is huge scope to create employment if basic products and services including financial services, retail, healthcare, and edu-
parity initiatives, such as flex-work programs and mentorship, but many feel these programs are not effective. Only forty-eight percent of the
cation, were to become more freely available. The Planning Commission is setting out an ambitious plan for job creation as part of its Five-
men polled feel achieving gender-parity should be a critical business imperative while eighty-four percent of the women do.
Year Plan running from 2013 to 2017. The proposal looks at sectors such as textiles and apparel manufacturing, leather products, food processing and travel and tourism all of which could create jobs in the Indian countryside.
5.
Women make thirteen percent to twenty-three percent less than men.
India needs not only an employment revolution but also educational revolutions that allow and encourages women play their full part in a
While this is very hard to measure as there are many variables from industry, occupation, profession, hours worked, etc., the pay gap has
modern Indian economy. It is well known that female participation in the workforce rises along with educational levels. In India, in 2010, just
changed very little since 2001. Some of this gap is due to motherhood. Childless women in corporate America earn almost as much as men.
18% of Indian women educated to the high school level entered the workforce in 2010, but 31% of those with a college education did. Educa-
Mothers with partners earn less and single mothers earn much less. Female programmers make ninety-three percent as much as their male
tion not only equips women for the workplace but also breaks down conservative social attitudes.
counterparts. Female physicians only make sixty-one percent as much as the male physicians.
But the proportion of women who receive formal education is shockingly low. In 2010, around 65% of prime-aged women in rural areas and
6. Women may work longer to receive the promotions that provide access to higher pay.
One example provided by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that women often have to work three years longer in a teaching
position to be promoted to a principal than their male counterparts. Some studies suggest that this is because women and men adapt different
strategies when it comes to management and pursuing promotions, yet other studies connect it less to work and more to gender-based biases.
7. Only 53% of employers provide at least some replacement pay during periods of maternity leave.
Despite the fact that the arrival of a child means extra bills and expenses, many employers don’t provide women with any benefits if they to
over 30% of women in cities hadn’t even received primary school education. Initiatives of the Prime Minister’s National Council on Skill Development, along with business and non-governmental organizations, will be vital to ensure women build job-relevant skills, even in the absence of formal education.
The situation of the next generation could be radically different. A doubling of secondary and tertiary education (for girls and boys) accounts
for the other half of India’s falling overall participation rate as more young people are in education rather than in work. The evidence today is
that the enrolment of girls and women in schools and colleges is on a par with that of boys and men in many parts of the country.
leave work temporarily to have a child. While there is no law requiring companies to offer paid maternity leave, considering it is an issue that
Industrial issues for women:
primarily affects women, it’s certainly a blow to their income potential and ability to care for their families and themselves.
There are a range of industrial issues that are important to women. These include:
8. Four in ten businesses worldwide have no women in senior management.
9. Women earned less than men in 99% of all occupations.
10. Minority women fare the worst when it comes to equal pay.
Women workforce in India
A smaller share of India’s women works outside the home than in virtually any country in the world only Pakistan and a clutch of countries in
the Middle East and North Africa have lower shares. Just 39.5% of India’s women of prime working age between 25 and 54 were economically active in 2010 compared with 82% in China and 72% in Brazil. It is startling that only 24% women in prime working age have jobs in India’s cities compared with around 65% in urban China.
That is not all. The proportion of Indian women active in the labour force is falling. In just 10 years, the share has fallen from an already low
39% in 2000 to just 30% in 2010 a much steeper decline than the 3 percentage point fall observed in other developing economies. This under-
1.
equal pay
2.
access to training and career paths
3.
the right to keep a job when pregnant, and after taking time off for the birth and care of a baby (maternity leave).
4.
the right to work part-time to accommodate family responsibilities
5.
child care services
6.
leave to care for sick family members
7.
sexual harassment
8.
Discrimination/equal employment opportunity.
representation of women in the workforce is a waste of the demographic dividend that India could reap from its young and rapidly growing
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Problems Women Encounter in the Workplace
There's no denying that the role of women in society has changed enormously in the past 50 years. Worldwide, women are not only enjoying
satisfying careers, some of them are outearning men. Despite these tremendous advances, women still face a variety of professional challenges,
particularly in traditionally male-dominated careers such as management, the sciences and other technically oriented roles. Recognizing these
challenges can help overcome them.
a. The Work-Life Balance
The drive to do it all and do it well is a uniquely female trait. According to the European Labor Relations Observatory, many women find balancing the responsibilities of their chosen profession with the traditionally female-oriented duties required at home challenging. Finding the
time to grocery shop, clean house, do laundry and cook dinner -- never mind taking care of the kids -- is difficult even when that's the only job
you have. Add a demanding boss, deadlines and ambition to succeed, and you have a recipe for anxiety that causes many women to feel overwhelmed and guilty.
b. Health Issues
According to studies sponsored by the federal government and performed by the Centers for Disease Control, women are also more prone to
certain types of work-related health issues. Women who work have higher instances of carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis, in addition to a
higher rate of respiratory illnesses and infectious and parasitic diseases, according to the CDC. Mental health is an area of concern as well;
women have higher rates of stress and anxiety disorders because of concerns over -- you guessed it -- balancing a heavy workload with the
demands of family. Sexual harassment also is a noted stressor.
c. Leadership and the Glass Ceiling
Despite the number of degrees that women earn and the number of women in the workplace, there is a dearth of women who rise to top leadership roles. The career website Monster.com reports that the difficulty women face in breaking what's commonly referred to as the "glass ceiling" often is attributed to management's concern that an otherwise qualified woman will leave work to have a baby or focus on family issues.
However, it could also reflect a woman's conscious desire to avoid high-risk, high-profile and high-paying roles.
d. Discrimination and Pay
Many women feel that these gender-based decisions result from discrimination. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as quoted on
Monster.com, women earn approximately 80 cents for every dollar that a man earns performing the same role. Women are also more likely to
become the victim of sexual harassment, which is difficult to prove and embarrassing to report. Worldwide, women are still victimized by
outdated gender attitudes.
References
1. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/problems-women-encounter-workplace-15405.html
2. Women in industry-a study in American economic history by Edith Abbott and Sophonisba p. Breckinridge.
3. Women in the Workforce: Still a Long Way from Equality
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