Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning 2007

PROJECT REPORT ON
PHILOSOPHY AND MANAGEMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES IN INDIAN COMPANIES

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Business is a game of entrepreneurial spirits and managerial skills. Entrepreneurs play the business game by acquiring, mastering and coordinating various business and management skills. Such skills include Human relations and Technology management as well as planning, marketing, negotiating and finance. A business organization is designed with the objective of creating and acquiring wealth through production and supply of products and services. Products, capital, skills, and entrepreneurship are increasingly becoming internationalized. Corporations compete with their own unique set of skill-equipment mix, knowledge capability competence equation and the critical entrepreneurial vision. This study HR Practices in India is a deep study on the incarnations of the present respective that Human Resource is Inevitable as Every Man is indispensable for the Organization. The Human resource management strategies in India in the 21st century has to focus on better individual-organization interface and greater emphasis on organizational effectiveness than on personal success.

INTRODUCTION Background In the 50s, there was a strong belief that employees were recruited not to question why but only to do and die. In the 60s, terms like manpower, staff and personnel came to be used and instead of controlling the employees, it became more and more acceptable to manage personnel as studies revealed that productivity of the workers could be improved if they were organized at work. And in the late 70s, people realized that beyond a point, productivity depended on people. Also, workers started demanding whatever they expected from the employers over and above their salaries; Personnel came to be called as Human Resources sharing the global thinking, Indian managers and behavioral scientists accepted and introduced such theories, models and concepts as theory X/Y/Z, Two Factor Theory of Motivation, Contingency model, Social Comparison processes, Socio-Technical system, Job Enrichment, Managerial Grid, Participative Management, Quality of Work Life, Total Quality Management etc. At the same time, experts observed that there were some strategic challenges of current times such as accelerating rates of changes in all aspects of businessincreasing competition, globalization of business, technological change, changing work culture, resource constraints, transition from industrial to information society, unstable markets owing to economic condition, increasing demands by corporate stake holders, and a complex psychological environment. Hierarchy, status, authority, responsibility, and accountability are structural concepts. But in the Indian context, emotions, feelings, empathetic perceptions, impressions and effective 6

components have influenced people more than anything else. The subordinates expect that the boss should have integrity, higher performance skill, commitment, accessibility, wider vision, sense of empowerment and credibility. Human resource management refers to a balanced interaction between these two sets of expectations (Armstrong, 2003). In the dynamics of the present scenario, many aesthetic changes like globalization are imperative. Corporations have to keep a watch on international competitors as the globalization is increasingly becoming a part of every economic system. Its less about making a smart choice; instead, its more of a necessity. In the mid 90s, a few outfits, notably, ITC & Arvind Mills tried to put concrete form in this respect but now we are proud to be apropos with a appellation like ICICI, Tata Consultancy Services, Dr. Reddys Lab, Asian paints (Kandula, 2005). Since these firms have successfully embarked themselves in the global purview and if asked upon; they instantly give the accolade to their respective Human Resource Departments.

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Since 1994, after the Marakesh contract, where GATT was replaced by WTO, the role of management has aggrandized but the role of Human Resource Department has multiplied. This Project keenly emphasized on all such aspects of Human Resource.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

This project is aimed at highlighting the metamorphosing role of Future Human Resource Managers, who will have to act as Change Agents or Change Facilitators-learning from experimentation, past experiences and the experiences of others for greater organizational effectiveness- in Todays Swirl Of Transformation. The project acclaims to reestablish the chief function of Human Resource, that is, it has to create Something for Everybody. Since everybody is aware of the fact that present corporate scenario demands fair more active Human Resource Management. To study current HR challenges in globalized world.

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LIMITATIONS OF STUDY
Every study conducted may have certain shortcomings and unfortunately mine is also a similar case. A few errors have crept in despite our best effort to avoid them but it is expected that still my study and findings are very much relevant.

An error may have been due to the samples taken not conforming to the actual population; this is because the sample is a convenience sample. Personal bias or personal error of the interviewer might also have crept in; some cases, while interpreting the respondents. Certain questions which are not properly responded by the respondents. Some of the respondents have not responded totally. Biases might have crept up on the part of the management while giving answers. Absolute sanctity of data can be a cause of concern as many respondents didnt ponder much over giving points, ranks etc. The sample size was small due to time constraint which might not be true representative of entire population.

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
RELEVANCE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN PRESENT SCENARIO Human resource management is more relevant in todays context due to the following compulsions (Kandula, 2006): 1. Change management: Today, terms such as Learning Organization, Managing organizational changes, Change Agents etc. are increasingly associated with change management. An organization can survive in todays socio economic environment only if it is proactive to environmental changes. 2. Competence: It is said that Give a man a job that he excels at and he would not have to work. In the organizational context, it may not be always flexible to allocate tasks to individuals at which each one excels, but surely we can enhance competence of individuals for specific tasks through well designed training programs. It is equally important to take note of the interests of the individuals. It is much easier to train him or her in tasks closer to his inherent liking. 3. Commitment: The extent to which the employees are committed to their work and organization has a bearing on organization performance. Transparently in organizational functioning, employees perceptions of various HRM policies, channels of communication and role models played by superiors strongly influence employee commitment. 4. Congruence of Objectives: Even well qualified and committed employees could pursue goals at variance to the organizational objectives. It is, therefore, essential that all newcomers to the organization are properly socialized into the existing community and are made aware of the organizational values, work ethos, customs and traditions. They should know

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what the organization stands for and what it wants to achieve and in the process, what is expected from each individual. 5. Motivation: One of all aspects of human behavior is the employees willingness to work and the desire to constantly improve his performance. People want to contribute to meaningful goals and most of them can exercise far more creativity, self direction and self control than their present jobs demand. It is, therefore, important to create an environment in which all members can contribute to the limits of their ability. CHANGING FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT 1.1 HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING Human Resource planning also referred to as manpower planning, has been defined as the process of getting the right number of qualified people into the right job at the right time (Amstrong, 2003). It is the process of matching the internal (existing employees) and external (those to be hired or searched for) supply of people with job openings anticipated in the organization over a specified period of time. Human Resource Information System (HRIS) One of the newer devices for providing skills inventory information is the Human Resource Information System (HRIS).An HRIS is an integrated approach to acquiring, analyzing, and controlling the flow of information through out an organization. An effective HRIS is crucial to nearly all HRM functions. This system is designed to quickly fulfill the personnel informational needs of the organization with almost no additional expenditure of resources. It typically employs computer and other sophisticated technologies to process data that reflect the day-to-day operations of a company, organized in the form of information to facilitate the 13

decision-making process. An HRIS should be designed to provide information that is timely, accurate, concise, relevant and complete. Retrenchment Intense global competition, rapid technological change, and apprehensions caused by recent workforce reductions have also led to organizations increasing their use of part time workers, subcontractors, and independent professionals in response to changing demands. Using these kinds of employees gives an organization far more flexibility in dealing with temporary shortages or surpluses of labour than does maintaining more traditional full time employees for all jobs. Hence when an organization experiences retrenchment, human resources are going to be affected. Events surrounding the managing of a decline should be of concern to those conducting human resource planning (Ratnam, 1999). RECRUITMENT Recruitment makes it possible for us to acquire the number and type of people necessary to ensure the continued operation of the organization. Recruiting is the discovering of potential candidates for actual or anticipated organizational vacancies . The ideal recruitment effort will attract a large number of qualified candidates who will take the job if it is offered. A combination of Internal and External sources are used by most organizations for generating a sufficient number of applicants. Internal recruitment involves generating an interest among current employees to cause them to formally indicate an interest in a given position. Some of the Internal recruitment methods include Personnel Records and Skills Bank, Job

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Posting and Bidding, Grapevine, Inside Moonlighting, etc (Mamoria, 1999). When an organization has exhausted its internal supply of applicants, it must turn to external sources to supplement its workforce. External recruitment sources include Direct Applications, Employee Referrals, Professional or Trade Associations, Employee database available online, Media advertisements (Newspapers,

Magazines, Directories, Television, Radio, etc.), Executive Search Firms- Head Hunters, Campus recruitment etc. But there is no single combination of resources and methods that will work well for all organizations, or for that matter, across all types of jobs and labour market, or even within a labour market (Aswathappa, 2005). STAFFING ON A ROLL With companies continuing to cut costs, it is the turn of the employees to be outsourced. Mindtree, an information technology consulting firm, outsources staff for functions like accounting, administration, regulatory work (billing of day-to-day work), sales tax, procurement (like fixed assets, software) and payrolls. So do 200 other firms in IT, telecom, fast-moving consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and manufacturing (DeCenzo & Robins, 2003). Routine accounting is unexciting. If you have full-time employees for this, By outsourcing, it's easier to rotate

productivity tends to decline over time.

employees" Also, 25% of the manpower costs are taken up by benching, times when the staff has no work, the company is pitching for new business or staff undergoes training. In times of slowdown, this can be 35%. By outsourcing manpower, we ensure that employees generate revenues all the time. TLS, which works with Mind Tree and 17 other companies, claims to have the expertise to recruit and deploy people across functions (sales, finance, marketing)

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and levels - from entry to middle and senior level. Says Ashok Reddy, managing director TLS. TLS is perhaps the latest entrant in this area. Others like Chennai-based Ma Foi, Kolkata-based Genius Jobs and MNC staffing outfits Manpower and Kelly Services set up operations much earlier. In fact, Ma Foi started off out-sourcing staff to the Gulf way back in 1992. In the last three years, it has increasingly been focusing on the Indian market. None of these companies touch security outsourcing. Margins here are too low to justify the time and effort required (Kandula, 2006).

Kelly's temporary or outsourced staff is typically in the Rs.5,000-20,000 per month bracket. They have 1-3 years experience in support, secondary sales, marketing and finance.Net margins of 17.5-25% and a growing market for temps have attracted firms to tap this opportunity. Ma Foi has seen revenue from staffing grow from Rs.1.07 crore in 1998-99 to Rs.11.57 crore in 2001-02. It caters to 130 companies in over 100 locations. By March 2003, it expects the temps strength on its rolls to grow to 5,000, up from 2,150 now. TLS, with 350 people at present, expects the strength to grow to 2,000 by March, 2003.

The costs of carrying a large pool of people, maintaining a bench and the expertise to handle staffing is not something that any search firm can acquire overnight. Staffing companies claim that brand equity will differentiate good players from the also-rans. In fact, all firms are not gung-ho about staffing. Gautam Sinha of TVA Infotech, a Bangalore-based search firm that recruits for technology and telecom firms, slays it's a low-margin firm that recruits for technology and telecom firms, says it's a lowmargin business. " Unless you have high volumes, it does not make sense. In

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recruitment, the net margins are 50%b compared to 20% in staffing. Also, you should have the space and funds to maintain a bench." Search firms have small outfits; that will deter them from tapping the opportunity. Adds Ma Foi's general manager (onsite resourcing) D. Rajiv Krishnan:" Staffing firms need an ability to recruit in multiple locations; manage HR, training requirements and payrolls.; (and) redeploy staff after a contract with a particular firm is over. Not something that any head hunter can do." (Aswathappa, 2005) SELECTION Selection is the process of securing relevant information about an applicant to evaluate his qualifications, experience and other qualities with a view to matching these with the requirements of a job (Flippo, 1980) In todays highly complex and competitive situation, choice of right personnel has far reaching implication for an organizations functioning. Employees well selected and well placed would not only contribute to the efficient running of the organization but offer significant potential for future replacement. Hence, building and maintaining an effective human organization becomes the most important management function. TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT According to Decenzo (2003), Training is a learning experience in that it seeks a relatively permanent change in an individual that will improve his or her ability to perform on the job. The term Development can be defined as the nature and direction of change taking place among personnel through educational and training processes. As far as identifying training needs by the company is concerned, Glaxo

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laboratories considers these factors- Level and rapidity of technological and administrative changes, Level of individual and group performance, changing organizational structure, and perceived organizational imbalances. At the individual level person himself recognizes the training needs and records it or the appraisee discusses the individuals training needs. Since Glaxo uses MBO system, this process helps a great deal in making training useful to both the employees and the organization. Human Resource Development The concept of Human Resource Development (HRD) is of comparatively recent origin. HRD is a process which consists of a series of activities conducted to design behavioral changes in a specific period. (Ratnam, 1999) The first HRD exercise was undertaken by Larsen and Toubro Limited. The exercise consisted of requesting a team to study various aspects of performance appraisal, potential appraisal, employee counseling, career development and planning, training and development. The study team suggested many changes in the practice of these systems to help improve professional and personal growth of the individual and consequently, growth of the organization a number of other organizations like State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Sundram- Clayton have started the practice of HRD. There seems to be some confusion about the concept of HRD in India. Since there is hardly any activity which is human free, the impression is generated that HRD is an answer to all human problems. Saiyadains study on a sample of 149 respondents show that majority of them, irrespective of years of education and experience, consider it in a currency way. They include all kinds of mundane situations in the

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concept of HRD. GE Indias CEO, Scot Bayman, does it differently. He does what he describes as reverse mentoring, which, simply put, is learning from executives down the line. I learn a lot of technology stuff from bright young guys in GE, which in any case believes in constant up gradation of skills, says he. According to Anu Ganapathy, Senior Manager, National Learning and Development, KPMG, change management is a learned skill. She believes that a forward looking CEO should actively seek re-training to lead or to keep up with industry nor just locally, but globally too. They care the initiators of change. They need to constantly hone their leadership and visionary ski8lls, she says. Dinesh C. Paliwal, the Agra-born, now Zurich-based Executive Vice President of ABB, couldnt agree more. He too is a believer in the touch mantra. According to him, the CEO should be in constant touch with customers and opinion leaders. It is very surprising to see many CEOs isolating and surrounding themselves with their own people (Kandula, 2006). Indeed, just because you are the CEO doesnt mean you know everything and, hence, should stop learning. Its a corporate jungle out there, and only those chief execs who reskill themselves continually will say at the top of the food chain. CAREER PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT In everyday parlance, the word career is used in a number of different ways. People speak of pursuing a career, career planning workshops are common, college and universities career Days, during which they publicize jobs in different fields and assist individuals through career counseling. Therefore the word career is a sequence of positions occupied by a person during the course of a life time. This

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is the Objective career. From another perspective a career consists of the changes in values, attitudes and motivations that occur as a person grows older. This is Subjective career. Both these perspectives focus on individual. They assume that HR activities should recognize career stages and assist employees with the development task at each stage. Career planning is important in todays context, as there is prevalent job insecurity and dissatisfaction among employees in relation to their careers. The consequence of career success or failure is linked closely with each individuals self concept, identity, and satisfaction with career and life.

Performance Appraisal Organizational effectiveness to a large extent depends upon the successes of individual employees in reaching their individual goals and their efficiency in adapting themselves to the changing global scenario. The assessment of how successful employees have been at meeting their individual goals, therefore, becomes a critical part of human resource management and simultaneously performance appraisal assumes an important role in HRM and the organization itself (Mamoria, 1999). In a survey of 250 public sector and 36 private sector managers, Chakraborty and Chatterjee (1975) examined where the emphasis should be placed in the performance appraisal. The results in percentage are: Emphasis On Actual results Efforts irrespective of results Public Sector 26.2 73.8 Private Sector 31.5 68.5

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About two third managers from both public and private sector organizations would like their superiors to lay greater emphasis on the efforts put in by them irrespective of results. The public sector Managers emphasized this factor more than the private sector managers. The overall objective of performance appraisal is to improve organizational effectiveness by providing vital information about the suitability of its human resources. The rapid changes taking place in the external environment of organizations require that interests of all external elements are balanced so that disruptions in the functioning of the organization could be avoided and employees performance is not adversely affected (Chopra, 2001) There are several methods for evaluating performance- traditional methods that focus on employee behaviour and result oriented that focus on achievement of given tasks. Some newer methods, such as appraisal by group, by colleagues, by subordinates, and 360 degree feedback, are also used. Since no method is perfect, it is advisable \to use a combination of methods. A better performance appraisal system should focus on the individual and his development, so as to make him achieve the desire performance. The development focus is rather new and has come as a result of research in behavioral sciences. Frequency of Performance Review (In percentage) Frequency Once a year Public appraisers 15.8 Sector Public sector appraisee Private 32.5 10.8

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Twice a year Three times a year Four times a year (Kandula, 2006)

41.0 8.0 35.2

37.6 3.4 26.5

54.1 13.5 21.6

Reward system in Organizations One of the central issues in considering motivation in work situation concern the reward systems utilized in and by organizations. The ways in which rewards are distributed within organizations and their relative amounts have considerable impact on the level of employee motivation. Motivation- hygiene Theory was proposed by Herzberg and his associates (1959).they used semi structured interviews to get respondents recall instances of work which led to an improvement or a reduction in their job satisfaction and how this affected their work performance, interrelationship in the work situation, and well being. The motivators (also called intrinsic or job content variables) are those factors that are within the individual (like achievement, recognition, advancement,

possibility of growth etc.) and the hygiene factors ( also called environmental or job context factors) are outside the individual relating to the work environment (like salary, inter personal relations, company policy and administration, personal life, working conditions etc.). The theory postulated that motivators and hygiene factors are independent and absence of one does not mean presence of other. In pleasant situations, motivators appear more frequently than hygiene factors while their predominance is reversed in unpleasant situations.

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In a survey of attrition in software companies some insights on what knowledge workers think of their employers, and why they leave when they do, Herzberg hygiene theory was used. A survey of around 60 software companies was carried out by a market research firm threw up the fact while factors like job content, interpersonal relationships and work climate motivated employees, it was primarily hygiene factors ( like compensation) that demotivated them. This is largely in keeping with the theory propounded by management thinker Frederick Herzberg who suggested that while a high pay would not motivate employees, a low one would certainly dishearten them. Ergo. Companies have to ensure that all hygiene factors are in place before they get on to the motivating ones. The highlight of the survey was the finding that 43% of employees would either definitely or most probably apply for a job with their existing companies ever again. Surely, familiarity breeds contempt (Aswathappa, 2005). Compensation Management These days, the organizations are also beset with the problem of take home salary concept. The employees are no longer interested in knowing how much the company is spending on each of them but they are keen to know how much would be available to them in hands. This had brought into sharp notice the question of income tax planning. The employees work for rewards and the employers seek higher productivity to keep cost per employee low (Ratnam, 1999). A balance is to be struck between these two parties with regard to compensation. The compensation should be designed in such a way that the organization is able to attract, motivate, and retain competent employees and at the same time the employees perceive it fair and

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equitable. In India, the Government, especially through labour laws has been playing a very important in determining wages and also making it mandatory for employees to provide welfare schemes to its work force. EMERGING TRENDS IN HUMAN RESOURCE 1. Empowerment of Employees Empowerment is an emerging function of HR management. Its practice seems to have appeared in USA around 1970. The concept of empowerment has been seen as the redistribution of power in work settings and has been described as the reorientation of all forces, values and believes, which determine human behaviour in organization. These values enforces liberate rather that restrict range of thought and action (Ratnam, 1999). Empowerment is seen to provide greater and discretion to employees so that they develop mutual trust, liberal sharing of information, become team players and relies their full potential to contribute to the organization. To do this they need training and must be rewarded for increased responsibility and accountability. Quality of Working life Quality of working life (QWL) has assumed increasing interest and importance in both industrialized as well as developing countries of the world. In India, its scope seems to be broader than much labour legislation enacted to protect the workers. The American Society of Training and Development established a task force on the QWL in 1979. This task force defined QWL as a process of work organizations which enables its members at all levels to actively participate in 24 MANAGEMENT

shaping the organizations, environment, methods and outcomes. Quality Circle The concept of quality circles (QC) is a result of Japanese concern for statistical quality control. According to Ohmae, quality circle is a group of about 10 relatively autonomous workers from the same division of a company who volunteer to meet for an hour or so, once or twice a month. After work (usually they are paid over time), they discuss ways to improve the quality of their products, the production process in their part of the plant and the working environment. Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited is the pioneer of QC in India. It started five QCs in various shops in January 1981. Subsequently, it spread to other shops and by October 1983 as many as 228 QCs were opening in BHEL. The objective of QC activity in BHEL is to achieve and sustain a reputation for quality at competitive prices in the national and international markets for the entire product range. The important functions of QC in BHEL include: Preparation of quality control manuals Preparation or quality plans for various products. Formulation of annual quality improvement plans. Conduct quality audit. In BHEL, there is a separate unit which coordinates all activities relating to QC. As of November 30, 1985 there was about one fifth of the total eligible work force at

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BHEL involved in QCs. According to one estimate in the year 1982-83, the theme and percentage of time spent on them were as follows Productivity Quality Cost reduction House keeping Safety 50.6% 23.6% 11.5% 10.8% 3.5%

A number of other organizations have started the QC, including Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd., J.K. Jute Mills, Bharat Forge Co. Ltd., Hindustan Aeronautics ltd., TELCO, Lucas TVS, Hindustan Machine Tools, Crompton Greaves, Bajaj Auto etc. In April 1982, Quality circle Forum of India was established.

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7. Productivity and quality In the era of global competition, productivity and quality is essential to satisfy customers. Productivity and quality could be improved through not only better technology but also trained human resource/ programmes like Total Quality Management (TQM) and Re-engineering which require extensive employee involvement can be implemented to meet the challenges of quality and productivity. Total Quality Management is the philosophy which believes in a company wide responsibility towards quality. With organizations becoming more competitive, they are developing customer orientation and consensus thinking, integrating corporate functions, and fostering team work. In short they are embarking on TQM. In this system, all the people in the organization are involved in taking up activities aimed at not only determining, achieving and maintaining the quality of processes, products and services at a level that meets or exceeds the customers requirement, but also making continuous improvement and reaching ever higher levels of quality. Talent Management From human resource to talent management, he new challenges may require a paradigm shift in how companies manage their people resources. At a recent seminar on talent management, a member of the audience was asked to literally step into the shoes of the speaker without stepping out of her own. Did the shoes fit? Obviously not. That the capacity to empathize totally with someone by getting out of ones own shoes before stepping into theirs is one of the intrinsic values talent management seeks to bring out in people within an organization (Dowling & Welch, 2004).

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According to Mr. Anil Sachdeva, CEO, Grow Talent Company Ltd, traditional HR systems approach people development from the perspective of developing competencies in the organization. This can actually be a risk-prone approach especially for companies operating in fast-evolving industries, since competencies become redundant with time and new ones need to be developed. Talent management, on the other hand, focuses on enhancing the potential of people by developing capacities. Capacities are the basic DNA of an organization and of individual potential. GLOBAL HUMAN RESOURCE STRATEGY Global HR has 2 implications- one is HR professionals should be aware and sensitive to unique country conditions and second is that HR professionals should master country wise policies related to hire, fire , compensation , training,

development etc, since each country has there own unique set of human resource requirements. The scarcity of qualified managers has become a major constraint with respect to the speed with which the multinational companies can expand. The main aim of HR management in all companies including national and multinational is getting the right people in the right jobs in the right places at the right time and at the right cost. Very few companies come close to achieving this. The Chief Executives of United States based multinational companies lack confidence in the ability of their HR functions to screen, review and develop candidate for the most important designations across the globe. Companies new to global scene quickly discover that finding savvy; trust worthy managers for their overseas markets is their biggest challenge. Anglo-Dutch Unilever has long set of priority on human resources. HR has a seat on the boards executive committee in an organization that 28

focuses on in house talent. Akio Morita, the founder of Sony Corporation, once said, There is no magic in the success of Japanese Companies in general and Sony in particular. The secret of their success is simply the way they treat their employees. Under Morita, the whole process of recruitment, selection, training, performance appraisal and rewards at Sony was built on the premise that employees were the most valuable part of the company. These multinational companies manage their HR talent through international databases that within hours can provide a choice of grade A- in house candidates for any assignment. The goal is to build sustainable competitive advantage by attracting and developing the best managerial talent in each of your companys markets (Dowling & Welch, 2004). 1. Break all Local national The first and the most fundamental program towards building a global HR program is to end all favoritism toward managers who are nationals of the country in which the company is based and focus on the international talent as per the international standards. 2. Trace your lifeline Another step is to integrate the HR role with the role of the line manager. The lifeline and the role descriptions should be revised at least annually to ensure they express the business strategy. At IBM skills teams update their role descriptions every six months to keep pace with the markets and to inform senior managers which skills are hot and which the company has in good supply. 3. Build a global database to know who and where your talent is

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The main tool of a global HR policy has to be a global database simply because multinational companies now have more strategic posts scattered around the globe and must monitor the career development of many more managers. IBM has compiled a database of senior managers for 20 years .To build this type of database you have to go beyond each managers curriculum vitae to determine cultural ties, language skills, countries visited, hobbies and interest . 4. Construct a mobility pyramid Evaluate your managers in terms of their willingness to move to new locations as well as their ability and experience. This will encourage many more managers to opt for overseas assignments and open the thinking of line and HR managers to different ways of using available in house talent. 5. Identify your leadership capital Build a database of your companys mix of managerial skills by persuading people to describe the information in their CVs about their managerial talents alongwith their potential on standard personal profile templates. Companies should make it clear that individual inputs to the system are voluntary but that HR and line managers nevertheless will be using the data to plan promotions and international assignments and to assess training needs. 6 . Assess your bench strength and skill gap

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Managers and functional experts are responsible for checking into the database to compare their capabilities against the relevant skills profiles and to determine whether they need additional training. Through the database we get a business view of what we need versus what we have. Once the gaps are identified the question for HR is whether there is time to develop the necessary people or whether they have to be headhunted from the external sources. 7. Recruit regularly A multinational company must stress recruitment in emerging markets and when possible hire local nationals from these markets. The best way to attract local national recruits is to demonstrate how far they can climb along with the organization. 8. Adventure your posts internally In large companies it is difficult to keep track of the best candidate. For this reason, IBM now advertises many of its posts on its worldwide Intranet .Routine internet advertising has many advantages Allows a competitive internet job market to function across nationalities and genders. Makes the system more transparent. Attract high flyers

IBM used to hire only from the inside but now it began to recruit outsiders including those from other industries to broaden thinking and add objectivity. 9. Institute succession planning

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Every manager in a line job should be required to nominate up to three candidates who could take over that post in the next week. This goes a long way in solving the problem. But the major problem is that many of todays successors may leave the company tomorrow. 10. Challenge and retain your talent Global networks that transfer knowledge and good practices run on people to people contract and continuity. As international competition for talent intensifies, therefore it becomes increasingly important for companies to retain their good managers. Monetary incentives are not sufficient but the package must include challenge, personal growth and job satisfaction . HR TRENDS IN CHINA McKinsey & Co. stated in a November 2006 report that less than 10% of Chinese job hunters are qualified for in-demand positions in accounting, finance and engineering at overseas companies. As a response, the Chinese Government has prepared an ambitious education road map aiming to boost university enrolment from 13% today, to 20% in 2010 and even 40% in 2020. Yet, this approach will only start taking effect three to four years from now and doesnt tackle a problem that many candidates, especially graduates, have. Despite their mostly outstanding formal qualifications they often lack the ability to apply this theoretical knowledge to real projects. This is why about 60% of graduates are expected not to get a job directly after leaving university. One third of all new graduates in China have an engineering degree but fail to present complex decision-making skills. Without experience in team-work or project handling most are unfit for working in international firms.

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But the shortage of skilled staff is not just seen at entry level. Due to little or no practical knowledge and the inconsistency that comes with frequent job-changing, lack of experience appears at the management level as well. The rare cases possessing both formal qualifications and the often-quoted invaluable soft skills are desperately sought after. Stories abound in the Chinese media of people doubling or tripling their salaries in a couple of years just by frequently switching jobs. Hewitts projected salary increases for 2007 indicate that this trend will continue with an expected rise of more than 8%. In some fields such as accounting, salary increases are already much higher. According to Mercer Human Resources Consulting, wages paid by the Big Four accounting firms rose 30% to an average annual surplus of about US$9,000. A look at the figures shows why: presently there are around 69,000 licensed accountants in China facing a demand for over 300,000. This dramatic disparity is quite likely rooted in the fact that Chinese Universities didnt start offering Certified Public Accounting as a major until 1994. Staff draught can get so extreme that even the industrys big players have to turn clients down. The emerging picture: The result is a picture of HR and the work environment in the year 2000 that's decidedly upbeat and confident in the status and influence of HR professionals. Although we paint a picture of HR taking a tangential path, or rather an altogether Uturn, taking completely unexpected twists and turns, it has its roots in reality. The chart below provides a comparative study to show how the role of HR has evolved over the years.

33

Study of the Changing Role of HR YESTERDAY TODAY TOMORROW

Success factors Organizational Style

Business judgment, Intuition Paternalistic

Information Strategic Plan Mission Professional Vibrant

Flexibility Agility Speed Empowered Learning

Employees considered as Motivational Methods Role of HR

Driving people through social & intellectual needs Provide people with Motivate by food, clothing and providing shelter. effective & fair appraisals and compensation systems

Hungry, Naked & Defenseless creatures Driving people through basic needs

Thinking and Rational Beings

Fully evolved, completely satisfied, mature human beings People drive themselves As a Change Agent As a Innovator As a Strategic Partner

With an enormous, young workforce (the median age is 25) living in the largest democracy in the world, India is poised to become one of the global economys newest powerhouses. Since India opened its markets to foreign investment in the early 1990s, its economy has grown at an impressive average 8 percent annual rate, and the nation is now projected to become the worlds third-largest economy (behind China and the United States) within two or three decades, according to global investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs and other economists. Most of the nations job and economic growth has been generated by family-owned Indian enterprises and multinationals in industries such as information technology

34

(IT), telecommunications, business process outsourcing (BPO) and pharmaceuticals. Maintaining high growth rates is a high priority for these industries because they face increasingly stiff international competition, most notably from China. But sustaining growth may be difficult, dueironicallyto a lack of qualified people. Despite the fact that India has a population of more than 1 billion people, and a workforce of 422 million, its literacy rate is a low 59.5 percent (compared with 99 percent in the United States). Further, only about 48 million peopleless than 12 percent of the entire workforceare college graduates. And those who do hold college degrees often dont possess the skills needed by the nations surging industries. The human capital challenges facing some of Indias hottest sectors are similar to the skills shortages that some employers in the United States face todayand that more may encounter in the future as vast numbers of baby boomers retire, legal immigrant labor grows scarcer and Americas educational system continues to struggle to produce qualified new workers. But while similar challenges face both nations, the stakes are higher in India. For many companies in highly competitive sectors, a lack of talented workers constitutes a make-or-break HR issue, which makes the value of good HR management readily apparent to top executives. The profession, as a result, is gaining both respect and attentionthe kind that comes from being on the hot seat. The results from HR are mixed, however, with some observers complaining of largescale failures and others pointing out high-profile successes.

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The HR Agenda With the national economy growing rapidly and with growth in such industries as IT and business process outsourcing more than doubling, HR challenges are coming fast and furious. Its like building an aircraft while youre in the air, says Marcel R. Parker, president of human resources at the Raymond Group of Companies in Mumbai, a leading Indian organization in textiles and retailing with 18,000 employees. Faced with growth at record levels in some industries and skyrocketing attrition, HR professionals say theyre spending upward of 80 percent of their time on recruitment. Compounding the problem is the fact that, for personal or family-related reasons, half of all the women they hire will opt out of the workforce by age 30, according to Anita Belani, Country Head for Watson Wyatt India in Mumbai. Thats a potentially significant problem since women make up about 20 percent of the workforce in urban areas, and far more in certain fields. The Have-Nots The contrasts within India are startling. The differences among its 35 states are more disparate than California is to Mississippi when it comes to standard of living, literacy and employment options. Indias per capita income is $3,300, yet it boasts a middle-class population of over 200 million and growing. To put it in perspective, Indias middle class is two-thirds of the United States total population of 300 million. Yet wide discrepancies exist between the haves and the have-nots. 36

When you look down from one of the most impressive skyscrapers in Mumbai, the corporate headquarters for a vast media conglomerate, right next to the building theres a shantytown, says Murray Dalziel, managing director of global practices at the Hay Group in Philadelphia. Of Indias 422 million workers, 395 millionor 93.6 percent of all workerstoil in what is known as the unorganized sector. Most workers in this sector are contractors, hourly, part-time, self-employed or farm workers. Workers in this sector are not protected by employment laws and do not usually receive health benefits. By contrast, the 27 million workers in the organized sector are eligible for health benefits, retirement, social security and other government-mandated entitlements. In India, only organized-sector employees are protected by labor laws, explains Debi Saini, professor of human resources at the Management Development Institute in Gurgaon, India. The unorganized workers get nothing at allno benefits, no social security. Even when the national government or individual states enact legislation like minimum wage laws to extend protections to these workers, the laws are toothless. I was talking to someone recently who employs 2,000 workers in his eight factories, Saini says. He pays no attention to the basic labor laws. Virtually no one follows them. How to mainstream the millions of socially, economically and educationally deprived Indians potentially is the most explosive and controversial issue that India faces. It is a subject of intense political debate in the business and academic

37

communities. Most important, finding workers with the right skills is a problem. Even hot industries that can attract college graduates from the top-tier business schools are being forced by market conditions to inflate salaries and lower job expectations. People who normally would be viewed as entry-level workers and paid accordingly are commanding much higher salaries and responsibilities, says Philip Felando, senior director of human resources at Skyworks Solutions Inc. in Irvine, Calif. Felando, who is responsible for 4,000 employees worldwide, including 300 engineers at a design center in Hyderabad, India, says: Youre a hot commodity regardless of your ability to perform. Felando says employers in India are forced to quickly boost pay for in-demand employeesor risk losing them. Skyworks has had to fast-track its promotion timetable, moving engineers up after six months while their U.S. counterparts may wait two years, he says. Another factor driving up salaries is the fact that skilled Indian workers know there is always another job opportunity and tend to give long noticesfour to six weeks to survey prospects and receive counteroffers from current employers. Retention, no matter the industry, is a nightmareespecially among younger workers. Parker, who must find staff for an ever-growing number of shopping malls, provides an example: Until a few years ago, [turnover] was between 3 percent and 5 percent, he says. Now, its as high as 70 percent. Its very frustrating. By the time I get them trained, theyre out the door. I ask myself, who am I really training them

38

for? Some new hires never even make it to the first day of the job, having found a better offer elsewhere in the short time between the offer and the start date. Another key problem is finding workers with the right mind-set. A survey of more than 60 CEOs in India this year by Aneeta Madhokdean of the faculty of management studies at the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management and Higher Studies in Mumbaifound that changing the workplace culture is their most pressing HR concern. As the CEOs see it, workers dont match up well against their hard-driving counterparts in Singapore and China. Theyre too complacent, less interested in working to advance their careers, more interested in balancing work with family and social activities. There arent enough young workers who are dedicated to their careers, echoes Arun Mansukhani, associate vice president of Hutchison Essar, Indias largest cellular provider. Not enough people are willing to work for things beyond the paycheck. Middle-class Indian workers today, especially the younger ones, have more disposable income and are increasingly interested in gaining material possession right away. Mansukhani compares his experience working at a call center in the BPO sector years ago with today. I got 5,000 rupees [$110] a month and felt I was doing well if I could buy new Levis jeans. Now a call sector executive gets 15,000 rupees a month; she wants jeans, a car and a mobile phoneand she wants them all at

39

once. A dearth of middle managers also is a pressing problem. India has plenty of technocrats and engineers; whats in short supply are general managers who can pull it all together, says Guarav Lahiri, operations manager at the Hay Group India in Gurgaon. Even for those managers already on the job, theres a gap in expertise and training. Rajeev Dubey, president of HR and corporate services for Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., one of the 10 largest Indian business conglomerates, says that with the exception of the relatively few managers with multinational experience, Indias homegrown managers are poorly prepared to cope with global challenges arising from mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and entering new markets. Many Are Called, Few Answer the Challenge While the HR challenges facing many Indian companies are both daunting and crucial to the continued success of their businesses, the number of enlightened HR leaders helping to tackle those challenges in a strategic fashion is small, some claim. HR still has not reached the strategic level that it should be at, says Watson Wyatts Belani. Even in the larger companies, they talk about being strategic, but in the main theyre not doing it. In the last five years, the way growth has happened, no one has thought about the real issues. Attraction and retention are all they can focus on. These are important, of course, but they dont go further. They dont look at the big picture. How many are actually doing workplace planning? They tell us they want to do human capital measurement, but very few really are.

40

Of 50 companies in the automotive supply sector, Lahiri estimates that only three or four are trying out cutting-edge HR practices. Its a case of overpromise and no deliver, he says. From an intellectual standpoint everyone nods their head and says strategic HR is great. Whether leaders are engaging and motivating people on the ground is a question. We seldom come across a CEO client that loves the HR managers: Theyre constantly complaining about how the HR guys are clueless on the business practices. Mostly, Indian HR managers seem content to leave the strategizing to others. Too many HR people expect themselves to be in the back office rather than the front, says Mansukhani. Bottom line, HR people are immersed in transactions that dont add too much value. Making Strides While everyone is swimming against the tide of HR challenges in India, some companies do appear to be ahead of the curve and making progress. For example, at Skyworks, attrition is at 10 percent, well below the 30 percent to 40 percent for engineers in the software industry, according to Felando. Likewise, outsourcer Prudential Process Management Services (PPMS) in Mumbai a company with 1,200 employees that serves Prudential U.K.s financial products customers in the United Kingdomreports attrition at 20 percent in an industry where 45 percent is the norm. The companys tactics are geared toward quickly hiring good candidates, rapidly boosting their skills and offering an environment that appeals to them on a more personal level by:

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Rapidly handling screening and selection. On average, PPMS adds 25 new hires each month. It does so by quickly zeroing in on candidates and closing the deal. In a single day, a candidate will pass through five levels of screening. When the candidate gets here, he takes a quantitative test, then a voice test to see if he can speak English, explains Angshik Chaudhuri, director of business solutions services. Next we do an attitudinal assessment, separate interviews by HR and the operations manager. At the end of the day we give the person a letter of intent offering the job contingent on his passing reference checks and submitting documentation like diplomas and pay stubs. It can take anywhere from one to three weeks to get the documentation, but the candidate knows on day one that we want him. (To learn how a U.S. employer is using on-the-spot hiring and quick-start training to attract and retain health care workers, see the HR Magazine article, Quick-Decision Hiring.)

Offering up-front training. PPMS invests the first 16 to 20 weeks of employment in training, teaching and testing competencies. In the first week, new hires learn about the company. Then come classes in speech, customer services training and the culture of the client country in the United Kingdom. Next, four to eight weeks are spent on specific financial products training. Finally, the person goes live under strict monitoring and begins to generate revenue.

Emphasizing horizontal and vertical opportunities. Workers are encouraged to move laterally and cross-train. We do this because our employees are

42

youngmost join us at 23and at that age a person does not always make an informed choice, Chaudhuri explains. If youre doing well in your role, we want to encourage you to try another. In addition, advancement and promotion opportunities are publicized widely within the Prudential family of companies. Candidates must pass through an assessment center where HR looks at their overall contributions and leadership potential.

Offering continuing education. After 18 months, employees are eligible for one of Prudentials MBA programs, specially tailored in partnership with toprated Indian business schools. The company pays for half the tuition.

Pitching lifestyle and downplaying compensation. Culture is the No. 1 selling point. Our position on compensation is never to be the market leader, Chaudhuri says. Were offering a lifestylea family-oriented environment, training, graduate education and job advancement. We tell candidates that if youd like more money, dont work with us.

Stressing family ties. Family and friends, boyfriends and girlfriends are invited to visit the workplace. We meet with them and tell them how grateful we are that the employee is with us, Chaudhuri says. When we do this, the workers social status increases phenomenally and the family relates to us as real people.

Developing good branding. Building a well-respected company brand is a powerful differentiator. If you work for a company thats well-known, your

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social equity is very high, Chaudhuri says. Youve been vetted; you have social status. He cautions that failing to live up to your brand can spell disaster. If your people practices dont mirror what you stand for, youll lose face very rapidly. Talent Management: A Top Concern for Top Executives HR executives who do have success tackling Indias human capital management problems are doing so under a spotlight. Especially in those sectors where a companys growth is limited by its ability to obtain and keep talented employees, Indias key human capital issues are key business issuesones attracting the attention of top business leaders. In fact, many CEOs in India recognized the need for good human capital management almost as soon as their markets were opened to foreign investment, says Wayne Brockbank, professor of HR management at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Brockbank has been consulting in India since 1994, when he was hired by Indian companies to share HR strategies he and other experts had been extolling in the United States for decades. In those early days, Brockbank recalls, CEOs in India realized quickly that the human side of the business is what you have to compete with. Your people will save you, not your factories. Recognizing the importance of talent management, some CEOs who lacked specialized HR expertise in-house took on the role themselves. Brockbank cites ICICI Bank, the major Indian financial institution that is going head-to-head with

44

mammoth Citibank in some markets. In 1998, ICICI had 8 percent of the financial services market in India, says Brockbank. Today it has 30 percent. Ask the CEO who guided the company during this period and hed say his levers for creating this juggernaut are his HR practices. Initially, he actually became his own HR VP. Other CEOs in India went outside the HR pipeline to find executives with business acumen who could add a strategic HR perspective. For example, when the leadership team at Mahindra & Mahindra wanted strong HR leadership, they hired Yale University-educated Dubey as president of HR and corporate services. In a career path not usually seen in the United States, Dubey previously had been a CEO for two companies in the Tata Group, Indias largest private conglomerate. I had never been part of the HR function, but I dealt with a lot of HR issues when I was a CEO, Dubey says. Now, he leads 150 HR professionals at Mahindra & Mahindra. We do a lot of work thats strategic to the success of our businesses: talent management, creating synergy, creating a culture of integration, mapping, succession planning and developing a global mind-set. The Importance of HR The value that many top executives in India place on human capital management is clear. Whereas in the United States, HR often has to make the value case for human capital, its not lost on Indian CEOs, says Salil Agrawal, head of the IT, BPO and Telecom Practice at ECS Ltd., a consulting firm in Gurgaon, India. The moment

45

CEOs talk about ramping upwhich almost everyone isfinding people becomes paramount. Unless they partner with HR, they know they wont be able to deliver. The importance of human capital management also is reflected in the types of executives who are hiring HR consultants. Six years ago, our clients were HR managers and directors, and we focused on traditional transactional activities like compensation studies, says the Hay Groups Lahiri. Today, our clients include CEOs and line managers, and were asked to address strategic issues about managing growth and change. Ultimately, HR issues are business issues here, and those who tackle human capital issues in a way that meets business needs are prizedand sometimes rewarded with far broader responsibilities. For example, at Skyworks Solutions facility in Hyderabad, India, the HR director is part of a triumvirate that runs the operation along with the site director and the controller, says Felando. The India HR director sits on the board of directors of the Indian company. Along with traditional HR duties, hes tasked with running the site from an operations perspective. He truly is strategic. The generally high value placed on HR management in India is illustrated by the results of a recent salary study commissioned by Hutchison Essar: Senior HR executives were the third-highest-paid executives in the country behind network architecture and sales executives.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research is an original contribution to the existing stock of knowledge making for its 46

advancement. It is the pursuit of truth with the help of study, observation, comparison and experiment. In short, the research for knowledge through objective and systematic method of finding solution to a problem is research; it also covers the systematic approach concerning generalization and the formulation of a theory. Different stages involved in research consists of enacting the problem, formulating a hypothesis, collecting the facts of data, analyzing the facts at reaching certain conclusions either in the form of solutions towards the concerned problem or in certain genralizations some theoretical formulation (Nargolkar, 2004, p.1).

Research Design Research design is a purposeful scheme of action proposed to be carried out in a sequence during the process of research focusing on the management problem to be tackled. It must be a scheme of problem solving through proper analysis, for which systematic arrangement of managerial effort to investigate the problem is necessary. (Cooper & Schindler, 2003). It destines the task of a researcher from identifying a managerial problem and problem area to report writing with the help of collection, tabulation analysis and interpretation of data. Though not exhaustic, Claire Selltizs definition of research design reveals some important aspects of research design. A research design is the arrangement of conditions for collection and analysis of data in a manner that aims to combine relevance to the research purpose with economy in procedure (Nargolkar, 2004, p.19).

All research approaches can be classified into three general categories research:

1. Exploratory Research: Exploratory Research is used when one is seeking insights into the general nature of a problem, the possible decision alternatives, and relevant variables that need to be considered. Basically there is a little prior knowledge on which to build.

2. Descriptive Research: Descriptive research embraces a large proportion of

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marketing research. The purpose is to provide an accurate snapshot of some aspect of the market environment. In descriptive research, hypothesis often will exist, but they may be tentative and speculative. In general, the relationships studied will not be causal in nature. However, there may still have utility in prediction.

3. Causal Research:

When it is necessary to show that one variable causes

or determines the values of other variables, a causal research approach must be used.

I have used exploratory approach using survey strategy. It is a popular method used for business and management research. It also enables the collection of a large amount of data in an economical way. The method is generally based on questionnaire, which I used extensively, that allows easy comparison, and as the data are standardized, it is easier to understand too. This method allows control over the process and increases the researchers dependence on others to provide quantitative research data, relying on the goodwill of the respondents and limited to the number and type of question that can be asked. All the above factors applied to the research. TYPES OF DATA USED Basically there are two types of data which are used in marketing research process 1. Primary Data: The methods of collecting primary data are as follows,

A: Observation B: Interview C: Telephone Interview D. Mail Survey

Interview: Interview is one of the chief means of collecting data in research process. Interview may be defined as a systematic conversation initiated for a 48

specific purpose and focus on certain planned content areas. It is not a simple two-way conversation between an investigator and an informant.

Surveys: There are three main types of surveys, depending upon the method of data gathering used: personal interview surveys, telephone surveys and mail surveys. Advantages of survey: Following are the main advantages of mail surveys: 1. Wider Distribution 2. Less Distribution Bias 3. Thoughtful Reply

The primary data under processing is collected from both direct filling the questionnaires and through e-mails also.

2.

Secondary Data: The data once collected by one person become the

secondary data if used by another person. Sources Of Secondary data: The various sources of secondary data are as follows* 1. Bibliographies 2. Directories 3. Television 4. Newspaper 5. Journals 6. Websites

The secondary data like information of, information about company has been taken from company website and companys yearly chronicles.

ATTITUDE MEASUREMENT Attitude is psychological constructs, a way of conceptualizing the intangible. 49

Attitude cant really be observed or measured directly because their existence is inferred from their consequences. Attitudes are mental states used by individuals to structure the way they perceive their environment and guide the way they respond to it. Types of Attitude Measurement Scale: There are four types of measurement scale as follows: 1. Nominal Scale: In a nominal scale, objects are assigned to mutually exclusive, labeled categories but there are no necessary relationships among the categories. 2. Ordinal Scale: An ordinal scale is obtained by or by arranging them in order with regard to some common variable. The question is simply whether each object has more or less of this variable than some other object. 3. Interval Scale: In an interval scale the numbers used to rank the objects also represent equal increments of the attribute being measured. 4. Ratio scale: A ratio scale is a special kind of interval scale that has a natural zero point. The Nominal scale and ordinal scale are used while designing the questionnaires. Both open ended and closed ended questions are put together in the questionnaire. STATISTICAL TOOLS USED The list of statistical tools and Marketing tools are used while analyzing the data are Tables, Bar Charts and Pie charts

DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

ANALYSIS There are an incredible number of pressures on today's organizations. To name a few: environmental pressures such as increasing globalization, rapid technological 50

change, and tougher competition; organizational changes such as new organizational alliances, new structures and hierarchies, new ways of assigning work, and a very high rate of change; changes in the workforce, including employees' priorities, capabilities, and demographic characteristics. Within these pressured organizations, there is a need for (and opportunity for) the human resource functions to play a critical role in helping organizations navigate through these transitions. The role of human resources has been evolving for some time. The shift from "personnel" to "human resources," for example, was part of the movement to acknowledge the value of employees as an organizational resource, and was an attempt to remove some of the stigma that was coming to be associated with slow, bureaucratic personnel departments. This shift in label was accompanied by a call for HR to become a strategic partner with the leaders of the business-to contribute to significant business decisions, advice on critical transitions, and develop the value of the employees-in short, to have a seat at the table.

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The human resources person should understand the business and have a bottom line orientation. This trend reflects the common perception that HR "business-asusual" is not prepared to meet the challenges that today's businesses present. He/she should also have an excellent understanding of human resource-related regulations, organizational development theory and practice, and motivation theory, as well as an understanding of the external environment. His/her contribution should be to go help the rest of the organization think through the implications of business decisions or strategies for the work force and to help the organization determine how best to deploy available human resources to meet the business objectives. HR role has been moving from focusing on Operational roles to focus on strategic roles. Most firms have undertaken productivity measures such as downsizing, reengineering, TQM, QWL etc Therefore, HR professionals are now focusing on infrastructure and their roles as an administrative expert. And due to the cultural change in an organization, the HR manager has to work as a change agent also. Earlier, the role of an HR manager was confined to traditional bureaucratic, regulation-and-policy-driven HR role. But now it has given way to human resources where the emphasis is on regarding a company's people as resources to be managed strategically, similar to time, money, and information. Some human resources professionals and some companies embraced this change early on. Others still are operating in the old style. The costs to the organization of a human resource that is crippled by unmanaged change are immense. HRs role is to focus more on HRM - aiding the line manager, while looking at the big picture and building a vision. On the other hand they have to

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act as employees advocate that is they have to stand up for their people, to make sure management is treating its employees equitably and fairly across the board. HR YES 30 NO 20 continues to balance the demands of several different roles: business partner, internal consultant, operational and administrative expert and both employee and employer advocate. QUESTION 1

AWARENESS OF EMERGING TRENDS

NO 40% YES 60%

YES NO

INTERPRETATION 60% of the people are aware of emerging trends. QUESTION 2 CHALLENGES OPPORTUNITIES BOTH 30 15 5

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TRENDS IN ORGANISATION

10% CHALLENGES 30% OPPORTUNITIES 60% BOTH

INTERPRETATION The trends provide organization with challenges. QUESTION 3 1 GLOBALIZATION 2 RAPID TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES 3 TOUGHER COMPETITION CHANGE IN WORKFORCEC 4 COMPETITION ORGANISATION CHANGES LIKE 5 ALLIANCES 20 5 3 14 8

54

FACTOR BEHIND CHANGING TRENDS NO. OF RESPONDENTS 25 20 15 10 5 GLOBALIZATION RAPID TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES TOUGHER COMPETITION ORGANISATION CHANGES LIKE ALLIANCES 5 0 CHANGE IN WORKFORCEC COMPETITION 4

3 FACTORS

INTERPRETATION The main factor behind changing trend is Globalization.

QUESTION 4 Yes No 30 20

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TACKLING CHANGE BY CHANGING HR STRATEGIES

40% 60%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION Yes organization tackle changes by changing HR strategies.

QUESTION 5 STRONG HR LEADERSHIP ACUTE FUTURE ORIENTATION FLEXIBILITY & 20 30 5

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CREATIVITY JOB ROTATION

ACTIVITIES FOR SUCCESS OF HR MANAGEMENT

35 NO. OF RESPONDENTS 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 ACTIVITIES 5 5 20 30 STRONG HR LEADERSHIP ACUTE FUTURE ORIENTATION FLEXIBILITY & CREATIVITY JOB ROTATION

INTERPRETATION Acute future orientation lead to success of human resource mangement.

QUESTION 6 EMPOWERMENT 10 57

JOB ENRICHMENT ASSESSMENT CENTRE QUALITY OF WORKLIFE QUALITY CIRCLE HR OUTSOURCING

5 5 2 8 20

EMERGING TRENDS IN HR 25 NO. OF RESPONDENTS 20 15 10 5 0 TRENDS 10 5 5 2

QUALITY CIRCLE HR OUTSOURCING EMPOWERMENT

20
JOB ENRICHMENT ASSESSMENT CENTRE

8
QUALITY OF WORKLIFE

INTERPRETATION HR outsourcing is the most important emerging trend in HR.

QUESTION 7 58

QUALITY OF WORKLIFE JOB RESTRUCTIURING & JOB REDESIGN CAREER DEVELOPMENT SELF MANAGFD TEAMS PROMOTIONAL OPPORTUNITIES PRACTICES IN HR LEADING TO CONDUCTIVE ATMOSPHERE

5 10 15 15 5

QUALITY OF WORKLIFE

10% 30%

10% 20%

JOB RESTRUCTIURING & JOB REDESIGN CAREER DEVELOPMENT SELF MANAGFD TEAMS PROMOTIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

30%

INTERPRETATION Career development & self managed teams lead to conductive atmosphere.

QUESTION 8 BRAINSTORMING PANEL ANALYSIS LINE GRAPH 20 5 8 59

FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION SCATTER DIAGRAM

2 15

TECHNIQUES ADDING CHALLENGES TO WORK

25 NO. OF RESPONDENTS 20 15 10 5 0 CHALLENGES 8 5 2 BRAINSTORMING 20 15 PANEL ANALYSIS LINE GRAPH FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION SCATTER DIAGRAM

INTERPREATTION Brainstorming adds more challenges to work.

QUESTION 9 ADEQUATE & FAIR COMPENSATION SAFE & HEALTHY WORKING CONDITIONS SOCIAL INTEGRATION IN WORK ORGANISATION CONSTITUTIONALISATION OF 60 5 10 20 15

WORKFORCE TECHNIQUE AS AN EMERGING ADEQUATE & FAIR CHALLENGE

COMPENSATION

NO. OF RESPONDENTS

25 20 15 10 5 0 5 10

20 15

SAFE & HEALTHY WORKING CONDITIONS SOCIAL INTEGRATION IN WORK ORGANISATION CONSTITUTIONALISAT ION OF WORKFORCE

TECHNIQUES

INTERPRETATION Social integration in work oragnisation acts as an emerging challenge in HR.

QUESTION 10 HOMOPHILY 20 61

EMPATHY PROXIMITY STRUCTURING OPENNESS REWARD

10 5 5 2 8

CHARACTERISTICS ACTING AS A CHANGE ADVOCATE

NO. OF RESPONDENT S 30 20 10 0 CHATRACTERISTICS 20 10 5 5 8 2 HOMOPHILY EMPATHY PROXIMITY STRUCTURING OPENNESS REWARD

INTERPRETATION Homophily acts as an emerging advocate.

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CONCLUSION Human Resource Management is much discussed in today's business world. But how well is it understood? In a world where people's competencies and skill sets are described in paragraphs rather than in a few words and where media reports of salaries make us do a double-take to ensure that seeing is indeed believing, it is becoming increasingly challenging to manage this high potential we consider as the country's asset. Over the past two decades, the world saw a complete makeover in the way Human Resource Management in organisations was defined, but in India, the change has been more prominent in the last decade or so, after liberalisation. Today, managing the expectations and motivations of a skilled workforce has brought with it attendant complexities in terms of the need for robust HR practices and organisational procedures. Earlier considered a support function for any business, HRM today is required to take on a more strategic role in order to align itself with the organisation's business strategies. Hence, the HR manager is expected to take on the mantle of a business partner along with managers of other line functions, in driving the firm's strategies. The shift in focus from traditional HRM to strategic HRM was inevitable. Competitive advantage for an organisation lies not just in differentiating a product or service or in becoming the low cost leader but in also being able to tap the company's special skills or core competencies and rapidly respond to customer's needs and competitor's moves. HR management can play a role in identifying and analysing

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external opportunities and threats that may be crucial to the company's success. It is in a unique position to supply competitive intelligence that may be useful in the strategic planning process. Over the years, some of the traditional HR practices have been revisited and analysed to evaluate their suitability in today's world. One such major practice is the concept of Human Resource Accounting (HRA). Initially, one might hesitate to accept a concept which tries to put a monetary value to human beings. How does one attach a number to a person's capabilities? However, HRA represents a way to gauge how strong and profitable an organisation's workforce is. Organisations have been claiming that their employees are their most valuable assets. The spate of downsizings and increasing job insecurity notwithstanding, the resurgence of interest in the area of HRA is perhaps testimony to this approach, where investments in human resources are now included as assets in a company's balance sheet, rather than expense heads in their profit and loss statements. The signals are clear the employee is an asset who can be groomed to bring in future profitability an asset which can define the company's image in the market today. HRA also involves accounting for investment in people and their replacement costs, as also the economic value of people in an organisation. A trend yet to catch up in the Indian industry, with a few exceptions such as BHEL, Infosys, SBI and Reliance industries, it has been extensively embraced in the West. With the growth of the industries in the `knowledge-verticals', human talent is undoubtedly the most important asset today. To make sure that a company selects the right person for the right job, and manages him/her carefully, processes like 64

competency mapping are gaining ground. Competency mapping is a process of identifying key competencies for a particular position in an organisation, and then using it for job-evaluation, recruitment, training and development, performance management, and succession planning. In conjunction with the balanced scorecard, this can be an extremely robust tool to manage an organisation's performance. Despite the growing level of awareness, however, in India, competency development and mapping still remains in the nascent stages of implementation. As far as the HR function is concerned, the time has perhaps come where it needs to be treated as a line function with every manager having HR activities as part of his line responsibilities, rather than treating HR as a separate, support-providing activity only. Today's manager is expected to wear multiple hats that of a leader, internal change agent, coach, counsellor, mentor in addition to his/her `technical' responsibilities. This would entail that every manager, irrespective of his/her functional area of specialisation, would have to have a thorough grounding in concepts and processes of HR. At the IIT-Madras Department of Management Studies, the curriculum followed in the HR area of specialisation reflects a response to these changing trends, where, in addition to incorporating the newest trends and best practices in the traditional HR course curriculum, newer courses in cross-cultural management, change

management, and international HRM attempt to familiarise the students with new concepts. It has become fashionable among organisations to use terms such as HRD (Human Resource Development) and HCM (Human Capital Management) as being

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representative of the changing trends in HR practices. Merely renaming the function is however not going to be sufficient. The need of the hour is for premier institutes such as the IIMs, IITs as well as other professional institutions to rise to the occasion and re-design their curriculum and pedagogical methods in consultation with the industry, in order to train their students to meet the changed expectations of the industry.

RECOMMENDATIONS Increasing organizational size and its complexity, transition from traditional to professional management, changing social and cultural norms, globalization of industry and availability of information technology are constantly changing the profile of HRM functions. Therefore, the HRMs role should be more flexible, innovative and constantly responding to the challenges of the environment. Hence the new HRs role has to be responsive to the human hopes and aspirations and situational changes both within and outside the organization. In the light of above analysis the human resource manager has to take some new roles. Making the shift to a new HR role will raise unique issues for every HR group that attempts it, but there are some common steps and activities that will increase the likelihood of success. Some of these steps and activities are: Strong HR leadership. As with any major change effort, a strong leader can develop a clear vision, motivate others to share that vision, and help them work

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toward achieving it. In order to change the role of HR in an organization, the HR leader will need to work both within the HR group and with the organizational leaders to reshape everyone's expectations of what HR can and will deliver. Acute future orientation. One of the ways that HR can provide value is to understand how changing environmental, organizational, and workforce factors will likely influence the business, anticipate the associated HR needs, and be prepared to deliver appropriate solutions to meet those needs. Flexibility and creativity. Responsiveness in the changing world of work will require being flexible-as the organizations change, so will their needs and priorities. In addition, traditional activities and processes may not be sufficient to meet the unique needs of the future-HR leaders will likely rely on creativity of their groups to achieve effective results. Increasing globalization of the market will create a need for both flexibility and creativity as businesses try to succeed in new locations, with a new workforce, and with new customers. Delivering value. Although this is not a new challenge for HR, it remains a critical one. HR is still perceived by many within today's organizations as simply a non-revenue generating function. It is important to make apparent the value provided by working with the management team to hire the right people, manage them well, pay them appropriately, and build a working environment that encourages success. Business unit assignment. Some companies are assigning HR employees to specific business units as a way of enabling them to develop a focused

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relationship with a small part of the business. This relationship can be enforced when the HR person has a direct reporting relationship with the leader of the business unit. Centers of excellence. As organizations grow, they often find themselves with multiple HR groups. These can be duplicative or complementary. When they are duplicative, they can be subject to (painful) downsizing and consolidation, leaving behind a department that is unable to serve all areas of the business which can, in turn, undermine the credibility of HR. An effective response to this issue is to utilize the multiple HR groups differently. One approach that seems to work well is to develop "centers of excellence," where the HR groups in different parts of the company develop their expertise in a particular area and serve the needs of the larger company in that area-HR groups operating within this model can see each other as resources rather than competitors, and the company benefits from high levels of expertise in a number of areas. Consulting model. A number of HR departments have adopted a consulting model of providing service. They view their internal customers as clients, learn consulting skills, and take their client satisfaction as a measure of their success. Job rotation. One way to bring the perspective of the business into HR-and vice versa-is to rotate line managers into the HR function for periods of time. These individuals often serve as reality checks for the HR group, and then bring an increased understanding of the value of HR back to their line function when the rotation is over. Sending HR people into other areas of the business can serve a similar purpose. 68

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New Delhi. Dowling Peter J., Denice E. Welch (2004), International Human Resource Management, 4th edition, Thomson Learning, Singapore. Chopra R. K., Management of Human Resources, V.K. Publishing House, Darya Ganj, New Delhi, 2001. www.theconnectinglink.net/meet_staff.html. Key problems: qualification and experience, http://www.fiducia-

china.com/News/2007/1004-1202.html Luis R. Gomez-Mejia, et al, Managing Human Resources, Prentice Hall of India, 2003, p. 139-145. Mamoria C.B. (1999), Personnel Management, Himalaya Publishing House, New Delhi

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