Hiring and employee retention have been identified as the “key challenges” in managing and measuring employee productivity, according to a survey conducted among more than 200 HR managers across industries.
Releasing the Workforce Productivity India 2012 report on Friday, James Thomas, Country Manager – India Operations, Kronos Inc., said the survey revealed that HR managers in many Indian companies were “too caught up in firefighting” attrition that they were less able to focus on the more strategic objectives of their business operations. “While measuring productivity among the blue collar workforce is relatively easier, HR managers complain that measuring productivity of the mid-level managerial segment proves difficult,” Mr. Thomas said.
The survey identified “inaccurate” manpower planning and managing absenteeism, especially unplanned absenteeism, as key worries of HR managers. More than half the respondents reported that they were managing workforce scheduling manually or through the use of spreadsheets instead of employing automated digital tools. “Absenteeism, especially when it is unscheduled, costs companies heavily because typically, replacement workers are only 75 per cent as productive as the regular workers they replace,” Mr. Thomas observed. More than half the respondents said their companies do not use “integrated processes and systems” to measure productivity, he said.
“In reality, hiring and retaining talent are not the most important problems that HR managers face,” Mr. Thomas observed. HR managers, he said, needed to get more involved in business organisations' “strategic objectives” such as those relating to measuring and rewarding productivity.
Keywords: Workforce Productivity report, human resource, hiring, attrition,
Well to be frank Attrition will always be an issue for companies and HR managers. Talking about the Tech(IT)Companies, the main reason for leaving is that they don't get proper exposure or kind of work related to their profile. If they want right project of their choice they have to wait a lot or they have to waste lot of time staying in pool.
The most vulnerable group is the FRESH GRADS which companies hire in bulk these days. Companies should try to retain the most out of them, by providing right exposure to technology as per their qualification, proper increment, proper Spot awards timely and allowing them some kind of boost from time to time. Also they should allow them to go for higher education like part-time MBA, part-time courses in interest of their Technology. In duration of 2-3 years companies should take them to such a level that they act as potential leaders and then companies/managers can showcase them commercially in front of clients.
HR has to learn and be novel in their recruitment practices. Nowadays they feel so insecure and incompetent to recruit laterally from market that they spend more time in inventing and harassing the existing employees. There can be no better reason other than insecurity when they ask employees to serve 3-4 months' notice period. There is no rational when HR is not even available to listen and empathize with employees genuine concerns and have no mechanism to put an end to bias and toxic presence of groupies in organization.
I do agree with Aakash Raval.
First of all, the HR stream should be streamlined and good people must come into HR jobs rather than like our Indian politics. According to my experiences, HR means cheat candidates in interviews, later cheat employees to get their own benefits and then company benefits. Company also give importance for profits rather than employee retention and focus on new hires. This is the state of Indian companies.
I believe HR community should introspect themselves first.
> in most of the B'schools people who are not capable of getting good grades in first year takes MBA HR to save them selves. > Unless you put papers HRs don't care about you. They can hire new person for almost 50% more package but before you put papers they will not even give you 10%.> Measuring productivity : How can people who don't have technical or related education can measure productivity? I have come across HRs who don't even know how to check mails properly. How this 75% was counted and why it didn't came to 80% or 70%. > Labor laws in India are not employee friendly compared to Developed nations and HRs don't work towards best practices
> How many HR really works towards employee betterment ? Ask employees what you want rather than forcing them to do what they want.
> I was with a company for 3 years, 5 HR handling me got changed(switched company)! So remove HRs from iterations data and figures may improve a bit
Each and every employee should have measuring objectives with clear target date which should be helpful for giving awards and to focus on their pending objectives. Also management should give motivation to the employees who will be good but lack of few strength.
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