EmployWise: Tips for providing mandatory HR training

Training for HR is mandatory in every company and it is important to educate the managers and supervisors on certain policy and procedures as well as legal matters.

Supposedly we take employee harassment of any sort as an example, usually people might hesitate or find it awkward to be a part of harassment related training session for a couple of hours, but then it depends on the trainer to do his/her homework well and come prepared with some real-life experiences to share. The point, which is to be kept in focus, is that for such unconventional topics the message has to be conveyed in a way different from usual training sessions.            

The following tips if followed can make the trainings on complex though important topics much more effective:

Trainings made alive through multi media: Instead of reading out the policies from a book, make them interesting through a blend of visual and multimedia aid. It is important to put the message across especially in trainings related to harassment, FMLA, ADA laws etc.

Real life examples of appropriate action: Real life examples leave a long lasting impact on the attendees; therefore to make the training effective such examples should be narrated more often. Showing the severe consequences of unacceptable behavior is critical to set an example amongst the employees. Moreover the trainer/front line manager should be able to portray that right steps were taken as an employer in the real life example they are stating.

Engage experienced trainers: Bring in people in-house or external with loads of experience to share experiences from their past work life. It’s better to train on topics that are crucial before waiting for them to become mandatory.

Apart from that the organisations can focus on arranging follow-up classes and provide handbooks with detailed policies and procedures for all attending the training. Such efforts taken by the employers depict the seriousness that they are putting in to make the employees aware of the necessary laws and regulations which influences the employees to give a respectable response

EmployWise is a complete HR Software for the life-cycle of an employee including Leave and Attendance software, Employee Database, Travel and Expense Management. Start Your Free Trial for 30 Days

Read More

EmployWise: Save Time & Energy with Good Prioritizing Skills

Prioritizing tasks is an important skill that not only helps to focus what is important, but also allows doing tasks on time with more attention and energy. For dealing with time management problems, prioritizing can facilitate in making better use of time, along with eliminating gaps in productivity. With this skill, you need not to work faster, but schedule your time in a way that you can dedicate time for various activities.

The 80/20 Rule...

When we are overburdened with work, we are not able to dedicate time and energy to all of them. At times we are even short of resources, which start hampering the work and results in several things left undone. Prioritizing is a way that helps solve all these problems and reduce frustration.

Prioritizing all the tasks in a way that this 20% contribution from our activities is properly scheduled can help us spend more time with family and produce better value outputs. In addition to this, it will help us understand what is important and what is urgent.

Prioritizing Tasks

For prioritizing skills in a useful manner, you should be able to differentiate your work as important and urgent. To prioritize work as important, you should focus on work that provides value, think for long term and one should have a clear vision. Rather than wasting time on different things, one should understand that first things always come first.

Usually when the tasks are given they all seem urgent and important, but in fact, most of the urgent activities that keep us involved are not really important for the long run. Tasks should be prioritized in such a way that they help us achieve long-term goals or may have long-term consequences.

Therefore, Good prioritizing skills facilitates everyone to finish the urgent tasks as soon as possible that may cause a problem if not taken care at time. These skills always prove helpful in saving time and energy and also reward us in the long run.

EmployWise is an Online HR Software for the life-cycle of an employee including Leave and Attendance software, Employee Database, Travel and Expense Management. Start Your Free Trial for 30 Days

Read More

EmployWise: Anointing the Bruise of Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisals induce strong tremors as aftershocks which have known to cause cracks in the mental state of employee’s. These cracks soon transcend and escalate into wide gorges, which cause rifts between the employee and his company.

Majority of the company’s employ an appraisal model, irrespective of its effectiveness and even its implementation. But no matter its finesse in execution, the truth remains that the factor of subjectivity will play spoilsport in maintaining an impartial and unbiased appraisal review.

The factor of subjectivity is bred in our human nature, and the outcome is directly proportional to the vibes between the manager conducting the review and the employee being reviewed.

Companies have learnt to pause recruitment drives post immediately after their performance appraisal, as they are expecting resignations form employee’s, who have fallen victim to the cracks from their appraisals.Therefore it’s essential to practice damage control which perhaps may mend and prevent the loss of an employee which may cause a talent deficit in the organization.The best antidote is to invoke a fair feedback system immune to character assassinations of managers due to the rage of employee’s.

Indian corporate has established a dogma which is far fetched from the fact of introducing these feedback systems. This is due because, feedbacks systems turn volatile as they need to find balances between being negative or constructive irrespective of it being the truth. And the skill of diplomacy is not something everyone bags.

The best remedy is to create an anonymous feedback system which confines the feedbacks in an enclosure as options given and to provide a quality and fair canvas to the employee’s. Prominent measures need to be taken by the HR to provide testament to the worthiness of the feedback which may in turn be a reassurance to the employee’s.

Job satisfaction has a direct impact upon the manager and employee relationship, its the prime ingredient in cooking up resignations and causing alarming talent deficits. Good performers fall victim to subjectivity and often cause a large void in the talent pool of the company upon their withdrawal.

Upon introspection it can be noted that the performance of an employee is a complex equation harnessing the variables such as motivational factors, training, expected outcomes, resources, delegates and the extent of empowerment. If an employee fails to meet the relevant and required competencies it’s rather absurd to blame the employee unless it is a case of voluntary underachievement.

The crucial litmus test of an organization in an employee’s mind lies in the way the company treats its departing employees. Therefore the outcome of this test is what defines the rate of corrosion in the employee pool.

Employwise is a complete HR Software for the life-cycle of an employee including Leave and Attendance software, Employee Database, Travel and Expense Management. Start your free trial for 30 days....

Read More

EmployWise - 5 Key Factors to Increase Employee Motivation

Employee motivation is a tricky subject for most managers and organization heads. Yet it is imperative for them to handle employee motivation diligently since it forms the core for organizational success. Employee Motivation essentially means developing effective ways to recognize and applaud the contributions of your employees whereby they are encouraged to perform better and contribute more productively to their organization.

According to entrepreneur.com, employee motivation is “using both tangible and intangible rewards to keep employees enthusiastic, loyal and interested in continued improvement”.

One way organizational heads can improve the level of employee motivation in their organization is by first ensuring that there is a definite structure or setup that is well implemented within their organization for understanding, assessing, measuring and rewarding employee activities and achievements.

J P Maroney, the founder of People Builders has listed down five success keys to effective employee motivation. According to him, the key factors for employee motivation are satisfaction, appreciation, recognition, inspiration and compensation.

Satisfaction: When employees are happy at work, they are always motivated and productive than those employees who are unhappy with their work. Therefore, organizations must increase and innovate ways to keep their employees happy. There are different ways to improve satisfaction at work. Organizations must understand what the workforce needs – may be flexible hours, rewards and recognition scheme, opportunities for career growth, open-door policy or anything else – and “satisfy” these needs. This way, when you have satisfied employees, you are also likely to have satisfied customers.

Appreciation: Employees like to be recognized for their efforts and their contributions to the organization. Therefore, managers and organization heads must make honest attempts and take every opportunity to openly praise and appreciate their employees. Appreciation is an effective morale booster. The more frequent it is, the better it motivates employees. A pat on the back, a few encouraging words, a thank you note, a mention in a meeting, a write up in a weekly newsletter are all simple ways to convey to your employees that you care for them and hold high their services to your organization.

Recognition: Employees like to learn that their work in the organization is taken note of, and that they are considered as assets of the organization. Managers and organization heads must honor this innate employee attribute and have a sound rewards and recognition system in place. They must find ways interesting ways to motivate their employees to perform a task and when the said task has been accomplished successfully, it must also be rewarded appropriately.

Work and non-work related contests, in-house rewards for various contributions and even recognizing their contributions outside of work will increase employee motivation by leaps and bounds. 

Inspiration: Employees always look up to their seniors and the organization head for inspiration. But more importantly they also look for inspiration in their organizations and the values it stands for. Keeping this in mind, organizations looking for improved employee motivation must have a strong mission statement and the heads of the organization must sincerely abide by these values and missions. When leaders lead form the front, employees will be inspired to follow them. Employees will be happy to work for an organization that is true to its beliefs and works towards realizing its dreams. Since every employee aspires the same, he will take inspiration from the organization itself. Inspired employees are also motivated and loyal.

Compensation: Monetary rewards or tangible rewards are one of the important factors of employee motivation. Therefore, organizations can use this means well to their benefit. Performance bonuses, promotional raises, salary hike, enabling profit sharing, giving gifts and distributing reward coupons are some of the effective means of compensation.

Employwise is a complete HR Management Software for the life-cycle of an employee including Leave and Attendance software, Employee Database, Travel and Expense Management. Start your free trial for 30 days....

Read More

EmployWise: Mobilizing Working Possibilities

A desire for increased productivity and a more connected company culture has prompted companies like Yahoo!, Best Buy, Bank of America and Zappos to scale back their flexible work arrangements. 

A decision like this would definitely impact the women workforce, but it is naive to believe that it would have no impact on today’s aspirational men. In fact the report presents some findings which actually expound all these beliefs and more.

I was going through Harvard Business Review last week when I came across this article by Anna Beninger and Nancy Carter of the Catalyst research team. Catalyst is an international nonprofit organization with an aim to expand opportunities for women and create more inclusive workplaces.

The finding from their latest report - Catalyst's flexibility research couldn’t have come at a better time. A desire for increased productivity and a more connected company culture has prompted companies like Yahoo!, Best Buy, Bank of America and Zappos to scale back their flexible work arrangements. 

A decision like this would definitely impact the women workforce, but it is naive to believe that it would have no impact on today’s aspirational men. In fact the report presents some findings which actually expound all these beliefs and more. Catalyst quizzed 726 MBA graduates around the world working full-time in both for-profit and non-profit firms across industries —about their experiences with, and perceptions of, flexible working arrangements. The responses were astounding. 81 percent of those surveyed reported that they were currently working at a firm that offers flexible work arrangements of some kind. In addition to telecommuting, this includes flexible arrival or departure, flexi time, compressed work weeks, reduced work/part-time, and job sharing. Flexible work options are in fact the rule, and not the exception, at organizations today. Their research also revealed that women and men were using flexible work options like flexi time and flexible arrival and departure to the same extent throughout their careers.

However, the study did confirm that women were significantly more likely than men to telecommute i.e. work outside of the office over the course of their careers. So while men and women are equally likely to use some flexi work options, women are more likely to telecommute. But women pay for that. Lack of access to flexible working arrangements damages high potential employees' career aspirations, and is especially harmful to women's aspirations, thus impacting the number of women raising their hands for stretch assignments and promotions. The report also discovered that women working at a firm without flexi work options were more likely to downsize their aspirations. According to Catalyst, flexibility is not just about being flexible with time. It is also about being strategic, which requires employers and employees to be open and creative in questioning the process of how work should be done, and why.

In a scenario where virtual meeting is possible from any place, any time, it is hard to imagine a company doing away with work-from-home. Needless to say, offering flexible working arrangements is critical for organizations intending to maximize their talent pool with high potential employees and become employers of choice. In fact a 2011 study by nonprofit Human Resources Association World at Work found that companies with stronger cultures of flexibility experienced lower turnover and increased employee satisfaction, motivation and engagement. 

Employwise is a complete HR System for the life-cycle of an employee including Leave and Attendance software, Employee Database, Travel and Expense Management. Start your free trial for 30 days....

Read More

EmployWise | Empowering Skills - Developing the Indian Youth

Skill is the ability and capacity acquired through systematic effort for smoothly carrying out complex activities in an organized environment for overall profit. Strong technical skills help to understand the technological complexities which enhance efficiency in work and helps in saving money as well as time. Moreover, it takes less time for correcting the mistakes of people with organizational skills and helps in reducing frustration and stress during work which is very important for managing businesses. With the help of skills it becomes easier to win trust of the client and associate with them more prominently from the organization’s point of view.

It has become very necessary for India to train its youth and enable them to obtain skills that could be utilized to sustain the economic growth of the country. However, in India employers often need to spend extra effort and time in teaching unskilled human resources. The major problem regarding skill development in India is lack of good industry standard communication, awareness and knowledge on modern technological implementations. As India is poised to become a global economic power and huge industrial investments are following into the Indian market certain areas of concern still prevail which needs to be taken care of.

One of the major problems that India is facing in empowering the youth with skills which is due to the lack of efficient leadership. Though successive Indian governments have come up with many innovative programs to enable the skill building procedure they still lag behind. Government needs to leverage the process of skill building in such a way that it becomes accessible for all the sections of the society.

In a highly populated country like ours, the strength of workforce required to support huge industrial initiatives is tremendous but the quality aspect is always missing. One of the reasons behind the missing quality of the workforce is lack of inclusion of skill specific training along with education. Additionally, formal education may be the basic requirement to make India literate but to make it prosperous skill specific training should be encouraged aggressively.

The role of private sectors and the civil society is equally accountable as that of the government in generating a skilled workforce for the country. Private sectors should take initiatives to provide trainings through various private establishments and should work in collaboration with the government to spread awareness regarding skill specific training.

Empowering the Indian youth with industry specific skills is very crucial for the economic development of the country. With the collaborative efforts of the leaders, private sectors and civil society India can plunge into a highly modernized future supported by well skilled workforce in the various industrial organizations.

Employwise is a complete HR Software for the life-cycle of an employee including Leave and Attendance software, Employee Database, Travel and Expense Management. Start your free trial for 30 days....

Read More