Guide your HR to twitter?

Most, on joining plugHR throw hesitation to wind as they engage with colleagues, community, clients and experience learning actively using Twitter. Thanks to our deep dive on social tools during the onboarding process.

Twitter is one of the most interesting social media channels however many still don’t find it as easy till they taste the addiction themselves. Once your team catches fancy, most interactions become sharp, suave and effortless. So here are three things that will help your HR get in the know and manage Twitter for you more professionally.

#Hashtags bring sense!! As you sum up in 140 characters its important that you use or add the popular hashtags in order to increase the audience for your tweet. People follow hashtags and then follow you. Keep a tab of what is trending in your circle and pitch in wherever and whenever you can. Art of listening on Twitter rests on Science of hashtags (#). plugHR runs a weekly chat on hashtag #hrtrends every Friday at 4pm, start following @plugHR for start.

Tweet chats is how you create and engage community that feels connected with your brand or product. Community conversations is powerful outcome of social media engagement. Go ahead, set up Tweet Chats around your product, clients, job seekers or what matters to you. If crowdsourcing as a term interested you, at Tweet Chats you'll see it in action. 9819733002

Lists you get added to is how others see you. You can make your own lists to classify how you see others, it's a smaller group of twitterati that you can use for focussed listening or following subject based conversations. 

Social Media is an evolving tool, you can improvise real time, key is to begin. Train yourself, train your teams, draw up a simple social conversation guideline and play with future.

So its not just Zappos

 

 

Last week Amazon too spoke about exit incentive. Not just a token gesture but raising the incentive to some $5000 for taking the exit offer is a serious attempt to clean workplace of the dubious souls. So golden handshake or VRS isn’t new concept even in India, but most would remember it as an end of career smiley. That a company would pay you just after induction to say “please spare us the pain”, might take an effort.

Those who still recall our movie night at last plugHR Bootcamp, we had watched Tony Hsieh in awe and exit incentive was one thing that impressed us for sure.

 

  

Think about it, new economy businesses are mostly about belief’s. These are new business categories, quite radical, uncertain, changing at high pace forcing the talent to operate in sustained ambiguity.  Last thing you want at your workplace then is a doubtful soul who walks in every day, concerned and spends all day spreading the same. You want that soul with your competitor sooner than later

 

Now for one’s who say the usual, “its not easy to…..”, well even your birth wasn’t easy, if that could happen, anything can happen, you just need to think like inspired entrepreneurs. Read Jeff Bezos, listen to Tony Hsieh, gather courage and roll it buddy, Post Induction Exit Incentive. It’ll just clean up some future mess in advance, much like that time machine thing which you could use to go forward, figure how much damage would these hires cost and come back to just pay them out.

For my HR, get over attrition chart stats and show me some real baddies off the bus & keep building Awesome Ventures.

The argumentative Indians can carry conversation here or catch me on twitter @prashantbhaskar

Happy Women's Day!!

We all have somebody or the other who might have touched our lives at some point or the time. Some inspire us to keep it going others make us believe in our true selves. This women’s day we asked some of our plug Pros to share the reasons for the smiles they carry every day. One’s who added value to their lives and left an impact for them to pass on to the future generations.

My Mom, greatness personified.

My Life has been a journey, and a lot of people have influenced it in some aspects or the other, my family, my friends and my teachers, but the one woman that has given meaning to my life and shown me how to live and face this world is My MOM.

No doubt moms are very special for everyone...but what my mom has done is truly outstanding. She is my pillar of strength, full of love and compassion.

Being a single parent life was never a cake walk for her, she struggled hard as teacher to provide the best of education and life to me. She provided not only basics but also the Luxuries of life to me. As a teacher she has mentored many lives apart from mine. Forgiveness is at the core of her heart and one look at her calm, serene and smiling face melts way all kinds of anxiety and anger.

No matter what the situation, she has disciplined me to be calm and always stick to the truth (Which we are tempted to conveniently let go).Today at the age of 60, she is still teaching and changing lives. She is my mentor, my source of inspiration, temple of Love and i never have to look elsewhere for any kind of advise. Whether personal or professional, what she will say will be the most thought after long-term solution. I trust her decision in all aspects, and yes of course she believes in learning from me as well as her other students to stay in tune with the times----she is on watsapp too!!!

I hope to instill as many values as possible in my kids as she has instilled in me. She is a very loved grand mom and does spoil my kids at time ...but always keeping them disciplined. She is and always will be my friend, philosopher and guide.

The message that she imparts through her words and deeds is very clear, whatever hardship or challenges life throws up, if you persist, persevere and pray...u will come out a champion.

Contributed By: Fatema Lokhandwala

You inspire me Maa’m!!

There will be always many people who inspire in your journey called Life. Just to name one person who have inspired you immensely would be like deciding between your own kids. Still I am taking that risk and naming one women who have inspired me apart from my Mother.

Hemangi Marathe is my Yoga instructor who has been teaching yoga since 1986 but if you meet her you will not believe that she belongs to the old school of yoga. Her larger than life smile, her curiosity to learn new techniques, her ability to adapt changes always inspires me. At the age of 48 when many people starts feeling that they need to slow down, she is learning new forms of dances.

I hope she keep inspiring all her students for many more years to come.

Contributed By: Shilpa Kayal

Now if you come to think of it, I am sure you would come across many such women who have helped you become what you are today. Sometime an acknowledgement like this can be good way to show your gratitude. So go ahead make someone feel special!!

Happy Women’s Day

 

 

Are you hiring for #startup?

We are in age where being an entrepreneur is a career choice but still more than 50% fail.

The current market dynamics though have been favorable for startup but execution is a key which many miss on to. However for any startup to run successfully it’s important to have the right talent at the right time. Yes RIGHT is very crucial here and all the more when attracting one is not an easy task. No matter how brilliant the Business plan looks like but without the resources actually on boarded it might just be good as a PowerPoint presentation.

Working for startups for a while now and managing this fire fighting here are some quick tips to follow out of my personal experience.

Invest on career page: Go check your career page, will you ever apply to an organization you have never heard of and even the website looks like from 90s. Following the latest trends and what your competitors or similar player doing in the market might give a baseline at least and later is your creativity to add more appeal. After all it’s all about creating an experience!!

Don’t ignore social: The current generation is truly a ‘social animal’. Social media is a free & interactive marketing tool, which has come out as a boon for startups. Not just one but has numerous platforms to target audience as per there interest. Channelizing the social efforts in the right direction will help in branding and also help to connect with passive and genuine job seekers. Such hirings come through pull affect and also help is spreading the word of mouth. If you are a starter better focus one platform to start with rather being everywhere with no impact at all!!

A day at work: Giving a feeler for how a day or a week looks like at your organization can be a good attraction and also will fetch you genuinely motivated talent and not just the one who thing startup means higher salary. Working with startup has its own charm and challenges, and this period though might not give full but at least a partial hand on experience to both the parties.

Talent holds prime importance: Reality is that instead of running after industry expertise better attract talent profiles that have zeal and enthusiasm to work for a startup. For various reason startup might find it difficult to hire experienced candidates and even after hiring retention will be a prime concern due to the past expectation and environmental influence of the candidate. In such cases Onboarding someone will lesser experience but potential to execute might be a better choice.

Pitch at its best: Do you have a call pitch? So how did you close the last deal? Well hiring has never been out of sales, and when it’s about selling a new workplace which is new in all relevance, it becomes even more imperative. A pitch which makes sure meets the aspiration or at least incites a desire to know more is what we are talking here. Listen to talk!!

Let the JD stand out: Revisit the Job Descriptions and see does it stand out? Make it interesting enough for the candidate to write back to you and hit your website before simply ignoring your job posting for some run of the mill work from an unknown name. Yes, sometimes we do judge the book by its cover J

Hiring for startup is a challenge for sure but as said it the RIGHT fit which can make the strategy look like a master plan.

 

The new buzz, Employee Wellness

 

 

 

 

What’s the new buzzword in the HR circles which may show stronger trends in 2014?  

Well, a lot of buzzwords for sure, but one critical one that seems to be catching the combined attention of the community is Employee Wellness. It’s really not a new-age concept, but has certainly been redefined and remoulded to suit the needs of the current times. It has gone beyond the gamut of employee wealth, health and safety, to reach a different level.  

Initiatives in this area are not restricted to company insurance plans, hospital tie-ups and club memberships only. They cover provisions such as onsite healthcare facilities, online health assessment tools, programs and information providers for healthy living, employee health screening camps, wellness and nutrition coaching. Organizations are also slowly opening up to the idea of addressing specifics such as women’s health and stress management counselling. More progressive organizations look at even providing assistance to those employees who have a tobacco or alcohol dependency as well as raising awareness in HIV/AIDS.

So with this kind of interest and of course investment, it’s time to try and see what are some key reasons for organizations to start focusing on this area.

1.       There is a slow but steady understanding of the fact that there is a linkage of employee health to business productivity. How organizations track this or measure this is far from developed in terms of a process, but at this stage, suffice it to say that the acceptance of this linkage as a reality, is the driver.

2.       Employer branding and employee value proportion – The rising need for a balanced work-life approach in the current workforce, is forcing organizations to evaluate how they want to position themselves as a an employer brand. Hence the emphasis on providing a stress-free work environment with focused commitment towards the overall well-being of an employee has risen.

3.       Such investment is a long-term spending and when weighed against other opportunity costs such as loss of work hours due to absenteeism, sick leaves, attrition / turnover cost, retraining and so on, it might not seem that significant.

Reading the undercurrents related to this future trend, SHRM India introduced the Employee Wellness Award for organizations, within its set of HR Awards, at its Annual Conference. The winner was Scope International, while SAP Labs and Reliance were runners’ ups. It is therefore evident, that this is a fast-paced trend, which will pick up speed in 2014 and so the more prepared we are, the higher our employee competitive edge will be as organizations.

About Author 

 

Simran Oberoi

Sr. Knowledge Consultant - SHRM India

 

 

HR and Football!!

Author: Pranay Reddy, plugHR Pro

Remember Oliver Kahn, who stood like Colossus of Rhodes bestriding German goalpost during the FIFA ’02. Oliver single handedly enabled Germany’s progression into the finals against a star studded Brazil. His awesome goal keeping played an essential part in his team’s victory against much famed oppositions. He didn’t even concede a single goal in the seven games leading to the final, where his sole mistake in the entire tournament not only cost him the coveted “world Champ title” but his captaincy and eventually his place in the senior side. It was also for his pyro techniques Kahn was honored with the ‘Golden Ball’ a rare occurrence among the goalies.

In football, Pundits have often said and I’ll repeat, “The goalkeeping, no matter how good you are, you should must be aware that what you’re doing is a ‘Thankless’ job”. Try to recall your childhood football icons, and figure out how many were actually goal keepers? Shocked, the answer is a big fat ZERO. We are cult followers, and the goalkeepers on almost all occasions are the ones who’re unable to create any cult around; simply because they’re not involved in scoring any goals and thus are not the ones who’ve halo around their heads.

An HR manger is also not involved in creating any value in a business, directly. How many times, have you ever patted the back of your HR when your appraisals were done on time? On the other hand you’ve grumbled almost every week, as you were marked absent, just because the funny biometric was being too funny? Now I am just interested in asking some rhetorical, as all readers are well versed with answers. My purpose is to set in a though process, so that people start contemplating.

In football you cannot win a game if your Goalie is weak, because the opponent will score more goals than you, similarly if you’re HR is not strong in engaging and training, your workforce will find it difficult to stick to your organization, and you’ll see your folks entering the premises of your competitors. Bingo! Your opponent has scored a goal over you, by poaching your priceless talent. Contrary to that, if you’ve a strong and a competent HR, your people will not only stick but will create awesome values for your venture and you’ll score a goal over a goal over your competitor.    

In football, Goalkeeper is the only player well positioned, who can analyze the strategy of the opponents and hence play a key role in catalyzing positive outcomes. This is possible because atop a football pitch, he is the only person who can mark the movements of his teammates. Another question to tickle your brain; who is the only manager in your organization who alike a goalkeeper can chart the progress and trajectories of your employees. You need not think furiously as you already have your answer.

When pressure mounts on the captain, or when he feels there is a need to call in a substitution, skipper always look forward to a valuable advice from his goalkeeper, whenever he has to make a quick decision. Rhetoric again, in an organization, who is the go-to person for a CEO, when he is in a dilemma, whether he need to ask some people to leave or on occasions when he needs some new talent to be pumped in the ecosystem of the workplace full of vibrant energy.

Top four challenges in Talent Acquisition

Author: Rekha Nair

For all those who sit on the other side of the table other than HR, Talent acquisition is the most mundane, most easy and most taken for granted task.  No one spares a second thought to the Recruitment process in the Company, apart from HR and if you are lucky the Top management once in a while when the bottom line is affected and the Leaders point out to ‘manpower’ issues as the reason behind it. Yes, you heard it right, most of us in HR are aware of this and this is what we deal with every day, but we would rather sweep it under the carpet and not discuss about it, but problems has to be tackled and analyzed if not today then tomorrow , definitely.

As any HR professional who has handled or is handling ‘Talent acquisition’ shall tell you that  though it sounds to be the most simplest of and uncomplicated task, it is actually not so, it is a challenge every day, and the Company and the HR team along with the line managers has to be geared up to meet the challenges.  Some of the most common challenges which any HR manager who handles Talent acquisition shall enumerate are  as given below:-

1)      Quality Manpower : It is amazing, the number of Engineering and professional colleges that we have in our country are close to  6ooo when we put together both, but when we get down to the process of sourcing, screening, selecting, we are all the more amazed at the number of mismatch that we have to deal with.  If we specifically speak about the Campus recruitment, in order to overcome the mismatch, there has to be lot of industry and academia interaction and handholding to enable the colleges to come out with courses or course content which comes up to the needs and expectations of the organizations.

When we talk about lateral entries the biggest challenge is finding the right talent for the right job, your shortlisted, selected candidate might have cleared all the psychometric test, might have cleared all the rounds, all the technical questions must have been answered beautifully, however, when he gets down to working, within a month the Team manager and HR realizes that the whole exercise has been futile as he has everything going on paper but when it comes to delivering it is a big miss. The challenge is to find the right talent, the right attitude for the given job and for this HR fraternity has been struggling and experimenting, but to till date we are yet to come up with a fool proof method.

2)      Stability : This might sound old fashioned and out of league, but this is one of the biggest challenges  for every organization and for every HR Head , and  that is to retain the talent that you have brought in and who seems to be the right fit.  It is again not to be left to the HR department to make sure that once the candidate has joined he stays put for decent amount of time, apart from Induction, being your buddy and point of contact in the initial days.  HR needs all the efforts to be put in by the respective Departments also where he or she joins to make it comfortable and interesting and lucrative in terms of work for the employee to make him want to come back to the office every day.

3)      Transparency :  It is the prime responsibility and in fact should be driven by the Ethic code of every Company that the HR department shall be transparent about the salary, designation, role, responsibilities, rules , regulations, ethics, culture  etc. of the Company and every effort shall be made by the Company to cover all these aspects through the Induction program and the various training programs and sessions that the employee goes through upon his joining.  The HR department should take extra effort to gauge the understanding of the employees , it is a good idea to have ‘on board interview’, similar to the exit interview, after the Induction is over  so that HR is able to address the gaps in understanding of any issue by the employee.  

Transparency is applicable both ways as an employee is entitled to all the information about an organization and its systems and procedures whether it is with regard to compensation & benefits, Learning &Development, Rewards &Recognition similarly an organization is entitled to have correct information about the candidate with regard to his qualification, his past experience, his last salary drawn etc.  Most of the organizations have put checks and balances in place to be sure that the information provided to them is authentic, in spite of that the number of ‘discrepancies’ which are reported by verification consultants to the HR department is alarming, and it is a cause of concern as many candidates give incorrect information about their salaries and qualifications , more over they supplement it with fake certificates and references.

4)      Culture fit   :  Okay, let us assume that we have taken care of all the above, we have got a right fit candidate who has made up his mind to stay with us long term and is totally transparent about his credentials and all is well, but then comes the most important question, in spite of the knowledge and information passed on to him about the organization and his absorbing the same, there are many unwritten rules in the organization which he shall be able  to understand only in due course of time, which may confuse him or take him by surprise or might even make him highly uncomfortable, this usually happens when employees make a move across industries for example when a candidate who has throughout worked in Media industry changes over to the EPC sector , he sees a huge transformation staring at him.  Here HR has to play an important role , this has to be done proactively, taking into consideration this piece of information and then by way of assigning a buddy to him in the department, or putting him under a mentor for sometime or HR itself taking pains to continuously communicate with the employee with the intention of keeping him for good and let not all the efforts go in vain.  Of course, this needs equal cooperation and willingness and a genuine effort from the candidate as well to imbibe the changes and change to grow.

As detailed  above, the ‘Talent Acquisition’ team whom most of us hardly give a second look unless and until we have to forward a resume under the ‘referral scheme’, is actually strengthening the foundation of the organisation every day and making sure that while all the others concentrate aggressively on the bottom line and profit margin, they are giving their invaluable support in their own quiet and determined way

About Author

Rekha Nair

She holds over 16 years of experience,  primarily in Corporate HR and has handled the entire gamut of HR in a reputed IT company in the Corporate HR Division, for the last 7 plus years working as Chief Manager - HR  of Angelique International Ltd., a reputed EPC company from India. Posses a good experience in Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, R&R, Trainings, Employee Engagement, HR Audits  and HRIS.