25 HR Ideas for Better Business

A Collection of 25 HR Ideas from our HRSME blog postings. An effort to enable the Business & HR Profession.

- Husys

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List of Contents

1. Social Presence 2. Power of Occasion 3. Collaboration 4. Employer Branding 5. Networking 6. Employee Grievance 7. Performance Expectations 8. Probation 9. One-time high recruitment

need 10. Vision & Mission 11. Building Longterm and

shortterm objectives 12. Ask for help 13. Share the business realities 14. Set Expectations &

Communicate clearly 15. Induction for performance

16. Building Revenue Focus 17. My Plan 18. Recruitment by Reference 19. Hire the Skill 20. On_job_Hiring 21. Hiring Fresh Talent 22. Campus Hiring 23. Hiring Tests for Evaluation 24. Group Discussions 25. Just-In-Time Fresh Talent

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First 5 HR Ideas for Better Business:

Social Presence

Power of Occasion

Collaboration

Employer Branding

Networking I was thinking within myself, if I have to give the best reading experience, what is that I can do differently on this Blog. I realized that tons of description may not excite any reader. Keeping it simple and sweet is the only way. While we want to give the best back to the readers, I decided to write a series of the 100 things that a business owner/CEO/Family Business Owner could do to improve his/her business with specific focus on People Management for better business. I would be writing small bits of inputs/advise for business owners ,which could be used with ease. I would try not to cover these inputs in a sequence of the HR Process but based on the experiences of our teams from time to time. I would plan to summarize at the end to compile the series in an e-book for future readers. This way I would cover the important things first and may be of use for the readers. In each of the posting we would like to share 5 such important aspects with Inputs & Ideas if any. Please note these are not necessary in an order of Induction/performance during the course of building business. Use your discretion. If you have any question at any point please do write to me at : gr(at)husys.net

1. Vision & Mission : One of the most important ingredient of organisation building. You may want to focus on what you want to do in future and how you want to achieve the same. If you are a start-up you can build this with a team of first few and work with rest to improve and achieve the same. Making sure that every individual is chosen to fit into this framework and win in long-term. Please do not hesitate to part with people who may not fit into this framework. Link every of your actions/processes/policies for present and future. Idea : You may build this including the core team and someone who can see your vision. Alternatively can use an external expert help in facilitating this process (Please do not ask external facilitator to draft for you)

You can only build an organisation when

everyone walks with you to the top

2 - Building the Long-term & Short-term Objectives : While you have a vision and mission for your organisation. Even if you do not have a clear Vision & Mission Statements (In most of the organisation its true that they do not have a formal

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vision & mission statements). Set your clear goals for short-term (for Financial year or Calender Year). Make sure that the Objectives are Simple, Clear, Time Bound and measurable. Make it convenient for people to relate it to performance. Idea: Build at-least Revenue targets with timelines(Sales, Collection etc.,), New initiatives in People practices, Processes and Future Expansion. Make sure that the same is communicated through a mail / team meetings / all employee meeting. 3.Set Expectations & Communicate

Clearly: Its always best to set the expectations of performance at the beginning of the relationship with any employee in organisation. The longer the relationship without set expectations, difficult to agree/accept the reality of business. Idea : Spare few minutes in writing the expectations and end output that measures the success of the individual on a peace of paper and Document(body of text) through an email. This 10-20 minutes of interaction and documentation can save many business days.

Its Tough to be on the Top : But its a reality

4. Share the Business Realities: Do not hide or hesitate to talk about your business situation with the employees. I am sure they are equally aware of what is happening in business. Spare few minutes of time to share the business realities during regular meetings and send common notes through email. This can include information about objectives achievement, new happenings, new competition and any other challenges that the organisation is going through. Do not hesitate to share the difficulties and people would come forward to help. You would have people come forward to extend help who relate themselves with the organisation Idea: Set a frequency of communication based on the communication and type of groups to be informed - function, divisions or overall organisation. Eg. Organizational Update to everyone by 5th of every month. 5. Ask for Help : Do not hesitate to ask for that extra-mile help from people who work in your organization. If you have shared your vision, mission, business realities frequently, it would be easier for seeking such support. You don't do that every bit of business deliver anyway, you need people to run the business and take those right steps in the path of growth.

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Idea: You can ask for any such support from the team immediately reports to you. In turn encourage the team to take further steps based on the ground realities.

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HR Ideas for better Business : 6-10 :

Induction,

Probation

Hiring

Grievance

Expectations Here are the next 5 Ideas for better Business performance in building Human Synergies. In this posting you would find basic information about Induction, Probation, Grievance Redressal, High Requirement Hiring and Setting Expectation of Performance. These are very day-to-day issues and needs to be addressed on the go. Please do read and add new inputs and perspective to make this blog a repository for simple & practical solutions.

On-Job & Experiential Induction

is the Key for Success

6.Induction for Performance : Induction of a new employee into the system is the first step for building Human Synergies. Induction is a process which would help the new joinees contribute the best by understanding the organisation and its systems. Organisation helps the new joinees to understand the history, policies, procedures, cultural values along with some bit of experiential

learning. This process can be simple to complex based on the person / seniority and/or implication of the decisions by the person (if they are serious more days and more in-depth induction). Since we bring people into the organisation to perform and deliver the best, Induction would help that process effectively. Idea: Induction plan can be few hours to few months as per the intensity of the requirement. Create a standard template for a day or two and make sure you execute as soon as you have a new joinee. You can discuss with your senior team members and set expectations of information sharing and experiential learning. Eg : The template can have columns like Date, Function/Department to visit, person to meet, Questions to Ask and time(from-to). Do not forget to ask the Inductee to ask for feedback report at the end of those few hours/days.

An Informal Chat helps the New Entrant

Establish Quickly

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7. Probation:

Probation is primarily to help the new joinees to get used to the environment and fit into cultural of the organisation. It is noticed that there are different set of probation methods in organisations. Some have a probation for junior level people. Some organisations follow for all the levels. It is noticed that however the experienced or accomplished in other organisation does not guarantee the same performance in the new organisation. The duration of the probation can be defined based on the general time frame that a new joinees get adjusted into the new system. Based on the organisational need and the general time taken for adjustment can be considered as a yardstick in defining the duration. There is a perceivable notion that Probation confirmation is linked to the increment/revision in salary. This is totally not true and should not be linked to monetary gains, so that the sanctity of organisational fitment can be managed.

Idea: Set some basic parameters to help assess the involvement of the Individual into the organisation. An open-ended one page report from the Supervisor would help in confirmation of services to keep it simple in consultation with the team member. Its also important to set the next set of expectations and measurable outputs agreed at this time.

8. One-time High Recruitment Needs: Many times you may have a need to recruit large pool of people at once. This number would vary from organisational size. Smaller companies to have 3-10 number of requirement may be high. For large organisations the number could run in Hundreds. You can segregate the positions in different buckets of experience and expertise and define a different strategy. Like for all fresh positions you can approach a college for database or for organizing interviews. For experienced you may want to use the position posting and a database access service for a short-term, with a job portal to make sure you reach the target. Or alternatively your own employees can be of great help with little focus. Idea: Call any Recruitment Agency and negotiate a different model, where they would work on retainer basis to close all the positions within a specific time period. This is possible and doable for the Recruitment Company. If you really assure some basic fee for their efforts, they can do a good job than just on success based in such situations.

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9. Performance Expectations: Setting the performance expectations at each level is important. It not only important to set the expectations but also to share what outcome you would like to see as a performance. for example: for a sales person Revenue & Collection %age. Production: Production Output in numbers, Wastage %age to be maintained, For HR person : %age of positions to be filled in days from requisition, employee turnover to be contained at a level. Idea : For every job/ position / individual define only two key components as output that you would be expecting and communicate in writing. Set a frequency of review to ensure that your single point of agenda is to discuss and see the progress.

Its All about setting the expectations

on Performance or on resolving

Grievance

10. Employee Grievance: Grievances typically are handled through a process of grievance handling procedure for large teams. However, In case of smaller organisation, Identify the problem related to Work norms infrastructure,

performance,Salary, increments etc., and appropriately respond. All the policy related framework done by HR need to be interpreted and clarified. Also see that if you need to resolve with the appropriate documents/ approvals. If it is related to interpersonal relationships, work related issues you may want to involve the manager to get the right picture and help them to resolve. This is a quick overview and specific problems can be handled based on the need/situation/background. One thing for sure, do not jump to resolve issues... identify the core of the problem and involve the appropriate authorities to make sure that grievance is resolved to the best of organisational capabilities/boundaries. Finally, never think that you are going to satisfy all the parties 100%.... Idea: If you really work on a detailed grievance redressal policy would be great. However, if you do not intend/can't define, then Identify last one year issues and resolutions. Set some basic guidelines in such cases if repeated and communicate to the teams in common forums/intranet/meetings etc.,. For any unresolved issues, set an escalation point and also what level it would be final and binding for resolution.

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HR Ideas for better Business: 11-15:

Networking

Employer Branding

Social Presence

Collaboration

Power of Occasion While we have a great concept and technology, it is important that your identity in the outside world would bring more prosperity and sustainability for your Business. We discuss some of these Important and cost effective ways to build your SME business. 11. Networking: Today’s world is small and networked. No business can ignore the networked world to sustain the business in their field of operation. Be it physical meeting networks or the virtual network they give immense potential to build relationships for better business. Business sustainability in future is marked by the power of networking by the teams working in such organizations.

Husys Team helping @ TIE-ISB Connect Event

Idea: Being part of the Industry Associations and groups would help.

Make sure that each of your team members is in different groups as point of contact and attending events. That would help you to cover by saving time for everyone while creating connectivity to organization. Being part of the virtual groups would help in spending less time and recall as more. 12. Employer Branding: Today any small & medium enterprise (SME) can hire more good people based on the Reputation that they have in the market. It is essential to create the brand and uniqueness of your organization as to why someone joins you. In today’s world what makes people attracted towards your organization is the “Employer Branding”. While it was a very costly affair some years back, now it’s the easiest due to the advent of Technology and Transportation. Technology helps in virtualisation and Transporting helps in reaching out where required faster and better. On the virtual world the brand is built based on the knowledge that you share with fellow community through various forums. Every CEO / HR Function has a great role to play in this area. Idea: Spend money effectively in creating the branding. There are many organizations competing to give you a better identity in the market. Use any corporate merchandise company, set a budget (even if it is spread over a year/ ASK for EMI) and ask them to give you the best solution. Use start-up merchandise companies for such support, they are dying to give different solution and prove themselves. While

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and established player may give a variety and may be cost advantage some times. Also, do not shy to share knowledge to attract better talent through specific discussion forums and online business forums.

Facebook Page of Husys

13. Social Presence: An organization’s ability to be in the Social system is important for attracting better talent, building brand and also helping the society. While you create the impact by networking and interacting, making the presence felt in the social system would help in reinforcing the brand. Today, every social platform can create an identity for your organization. Building an image and personality of your organization can be achieved through social impact/presence. This presence would help your customers/clients to identify through search. This would also help you in reinforcing positive image of your organization. Idea: Assign this responsibility to one or two technology savvy individuals in your organization. Make sure that you have

the standard login-ID, password for future usage/modification. Identify the Social medium : Facebook, Linkedin, Slideshare, Pinterest, Blogger, Myspace, E-commerce facilitation websites, Industry Websites and other social forums to have your presence. Integrate the information on your website to this medium seamlessly. Always maintain the updated information. 14. Collaboration: We have earlier discussed in many forums about the importance of Collaboration. Tomorrow’s business is sustained through collaborative deeds of organizations. It’s important to share and collaborate for common cause and benefit organizations. You can look at collaboration with like-minded companies in the areas where one can share and benefit. You can also collaborate companies within your lane, Industry Estate, Cluster etc., this would help organizations to build cost effective ways to enable better products/services for their clients/customers.

A group of kids involved in a collaborative leaning session

Idea: Eg1: For Recruitment, you can pool the resources for hiring by sharing portals logins, business space on-line

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and also any exhibition space etc., This keeps your cost distributed and get the exactly the same benefit that you would reap otherwise. If you are in a same Industrial estate you could plan for a common pool of advertisement, community hiring, job mela’s etc., Eg.2 You can also do a vendor negotiations on the common pool of services / products that you want to purchase. 15. Power of Occasion: Using the power of an occasion would be a great idea in creating interest in people. Especially for the internal customers who are our back-bone of organizations. Using the occasions effectively means that your communication would have more importance and relevance for effective implementation or ideas or solutions.

Recent Times : A Team from a Software company organised

an event for Orphan children on the occassion of Indian auspecious day:

Kartika Pournami where people collaborate for group lunch.

Idea : CEO can communicate a relevant details based on the Occasion. Like the new year beginning could talk about the past and what future holds for organization (Send a note on the 1st day of New Year). Also a specific festival

can be a great idea to build the cohesiveness in a team (Group Lunches, Shared lunches, Sponsored Lunches on these occasions).

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HR Ideas: 16-20: Revenue Focus, MyPlan CEO’s, Hiring References, Hiring Skill, On-Job-Hiring At Husys we all enjoyed growth of our clients in the year 2012 and look forward to grow more with positive energy. We want to contribute more this year to SME’s in India and across the globe.

16. Build Revenue Focus: Market today is for the fittest. Survival linked to the performance on business revenue. It’s always a challenge to measure every function in revenue terms to stay fit. However, it is possible with the SME’s due to the size and arm length distance that you can see the last mile Sale/Cost/wastage. All SME business owners must develop an attitude to help their employees to measure themselves in relationship to Business Revenue. Also always bring the focus on what the money you receive from your customer is the money you to consider as sale. Idea: Build the Sales & Collection Target for the Sales Teams and focus only on the collections as benchmark for evaluation of performance. For other Functions its always saving cost is adding value to profit. Hence, make sure that you create budgets which are very demanding and ask the support systems to execute with care. You may look at certain percentage of cost to

revenue be spent keeping your promise to all stakeholders. Support functions would include – HR, Finance, Administration, Logistics etc.,

17. MyPlan: We find many a times SME’s do not grow beyond their capacity due to the bandwidth of the CEO/Owner. This is primarily due to the fear of loss - we noticed that in SME’s anything beyond a point of disclosure about business to employees may take away with the concept/IP/knowhow. Hence, many activities revolve around the business owner for want of clarity / approval / advise. This makes the SME restrict their growth and also face stiff competition from outside and struggle to survive. In many cases the CEO/Business owner becomes the victim of No Growth / Medical Issues / Family Issues as he/she would not have more time to think and grow their business. You may hear comments like “If I reveal this my employee may run away with the formula/knowhow”. It is important that the mindset is changed if one plans to grow. Idea : Remember, If someone is willing to take your knowhow and start they would start in any case. In such cases your business can never grow and

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would fail eventually. Developing your next levels and sharing the growth is the best answer. When an employee sees a growth why should he/she go and start their own. Also not every startup that way is successful and they fail 99.99 times by going through the same thinking syndrome. You need to build an aggressive plan for growth and help them to achieve more by being with you. Business sustenance is all about generating wealth around in today’s market.

18. Recruitment by Reference: This is one of the most commonly used sources of recruitment in Indian SME’s. The reason always seems to be that it’s cheaper and they do not need to shell out money on Hiring cost. We have noticed in many cases by over doing this has impacted business from growing in SME segment. It’s also noticed that 80% of company sometimes came through one reference before even one realizes. Idea: Any over doing is not good. Either food for body or for Reference as Business practices. Please create some basic guidelines for such hiring internally (viz. hiring only one/two employee from one employee in the same location or not more than 30% of hiring happens from internal reference). Also another

point of view is to reward for the recruitment on long-term basis for eg: pay no/lower reward when the reference Is hired. But, pay additionally if that employee contribution is more to business in long-term.

19. Hire the Skill: SME’s have the best advantage of not having stringent policies or procedures many times. However, we have noticed that there are standard habits during hiring. Some of the common approaches: Hiring the sales persons from the competitors or someone who sold the same products earlier. Want person only with specific background like the job/jobholder with in your system. We have noticed in many cases the CEO do not use his/her discretion in identifying the alternative skill to bring newness to the business. Also SMEs suffer from hiring the same kind of profile from other organizations and the employees hired comes and rubs the culture & approach of competitors/job handled. Idea: Thinking alternative source and expertise but can execute the job requirement at hand effectively should be the goal. Here is an example: Pick a certain %age of sales persons from different product/service line/industry

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with excellent history. This would help challenge your assumptions of doing business or developing customers with newness in execution. Similarly, the application of this can be done in many areas of HR, Marketing, Operations etc., 20. On-job Hiring: Today’s resources and businesses are so dynamic that hiring the right person is always a question even after so much of research gone in Hiring. Any best recruiter in the world would never say that this person fits well in this position with 100% accuracy. Especially at SME’s not many tools are available to measure the success of any candidate especially in case of fresh graduate/PG candidate. However, hiring fresh talent is a business need to keep the cost lower and build one’s own cultural-centric teams for future growth.

Idea: It is evident that the fresh graduate/PG candidate is yet to prove on the job. Many a time’s most of the SME’s do not have practice of campus hiring. SMEs can adapt to a methodology of hiring where they give the new entrants from college a choice to work on 2-3 days on-job to measure the fitment. This would require a preparation of common set of works to be assigned to the candidate before joining. This is the effort/investment that

the candidate and organization need to put. Ideal if the college graduates work on project/internship before joining. This would help as a Realistic Job Preview in many cases.

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HR Ideas for Better Business 21-25 :

Hiring Fresh Talent

Campus Hiring

Hiring Tests for Evaluation

Group Discussions

Just-In-Time Fresh Talent

In this blog post we would focus on one of the key aspect of building fresh talent pool for growth. Every growing organization cannot ignore this essential method for talent building. This method is successful based on the current Job market, Industry awareness & Social Influence on the Young Generation in that market. There are many Government initiatives in various countries based on the business/economic environment in those countries. India – Govt. of India spending lots of money in developing resources through their National Skill Development Programs. In Wales-UK the companies are provided grants up-to 50% of employee salary to companies based on the location and skills they are hiring.

21. Hiring Fresh Talent:

Businesses across the globe strive to build efficiency in People, Process and Technology. A growing organization would have no choice to build within. A building within the organization means a plan for cost efficiency and building future talent the way you run your business. Many growing organizations keep certain percentage of the new workforce hiring for Fresh Talent. This gives them an edge of building and sustaining Hands to Deliver and Senior Management Head to think. It becomes

many times inevitable to recruit fresh talent for growth.

Jr.Husyst - Havish willing to help us grow!!! Catching them Young!!!

Idea: Create a simple processes for Fresh Talent Hiring in Organization including pay range(Your affordability + availability in your areas of operations), designations(do not go by fancy designations – simple meaningful for the role), Training & Orientation time (Must for getting value), Measurement of performance parameters and Growth Opportunities in future. Hit the road once these things are defined with clarity. Variations can be possible based on Industry, market & Social circumstances around employment region.

22. Campus Hiring :

Campus Hiring is all about building your brand with the potential employees and bring some of the bright and new ideas into the organization. However, It’s not as easy as it sounds. It is a hard work for the employer to make an effort to identify the potential colleges who can produce the best that suits for you. No

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campus is right for everyone, please identify your own campus based on what you want and if they college graduates are tuned to come to your campus.

Campus Hiring by Husys-India

Idea: Do not go by the rank of the school when you choose. Talk to the head of the college and see how his/her focus in grooming the students in their college. They would be able to give you multiple options including they can send their students to your office than you going to the college. However, there are advantages if they visit your office to keep them more close to the realities.

23. Hiring Tests for Evaluation:

Conducting Test is a universally used process for filtering from more applicants. This test can be applicable based on the position (especially jr.level) unless it is a mandatory Regulation in specific positions. A Selection Test can focus on the work related and non-work Related. Work related test would include the areas of business/function. Non-work related can

be to test the mathematical, logical thinking ability etc.,

Ultimate Skill-Test a Sample

Idea: Building a Test for evaluation can be tedious many times. However, use this as a point of elimination first, but the result of successful candidates can be used for Discussion point during personal interviews. Build a simple test and administer internally to see the reliability and build some Upper and lower control limits for elimination (Tolerances). Do not make it lengthy, but focused on the output that you may want to draw. Include Work related & non-work related together to save time and give equal number of questions as far as possible.

24. Group Discussions:

Group Discussions are generally to evaluate one’s ability to collaborate and communicate with the group. This can also bring about the team dynamics and the adaptability of the individual who are involved. The participants can be put to discuss a specific topic related to their function or general ability/knowledge. This method is again used for

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elimination/filtering from a large group of applicants.

Husyst in Group Discussion before Campus Drive

Idea: Building Group Discussion evaluation is important which can focus on 3-4 key parameters which would impact the potential job that the applicant is going to face inside your organization. Typical parameters include Communication (verbal, non-verbal), Interpersonal skills, Building Ideas & Developing Relationships. Evaluate based on their Natural projection of these qualities by the Candidate.

25. Just-In-Time Fresh Talent:

Business wants any resource Just-In-Time to make sure that the return on investment is perfectly timed. Any Business organization would be thrilled to see If they get a readymade resources for them. Currently governments are building lot of talent pool to make sure that the employment generation happens quickly. All the efforts are made to build employable people as soon as they complete their education.

Ganesha - For a Great Beginning

Idea: As always “No pain – No Gain”. A step forward can help you to a great extent in building your talent. If you are in a specific area of specialization you could design a program which can be given to the Government Initiatives (India – National Skills Development Program). You may get in touch with your Industry association to ask for your required resources and help yourself (In India

:http://www.nsdcindia.org/our-work/industry-associations.aspx,http://www.nsdcindia.org/faq/entrepreneur-faq.aspx in UK wales govt. :http://www.gowales.co.uk/en/Graduate & UK Govt.https://www.gov.uk/jobcentre-plus-help-for-recruiters ).

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About Husys:

Husys - HR Function Management Company (www.husys.net) is striving to build HR Department for Start-up, Small and Medium businesses since 2002. Husys strive to help in managing to stream line the change that organizations go through during their growth phase. Husys addresses the key Human related issues to support organizational Growth. We integrate the Hiring, Inducting, Performance Measurement, Policies, Employee Bonding and Development. Reach for any support in HR Services / HR Outsourcing / HR Function Management / Customized HR Outsourcing in India. We truly live our Vision: "Synergizing Human Potential for Business & Society".

Reach Husys:

Husys Consulting Pvt.Ltd

Corporate Head Quarters Husys House, Lakeview Enclave, No.1-8-505/E/D/A, Prakash Nagar Extn., Opp: Begumpet Airport, Secunderabad – 500 016. Phone : 040-65195632/ 9948078937. Cyber mail : reach@husys.net

Regional Offices at : Delhi : 1102-A, 6 Devika Towers Nehru Place, New Delhi - 110019 Email : reach@husys.net Phone:011-41750222 / +91-9718691726 Mumbai : 107, Tejaswini Tower, opp: Mumbai University, Manipada, Vidhya nagari, Santa Cruz (E), Mumbai - 400098. Email : reach@husys.net Phone:+91-8108128582 / +91-9967678664 Bangalore : 512,1st Floor,16th Cross Indiranagar II Stage,Bangalore-38 Email : reach@husys.net Phone:+91-9964312637 USA : Nina E. Woodard, SPHR, GPHR Phone: 1 760 717 1431 Email : nina@ninaewoodard.com