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Global Competitiveness:Challen • es and Best Practices in HR

SCOPE International HR mmi -

NBASE STUDY

Reimagining HRGlobal Competitiveness & NewAge Workforce

BCC (India) Limited, for-merly known as NationalBuildings Construction

:nation Ltd, is a blue-chipent of India Navratna

ic Sector Enterprise function-under the aegis of Ministry

Urban Development. Listedboth the Stock Exchanges,company's unique busi-

aess model has today, made itout as a largest PSE in the

a truction sector and a leaderith more than 1NR 70000 Crores

order book. The Company haslegistered A substantial 32%Growth in top line during FY3015-16 as compared to previ-ous year. It has posted a profit oflits.311 crores while its total turn-

has surged to Rs.5749 Croresduring FY 2015-16. Having an:immense strength in the con-struction sector, NBCC has aPAN India as well as global pres-ence. Company's present areas ofoperations are:

• Project Management Consul-tancy (PMC)

• Real Estate Development

• EPC Contracting

• Redevelopment of GovernmentColonies

Narender Singh, DGM (HRM)Raveesh Kumar Sethi, Manager (HRM)

BackgroundWith concentration of the man-agement to be a Engineering ma-jor, priority of development andadoption of best Human Reso-urces practices matching industrystandards took a back seat. Beinga Government Organization,company had adopted variousprocedures and practices pre-vailing in Central GovernmentOffices and major activities ofHRM Department were concen-trated on service matters suchas leave, attendance, pay fixa-tion etc. Appraisal Process of thecompany (AFAR Process) wasin operation in line to procedureadopted by Central Governmentoffices.

Hard copies were issued to em-ployees for writing their selfappraisal which were sent byemployees to their subsequentassessing authorities who wereplaced at distant far location ei-ther through courier or postalservices which lead to delay infinalization of APARs. With hardcopy APAR process in existence,there used to be cutting/ use offluid in the APARs and represen-tation/ grievances and court casesby employees were on rise. Withfrequent transfers of employees

from one project to another dueto nature of business of com-pany, sometimes it was difficultfor HRM Department to trackAPARs of employees which usedto delay convening of DPC activi-ties which was one of the cause ofdemotivation among employees.wn application by employeesseeking APARs were all time highwhich used to keep one to twoemployees of HRM Departmentalways engaged in getting photo-copies of AFAR of employees.

It is essential to point out herethat the performance of the orga-nization among its peers in indus-try was excelling day by day andmanagement wished that HRMdepartment should also adopt theprevalent automated HR solutionfor AFAR process which is ro-bust, transparent, paperless andeasy to operate with provision tomonitor the real time progress ofAFAR activities online on click ofthe mouse to re -image the HRMfunctioning. _

Problem StatementHow to transform AFAR processof the company in online modematching industry standardswhich is transparent, easy in

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NBCCASE STUDY

operation by employees and as-sessing authorities and can reim-age FIRM Department.

Key Challenges• Fear of Acceptability of OnlineAppraisal application at all levels

• Accessibility of ERP Applicationby employees located at far flungareas across the country

• Cost effectiveness of ERPapplications

• Testing of DevelopedApplication

• Data Collection, Verificationand storage

• Backup and SupportMechanism

• Establishing credibility of FIRMDepartment through transparen-cy in AFAR Process.

Steps taken toaddress the ChallengesWith the vision of presentChairman - cum - Managing Dire-ctor to adopt a technology basedautomated HRM process whichhelps bringing in transparencyand operational efficiency in theworking FIRM Department,Corporate FIRM Division initi-ated "Project Prayas" for stream-lining various FIR practices andprocedures. The first initiativeundertaken by FIRM Departmentunder "Project Prayas" was tran-sitioning the Manual AFAR pro-cess into online mode throughEnterprise Resource Planning(ERP) Application for all GroupA&B level employees includ-ing employees at E-8 and E-9level. A task force of HRM em-ployees from PMS section wasconstituted to implement theOnline Appraisal Process. In or-der to ensure that a completeHR transformation take place as

per the direction and vision ofthe Management, series of FIRMtransformations processes wereplanned and it was decided thatwith the successful implemen-tation of this application in ap-praisal process , new and moderntransformation to improve FIRMpractices can be extended later toother areas of Human ResourceDepartment.

Fear of Acceptabilityof Online Appraisalapplication at all levelsIn order to address the key chal-lenge of acceptability of OnlineAPAR Process by employees atall level, major emphasis of taskforce was towards designing ablueprint of a user friendly andinteractive online Appraisal ap-plication which is easy to use andsimple to understand. The entireonline E-PMS application blue-print was commissioned with anapproach that employees find iteasy to login into the applicationwith ease and can operate appli-cation convieniently. The applica-tion was developed in-house af-ter taking into consideration thecomfort level of employees usingthe existing ERP application.

Accessibility of ERP Applicationby employees at distant location

Since NBCC is an enginee tugorganization where majority ofemployees are located at projectsspread across India and abroad,so the challenge of accessibilityof AFAR by employees located atfar location was a major issue forsuccessful execution and imple-mentation of the E-PMS applica-tion. In order to address this is-sue provision was created in theapplication that part from web-mode the application can also beaccessed through mobile phones

by employees/ assessing authori-ties located at project sites.

Cost Effectiveness of E-PMSapplication

SinLe the project of Transforma-tion of HRM activities was one ofthe initial projects given to FIRMDepartment, efforts were put inthat E-PMS application can bedeveloped using the best webtechnologies which can later besynchronized with the existingERP application. To ensure thatE-PMS application is cost effec-tive and all features starting fromtracking the AFAR activities on-line to provision of Printing dullyassessed APARs were createdin the E-PMS application. Theapplication was developed on.Net Web Framework (MicrosoftTechnology) matching the indus-try standards.

Testing of DevelopedE-PMS application before rollout to employees

Another major challenge beforeHRM Department was user test-ing of E-PMS application along-with its various functionalitiesright from appraisee to acceptingauthority level. To ensure that nomajor glitches are encounteredby users while operating the ap-plication, application testing wascarried out in house by HRMDepartment. All these activitieswere carried out internally beforethe final APARs were rolled outto employees for writing their selfappraisal and assessment by vari-ous assessing authorities.

Verification of credentialsin APAR by Employees andData Storage

,,n,L to ensure that data inAPAR of employees is correct in

i e KALEIDOSCOPE February, 2017

L respect, blank APARs were putto employees with the data.Blank APAR format with

Aatz were opened to employeesdir ou gh E-PMS application fortheir viewing and verification

credentials. This activity wasstrategized to ensure that everyemployee could feel the ease ineperating the E-PMS applicationC D one hand and on the otherhand could give employee chanceto review their credential such asnames of reporting and review-ing officers, period of assessment,name of the project and otherdetails in APAR. Provision wasmade for proper Data securityand storage.

Backup and SupportMechanismSince the APAR assessmentthrough E-PMS application wasintroduced for the first time,HRM Department strategizedseries of actions to ensure thatemployee queries were resolvedat earliest over the phone ore -mails. Steps were also taken

to ensure that no technical issueexist during the course of theAPAR cycle. To ensure that em-ployee don't feel dejected dueto any technical glitches if theyencounter any, following stepswere taken

• A back up support Team atHRM Department, was alwaysavailable to address the queriesof the employees and guide themabout the filling of appraisalreports.

• E-PMS help/guide files weremade available to employeesthrough ERP, these guide fileswalk through employees/assess-ing authorities right from loggingstage to assessment stage.

• SLC of PMS section was de-fined and any query by employees/assessing authority wasresponded back in the shortestpossible time.

• Data security and Data Backupswere carried out on daily basisby IT Team to ensure completesafety and security of E-PMS data

NBCCASE STUDY

with provision of proper storageof records.

Establishing credibility of HRMDepartment through transpar-ency in APAR ProcessIn order to address the major areaof operational transparency dur-ing the currency of appraisal cy-cle, HRM Department organisedseries of dialogues with employ-ees through informal personaldiscussions and also through of-ficial communication in form ofcirculars and mailers. To re -in-force employees belief in ensur-ing that complete transparencyexist in APAR process, employeeswere provided with a windowin E-PMS application throughwhich every employee couldview the progress of the APARcyde. Further, on completion ofAppraisal process, APARs dulyassessed by assessing authoritiesare disdosed to employees forviewing which has helped em-ployees to improve their perfor-mance in areas highlighted by theassessing authorities.

Process Flow of Appraisal process of the company:

. .,_t______

Collection of Employee Details from E-PMS application 10th January to 31stJanuary

2 Opening of Blank APAR forms for verification of employee 15th Feb to 15th Marchcredentials

3 Opening of APAR form for writing self Appraisal by employees 01 St Week of April

4 Closure of Appraisal process after assessment by all assessing au- 15th Julythorities including Accepting authorities at various levels

5 Convening of DPC proceedings

Issue of Promotion Orders

10th September onwards

6 01st October

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NBCASE STUDY

Outcome of the HRTransformation initiative

• E-PMS application helpedre -building trust of FIRMDepartment that complete trans-parency exist in the APARprocess.

• With successful implementa-tion and completion of OnlineApp-raisal cycle, credibility ofHRM Department increasedmanifolds which led HRMDepartment to establish itself asBusiness Partner to Management.

• Successful implementation ofonline appraisal cycle also result-ed in disclosing employees withthe duly assessed APARs withcomplete marking and grading ofassessing authorities.

• Time bound completion ofAPAR process resulted in timebound convening of the DPC ac-tivities every year in month ofSeptember. Promotion orders areissued on 01st October every yearresulting in benclunarking HRMDepartment commitment as perthe policy of company. This also

led to strengthening FIRM cred-ibility among employees.

• Introduction of online appraisalprocess has also resulted in zerotransit loss of APARs as all dataremain intact on server. Migrationto online APAR process has alsoenabled Management to retrieveinformation in respect of employ-ee's performance in few clicksthrough E-PMS application.

• Online APAR process has alsohelped in timely preparationof PRP data for submission toRemuneration committee.

• There has been no RTI applica-tion by employees seeking photo-copies of their APAR after imple-mentation of E-PMS process.

• All APARs submitted electroni-cally by employees are availablein ERP for employee reference toenhance transparency.

Reimagining HR:Global Competitiveness andNew Age Workforce

The novelty of the initiativetaken by HRM Department for

modernization and transforma-tion of HRM practices helpedin re -branding and re -imagingFIRM Department as one of themost transparent and employeefriendly Department. The initia-tive not only helped in estab-lishing the credibility of HRMDepartment but also made orga-nization competitive with respectto the practices followed by itspeers in the industry which is apre -requisite expectation now adays of the new age workforce.The initiative not only helpedin transforming the appraisalprocess but also acted as a launch-pad for introduction of newmodernized HR practices whichare essential to survive in a com-

pe titive environment.

The successful implementationof E-PMS application by HRMDepartment also re -in -forced theManagement beliefs that mod-ern FIRM initiatives matching theindustry standards can be devel-oped and implemented in-houseby FIRM Department. • • •

42 I KALEIDOSCOPE February, 2017

NBCCASE STUDY

HR Automation -Project Excellence

N BCC (India) Limited, is a blue-chipGovernment of India Navratna PublicSector Enterprise under the aegis of

Ministry of Urban Development. Listed withboth the Stock Exchanges, the company's uniqueBusiness Model has today, made it stand out as thelargest PSE in the construction sector and a leaderwith more than INR 70,000 Crores order book. TheCompany has registered a substantial 32% Growthin top line during FY 2015-16 as compared to previ-ous year. It has posted a profit of Rs. 311 crores whileits total turnover has surged to Rs. 5749 Crores dur-ing FY 2015-16. Having an immense strength in theconstruction sector, NBCC has a PAN India as wellas global presence.

The Company's present a eas of operations are ilProject Mana-gement Consultancy (PMC). ii) RealEstate Development & iii) EPC Contracting &Redeve-lopment of Govt. colonies.

BackgroundDue to diversified business & having its operationin remote areas across the country, it is imperativefor NBCC not only to establish a system for timelycompletion of projects & meet the deadlines butalso to update, enhance and change the systemfrom time to time in line with the emerging trendand challenges by adopting new technologies. Toachieve this in efficient manner, HRM departmentof NBCC set to play a pivotal role. The vision ofour CMD towards HR automation including paper-less working and the flagship program of DigitalIndia Movement initiated by Government of Indiafurther acted as a driving force to initiate a changefrom conventional file -paper working to paperlesstechnology based working in the organization.

Problem StatementThe problems can be listed out as below:

Sanj eev Kumar,AGM(HRM)

Kush Ganeshiya,AGM(HRM)

Debasis Satapathy,AGM(HRM)

• All employees deployed in semi urban remoteareas often complainedabout absence of efficientmechanism for taking Administrative approvalsand resolving service matter.

• Slow and lengthy communication process re-sulted in distorted and delayed information whichslows down the decision -making process.

• Different Units are not able to share the informa-tion at a common platform so that it could help otherunits to use the information for achieving commongoals. This limits the capability of the company as awhole.

• There were thousands of paper documents inthe form of files being dealt in the company on adaily basis. Keeping record of all paper documents,their movement, safety, storage and retrieving in-volves lots of time, money and efforts which in turndecreases the efficiency and productivity of thecompany.

• The physical fi le movement of official files &documents from remote locations and from, otherprojects across the country incurs a lot of time andrequires an extended tracking from table to tablebefore the final decision.

Key ChallengesIt was felt by the NBCC management, that the needof hour in this situation was to have a system inplace where an authorized employee could locatethe required documents and files in the shortestpossible time, update and share them with other rel-evant users and eventually store them with properreferences. This provides NBCC a valuable insightto the need for creation of e -services portal.

InitiativesTo start with, in order to achieve this end objective,

148 KALEIDOSCOPE February, 2017

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we took a decision to implement the following fourHR automation tools.

a) E -Office, b)Digitization of records, c)Officialemail ids to all Resources and d) Online propertyreturn

E -office: A MAJOR HEADWAYThe need of transforming conventional governmentoffices into more efficient and transparent e -offices,eliminating huge amount of paperwork has longbeen felt. The office product pioneered by NationalInformatics Centre, aims to support governance byushering effective and transparent inter and intra-government process.It is designed for the govern-ment departments, PSU's Automation bodies to en-able paperless office by scanning, registering androuting the inward correspondences along withcreation of file, noting, referencing, correspondingattachment, draft for approvals and finally move-ment of files as well as receipts.

e0ffice, is a workflow based system that replacesthe existing manual handling of files with more ef-ficient electronic system. The system involves allstages, including the diarisation of inward receipts,creation of files , movement of receipt s and filesand finally the archival of records. With this system,the movement of receipts and files become seam-less and there is more transparency in the systemsince each and every action taken on a file isrecorded electronically. This simplifies decisionmaking, as all the required information is availableat single point.

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Launch of a -Office

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Applicationof e -Office in HRIVI

HRM PolicyThrough E -office, policy formulation section pro-cesses the proposal electronically till the approvalstage without using a single paper. All papers relat-ing to coverage of mediclaim for all employees alsomove electronically.

WelfareMedicIaim—The mediclaim Iden-tity card process-ing is also being carried out electronically.

KALEIDOSCOPE February, 2017 147

NBCCASE STUDY

Training & DevelopmentFor the nomination of employees for the externaltraining the entire process of approval by competentauthority is being processed through E -office. Thetraining needs identification process is also throughAFAR and on line, from where the data i s beingpicked up for the structured training interventions.

IndustrialRelation ProcessThe internal process of getting all approvals /cor-respondences relating to unions are processedthrough e -office.

Manpower PlanningThe process ot understanding the current man pow-er, expected VRS/Exit etc., expected additio al needdue to expansion of projects etc. and cons quent ad-ditional man power requirement could be processedthrough E -office. Transfer/ posting of resources —Competent authori ty's approval can be obtainedthrough E -office for all transfer and postings.

RecruitmentThe process of getting manpower vacancy approval,giving advertisement in the newspapers, communi-cating to internal Corporate Communication divi-sion, formation of panel for the interview, gettingapproval of the proceedings of group d iscussionand interview, approval from competent authorityfor the selection of candidates and issuing the offersis being processed through e -office.

Service MattersThis division handles thefollowing processes and the benefits are:

• Establishment All correspondences relating tothis division are processed through E -office. Some ofthe usages are Annual Confidential Report, Transfers,Time Office, Industrial Relations, SuperannuationPension, Personal/ Service file, Superannuation pro-cess, Leave management system etc.

With the lunch of this new System, the organizationmoved a giant leap towards digitization and paper-less management of files as a part of Digital IndiaMovement.

After implementation of e -office, we are benefitedwith following functionalities:

• Unifies view of data: Each Application of e -officeaccesses the same data, so it reduces duplicationsof efforts and data remain common across all thefunctions.

• Single Standard Based Directory Service.

• Archival of e -Records& Content and DocumentManagement: Data remain stored in the server andmade available as and when required. Retrieval ispossible on the basis of metadata.

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Digi tisation of RecordsN BCC is an over half a century old organization. It

has thousands of files which runs into several lacs

of pages. It was extremely challenging to store the

files as well as their retrieval. It leads to procure-ment of more and more compacters. Hence we tookconcerted decision to digitize all the files of all thefunctions in stages. We scanned & uploaded oversixty lakhs pages. In the server the data is secureand hence the possibility of data loss is next to zero.Based on the functional requirements, authoriza-tion have been given to the specific users, hence thepossibility of tweaking data is remote. Any specif-ic subject/topic could be retrieved through searchwhich takes seconds from lacs of pages. This wasa great leap indeed towards the vision of paperlessoffice in NBCC.

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1481 KALEIDOSCOPE February. 2017

NBCCCASE STUDY

Personalised Email IDS to all ResourcesThe uniqueness of NBCC is its presence in everynook and corner of the country and in several for-eign countries. Most of the projects are in extremelyremote locations which are far from cities.

I IGITAL °PHYSICAL1 - 1

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Only way to have written communication withthem is through email. We took a concerted deci-

sion to create official personalized Email IDs ofNBCC domain for all resources including junior

engineers who are at the project locations. The pro-

vision of Email id has resulted into a phenomenal

change in terms of data exchange among executivesat all levels. Now any message from HO can reachto any of the concerned employee instantly.

On Line Property ReturnAnnual Property Return(APR) is mandated by theGovernment in which each and every resource inan organization is supposed to declare assets. Theprocess of filing was in hard copy. We were receiv-ing thousands of pages through postal or throughcourier. It was important to have perfection in termsof timelines. Instant retrieval of papers in case ofrequirements was also much more challenging. Toget rid of all these challenges it was decided to re-ceive the APRs on line. The system is designed insuch a way that without filling the APR on line, theemployee can't access the ERP.

Accepting the challenges and responding

Though the challenges are big but moving forwardis the only solution to face the challenges. The chal-lenges were met in the following way:

• We believe that generational differences can actu-ally present a positive opportunity for development

at both ends of the spectrum. "YGen's" enthusiasmfor trying new things could be used to encouragea culture of innovation. Batches mixed with youngand old officers were called for interactive sessionsand asked for their ideas and suggestions for im-provement in the presented system. This generateda sense of belonging among the officers and alsogenerated a general acceptance among the users.

• Effective trainings on e -Office, both external andinternal to every employee of the company to makethis project successful.

• IT officials visited various locations to train theusers on the job.

Outcome• Accountability increased, the responsibility ofquality and speed of decision making is now easierto monitor.

• The total cost of the stationery and printing hasgreatly reduced.

• All desks are free of physical papers.

• Retrieval and assessing of the files in much morefaster and full proof.

• Promote greater collaboration in the work placeand effective knowledge management.

• Files, approvals are now t raceable and can beused at any time in future.

Reimaging HR: Global Competitivenessand New Age WorkforceThe uniqueness of the initiatives taken by HRM de-partment for automation, mordinisation and trans-formation of the function has helped in re -brandingand re -imaging the department. The initiatives notonly helped in establishing the credibility of theFIRM Department but also made organization com-petitive with respect to the best practices followedby its peers in the industry which is a pre -requisiteexpectation of the new age work force.

Going ForwardCurrently for various functional requirements weare using several applications like Eoffice, Datamanagement system (DMS), Performance manage-ment system, Infra Net, ERP etc. Now the real chal-lenge is to integrate all of them under one umbrella.We are in the process of implementing a ERP in thesystem to integrate all.We are at an advance stage ofimplementation. • • •

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