Blogging For Consultants

Interesting video from Vault's Global Consulting Editor, Naomi Newman talking about their blog focused on Consulting. She talks about how boutique consulting firms are in demand by Vault readers. Yeah, firms like Tvarita Consulting ;-)

Social Media is like Sex

Hat-tip to Lilia

a pointer to Bringing Social Media To Work by Jeremy Burton, with the quote:
For most people, the human drive to connect and share is stronger than the duty to spend every possible moment "being productive". No matter what, people will find ways to socialize and share during work hours. It might be best to treat this like
sex education: If your employees are going to "do it" anyway, why not encourage
them to channel their social-media impulses in smart, safe ways that can
potentially help your business?
Puting it next to David Gurteen's blogging as loving sexual relationship

So remember, do explore, do be "safe", be consistent, keep it simple and don't get addicted to it.

and this is my 1900th post ;-)

30 questions

If you have had any kind of exposure to US recruiting and HR practices you know that there are some questions that are absolute "no-nos" in interviews.

HR world has posted an article " 30 Interview Questions You Can't Ask and 30 Sneaky, Legal Alternatives to Get the Same Info"

Interesting reading. And the alternatives are not really "sneaky" ways :-)

Low relation between HR practices and Employee Satisfaction

According to the news from the CNBC-TV18 Employer of Choice award apparently there is a tenous linkage between adoption of HR "best practices" and the employee satisfaction scores.

70% weightage is given to the employee perspective. So it is an Employer of
Choice awards but based on the employee perspective. The Employer is judged on
the HR practices, he has put in place for which 30% weightage is given

The Jury comprising K Ramkumar, Group Chief Human Resources Officer, ICICI
Bank, Madhukar Shukla, Professor, XLRI, Jamshedpur, Ganesh Chella of Totus
Consulting, Chennai and Tarun Seth of Shilputsi debated the findings day long, throwing up learning’s for everyone.

The key revelation from this debate was that the adoption of well known HR practices do not necessarily bring in the highest employee satisfaction scores. This threw up surprise findings, where companies known to adopt the best HR practices did not figure in the top ten as their employee satisfaction scores were low.

So what does that mean for us HR professionals?

The reason in my view is that "best practices" in HR become "expected practices" very very soon. If you had to use OB jargon (from Herzberg's motivation theory) factors that are considered "motivators" become "hygiene" very very soon.

Consider the case of a great boss. When you work with a great boss in a firm, any boss you would work with later has to compete with that image of a boss in your mind. And you might end up dissatisfied with every subsequent boss after that :-)

So what is considered a "best practice in HR" gets assumed and taken for granted very soon. Open communication? Transparency? Cab pick-up and drop? Pool tables in the office? Free food and laundry? Stock Options? 120 percentile of market salary?

They'll make news when they get introduced in the organization or noticed when a new employee joins.

But eventually what will keep an employee satisfied and motivated and working in the organization is the nature and quality of work.

The organization that can provide a context for their employees to make their own personal meaning will actually succeed in doing HR's real role.

Career Success

Kaushik left a comment on my previous post about Career shaper research with CCL's research on Career Success.

I would refer to one of CCL's research (very old, but still valid) on Career Success Maps (CSM). Its a unique way which combines choice of careers and being successful in them. As a summary, it highlights 5 different CSMs :
1) Free : people chosing professions that provide them the freedom to be creative and effective. Eg: Ad agencies and consultants (like me;))
2) Ahead : People seeing substantial value in hierarchical growth and regard levels as a strong motive in the choice of careers. Brand is very important for them. eg: People seeking to work in large corporates
c) High : People who love excitement, who really dont care about beurecracy, structure, growth as long as they get to do exciting stuff. They usually figure out where the action is and land up there. Eg: some research organizatons
d)Secure : People who seek security in their job. Dont really care if theres no growth, no excitement etc.
e)Balance : For these people job is just one element of their larger life. They are usually good in all their roles as an employee, spouse, friend, social contributor etc

It's interesting to also compare CCL's research with Butler and Waldroop's earlier work on "job sculpting" (Nimmy's also blogged about it here)

Of the following eight life interests, 1-3 usually emerge as motivations at work -- and sources for job satisfaction:

• Application of Technology These people love the inner workings of things.
• Quantitative Analysis These people gravitate toward the numbers and use them creatively to analyze data. They excel at analyzing ratios, customer research data, etc.
• Theory Development and Conceptual Thinking These people love nothing better than relating concepts to pursue higher levels of understanding.
• Creative Production These imaginative, out-of-the-box thinkers love to start things when there are lots of unknowns and they can make something out of nothing. They thrive on newness, whether it�s a product or a process.
• Counseling and Mentoring For some, nothing is more enjoyable than teaching. Whether they do it because they enjoy watching others succeed, or because they want to be appreciated, they see social value in their cause.
• Managing People and Relationships Wanting to manage people is different than wanting to counsel and mentor. The focus here is on outcomes, and these people enjoy working day-to-day with others. They like to motivate, organize and direct.
• Enterprise Control These are the go-to people who love being responsible for the direction of a team or project. They specifically like being in charge, although they may not like managing people. Their main thrill is in "owning" the transaction (i.e. being accountable).
• Influence Through Language and Ideas These people enjoy storytelling, negotiating and persuading just for the sake of it. They are most fulfilled when they are communicating (speaking or writing). Even if no one is listening, they are practicing their skills through self-talk.

Career Success and Life Interests. What a heady combination. By the way, regular readers of this blog can surely point out my life interests I guess :-) !

Who are you subjecting to training?

Prasad raises a very pertinent point in his post "Training the Victim":

The real problem in these contexts might not be related to the capability level of the individual employees at all. Often, the problem is mainly at the structure, process, policy or leadership level. However, it is relatively difficult/inconvenient for the organization/unit head to address the issues/make changes at these levels. So there is a temptation to jump to the conclusion that it is an employee capability issue and to attempt a training solution. Since the real issue remains unaddressed (despite the 'training solution'), there can't much improvement in the situation. I am not saying that there won't be issues at the individual capability level. Of course this possibility should also be explored and if there is evidence for the existence of such a need, an appropriate learning solution could be attempted. My point is just that a proper diagnosis needs to be carried out before a solution is attempted (instead of jumping into the most convenient solution) and that when it comes to taking the responsibility for the deterioration in the performance of the unit in such situations, sometimes, the individual employees are 'more sinned against than sinned'.

The sad part is that the inability to view a system holistically is a rare skill. Often such "training managers" who are called want to contribute but themselves lack capability to diagnose. In such a case the saying "To someone with a hammer, all the problems look like nails" holds true.

When I attended Peter Block's program on "Internal Consulting Skills" the ability to question and to equate with the business leader and manager is a key skill for all support staff. However few HR and Training managers can actually do so. In fact, one of the exercises the program had was for participants to start their statements with "I want..." when talking to a business leader. One of my friends, the Recruitment Manager for a unit said, "How can I possibly say 'I want'? My clients would detest me!"

Internal HR units I think start becoming very servile rather than stay service oriented. In fact my suggestion for HR people is to start being a lot more assertive, question every data given and come to your own conclusions. When I was a person delivering internal service I often wondered what Tom Peters meant when he said that HR folks have to change to Professional Services Firms internally. Now I know.

You'd think that when someone runs a monopoly on a service they would become haughty and when someone is operating in a competitive market they become servile. However my experience with internal HR groups ("the monopoly") and as an external consultant ("competitive market") has been quite the opposite !

What shapes careers?

According to a McKinsey survey:

• Executives around the world say the events that most profoundly affected their careers originated largely at work, not from family or personal issues
• 40 percent of respondents say they have had difficulty balancing work and home life, they also say this challenge doesn’t drive most career decisions.
• The survey uncovered few differences between the experiences of men and women. However, women are more likely to have had a mentor or role model and to have experienced discrimination.
• Respondents are satisfied with the outcome of career-shaping moments, saying that they led to more interesting and important jobs and to higher compensation.

Very interesting. The McKinsey Quarterly conducted the survey in July 2007 and received responses from 482 male and 409 female executives from around the world, across industries, and at varied points in their careers. Thirty-nine percent are C-level executives. All data are weighted by the GDPs of the constituent countries to adjust for differences in response rates.

Whatever defined the respondents’ most significant career-changing event, the most common outcome was a new job.

So are companies majorly failing to manage the change that develop from career decisions of their employees?

Fast Track to Blogging

Maulik has a blog called "Fast Track to Blogging" and looks like he profiles some Indian blogs that he likes.

I'm delighted that he has good things to say about this blog, and more because of the eminent company it shares along with Sepia Mutiny, Digital Inspiration, India Uncut and Youth Curry.

Wow ! That feels good !

If you're interested in some great Indian blogs, I'd suggest you to take a look at the "best Indian Bloggers and Most Popular Blogs in India" site on labnol.org. You'll find yours truly's blog listed as a part of the "Veteran Indian Bloggers" section.

Yeah Amit, you have succeeded in making me feel old ;-)!

Blogging and Business Development

After I posted about Ford Harding's blog earlier Ford sent me a thank you mail. We got into a conversation and I started telling him about how blogging has benefited me and my ability to get consulting clients. Ford then asked me if he could share my story on his blog and he has :-)

Ford also offered to send a couple of his books to me to read, and I received them yesterday. They are Creating Rainmakers: The Manager's Guide to Training Professionals to Attract New Clients and his earlier book Rain Making: The Professionals Guide to Attracting New Clients

As you might have guessed Ford Harding and his company help professionals become "rainmakers" as their site says:

If you're an accountant, attorney, architect, engineer, executive recruiter or management consultant, you've spent years learning your profession.

But now, if you and your firm are going to prosper, it turns out you're going to have to become a rainmaker, too. And no one ever taught you that in school.

Harding & Company helps professionals learn to sell and market. We help them make the transition from doing and managing client work to bringing it in. We help build the sale behaviors that are a vital part of any professional service firm's success.

I have just started browsing through the books and have found that some activities that I have been indulging over the last few years (unknowingly) is what rainmakers do as second nature. Two aspects being, looking at every thing always optimistically and cultivating a network without the thought of immediate business gain.

In fact, before the days of blogging and before the days of Yahoogroups.com I interacted with students from other B Schools and CAs on a Rediff chat site called "A Smoke Filled Cafe". I am still in touch with them. One is a retail consultant with AT Kearney and the other is a KPMG auditor at London.

Other examples have been to create a community of HR professionals and KM practitioners in 2000. Many members of these communities have become personal friends and people who sound me out for advisory help.

Then of course, there is this blog, and the Linkedin community and connections through Orkut and Facebook.

As Ford says in his book, developing network is a pay-off that is a J shaped curve. It starts very slowly, probably leading to disappointment in the short term...but when the curves starts going up it moves very steeply :-)

Keep an eye out for my detailed review of Ford's books coming soon.

My articles on Insightory.com

You might remember that I posted about Insightory.com a site focused on knowledge sharing and collaboration started by ex-Hewitt Associates consultant Avneet Jolly.

Here are some of my articles that I wrote which you can download from the Insightory.com website

1. How to get promoted - Focused on the Do's and Don'ts for getting promoted for the first time. I call it building your organizational quotient ;-)
2. Blogging for Business - Quite self-explanatory. A presentation.
3. Preparing People for Leadership - You might have read this article on my webpage, but now you can download the document too :-)
4. The future of HR and Recruiting - Where is the profession headed?
5. Gazing into the Crystal Ball - If the HR profession is changing what skills must the HR professional build?

Hope you like them. Bouqets are brickbats are welcome :-)

Blogging and Learning

Have been quoted in Education Times' Executive Education section:

“Learning is essentially a social activity, by engaging with others and
understanding different realities and contexts. Blogging magnifies the scope to
engage with others who are spread throughout the world.”Blogging as a tool helps
you learn from various people from your field of work and express to them
better. It leaves more scope for learning as it leaves you more exposed to
different ideas and comments and opinions.
One’s understanding of a topic is raised by having such open and unrestricted access to peers, superiors and opponents. How? Blogging as a tool aids you to connect to others in asynchronous time and therefore has periods of incubation. Another key advantage of the tool would be the fact that anyone on the internet can challenge or support your point of view or idea and might provide you with valid points and research to support their views. This is almost like an auto-check for your literature where the world literally is continuously churning out corrections and add-ons for
your ideas.

Blogging as a means of communication can be used as towards branding,
market research, innovation, consumer insight, hiring, customer service,
marketing and public relations besides giving consumers a platform for voicing
opinions and building an online community. However, the current use of corporate
blogging in India is at a very nascent stage. Expected because corporates in
India are not used to a two-way communication with their stakeholders. Ghosh
adds,“Indian firms have to understand that blogging is also about giving the
organisation a human face.”

Associating with a Consulting firm t Hyderabad

For people who follow my career, here's an update...

After more than a year of an independent consulting venture, I've bowed to the fact that maybe I can't do it all alone.

Hence, I've decided to join forces with some people who are doing some great and innovative work in HR consulting and outsourcing . Remember the new take on HR outsourcing I talked about? Well, it offers that service.

My role would be two fold. I would be working with them to look after HR service delivery for some ongoing projects and also look at building and delivering new business in HR consulting areas.

Then there's the question of Blogging and Social Media Consulting that Imagence was offering. While the services do not tie into its service offerings, we would evaluate any request for blogging related services by a client and then evaluate if we could deliver it.

In hindsight, working independently is a great learning experience and I loved the flexibility that I got through it. The downside was that if a couple of inquiries for work came in I could not build a longer pipeline of work unless clients had responded to earlier proposals.

Lessons from Blogging

Usually, when people ask me about the benefits of blogging - I usually don't know what to focus on. There are many areas where blogging adds value.

Now I just have to direct them to this post by Lilia. This bit, particularly, resonated with me deeply:

However, the real value is not at the post level - ecosystems between blog posts are more interesting and more important. Think of the fuzzy feeling of knowing someone from reading a weblog over time, implicit understanding of a new issue that emerges while following a conversation between bloggers or sense of belonging to a network of others - in all cases posts and links are only a tip of the iceberg. Counting and measuring those visible traces is tempting, but knowledge, reputation, relations are likely to escape rankings.

And Lilia is not someone who merely blogs. Her PhD research was around blogging. Check here for her highlights from Microsoft employee blogging study and her posts on the choices between personal and business dimensions of blogging : Blog posts 1, 2, 3 + ECSCW'07 talk

Insightory.com for knowledge sharing

A friend, Sanjay Lakhotia asked me to check out Insightory.com, which wants to be the knowledge sharing, collaboration and networking platform between management industry and academia.

The site is still in "alpha" (now is that a sign of web 3.0 ? ;-)

Currently there are a lot of management papers kind of stuff uploaded by current business school students in India. Avneet Jolly (an ex-Hewitt Associates consultant) who is the brain behind the site wants to roll it to B schools in the US and Europe soon. As they say:

Our goal is to do for management knowledge what Wikipedia has done for general knowledge i.e. put it out on the "open" web, so that those who have expertise can add to it, and those who need the expertise can tap into it. In doing so, we will create powerful networks, with rich opportunities for "providers" as well as "seekers" of management knowledge.

However the site it is not a wiki. If you have seen Scribd.com it seems more like a version of Scribd.com focussed on management subjects.

I'm not sure how much management practitioners will use the site, but seems like management students will discover a lot of creative ways to complete their assignments now.

Oh there's a contest on now too...Anyone in the management community is welcome to participate. See details, rules and award information here. Documents submitted up to Dec. 31, 2007 will be eligible for Daily Best Document awards of US$ 100 or 200 each or local currency equivalents. The Overall Best Document submitted during the Contest will receive US$ 3,000 or local currency equivalents.

Wow ! That'll ensure participation, I guess !

PwC research on Managing Tomorrow's People

A friend of mine sent me a pretty interesting research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). They along with the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation at the Said Business School in Oxford to think about the factors that currently affect business and those which we believe will grow in importance in the future.

So I sent off a mail to the people behind the report and got a response from Sandy Pepper, Partner with PwC in the UK saying I could blog about this report.

The report uses the "scenario planning methodology". The scenario planning exercise revealed that individualism, collectivism, corporate integration and business fragmentation would be the most significant factors affecting global business until 2020. They aligned these along two axes, around which they developed the scenarios further.

So they came up with three "worlds" which were labeled "Blue" (for big company capitalism - where the globalisers take centre stage, consumer preference dominates, a corporate career separates the haves from the have nots), "Green" (Companies develop a powerful social conscience and green sense of responsibility. Consumers demand ethics and environmental credentials as a top priority. Society and business see their agenda align) and "Orange" (Global businesses fragment, localism prevails, technology empowers a low impact, high-tech business model. Networks prosper while large companies fall)

The Future for HR in these worlds according to the report:-

In the Blue World where corporate is king, the people and performance model below is the closest to what many leading companies are aspiring to today – linking HR interventions to improvements in business performance and using more sophisticated human capital metrics to evaluate corporate activity. Under this scenario the management of people and performance becomes a hard business discipline, at least equal in standing to finance in the corporate hierarchy.

In the Green World where companies care, corporate responsibility (CR) is good. The CR agenda is fused with people management. As society becomes a convert to the sustainable living movement, the people management function is forced to embrace sustainability as part of its people engagement and talent management agendas.
Under this scenario successful companies must engage with society across a broader footprint. Communities, customers and contractors all become equal stakeholders along with employees and shareholders.

In the Orange world, economies are comprised primarily of a vibrant middle market, full of small companies, contractors and portfolio workers. People management is about ensuring these small companies have the people resources they need to function competitively. This allows an important role to be carved out for HR, one where the people supply chain is a critical component of the business and is strategically led by the HR function. But the flip side is that this could also see in-house HR becoming a sourcing or procurement function, with the high-end people development aspects of HR being managed externally by guilds.

So what realities will actually come to pass?

In some cases we can see the signs already. The Blue and Orange world exist side by side today, specially in places like Silicon Valley. Orange world firms and people are the creative juice for larger organizational behemoths to buy out and leverage and scale up. Of course, UK consultant and philosopher has talked about it in his book "The Elephant and the Flea". Handy has also touched upon portfolio careers that is mentioned as a reality in the Orange world in the PwC report.

In Europe Green firms are well on the way to becoming a reality I guess. In the West Gen Y is concerned about CSR and how green organizations are. In some years it will matter across the world !

What do you think ? You can download the report here.

Congrats to the Evil HR Lady !

For coming in third in the best business blog category at the 2007 weblog awards.

Who says HR people don't have a sense of humor? You should read her blog :D

She's beaten blogs like Valleywag and Pro-Blogger ! That's some awesome achievement !

What Gen Y or Millennial employees want

From an email I received:

In a just-released guide, What Millennial Workers Want: How to Attract and Retain Gen Y Employees, Robert Half International and Yahoo! HotJobs examine the professional priorities of the most senior members of Generation Y — those who have already started a career or will soon start one. More than 1,000 adults ages 21 to 28 were polled for the project.

“The research depicts a pragmatic, future-oriented generation that holds many of the same values as its predecessors,” said Reesa Staten, senior vice president and director of workplace research for Robert Half International. “Yet, certain distinctive qualities, such as a desire for very frequent feedback from their managers, are unique to this generation. Generation Y expects a lot of its leaders. Making sure supervisors of Gen Y professionals have supportive management styles can go a long way in attracting and retaining these workers, who will play a greater role in organizations as more baby boomers retire.”


Big expectations of company leaders
Survey respondents rated working with a boss they respect and can learn from as the most important aspect of their work environment, ahead of having a nice office space, a short commute or working for a socially responsible company. Those surveyed also indicated that they expect more “face time” from their supervisors than a weekly status meeting. The majority of Gen Yers (60 percent) want to hear from their managers at least once a day.

Redefining a successful future
Most survey respondents appeared optimistic about the future, but this isn’t a group whose idealism overshadows practical concerns, according to the study. When evaluating job opportunities, for example, the research shows that salary, benefits and room for professional growth are top concerns for this group. While 46 percent of Gen Yers consider their career prospects better than previous generations, many respondents feel they also will have to save more money for retirement and study harder than generations past. In fact, nearly three out of four (73 percent) Gen Yers surveyed said they will likely go back to school to obtain another academic degree or certification.

A corner office or impressive job title doesn’t equal success for Gen Y, the survey results suggest. In fact, respondents ranked “a more prestigious job title” last among seven factors that would prompt them to leave their current positions. Opportunities for professional growth and advancement rated a greater career priority, the research shows.

Keeping their options open
Like most employees, Gen Yers crave challenge on the job. The top factors that would tempt Gen Yers to look for greener pastures are added pay and benefits, opportunities for advancement, and more interesting work. Even firms that provide some of these incentives may not be able to keep Gen Y staff members for the long term. Four out of 10 respondents said they plan to stay at their job up to two years; only one in five foresees staying at his/her current job six years or longer.

“Millennials never stop marketing themselves,” said Tom Musbach, managing editor, Yahoo! HotJobs. “This means companies must constantly be in recruiting mode with current employees.”

Inherently, it's always a great idea to be in a "recruiting" mode to retain employees. However the irony is that recruiting and HR generalist positions are becoming too divorced in businesses to have any real conversation about the expectations and promises given to employees, whether of Gen X or Y !

I wonder if a survey like this was conducted in India what would it say?

XLRI summer placements

Seems like Financial Services companies and Consulting companies are laying out the red carpet for the batch that'll be graduating 10 years after ours :-)

Seeing the summer internship stipends they are being paid one wishes that one could do five such internships in a year ;-)) as a consulting assignment. Life would be so uncomplicated then !

With domestic stipends reaching astronomical heights of Rs. 5 Lakhs (Lehman Brothers), the process resulted in the Batch of 2009 being placed in exclusive roles with the best companies in the industry, both from India and abroad. Lehman Brothers, J P Morgan Chase, Hay and Microsoft offered stipends of more than a lakh (for domestic offers), while Novartis, HUL, ABG, P&G, Transworld, Asian Paints and ICICI made foreign offers.

On a serious note, it shows how organizations are taking the battle from the final recruitment process to the summer internship process.

Look at it this way, think about the internship process as a two month long interview process during which the organization and the prospective employee evaluate each other.

The money being paid is just the cost to cut through the clutter.

Assessing Potential

As usual, Prasad posts on a pertinent topic. What is potential assessment, after all?

Unfortunately, (or should it be thankfully?) I have never been part of an organization that did any kind of potential assessment. There was this one organization where your manager and his manager were supposed to do a "scaling call" for you for the succession plan of the business. Which, if you see it, was another way of assessing potential. So people would be ranked one of the four options, Ready to be Promoted, Develop in Place, Continue in Place and Move Out. In decreasing order of desirability.

However what this organization did well was to put the onus on to the manager. If you as an assessee went for three quarter as "Ready to be Promoted" and yet were not promoted, your manager was hauled up over the coals to explain why not?

If you spent two quarters as a Develop in Place and were not yet "Ready to be Promoted" your manager was questioned again.

So organizations need to get a fix on what kind of potential they are assessing for. As Prasad says:

The answers include 'potential to be effective in a particular position', 'potential to be effective in a job family', 'potential to take up leadership positions in the company' etc. Logically, this should lead to the creation of a capability framework that details the requirements to be effective in the job/job family/leadership positions that we are taking about. The potential assessment has to be done with respect to these requisite capabilities. Depending on the nature of the particular capability the method for assessing it can be chosen keeping in mind the organization constraints/context specific factors. In many cases the employees might not have had an opportunity to demonstrate the requisite capabilities (for the future/target job) in their current/previous jobs. This would call for some sort of simulation, similar to those used in assessment centres. For some aspects of particular capabilities that are close to work styles/ personality attributes some sort of psychometric testing could also be useful. Managerial judgement (especially if it is based on in-depth discussion by a group of managers who have had significant amount work related interaction with the employee) and 360 degree feedback are useful to supplement the data from assessment centres/from other assessment tools particularly from a data interpretation/'reality testing' point of view.

Unfortunately organizations and their HR people are usually unable to plan so far ahead. In times of tremendous change sometimes looking for potential that is framed by what worked in the past will undo chances of success in the future.

So what kind of potential are you assessing your existing employees or even new employees for?

Old style or new style CEOS

Seems like there is space for everyone.

This post on the Starkman & Associates blog shows how nice guys are certainly not needed when CEOs are hired by Private Equity buy out firms. In fact, seems like they are people who are looking at short term- quarter to quarter thinking from which apparently public firms are being saved when a Leveraged Buy Out occurs.

This post by B Prem Rao focuses on CEO 3.0 version.

Says Prof. Warren Bennis, University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California and a thought leader on leadership: "It’s someone who can assemble a team that functions as smoothly as a jazz sextet,” .

The conclusion? Leadership depends on the context like so many things in life. When needed, you have to be ruthless. Other times you have to involve others. It's not an easy thing to understand and predict. However I believe it's not so much about how CEOs and leaders are, as much it is about what they do. It's easy to study the first, but quite difficult to objectively view the latter.

HR Headlines

Courtesy Naukri.com

Companies Increasingly Hiring Housewives
With a shortage of manpower in retail, banking, IT and insurance sectors, companies are increasingly hiring housewives with prior work experience. Companies are exploring the untapped potential of housewives who have had career breaks due to marriage and kids. Companies believe that such women are less likely to hop jobs and are thus more reliable. Women also prefer taking up such jobs as it gives them flexibility of work hours and freedom to work part-time.
Source: 27-10-07 Hindustan Times Compiled by www.naukri.com

Cisco To Triple Headcount In India By 2010
Cisco Systems Inc plans 0to increase its headcount in India to 10,000 by 2010. Also, the company plans to invest $1.16 billion in the country. The company intends to strengthen its presence in India and ramp up its employee strength. There are indications that almost 20 percent of the firm's higher management team would be based in India by 2012.
Source: 29-10-07 in.news.yahoo.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

15,000 IT Professionals To House HCL Tech Hub
HCL Technologies plans to build its technology hub, to house 15,000 IT professionals. The company claims that it wants to develop the next generation intellectual property. To reach this end, HCL will invest USD 250 million to build the hub and hopes to generate revenues in excess of USD 1 billion annually. The hub will take about three years to become fully operational. HCL will also come up with many centers across the country including Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Manesar, Madurai and Nagpur.
Source: 01-11-07 news.moneycontrol.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

Bangalore HR Summit 2007 On Dec 7-8, 2007

Theme: Leveraging Technology for HR Effectiveness Date: On Dec. 7 & 8, 2007

Venue: Le Meridien, Sankey Road, Bangalore-8, India

Institute of HRD, will be hosting the Bangalore HR Summit 2007 on Dec. 7 & 8, 2007 at Le Meridien, Sankey Road, Bangalore-52, India. In this HR Summit, over 300 Human Resource professionals from India, Asia Pacific and Middle East are expected to participate and deliberate on the theme 'Leveraging Technology for HR Effectiveness. The HR Summit will witness presentations and deliberations by eminent CEOs, Senior HR professionals, researchers, and academicians. The eminent speakers would include

Mr Amitava Roy, President, Symphony Software Services, India, Mr N. G. Subramanian, President, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Mr Sharad Heda, Chief Operating Officer, Microland.

For more details about the HR summit, please visit www.hrsummit.in or contact J. Reuben 91-80-65617338, 41244291or send a mail to hr@hrsummit.in

Source: 02-11-07 Company Bureau Compiled by www.naukri.com

Eliminate Child Labour At The Root
The enormity of the ailment of child labour that plagues our society is in clear view again, post the GAP controversy. But are the raids and sending back of the kids enough action against the mammoth crime? Probably, not. What needs to be done is tackling the problem the other way. Why not penalize child employers heavily? Why not give such exemplary punishment to them that it acts as a deterrent? Once the job opportunities for child labour dry up, the temptation to have more children as earning hands would also eventually cease. Government and the lawmakers need to look at a permanent solution to curb the evil. As of now, they can focus on the issue of rehabilitation of these hapless children.
Source: 02-11-07 Hindustan Times Compiled by www.naukri.com

Corbus India Is The Best Place To Work: Survey
According to a Nasscom survey, Corbus (India) tops the list of ‘exciting emerging companies to work for’ in the Indian IT/ITES industry. RMSI Pvt Ltd and Hytech Professionals India rank second and third respectively. The survey was conducted for small and medium sized IT-BPO companies, with annual turnover of up tp Rs 250 crore. The analysis was based on factors such as training & development, career management, constant and effective communication, documentation, benchmarking and recreational activities. AgreeYa Solutions (India) Pvt Ltd ranked 15th in the survey.
Source: 31-10-07 Business Line Compiled by www.naukri.com

BHELto add 20,000 More
In a drive to expand its capacity, the public sector engineering giant Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) will hire 20,000 people in the 11th Plan period (2007-12). , Out of these, nine thousand would be engineers. According to the Chairman and Managing Director of BHEL, Mr A.K. Puri, currently BHEL can make power equipment of 6,000 MW a year and it intends to take this up to 15,000 MW a year by 2009 and to 20,000 MW by 2011. To attain this target, they need to augment the manpower.
Source: 28-10-07 www.sify.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

Tier II, III Cities Becoming Preferred Job Destinations
As huge investments are being done in Tier II and III cities, they are turning into ideal employment destinations for educated youth. As a result, Delhi and other metros are likely to see a drop by 50% in jobs in the next three to four years. Better power and infrastructure are attracting investments in these cities. According to a forecast paper brought out by Assocham, the preferred sectors for job seekers are construction, real estate, automobiles and BPO.
Source: 30-10-07 www.livemint.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

Reliance Retail To Have 1mn Workers In 4 Years
Despite the continued protests against its stores in some parts of the country, Reliance Retail plans to increase its workforce to one million within the next four years. According to Ms Susan Bloch, chief culture officer of Reliance Retail Ltd, the company wants to achieve in four years what Wal-Mart achieved in 30 years. Starting in November last year, currently the company has 300 stores in 30 cities. The company aims to open 500 hypermarts in the country by 2010.
Source: 31-10-07 www.sify.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

Double Workforce At Shakti Entrepreneurs Within Two Years
‘Shakti’, the rural women entrepreneurship promotion programme of Hindustan Unilever Ltd will have double the workforce in India over next two years. According to Mr Douglas Baillie, Chief Executive Officer, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, the current number of 42,000 women entrepreneurs who sell their products directly to household and retailers in villages will increase to over 1,00,000 by 2010.
Source: 29-10-07 Business Line Compiled by www.naukri.com

Foreigners May Be Allowed To Head Foreign Cos In India
If a new company law by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs comes through, subsidiaries of multinational companies (MNCs) and foreign companies venturing in India would be allowed to have a chief who is not a resident of the country. The Ministry is likely to relax the existing requirement where the Managing Director of an MNC subsidiary must be an India resident. However, it is likely that the new law will require that at least one director on the Board should be a resident.
Source: 28-10-07 www.sify.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

SBI To Hire 3,000 Marketing & Recovery Officers
After the complaints against the high-handedness of private loan recovery agents, State Bank of India has decided to directly hire 3,000 marketing and recovery officers. The job profile of these recovery officers would include ‘soft recovery’ of loans.
Source: 01-11-07 www.thehindu.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

SC Stays Delhi HC Order Over Air India Airhostesses
Supreme Court has stayed the Delhi High Court order that allowed Air India airhostesses to become in-flight supervisors, as their male counterparts. The interim order was passed on a petition filed by Air India Cabin Crew Association and others challenging the eligibility of female crewmembers for appointment as in-flight supervisors. The hearing on the case will come up on November 19.
Source: 02-11-07 Hindustan Times Compiled by www.naukri.com

Training Programmes By Adobe, NIIT Alliance
NIIT Ltd and Adobe Systems Inc have come together to form a global alliance under which NIIT would offer training programmes on Adobe’s software tools and technologies used in business, entertainment and personal communication across 32 countries. The move is aimed at creating a talent pool for design, web, mobile and interactive media. According to the alliance, NIIT would provide the training programmes in 600 centres in India and overseas in the next three years, and target 60,000 students.
Source: 28-10-07 www.sify.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

BNP Paribas Appoints Mr Abhijit Raha As CEO
French bank BNP has hired Mr Abhijit Raha as the head of institutional equities and corporate finance operations in India. Mr Raha will also be the Chief Executive Officer of the proposed joint venture between BNP and local brokerage Geojit Financial Services Ltd. Mr Raha will work out of Mumbai. Previously, Mr Raha ran an India-specific fund in partnership with Bank Julius Baer. He was also instrumental in building foreign brokerage CLSA's operations in India.
Source: 29-10-07 www.sify.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

Mr Khattar To Be Replaced By Mr Nakanishi At Maruti
Mr Jagdish Khattar will retire as the Managing Director of Maruti Suzuki India on December 18. He will be replaced by Mr Shinzo Nakanishi. Mr Nakanishi is currently the chairman of MSIL. Mr R C Bhargava will be the new chairman. Mr Khattar joined Maruti in July 1993. Mr. Tsuneo Kobayashi, present Sr. Joint Managing Director will return to Japan and Mr. Tsuneo Ohashi will succeed Mr. Kobayashi with effect from January 01, 2008 as Director in charge of Production.
Source: 29-10-07 www.rediff.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

Andhra To Have 80 lakh More Jobs By 2015
According to a study on skill and employability conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), over 80 lakh new jobs will be created in Andhra Pradesh in different sectors by 2015. There will be a sharp rise in demand in all sectors but construction, textiles and ITeS sector would require the highest number of employees at junior and middle levels. Mr B Santhanam, Chairman of CII taskforce on skill, employability and affirmative action, has suggested that the government should invest in skill development and training to plug the demand-supply gap in future.
Source: 27-10-07 Indian Express Compiled by www.naukri.com

1,000 TCS Jobs To Be Created In US
Ohio government has awarded a $2.5 million Rapid Outreach Grant to Tata Consultancy Services America to promote the growth of businesses and the creation and retention of jobs in the state. TCS plans to acquire and improve an existing building to support the company's new facility in Miami Township to be utilized as the North American headquarters and a development center with Information Technology solution delivery capability. This mega project is expected to create 1,000 positions within the first three years of the project's start.
Source: 31-10-07 www.rediff.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

Former Bureaucrat Is Hyundai India’s President
Korean automotive giant Hyundai Motors has hired former finance secretary Mr Ashok Kumar Jha as president of its India operations. Mr Jha’s appointment is important in view of the launch of Hyundai’s new model ‘i10’ in India. His know-how of the functioning of the government appears to have worked in his favour. He will fill the post that has been lying vacant for the past one-and-a-half years since Mr B V R Subbu left the company.
Source: 27-10-07 www.rediff.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

Mr G Srinivasan Joins United India
Mr G Srinivasan has joined United India Insurance Company as Chairman and Managing Director (CMD). Earlier, he served at New India Insurance Company, Trinidad as Managing Director. Mr Srinivasan will succeed Mr M K Garg at United India. He is a Fellow of the Insurance Institute of India.
Source: 27-10-07 Business Standard Compiled by www.naukri.com

Mr Prashant Jain Promoted At HDFC
Mr Prashant Jain, the Chief Investment Officer of HDFC Mutual Fund has been promoted as the Executive Director of the fund house. Mr Jain is an old hand with 15 years of experience in fund management and research in the mutual fund industry.
Source: 27-10-07 Business Standard Compiled by www.naukri.com

Merrill Lynch CEO Steps Down
A week after Merrill reported its first quarterly loss in six years, and the biggest in its ninety-three-year history, its Chairman and Chief Executive Mr Stan O’Neal stepped down. Mr O'Neal has worked for Merrill Lynch for twenty-one years. He has held the top job since 2002. Meanwhile, Mr Alberto Criboire, a board member since 2003 and founder of private equity firm Brera Capital, will serve as interim non-executive Chairman.
Source: 31-10-07 Business Standard Compiled by www.naukri.com

Chrysler To Down-Size Further
US car giant Chrysler plans to cut at least 10,000 jobs. The announcement comes months after it was bought by a leading private equity firm. Up to 10,000 hourly jobs will be cut next year. At least 1,000 salaried positions are also expected to be lost. The layoffs are in addition to 13,000 jobs that Chrysler is already shedding. Chrysler has claimed that the decision is taken keeping in view the worsened market conditions since the buyout and the company needs to reduce costs more aggressively.
Source: 01-11-07 news.bbc.co.uk Compiled by www.naukri.com

Immigrants Grab Over 50 pct Of New Jobs In UK
Immigrants have snapped up more than half of all new jobs created in Britain over the last decade. According to the latest figures, 52 per cent of the 2.1 million jobs created under the Labour Party government since 1997, went to 1.1 million migrant workers. The report also revealed that migrants had earned 424 pounds a week on an average whereas British workers earned 395 pounds.
Source: 31-10-07 The Tribune Compiled by www.naukri.com

4,000 Asian Workers Face Deportation In UAE
As an outcome of strike and protest marches, nearly 4000 Asian workers face deportation in the UAE. The Asian labourers in Dubai staged illegal strikes over poor wages and working conditions in Dubai. The UAE labour ministry has charged them with acts of vandalism. The decision came after several thousand manual workers downed tools and reportedly occupied and vandalized a building before attacking police and vehicles with stones. Such protests are a rarity in the UAE.
Source: 30-10-07 www.livemint.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

Germany’s Jobless Rate Falls To 14-year Low
Germany's expanding economy has brought its jobless rate to a 14-year low at 8.7% in October. The jobless rate fell despite the high Euro and muted consumer confidence. The figure is the lowest since 1993. The unemployment total fell for the 19th consecutive month in October, down 40,000 to 3.657 million.
Source: 30-10-07 news.bbc.co.uk Compiled by www.naukri.com

UK Nearing US In Executive Pay Scale
According to a report by Incomes Data Services, a UK research group, over the past five years, the total earning of chief executives at British blue-chip companies has doubled. This makes them at par with their US counterparts. The average annual compensation for chief executives of FTSE 100 companies is a mere £3.17m. In 2003, US CEOs' average pay was 1.6 times that of their UK counterparts. The gap between American and British incentive packages has also narrowed, from 8.4 to 5.2 to one.
Source: 29-10-07 news.yahoo.com Compiled by www.naukri.com

Alcatel-Lucent To Layoff 4,000 More Jobs
After posting lower revenues and forecasting lower sales for this year, Alcatel-Lucent plans to cut 4,000 jobs by 2009. The French-American group eyes additional savings of 400 million euros ($576.2 mn) in gross margin and comparable operating expenses by the end of 2009, bringing the total to 2.1 billion euros. The group has also announced the departure of its Finance Director in the coming weeks.
Source: 30-11-99 news.yahoo.com Compiled by www.naukri.com