Tech-boarding for wonderful candidate experience & great employer brand

An effective onboarding process has been attributed to new joiners reaching optimum productivity faster and creating a longer term engagement with the team and organisation at large. However, Gallup in its survey found that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organisation does a great job onboarding new employees and a research by Glassdoor found that organisations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% & productivity by over 70%. 

The need for personalised connect in the #FutureOfWork owing to the newgen workforce growing up in a hyperconnected, tech-enabled, consumerised world alongside increasing business competitiveness, demands a quantum leap in onboarding effectiveness and engagement.

Innovation driven new age HRMS and onboarding solutions have evolved to provide an elevated experience through Paperless, Personalised, emPowering and Policy Compliant onboarding 

Paperless

• Minimised data entry throughout the process using AI enabled OCR not only populating requisite data into the correct fields automatically but also validating the genuinity of the document. 
• Complete process from candidate application to becoming an employee and beyond enabled by the system, seamless flow of data avoiding duplicity of inputs
• Creation of secure Employee Digital File
• Information to requisite stakeholders for their actions and automated digitally authorised company / statutory forms for respective actions.

Personalised 

• Mobile first experience with an easy to use intuitive interface 
• Curated  pre-joining communication and engagements based upon role / level
• AI driven Mood surveys at frequent intervals providing an insight into candidate behaviour for proactive actions by the organisation
• 30-60-90 day surveys and insights

emPowering

• Pre-joining induction, functional and statutory trainings for enhanced preparedness at the time of joining
• Gamification familiarising the candidate with the new environment
• 24 x 7 queries addressed through Bots and direct chat access with the future team and HR 
• Real time document verification status / remarks to the candidate bringing transparency with zero latency.

Policy Compliant

• Ensure internal process compliance through validations and automated workflows
• Legally compliant, digitally signed legal / statutory documents 

All of the above is complimented by actionable insights through AI embedded, Intelligent and customised Business Dashboards for CXOs and other functional roles. 

It is time to harness the technology in extending the wow feeling to new hires right from the first interface, in turn make our much needed contribution towards productivity and profitability.

Do you have the choice to work on what you love ?

There’s a profound shift in the world of work, an era of lifetime employment to multiple employments to entrepreneurship is now giving way to the gig workforce. Most of the organizations today have a mix of full time, contingent, gig and even crowdsource talent with latter ones becoming increasingly prominent much sooner than expected.

I happened to meet a young professional who started his career in 2011 with a top tech company and was soon reeling with boredom and out of the race on a corporate ladder. Different projects were pulling him in different directions and daily routine was exhaustive enough for a rollover to another day. Away from home in a new city, the only smiling moments for him were a few likes and wow’s on social media.

While on a taxi trip in Delhi, he was inspired by Mahavir who was driving for both Uber and Ola on the same day depending upon which one was giving better value per hour. Mahavir was able to derive best returns for his skills and time without restricting him to any one provider. This experience inspired him to leave his regular job in 2016, just 3 years in the gig world, he is now serving 5 tech organizations including two competing ones extending handsome earnings. Having gained expertise in the rare skill and a strong social network helped him carve a niche for himself.

The skill has become the new currency and the value of critical skills is on the rise. A choice to work on what you love every day also comes with a flip side, critical skills are not permanent, demand to supply gap is being identified and getting filled faster than ever. A specific skill currency value may crash quicker than a stock market rally. The gig work also comes with an uncertainty of cash flows with a need for continuous investment into self and network development.

Current generation and organizations are embracing this workforce mix without a proper framework to protect the interests of gig workers. Missing social security umbrella especially in the growing economies and lack of pricing models are amongst the key factors to be addressed to unleash the true potential of gig work models.

Modern-day HRMS solutions are gearing up to these new ways of working, innovative solutions to connect organizations to the larger talent pool in the open-world curated to the specific business requirements are being introduced to boost the productivity and profitability. 

“Embrace change. Envision what could be, challenge the status quo, and drive creative destruction.” Charles Koch

Ved Prakash Singh is Vice President and Business Head at ZingHR (www.zinghr.com). 

ZingHR is amongst fastest growing HRMS solutions with over 550 clients and about a million active users spread across India, Middle East, South East Asia and Australia. Harnessing the modern-day technology coupled with strong functional and business understanding ZingHR stands as a unique platform which aims at delivering Business Outcomes alongside HR Transformation.

Management Lessons from 'Mission Mangal'

At this time when all of us stand beside ISRO for success of Chandrayaan 2, I had the opportunity to watch ‘Mission Mangal’ throwing up lessons from the lives of scientists and their pursuit to explore the unexplored and conquer the unconquered. 

“Gettin’ good players is easy. Gettin’ ’em to play together is the hard part.”

- Casey Stengel

‘Mission Mangal’ is a rousing story of an ordinary team accomplishing an extraordinary feat by asphyxiating challenges on-course through continuous innovation, grit and determination. The story exhibits the power of a team and the right attitude towards the goal as an underlying factor behind the success of any mission. Alongside entertainment with humour, the story serves as a leader’s handbook in building high performing teams.

Below is my take on some of the key lessons:

1.    Leader’s take responsibility for the failure

The movie begins with the failure of the GSLV mission. Rakesh Dhawan (Akshay Kumar) takes the outright responsibility of the failure even though Tara (Vidya Balan) repeatedly admits that it was her ignorance which led to the failure. Dhawan displays the true spirit of a leader - ‘Success belongs to the team and failure is yours’.

2.    Failures are temporary, leaders bounce back stronger than ever

After the failure of GSLV, Dhawan is moved to a different and seemingly impossible Mars mission. Disappointed momentarily, Dhawan quickly gets back into his real self. As leaders, you will encounter failures but your ability to bounce back will determine the accomplishments you can make in the long run. No leaders can rise without failure, watch out if you are not failing, probably you are not picking up challenges beyond your proven potential.

3.    You don’t need the most experienced team but an aligned high performing team 

If you have got a team which has all the experiences required to perform the task at hand, you are not heading towards achieving big. As a leader your dearest responsibility is to align the team at hand and convert them into high performing group. The turning point of the Mission’s success was when Tara reignited the passion of the scientist in each team member leading to a change in their attitude from ‘9 to 5 job’ approach to ‘My mission, my passion’.

4.    Continuous innovation and problem-solving is the key

The movie showcases many examples of simple and practical ideas inspired by cooking, sailing, waste management etc espoused for appropriate challenges. As long as teams are focused on the final objective, innovations galore. Those who don’t experiment can’t be called scientists; those who don’t solve problems can’t be called leaders. 

5.    Back your Team and Team-mates

Varsha Pillai (Nithya Menen) was proposed to be given full support during pregnancy and childcare alongside the freedom to select if she wanted to be a part of the mission. Similarly, Neha Siddiqui (Kirti Kulhari) was offered accommodation by colleague Ananth Iyer (HG Dattatreya). Your team is about individuals coming together, there would always be one or the other challenges faced by your team members. If we can nourish an environment of mutual and organizational support, people would go beyond the call of duty to ensure the success of the mission.

6.    Your present is as precious as your future

Eka Gandhi (Sonakshi Sinha) the propulsion control expert, was able to contribute only when she left aside distractions of change in role or job application to NASA. The lesson is to plan for the future but live in the present or you may not realize the true potential of the opportunity at hand.

7.    Looks or past records can be deceptive

Plus-sized Varsha Pillai turned out as an expert lightweight satellite designer and the senior-most team member Ananth Iyer came up with modern-day innovation to create the composite material for satellite using plastic waste, aluminium and other items. Leaders get the best out of their teammates irrespective of their looks, background and past glory propelling them way ahead of their own aspirations.

8.    Push people to make them think alternatively 

Eka Gandhi got stuck and was unable to create a trajectory path within allocated fuel and timeframe until pushed for outcomes by Dhawan. Though the alignment and motivation serves most of the situations, it may sometimes be required to push people out of their comfort zone to ignite alternative thinking.

9.    Leaders back leaders who believe in themselves and dream big

Dhawan’s statement “Karenge sir, pata nahi kaise par karengey, karna hi padega (We will do it, sir, don’t know how but we will do it, we will have to do it)” displayed his resolve towards the mission inspiring initially skeptical ISRO Chairman (Vikram Gokhale) to agree and extend greater resources towards Mars mission. When you believe in yourself and back your functional plan with high resolve and passion to achieve, other leaders start believing in you and often start co-dreaming.

Wishing you an exciting Leadership journey, keep learning, keep inspiring and keep empowering….

…….

Mission Mangal is based upon the real event of ISRO’s (India Space Research Organisation) successful mission to Mars 2013-14 making it the only Asian country to reach Mars and First Nation globally to achieve the feat in the first attempt. Only Russia (Roscomos), USA (NASA) and Europe (ESA) had sent successful missions to Mars before India (ISRO).

Credits : Mission Mangal Team, Blog Editing by Murtaza Ali Khan @apotofvestiges

HR - Profession with a difference

Gallup has been tracking employee engagement since 2000, one of their recent article mentions worldwide engagement at 13% which by itself is an abysmally low figure and despite so much focus, it is barely crawling upwards (Engaged meaning employees are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace).  

AON report reflects actively disengaged employees from 7% to 17% across various tenures with the organisation terming them as workplace prisoners (A Workplace Prisoner is someone who indicates they will stay with the organisation despite a lack of motivation to give their best efforts and a lack of positive things to say about their organisation or work).

Engagement amongst HR professionals, the custodians of employee experience is no different than above. One generally hears that we do not have much power in HR and compare with other function or functional heads authority who drive P&L. If you’re at the cusp of ‘no HoD listens to me or consults me for important decisions’ and ‘I do not have power to take critical business decision because I am in HR’, don’t judge people or HR as a profession, don't push too hard on every such incident, take a step back and ask yourself why does it happen, how can the outcome be different next time.

Every profession has its own nuances so do HR. We are an enabling function and our initiatives have to be taken up through influence and persuasion rather than from position of authority or power. The biggest thing that is bestowed upon HR is comparative larger freedom to craft our time schedule or how we as a team spend our time during the day which is being complimented by insertion of technology and automation taking away routine activities.

It is critical for HR professionals to spend longer period with each organisation they serve when average stint per organisation is reducing to less than 3 years. Longer time-frame is critical to understand as to how decisions are made in your organisation and behaviours that support such decision making, need to learn such nuances positively and create an influence not only within but also outside your span of control, obviously this cannot be achieved without knowledge of the organisation, HR domain and execution abilities.

Do not get perturbed when someone challenges even the very existence of HR, do not push too hard against the individual/s, the next era unfolding with frequently changing business models, competitive edge shifting to adaptable high calibre talent and ability to deliver in matrix fluid teams, HR is poised to play critical role than ever. And if you are new to your career or organisation, you probably need to just put your head down and spend time to be good at it and neutralise the lack of power through influence and persuasion specifically so till you make it to general management positions wherein this would turn out to be your biggest strength.

Stay engaged

References: 

Gallup Engagement Report http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/188033/worldwide-employee-engagement-crisis.aspx 

Aon Report Actively Disengaged and Staying, dealing with prisoners in the workplace Oct 2016

Productivity Enhancement Tools; Getting them to work

Productivity Enhancement Tools; Getting them to work

Introduction

Mornings are a mad-rush for many of us. Hitting the snooze multiple times, rushing through shower, skipping or gulping down breakfast, boarding bus/train just in time, pushing accelerator paddle of bike/car in middle of heavy traffic etcetera have become part of daily life for majority of professionals.

21st century brought round the clock electricity, internet connectivity, 24hour entertainment/news/sports channels, 24x7 health clubs, friends, relatives and business colleagues operating at various time zones, advanced ERP’s; in short our life is now active all the way through and boundaries between day and night or different time-zones have somewhat diminished. In principle these technological advancements claim to make our life more convenient, provide greater control towards how we want to operate over extended hours, boost creativity and improve work life balance however, the reality turns out otherwise. 

Work pressure and burnout cases across the world are at their highest levels; companies are investing billions of dollars to improve work-life balance of their employees, a whole range of productivity tools and literature are being introduced one after the other with very little success in actually easing out our lives. Not only this is shortening the work careers of talented professionals but also weakening families bonding, there are new terminologies like ‘Sunday father/mother’ being coined that reflect gloomy situation of millennial children.

Solutions available – their current effectiveness

If we analyze the impact of productivity tools available on web, software and applications on iOS or other systems, most of the management professionals would have used one or a combination of productivity tools in their career but the continuity of these tools and effectiveness is abysmally low. Some of them have stopped following them after an initial push, some lacked discipline, while others partially benefitted and rest cribbed about the external environment that they never get to plan or when they are all set to execute as per calendar some or the other event disrupts them.

Is there something wrong with productivity tools, the answer is a clear ‘No’. Those working towards creation of such tools expected that user would be in control and such tools will channelize our actions, 'urgent and important', 'urgent and not important' will ease out priorities in the VUCA world. Recall the day you spend about an hour to bring everything on the calendar or listing down priorities well spaced out, called your team to share the same and suddenly the bell rings, the other side is a top level executive seeking some urgent details. Another time an unexpected guest drops in, a senior colleague walks in or meeting get stretched beyond schedule, call from a heavy weight customer to discuss his concern or the new product launch, suddenly your calendar entries start staring back at you. Did you ever gave a thought that is there something wrong with people around you or you have to keep waiting for the simplification of work life which is never going to turn into reality.

How to make them really work – solution to make solutions work

An old saying 'Well begun is half done', while interacting with those using the productivity tools, I discovered that the ones' yielding greater benefits of such tools are those who start early... early in life and earlier during the day.

  

In Hinduism 'Brahma Muhurta' is a period one and a half hours before sunrise and is referred as 'God's Hour'. It has been traditionally considered as an auspicious time in all practices of yoga and most apt for meditation or any other high energy/creative work. It is said that the atmosphere is charged with powerful positive vibrations during this period.

Start the day about 4 hours before leaving for office. For those who leave office at 9AM, wake up at 5:00AM. Freshening up, reading/writing, getting on with the most creative task that you have been craving to work upon for a long time, making the strategic plan blueprint, exercise, chat with parents, helping wife in the kitchen, dropping children happily to the school transport. Few minutes relaxed preparation for office, reaching office well about 15-20 minutes before office time. That silence before work hours when you could fetch up with mailbox, plan tasks to be taken up during the day without any interruptions (normally the frequency calls from colleagues or from outside during the initial 1-2 work hours of the day is pretty low), the morning team meeting with a clear plan. You receive an urgent call in the middle of the day but you are in control, your team briefings have been completed, tasks are on the way as they should be and you are free to attend the top people or those unplanned events.

Expectedly all you productivity tools which seemed ineffective earlier will start giving results and a journey to a happy and productive life begins.

Be wary of some distractors in the morning like e-mails, believe me no one is expecting your replies at 5AM in the morning. There can't be anything more criminal than watching TV or wandering unplanned after all, this is the only time when no external factor is driving you, live the way you want to i.e. the most productive, I know you want your life to be more productive and it is corroborated by the fact that you have read this all the way down till this line and you have that bright smile, will and confidence on your face to change the things around you.

Conclusion

We have the same amount of energy, choice is where to spend; on the morning rush or morning productivity. Make a try for 30 days and see the difference for yourself and I am confident you will not stop waking up early. If you are already doing this then you know the importance, influence those around you or your team to follow the suit.

Wishing happiness through better productivity

ved