Time and Motion

December, the appraisal time. Everybody waits for this eagerly but after this most of your employees complain of unfair evaluation. And you at the other end are not able to gauge the real thing. Sometimes the employees’ voice goes unheard. This can lead to dissatisfaction among them and hence hampering the productivity and ultimately the revenue of the company. This sometimes leads to a bad image in the market as well and hence you can end up as a non preferred employer.

The time and productivity tool acts as a scale to measure the work and performance of the employees. This ensures the uniform and perfect gauging of the employees’ work and hence leaving no room for injustice and ensures transparency.

This will measure all the work done by the employees on a common scale and after having the data about the employees, you can prepare a report or rank them on that scale and decide the salary hikes, promotions etc. on that basis.

For each department you have, first decide the standard job which is almost commonly done by majority of the team members of that department or team. Now, calculate the average time spent on it by collecting few samples of it from each member (getting precise, you can record average time for doing each step involved in that job). This will give you a scale that what is the average time required to do that job.

Average Time = Total time spent ÷ Total number of samples collected

Now similarly, take the samples for time spent on each job and calculate the average time accordingly. This will give you an overall idea of the time spent on each job. Now based on the productivity report for each employee, you can assess the productive time of the employee and hence do the review on that basis.

And also with this you can measure the non-productive time of your office and can use that much effectively in other constructive works and also can plan further headcount hiring and also a reshuffle or expansion.

This will help you in ensuring a new broad outlook towards employee and organization and at the same time leading to employee satisfaction. With this everything will be in black and white leaving no grey areas, so those who are real effective and working will prefer you as employer and the idle ones will be sidelined. This will give you the maximum value of each dollar spent on the employee.

Change Management

Some 20-25 years back everything was stabilized, no movement. The top management used to formalize and finalize the strategy and targets and the whole company used to move on a straight line. No frequent acquisition, mergers, etc. But if you see today there are very frequent acquisitions, mergers, and diversifications etc. In this scenario, companies are bound to change their style and everything very frequently. This is the change and as everybody knows that change is always difficult to introduce. Its human psychology that it resists the change, firstly it thinks things as everything is going smoothly in this way why does he need a change? Secondly, even if he is convinced that this change is for betterment it’s still difficult to adopt. More than anything the change management is about the psychological aspect.

Before considering going for a change management, first check for few things. Check why do you need a change? What is the required change? How this change is going to help your organization? Finalize a time frame and step by step program for the implementation of this program i.e. when it should start and end and how to introduce the change so that you face the minimum of resistance and other hassles, meaning calculate the risk involved.

How to plan for a change to be introduced to the organization? This comes as a BIG question to any organization. First and foremost, as this change plan is going to get implemented directly to the employees who are human beings, so the HUMANITY ASPECT should must be there. The more of this, the lesser the resistance experienced. This is the psychological aspect of change management.

Another psychological aspect, as the lower level employees see towards their superiors and want to be in their position. So they best way to start the change implementation is to START FROM THE TOP OF HIEARCHY LEVEL. Then going down step by step and assuring that it’s introduced and implemented comprehensively. If the flow goes in this way, the lower level employees will be inspired and would see the change with a positive mindset. So let the BoD first gets adapted to these changes, then the CEO and so on…

For monitoring the change introduction and implementation, make a small team of employees who will act as MENTORS AND LEADERS during the whole process. Let this team select employees at different required levels through whom they can introduce the change to the particular level of employees. These people will be those who are more in contact with the particular level of targeted employees. The top most level of the group will be ultimate owner of the whole process and going down these employees will be the owner for the particular step.

Many a times the employee is not completely aware about the change and the corresponding impacts of the same. Make sure that the message is conveyed completely and organize AWARENESS SESSIONS for the sake of better diffusion of the message in the company environment. This will help you in avoiding and controlling any misconception or rumors spread across the organization. As implementation of a change is a critical issue in itself.Sometimes this change gets encountered with the culture resistances as well. It’s always advisable to handle this delicate and sensitive issue with DUE DILIGENCE AND NO NEGLIGENCE. It’s always good to access the cultural risk in advance and plan the change accordingly. Try to take the culture as a sacred thing and maintain a nice distance from it. If in any unavoidable circumstances you are unwillingly subjected to such a situation, then before addressing it try to gain some knowledge about the particular culture as it will help you in justifying your point after listening to the other party patiently.

Always try to be accessible to every individual to satisfy their query. If your budget allows, create an online forum on your organization’s website like ASK YOUR MANAGEMENT or something similar and don’t obligate them to disclose their identity. This will enable them to interact with you and you in turn will be getting the feedback. This will make them feel connected to the management and will be easier for them to adopt. Also, do specify a Turn Around Time for it like 24 working hours or something.

To conclude, it always seems easier to think for introducing a change but before finalizing it first finalize the risk factors and plan to encounter them. Any change should be productive and make sure that during the course of change implementation, the productivity is not hampered. The mentors and leaders should explain the ease with which they already adopted the change and how it is helping them. They should always try to solve and explain things with the examples mentioning themselves.

Employee Retention Tools

In the present scenario, world is turning into a global village and the whole globe is reachable from any destination. In this small world even companies are reachable to the people and vice versa. And so their jobs are also easily accessible for everyone. In this situation, the biggest challenge for a company is to retain its workforce intact especially the Knowledge Banks.

All the companies are planning to increase their turnover every moment of time. While in all this workout of increasing the turnover they forget about their loss incurred by the resignation of employees and the expenses of hiring new employees (Hiring Cost, Training Cost, Productivity Loss etc.). This hiring of a new employee normally costs around 35% or more of the average employee salary. For example- let us consider average salary of an employee per year as Rs.20, 000, and then the cost of hiring a new employee and other expenses come around Rs.7, 000. If you have 2 employees resigning per month the cost comes to Rs.14, 000 and taking the same for 12 months comes to around Rs.168, 000, which is a direct loss from the turnover of the company. And after all this there is always a risk of getting a right employee for the right position with a right attitude.

If an employee resigns, then good amount of time is lost in hiring a new employee and then training him/her and this goes to the loss of the company directly which many a times goes unnoticed। And even after this you cannot assure us of the same efficiency from the new employee (He might be better and might not be)। You require time to judge his capabilities and work nature। The loss is even graver if he/she is Your Knowledge Bank, this can bring your process to a stand still even. And above all these things, one resignation many a times triggers a chain reaction among other employees, leading to a negative effect.

For all these and many other reasons you need to retain your employees. For retaining your employees, you need to understand the requirements of the employees and at the same time should make them clear about the expectations of the company from them. It’s a general human tendency that each human being thinks himself as important and expects the same from the other side, so the company management should make their employees accountable for their respective jobs and make them feel that they are very important for the smooth processing of that process(At the same time create a backup for him). Care and importance are two things of which every human being is mad of.

Below are few of the tools for Employee Retention:-
1. Employee Reward Program- You can make a provision of Monthly or Quarterly Award (depending upon the budget) for the best employee, Awarding 2 or 3 best workers each month. The award can be in terms of gifts or money. If it is money then it should be divided into two parts, first part to be given with the next month salary and the remaining after 6 months. In this way he/she can be retained for 6 more months. These rewards shall be considered at the time of appraisal.

2. Career Development Program- Every individual is worried about his/her career. You can provide them conditional assistance for certain courses which are beneficial from your business point of view. Conditional assistance means the company will bear the expenses only if he/she gets an aggregate of certain percentage of marks. And entrance to that course should be on the basis of a Test and the number of seats to be limited. For getting admitted to such program, You can propose them to sign a bond with the company, like they cannot leave the company for 2 years or something after the successful completion of the course.

3. Performance based Bonus- The employee always comes to know about the profit of the company which is of course based on the strategic planning of the top management and the productivity of the employee. To get more work out of the employee, You can make a provision of Bonus. By this employee will be able to relate himself with the company’s profit and hence will work hard. This bonus should be productivity based. You can make sure that this bonus is not adding extra-pressure on the budget of Your Company and you can arrange this by cutting a part of the salary hikes and presenting it to the employees in the form of bonus.

4. Employee Referral Plan- You can introduce Employee Referral Plan. This will reduce your cost (charges of external consultants and searching agencies) of hiring a new employee and up to an extent you can rely on this new resource. On every successful referral, employee can be given a referral bonus after 6 or 9 months of continuous working of the new employee as well as the existing employee. By this you can get a new employee at a reduced cost as well as are retaining the existing one for a longer period of time.

5. Loyalty Bonus- You can introduce a Loyalty Bonus Program in which you can reward your employee after a successful completion of a specified period of time. This can be in the form of Money or Position. This will encourage the fellow employees as well whether they are interested in money or position, they will feel fascinated.

6. Giving a voice to the Knowledge Banks- First of all you should try to retain your workforce intact, as they are the intellectual asset of the company. And above that you can’t afford losing your knowledge banks. These are the people who stabilize the process. You can involve them in some of the decisions.

7. Employee Recreation- You should also let your employees enjoy in a light mood. You can take your employees to a trip or for an outing every year or bi-yearly. You can make use of this trip as well. You can start this trip with an opening note about the management views and plans, strategies etc. At the same time you can involve your top management into some of the fun activities as this will make feel the employees that they are very close to the management and everybody is same.

8. Gifts at some Occasions- You can give some gifts at the time of one or two festivals to the employees making them feel good and understand that the management is concerned about them.

9. Accountability- You should make each employee accountable so that he can also feel that he is as important as his manager. If he/she will be filled with this sense, he/she will seldom think of leaving the company.

10. Making the managers effective and easily accessible- You should make the management easily accessible so that the employee expectations can be clearly communicated to the top management, as it is impossible for the top management to reach each employee frequently.

11. Surveys- You should conduct regular surveys for feedbacks from employee about their superiors as well as other issues like food, development plans and other suggestions. This will make them feel of their importance and the caring nature of the company. Some of the suggestions might be of real good use for the company.

For a company, the workforce is like an intellectual property, both in terms of skills and money. A trained and content workforce can lead a company to new heights while a opposite one can hamper it badly. So, every resignation saved is every dollar earned.