Work Environment

A safe and happy workplace makes the employees feel good about being there. Each one is given importance and provided the security that gives them the motivation and incentive to stay. This is usually achieved through internal surveys to find out whether they are satisfied and if not what they think needs to be changed.

Open Management

Employees don’t like the feeling of being kept in the dark about what is happening in the company. They feel motivated and develop enthusiasm only when the management opens up to them and discusses the company policies, sales, clients, contracts, goals and objectives. This encourages participative management. Asking them for ideas on how to improve will get their creative juices flowing. Being open about everything related to the company will help in building trust and motivating the employees. This open management policy can be practiced using several tools.

Performance Incentives

Every good performance is appreciated in the form of a pat on the back, bonuses or giving some other compensation for a job well done. Organizations that struggle to keep up with the attrition rate are mostly those that think employees are “just” doing their job. Even if it is the employee’s job, completion in an appreciable manner calls for an incentive, and this goes a long way in boosting the staff morale. These incentives can be implemented at the individual as well as the team level and it has been seen that this works wonders in getting the best out of the employees. But it is important to keep in mind that these bonuses should not be given without a reason, unless it is a commitment for annual bonuses or some such thing. Doing so will only reduce the perceived value of the bonuses.

Performance Feedback

This is one the methods that is being followed by many organizations. Feedback is not only taken from the boss, but also from other seniors and subordinates. Previously, appreciation was only sought from the immediate boss or the management, but now organizations understand the importance of collecting performance feedback from several quarters. The opinion of everyone matters, especially for someone who is in a leadership role at any level. Each person in the team is responsible for giving constructive feedback. This kind of system helps in identifying people who can perform well as leaders at higher levels in the organization. Even the senior level managers can use this system to their advantage, as a tool to improve themselves.

Employee Evaluation

Every company has an employee evaluation system in place but a good system links individual performance to the goals and priorities of the organization. This works well when achievements are tracked over an year. For a fair review of each employee, the evaluation, apart from being done by the boss, should be done by another person at a higher level, for whom the employee’s contribution is important. Ratings can also be obtained by other employees. This ensures a fair and accurate rating of each and every employee.

Sharing of Knowledge

Knowledge sharing is a wonderful strategy that helps in the betterment of the employees and their work. Keep all the knowledgeable information in central databases that can be accessed by each and every employee. For example, if an employee is sent on some training, the knowledge that is acquired by that employee can be stored in these databases for others to learn from it. Even innovative ideas that the management deems fit for employees to see, can be stored here for all to see.

Publicize Good Performances

Every company has some employees who outperform others. Such performances should be highlighted and displayed where other employees can look at them; such as on the display boards and intranet etc. This will encourage others to give their best. A proper system should be set up to make a list of high performances at specific times in a year.

Discussions

Successful organizations nurture ideas and they understand that employees who are actually working and know the business can provide the best ideas. The management should have discussions with employees to get these ideas out of them. There can also be suggestion boxes to capture these ideas. Through this system, managers can find talented employees and develop them.

Rewards

While recognition of talent is highly important, this recognition has to be made public and what better way than holding ceremonies and announcing to the whole world (the employees), the achievements of a fellow employee. There can be nothing better for an employee than the heady feeling from a resounding applause.

From India, Ludhiana
Employers are placing greater emphasis on business and an automating as well as outsourcing administrative functions, which will force many HR professionals to demonstrate new skills.

There are many companies who are having innovative HR practices. Some of them are:

1. INFOSYS-

Infosys a company who started the year with its iRace competency development tool getting panned which is almost scrapped - because it increased the number of years between promotions. As average increment last year was 14 percent. The rate of attrition is 17.5 percent.

2.GOOGLE-

Google's culture is unlike any corporate worldwide, and it is because of a highly communicative environment that fosters productivity. To retain employees and keep them motivated was a tough task for all employers, especially those in the competitive software business so they open and frequent communication and honouring offers made to freshers in colleges were key strategies. With companies such as TCS hiring some 50,000 people annually, this was a key differentiator. Training in hours per employee in a year is 60.

3.AIRTEL-

This is a country where Airtel is a start-up, and all of us are taking the lessons and learnt from our start-up rivals in India.. "This was an opportunity to develop the management and soft skills." The rate of attrition is 12 percent. Training in hours per employee in a year is 35.

From India, Faridabad
Marriott Hotels India

All associates, right from the senior management to the junior most, are equally divided into four houses: Elephant, Lotus, Peacock and Banyan. Each house has an activity every month, through the year, around areas such as leadership and training. Competitions are also held through the year, which enable associates earn rewards and points for their house.

Two-way Communication: For new entrants, there is an event called 'Koffee with the GM' to interact with the GM and share their views over a cup of coffee. For employees too shy to talk, there is the option of anonymously calling up the Integrity Hotline, a 24X7 toll free number.

Employee Benefit Initiatives: Employees are given six offs in a month and financial support for higher education. Each and every employee on their birthday can stay in the hotel for one day with their spouse or family and can dine anywhere.

Knowledge Initiatives: Every Marriott Hotel has a learning centre that has a collection of books and videos, along with an internet connection.

Defined Span-of-Leadership: There is a Leadership Performance Process Management System which defines nine competencies which a Marriott associate should have and develop.

Reward System: There are two kinds of awards for individuals or groups to recognise outstanding performance. Each Marriott Hotel in India has its own awards. This is apart from an overall event involving all Marriott properties globally.

From India, Ludhiana
HCL Comet

Job Rotation: Encouraging job rotation every 18-24 months to give exposure, experience, try to do away with monotony and encourage cross-functional movements.

The Smart Service Desk (SSD) is an automated trouble ticketing tool for employees to raise online tickets related to their transactional issues with HR, Finance, IT Team, etc. Besides, the company has a 360-degree performance evaluation process that focuses on self-determination and self-assessment, while "I4Excel" allows employees to do their own self evaluation.

MyXtraMiles is a loyalty point system that gives 'mileage' to employees who receive appreciation from any of the following four sources: peers, subordinates, managers and customers. The points can be redeemed for attractive gifts, including trips abroad. The EHD Team comprising HR and finance professionals aids the employees in solving their day-to-day transactional needs. Its mascot 'Natasha' is positioned as the employees' personal assistant for policy and information dissemination, and communicates with them on a much personal level. The employees are encouraged to post their feedback and suggestions on company issues on its sub-portal iGen, while through the 'U&I' feature they can get their queries answered directly by the CEO.

Work-life Balance: Organize games, birthdays and achiever parties. Besides, it has started a club for the employee's children called the'Little Comnetians Club', wherein regular events are held for them.

Awards: The company has various recognition-led-incentive programmes / awards like WYGIWYG Certificates and COO's Party Vouchers. Each year, the employee who has been a consistent star performer, is honoured with the 'Top Gun' award at the company's annual function. Employees who refer their friends and acquaintances are given financial incentives, and an annual award called the 'Top Gun Comnet Builder' for providing the highest number of references.

MBA 1-C

From India, Ludhiana
1.Google's one of hr practice is eliminating friction at every turn: ensuring change can happen quickly and efficiently.Google’s approach to innovation is highly improvisational. Any engineer in the company has a chance to create a new product or feature.

2. Simplifying HR at Philips—Philips’ HR transformation initiative is called “HR

Simplified”, which as the name implies, is a drive toward simplicity in HR services.

This initiative is aligned with a larger Philips mission stressing operational excellence

and consistency across all its businesses. One of the main objectives of HR Simplified

is to streamline the HR experience for managers and employees by creating one

global shared services organization with a single point of access for leaders, managers,

employees, and HR. In addition, HR business partners are freed up to provide more

strategic support to managers. While leveraging economies of scale (productivity) and

cost agility are important, they are considered an outcome of this initiative, rather than

a core objective.

For some companies, a strong customer focus supports the case for global shared

services, as they recognize the value of shared services in delivering a quality customer

experience.

3. Creating a Quality Customer Experience at Bayer—Bayer’s original objectives in

creating its shared services organization were three-fold: increase quality, improve

speed of delivery, and decrease costs. Over time, the company has maintained these

objectives, but the primary emphasis is on quality. Bayer measures success through key

performance indicators (KPIs) backed by a metrics dashboard that provides real-time

data on progress. The shared services organization has formal service level agreements

and reports on performance monthly. Since the function is structured as a separate

business entity, there are specific prices for “products” and deliverables. Over time,

leadership has increasingly recognized the positive impact shared services can have

on quality and speed. As a result, they now value these outcomes more than the

cost savings.

4. ■ A Modified Approach at Northern Trust—Some organizations have adjusted their

original plans based on key learnings during the design/implementation process.

At Northern Trust, HR globalized several processes, including training, performance

management, and on-boarding administration. For payroll, the original goal was to

create a single global payroll administration process managed by one global vendor.

However, this proved difficult to achieve due to variations in tax laws across countries.

Additionally, HR discovered that most vendors were not willing to support a globally

dispersed employee population, particularly in countries with few people. As a result,

HR developed a regional approach to payroll, in which administration is insourced in

the U.S., but outsourced to external vendors in all other regions.

From India, Ludhiana
Infosys

Training at Infosys was an ongoing process. When new recruits from colleges joined Infosys, they were trained through fresher training courses. They were trained then on new processes and technologies. As they reached the higher levels, they were trained on project management and later were sent for management development programs, followed by leadership development programs.

Training New Recruits

Infosys conducted a 14.5 week technical training program for all new entrants. The company spent around Rs. 200,000 per year on training each new entrant. The new recruits were trained at the Global Education Center (GEC) in Mysore, which had world class training facilities and the capacity to train more than 4500 employees at a time. GEC, which was inaugurated in February 2005, was spread over 270 acres and was the largest corporate training center in the world with 58 training rooms and 183 faculty rooms.

Training Programs for Employees

Infosys also conducted training programs for experienced employees. The company had a competency system in place which took into account individual performance, organizational priorities, and feedback from the clients.

The first step toward carrying out performance appraisal at Infosys was the evaluation of personal skills for the tasks assigned to an employee during the period of appraisal. To evaluate the performance, different criteria like timeliness, quality of work carried out by the employee, customer satisfaction, peer satisfaction, and business potential, were considered. The personal skills of the employees were also evaluated based on their learning and analytical ability, communication skills, decision making, change management, and planning and organizing skills. Each of these criteria was measured on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 signifying above the expected performance level and 5 below the expected performance level).

360-Degree Feedback: The employees also look at aspects of the managers' performance, strategic vision, ability to communicate, problem-solving skills, responsiveness. The results of the survey (the rankings and comments) are then aggregated and published online for everyone to see.

Employee Engagement: Some of the new initiatives include My Pal, Three Cheers, Wellness Programme, Little Mindian and Bring a Smile Programme while some of the existing ones are preventive health check-ups, yoga classes and employee relief fund.

Accenture

All Accenture employees have career counsellors, typically two levels above them in the hierarchy, who are given a budget and specific time to mould the career of their wards.

It has set up an Inhouse Event Management arm and employees who take part in clubs and special interest groups are expected to conceive and run programmes for each of these initiatives, ranging from sports to corporate social responsibility.

Empowered Employees: Employees at relatively junior levels are empowered to take decisions and managers running even 100-person units are allocated budgets to run their businesses.

Education Initiatives: There's a massive focus on education and training with 16,000 online courses for employees across all levels. It offers courses in association with the likes of MIT to upgrade employee skills.

Career Mobility: Employees are allowed to make their own career choices; there is no compulsion to choose the orthodox vertical approach.

From India, Ludhiana
TATA TELECOM - Tata Telecom has received the 'Innovative HR Practices Award' from the World HRD Congress 2003 for the global standards that the company follows in its people-excellence practices. In order to establish an open work culture, with a special focus on the transparency of its performance-management system, the company has adopted a four-tier approach. This consists of a performance-management system, opportunities for professional and personal development, an environment of engagement in the company, and improving the quality of work life.

CISCO-:The way they have empowered there line managers needs to be mentioned first in this regard. They have provided them with HR tools, technologies, online tools etc., which give them an edge over their counterparts in other organizations. At the click of a button, a manager can look at the database of his/her own people, track history of development, increments, promotions, stock options etc. They are also given the rating and ranking tools. They could recommend changes and training needs and they could draw upon the resources available. Technology is deployed in a very effective way.

Infosys BPO Ltd:In the recent world HRD congress held in Mumbai the company won 7 awards for its human resource management practices. The major strength of the company lies in innovative talent hunting, recruitment and retention process.

GOOGLE

From India, Ludhiana
INNOVATIVE HR PRACTICES AT BIOCON.
Biocon has set up a Women's portal, to given women special attention. In fact, one of its innovations - an inhouse day care centre for Staff's children, with a specialist monitoring the development of the children was set up mainly for women.
"The day care centre has helped improve productivity as parents are more relaxed when they know their children are close at hand and well looked after," Ms Bareja said.
The day care centre has grown enough in popularity for the men employees to use it too. "Even employees of nearby companies such as Wipro and lnfosys drop their children at our centre," Ms Bareja said.
Biocon also has an inhouse healthcare centre, which actually helps the company save nearly Rs 30 lakh on routine medical check ups for staff by cutting down travel time.

From India, Moga
1. TATA TELECOM... has received the " innovative HR practices award" for it's people excellence practices. In order to establish an open work culture , with a special focus on the transparency of its performance- management system.
2. IKEA... Adopted a positive approach toward human resource management which taken initiative related to flexible work design, comprehensive benefits, quality of work life and employee training and development.
3. GOOGLE... Give opportunity to its engineer to create a new product or features and eliminating friction at every turn.

From India, Amritsar
Kretha T Mbambo
Lately companies have become innovative with diversifing their products and services.
For example: Zirtual, a virtual assistance services wants to make it easier and more affordable for busy professionals to retain an assistant.
The company connects its registered clients, primarily small business owners and entrepreneurs, with virtual helpers.
It’s far cheaper than hiring a personal assistant but gives you more oversight than you’d have if you hired a random stranger.

From India, Delhi
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