WORKFORCE Architecture

We had a lot of discussion on Employee Retention, Employee Satisfaction. HRs planning strategies to give employees a sense of satisfaction and make the organization a best place to stay. We have discussed about Performance Based Approach, Variable Pay Approach etc. Lets talk something new today. It’s a term which is discussed less and is still unheard, “Workforce Architecture”.

Workforce architecture is a detailed blueprint for an organization's talent structure. This blueprint defines employee roles, competencies, accountabilities, performance expectations and development opportunities across the enterprise and clearly articulates how work should be accomplished.

Workforce architecture gives employers a better grasp of their overall workforce composition and capabilities - their "talent inventory" - in relation to their current and future business needs by identifying what skills are needed in various roles and who has those competencies now. This information allows senior leaders and managers to make better, more objective decisions about how best to build and deploy the workforce in pursuit of business goals. On an organizational level, it helps them answer critical questions such as:
·How are our workforces needs changing? What kinds of employees should we be recruiting?
·What are the development needs of our workforce?
·Where are our talent gaps and how do we fill them?
·Which specific roles or job families create the greatest value for our organization?
·Where do our top performers reside and are we rewarding them appropriately?

On a managerial level, managers gain the ability to answer practical, day-to-day questions such as: Does a particular employee have the right skills, competencies and experiences for this role? If not, who within the organization does?

Four key applications of workforce architecture are:

1.Integrated Workforce Architecture.
2.Functional Excellence
3.Global Harmonization
4.Emerging Markets

Keep watching the space, as we will discuss on this applications separately.

Courtesy: Mercer

Please Note that the article is taken from Mercer. The idea is to make ourselves aware of something, which we do not know.

EVERYTHING EXISTS, THE POINT IS TO DISCOVER THE CONCEPT AND SELL IT AS AN IDEA

Corporate ENLIGHTENMENT

I would highlight two genres of organization who believe that employees can be retained in two ways:

1.Give them challenging roles. Understand their interest and give an opportunity to prove themselves.
2.Engross them in other activities. Conduct Fashion shows, sports tournaments organize frequent events.

The question is which one interests more to the generation now? Most of the companies have a high attrition rate. Some of the organization has a bench rate of 52%. Are the employees more concerned about the fun part of the Corporate or the work of Corporate or the employers are failing to understand the needs to their employees. The organizations have become more like a product which packages itself well so that some priced customers’ takes it but the reality peeps out soon. The thinking quotient has surely changed. Now, a person believes in working in a firm, which can give him more independence in terms of decision making and challenging roles. A career-focused individual is certainly broadening his vision to work for a small firm rather than working for an MNC and get lost in the crowd. The most important thing to understand is an organization can hook its employees in the corporate events for some time but in the long run the feeling of being in a monotonous job creeps. The organizations should come out from the long followed policy and take a drastic step to change it. The change is to make the employees feel home in the office where the employee should have the rights to take decisions upto a certain limit and given challenging job role. There can be ways through which this can be achieved.

1.Remember, hiring new employees cost more than retaining old one. So, make sure, job rotation is followed as a policy and every employee should be given a chance to change his/her profile within a year if not interested.

2.Make the maximum use of Benchees. Rather than looking outside, the benchees can be asked to jump on the roles depending on their interest whenever certain employee needs a change which can best be termed as Replacement.

3.Not to forget, Marketing is not ahead of Performance. If marketing is good but the product fails to deliver then nothing can save the product from dieing. Its necessary to organize the corporate events but it should not be regular thing. The employees get diverted more towards to it rather than his job. Employee interaction should be frequent with the HRs. Workshops is certainly helpful in a month where the Manager along with the employees and HRs can discuss on how to make the best use of the employees.

Vinayak Kamat Named 2007 PRM Candidate of the Year

Vinayak was chosen from those nominated for this award based on his excellent exam scores, top ranking among candidates who answered five essay questions and his performance during a telephone interview of five finalists. The nominees spanned from all across the globe.


"This is a highly prestigious award, identifying the best of the best among our PRM holders," said David R. Koenig, Executive Director of PRMIA. "We were highly impressed by Vinayak and congratulate him on this international recognition."


When contacted, Vinayak said that he was thrilled at receiving such a highly prestigious award and it felt great to get achievement at an international level. The senior management team at HSBC GLT has lauded Vinayak for carving his niche at the PRMIA and placing GLT on the global map.


PRMIA is the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association with more than 60 chapters around the world and over 40,000 members from more than 175 countries. A non-profit, member-led association of professionals, PRMIA is dedicated to advancing the standards of the profession worldwide through the free exchange of ideas. PRMIA offers the only globally endorsed Professional Risk Manager (PRM) certification program, pursued by over 2,000 active candidates in more than 90 countries, more than any other risk certification program the PRM is the higher standard in risk certification.

VINAYAK KAMAT WORKS IN BUSINESS SOLUTION AND CONSULTING GROUP OF HSBC.

Need to BRAND..Why?

Well, Branding and Advertising have become key focus area for organizations. A lot of it depends on the target market, budget, and the influence it can create on the minds of the customer. Today, we will discuss what are on the biggies minds when they advertise for branding their brand. IBM, one of the most sought after organizations comes with innovative ads, which require a lot of thought process to understand the message IBM wants to convey to its customers. According to IBM, The key to differentiation is innovation. Not the innovation that sparks new inventions per se, but innovation that reinvents how businesses do business at every level of the enterprise. No one does innovation better than IBM. The ads are very much thought provoking. It can be a water cooler in the middle of the desert serves as a metaphor for a meeting place where your organization's best minds can come together to create innovative new ideas. And, Accenture, one of the best Consulting firms believes in high performance and when we think of high performance, Accenture thinks of Tiger Woods who serves as a metaphor for their commitment to helping companies become high-performance businesses. Their advertising theme united their ethos and position: "Go on. Be a Tiger." Similarly, in HSBC commercials, a ring can signify a marriage or a group composed of people from different ethnic backgrounds. The important thing to notice is the sustainability in the market and the continuity to remain the market leader through continuous positive re-enforcement about the brand.

Better STRATEGY through ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

Executives have a golden opportunity to orient strategy around organizational design and thus to make companies thrive no matter how market and competitive conditions change.Organizational-design work is hard and time consuming, but its payback—in profits, costs, and risks—surpasses that of investments in product design and other traditional strategic initiatives.Building strategy around organizational design represents an evolution away from the organizational structures of the 20th-century industrial age, when capital was the scarce resource and vertical, hierarchical structures were the key to efficient performance.The key ingredients of progressive corporate strategy in the 21st century are “one-company” governance structures, knowledge and talent markets, and organizational designs intended to maximize collaboration among the talented workers who create today’s wealth.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract_visitor.aspx?ar=1991&l2=18&l3=30&srid=17&gp=0

Courtesy: McKinsey

REQUIREMENTS Specifications

Requirements Specification is a description of what you want the system to do. This document may also be called a Business Needs Specification. The Requirements Specification should generally not be written in computer terms or contain assumptions about how the system should be written (unless these are part of the requirements). Requirements Specification should cover topics like:

1.Introduction: Your introduction, location, your market and target customers, contact details and the service your offer.
2.System Overview: Potential users of the system, number of users, kind of users according to their work, the problems they face, hardware and environmental constraints etc. This also includes the deliverables, business rules that needs to be included in the system, back up for the system, security needed for the system, technical support required.
3.Functional Requirement: This includes your requirements, importance of the requirements, design or implementation issues.
4.Data to be held: The kind of data that the system should held
5.Operational Scenario: The kind of scenarios that an user might face while using the system.
6.Budget and Schedule: Timescale required, management constraints, critical deadlines and the budget.
7.Appendices and Contact Number: Any acronyms or abbreviations.

Forming a CLIENT CONSULTANT Relationship

In consultancy, understanding the Client- Consultant relationship is very important. It forms the basis of the Consulting process. Generally, there are three major form of relationship exists between a Client and a Consultant
1)Contractual Relationship: It’s a kind of social agreement where rules of engagement and firm boundaries are defined and formed.
2)Idealized Relationship: It’s a kind of abstract or imaginary level of engagement where each person transfers in prior learning and desires and proceeds to act these out.
3)Authentic Relationship: It’s a level ahead of Contractual Relationship where you witness yourself, very clear about your stance and share your stance with others where appropriate.

The focus is more on Management Consulting as it involves a lot of aspects to it like economical, financial, marketing, IT, People Management and the list goes on. The expertise of the consultants depends on either the task or the process. Task centered Consultants focus more on the problem and minimize the people aspect whereas the Process centered consultant tend to focus more on people and relationship and the leave the problem to the client to solve.

Well, we will discuss the phases of Consulting in the next post. Keep watching the space.

Working on your MIND

Mind is the driver of your persona. It allows you to visualize, think, analyze and take decisions. An individual’s level of success or failures depends on his mind. How to make your mind work to your benefits? Yogis and Sadhus have shown us the path of meditation to control the mind and make your mind work in sync with the body. Even science asserts the benefits of meditation. Here are some ways which you can help you to condition your mind and achieve success.

The first and foremost thing is to NURTURE your mind. Fill your mind with things, which influences you a lot. It could be a motivating book, a dance form or a mere jogging. Relaxing body sometimes relaxes your mind. Make a habit of doing something everyday that you feel can relax your body and mind.

Stay away from NEGATIVE. Negativities can make your mind work in a way, which can be harmful to you. Do not think negatives. Be positive and Stay positive is the ultimate mantra. Make a practice of saying to yourself something, which you want to do infront of the mirror. If you want to achieve something, make sure you repeat it as many times as you can so that it makes your mind think accordingly and you take appropriate actions to achieve that.

MEDITATION is always the key to increase your concentration.

Stay ALONE with yourself everyday and make a note of the things, which you did in that day which you feel relevant and whether it was good or bad. Again, there is nothing good or bad in this world. It’s all in your perception. So, it’s always better to justify why the things done by you is good or bad. That will help your mind take decisions in an appropriate way.

Watch CARTOONS. It seems funny but it helps your mind to relax and also to be imaginative and creative. It could be a reason why children like cartoons to watch. Its because its at this stage they start to be creative and desire to do things which might seem impossible to others.

MERGERS and ACQUISITIONS

Mergers and Acquisitions are the most strategic decisions taken by the organizations and it requires a lot of understanding and expertise before a firm decided to acquire another firm. There are some crucial points that a firm needs to focus before going for the deal as a single wrong decision may make or mar the M&A.

1)Be clear about the transaction structure. Whether a firm is interested in Asset purchase, Stocks purchase or Merger. And, if it’s a merger, whether it’s a Direct, forward or triangular. Direct merger is one where the acquirer acquires the firm and the asset id transferred to the acquirer by the operation of law. Forward is one where the subsidiary of acquirer acquires the firm and Triangular is one where the firm, which is acquired by the subsidiary of the acquirer, gets wholly merged in the subsidiary.
2)Clear understanding of the mechanisms of value creation process in Mergers and Acquisitions. Over-valuation of costs and under-valuation of costs and risks should be avoided. The similarities and the differences of the two firms should be analyzed properly so that it would help in clearly understanding the aftereffects of M&A.
3)Employee Stock Options and Valuation is one area which the acquirer and the firm getting acquired should look at before going for a M&A deal.
4)Paying premium if the synergies not realized can turn to be a major turn off for the acquirer.
5)Two companies should properly get integrated with high level planning and design, which will help in successful implementation.
6)Due diligence is the most important factor or rather defined as the watchdog of a successful M&A.

The Crux of Marketing: PRICING

Wondering how to price a product or service? How much to charge from your customers? It’s easy to price a product by analyzing the existing similar products in the market but what about a new product or a service. Though there are some industry accepted figures but still it’s your business and pricing plays an important role in your business. Not everytime RFPs will help you in deciding the pricing. Sometimes we literally get a big idea written down on a small pice of paper. While other times we may get 30-page RFPs that provide excruciating detail.
Regardless of how the client writes down what they need, they often only know the rough strokes of the how to reach their goal, not the specific nitty-gritty details, which are often where the majority of costs lie. But why should they? That should be what they are hiring us for, to help them find what they want, and more importantly, what their users want.
Budgeting plays a major role in deciding the price. Vendors always want them, clients never want to reveal them. We ask every client if they have a budget that they need us to work within, every agency I’ve ever worked on the other side of the fence with has asked the same. Very very few clients ever reveal this crucial detail. The budget reveals a lot about the client and the project. We use it as a barometer of how serious the client is, if they have given their project serious consideration, how much they understand about the project, to evaluate possible return on investment scenarios, to help define scope, whether it is cost-efficient for us to pursue, and to see if we can even do the project within their budget. When we price out a project we not only price out what we know about the project, but also detail what we don’t know. We come up with worst-case scenarios, address risks, point out all the things we think could impact meeting the goals of the project. There are two major methods of billing for projects, Per Project, Hourly. Traditionally most projects are charged on a Per Project rate. The idea here is that the vendor can accurately guess the scope and attach a fixed price at the beginning of the project. This in invariably never the case, so scope and price is often padded and margin added to protect the vendor from additional scope.The problem is one way or another somebody loses, either the client pays too much, meaning paying more than it’s market value, or the vendor eats into their profit. One benefits to hourly billing is the client is responsible for increases of scope, protecting the vendor and the customer. If the project is completed early the client pays less, protecting the client. This puts the onus on both parties to communicate regularly and work more effectively. Rather, budgets and requirements should be defined, watched and met. If the hours start to go over, this should be called as soon as possible, ideally before the hours are committed. Regardless of billing per project or per hour, we believe that any project is a partnership between client and vendor. That in order to mutually achieve a goal we must work together every step of the way. Communicating expectations of scope and cost is always crucial.

Courtesy: BlueFlavour