Talk to any player across sectors ? IT, telecom, retail, education, entertainment ? and there?s one unifying lament, that India is undergoing a talent crunch like never before. With experiment and research key to a corporate?s success, organisations have often revamped to keep pace with the competition. A lot has been done to enrich the workforce too. But have we paid enough attention to human resources management? If we look at the rate of attrition, it is as high as ever in a country like India where the rate of unemployment is not less either. What it is it that is stopping HR managers from recruiting the right kind of people for the organisation? Why is the employee satisfaction level still low?
Finding answers to these questions will not be easy unless we define the role an HR manager. The HR manager?s job is not restricted to recruiting people for the organisation ? it also means managing the people. An HR manager should be someone who is friendly and approachable and will bridge the gap between employee and employer. More importantly, the HR manager should create a comfortable work atmosphere for the employee thereby ensuring better time and energy management. With such crucial tasks to be performed, it is essential to have enhanced systems that will permit the HR team to do the job in the best way possible.
?It?s important to nourish HR?
Today, when automation is the last word in every field, the HR department is also looking at introducing systems that will strengthen the organisation. For instance, there?s the Human Resource Management System (HRMS) developed by many reputed software companies like SAP, Oracle, eHorizon etc. These products are easy to use and reduce a lot of manual work thereby leaving the HR managers free to spend time on nurturing the talent pool. Where there is so much work to be done, HR managers cannot be expected to flip through thousands of resumes to select the right candidate. The HRMS products are continuously being updated and enhanced to help the HR department choose the right one for the job.
?Today, HR managers are not just paid to work in corporates but they are an asset to the company,? says Jyoti Mukherjee, founder and group managing director, eHorizon India Private Ltd. Chaya Arora, marketing manager, SAP India goes a step further and adds: ?People are a critical success factor in every business.? Thus, it is essential to nourish the HR department in an organisation. May it be SAP, People Soft or eHorizon HRMS, these, ?solutions equip executives, HR professionals and line managers to hire the best talent, and as well as cultivate the skills of their workforce,? says Arora.
SAP HCM (Human Capital Management) allows the organisation to streamline their goals and ?organisations are more readily able to understand where their workforce?s talents lie and align the goals of the employees with that of the organisation?s overarching business strategy.? By using SAP, says Arora, ?our customers have been able to reap the benefits of reduced costs, better return on investment, and they have been able to attract and retain talent, enabling the division to become a strategic part of the organisation.? The latest product of SAP has ?end-to-end solutions? (from hire to pay, talent management etc.), which are completely integrated, offers real-time data and are enterprise service-oriented architecture (ESOA)-enabled.
Says Mukherjee: ?HR is not all about hiring and firing. The trends are changing dynamically. They are a growing power in the organisation and are responsible for transferring information into knowledge. India has a large workforce and it is a challenge to convert this into a resource.?
?Tapping the intelligence? may be the key word for developers but then maintaining a large workforce is even more important. eHorizon HRMS has thus developed an integrated system that will manage the workforce right from hiring to inducting, training, performance rating, leave management, payroll system and also retirement solutions. The eHorizon HRMS is equipped with e-induction and self-training options. ?It not only makes the work of the HR easier, the employees working in the organisation can go for ?self service? on the desktop instead of running to the HR for each and every query,? says Mukherjee. The new version of eHorizon HRMS will include an SOS IT card that will contain all the medical details of the employee that can be updated by the employee himself.
Clientspeak
Sudheesh Vankatesh, head HR, Tesco HSC, points out that the company has been using People Soft HRMS 8.3 version for three years. ?The software has reduced the workload of the HR thereby giving them more time in involving themselves in people engagement than administration. A good system will also keep the overhead costs low.? This is true for every organisation ? large or small. ?But SMEs sometimes find it too expensive to install HRMS. Moreover, it is difficult to break the traditional idea about having a touch and feel HR manager,? says, Partha Sarathi Bandyopadhyay, marketing manager, eHorizon India Private Ltd.
A large organisation like DCM Shriram does use SAP HCM but admits Sushil Baveja, head, corporate HR: ?Organisations go a little overboard about HRMS. Automation is desirable but one should not be a slave to automation. There should be a perfect balance between automation and the personal touch.? Besides such barriers, the ?HR departments also often take international brands as the benchmark and refuse to explore newer software with enhanced features,? rues Bandyopadhyay.
Dominic Ooko, head, HR, Securicor says, ?eHorizon Human Resources has greatly reduced the manual records we hold. Prior to the introduction of the system, information about the entire workforce (over 10,000 employees) was held in giant files. A user-friendly system like this has made computerisation much easier. And it goes without saying that data retrieval is much faster now.? In short, ?eHorizon HRMS system provides all the features needed to process the personnel related information for our organisation,? says Maggi Kaddu, HR Manager, East African Development Bank.