There could a silver lining to your oh-so-boring sarkari job. At least at the navratna and miniratna public sector undertakings, as paypackets get heavier and HR managers get interactive. PSUs are now shaking off outdated HR norms and drafting performance-centered practices to match their private sector counterparts.
Conferred with the navratna status, which allows greater autonomy in financial and administrative matters, many PSUs are setting new business targets and offering improved remunerations, industry players say.
Defence public sector Bharat Earth Movers Ltd (BEML) is ?replenishing? its manpower requirement and is aligning HR initiatives to a restructured business plan. ?We have recently created new posts for directors to three departments and assessed how our manpower strength should be replenished. Wherever the need is felt, we will have initiatives that are unheard of in the PSU space,? said Chamola VM, BEML?s chief general manager for HR.
BEML, a miniratna player, has also drafted new incentive schemes for ?retention and nurturing its talent pool? through better salary patterns and profit-linked rewards, he added.
Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd says it has deployed online performance assessment techniques for employee-appraisal. This a total u-turn from last year when nearly 9,000 executives of the a navratna unit decided to return their plant performance payment to the company as a mark of protest against low performance incentives and low pay.
Bharat Electronics Ltd, conferred the navratna status recently, is also reworking the pay packages for its employees. ?We will bring in improvement in pay packages and make it attractive for employees by making it performance-oriented,? CMD VVR Sastry said.
Meanwhile, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), in a bid to infuse fresh blood, recently launched the company?s first media campaign to attract young talents. ?Defence public sector companies like HAL with expertise in aerospace engineering face stiff competition for talent from emerging private players in the sector,? an official with a rival private sector company said. HAL is said to have introduced better remunerations such as high bonuses, mainly for retaining their key technical staff.
India has 12 PSUs with navratna status. To improve efficiency and accountability of government employees, the Sixth Central Pay Commission had asked Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad to conduct a study to examine the feasibility of having performance-related pay in PSUs. The government is also said to be mulling a similar model for public sector banks, which may be asked to offer incentives in proportion to their profits or turnover.