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MEWCI

Training & Development Programme at MEWCI Falls FlatMEW Credence International (MEWCI) has a turnover of $1.5 billion with global operations spanning more than 10 countries across Asia, Africa and Europe.

Vikram Singh Deo, who has four decades of experience in recruitment and retention, conflict resolution, training and development, labour relations and compensation management, wasappointed VP, HR at the MEWCI Group in 2011.

Deo’s KRA was to increase the quality and productivity of manpower and help the organisation catapult into its next growth orbit.

The HR department under his leader-ship designed and executed a training programme titled, ‘Parivartan’ for FY13, to enhance skill sets and up-grade employees’ attitude.

At the end of the first month — April 2012 — Deo had the MIS showing em-ployee attendance across all three man-ufacturing units. He was puzzled. Less than 25% of the 791 employees who

were required to attend, showed up. In some cases not even a single employee attended.

Deo knew the capability of his trainers; his team had prepared a training calendar taking into consideration holidays and extended weekly work hours.

Deo was determined to find a solution at the grassroot level.

Were corrective measures required?

BN BALAJI SINGH, Dean, Faculty of Management Studies, PES University

PROF BRIJESH SINGH, Professor, Faculty of Management Studies, PES University

BN Balaji Singh

Brijesh Singh

SFPCL

SFPCL: The Golden Gateway to Success of Agribusiness in IndiaAlthough an agrarian economy, the farmers’ conditions in India are below subsistence level. Poverty, illiteracy, large family sizes, small land holdings, societal norms, natural calamities and suicides add to their agony.

State regulations of agricultural mar-kets were meant to protect farmers from exploitation by interme-diaries and traders and to en-sure better prices and timely payment for their produce.With time these markets have become bureaucratic and con-servative and acquired the status of restrictive and monopolistic markets.

Sahyadri Farmers Producers Company (SFPCL) is the result of a progressive move by the farmers from Nashik and its surrounding districts to come to-gether with a focus on horticulture. It is a farmer producer company, dealing in

international and national markets for horticultural produce. It has been active as knowledge provider, a mediator for exporting produce, facilitating quality produce, packaging, labelling and brand-ing the produce by marginal farmers. The Farmers Mall envisioned by SFPCL as a ‘One Stop Mall’, will cater to all the

needs of farmers whether it is equipment, fertilizers, seeds or technology-driven products.

However, SFPCL faces many challenges. Can it convince around 12,000 farmers in the

next five years to register with it? Can it establish a market for organic farm-ing and food processing? Can SFPCL emerge as the golden gateway towards the success of agribusiness in India?

PROF VIDHYA SRINIVAS, Institute for Technology and Management, Mumbai

Vidhya Srinivas

Employees Prefer a Young BossOver 60% of employees in India prefer a young boss over an older, more experienced one, revealsa recent study by TimesJobs.com based on responses from over 650 employees.

A young professional(25-40 years)

A senior professional(40–70 years)

WHO WOULD YOU PREFER AS A BOSS?

65% 35%

Young boss

Given a choice, 78%of them would like to work under a young boss

Given a choice, 50%of them would stick to an old boss; 50%want a young boss

Old boss

WHO ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING UNDER

57% 43%

46% 46%

33%40%

21%14%

Understanding Understanding

Friendly/funUnbiased

More practical

Patient

WHY DO YOU PREFER A YOUNG BOSS?

WHY DO YOU PREFER AN OLD BOSS?

75%employees in IT sector prefer a young boss

Automobile is an exception with higher preferencefor old/experienced bosses (nearly 80%prefer an old boss)

Manufacturing has equal preference for both (50%prefer old boss, 50%prefer young boss)

63%in non-IT sectors prefer a young boss

PREFERENCE FOR YOUNG BOSSES ACROSS SECTORS

Nearly60%entry-to-middle- level employees prefer young bosses

Nearly74%employees between 20-40 years age group prefer young bosses

Nearly88%employees over 40 years of age prefer old bosses

Nearly80%senior professionals with over20 years' experience prefer old bosses

80%female employees prefer young bosses

56%male employees prefer young bosses

SOME LIMITATIONS OF BOTH

Old Bosses

Inflexible

Biased

Unreal-istic

Unsympathetic/Stern68% 15%

10%

7%

Lacks experience

Lack knowl-

edge

Unrealistic

Older employees have apprehensions in reporting

to a younger person40%

25%

14%

Young Bosses

21%

WAYS TOWAYS TO

Having accountability at the workplace ensures em-ployees are responsible for their designated responsi-bilities and function opti-mally. An accountable workforce is productive and contributes to the overall performance of the organisation. Brinda Dasgupta shows you how to increase ac-countability among your employees to keep the workflow hassle-free.

Make Sure Staffers are Accountable

Empower Navigation

2

Giving your employees the chance to drive their own results is essential. “People need to see for themselves what works and what doesn’t — and analyse the causes, seek feedback and learn in the process,” says Rajnish Ku-mar, HR head, products and new growth business, Infosys.

3 Trust Your Employees

Having faith in your team’s ca-pabilities will inspire them. “Employees will respond when you treat them like adults,” says Naresh. “Trusting them to take responsibility for allocated du-ties and meeting budgets will go a long way towards making them more accountable.”

Remove Ambiguity

4

Keep internal processes clear, make sure decision-making is smooth, and refrain from chang-ing expectations too often. “Re-moving confusion is an impor-tant step,” says Kumar. “If a team is truly accountable they identi-fy the root cause, innovate and work towards results or per-formance improvement.”

Keep Dialogue Open

1

Senior management should hold regular meetings with employ-ees. “Include your team in the process of setting goals; this sends out a message that open dialogue is valued,” says Shan-thi Naresh, talent business lead-er at Mercer Consulting India.

Keep the Fear Factor Out

5

If an employee is missing tar-gets, sound him or her out, but go easy on the punishment. “Im-posing penalties at work for low performance or productivity promotes a fear culture,” says SY Siddiqui, chief mentor at Maruti Suzuki. Capability building, par-ticipation and involvement are preferable, he says.

Sreeradha.Basu@timesgroup.com

Mumbai: HR services and staffingfirms in India are expanding theirteams and operations to cater to therapidly growing demand for recruit-ment process outsourcing (RPO) as or-ganisations increasingly farm out allor part of the hiring functions to focuson their core businesses.

With the estimated .̀ 400 crore RPObusiness in India expected to grow at astaggering 40-50% a year for the next fewyears, firms such as PeopleStrong, Man-power Group, Quess Corp, Randstadand TeamLease Services are attractinga steady stream of new clients.

There is an increasingly sharper focuson understanding of the Indian marketfor RPO projects, said Pankaj Bansal, co-founder of PeopleStrong. “Corporatesare looking not only for a specialisationin sourcing but also in processing andtechnology, to which attention was notpaid a couple of years ago,” he said.

A few months ago, PeopleStrong in-ked a deal with software exporter Wi-pro worth $16 million (about .̀ 100crore), according to an Everest Groupreport, for a period of five-seven years.

PeopleStrong provides platform-based RPO solutions, taking end-to-

end ownership of permanent recruit-ments for its clients. It has seen addi-tion of 10 new RPO clients every yearand growth of about 100% over the pastone year alone.

At Quess Corp ((formerly known asIkya Human Capital Solutions), plansare underway to expand operations toother parts of the world by leveragingthe group’s global presence acrosseight countries. “We are evaluatingpartnerships with international RPOfirms to drive this next phase ofgrowth,” said Guruprasad Sriniva-san, business head, staffing solutions.Startup and growth stage companiesare also inviting Quess Corp to discussRPO possibilities, he said.

As hiring increases and the war for tal-ent intensifies, more and more compa-nies are expected to outsource theirrecruitment process work. This modelhelps provide a cost-effective and con-sistent talent acquisition process, keep-ing turnaround time low and allowingcompanies to scale up quickly when thebusiness environment improves.

In India, software, technology and ITsectors are the major torchbearers forRPO growth. However, mid-sized to largecompanies in manufacturing, telecom,pharmaceuticals, healthcare and bank-ing sectors are also driving demand.

In the global market, multinationalcompanies are increasingly seeking asingle RPO service provider acrossmultiple locations, with India beingone of the primary markets.

“Companies are moving towards re-gional shared service centres for HR

and this is bound to see an increase inglobal RPO programmes,” said Sri-kanth Rengarajan, executive directorand president, ManpowerGroup In-dia. He said the company has seen athreefold increase in business enqui-ries in global multi-geography RPOsin the past quarter.

At Randstad India, the growth in thisvertical in 2014 was over 120% and morethan 30 clients have come on board in thepast one year. “The largest contributorwould be ‘project RPO’ where clients ap-

proach us for managingthe entire talent acqui-sition process for a spe-cific project. However,end-to-end RPO offer-ing is also gainingprominence,” saidMoorthy K Uppaluri,CEO of Randstad India.

Little wonder then,these companies are al-so fast scaling up theirRPO teams. Quess Corpplans to double head-count to manage new

RPOs while PeopleStrong plans to in-crease its team size by 50%, hiringrecruitment specialists from IT, engi-neering and automobile sectors. Team-Lease Services also plans to add 50 peo-ple to its current 150-strong team.

“There is a realisation that an RPOprovider’s job does not stop at hiringbut reaches deep into the onboardingprocess to ensure best fit,” said up Ku-nal Sen, senior vice president at Team-Lease Services.

Recruitment Outsourcingis the Next Big Thing

Rapid GrowthRPO market estimated at about

`400 crin India, growing at 40-50% annually

QUESS CORP Growing at 25-30% year on year. Plans to expand operations to other parts of the world; evaluating partnerships with international RPO firms

PEOPLESTRONG Grew 100% over the past financial year. Adding about 10 new RPO clients every year

TEAMLEASE SERVICES RPO business doubling every quarter for the past couple of quarters. Got 10 new clients on board in the past quarter

MANPOWERGROUP INDIA Threefold increase in business enquiries in global multi-location RPOs in the past quarter

RANDSTAD INDIA RPO is the fastest-growing business vertical for Randstad in 2015. Over the past year, more than 30 clients have come on board

MNCs areincreasinglyseeking asingle RPOserviceprovideracrosslocations,with Indiabeing one ofthe primarymarkets

Cos in IT, manufacturing,telecom, pharma andbanking driving demand

Business expected to grow 50% a year as companies farm out hiring functions; staffing firms scale up RPO teams

Big data scientists arein great demand. Toget business valuefrom big data, compa-

nies are looking for multi-skilled expertswho understand programming, large-scalemathematics, statistics and business, anduniversities are introducing specialised pro-grammes to meet this demand.

Dean Ramayya Krishnan of Carnegie Mel-lon University, is the professor of Manage-ment Science and Information System. Hespoke to Varuni Khosla on the new role ofdata scientists in both public and privatesectors to understand policy, informationsciences, and how the two intersect in orderto create-forward thinking organisations.Edited excerpts:

What is the volume of big data being produced?It’s not just the volume of data that has goneup but also the variety, like video, soundsand so on. Something as simple as usingmaps on phones generates a stream of data.

What kind of industries need to study big data?Consulting companies like the Big Four andthe poster children for big data — companieslike Google, Amazon etc. But you don’t haveto be a Google or an Amazon to find value inbig data. Sectors like finance andgovernance require evidence-baseddecision making.

Do students need to specialise in this field?Students studying big data can choosewhether they want to be in technology cre-ation or technology implementation. Theglobal demand for these students is quitehigh and going forward it will be a horizon-tal skill.

Students who are just data scientists won’tbe the only requirement; they will need tocombine it with marketing, human re-sources or operations skills.At our college for instance, we offer cours-

es in technology innovations. So you coulddo a masters in data science or data re-search — and we include both decision aswell as data analytics. Decision analytics is

equally important.This area has a lot of global interest and the

supply of scientists is less than demand.Masters’ students who have studied dataanalytics have a median salary (with an en-gineering degree before they came to us andtwo years of work experience) of $1,10,000per annum.

What is the background requirement tostudy big data?Amajority of students getting into this fieldhold a masters degree in some field with abackground in quantitative engineering be-cause it needs strength in math, problemsolving and information technology to beable to do these jobs.

‘Students Must CombineOther Skills with Big Data’

Q&A

IN DEMAND

Data analytics has a lot ofglobal interest and the sup-ply of scientists is less thandemand. Masters’ studentscan earn a median salary of$1,10,000 per annum

Harvard Club of Mumbai, which rep-resents all the university’s colleges.

Most large corporate families in-cluding the Tatas, Piramal, Godrej,Bajaj and Mahindra have some affil-iation with Harvard with either theirpromoters or children having stud-ied there. “It is up to someone to tapinto those affiliations… the dean is acatalyst in this,” she said.

Also, the Harvard School of PublicHealth will in a few months have anoffice in Mumbai and has filed for reg-istration for the new hub in the city, KVish Vishwanath, professor of healthcommunication at Harvard School ofPublic Health, who will also head theIndian unit told ET in his first and ex-clusive media interaction. “The In-dia hub will be called Harvard Glob-

al. We have received a generousdonation of space from Swati Pira-mal,” he told ET. The institute will al-so work closely with partners in In-dia to invest in healthcarecapacity-building and manpower.

A lot of the faculty members at HBSand other colleges in Harvard are In-dians and having this sort of engage-ment with India gives them an oppor-tunity to reconnect with their roots.

India is also a crucial market forHBS’s online teaching platformHBX, launched globally two monthsago. Harvard professor of Indian ori-gin Bharat Anand, who is spearhead-ing the project, was recently in Indiato showcase the platform.

Rica.Bhattacharyya@timesgroup.com

MUMBAI: The world’s leading uni-versity Harvard is increasing its en-gagement with India as it attemptsto draw lessons from and reach outto a crucial and complex market.

For the first time in seven years,Harvard Business School recentlybrought its Advanced LeadershipInitiative for Harvard fellows to In-dia where global fellows got to inter-act with industry leaders such as DShivakumar of Pepsico and SwatiPiramal of Piramal Enterprises.

In a few months, The HarvardSchool of Public Health under Har-vard University will have an officein Mumbai. Also, HBS recentlylaunched its version of online teach-ing called HBX, for which India is amajor market. Apart from these, anincreasing number of Indian casesbeing taught at the school, greaterfaculty interest for research in In-dia, coupled with the school’s Indianorigin dean Nitin Nohria’s proac-tive role to engage with Indian busi-ness leaders are all signs of the in-creasing engageemeent.

“There are many things India hasto teach,” said Rosabeth Moss Kan-ter, chair and director at Harvard Ad-vanced Leadership Initiative, whichis aimed at preparing leaders to takeon challenges in the social sector.

Having an Indian at the helm hasaccentuated their presence in India.

“With the dean being Indian therehas been a massive movement to-wards India,” said Vibha Kagzi, anHBS alumni and co-president of the

Harvard ReachesDeeper, DrawsLessons from IndiaHarvard School ofPublic Health to openMumbai office, amongother initiatives

LOOKING EAST

India is a major market forHBS’ online teaching plat-form HBX. An increasingnumber of Indian casesare being taught andthere is greater faculty in-terest for research in India