CHAPTER - 1

HRD MANAGEMENT IN IT INDUSTRY

 

1.0       INTRODUCTION

1.0.1 Success of every business enterprise depends on its human resource. Money, material and machines are inert factors; but man with his ability to feel, think, conscience and plan is the most valuable resource. At the same time human elements are most difficult to be inspired, controlled and motivated. The upcoming competition in India, will demand high motivational level of its employees.

1.0.2 Growth of an enterprise is vital for the economic development of the country. This is possible only by maintaining the enthusiasm and motivation of the employees, which is vital for carrying out the operations in most efficient manner. The most successful companies, all over the world have designed their business policies to achieve higher productivity by using potentiality and strength of people.

1.0.3 The basic aim of human policies is the genuine concern for the people. Proper design of human policies is based on the higher responsibilities, personal and positive approach in the total perspective of organisational interest. The world's best companies have established their strength with their people. The employees identify themselves with the company they are working for. This also help in building up their spirit, morale and espirit-de-cops which becomes strength of the company. The culture of excellence thus nurtured contribute to growth with stability and continuous improvement in productivity.

1.0.4 Finding the right man for the job and developing him into a valuable resource is an indispensable requirement of every organisation. Human resources are capable of enlargement i.e. capable of providing an output that is greater than the sum of the inputs. Proper recruitment helps the line managers to work most effectively in accomplishing the primary objective of the enterprise. In order to harness the human energies in the service or organisational goals, every manager is expected to pay proper attention to recruitment, selection, training, development activities in an organisation. Proper promotional avenues must also be created so as to motivate employees to peak performance. Thus, personnel functions such as manpower planning recruitment, selection and training, when carried out properly, would enable the organisation to hire and retain the services of the best brains in the market.

1.0.5 The human resource management is very crucial in respect of information technology services than other manufacturing or marketing enterprises. The IT services are technical in nature and at every stage the human touch is involved. Hence it is well motivated and devoted manpower which is very much essential for the success of IT industry.

1.1 ROLE OF HR MANAGERS

1.1.1. And Some industry commentators call the Human Resources function the last bastion of bureaucracy. Traditionally, the role of the Human Resource professional in many organizations has been to serve as the systematizing, policing arm of executive management. In this role, the HR professional served executive agendas well, but was frequently viewed as a road block by much of the rest of the organization. While some need for this role occasionally remains you would no want every manager putting his own spin on a sexual harassment policy, as an example—much of the HR role is transforming itself. The role of the HR manager must parallel the needs of his changing organization. Successful organizations are becoming more adaptable, resilient, quick to change direction, and customer-centered. Within this environment, the HR professional, who is considered necessary by line managers, is a strategic partner, an employee sponsor or advocate, and a change mentor.

1.1.2 Strategic Partner:-In today’s organizations, to guarantee their viability and ability to contribute, HR managers need to think of themselves as strategic partners. In this role, the HR person contributes to the development of and the accomplishment of the organization-wide business plan and objectives. The HR business objectives are established to support the attainment of the overall plan and objectives. The tactical HR representative is deeply knowledgeable about the design of work systems in which people succeed and contribute. This strategic partnership impacts HR services such as the design of work positions, hiring; reward, recognition, and strategic pay; performance development and appraisal systems; career and succession planning; and employee development.

1.1.3 Employee Advocate:-As an employee sponsor or advocate, the HR manager plays an integral role in organizational success via his knowledge about and advocacy of people. This advocacy includes expertise in how to create a work environment in which people will choose to be motivated, contributing, and happy. Fostering effective methods of goal setting, communication, and empowerment through responsibility build employee ownership of the enterprise. The HR professional helps establish the organizational culture and climate in which people have the competency, concern, and commitment to serve customers well. In this role, the HR manager provides employee development opportunities, employee assistance programs, gain sharing and profit-sharing strategies, organization development interventions, due process approaches to problem solving, and regularly scheduled communication opportunities.

1.1.5 Change Champion:-The constant evaluation of the effectiveness of the organization results in the need for the HR professional to frequently champion change. Both knowledge about and the ability to execute successful change strategies make the HR professional exceptionally valued. Knowing how to link change to the strategic needs of the organization will minimize employee dissatisfaction and resistance to change. The HR professional contributes to the organization by constantly assessing the effectiveness of the HR function. He also sponsors change in other departments and in work practices. To promote the overall success of his organization, he champions the identification of the organizational mission, vision, values, goals, and action plans. Finally, he helps determine the measures that will tell his organization how well it is succeeding in all of this.

1.2 LEADERSHIP AND EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT.

1.2.1            The main role of leadership was seen as creating a participatory process for employee involvement, to build collective wisdom. Control has given way to collaboration and the old paradigm of promoting competition and motivating through incentives shifted to creating co-operation and oneness amongst people. This is a marked shift to build effective teams. Research shows that six out of every 10 employees like to work in teams. 87 per cent of all Fortune 500 companies use parallel teams and about 100 per cent of all companies use project teams.

1.2.2           Story telling and appreciative enquiry are emerging as a new dimension in positive motivation. Finding out what's wrong seems to be the trend. In Walt Disney, telling success stories is one of the important methods used to remind people of greatness and goodness of the organisation. Leaders in Disney concentrate on quality, values and involvement. Speaking in the plenary sessions, Tom Peters said, " We have transitioned from an asset-based economy to a talent-based economy. The new definition of lay-off is untalented go talented stay. Leaders must realise that talent is equal to brand". His new theory is EVP which means "Employee Value Proposition".

1.2.3          Rosabeth Moss Kanter said, " Human beings are good raw material, they become assets when you train them to increase their knowledge and skills". She added that only a few organisations really train people to make them a success. Seconding this, Mr Peters pointed out how most organisations are not serious about developing people. They spend on an average 26.3 hours per person per year on training. A surgeon, a pilot or an athlete on the other hand spends 10-15 times more on training.

1.2.4          He also stated that the HRD department should be renamed TDFD (Talent Development Fanatic Department) and wealth for this new regime will flow from innovation, not organisation. Quoting Gary Hamel he said, only those employees will succeed who are "certified radical". Only those companies will succeed who create a cause, not a business. Leaders according to him are living individuals, whom people can smell, feel and touch. Their passion for work must be infectious.

1.2.5          Another aspect of leadership if the decision to introduce fun in the work place. Research shows that this reduces absenteeism and builds stronger, deeper and longer lasting relationships. It appears out of every 100 Fortune companies in the last decade, 69 are dead and only 31 are alive. In a Forbes Magazine study of around 100 companies from '17 to '87, only 39 companies were found to survive. Management of Change:-Research proves that many change models don't consider the human experience during change. The overriding concern seems to be to downsize. It was found that most change processes go through four fundamental stages.

• People try to resist or deny change

• They adapt, participate in the change

• They attempt to add value

• The culmination or formation of a new status-quo

1.2.6 A number of presentations revealed that leaders who initiate change must do so with one foot in the future and the other planted in past values. Forgetting tradition must can devalue existing strengths. The success of a change process depends on the skill of the facilitator to create a participatory process to enlist the support of people and address the issue of grief.

1.2.7 E-Learning :- Organisations like Ford Motor, Hewlett Packard, Intel and IBM are using e-learning to increase the knowledge of their people. Companies like Fordstar even manage time differences between countries while conducting virtual class rooms, chats, demos, presentations to communicate new concepts, product details, core values, issues of governance and corporate communities.

1.2.8 CEO's are talking to their people about new ideas and enlisting their support through forums and message boards. This is changing the way people behave and work. The advantages of e-learning are many: It is self-paced, flexible, less expensive, modular and has a huge reach.

1.2.9 Universities like Cornell, MIT, Stanford, etc, have started emphasizing e-learning to attract a worldwide audience. Web-centric universities are becoming the order of the day. William Taylor, editor and managing partner of the Fast Pace magazine, said, "There is no going back from back from dotcoms". He was of the opinion that there is a merger taking place between computers and human beings.

1.3 INNOVATIVE PRACTICES IN HR

1.3.1 The Innovative Practices in Human Resources study uncovered 12 practices that are reducing HR costs and improving service quality to employees. Key findings from this research included the need for HR managers to streamline processes, lower overhead costs, and enable their departments to advance from transactional organizations to strategic partners in the business.

1.3.2   Practices and technologies include:

• Internet and intranet employee services

• Strategic human resources

• Centralized HR departments and call centers

• 360-degree performance appraisals

• HRIS systems

• Employee self-service

• Voice response systems (VRUs)

• Resume scanning and Internet recruitment

• Kiosks

• Automated time and attendance systems

• Team policies and development

• Outsourcing

• Business process reengineering (BPR)

 

1.4 LINKING PAY TO PERFORMANCE

1.4.1 Most Human Resource professionals are familiar with the concept of strategy. There is much more concentration and focus today on the strategic outcomes of human resource activity than ever before. The area of compensation is no exception.

1.4.2 Pay for performance systems are becoming more and more popular as senior managers reach beyond the use of compensation systems to deliver pay. There is far more interest in more closely linking the reward mechanisms to the achievement of corporate objectives. Motivation for superior performance is the goal.

1,4.3 In experience, most organizations will profess to a "pay-for-performance" philosophy as a keystone of their compensation system. Such a system requires solid grounding in a clear and documented link between performance and salary increases. Unfortunately, the link between individual performance and pay is frequently nonexistent - "merit" pay is a hollow concept in this regard.

1.4.4 A merit system demands that managers be willing to make distinctions in merit increases based on performance. However, several factors get in the way of this happening. First, the annual salary change is usually a small percentage. Giving the better performer 2% more than the cost of living has little motivation or recognition attached to it. Similarly giving the poor performers 2% less than the cost of living increase is not that much of a penalty. So many managers don't make that distinction - it is too much hassle. So everybody gets the same increase.

1.4.5 Second, most performance appraisal systems are after-the-fact appraisals. In other words, at appraisal time, which is usually toward the end of the year, managers are required to evaluate the performance of their staff. It means sitting down and trying to reconstruct what each staff member did, capturing it in a non-threatening way, communicating the evaluation without a fuss and finally, making a merit increase recommendation. Sound like a familiar pattern? It is a process that repeats itself year after year.

1.4.6 The end result is usually a lot of avoidance behavior. Managers avoid the appraisal process like the plague. Although employees profess to want to "know where they stand" they often take issue with the appraisal. Besides, they don't listen to the evaluation, they wait until the penny literally "drops". "What is my rating and how much do I get?" is a constant theme in merit systems where salary decisions are tied so closely with the appraisal process.

1.4.7 You might well ask is there any way out of this mess? The answer is fortunately yes. Organizations that are the best and want to separate themselves from the rest, are turning away from the merit system and toward an annual incentive system, particularly for middle and upper management positions but increasingly for teams and individuals lower down in the organization as well.

1.4.8 They are adopting a system of annual incentive bonuses linked directly to the achievement of corporate and individual objectives in three specific areas. The areas are corporate revenues and gains, cost containment and behavioral changes. The first two areas are quantitative and the third area, which is gaining in importance, is qualitative in nature, and has a great deal to do with building managerial and individual competence.

1.4.9 Why Is This Transition Occurring? :-Well, there are many challenges facing businesses today and these challenges are driving them to find better ways of linking pay and performance to the achievement of corporate results..

1.5 CHANGING JOB DESIGN IN IT COMMUNITY

1.5.1 The California State University (CSU) system is being challenged to meet increasing demands for educational and administrative services through the innovative use of technology and human resource systems. Even though funding levels for higher education have been cut in recent years, public/taxpayer expectations and the demands for quality education, access, service, and accountability have grown. Technology initiatives within the CSU have resulted in significant advances and improved technical capabilities and efficiency. Human resource and organizational systems are also needed to capitalize on and thrive in this rapidly changing work environment.

1.5.2 In 1991, the CSU began a study to look at alternative work and job design approaches to meet these challenges. The study focused on the information technology community and how work processes and activities could be better organized to remove artificial barriers and improve organizational effectiveness, a process often associated with the term "reengineering." Secondly, the study focused on developing a job design approach that could adapt to changing skill requirements and that would promote the continuous acquisition of skills for knowledge-based employees in information technology. The goal of improved organizational effectiveness and an orientation towards reengineering and skills guided the development of the proposed job design approach.

1.5.3 This article begins by identifying several trends that led to the study, then describes the overall project within the context of an organizational effectiveness equation. A new job design approach that was proposed as a result of the study is presented, including a new classification structure and competency dimensions and measures for defining and evaluating positions. Finally, other supporting systems are described for an integrated human resources approach. The development phase of the project has been completed, and the CSU anticipates entering into negotiations with its employee representatives in the near future.

1.5.4 Three trends have had a direct impact on the development of a strategic job design approach for the information technology community at the CSU: (a) diversification and convergence of technology, increased demand for educational access and (b) changes in instructional delivery methods; and changing work place demands and priorities.

1.5.5 The technology demands within higher education lead to a complex and dynamic computing environment. Academic and administrative computing strategies tend to be at cross-purposes in terms of defining systems requirements. This has resulted in widely diverse systems and technology within and across the CSU's twenty campuses. Increasingly, however, campus systems are becoming more integrated, as data are shared across multiple platforms on a network "highway" that is linked to external information sources. Networking and desktop computing have removed traditional boundaries for information access, research, and decision-support purposes. Data, voice, and video technologies continue to be combined in more interactive and user-friendly formats.

1.5.6 In terms of educational trends, many institutions offer distance learning using various transmission media and are incorporating instructional technology into curriculum development. Students expect guaranteed access to technology and to research databases, and this access has become an issue of social responsibility.[1] Library and computing functions are becoming increasingly interdependent in "an infrastructure of scholarly communication" within higher education.[2] Workplace trends, as presented in Sustaining Excellence in the 21st Century: A Vision and Strategies for College and University Administration, well represent the outlook for the CSU. Two key issues are identified:

(1) Economics. There is increasing pressure to constrain administrative costs within the "labor intensive cost structure" that exists in higher education. Reductions in staff are occurring at the same time as transaction volume and service expectations are growing.

(2) Decentralization of responsibility. With fewer people and greater access to information, organizations are moving responsibility for decision-making downward to the point of service. Work organization is shifting away from job specialization and a task/procedure orientation, to more generalized job responsibilities focused on outcome and greater participation on cross-functional teams

(3) Another central workplace trend is the "earning and learning" environment described by the U.S. Department of Labor in its Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) report. To quote Thomas P. Foley, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry:"We've changed from the idea of "one skill, one job" to the reality of a range of skills that have to apply to a number of different kinds of professions. More to the point, workers must possess a skill that they continually upgrade just to keep pace in the professions they choose."

(4) The influx of new technology and applications has created a demand for continual learning and adaptation. Due to the CSU's relatively stable workforce, maintaining skills to keep pace with changing technology was identified as a critical goal. Knowledge requirements are expanding to encompass a greater breadth of technologies and subject expertise, as well as including process-oriented capabilities such as communication and negotiation skills.

1.5.7 The implications of these technological , educational, and workplace trends point directly to the need to reengineer organizational structures, work design, and processes. Based on these trends and overall organizational goals, two key objectives were established for a new job design approach for the CSU: flexibility and skill development. Fundamentally, each campus needs the flexibility to achieve its goals by distributing work assignments in a way that optimizes its available skill mix and promotes individual skill development and initiative.

 

1.6 OBJECTIVES OF STUDY

1.6.1 Following were the objectives of the study:-

1. To enlist emerging HR trends in Indian IT Industry

2. To review literature and research done in this area.

3. To find out lacking areas regarding the HRD in IT sector.

4. To measure the perceptions of IT sector employees in respect of application of HRD in their organisation.

5. To suggest the measures to fill the gaps and improve motivation level of employees and HR management in IT industry.

 

1.7 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

1.7.1 The study was exploratory in nature. All published and unpublished available on the subject matter was consulted. Interview and discussions were held with the various executive/ Managers/ staff employed in IT sector. The HRD functions/ activities being undertaken in different IT organisations were also studied. Primary and secondary data available with these organisations was also used for this project study.

1.7.2 In order to measure the employees perceptions of emerging HR trends in different IT organisation, the survey was undertaken. The survey was based on structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was mainly based on objective type close-ended question, but few open ended questions were also included.

1.7.3 Firstly, the pilot survey on ten randomly selected respondents was undertaken. Then the questionnaire was modified accordingly, if desired.

1.7.4 The final questionnaire was administered in person to the extent possible and through mail if needed. The 100 respondents were selected among the executives and staff working in various IT organizations. The convenient random sampling technique was used for the selection of the respondents.

1.7.5 Finally, the results of the survey has been presented in Tabular form, analyzed and interpreted to meet the required needs of this project study and presented in Report form.