Nuts & Bolts

One of the key HRM rituals in organisations is carrying out employee performance reviews, pay hikes and enhancing job responsibilities. This is also known as PMS, Performance Appraisals, Employee Appraisals, Rewards Management etc. But why do Business owners want this? To segregate performers from non-performers. Why? To recognize performance. Why? To motivate performers to repeat or improve their performance. Why? To get good or better business performance and profitability. So good individual performance is an imperative for getting good business performance. So business owners or employers have reasons to ensure that their employees perform well. But how do they measure employee performance? Typically, employers consider performance to be directly proportional to utilization or productivity, i.e. (output / input) or (output hours / available hours).  It means, more the hours of work or output with the available man-hours, higher would be the performance! Though this hypoth...

ISO 9000. Probably one of the most misused and misunderstood management framework in recent times! What exactly is ISO 9000? It denotes a series of standards for quality management system from International Organisation for Standardization (or ISO) located in Geneva, Switzerland. ISO is an independent non-governmental organisation with membership of 162 national standard bodies (e.g. BIS or Bureau of Indian Standards is one such member). And Quality Management System is a framework for managing the operations in an organization in such a manner that the quality of the delivered product or services meets the specification, which was confirmed to the customer. ISO 9000 series includes a standard ISO 9001:2015 that is used for certification (or recognition) of compliance of the stated requirements by an organisation. This certification is granted by an authorized certification agency. The certification agencies verify the activities and /or evidences thereof by an organisation and...

Do you Have a continuously changing ‘To do list’ and updating it takes lot of time and you miss out on important actions several times? Find it difficult to track progress of tasks that you had assigned to your Leaders and Managers? Miss reviews with your team members for updates on the assigned tasks because of lack of time? Find different team leaders arguing or blaming one another for delay in responses, task updates or decisions that affects their team output or achievement Find it very tedious to go over the flood of sms and whatsapp messages from all your team members and spot the ones that may need your attention for any action / decision? If you think you are losing out on revenues and profits because of the above then you are damn right and you aren't alone! Most business managers and small business owners are familiar with these challenges and are unable to resolve them appropriately despite all the software tools that are now easily available free or at...

Business organisations, Leaders and Managers are rarely short of improvement or change ideas that many times look very promising. However, it is probably equally rare to see these ideas get implemented successfully! Then are the ideas inappropriate, or the decision-makers not interested in improving things, or the people do not want it, or something else that resists implementation success? There are scores of material available today on what ensures implementation success. So I need not repeat them anymore. I also feel most Leaders and Managers are aware of these essentials too. What I see most Managers miss out on is an approach to involve the target group in the implementation process! Its normally a top down given to you implementation job that smacks of imposition and demonstration of authority or power by the higher ups in the hierarchy. The people who are expected to implement and benefit from the improvements are made to detest and resist the change. So invariably the c...

We all want to change something or the other to get some improved outcome. The desired improvement could be in our personal or professional areas. It could be improved performance, reduced travel time, quicker task completion, improved effectiveness of a training session....etc. The list can be endless. But do we always get the improvement we desired? Unfortunately no. And I am sure it can't be attributed to our lack of commitment or intent in most occasions. Then why? Let me share an example to illustrate a typical improvement effort gone wrong! I was once scheduled to address a group of salespeople of a retail store before the start of the start of their daily work. they had to plan it that way as getting them together during the work hours without affecting sales operations was not practicable at all. So they had planned about 30-45 minutes' session for the sales team. As I had learnt that they have a prayer meeting about 10/15 minutes before store opening, I had sugge...

Does our expectations increase as we achieve something? It surely does and we start expecting something more, better, bigger or higher? That's human nature and it's true for everyone, but the type and quantum of expectations are different for different individuals. Now, why am I discussing expectations? We all know this! But do we as leaders or business owners, consider fulfilling expectations of our teams or only ours for fulfillment? This is where many business owners / leaders do not feel comfortable. I have had several instances of heated arguments with business owners about why they felt it was better not to create opportunities or reward teams adequately so that their expectations do not grow! They felt it could cost them more, and /or retention could be more challenging. Does this make any logical sense? If I am expecting higher revenues and profits, how do I go about it? I will naturally expect my teams to achieve higher or steeper targets to fulfill my expectatio...

It is absolutely essential for the small businesses to hire right talent to grow business. Every small business owner understands the importance of getting the right person to work with him. However, very few are able to break the hiring jinx! Let's understand why. The recruitment process involves the following steps Defining the job specification for the vacancy  Inviting applications through advertisements in portals or newspapers or through placement consultants Screening applications and shortlisting candidates Conducting interviews / evaluations to select candidate(s) for final consideration Job offer and acceptance  Joining and closing the vacancy To get the right fit candidate (or top talent for the business), we must do the first 5 steps right. We all know this and try to do it well too. But does it still get us the right candidates? No is the more common answer. Why? Because success of the steps also depend on the response of the job seekers.  ...