Lessons from recession

The show is certainly going on for some. They are gathering the most from this crisis and capitalizing on the lessons learnt. They are daring to be different and yet play at the same level field. Renuka Vembu on how organizations are finding opportunity in adversity Every cloud has a silver lining. Well, the adage holds true as the worst recession has hit the global economy and are draining resources out. Even amidst gloom all around, there are people and organizations who are finding opportunity in this adversity. Perhaps they are those who believe that the worst times are the best teachers. Delving deep There is a lesson to learn for everyone and an opportunity to change for the better. For organizations, it revolves around cost savings, streamlining of processes, stringent allocation and monitoring of resources, cutting the fat and linking employee pay only as per performance, lowering attrition rates, revisiting and strengthening the polices and peoplebase, etc. For employees, it would be adding value to their everyday work and being performance-oriented, and being cross-trained and multi-skilled. Ulhas Aher, Head, HR, Datacraft India, added that the current slowdown in the economy has really taught many lessons to organizations and individuals alike. From leadership to individual contributor, from high performer to low performer, shortcomings have started surfacing and are getting exposed. S R Manjunath, Senior HR Director, NetApp India, asserted, It is important for any organization to follow strong fundamentals in managing the businessefficient operations, cost management and meritocracy on employee performance and rewards. This would help a company to stay competitive, irrespective of the environment and the adjustments required to be done will be minimal when they are hit with a recession or any other challenge in the market place. The clean up that has happened across companies has set the base line on how the companies should manage in the future proactively v/s having to react when faced with similar situations. A lean-mean attitude has taken over and is helping companies swim through the tide. Agility and adaptation, restructuring and reskilling, are some of the lessons that are staring at the face of the entire organizational ecosystem. Vivek Menon, Director, Human Capital Management, Integreon, explained, While it is essential for organizations to differentiate themselves and showcase value and service that they bring to customers, from the HR and employees perspective, we need to ensure that there is minimal redundancy in the system and we implement appropriate processes that enable us to provide maximum value to both internal and external clients of the organization. Emphasis on training and enhancing the skill-sets of our people, enable them to work across verticals as per the need of the organization. This in turn helps in reducing redundancy and increasing resource utilization. Also, the company has a focus on a gamut of customers across service lines and verticals instead of putting all their eggs in a single basket. They dont depend on any major client or vertical has for more than 10% of their revenues. This has helped the organization in allocating people as per the need of various

clients and maximizing resource utilization. It also re-iterates the need for retraining people from time to time. Changing perspectives
"The current slowdown in the economy has really taught many lessons to organizations and individuals alike. From leadership to individual contributor, from high performer to low performer, shortcomings have started surfacing and are getting exposed" - Ulhas Aher Head, HR, Datacraft India "HR has been playing a strategic role given the growth and need to meet staffing demand. And in todays situation, it is once again playing a strategic role managing cost and assisting in decision-making that impact employees" - Chetan Shah MD, Synygy India "We have been able to inculcate the entrepreneurial culture within them, wherein they are no longer thinking on the lines of just being employees, but also being part owners of the business" - Vivek Menon Director, Human Capital Management, Integreon

With limited job openings, employees have to be equal partners in taking onus and charge of the situation. Scaling pay packets have been brought back to normalcy. The misappropriate increase has been aligned and now employees no more have the liberty of frequent job jumps only taking the enormous hike as a consideration. Likewise, for organizations, retraining staff and upgrading their skill-sets will help in the short-term as well as pay off in the long run. Large-scale hiring and staff on bench have to be sliced while the huge pipeline of projects that werent set to take off in the near future, and which had a tentative returns on investment have to be re-thought and well-planned. The HR personnel have also to start learning to do more with less, and expand their focus area and be all-inclusive. Chetan Shah, MD, Synygy India, said, HR has been playing a strategic role given the growth and need to meet staffing demand. And in todays situation, it is once again playing a strategic role managing cost and assisting in decision-making that impact employees. Revamping policies, fine-tuning strategies The challenge and the solution for organizations lie in modification, and more importantly, adherence to policies and procedures. Yesterdays necessities having become todays luxuries, and hence there has arisen a need for re-examining the map on which the entire organizational framework was chartered.

Shah felt, It is not so much the loopholes around policies, but more around its compliance. Many organizations are realizing that policies were not being followed and complied with and so stricter enforcement has become imperative. These can be in expense reimbursements, time-off tracking, dress codes, etc. A differentiating factor at Integreon is that their appraisal system is not only focused on rewarding the top performers, but also aimed at understanding the needs of the average performers. The company believes that if an employee is an average performer, either he/she is in the wrong role or doesnt have some of the specific skill sets for the job. In either case, they analyze and identify the non-performance areas of the employee and look at options to address those. A two-way traffic

It is widely agreed and accepted that if the company has shown respect towards its workforce and been transparent in their dealings and communication, employees have traveled the extra mile and put in efforts and maintained their loyalty towards the company too. They have improved their service levels, enhanced their skills and taken on additional work. They have worked towards enhancing their aptitude and technical expertise and knowledge-base, being equal participants in taking onus of the situation and shouldering equal responsibility. The employer-employee relationships have improved where companies have stood their ground, considered the long-term perspective, and treated employees with respect and as assets. It has faltered where the short-term damage control mechanism has been given more weightage than a long-term planned approach. Even with lower budgets, companies have re-planned and worked within limited means, not compromising on the training and development, reward and recognition, or even the recreation aspect. So there have been organizations that have cashed-in on the opportunity and not resorted to lay-offs, but have also managed to recruit additional talent. They will be the significant beneficiaries when times improve and talent surfaces again. Menon proudly asserted, We are doing away with policies and processes that are not delivering value to the end customers. This has brought in a culture of questioning the status-quo. The biggest silver lining has been the response from the employees to these times. We have seen a sense of ownership and belonging in them towards the work. We have been able to inculcate the entrepreneurial culture within them, wherein they are no longer thinking on the lines of just being employees, but also being part owners of the business. Future course of action In Synygy, they plan to focus on automation for all their processes. The slowdown has made them reallocate staff to improve productivity through automation of internal processes. By way of this investment, they expect to reap rewards once the economic scenario improves, through less administrative staff and better business growth. Aher feels that in this time of recession when the supply is more than demand, speed of delivery and value addition to clients business act as the key drivers of business. He added, Those who have invested in employee development and retaining key talent are the one who are leading the pack and grabbing opportunities. Organizations have realized the importance of employee and leadership development, and also multi-skilling which has helped many organizations to utilize employees optimally. Manjunath raised a hopeful voice that the current experience of having to deal with huge impact of the recession would help the eco-system to be sensitive in following strong fundamentals in everything they do rather than reacting to spikes in opportunities in the market place which keep changing from time to time. The current impact is big enough for everyone to learn and to be cautious on how the corporates need to be managed to minimize the impact if such situations repeat again, he echoed.

All companies have tweaked their policies and strategies to fit into their scheme of business interests and market standings. It is just a case of few having worked to the best with restrained resources while others compromised too much to combat the current wave