What is the Organisation Worth? Nandita Gurjar (VP-HR, Infosys Ltd.) discloses HR’s new role of being the only change agent that can survive the current economic crisis |
 We are in the midst of an economic downturn, with bearish stocks, inflation at a record high, rampant job cuts and the general mood of gloom and insecurity in the economy. It comes as no surprise that the PM has intervened to provide the much-required adrenalin. In these challenging times, all stakeholders greatly look forward to value-creation through HR.Most businesses today are facing tough questions like: How do we protect our margins? When the trend is ‘latest-being-already-outdated’, what should be the best value proposition to clients? How can cost optimisation be balanced while keeping employee motivation and morale high? Till the early 1990s, corporate value was driven by tangible assets presented in the balance sheet and it was linked with all performance goals. By early 2000, the relationship between market value and tangible assets changed dramatically. The book value of the assets represented less than 15% of total market value. In short, intangible assets became the key drivers of market value in the new economy. So, what is HR’s role in creating and sustaining value? Using HR analytics for dashboard-driven decisions has paved the way for an integrated approach to human capital management, while delivering value for every people-related decision made by the organisation. It goes beyond employee satisfaction and turnover percentages, and takes a look at what actually constitutes those percentages and helps with actionable measures throughout an employee’s life cycle. The first step of the cycle is hiring. HR analytics have helped us identify the best sources for hiring not only from the attraction perspective, but in terms of conversion and performance of hires through these sources. They have also provided key insights with respect to consultant-based hiring and attrition patterns. The next step being deployment, HR has helped with bench deployment and internal mobility analysis. This helped greatly to change the way in which we looked at the new hire deployment, making it more employee-centric in nature, which in turn impacted longevity with the company. The analysis of the nature of internal mobility helped us fill in process issues, thereby making the transition a pleasant experience for the employee. Engagement means different things to different employees – some may enjoy working while others seek recreation at their hobby clubs. Spend analytics help in prioritising spends to ensure maximum returns on HR spend for employee engagement. An engaged employee is a satisfied employee. And this can be tested and proven right or wrong through a detailed analysis of results from an employee satisfaction survey. Thus, it is not only important to know employee satisfaction in terms of numbers, but also to engage in real action by examining the details of satisfaction results. |
The backbone of the entire HR service delivery experience is a very efficient employee helpdesk. The analysis of the queries channelled through this helpdesk will not only help in fixing the policy/process level issues but also drive up internal service providers’ efficiency. Another interesting return is trends in queries which indicate where we need to improve in order to reach out to our employees in the most effective way. While most organisations today focus on reducing productivity loss through feel-good initiatives, analytics help with an attrition predictive framework to identify and initiate proactive intervention towards retention. It also helps in identifying ‘cost incurred due to attrition’ which could be a factor for the loss of knowledge, cost of replacement hiring, etc. This has been instrumental in helping our managers focus on people management skills. Thus, HR as a function needs to be looked at as a change agent. HR analytics is a powerful tool which helps HR change its focus from ‘what does the employee cost the organisation?’ to ‘what is the organisation worth to the employee?’ It is time that organisations start to acknowledge this. |
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