Laxmikanth Venkatraman (MD, Broadridge Financial Solutions India Pvt. Ltd.) tells Schweta Chaturvedi that leaders should attract the right talent and allow them to be themselves by following the right approach

Q. What makes an ordinary company a ‘great organisation’?

A. It is the people and always the people; this is what I have always believed in and have experienced too. It is the ability to attract, retain and nurture people that makes an organisation great. People make all the difference inside or outside a workplace and that is why they need to feel connected with the organisation. Our job as leaders is primarily to attract the right talent and allow them to be themselves which can be done through the following approach:

Experience, Explore and Grow

People should feel empowered. We, as leaders, have to be the Thirthankara (according to Jainism, Thirthankara is a human being who in addition to achieving liberation and enlightenment, became a role model and leader for those seeking spiritual guidance) who with knowledge and guidance will enable the connection and bridge the gap.

Q. What are your thoughts on the talent base in India? What is the need of the hour to generate more employment opportunities for them?

A. I think, fundamentally, our talent base is good both from the perspective of technical skills as well as from that of soft skills and this is increasingly being recognised globally.

There are some challenges that we have from our education system and from companies which do not equip people adequately to be job ready. But the biggest hurdle in my view is embedded in our thinking. Our system constrains us to think only in a certain manner. Our upbringing and milieu have instilled fear in our minds which has conditioned our living. We need to learn to unlock ‘that’ fear. I believe in F=S=O, that is, fear = scarcity = opportunity (on the lines of counterfactuals). Click here to read more...

Like us and read IIPM Think-Tank articles on facebook

IIPM Think-Tank

Business and Economy

The Sunday Indian

Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri

Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri

4ps Business and Marketing

The Human Factor

IIPM-The Indian Institute of Planning and Management

IIPM Info Page

IIPM - Best Post Graduate Business Management Institute India

Emerging trends

The short-time working programme in Germany, known as ‘Kurzarbeit’, is supposed to ensure that companies across all sectors keep workers employed in times of crisis or low demand by reducing working hours and consequently wage costs. The Federal Employment Agency provides funding for short-time working based on business cycle and economic reasons, providing that certain conditions are met. The agency tops up reduced wages by a certain percentage and subsidises social security contributions on short-time wages by 50 per cent (up to 100 per cent during qualification programmes and after seven months). The programme existed before the crisis, but was extended because of it. The incentives to encourage employers to retain workers by reducing working hours instead of firing them were originally due to expire in 2010-end. According to the German government, the scheme has proved itself during the economic crisis by keeping unemployment lower than in many of the country’s trading partners.

Organising union activities in transnational firms
Between 2007 and 2008, Romania’s Free Trade Union Federation of Commerce (FSLC) carried out activities in companies operating in Romania, with the support of other trade organisations. FSLC concentrated on organising employees in transnational companies. The main companies targeted were Metro Cash & Carry, Carrefour and Billa-Rewe. As a result, FSLC and the newly established Metro union ‘Solidaritatea’ signed a collective agreement in April 2008 for Metro Cash and Carry.

The agreement improved working conditions and wages for the employees at Metro. An information and consultation forum for social dialogue at Metro Romania was also established, and the Romanian employees won a seat on Metro’s European works council. The Metro collective agreement gave a 9.5 per cent increase in wages, a loyalty bonus after five years of employment, and a 10 per cent bonus for work on Saturdays and Sundays. It also provides three paid days each month for union representatives, and stipulates that employers have an obligation to focus on improving working conditions. Click here to read more...

Like us and read IIPM Think-Tank articles on facebook
IIPM Think-Tank
Business and Economy
The Sunday Indian
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri
Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri
4ps Business and Marketing
The Human Factor

Universities have two roles – creating and disseminating knowledge.

Third, focus on improving faculty quality. Universities have two roles – creating and disseminating knowledge. This translates into two key responsibilities for faculty, research and teaching. The importance of faculty undertaking these dual roles is demonstrated by the fact that there are almost no top teaching business schools globally that do not also excel in research. Indeed, excellence in research is an important requirement for eminence in teaching and education. Unfortunately, most Indian business schools do not recognise research, and do not view it as related to teaching and education. As a result, with few exceptions, faculties undertake little research and many institutions rely heavily on practitioners who lack fundamental understanding of theoretical foundations.

Not all faculties or institutions need to undertake global-standard research. Yet the current state in India, where perhaps only one business school does so, suggests a major underlying problem. The solution is a challenging one – introduce research-oriented PhD programmes, hire better quality faculty, offer adequate compensation and align incentives to include research excellence. A concerted effort to draw on Indian faculty abroad to help develop doctoral programmes and faculty should be an immediate priority.

Fourth, allow foreign institutions to establish campuses in India, as that will increase options for students, introduce beneficial competition, raise standards and increase investments in education. While there must be some quality standards, a broad range of institutions should be allowed in. The rationale for doing so is similar to that of encouraging foreign direct investment and arguments against doing so, equally mistaken. Click here to read more...

Read More IIPM Related Articles
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

Professionals make for better teachers

Q. Please give us an overview of the education system in the United Kingdom. Also, how different is it from that in India?

A. The education system in the United Kingdom has experienced the same set of challenges that the Indian system has at some point or the other. In terms of quality and availability of faculty, we have been through a fair share of challenges. Universities in the United Kingdom have depended on faculty with no real-world work experience, even for teaching accountancy courses. On the contrary, the independent training institutes have relied heavily on qualified business professionals to teach professional courses. What we have seen, therefore, is a trend where the independent institutes have almost taken over the entire demand and supply of accounting professionals. Students have moved away from university degrees in accounting to professional programmes supported by training institutions.

Q. What kind of training programmes are conducted for teachers in the United Kingdom?

A Training or qualification is as critical as its application and relevance. Quality teachers have experience of working in the field to back their academic knowledge. The best teacher training programme would expose teachers teaching accountancy or business-related subjects to the real world of business and finance.

Q. What is more important – education or experience, especially at a time when universities and companies are shaking hands?

A. When it comes to teachers, relevant work experience is as important as the academic qualification. Sound exposure to industry ensures that their teaching is backed by examples and case studies from the real world. That means students are more ‘business ready’ when they come out of the institute and the companies do not have to spend too much time in training them. Click here to read more..

Read More IIPM Related Articles
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

Top-performing countries concentrate on producing a surplus of good educationiSt and ensuring every student has a fine teacher.

 Marc S. Tucker (President & CEO, National Center on Education and the Economy) reveals that top-performing countries concentrate on producing a surplus of good educationiSt and ensuring every student has a fine teacher

Q. Serving on the research board and framing education policies since long, where do you see India standing?

A. It seems to me that much of the progress in India in recent years has been made in spite of its government. When I was in India a few years ago, I saw enormous hunger for education everywhere. I saw that cry for education is being met in many places by a bewildering array of agencies, institutions and individuals. It is conceivable that technology might make a substantial difference to India, although my own reading of history in my country is that technology has rarely lived up to its promise in the field of education. We have been researching the countries with the best national school systems for more than 20 years. They did not get there with technology, but the old-fashioned way, by upgrading their teachers, their standards, their curricula and their testing systems. The principles that underlie successful education systems are the same everywhere. If India wants to join the ranks of the top-performing national education systems, it needs to study those principles and adopt them.

Q. How are educational practices in the United States different from other countries?

A. If you look at top performing countries, one of the important steps they have taken is to improve the quality of their teaching force. They have worked hard to raise the standards for entry of teachers in their institutions. In almost all the top 10 performing countries, you will see ratios of applications to acceptances in the order of 6:1, 8:1 and 10:1, resulting which they are recruiting their teachers from a very high segment of their ability spectrum, essentially the same segment they recruit their high status professionals from. Also, there is an increased emphasis on diagnosis and prescriptions and teachers are able to quickly recognise who is lagging behind and needs help. This practice has become an important part of the curricula in these teacher education systems. Click here to read full interview...

Read More IIPM Related Articles
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

That formal system

Ajay Mangal, CEO, Umang Realtech Pvt. Ltd.

 

When I was 18, my pocket money was... less than Rs 10.

When I was 18, my wardrobe was full of... only formals.

When I was 18, my walls had posters of... Sunil Gavaskar.

When I was 18, my study hours per day were... more than 12 hours.

When I was 18, one lesson my dad would teach me everyday was... work hard, it will not go waste.

When I was 18, my wallet would have... no money.

When I was 18, my ambition was... to be a chartered accountant.

When I was 18, my favourite hangout was... the library of Sri Ram College of Commerce. 

When I was 18, I would travel to college by... DTC bus or university special.

When I was 18, the sports I enjoyed the most was... Cricket.

When I was 18, my mentor in life was... my father.

When I was 18, I read... only my text books.

When I was 18, favourite actor was... Amitabh Bachchan.

Click here to read more...

Read More IIPM Related Articles
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

Creating high-performance culture

Performance is the essential internal engine of an organisation which wants to achieve a notable impact in its sector. There is an array of management tools that promises to help improve the performance management process. However, an effective performance management system encompasses everything managers do to ‘lead, manage, assess and develop employees such as establishing objectives, planning individual career development and various assessments, including self assessment, manager assessment, and 360-degree assessments’. This article delineates elements to help leaders and HR practitioners discuss, propose and deliver the best in process.

Performance management should be seen as a continual set of activities like goal setting, managing, coaching, providing feedback, development planning and rewarding and recognising. The organisations that follow it zealously on a regular basis are more effective and perform better. As a practice, leaders should create their business plans or balance scorecards before start of the performance year and should cascade it before the year. Absence of it results in an employee missing the opportunity to be reviewed for the whole year, hence, in effect his annual performance is measured for an incomplete year.

Another observation is that organisations do not customise rating scales on the basis of their needs. Some inherit the scales from their parent organisations to align them globally. Performance rating scales should depend on economic scenarios of the operating market, quantifiable aspect of performance, performance philosophy (meritocratic or tenure), managerial depth, variable pay plans and learning and development agenda of the organisation. Click here to read more...

Read More IIPM Related Articles
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face