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Showing posts from January, 2013

Employees are assets but workforce is a liability.

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“Employees are our assets” almost every CEO has perhaps used it at least once in his lifetime. However, adding these assets under these uncertain economic conditions has become somewhat difficult. Companies, big and small alike, often do not have a steady influx of projects. You may have projects to engage 600 people in one part of the year in other parts of the year you may not have enough work for 200 people. In such cases it is impossible to maintain a workforce of 600 throughout the year. This problem has given rise to new breed of manpower sourcing agencies. We often refer to them as body shoppers. These firms provide temporary workforce to those companies in need. Some larger companies also utilize their bench by lending their workforce to other companies on a temporary basis.  From the example above, the company would employ 200 people and hire contractors when their workforce need gets escalated. Body shoppers employ contractors and supply them on a need basis. Reaso

The Almighty Report

Employees from across industries and domains frown when their managers ask them for a report. Reporting, in the eyes of many, is not a productive activity. Nonetheless, every organization maintains a fleet of reporting / MIS analyst, Business analysts, BI tools etc.  For most companies the reporting and analytics fleet will remain an overhead unless the core business of the company is analytics, BI or reporting. Despite its auxiliary nature, reports are very powerful. They help those at the helm to call the shots which can make or break the future of a company, and those associated with it. People providing reports are always the first to see information, like a sailor atop the mast. The reporting team will have the results of a company even before the CFO sees it. In many companies, members of the reporting team are prohibited from trading in shares. And the power of these reports puts its creators in a very responsible spot. Like my Manager rightly reminded me, a wrong report an