Indian HR

When considering a partnership to outsource one or more of a company’s functions, it is important to design and analyze the contract to meet multiple business requirements. All contract points should be synergized to guide the desired outcome based on their collective outcomes.
1. Service level agreements (SLAs):
An SLA is an official document included in the master contract for an outsourcing agreement that includes a detailed description of services required and level of performance needed. When preparing an SLA, design it to meet the needs for project success in deliverables as well as financials. Set a standard when reviewing potential outsourcing partners’ capabilities and making a provider selection. Outsourcing requires a high level of trust, and only with careful planning, monitoring and execution of the SLA will success be obtained.
2. Legalities:
Hire a legal firm, or use an in-house legal expert to take advantage of his or her experience designing outsourcing contracts. Look for specific verbiage on the contract that covers risk mitigation, change orders, regional compliance issues, delegation of tasks, partial or total delegation, ownership of IP and future retention after the contract term, contract termination measures, transition of tasks, and other items that may be necessary.
3. Expertise:
The goal is to make the outsourcing process seamless – new assets are just like talent. Whether it’s an outsourcing provider’s technical proficiency, specific industry niche experience or ability to perform at the expected level, on time and budget, draw on that provider’s expertise. If the project will require ongoing compliance to changing laws and obtaining various certifications, engage an outsourcer with a proven track record. The outsourcing partner must be knowledgeable of requirements for initial project phases and have the capabilities and be forward-thinking enough to obtain what the organization needs to remain compliant and on target.
4. Milestones:
Setting milestone achievements is key in the outsourcing contract. Milestones should involve any and all actions toward specific needs. Product delivery phases, personnel deployment, fee allocations, acquiring specialized permits or certifications, obtaining government approvals and creating valuable training programs are just a few items to include when expecting milestones to be met during contract duration.
5. Backup plans:
Even after completing due diligence in selecting an outsourcing partner, an organization needs a plan B, or backup plan, as a contingency. In some cases, it may help to have a plan C. Outsourcing partners may be acquired or suffer an unexpected financial decline, even though their past financials reflect a strong position. Unexpected acts of nature, wars, embargoes, natural and man-made disasters, sudden passing of key management figures, and many other factors can contribute to a sudden change of contract plans.
Outsourcing is a necessity today. Enhancing company value to shareholders while focusing on core competencies is a daily challenge. If talent leaders monitor and balance talent assignments, equipment allocation and other assets while performing within financial constraints, with the right preparation, attention to detail and ongoing oversight, outsourcing contracts can become a key business asset.
by Richard G. Shulman | Talent Management
[About the Author: Richard G. Shulman is a director at The Training Associates.]

Daniel Margolis

Staffing agency Kelly Services places top talent in employment opportunities across the globe — all while developing its own internal talent.

As a staffing agency, Kelly Services operates in a space unique to its industry; its product is people. According to Nina Ramsey, senior vice president of human resources for Kelly Services, the overall company strategy as well as the company’s individual employee development plans are built around an understanding that Kelly deals in human capital.

“We ask people to connect their goals to the three strategic objectives of the company, which are all centered [on] people, profit and customers,” Ramsey said.

Kelly provides staffing services and employment opportunities globally. As with any international endeavor, it requires a fair amount of manpower to do so, boasting a workforce of 7,500 full-time employees. Ramsey spoke with Talent Management about the challenges involved in managing staff who manage staff.

TM: Describe Kelly Services’ approach to talent management.

Ramsey: As a company, strategically we made a commitment over the last couple of years toward creating a high engagement culture and [being] an employer of choice. We believe in a connection between employee engagement, customer engagement and then profitability — that whole equation. We know we need to focus on having the right leaders in place and additionally that we need to make it possible for people to grow and develop in their careers, not only for their current jobs but also for future roles. So our approach to talent management really touches every step of the employee’s life cycle while they’re with us, from the point in time that you’re sourcing and recruiting all the way to the point in time when they’re transitioning to other employment or to retirement, whatever the case might be.

TM: What processes or programs have you established to improve the performance of Kelly’s entire workforce?

Ramsey: First of all, we’ve built multiple competency models for all levels of the organization. Whether you’re an individual performer or you’re a leader of people, we have competency models that really cover all positions within the company. We developed an assessment methodology that we use for all our leadership roles. We have an extensive on-boarding program that was designed to establish an early connection to the employee as well as to reduce time to productivity. We’ve had great success with it because it’s allowed us to see an improvement in turnover for the people who go through this on-boarding program, and we’ve also seen a decrease in the time to productivity.

Right now, we’re in the process of developing career maps for every position in the organization so that people can see what their options are across the company — so not just in the group that they work with now, but in other groups down the road. We’re hoping to have a good number of those finished by the end of the year.

TM: How is performance management linked to Kelly’s strategic objectives?

Ramsey: Over the last few years, we’ve been sharing what the plan of the company is across the world through our intranet. And so our employees get a chance to see what the strategy of the company is in a concise fashion; we’ve got what we refer to as “the strategic plan on a page.” Department plans are linked to people, profit [and] customer strategy, and then we ask folks to fill out their performance plans to correspond with those three strategic objectives. And those plans are developed early in the year and reviewed at various points throughout the year — minimally at midyear, at which point we do an extensive check in on their development progress — as well as at the end of the year to evaluate overall performance for the year.

TM: What challenges impact talent management at Kelly?

Ramsey: From a technology standpoint, we’re a bit challenged in that we don’t have a single HRIM [human resource information management] tool across the world, and while we’re pleased with all of the capability that we have across the U.S., we are a global company, and we are finding it a challenge to connect all the dots across the world from an HRIM perspective. We are making progress in that manner, but we’re definitely challenged on the technology front from an HRIM standpoint.

The whole role of the leader as the most significant career coach the person will have in their journey — just establishing the role of the leader as coach — is new. So getting our leaders up to speed fast enough on what it means to be a career development coach is another challenge. We’ve had in the last couple of years, particularly with the economic challenges around the world, some limited resources in terms of rewarding developing people, and so that’s been a challenge. I don’t think we’re alone in that. Getting beyond the view that compensation is the answer to retention of top talent has been another challenge as well. Many of our leaders now understand and embrace that it’s more than just paying people enough, it’s everything you do for them from an environment standpoint and culture, as well as from a development perspective.

TM: How does Kelly work to change or create leadership and management behaviors that lead to optimal workforce performance?

Ramsey: We’re really privileged to have a talent leadership advisory board at Kelly that’s comprised of senior leaders across the company, so their prime focus is to ensure that we’re building the bench strength needed for the company.

We’ve created and launched a leadership blueprint for the company, and the blueprint is really an aspirational competency model for what it means to be a leader at Kelly today and our vision for what the leaders of the future will look like. That’s really the basis from which we’re developing selection tools [and] development opportunities and we’re making succession and transition moves for the company.

TM: How does Kelly develop organizational culture and employee attitudes to optimize workforce performance?

Ramsey: There’s been an intentional focus over the last few years on executive messaging around the strategic direction of the company and the expectations of leaders and the progress that we’re making against the strategy. We are committed to engagement surveying and action planning, and we’re open about the results and the actions that we’re taking. [We have] an increased focus on acknowledging and celebrating success where we see it happening around the company.

TM: How does Kelly use learning and development to manage talent?

Ramsey: Every employee is encouraged to have a professional development plan to begin with. In our performance management technology, we’ve got a skills assessment that’s mapped to the learning available to them. It has recommendations in it that balance out traditional ways in which one can learn via classroom and online to even on the job. We also [offer] more experience-based learning recommendations, providing development opportunities for people that we view as top talent to prepare them for future roles that we’ve identified they’d be capable of performing.

TM: What processes or programs have you established to attract, recruit and retain top talent?

Ramsey: The on-boarding program that we implemented has been one of our most extensive efforts with regard to engagement and retention. We’ve seen a decrease by 85 percent in turnover and a 27 percent improvement in productivity with the folks who have been through that program, so it’s been very encouraging. We also launched a pivotal talent initiative a little over a year ago where we’re beginning to look more carefully at revenue-generating roles, honing in on what the customers require of those roles; what skills and capabilities are needed to perform them; [and] what do we need to do to make sure that we have the right reward strategy in place for those roles.

TM: How do you measure workforce performance?

Ramsey: We do it through looking at individual accomplishments against one’s goals on their performance plans. We look at unit and organizational measures as well, largely either key projects that have been accomplished, whether the financial measures have been achieved, both on an individual unit or organizational level. We measure turnover and hold leaders accountable for [it, and] we measure engagement and hold leaders accountable for their engagement scores.

TM: How do you use assessments to manage Kelly’s talent?

Ramsey: Beginning a couple of years ago, we installed a leadership assessment approach for the company, and we’ve thus far looked at the top 200 folks primarily in our operational roles in the company. We’ve not gotten to all of the support staff yet, but [we have done it] in the operations area. That assessment process is comprised of some self-assessment, but also 360-degree assessment, looking at one’s current performance as well as potential. So we’ve done that across the organization, and the result of that has really told us where the common development needs are. We’re able to use that information as a basis for which we develop curriculum and implement programs around the world that will support those more common development needs.

TM: What’s next for your organization in terms of talent management and workforce performance development?

Ramsey: We intend to continue using the pivotal talent approach that we’re taking to look at revenue-generating roles and developing the right approach for selecting, developing and rewarding [talent]. We will be doing some targeted workforce planning to correspond with the strategy of the company. We’re going to do some targeted succession and development of folks that are working on key business initiatives, some folks that have been identified as top talent for successor roles. And we’re adding some additional leadership curriculum over the next several months to correspond with what we learned through our assessment pro

by Deanna Hartley | Talent Management
The global nature of business today oftentimes entails overseeing teams comprised of foreign nationalities – a reality that has spawned “Outsourced,” an NBC sitcom that documents the journey of a manager whose department gets outsourced to India.
“I worry about people seeing the show. Because it’s in India, they somehow would think there are different rules in India about managing human behavior – and there aren’t,” said Aubrey Daniels, author of Oops! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time and Money.
The core management principles that enable employees to perform effectively are the same, regardless of geography, he explained. Bosses on shows such as “The Office” and “Outsourced” amuse audiences because they are often clueless as to why they can’t influence their direct reports to behave in certain ways. According to Daniels, this is because they take a one-size-fits-all approach to workforces.
“Any time you try to reinforce everybody with the same thing – whether it’s something you say or something you give them – you’re going to be in trouble, because what’s positive to one may be negative to another,” he said. “In ‘Outsourced,’ there are going to be lots of occasions like that, where the American is going to try to reinforce everybody with ‘steaks [are] on me’ – and that may not go over very well.”
Here are a few tips for managers of global – or even local – teams to improve performance.
1. Learn employees’ positive reinforcers.
“You could pat somebody on the back and not increase whatever they’re doing, so that would tell you that’s not a reinforcer,” Daniels said. “We need to look at behavior to see the impact of what we do. If I’m going to have a good relationship with you, then I’m going to have to pay attention to you; I’ve got to watch your behavior and how you respond to things I do.”
In an organization, this may entail setting up candid one-on-one meetings with direct reports.
“We sit down with [the employee] and say, ‘Tell me what’s important to you, what you’re trying to accomplish here. Why did you come to work here? What do you want to accomplish for yourself short term and long term?’” he said.
Doing so not only empowers the individual to contribute his or her best to the organization, but also helps managers develop a good working relationship with direct reports.
2. Pinpoint behaviors that add value.
Throwing out ambiguous statements, such as ‘We want you to take more initiative,’ doesn’t serve to improve employee performance, Daniels explained.
“We want to determine what drives the result we’re trying to accomplish, and we find over and over again that managers don’t know what it is, as basic as that seems,” he said.
For this reason, it would behoove managers to pinpoint behaviors that add value and be specific when communicating them to their direct reports. In a sales situation, it may be setting up meetings with prospective customers, writing proposals, etc.
3. Graph employee progress.
Graphic feedback – or feedback plotted on a graph or chart of some sort – allows managers to track the progress of individuals or groups, Daniels explained.
“The value of a graph is you can see small changes in behavior, which allows you many more opportunities to reinforce them than if you’re not tracking it,” he said. “Other people seeing that can comment on how well you’re doing, so you can get social reinforcement as well as reinforcement from the boss.
For example, graphically tracking the frequency of customer contact in a given week may help a bank strengthen its relationship-banking efforts.
4. Reinforce behaviors that contribute to progress.
Tangible business results aren’t immediately obvious. For example, it may take the aforementioned bank a month to begin to detect an increase in sales.
“The problem is, if you didn’t get some form of recognition for the effort you were making in contacting the customers, then in four weeks your effort would diminish because the results are lagging the behavior,” Daniels said. “If you know that contact with customers is going to increase sales, then your job as a manager or supervisor is to make behaviors get enough reinforcement to keep them going until such time as they begin to see [an] increase in sales.”
5. Celebrate results.
Managers typically commend their teams for a job well done by calling them together, telling them how well they performed and providing something tangible, such as cash incentives or time off.
“We talk about a celebration as an opportunity to relive an accomplishment,” he said. “The celebration should be employees talking about what they did to create that result. That’s their reinforcement because it allows management to see how smart they are, how hard they worked, how difficult it was, etc.”