The Official Blog of Benifys HR Solutions

Hectic month here at Benifys, like really hectic! Hence the late update, but then, work does come before anything else… not to say that we don’t like you, of course we do – that’s precisely why we spend so much time and effort making sure that if it is about HR, you hear it first from us!

Talking about things happening at work, our CEO, Mr. Ajay Chowdhury, recently conceptualized a new HR product made specifically for schools keeping in mind their peculiar needs and requirements, you can read more about the product here, and download the product brochure from here. The content for training and intervention for these programs is never a limiting factor for us because we apply a modular approach to content creation besides creating customized content on demand. Going with the theme of the name of our newsletter HR@Work, we have named this product HR@Schools, and are currently conducting market research in the NCR region on the Supply vs. Demand gap in the corporate services available to schools.

Since our organization’s formation in January 2009, we have been able to map the Human Resources Outsourcing market to a reasonable amount of success, we now know that the three most ‘in demand’ services in the National Capital Region are – recruitment outsourcing, payroll outsourcing and training and development. So we have been indeed lucky as far as start-up stories go, by no means have we reached where we want to be… but we have all the fun and learning typically associated with a start-up without actually having to go through the many toils and struggles. Silicon, Sushi King, RBS, iSango, Slideshare, Vinsol, Rabyte, and Vestige are some of the clients that we are currently catering to and there are many more in the pipleline.

There is a lot of activity happening in the online space too…

1. It is now possible for readers to subscribe to concise but powerful ‘mobile’ career tips by registering on our Blog (service powered by http://www.alertrix.com).
2. If you look closely on the left sidebar, you will find that there is now an option to subscribe to our articles and blog updates though e-mail now, and yes, we hate spam and unsolicited mail as much as you do!
3. The new Carnival of HR is up and running at the HR maven blog! Deirdre has an excellent post on her hands with some amazing submissions from thought leaders in the HR sphere. Our submission for the carnival was the article – If employees could fly; just some good humored stereotyping of people at work
4. Please do join our Facebook community of forward looking professionals at http://www.facebook.com/benifys, we pick the best of the web and post it there regularly, delivered in your Facebook Homepage.
5. 7600 followers at http://www.twitter.cm/benifys, we must be doing something right! From our twitter profile you will receive career and HR related updates on an hourly basis, did you know you could also subscribe to these updates in your reader via an RSS feed?
6. We have some amazing collection of articles, guest posts, links, resources and news coming up in this the October edition of HR@Work, to which you can subscribe here.

And besides work…

Sometime during the beginning of this month, we all went to Bar-be-que Nation for lunch to celebrate; it wasn’t quite clear to me what we were celebrating! Maybe it was a pre party for Rahul’s on coming birthday, maybe it was the fact that Ajay bought a beauty of a car, maybe it was the amazing feedback Ankita received from our clients, or maybe it was that the fact that I won an iPod nano from Channel [V] (no wait, we got the last news while we were having lunch!)

Anyway leaving you here with a collage of pictures from the lunch, find out more about all of us here. Till the next time this space is updated… keep doing what you love

September, the month gone by, when the weather starts turning a little hospitable this side of the globe – nip in the air and all of that, start of festivities and a general sense of well being amongst the population at large. This year, there was more good news – indications are that the Corporate world has shed some of the caution that infested it’s spending on the nice-to-have activities (yes, I AM talking of activities on the Human Resources front here, unfortunate, but true).

On the national front, the déjà-vu brought back a sense of unfairness, almost as if the Gods were conspiring yet again – India has lost a disproportionate number of leaders to unnatural deaths – Gandhi, Bose, Shastri, Sanjay, Indira, Scindia, Pilot, Surendra, the list is endless – and now we have the Andhra strongman, YSR added to this unfortunate inventory. While not all of them will rank right up there in terms of leadership skills, popularity, expertise or skill, the fact remains that the political canvas of India just might have been a little different if all of them were still around, or had lived their full lives.

What was more disconcerting was the senseless ranting amongst even the senior state party functionaries to pass on the baton to his greenhorn son. THIS is our own doing, the craving to attach oneself to someone who is not even close to his father or uncle or husband, or what-have-you, for short term gains and miss the big picture completely. My father served as the Vice-Chancellor in two prestigious Universities of India – and when he retired from there, none of his senior Deans and professors put pressure on the authorities to hand over the mantle of running the Universities to his son

Why, you must ask – and the answer is clear (apart from the fact that I would stand nowhere close to my father in administrative or subject-matter expertise, but that’s the obvious one) – the real reason is about structure – the more ambiguity there is in the surroundings, the more the uncertainty, the more the insecurity, the more the chances of the wrong decisions being taken. Universities, unlike states or nations, are run, like well-oiled machines – on policies, rules, regulations and structures.

You must ask yourself whether your HR department will fall apart if the existing HR guys left you (and they will, sooner or later), will it take you long to recover, and will some knowledge be lost forever? Similarly, if you’re setting up an HR function, do you want to let it remain at the mercy of the person who sets it up? Benifys provides seamless transition of your existing HR set-up (or setting up the function, if you don’t have one now) on templatised, time tested methodologies and implementation expertise. Would you rather trust this important function to professionals and experts, or take the long-winded route of hit-and-trial, and yet not get the HR function contribute in the manner that it actually can?

Choose, and let us know – we’re here to help.

I don’t even want to talk about our campaign in Champions Trophy. Another case in point, though – if you love your Hummer more than your profession, you’re bound to let people down. And if you don’t concentrate on your core competency (we help you do that, by the way), you’re probably delivering a sub-optimal result.

Finally, I have to force myself to agree with Mr. Tharoor when he says that we should work on Gandhi’s birthday. It is only by working harder and smarter that we will take India to the heights that he would have wanted us to scale. Working on his birthday is the least that we can do for him.

In the meantime, enjoy the festive season, and keep smiling

It is said that adversity brings out the best in some – well, far from the truth for the only viable alternative that the people of India had to the ruling coalition. Just the beginning of the second term out of power and the house of BJP is in shambles like never before. It seems every bad wolf in the neighbourhood can huff and puff and bring it all down. Not only this, they are squabbling over petty issues that the country does not even care about. Reminds me of Ponting and his men, but that’s another story. So, back to the BJP and the disaster – the links with the right wing RSS are now clearly out in the open – something that everyone knew all the while, but something that they have been try to keep a tight lid on by ignoring, refuting and what have you. It is not a nice scene – they have some great leaders. Maybe life will come a full circle for them one day – seems pretty far away as of now.


The other house that is a little shaky right now is that of the TATAs – humungous losses in the steel business, the price to pay for taking over Corus, and they’ve got to keep the Jaguars and the Land Rovers floating too. They’ll pull a trick out of their bag still, but cautious times ahead for them, I’m sure. The bigger you are, the bigger your problems – thank God Benifys is lean and hungry and manageable. We’re looking at some good things to happen to us in this month. And we’re raring to go.


Something else to cheer about – lots. India’s in a Grand Slam main draw after 7 long years. While this statement has a depressing side to it, we prefer to look at the brighter side – we’re there, right? So what if it does not happen every year. What about Force India and the F1 stupendous achievement – shows that victory does not always come to the big and the strong and deep pockets – it is guts and determination and the zeal to win that gets you there. Missed the top spot by a whisker, but this is just the beginning. We stock all of this in plenty at Benifys. Our team is well equipped to provide a solution to any HR issue that you might be facing right now. All it takes is a click or a call – try it.


No rains still, and time’s running out – some people happy not to have to experience the tragic consequences that rain brings in any city of consequence in the country. But that does not mean that people are celebrating – we know at what price we’re reaching home in time. This is like the many dilemmas that we face all the time – build or buy, retained services or outsourced, trust someone else with my data or not, have HR run by an external agency or drain my bandwidth all the while and hang on to something that I don’t have to do – ah, what we’d give to find an answer to these. Well, all that you have to give is an hour to us – we’ll be happy to show you what’ll work best for your set-up.


Till that time, keep smiling – it’s not all that bad

Ajay has converted his zeal for people development into his career. An alumnus of Modern School and Hindu College, and equipped with a University Masters in Sociology from JNU, and an MBA from FMS, University of Delhi – from the very outset, he decided that people were his passion.

He has held leadership positions in HR in blue chip organizations cutting across industry verticals and domains within the HR function.

The Union Budget came and went – had a hugely negative impact on the market, even though it’s picked up lately. Missed opportunity, I think – the first two years of the government is always the time that you can push strong reforms, even if they hurt. Third year onwards the elections suddenly start looming on the horizon, and that’s the end of reforms. With a strong government, wanted to see a little more aggression than what we witnessed. Maybe they’re waiting for next year – sure hope so.


On to my favourite topic – I find this Australian snowball gaining momentum as it rushes down the international cricket ratings really fascinating. A 75 year old Lords jinx broken, a tied first test where the Australians again howled and hollered about non-gentlemanly behaviour (look who’s talking, mate), top order floundering yet again, bowling without teeth – all the drama associated with an ungainly fall from glory. On the other side of the chart was the Bangladesh team – even though they beat a hugely watered down West Indian team – it was still history being made, and something to remember. Glad that the West Indian problems have been sorted out, would have hated to see teams from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the likes take to the cricket field.


The point is, there is nothing permanent, and nothing that may not change tomorrow. Just like the mindset around HR outsourcing. Things are a-changing, and changing in favour of outsourcing non core competency areas. Why carry the burden on your shoulders when there are professionals who can manage stuff better? Have a look at one of our articles in this edition on this.


Amazing land, this India – a particular politician spending unimaginable amounts on her own statues across some state – 1,000 to 2,000 crores of rupees being spent on this. Imagine what this amount, spent wisely, could have done for the state. And the irony is, with all the hue and cry surrounding this absurd intent, there is no-one that can stop her. Strange are thy ways, democracy. I know of no-one alive who would be so keen to see themselves as statues all over the place. I know of no-one dead who would have this desire, either – but that’s another story.


The point is, in parts, India needs some sense beaten into it – partial emergency is what we need. On the spot corrective measures, whether it is politicians like these, or the rich and famous brothers who fight between themselves over a national asset, or the drivers on the roads who will drive on anything that even remotely resembles a road, flouting all traffic rules, it’s like a bunch of maniacs out there. What a lovely place it would be without these elements – what a lovely place it is despite these elements. So, coming back to the word partial – how about partial outsourcing. Let professionals bring in the expertise or the bandwidth to carry out special projects in the HR domain.


Many people are, call us to find out who we’re working with, and on what.


Before we leave you with the Newsletter, here’s a quick ‘welcome back’ to the King of the Track. This is what relationships are made of, putting everything on stake all over again – holds true for Ferrari and Schumacher alike. Go for it Schumi, set the track on fire once again…


And in the meantime, have a great month of August – keep smiling.

The month is almost about to end, and we are just gearing up for the finalization and distribution of the Fourth Edition of our in-house Newsletter HR@Work for which we have been consistently getting great feedback; well, this issue is extra special then… why you ask? That’s because the newsletter now has a completely revamped look and let us tell you we just absolutely love it, and know that you will too! So here come the updates:


When we conceptualized HR@Work, we were not sure how it would be taken and whether we would be able to pull it off to any degree of success, now fourth month into it’s run, it now has a circulation of around 2000! The primary target audience and majority of the opt-ins that we get are from people working in the HR leadership domain in India with the occasional sign-up from professionals overseas who happened to stumble upon the Blog.


As I said earlier, the Newsletter has a complete new look and will have a guest column starting this month. We plan to use this space to not only get experts to talk on varied aspects of business like management, motivation, workforce management, people issues, organizational climate and the likes, but also as a space where our clients and partners can talk about the challenges they face in their day-to-day business affairs and what is it that keeps them going.


We love experimenting with Web 2.0 and believe there is a vast latent potential to it, once the targeted users reach a critical mass; taking action on that thought we are now on Facebook and Twitter (and are about to cross 4000 followers on the latter!). Eventually, we also plan to open a support group on LinkedIn where business professionals and budding entrepreneurs can discuss the problems they face while implementing their HR, or the lack of it.


This update is rather special, thanks to Shauna Moerke of the HR Maven Blog, we are now participating members of the “Carnival of HR” community and besides being featured in that space, we will be hosting it on our Blog on the 14th of April, 2010! Check out the latest carnival post hosted by Effortless HR Blog here.


A little late in the day to mention, but we signed a content partnership with HRguru (Part of the Monster.com Worldwide Company) for syndication of our articles on their website. HRGuru is an online community dedicated to advancement of current and future human resources professionals and of the improvement of HR as a whole. We plan to help each other in our online promotion efforts besides content sharing.


Lots of birthdays this month in our team, three to be precise and what fun it was! We wanted to share the photos but then someone suggested (smart thinking indeed) that posting our cake covered faces all over the internet might not be a very good idea and it for sure wouldn’t do any wonders for our branding effort! So I guess we wait until we can get some no ‘cake on the face’ photographs of us, fat chance of that I think! You can check more information about our team here, for once we have clean, bright faces .