The Official Blog of Benifys HR Solutions

“What’s the first syllable in the word routine?” That’s right… it’s rut. Being in a rut can be a very emotionally frustrating period, we all have a drop in motivation levels every once in a while, but if left unchecked, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy – if you think you can’t get out of it, you can’t! As an employer, if you are observing a drop in the engagement levels and enthusiasm of your employees, by default it becomes your concern to provide support in some form because it is now your problem too. You have to understand that someone yawning in the office, or the star performer in your office acting like Jughead after declaring him his role model is not a problem per se, it is only a symptom of a problem.

Signs of clear and present danger! Something might be wrong if:

1. Everyone is laughing and pushing each other around until they realize its Monday and not Friday, silence ensues.
2. The main project that everyone is working on is the ‘staring game’, no one wins.
3. The last time your team celebrated the successful completion of a project was – oh snap; now you have memory loss.
4. Your organization has a revolutionary motto, it is – “We don’t even smile for free”.
5. Conversations go something like that – Q. “Was that work that you gave to him/her done?” A. “Yes, that was done and the other was done too”. No objectivity.
6. New ideas are met with an enthusiastic, almost frenzied cheer and then a “what was that?” a little later.
7. After a lot of failed attempts, your employees finally started a YouTube podcast; it’s called “Lessons in time mismanagement”.
8. You observe violent reactions every time someone mentions “work-life balance”, sometimes people just read it somewhere and then run and scream.
9. The most generous compliment the boss gave this month was actually an insult in disguise.
10. When you approach people at their workstations, you can swear you saw them making wish-lists at eBay, and later frantically hitting Alt+ Esc.

Now that you know something is wrong (thank god for that!), next time we’ll cover the actions you can take to salvage the situation an turn it around if you witness such absurdities at work…

Love him or hate him, he is arguably one of the most popular fictional characters of recent times; fans swear by his ‘awesomeness’ and go hysterical about the ‘legendary’ tricks he pulls off on the show (no wonder – Neil Patrick Harris is a magician by profession!). Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother is a character with an extremely sharp wit coupled with shades of sarcasm thrown in for good measure. Alright, let’s not get too carried away now, for those who have seen the show know what we are talking about!

So you might wonder why a Human Resource organization would post a video from a popular TV show and talk about it, well the video in question is called “Barney Stinson’s Video Resume”.  And if nothing else – it is an extremely good example of personal brand management, the video has over 55,000 views on YouTube, and some other similar videos from the same show have over 600,000 views! This is digital marketing at its best…

And if that wasn’t all, there are takeaways, here’s what Barney has to say about success:

• First thing that you need to know about success is that is doesn’t just come to you.
• Most people associate success with money and power, but really it’s a state of mind.
• When it comes to success, the only limit is that there are no limits.

Now, who wouldn’t hire a candidate like that?

1. Trustworthy – If you cannot make someone trust you, you can be sure that when the time comes, they will make their own path instead of following the one that you laid. As a manager, you just cannot afford that; trust building is necessary not just for managing people, but also while dealing with suppliers, clients and even your own superiors. Trust makes the business world go round.
2. Punctual – What is the best way to show someone that you value their time? The only effective way is to start valuing your own, being five minutes late in a job interview can cost a candidate a potentially good job, in the business context – a five minute delay could be interpreted into any number of things – a loss of opportunity, lack of credibility, lack of commitment, a lopsided attitude. If you’re punctual, you send out a clear message that you are on top of things and not overwhelmed by them.
3. Detail oriented – It is good if you can see the ‘big picture’, but if you don’t have the details, it is just that, a really big picture of nothing in particular, pictures cannot run a business but you can. You might be a Manager who thinks that it is just impossible to be focused on details when you have so many things to manage – but ask yourself in all honesty, is it because you are proud of meeting deadlines and are always in a rush to just get work done and pass it on somehow? People in some industries have to work for years at the worker level before being made a supervisor or manager… why? Because when they are promoted, they know exactly what they are talking about.
4. Awesome – The importance of having a positive self image is often overlooked, auto suggestions have been scientifically proven to work.  If you feel good about yourself, it will show in the way you carry yourself and also the way you communicate with others… so go ahead – be awesome, work awesomely and expect awesome results!

When one starts thinking of outsourcing the HR function, whether partially or totally, there are a lot of questions that crop up in the mind. We’ve attempted to put together some of them and tried to present potential solutions so that these questions do not act as roadblocks in the journey towards greater efficiency and professionalism in the HR function.


Outsourcing is now a norm, people have realised that they should concentrate on their organisation’s core competencies and not share limited bandwidth in trying to run functions that can be run by someone else better, either because that someone else is better trained to carry out these functions, or because it does not make commercial sense to have an in-house function that would probably not have its hands full all the while.


Q. I have an Admin / HR team and they are doing okay. Why do I need to outsource?

A. True, the existing team might be working out fine, but there are no comparators to their performance, they operate on benchmarks that have been internally set, based on the limited knowledge of the HR function that most line managers possess. To enable dramatic growth for any organisation, and to have access to specialized expertise in each of the HR domains, a much larger team is required. This larger team could be a virtual team, working for your organisation on a need basis, rather than add to the salary bill that’s probably already a large part of your total expenses. Through outsourcing, you have access to quality HR services, thought leadership, and specialized support for different HR processes.


Q. How secure is my data? How will the Outsourcing partner ensure confidentiality at my site or their back-end operations?

A. Quality outsourcing organizations are committed to data security for all their client organisations. While most sign an NDA and related legal documents, they also ensure that your data resides on an IT platform that has restricted access. The data that needs to remain secure resides in exclusive servers with every possible care taken through technological barriers (firewalls, anti-hacking tools, etc.) to human interventions (strict control over number of people with rights to access your data). All physical data pertaining to your employees normally rests in your premises, they do not take it away to store it elsewhere. End of the day, you have to trust your data with someone, and in these times, the care that good outsourcing providers take of your data is probably better than what your internal team would be doing.


Q. If I outsource HR it will affect the morale of my employees. What message will this send to rest of the functions?

A. Outsourcing of a function is a common practice nowadays. This is done not with a view to shed workforce, but to equip the function with a competitive edge and improve its efficiency and effectiveness. When people see the difference that outsourcing has made to the organisation, they will realize the benefits of outsourcing themselves. At the same time, outsourcing decisions always have a strategy for the existing HR team, based on the company’s needs they can groomed into a consulting or business partner role. This is what is known as “Retained HR”. Some HR outsourcing firms go to the extent of taking on the existing HR teams onto their rolls, where they work under the shared services model, while providing continuity to the existing HR function.


Q. If I outsource, will I have the same control as compared to an in-house HR team?

A. You do not lose control over the HR function. Instead, you free your bandwidth from carrying out, or overseeing, HR related tasks, and you equip your HR function with expert knowledge and professionalism. While legally they may reside on some other organisation’s rolls, they still function as an in-house team, providing you with as much face-time and interaction as required. Every activity that the existing team was carrying out will be replicated by the outsourcing organization, only with greater cost-effectiveness and better quality.


Q. Will there be cultural issues between the outsourced services provider’s team and the outsourcing organisation’s employees/other functions?

A. HR outsourcing has evolved to a level where HRO firms are now committed to a seamless transition. They function as an internal department. Your employees and your management team will not even notice the cultural differences. If at all, they will be happier with the greater professionalism and expertise that the HRO firm brings.


Q. What can an HRO firm do differently to cut down my recruitment cost?

A. Two things – first, they will be able to manage your existing vendors better, because they have specific expertise in the recruitment space. This will help them negotiate better rates, and put in place a vendor management practice that you might otherwise not have access to. They also have a pool of recruitment partners, and will be able to obtain better terms for your recruitment requirements. Second, even if they utilise their own recruitment engine to service your needs and fill a position for you using their own resources, their charges will be highly competitive because they are now your partners.


Q. If my employee base increases by X % how will HRO firms deal with it and will there be any change in costing?

A. Work with the outsourcing partner to arrive at a per employee costing model rather than a lump sum. This benefits both parties. For you, your costs are linked to your capability to pay (if you’re growing, the probability is that you’re now able to allocate a larger portion to support services like HR – if you’re shrinking, you’d like your support services costs to some down as well). For the outsourcing services provider, he becomes a partner in your growth, always on the look-out to add value to your business so that both the organisations grow together. In such models, there is no redundancy built into the pricing mechanism, and you don’t end up paying extra for people who are not on your rolls.


Q. I want the core HR activities to be handled by my team; I can probably outsource just my recruitment function.

A. Then what you probably need is an RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) instead of an HRO. The strength of HRO firms is in demonstrating the value that HR can bring to an organisation through an end-to-end offering, and not in piecemeal services like recruitment.


Q. My organisations training needs are very specific. How will you design training programs for me?

A. Besides other verticals, most HRO firms nowadays have a dedicated Learning and Development team. Although they don’t usually cater to functional or technical training because we such training programs are best handled by subject matter experts, and not training experts. The basic behavioural tenets in employees in any industry vertical are similar to a large extent, and differ in degrees between industries. Even so, the expert trainers and content developers in an HRO will understand the particular need for your organisation and design customized training programs to address the training requirements of your organisation.


Q. How much do I gain from outsourcing HR in terms of money? Is it worth the effort?

Depending on the vendor the pricing is very competitive and sometimes even lower than what your organisation should be incurring as the total cost of running the HR department as an in-house function. This figure is derived from industry benchmarks. While this gives you an immediate reason to outsource, the true value add that you will experience will be in terms of the drastic improvement in quality and accuracy of the HR services from the very beginning of the engagement.

It is said that every person is unique in their own way, but the term ‘unique’ is sometimes misleading. The truth is that everyone of us has come across unpleasant people of various types and degrees in our personal and profession lives, and I bet you won’t like to call them unique (jerks, perhaps?!).

The worst is when you happen to be unlucky enough to deal with these people in a professional setting, because unlike your personal life, you cannot hope to just ignore them and get on with it. In fact, chances are you are working with them in a team or worse still, working under them. Our attempt is to present to you five types of the most troubling, and unfortunately, also the kinds that you are very likely to encounter.

We know there are many more than just these five kinds – people who can become a reason for a severe case of headache; but we’re presenting the kinds that’ll make you exclaim – “hey, I know a guy who’s just like that”.

So write to us and let us know if you know someone like this, share names if you dare – we promise not to publish your feedback if you don’t want us to…

The Intimidator

This person does not want to listen to what you have to say, ever. All he is interested in is getting the work done, his way, and it definitely does not bother him if he has to push some people around or act in an abrasive manner in the process of doing so. Some of them do this because they (genuinely) really want to get work done as they see it as the first priority, but then there are different types here. One of them is also a person who gets his sense of identity by belittling others on a regular basis, which is an unhealthy mindset to say the least. People who come in contact with pushovers more often than not end up losing motivation and consequently their zeal for work.

If you come across people of this kind, catch them in a weak moment (yes, they have them too), or just when you’ve wowed them with a task done ahead of time (push yourself, you can finish a task ahead of time, even with their deadlines), and tell them that you’re losing it (they love it when they hear that they’ve driven someone around the bend, especially the second kinds – it makes them feel closer to being God, which is what they want to be, in their subconscious mind), and that they’re the only ones who can save you from a breakdown. They love to help. With the first kinds, talk to them about how you also value time, and will stop at nothing to get the task accomplished, and that you’re all tense yourself while the task is WIP. If they know that you share the urgency, they’ll lay off slowly. Needless to say, you need to build credibility by achieving tasks within deadlines first.

The Chit Chatter

The ‘chit chatter’ just loves to talk. The amount of damage they can inflict on your company depends entirely on the kind of ‘chit chat’ they indulge in. For some it could just be an innocent one hour discourse on ‘how bad the traffic was today’ or maybe ‘how awesome was a party they went to’, the only problem is that while they satisfy in their compulsive need to talk, they never realize their it’s on the company’s expense; add a few listeners into the picture and you imagine what it does to the business. But still these people do not cause half the damage as the type that indulge in spreading baseless disparaging rumours or malicious content about the company or about someone in particular. There you have a real problem!

While everyone must have their moments of relaxation, if you are beginning to feel that the chit-chat is coming in the way of productivity, or if it is otherwise damaging, put a stop to it immediately. The first step is to discourage being a part of their mindless chatter group – act as if you’ve suddenly remembered something that needs your urgent attention and rush off, leaving the chatterbox in the middle of the sentence. Play and beat them at their own game – act conspiratorial with your colleagues and tell them that you overheard someone in the senior management saying the productivity of this section was falling and/or not what it should be; wonder out loud if the gossiping has anything to do with it. For subordinates, tell them on their face that they need to concentrate more on work; for seniors, tell their seniors that the constant chatting is a distraction that is not allowing you to concentrate and therefore, coming in the way of productivity.

The Disinterested Lazy Bum

They do not care at all about anything that they are paid to have interest in, and their motto is ‘work in progress’. If somehow they do manage to get some work done, they will sit around growing old instead of asking for more work themselves. These people are perhaps the most difficult to manage because you can never expect any kind of feedback or level of interest from them, something very similar to asking a wall – “can this be done?” or worse instructing it to “work on an idea for the pitch”. There could be any number of reasons for such kind of behaviour like just being a plain lazy slob by nature, in which case there is not much hope. Lack of working knowledge about their role could be a factor for their behaving in this manner, this can be rectified by appropriate training. Be aware that something may be bothering them at work or at home that has made them lose interest in work altogether.

This one is a tough one to crack. The best approach is to talk to them and figure out where is the source of this laziness. If it is something that can be rectified, or will rectify itself with time, let them be – everyone has good and bad phases in life. But if you’re convinced it’s an attitude problem, call a team meeting and let them know that some people have to work extra hard so that they can make up for a team member with a lazy attitude – let them figure it out and let them find an answer. If the lazy guy is a team mate, let him know that it’s unfair for others to have to shoulder additional work, or that he’s acting more like a bottleneck than an enabler. When you’ve tried everything, and nothing works, maybe it’s time for that guy to move on.

The Timid Kitten

Instructing someone what to do is not always enough, like you would like to believe. Sometimes you have to also explain how to do it with excruciating detail, the timid kitten is a gentle unassuming person who only has one real problem, which is that he needs to be supervised on an hourly basis (minute basis in worst cases). In most cases this condition of the person stems from their apprehension of getting it wrong. Even if you know they won’t, you literally have to hold their hands and guide them through work. These are the sort of people whom you sometimes have to teach a task over and over again. Although good in their intentions, this method of working can really get on the nerves of the supervisor, and the fact that he has a busy schedule does not help.

The only way to handle this guy is to refuse to help – point blank – even if it seems rude. If someone has to be micromanaged, the overhead that he brings to the business is probably not worth anyone’s while. Train and coach people, build their confidence, never spoonfeed. Constantly required attention is not only bad for the supervisor’s calendar, it is also a roadblock on the learning curve of the timid kitten. Since these guys are well meaning from within, don’t take any drastic decisions about their tenure in the organisation, all that they need is space, confidence and the ability to accomplish a task. Coach them, and they’ll surprise you over a period of time. They are also the most loyal folks, if you help them gain confidence in themselves. No-one can forget the fact that you helped them rise in their own esteem, and they’ll go to any length to stand by you in tough times.

The Thoroughly Incompetent

You have no idea how they got here, or what they are doing, or even why they are the way they are. They have no idea why they are here or what they have to do; it’s a pretty hopeless scenario to be looking at. You know there has been wrong somewhere because they are incapable of performing the simplest of tasks related to their domain, an analogy could be a professional photographer asking where the click button is. You really can’t do much in this situation except hope for a miracle and invest in some training… but will they be receptive to that, which, given the situation seems highly unlikely. Wait, do they know what training means?

Gently, ask them to make a move – they’ll probably find their true calling, and will thank you for it later.