The Official Blog of Benifys HR Solutions

People change, fact of life. And organizations change too, much like a evolving mass of ideas in a constant state of flux. Trouble brews when the lines connecting the goals of an individual to that of an organization diverge and go out of alignment, add to that the job hopping typically associated with Gen-Y folks and an entire generation of baby boomers heading towards retirement – and you have a whole lot of leaving coming around (pun intended). But, as any seasoned HR Pro will agree, not all people have an equal capacity to maintain their maturity when it comes to letting go. Whereas the more wise will leave gracefully, an awful lot will act like a child with an ego hurt; the first question hence comes to mind – “how difficult is it going to be to ask this person to leave and see them through the exit process”. Another factor, and perhaps one that is more important to the employer is “how much will the business be affected negatively if this person leaves?” Let’s equate these factors against each other as a measure to assess an employee’s work style based on the way they behave while parting ways.

Peaceful Impacter – These individuals are usually very understated, and most likely introverts. But that does not mean their work has to be understated too; because of the highly efficient methods they deploy at work (by coming up with creative solutions) and their adaptable nature… it becomes very is hard to find faults with their work. In fact, it’s your turn to be alarmed if this person leaves or is contemplating leaving your organization, because they will do so in a very matter-of-fact manner once they make their mind up.

1. Needs their space.
2. Will work uninstructed in ideal conditions.
3. More likely to come up with breakthrough ideas.
4. Might seem arrogant and indifferent on the surface.
5. They strive to find meaning in their work.

Arrogant Influencer – It is said that in organizational life, one can either have freedom from others or influence over them. Never both things at the same time. Individuals in this quadrant choose to exert influence on others as opposed to enjoying freedom from them, they control people and get work done through them (and that’s the impact they bring). Being arrogant, like micromanagement, is often not a choice, it’s a conditioned thought pattern. Needless to say, the tolerance for such employees differs based on the organizational climate.

1. They need people to listen to them.
2. Will seem inseparable from the organization.
3. Can be, and mostly will be pushy.
4. Yields authority, of that, there is no doubt.
5. More likely to delegate, direct or supervise work.

Drama Queen – They have quaint and frail self-image, like they are living in some kind of a dreamland, of which they are the respective prince or princess. They should have probably taken dramatics as a career since they obviously have a flair for it. Anything work related is not really their forte, they are full of acts (pun intended) as long as you don’t expect them to work or ask them to quit. If and when you do either one of those things – you are in for a live workshop of high emotion drama. Don’t argue much with them – they have an undue sense of entitlement, others just have to live with it.

1. Cannot work 9 to 6 faithfully even if life depended on it.
2. Might be paranoid and have delusions that they are being discussed and scrutinized.
3. Will expect people to take care of their needs without saying them.
4. Needs a thorough reality check, either through introspection or intervention.
5. More likely to spill coffee in a conference and create a scene, or just create a scene with anything.

Useless Bystander – The ones seated bang at the middle of the conference table, and will switch to whichever side of the table as dictated by the status quo. The main motive that fuels their actions is to keep things running the way they are, for better or worse. Why they behave the way they do can have so many endless explanations that it deserves a post of it’s own. They will leave the organization as easily as they came in, the the difference to the overall scheme will not be noticeable. Why does this work? Because at least there is no unrequired theatrics and in their defense – they provide a balancing effect.

1. More likely to not do anything of great significance.
2. Might prove useful in diffusing situations where serious conflict arises.
3. Will stick to sides, whichever side seems better in a given situation.
4. Can have a really long and healthy career despite incompetence because they never fix what’s not broken.
5. Needs to be a little more opinionated – to fight like they are right and listen like they are wrong.

“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…

Why do we think of energy in conventional terms? With right approach and motivation, humans can be as charged.

At the ripe old age of 81, Lal Krishna Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party had to travel to several places by air in the summer heat in the previous two months, as he was projected as the prime ministerial candidate by his party. When the Hindustan Times tried to probe the secret of Advani’s energy, he replied, “Food and sleep are two things I need very little of.” Advani’s frugal diet of curd and fruits would perhaps make him feel more energetic, since he has to travel a lot.

One often comes across the expression “saving time, money and energy” quite often. However, though it is possible to bump across articles and power point presentations on time and money management, energy management from an individual’s perspective are relatively rare to come by. When it comes to energy, we generally think of thermal energy, solar energy and nuclear energy etc.


Energy From Passion

One’s chances of success improve with the degree of high energy levels that one is able to generate and sustain throughout the day. Apart from one’s energy level, this would also depend on one’s interest in one’s work. The more passionate one is about one’s work, the more energetic one is likely to feel throughout the day. The grand old man from Bollywood, Dev Anand, who at the age of 85 is contemplating a new film called Chargesheet, has this to say in this context; “No drug can turn you high as your own work. I am always on the high. You cannot enjoy your life unless you enjoy your work.” Perhaps this is why the word “ever ebullient” is used for Anand since he epitomises the expression”zest for life”. One certainly needs to be charged up to make Chargesheet at 85. UK-based website http://www.careerenergy.co.uk/index.shtml states, “The key to a successful career lies in understanding four things: What we are good at, what we enjoy, what matters to us in life and what motivates us at work.” In the book Lead to Succeed, the authors states, “Each of us is pure energy and it is our personal responsibility as to how we direct that energy. When we involve ourselves in something that is not of interest to us, we are not channeling our energy effectively. Entrepreneurial leaders naturally raise the energy levels of people within an organisation because they ensure people are able to focus on what they are best at. Energy is always higher when what you have to do is what you want to do.”

Right Approach

In a more practical context, it may not be possible for everybody to be in the work that he enjoys doing, is good at, is motivated by or is in congruence with what one believes in. If this is the case, then drive and energy become two different factors unlike what is mentioned above. If you are not driven by your work, energy management becomes a top priority as it is bound to mitigate suffering. The choice of work may not be within one’s control but how one approaches one work is definitely within one’s control and one can try and generate and sustain high energy levels.

People like Advani or filmstar Shah Rukh Khan may need very little sleep but for an average person, getting a good night’s sleep is the first step towards high energy levels. One gets to read off and on how Yoga is very good for depression as well because of the secretions of the endocrine glands that are caused by the various Asanas. The problem is that unless one is really passionate about Yoga, it can be quite boring.

It is better to play one sport, in which one is interested in, regularly and with intensely but if that is not possible, one can combine different forms of exercises than merely depend on Yoga. We are witness to the fact how our sportspersons in many categories have the talent but do not have the endurance to give good performance consistently. Talking of sports reminds me of a lady with whom I play Tennis on the weekends. I have seen her play non-stop for four hours in peak Summers several times which is surprising, since she must be somewhere in her mid-fifties. She also claims to do Yoga or cycling for one and a half hours on occasions, going on marathon runs, doing all the housework by herself (including washing cars) when the servant is not around etc. I found that her knowledge of exercise and nutrition was quite exceptional. Eventually it all boils down to good energy management.

Energy Drainers

There is a saying in management that arriving is more difficult than striving. Similarly, generating high energy levels in one thing, sustaining them is another. Energy drainers apart from the work itself are work relationships and bad office habits.

One is lucky if one is able to consistently work, with those people with whom one is able to bond better, but that is not often the case. Arguments are major energy drainers and one can try and avoid them to the extent possible but many times, one has to take a stand and one is perhaps better off with learning argumentation techniques or how to be assertive without being aggressive. This is normally done for good inter-personal relations but also helps prevents energy for being drained in futile verbal battles.

Right Questions

In February, I attended a three day seminar of Results coaching system, from where I learnt that coaching is about asking questions to a person about his own thinking about a particular dilemma in a manner that the solution comes from him rather than telling him or advising him what to do. Their book called Quiet leadership says, “The more successful a person is, the less you can tell him what to do and the more you can help them think better for themselves.” It reminded me of one quote from Sir Winston Churchill, “Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.” This is a common day-to-day situation which causes friction.

I realise that asking questions even in general and not just coaching situations causes less friction than going around advising or telling people.

On listening to one of the recordings on coaching, I heard someone say that in their view, coaching was one of the ways to move towards silence. That reminded me of meditation.

According to an article Energy is the real healer in The Times of India, Paramhamsa Yogananda described the body as a battery. He taught that we need to learn to recharge the battery by drawing more on the divine source of energy. By consciously attuning with the healing forces of the universe, one could feel a dynamo of power flowing through one’s body. Prayer and meditation are a means to draw energy from that divine source.

In addition, silence and fasting can also help in quieting the mind.

Ayurveda speaks of Vata, Pitta and Kapha tendencies and having a pacing and restless mind is indicative of the Vata mind which should be avoided. One has to be careful currently because the pace at which change is taking place, are arousing Vata tendencies in even people with other dispositions. In negative moods, they can prove to be disastrous, apart from being harmful in positive phases, as well when they go out of control. Lifestyle also plays a major role in keeping oneself calm.

Back to Basics

In his wonderful book Success v/s Joy, seven-time world billiards Champion Geet Sethi describes how the standard of his game fell after his lifestyle had become dissipated and fragmented when he was overcome with materialism and acquisitiveness. He went back to the basics and his performance peaked when his mind became calm. He describes how a disciplined lifestyle helps in developing will power and concentration, which for all practical purposes is mental strength. Apart from that, what one eats, as also chewing food properly, has a significant effect on the mind, which reminds of the famous saying “Avoid hurry, worry and curry.”

The medical profession has begun to realise that energy is the real healer. The old approach is to kill the disease by attacking it, using medicines, radiation, surgery etc. The new approach strengthens the organism so that it won’t be vulnerable to disease, using herbs, diet, exercise etc. In order to make ourselves immune to disease, we must learn to strengthen the flow of energy in us and remove obstacles to its flow. The basic thing is to remove energy blockages — trains in Japan and Germany move at 500 miles an hour because of the concentrated force of superconductivity or electrons moving in one direction without any resistance. Reiki and Pranic healing are highly specialised energy healing systems and would probably justify a separate article devoted to them.

The Tight Spots

Coaching is one strategy but how one reacts to situations during the day is the most important factor in conserving energy. An acquaintance in the US told me, “People in India are so emotional that when we come on vacation, everybody in me and my wife’s extended family expects us to visit them, which is not practically possible. Therefore, I myself throw a party to gather everybody at one place, which saves time and energy considerably. I am not bothered about people who do not agree with this.” Though this indicates emotional fortitude, it is practical emotional intelligence in action.

I have often heard people say that one can’t change people but can only change one’s responses to them. That may be true for certain situations but one should effect change in others whenever possible. This is true both in personal and professional life. I read in a Harvard Business Review book how the management should try and modify the behavior of six personality types when excess of the behavior pertaining to each type starts to prove counterproductive. The book Power of Now says it very well, “If you find the current situation intolerable, you have three choices — remove yourself from the situation, change it or accept it totally.” In my view if there is a mistake in reading the situation and responding to it correctly, there is considerable waste of energy. Acceptance of severe tragedies is never easy and in absence of a sufficient level of acceptance, Yoga and meditation remain mere tools and techniques. The better the acceptance, the sooner one can get to normal energy levels and is able to sustain them.

This article is written by Hiren Shah and was published in the October issue of Management Compass.

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

By outsourcing HR functions, a company can unleash its energy for its core areas of function

GOOGLE as a search engine provides an excellent common platform for personalised consumer experience, as individual users decide how to use it to suit their particular needs. Giving other similar examples, the top ranked thought leader in the world, CK Prahalad explains in his book The New Age of Innovation that unique personal experiences are permeating industries as diverse as toys, financial services, travel, hospitality, retailing and entertainment. He further says that no company has all the resources to create unique personalised experiences and flexible systems are a prerequisite and must be developed to access talent, components, products and services from the best source. In this context, he mentions outsourcing as one way to access low cost, high quality talent and explains that it should not be seen only as a means to reduce cost but also give personalised service.


In the book, the head of ICICI human resources function describes his job thus, “ICICI now faces a challenge in our aggressive growth and HR emerges as a strategic function in this increasingly competitive battle for talent. We run HR operations and recruitment as a production factory. We scan more than 3,50,000 applicants annually. We hold monthly recruitment planning meetings that resemble demand forecasting meetings by a manufacturer.” Considering the complexities involved, one wonders whether it is possible for all companies to manage HR operations of this magnitude in house. In a world where business suddenly grows astoundingly, not only recruitment but training and development of the staff along with compensation and performance management also have to be handled aptly. As people are supposed to be the most important resource and management of people involves a lot of subjectivity, any inefficiency in this area can prove to be disastrous. Can it not be done by outsourcing HR services?


Normally when one thinks of outsourcing, the BPO industry comes to mind. Apart from call centers, there are many companies which outsource financial accounting and legal services as well. HR outsourcing is relatively rare but has been taking fervent steps in recent times. One of the best companies to emerge in recent times is Benifys, which claims its mission to be “to provide value-based outsourced HR solutions, enabling client organisations to optimally deploy their people and fiscal resources by leveraging simplified, quality HR practices cost effectively.” The basic idea is that organisations should be able to outsource their activities to HR companies to enable them to focus their attention on their core competency and develop variable capacity or increased flexibility to meet changing business demands.


Bill Gates had said in an interview to Time magazine, “As a business manager, you need to take a hard look at your core competencies. Revisit the areas of your company that aren’t directly involved in those competencies, and consider whether web technologies can enable you to spin off those tasks. Let another company take over the management responsibilities for that work, and use modern communication technology to work closely with the people — now partners instead of employees are doing the work. In the web work style, employees can push the freedom the web provides to its limits.” Though this was said in the context of IT, it can be true for HR as well if the work is outsourced.


According to Benifys, the existing team in the client company 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 specialised expertise in each of the HR domains, a much larger team is required, which can work on a need basis, rather than add to the salary bill that’s probably already a large part of the client’s total expenses. The most important thing is that with outsourcing HR becomes a variable and not a fixed cost, which can impact profitability considerably, especially in adverse situations. For any client, costs are linked to their capability to pay. If the client company is growing, the probability is they are now able to allocate a larger portion to support services like HR. If they are shrinking, they would like the support services costs to come down as well. For recruitment, HR companies can help negotiate better rates, and put in place a vendor management practice that one might otherwise not have access to. They also have a pool of recruitment partners, and will be able to obtain better terms for recruitment requirements.
Where training and development is concerned, the expert trainers and content developers in an HRO company will understand the particular need for the client organisation and design customised training programmes to address the training requirements. Benifys has different methodologies for all scales of operations — start-ups, middle and large. For better effectiveness and efficiency there are many benefits like leveraging shared services, access to innovation and thought leadership, tighter control of budget through predictable costs, accurate and secure data flow etc.


In the words of the Benifys CEO, Ajay Chowdhury, “HRO need not remain restricted to transactional activities, even though that is already an established market in India, but needs to move into an end-to-end solution space, where the executive management of an organisation, specially in the SME space, can sit back and concentrate on what they do best — develop strong go-to-market and strengthen business processes. For larger organisations, there is obviously a need to outsource the transactional HR activities, and bank upon people like us to implement specialised projects, or customised L&D initiatives. Having successfully gone through the proof-of-concept stage, we’re on the verge of a big leap forward.”


One of the most well known corporate figures in recent times, former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch had adopted a philosophy of getting out of all the businesses except those areas where the company could be first and second. Outsourcing to my mind is extending the same philosophy internally — get out of all the areas except where you are best, your core competency. Welch had a 70:70:70 rule. He has decided that 70 per cent of GE’s work will be outsourced. Out of this, 70 per cent will be done from offshore development centers. And out of this, about 70 per cent will have to be done here in India. One of the reasons of his stupendous success could have been his efficient outsourcing. Peter Drucker’s book Innovation and Entrepreneurship describes how the great Henri Ford’s empire began to crumble after James J Couzens, the man who used to look after all other management functions to enable Ford to focus on his engineering core competence, left the company. In his book The High Performance Entrepreneur, Subroto Bagchi, vice-chairman, MindTree Ltd, says, “Many times a startup fails when it tries to be too big too soon and does things which are not its core competence.” Bagchi is right. Outsourcing is actually in-resourcing; whether it is a start-up or otherwise, the shift in focus to core competence can unleash forces that can be one of the factors which can actually make the entire company a high performance entrepreneur.

This article is written by Hiren Shah and was published in the October issue of Management Compass.