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Employee Management During Layoffs

by V S Rama Raoon November 5, 2011

Temping, also known as contractual staffing has been asignificantly big trend in the west across various sectors be

it IT, pharma, education etc. In India the story however, is

different.

Its only in the past few years that temping as a concept isbeing looked at and explored by India Inc. More so now

since firms are realizing that not only is this tool a cost

effective tool but also a useful method for getting the besttalent from the market and removing the under performers from the lot. Its like taking people on

trial and check basis. Temping gives you the option of removing bad performers and retaining

the good ones.

Temping as a practice should be limited to roles that require extensive manpower and sectors

that are labor intensive. In a few firms the various roles in HR and IT have been handled by

contractual staffers. These activities are repeating but not on going and temping in these

functions ensures an introduction of fresh ideas and a better ROI that is Return on Investment.

Apart from this, highly labor intensive activities like the sales force management have been

taking in contractual staffers. These activities are primarily service / marketing oriented and

often area specific. Employing contractual staffers as medical representatives in the chosen area

helps better reach out to many employee problems and address them individually.

For a pharmaceutical major, contractual staffing is not a recent phenomenon and has been

practiced for over two decades now. It is one of the HR tools and practices to improve

operational efficiencies.

Through this, systems and procedures are more tuned in and help in improving overall

productivity levels within the organization.

Of course, the financial advantage it gives to the organizations is another big benefit of

contractual staffing. An organization can easily achieve around 15 percent cost saving throughtemp staffing, but more than that its the value that the firm gets since the infrastructure cost goes

down significantly.

During forced layoffs this is just the kind of support any company needs. Employers have donethe rationalism of their headcount and removed out the non-performers. When recruitment is

frozen temp comes very handy.

Employers dont want to create permanent manpower costs. Moreover, they are looking at temp

staffers and thinking of converting them to permanent staffers once the market bounces back.

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Elaborating on the sectors that could possibly increase their focus on temp staffing are insurance,

manufacturing, telecom and banking. It is not just a flash in the pan but a trend that is here tostay. At a time when most organizations are concerned about various means to curb operational

costs, work force management tool comes as a shot in the arm.

Man power management means managing an employee effectively by putting him/her at theright work in the right place, at the right time and getting the right output. An employee is themost important asset of an organization and managing the asset effectively reduces the

operational costs of a firm automatically. Cost adherence, productivity is the key in workforce

management and managing these things is crucial for the growth of any organization.

But many organizations in India have not adopted automation and still go by the manual systems

which leads to lot of intentional errors in pay rules attendance, leaves etc., which ends up in

unwanted expenses for the firm.

Increasing productivity and saving costs:

Workforce management tools help firms to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, andimprove workforce productivity. Tools used for recruitment process are applicant tracking

systems, assessments career tracking and surveys etc. which help the organization to identify and

develop best people for the jobs. This goes a long way in increasing productivity and saving

costs.

Tools for time and attendance management leave and absence management etc helps an

organization to identify things like unaccounted absence and half day leaves and to manage such

leakages effectively. A car manufacturing company improved the productivity of its workforceby using Workforce Central Suite a workforce management tool developed by a professional

software company. The solution had the ability to deliver real time labor data to its operatingdepartments while pay transactions. By comparing actual labor information with real time datafrom the budgeting system, managers were able to identify excess headcount in various areas

throughout the plant and made sure that they have the right number of associates. This improved

the plants hours per vehicle output and also the savings.