TRENDS

IN IT INDUSTRY

INTRODUCTION

Success of every business enterprise depends on its human resource. Money, material and
machines are inert factors; but man, with his ability to feel, think, conscience and plan is the
most valuable resource. At the same time human elements are most difficult to be inspired,
controlled and motivated. The upcoming competition in India, will demand high motivational
level of its employees. Growth of an enterprise is vital for the economic development of the
country. This is possible only by maintaining the enthusiasm and motivation of the employees,
which is vital for carrying out the operations in most efficient manner. The most successful
companies, all over the world have designed their business policies to achieve higher
productivity by using potentiality and strength of people. The basic aim of human policies is
the genuine concern for the people. Proper design of human policies is based on the higher
responsibilities, personal and positive approach in the total perspective of organisational
interest. The world's best companies have established their strength with their people. The
employees identify themselves with the company they are working for. This also help in
building up their spirit, morale and spirit-de-cops which becomes strength of the company. The
culture of excellence thus nurtured contribute to growth with stability and continuous
improvement in productivity.

Finding the right man for the job and developing him into a valuable resource is an
indispensable requirement of every organisation. Human resources are capable of enlargement
i.e. capable of providing an output that is greater than the sum of the inputs. Proper recruitment
helps the line managers to work most effectively in accomplishing the primary objective of the
enterprise. In order to harness the human energies in the service or organisational goals, every
manager is expected to pay proper attention to recruitment, selection, training, development
activities in an organisation. Proper promotional avenues must also be created so as to motivate
employees to peak performance. Thus, personnel functions such as manpower planning
recruitment, selection and training, when carried out properly, would enable the organisation
to hire and retain the services of the best brains in the market. The human resource management
is very crucial in respect of information technology services than other manufacturing or
marketing enterprises. The IT services are technical in nature and at every stage the human
touch is involved. Hence it is well motivated and devoted manpower which is very much
essential for the success of IT industry.
ROLE OF HR MANAGERS

Some industry commentators call the Human Resources function the last bastion of
bureaucracy. Traditionally, the role of the Human Resource professional in many organizations
has been to serve as the systematizing, policing arm of executive management. In this role, the
HR professional served executive agendas well, but was frequently viewed as a road block by
much of the rest of the organization. While some need for this role occasionally remains, you
would not want every manager putting his own spin on a sexual harassment policy, as an
example—much of the HR role is transforming itself. The role of the HR manager must parallel
the needs of his changing organization. Successful organizations are becoming more adaptable,
resilient, quick to change direction, and customer-cantered. Within this environment, the HR
professional, who is considered necessary by line managers, is a strategic partner, an employee
sponsor or advocate, and a change mentor.

Strategic Partner:-In today’s organizations, to guarantee their viability and ability to contribute,
HR managers need to think of themselves as strategic partners. In this role, the HR person
contributes to the development of and the accomplishment of the organization-wide business
plan and objectives. The HR business objectives are established to support the attainment of
the overall plan and objectives. The tactical HR representative is deeply knowledgeable about
the design of work systems in which people succeed and contribute. This strategic partnership
impacts HR services such as the design of work positions, hiring; reward, recognition, and
strategic pay; performance development and appraisal systems; career and succession
planning; and employee development.

Employee Advocate: -As an employee sponsor or advocate, the HR manager plays an integral
role in organizational success via his knowledge about and advocacy of people. This advocacy
includes expertise in how to create a work environment in which people will choose to be
motivated, contributing, and happy. Fostering effective methods of goal setting,
communication, and empowerment through responsibility build employee ownership of the
enterprise. The HR professional helps establish the organizational culture and climate in which
people have the competency, concern, and commitment to serve customers well. In this role,
the HR manager provides employee development opportunities, employee assistance
programs, gain sharing and profit-sharing strategies, organization development interventions,
due process approaches to problem solving, and regularly scheduled communication
opportunities.

Change Champion: -The constant evaluation of the effectiveness of the organization results in
the need for the HR professional to frequently champion change. Both knowledge about and
the ability to execute successful change strategies make the HR professional exceptionally
valued. Knowing how to link change to the strategic needs of the organization will minimize
employee dissatisfaction and resistance to change. The HR professional contributes to the
organization by constantly assessing the effectiveness of the HR function. He also sponsors
change in other departments and in work practices. To promote the overall success of his
organization, he champions the identification of the organizational mission, vision, values,
goals, and action plans. Finally, he helps determine the measures that will tell his organization
how well it is succeeding in all of this.

LEADERSHIP AND EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT.

The main role of leadership was seen as creating a participatory process for employee
involvement, to build collective wisdom. Control has given way to collaboration and the old
paradigm of promoting competition and motivating through incentives shifted to creating co-
operation and oneness amongst people. This is a marked shift to build effective teams. Research
shows that six out of every 10 employees like to work in teams. 87 per cent of all Fortune 500
companies use parallel teams and about 100 per cent of all companies use project teams.
Storytelling and appreciative enquiry are emerging as a new dimension in positive motivation.
Finding out what's wrong seems to be the trend. In Walt Disney, telling success stories is one
of the important methods used to remind people of greatness and goodness of the organisation.
Leaders in Disney concentrate on quality, values and involvement. Speaking in the plenary
sessions, Tom Peters said, " We have transitioned from an asset-based economy to a talent-
based economy. The new definition of lay-off is untalented go talented stay. Leaders must
realise that talent is equal to brand". His new theory is EVP which means "Employee Value
Proposition".

Rosabeth Moss Kanter said, " Human beings are good raw material, they become assets when
you train them to increase their knowledge and skills". She added that only a few organisations
really train people to make them a success. Seconding this, Mr Peters pointed out how most
organisations are not serious about developing people. They spend on an average 26.3 hours
per person per year on training. A surgeon, a pilot or an athlete on the other hand spends 10-15
times more on training. He also stated that the HRD department should be renamed TDFD
(Talent Development Fanatic Department) and wealth for this new regime will flow from
innovation, not organisation. Quoting Gary Hamel, he said, only those employees will succeed
who are "certified radical". Only those companies will succeed who create a cause, not a
business. Leaders according to him are living individuals, whom people can smell, feel and
touch. Their passion for work must be infectious.

Another aspect of leadership if the decision to introduce fun in the work place. Research shows
that this reduces absenteeism and builds stronger, deeper and longer lasting relationships. It
appears out of every 100 Fortune companies in the last decade, 69 are dead and only 31 are
alive. In a Forbes Magazine study of around 100 companies from '17 to '87, only 39 companies
were found to survive.

Management of Change: -Research proves that many change models don't consider the human
experience during change. The overriding concern seems to be to downsize. It was found that
most change processes go through four fundamental stages.

 People try to resist or deny change

 They adapt, participate in the change
 They attempt to add value
 The culmination or formation of a new status-quo

A number of presentations revealed that leaders who initiate change must do so with one foot
in the future and the other planted in past values. Forgetting tradition must can devalue existing
strengths. The success of a change process depends on the skill of the facilitator to create a
participatory process to enlist the support of people and address the issue of grief.

E-Learning: - Organisations like Ford Motor, Hewlett Packard, Intel and IBM are using e-
learning to increase the knowledge of their people. Companies like Ford star even manage time
differences between countries while conducting virtual class rooms, chats, demos,
presentations to communicate new concepts, product details, core values, issues of governance
and corporate communities.

CEO's are talking to their people about new ideas and enlisting their support through forums
and message boards. This is changing the way people behave and work. The advantages of e-
learning are many: It is self-paced, flexible, less expensive, modular and has a huge reach.

Universities like Cornell, MIT, Stanford, etc, have started emphasizing e-learning to attract a
worldwide audience. Web-centric universities are becoming the order of the day. William
Taylor, editor and managing partner of the Fast Pace magazine, said, "There is no going back
from back from dotcoms". He was of the opinion that there is a merger taking place between
computers and human beings.

INNOVATIVE PRACTICES IN HR

The Innovative Practices in Human Resources study uncovered 12 practices that are reducing
HR costs and improving service quality to employees. Key findings from this research included
the need for HR managers to streamline processes, lower overhead costs, and enable their
departments to advance from transactional organizations to strategic partners in the business.

Practices and technologies include:

 Internet and intranet employee services

 Strategic human resources
 Centralized HR departments and call centres
 360-degree performance appraisals
 HRIS systems
 Employee self-service
 Voice response systems (VRUs)
 Resume scanning and Internet recruitment
 Kiosks
 Automated time and attendance systems
 Team policies and development
 Outsourcing
 Business process reengineering (BPR)
LINKING PAY TO PERFORMANCE

Most Human Resource professionals are familiar with the concept of strategy. There is much
more concentration and focus today on the strategic outcomes of human resource activity than
ever before. The area of compensation is no exception.

Pay for performance systems are becoming more and more popular as senior managers reach
beyond the use of compensation systems to deliver pay. There is far more interest in more
closely linking the reward mechanisms to the achievement of corporate objectives. Motivation
for superior performance is the goal.

In experience, most organizations will profess to a "pay-for-performance" philosophy as a

keystone of their compensation system. Such a system requires solid grounding in a clear and
documented link between performance and salary increases. Unfortunately, the link between
individual performance and pay is frequently non-existent - "merit" pay is a hollow concept in
this regard.

merit system demands that managers be willing to make distinctions in merit increases based
on performance. However, several factors get in the way of this happening. First, the annual
salary change is usually a small percentage. Giving the better performer 2% more than the cost
of living has little motivation or recognition attached to it. Similarly giving the poor performers
2% less than the cost of living increase is not that much of a penalty. So many managers don't
make that distinction - it is too much hassle. So, everybody gets the same increase.

Second, most performance appraisal systems are after-the-fact appraisals. In other words, at
appraisal time, which is usually toward the end of the year, managers are required to evaluate
the performance of their staff. It means sitting down and trying to reconstruct what each staff
member did, capturing it in a non-threatening way, communicating the evaluation without a
fuss and finally, making a merit increase recommendation. Sound like a familiar pattern. It is
a process that repeats itself year after year.

The end result is usually a lot of avoidance behavior. Managers avoid the appraisal process
like the plague. Although employees profess to want to "know where they stand" they often
take issue with the appraisal. Besides, they don't listen to the evaluation, they wait until the
penny literally "drops". "What is my rating and how much do I get?" is a constant theme in
merit systems where salary decisions are tied so closely with the appraisal process.

You might well ask is there any way out of this mess? The answer is fortunately yes.
Organizations that are the best and want to separate themselves from the rest, are turning away
from the merit system and toward an annual incentive system, particularly for middle and upper
management positions but increasingly for teams and individuals lower down in the
organization as well.

They are adopting a system of annual incentive bonuses linked directly to the achievement of
corporate and individual objectives in three specific areas. The areas are corporate revenues
and gains, cost containment and behavioural changes. The first two areas are quantitative and
the third area, which is gaining in importance, is qualitative in nature, and has a great deal to
do with building managerial and individual competence.

Why Is This Transition Occurring? -Well, there are many challenges facing businesses today
and these challenges are driving them to find better ways of linking pay and performance to
the achievement of corporate results..

CHANGING JOB DESIGN IN IT COMMUNITY

The California State University (CSU) system is being challenged to meet increasing demands
for educational and administrative services through the innovative use of technology and
human resource systems. Even though funding levels for higher education have been cut in
recent years, public/taxpayer expectations and the demands for quality education, access,
service, and accountability have grown. Technology initiatives within the CSU have resulted
in significant advances and improved technical capabilities and efficiency. Human resource
and organizational systems are also needed to capitalize on and thrive in this rapidly changing
work environment.

In 1991, the CSU began a study to look at alternative work and job design approaches to meet
these challenges. The study focused on the information technology community and how work
processes and activities could be better organized to remove artificial barriers and improve
organizational effectiveness, a process often associated with the term "reengineering."
Secondly, the study focused on developing a job design approach that could adapt to changing
skill requirements and that would promote the continuous acquisition of skills for knowledge-
based employees in information technology. The goal of improved organizational effectiveness
and an orientation towards reengineering and skills guided the development of the proposed
job design approach.

This article begins by identifying several trends that led to the study, then describes the overall
project within the context of an organizational effectiveness equation. A new job design
approach that was proposed as a result of the study is presented, including a new classification
structure and competency dimensions and measures for defining and evaluating positions.
Finally, other supporting systems are described for an integrated human resources approach.
The development phase of the project has been completed, and the CSU anticipates entering
into negotiations with its employee representatives in the near future.

Three trends have had a direct impact on the development of a strategic job design approach
for the information technology community at the CSU: (a) diversification and convergence of
technology, increased demand for educational access and (b) changes in instructional delivery
methods; and changing work place demands and priorities.

The technology demands within higher education lead to a complex and dynamic computing
environment. Academic and administrative computing strategies tend to be at cross-purposes
in terms of defining systems requirements. This has resulted in widely diverse systems and
technology within and across the CSU's twenty campuses. Increasingly, however, campus
systems are becoming more integrated, as data are shared across multiple platforms on a
network "highway" that is linked to external information sources. Networking and desktop
computing have removed traditional boundaries for information access, research, and decision-
support purposes. Data, voice, and video technologies continue to be combined in more
interactive and user-friendly formats.

In terms of educational trends, many institutions offer distance learning using various
transmission media and are incorporating instructional technology into curriculum
development. Students expect guaranteed access to technology and to research databases, and
this access has become an issue of social responsibility

. [1] Library and computing functions are becoming increasingly interdependent in "an
infrastructure of scholarly communication" within higher education.

[2] Workplace trends, as presented in Sustaining Excellence in the 21st Century: A Vision and
Strategies for College and University Administration, well represent the outlook for the CSU.
Two key issues are identified:

(1) Economics. There is increasing pressure to constrain administrative costs within the "labour
intensive cost structure" that exists in higher education. Reductions in staff are occurring at the
same time as transaction volume and service expectations are growing.

(2) Decentralization of responsibility. With fewer people and greater access to information,
organizations are moving responsibility for decision-making downward to the point of service.
Work organization is shifting away from job specialization and a task/procedure orientation, to
more generalized job responsibilities focused on outcome and greater participation on cross-
functional teams

(3) Another central workplace trend is the "earning and learning" environment described by
the U.S. Department of Labour in its Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills
(SCANS) report. To quote Thomas P. Foley, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of
Labour and Industry: “We’ve changed from the idea of "one skill, one job" to the reality of a
range of skills that have to apply to a number of different kinds of professions. More to the
point, workers must possess a skill that they continually upgrade just to keep pace in the
professions they choose."

(4) The influx of new technology and applications has created a demand for continual learning
and adaptation. Due to the CSU's relatively stable workforce, maintaining skills to keep pace
with changing technology was identified as a critical goal. Knowledge requirements are
expanding to encompass a greater breadth of technologies and subject expertise, as well as
including process-oriented capabilities such as communication and negotiation skills.

The implications of these technological, educational, and workplace trends point directly to the
need to reengineer organizational structures, work design, and processes. Based on these trends
and overall organizational goals, two key objectives were established for a new job design
approach for the CSU: flexibility and skill development. Fundamentally, each campus needs
the flexibility to achieve its goals by distributing work assignments in a way that optimizes its
available skill mix and promotes individual skill development and initiative.