12 Ways to Keep Your Employees Happy Without Raising Wages


An article from : http://www.bschool.com

The old adage, “a happy employee is a productive employee” has been proven to be true time and time again. Looking at many of the most successful companies today, many of them have a wide variety of ways they keep there employees happy and working. While it’s true that raising wages will always make employees happy, there are several other things you can do to ensure their happiness. These things will also probably be significantly cheaper than an across-the-board wage hike.
1. Flexible Hours
All businesses are different, and some are much easier to allow flexible scheduling than others. However, simply making any effort can have positive results. Employees have lives outside the workplace, and sometimes issues with children come up, family emergencies, or simply needing a nice vacation. Allowing employees to have some flexibility is a great way to keep them happy. If a employee asks to leave work early to pick up their child from school, letting them go, and having them make up the time later (if you so desire) is much more effective in terms of employee happiness.
2. Casual Fridays and Other Themes
 Businesses have many different kinds of dress codes. Some are strict, and business formal, while others lean towards business casual. No employee likes wearing a suit and tie every day, so allowing employees specific days of the week to “dress down,” is a great way to keep them happy. Making the dress-down day theme oriented can also produce great results (usually, something more inventive than a simple Hawaiian shirt day will have better results). Potential ideas include, sports teams, colleges, wear your favorite sweater, and so on.
3.  Coffee and Tea for Everyone  
It’s no secret that a little caffeine can do wonders in terms of motivating an employee. It’s often difficult to complete tasks if you are run-down, or otherwise simply very tired. Giving employees a high quality coffee-machine, with a variety of options (including tea, for those who don’t like coffee), is a wonderful decision. In terms of cost, it won’t be as much as raising wages, but it will certainly help motivate some employees to keep working away. There will always be those who disagree, but in my experience, half of the office would be asleep before lunchtime without some coffee or tea.
4. Family Events
Employees like to take their families to work-related events. It’s a great way for them to build new relationships, and just have a good time outside of the traditional workplace. “Family Days,” as they are sometimes called, can be tremendous for employee motivation. Serving good food, maybe some beer, having fun games, and generally making a great experience at a family event is fantastic from an employee-motivational standpoint.
5. Company-wide Competitions
Competition is the mother of productivity. If you can come up with a great competition, with a great reward, you just might find that your employees really get into it. It depends on your industry, but one example would be a sales competition for a sales company. Other competitions can involve things outside of the work place, such as fitness competitions.
6. Child Care Facilities  
Sometimes things happen, and employees will need to bring their children to work. If you don’t have anything that could be used as a childcare facility, you risk unhappy employees who will be forced to jump through hoops in order to take care of their kids in difficult situations. Google allows their employees to, in an emergency, bring their kids into work, and Google has nice toys (such as legos) for kids to entertain themselves. If you don’t provide emergency child care for employees, then they may have to start their own daycare business, and that wouldn’t make anybody happy (unless you really like kids).
7. Nice Office Supplies
 This may seem funny, but consider it. I don’t know how many employees have complained over the years about a lack of office supplies, but it’s a large number. Employees need supplies to do their work. So having nice post-its, pens, and paper readily available is a must if you’re going to be keeping your employees smiling and working.
8. Parties
Who doesn’t love a good party? In my experience, some of the happiest employees are those who are celebrating a coworker’s birthday and eating some cake. If you are diligent and get everyone in the workplace’s birthdays written down, then you might just see happier employees. The gesture will look great on you as a boss, and it will keep employees being social and happy. Remember to change the cakes though, people like variety. Also, don’t ever cancel the office Christmas Party, it’s the most exciting one of the year.
9. Friendly IT personnel
 IT is the bane of the existence of many employees in companies all over the world. There’s nothing more angering and frustrating then coming into work, only to find that your computer is malfunctioning which prevents you from doing your work. Having a friendly, well-staffed, IT department can do wonders for employee happiness. IT people should want to help employees. In fact, at a company like Google, they provide their employees with an opportunity to play video games while they wait for their computer to be serviced. Having this won’t just improve employee happiness; it will also probably improve productivity, as there will be less down time due to computer issues.
10. Delicious Food
 If there’s one thing workers really care about, it’s food. Recently, my friends’ work place changed their kitchen manager. The food now apparently “sucks,” which has lead to my friend being unhappy, as well as many of his coworkers. How can employees work hard and be happy if they have empty stomachs, or view the cafeteria food as awful? If the food is delicious and healthy, then employees will be much more well fed and therefore happier. Once again, at Google, employees have access to more food than anyone would ever need. Their employees are ecstatic when it comes to their work, and I think it has a great deal to do with how full their bellies are at the end of the day.
11. Decorations and Windows
There’s nothing more depressing than a dark office with very little windows and seemingly endless rows of cubicles. Employees don’t want to feel as if they are working in a sweatshop. Adding color to the workspace, paintings, and making sure that it is well lit with ample windows can do wonders in terms of employee morale. You don’t have to do a full-scale remodeling, but investing in some artwork and color for your office can have a tremendously positive affect.
12. Be Open to Suggestions
 If there’s one thing that people like to do, it’s voice their opinion. Being open to suggestions is one of the simplest and most-effective ways to keep employees happy. If employees feel that their opinion is valued, and if they see some of their suggestions implemented, then they will be much happier. The improvements could also turn out to be really great for your business. After all, two heads are better than one, so if you have all your employees thinking and making suggestions for improvements, then that’s a very positive sign.

Businesses should always be concerned with how happy their employees are. A happy employee will work harder, be more social, and will simply be better for the business than an unhappy employee would be. While raising wages is the quick and easy fix, in the long term, it’s better to focus on a variety of elements to help make employees happier and enjoy their work more. If you take any of these suggestions, I’m sure at least one employee will come into work with a smile on hides or her face every day.

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Making the Right Moves


[Note: This article Captured from Workforce Solutions Review Online, March 2011]

During the recession, many companies faced extraordinary organizational and productivity disruption as they devolved in a matter of months, sometimes even weeks, from a heavily staffed, money-making machine to a very lean organization where every staff position had to contribute directly to revenue production.
Today as a recovery takes root, companies now understand the need to optimize their organizational structure more frequently and in smaller increments, adjusting smoothly to market realities and avoiding future disruption. But how can they do this? How can they maintain sufficient personnel to capture every business opportunity without the risk of suddenly finding themselves with a bloated workforce, inadequate controls, and no clear link between expensive human capital and business results?

Organizational Optimization

The answer lies in developing greater corporate agility through the discipline of “organizational optimization.” Many organizations today use a one-off approach to handling re-orgs, attrition and workforce reductions — they perceive a sudden need and quickly take a best-guess action. With organizational optimization, however, managers regularly pinpoint gaps and weaknesses in the current organization and then identify the changes, dates and financial impacts that will lead to an optimal state. Such changes might include increasing or decreasing head count, redeploying or replacing low performers, acquiring new skill sets, and even developing new training programs to increase the competencies of the current team.

The concept of ongoing business optimization isn’t new. All organizations do some level of financial planning. Managers rely on accounting software packages to help them forecast revenue, expenses and budgets, and they have contingency plans in the event their forecasts are wrong. In organizational optimization, managers follow a similar process for workforce planning. They use software to create a plan that includes new hires, layoffs, promotions, redeployments, and salary increases, along with all the financial impacts. They also have contingency plans in the event the business reality changes.

The goal with organizational optimization is to evaluate the cost and impact of each scenario, find the optimal solution given the current business reality, establish the right time frame for implementing the plan, then adjust the plan incrementally as necessary. The “gap” between business results and staffing levels is minimized for an improved overall outcome.

For example, let’s say an organization is launching a new product, yet it is unsure whether the adoption will be swift or the market will follow a more gradual trajectory. The organization has a few options — it could staff up to support the best case scenario or wait and try to hire as demand requires. The first option could get very expensive as it forces the organization to take on significant cost that may not be offset by revenue for months. Staffing just-in-time to meet the growth would better align cost to revenue. In order to do so, however, managers need the ability to plan scenarios for different growth trajectories in advance, and need access to accurate current information to understand how they are tracking to their plan. These scenarios would include plans for redeploying employees from other departments, bringing on part-time or contract employees, hiring full-time staff, or even separating employees from other groups as this new product displaces revenue. The net result is that by optimizing the supporting organization, bottom-line results for the new product are significantly better. Unnecessary staffing cost is eliminated while the product is still supported in a proactive, high quality way.

To do this, executives must be able to track the actual impacts and costs over a defined period, continuously compare actual expenses to plan, and adjust the plan as needed. The first step in being able to do this is acquiring the right tools.

Visibility and Analysis

Today, software solutions can provide human resource managers the information they need to achieve organizational optimization. Typically, this software would include a current organization chart, a future organization chart, and a listing of potential next moves for each member of the team, as well as new skill-sets that need to be acquired. This information, presented along with date and net cost to the organization, creates the baseline for optimization. A monthly or quarterly review lets the organization realign the future chart and next moves with any changing requirements.

When looking for a software package for organizational optimization, make sure it provides visibility into key metrics and supports the required analysis for:
• Alignment between the number of employees in each function and business objectives,
• Total cost of the workforce and the impact of plan changes,
• Depth and distribution of skill-sets,
• Ratio of full-time to contingent labor,
• Scenario planning, and
• Key job positions and related succession plans.

This information and analysis is critical to gaining an understanding of the relationships that exist between HR, financial plans, and other business goals and metrics. The ability to analyze this information also accelerates the information-analysis-action cycle, shrinking a quarterly or monthly cycle time down to near zero, so managers can rapidly make decisions, iterate, observe progress toward the goal, and make course corrections along the way. Finally, this information supports improved process management, facilitating better collaboration, faster change implementation, and more accurate results tracking.

Rigorous Processes

Software is critical to organizational optimization because it is the only way to analyze multiple what-if scenarios. Without this capability, an organization cannot hope to arrive at the best configuration and action plan for coping with changing conditions. But software is also important because it brings objectivity to the process. This is especially important during times of intense change — such as concentrated business growth, rapidly changing economic conditions, and business emergencies — when actions based solely on emotion can do long-term damage.

In addition to software, organizational optimization requires discipline. The reviews must take place at regular intervals. Managers must maintain a tight link between their incremental adjustments and the current business plan. And adjustments to the workforce must be implemented as indicated in the plan.

By using technology to constantly analyze the relationship between the workforce and the business plan, and by establishing rigorous processes to ensure the workforce is regularly and optimally adjusted to meet current business goals, organizations can maximize the productivity of their workforces, position themselves to take advantage of every business opportunity, and avoid making strategic mistakes when the next crisis occurs.

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IPM - National HR Conference 2011 - Have You Registered,... ?

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Cinnamon Grand launches Green Forum for staff


Cinnamon Grand launched Green Forum, a special environmental education and awareness initiative, for the staff last week.
They keynote speaker at this forum was Professor Sarath Kotagama, leading environmental scientist, researcher, ornithologist and Professor of Environmental Science (Department of Zoology), University of Colombo.


He addressed the theme biodiversity, with emphasis on the state of the planet and the need for greener thinking and the practices in the hotel sector.

Green Forum, which will be monthly event in the hotel’s staff training calendar, is aimed at creating a forum of knowledge and advice by bringing together diverse personalities from the environmental sector.
The novel event also coincided with the month-long environment-related activities that the hotel is implementing in different stages, amongst all its stakeholders in commemoration of World Environment Day.

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Recruitment methods


The methods of recruitment open to a business are often categorized into:

Internal recruitment is when the business looks to fill the vacancy from within its existing workforce.
External recruitment is when the business looks to fill the vacancy from any suitable applicant outside the business.
Internal Recruitment:
Advantages :
Cheaper and quicker to recruit
People already familiar with the business and how it operates
Provides opportunities for promotion with in the business – can be motivating
Business already knows the strengths and weaknesses of candidates

Disadvantages:
Limits the number of potential applicants
No new ideas can be introduced from outside the business
May cause resentment amongst candidates not appointed
Creates another vacancy which needs to be filled

External Recruitment
Advantages
Outside people bring in new ideas
Larger pool of workers from which to find the best candidate
People have a wider range of experience

Disadvantages
Longer process
More expensive process due to advertisements and interviews required
Selection process may not be effective enough to reveal the best candidate

The four most popular ways of recruiting externally are:

Job centres - These are paid for by the government and are responsible for helping the unemployed find jobs or get training. They also provide a service for businesses needing to advertise a vacancy and are generally free to use.

Job advertisements - Advertisements are the most common form of external recruitment. They can be found in many places (local and national newspapers, notice boards, recruitment fairs) and should include some important information relating to the job (job title, pay package, location, job description, how to apply-either by CV or application form). Where a business chooses to advertise will depend on the cost of advertising and the coverage needed (i.e. how far away people will consider applying for the job

Recruitment agency - Provides employers with details of suitable candidates for a vacancy and can sometimes be referred to as ‘head-hunters’. They work for a fee and often specialise in particular employment areas e.g. nursing, financial services, teacher recruitment

Personal recommendation - Often referred to as ‘word of mouth’ and can be a recommendation from a colleague at work. A full assessment of the candidate is still needed however but potentially it saves on advertising cost.

Captured From http://tutor2u.net 

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hSenid Powers National HR Conference 2011

hSenid Business Solutions signed on as the Principal Technology Partner to sponsor the upcoming National HR Conference 2011 organized by the Institute of Personal Management of Sri Lanka. hSenid has sponsored this event for the past several years and has now become a permanent associate of this event.



This National HR conference will be held on 28th and 29th June 2011 at Cinnamon Grand Hotel under the theme “HR Powered Edge in a Booming Economy”. The emphasis of this conference will be on the dimensions of Human Resource management that will lead and motivate HR professionals to make a difference in their organizations, in order to enhance their bottom line performance.

hSenid Business Solutions, the premier Human Resource Information System Solutions provider serving a customer base of over 600 clients in 24 countries, is specialized in Total Human Resource Applications, SaaS - HR Solutions (PeoplesHR.com) and Human Resource Outsourcing (HRO). hSenid has grown to be a truly indigenous multinational company operating in Sri Lanka, United States, Singapore, Malaysia, and India. Speaking on the sponsorship CEO and founder of hSenid Mr. Dinesh Saparamadu said “In the post conflict Sri Lankan scenario, the need for Human Resource Management and Development is very badly felt. We are very happy to be in partnership with Institute of Personal Management in fulfilling this national requirement"

Institute of Personnel Management of Sri Lanka (IPM) was founded in 1959 and is a Professional body incorporated by an Act of Parliament (1976). IPM is affiliated to the Asia Pacific Federation of Human Resource Management and World Federation of Personnel Management Associations. “Quality delivery of service is a prime objective of IPM. When we have a HR solution provider with similar thinking it is very easy for us to partner. That is why this relationship is progressing so well for so long” said the President of IPM, Mr. Ajith R de Costa.

The upcoming National HR Conference and Exhibition, the foremost HR event in Sri Lanka is specially designed to bring new heights of Human Capital Management to meet the challenges in a booming economy.

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IPM - National HR Service Providers Exhibition - 2011

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hSenid Biz launches SaaS based Peoples HR 2.0 at CeBIT Australia 2011

At CeBIT Australia 2011, Asia Pacific’s largest business technology event, hSenid Biz, a leading HR solutions provider is to showcase the latest HR SaaS application, Peoples HR 2.0.
People's HR 2.0, a complete web based HR software solution covering a wide spectrum of today’s enterprise HR needs such as Absence Management, Training and Development and Performance Management amongst others. An innovative, on demand human resource management application – hSenidBiz Peoples HR 2.0 – promises to fundamentally redefine the management of human resources using the latest technology in an efficient and economical way. hSenidBiz Peoples HR 2.0 offers significantly higher flexibility, amazingly lower total cost of ownership and guaranteed shorter implementation time frame.

With People’s HR companies can easily manage their HR processes via comprehensive, user-friendly interfaces from any location in the world. This “On demand” HR software solution is ideal for small and-mid- sized companies who want to focus more on managing and developing their most valuable asset; human resources rather than be tied up with HR administration.

Based on SaaS (Software as a Service) architecture there is no requirement for enterprises to purchase additional hardware; neither is there a need to install cumbersome HR software. Every database and application runs on remote servers administered by our well trained team. Companies will only pay for what they use on a periodic rental basis.

“hSenidBiz People’s HR is a phenomenon that the HR community will definitely want to experience” says Founder and CEO of hSenidBiz, Dinesh Saparamadu. “The comprehensiveness of People’s HR will cater to most requirements of the HR function, making it a one-stop shop for all HR related technology needs. People’s HR being a green IT initiative, is the right tool for companies that are focused on their core competencies with a commitment to superior performance and rapid growth”.

For more information on hSenidBiz People’s HR, please visit:
www.peopleshr.com

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