Innovation In designing the Office of Today

What if you step into your office building, one fine day and find out that the entire appearance of the office has undergone a major makeover? You find that all the glass cubicles have been dismantled to create more open space and you now share your workstation with your CEO! Your canteen has a LAN connection and you are encouraged to work using your laptop, sipping cappuccino, while being seated cozily on a beanbag. Your boss encourages you to have your weekly brainstorming sessions at the office recreational centre, while working out on the treadmill. Your new office is swanky, contemporary and stylish!

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Downturn in economy can mean new opportunities for entrepreneurs

However, believe it or not, some experts say that this is just the time for launching a start up. Just speak to Hitesh Oberoi, part of the team that launched highly successful ventures like naukri.com, jeevansathi.com, and 99acres.com. He believes that “it’s a great time to be an entrepreneur again…. [Companies are] going to try and cut costs, be more efficient; manpower is easily available so it’s a good time to start a company.”

What You Need To Know About Surviving Layoffs

Every morning, it seems, you read an article in the paper about layoffs at another company. Those layoffs are hard on the people who get laid off, but they are also just as hard on the people left behind. There is more work to be done and fewer people to do it. There is the lingering fear that more layoffs might happen or that the company might close altogether. Here’s what you need to know to survive in this business climate, both as a manager and as an employee.

Best big companies to work for

Valero Energy
Fortune 1000 rank:

16 Best Companies rank: 67 No. of U.S. employees: 17,488

Most common salaried job: Store Manager - RetailAvg. pay in that job: $97,73 What makes it so great? Largest oil refiner in North America makes its corporate jet available for employees with medical emergencies and covers 100% of health insurance premiums.

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Top 10 Tips to Attract,Retain & Motivate Employees

Grimme's Top 10 Tips: To Attract, Retain & Motivate Employees
1-Pay employees fairly and well - then get them to forget about money.
2-Treat each and every employee with respect. Show them that you care about them as persons, not just as workers.
3-Praise accomplishments and attempts…

What kind of employee are you ?

Aries Employee Profile (march 21 - april 19)
Aries employees make excellent troubleshooters.They'll usually want to be out in the field at a variety of different work sites fixing things. They certainly won't be happy for very long behind a desk in a 9 to 5 schedule. The bored Aries employee ..........

Taurus Employee Profile (april 20 - may 20)
Taureans make some of the best employees. They are loyal, hardworking, and no-nonsense. They work methodically and follow projects through until they are complete. Some may appear to work a little too slowly-usually because ......

Talent Management through Psychological Contract

According to a survey by Merit Trac, there is 93% gap in the employability even after professional qualification. This raises serious questions regarding our education system. Skill and competency is a result of nurturing right learning attitude.

People and knowledge have always been the foundation of any organisation, however, the importance in last decade has grown many fold due to globalisation and Information Technology Revolution. Products and processes no longer are competitive edge and can be replaced by better ones. Psychological contract between people and organisations are becoming more important than the written contracts

6 degrees of separation

We all network in multitude of ways, sometime even without realising it. It’s true. No one is, or can be, exempt from these social linkages or networks, be it an individual or a corporation. And from an organisational point of view, dabbling in social networks has always been important, to learn and absorb more from the environment. But it has also gained importance from the point of view of recruiting - simply because networking is one of the easiest and fastest ways to find people with the right competencies and experience. In a world that is rapidly latching on to the use of technology to do everything in a better way, organisations have found that some old-fashioned social interaction can work wonders for them

A dearth of HR talent

A survey of HR directors at 20 global corporations based in the United Kingdom also found that core HR services such as employee data management and recruiting are often poorly executed. The troubling gulf between the needs of the business and the ability of HR to respond will force many companies to rethink their approach to the recruitment, training, and development of HR employees.

Centered leadership: How talented women thrive

Women start careers in business and other professions with the same level of intelligence, education, and commitment as men. Yet comparatively few reach the top echelons.
This gap matters not only because the familiar glass ceiling is unfair, but also because the world has an increasingly urgent need for more leaders. All men and women with the brains, the desire, and the perseverance to lead should be encouraged to fulfill their potential and leave their mark.

The challenge of hiring and retaining women

In an era of ever-intensifying competition for talent, companies that can appeal to and retain different kinds of workers are more likely to succeed. Understanding diversity in the workforce has been a professional interest of Axelrod’s since 1989, when she was asked, as a young McKinsey consultant, to help figure out why the firm was losing so many women and what could be done to keep them. In the late 1990s, Axelrod was a leader of McKinsey’s War for Talent project, which quantified the challenges that leading US companies faced in finding talented executives. She later moved on to executive roles at the global marketing communications group WPP and then to eBay.

Can an organisation evolve itself to become an employer of its choice

In todays business, people are the key differentiator and getting the right type of talent, in time and retaining them has become the primary focus of almost all organisations. Becoming a beacon to attract talent has become the secret ambition which has spurted organisations to take note of how they are perceived by employees, both current and prospective.

Organisations have started adopting various novel ways of becoming attractive. And like a peacock displaying its plumes during mating seasons, organisations too have started publicizing their uniqueness.

Economic and hiring outlook, third quarter 2008: A McKinsey Global Survey

Although executives indicate that their companies have greater pricing power, it isn’t translating into stability for workers. Hiring plans have dwindled over the past year. Almost 30 percent of the executives now expect their companies to shrink the size of the workforce in the next six months (Exhibit 4), up from 18 percent a year ago. Executives in manufacturing and financial services, where workforce cutbacks have been more common than in other industries, are even more likely than executives in general to say the workforce will decrease than increase. By contrast, 43 percent of the executives in energy expect hiring levels to rise—by far the most in any industry. It seems likely that energy companies are drawing on their enormous profits to continue exploring.

Online Video Resumes

Do you ever have one of those moments when you wince at the past and wonder, “What was I thinking?” Big hair and parachute pants come to mind for me because I was a child of the eighties. Trends come and go. Some stay and become part of our lifestyle and culture while others, gratefully, die a natural death never to be resurrected. Yet at their height of popularity, it’s difficult to tell which have staying power and which do not. This is why we need to pay very careful attention to the newest job search trend – the online video resume.

WorkPlace Diversity- A melting pot of talent

A global economy brings with it a diverse workforce. Workplace diversity encompasses race, gender, ethnic group, age, personality type, educational background and work experience.

Managers need to be careful and ensure that decisions and actions are not influenced by stereotypical views. “Ethnic minorities lack qualification, women with young children are less committed to work, disabled employees are more likely to be sick than others and older workers lack ambition and enthusiasm”. These could be some of the stereotypical presumptions that exist. These should be avoided.