Progressive company gets Recruiting Managers and HR working together to revolutionise the way they recruit.

  Managers and HR at Tata Projects Limited joined forces to align to the same goal - effective recruitment.

The first set of participants

Part of the process for enhancing organisational performance is to ensure you recruit/select people most likely to be “winners” in their specific role. Unfortunately, in many companies, even experienced interviewers do not understand the determinants of high performance, so end up recruiting on the basis of skills, knowledge, qualifications, and experience. As has been proved, time and again, these elements are far from adequate.

Getting it right more often requires an almost totally new way of defining the needs of the job and also understanding how to interview in a way that obtains valuable information about the candidate’s strengths against these needs.

Success in this venture also demands a team approach between managers and HR to ensure they are both looking for, and assessing, the same vital attributes.

This what the two-day Recruiting Winners Workshop was planned to help the two sets of participants groups achieve. Although the workshops were in early November, the participants have already started implementing the new ideas with enthusiasm. Now we are all watching and waiting to see what their efforts will achieve.

The second set of participants

 Tata Projects Limited (TPL) was established in 1979 as an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) Company in the Engineering Sector of the Tata Group. It is one of the earliest and very few Indian EPC companies which have acquired the triple certifications of ISO 9001, 14001 & OHSAS 18001. Today, TPL is one of the leading EPC Companies in India.
As a part of its corporate sustainability TPL serves the community in the areas of employability skill development, primary education, safe drinking water and health. In line with the Tata Group philosophy, it also takes up Affirmative Action initiatives.

The Workplace Festive Season Has Arrived! (A new take on Appraisals)

It's another festive season and people are getting more and more excited as the time draws near. The workplace is buzzing with delighted anticipation ...

It's appraisal time again!

You can almost feel the glow of excitement of everyone around you on the morning commute to the office. You can almost hear their unspoken wish: 'I do hope I get told my appraisal date today. I can't wait to hear!'

You can pinpoint those whose day has come. They are the ones with the palpable inner glow and the radiant smile that almost lights up the bus or the railway carriage.

Ah! If only every day was appraisal day! 

But what is this I hear? You are telling me to return to the real world, where over half the employees — both managers and their direct reports — dislike appraisals? The world where most people are disengaged and a large percentage resign because of their bosses.

If this is so, why do companies have this annual event? Is it just to determine what kind of increment they will get?

You say that there is no connection between the appraisal and salary awards? So this means all the effort I have put in to streamline what I do to achieve greater throughput does not reflect in the value I receive and therefore, if I hadn't bothered, I would get exactly the same increment or recognition?

Oh? It is also to help you plan my developmental needs?  So if we find my performance is lacking in February, it will be pinpointed in December so I can receive the appropriate training in the following June? Very helpful.

Besides this, how can an effective and objective assessment of my performance take place when so much of what I have done (or not done) over the past year will have been forgotten anyway? The fact that my current manager took over his position two months after I had done that streamlining and was therefore unaware of my real value-add wasn't helpful either.

It all seems rather arbitrary to me.

Why don't many more companies stop doing what has always been done and instead focus on the things that create a culture in which people enjoy producing great results and in which appraisals are a positive experience for all?

So let's get people smiling in anticipation of not only their appraisals but also their everyday work. It can be done. It has been done.

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