Bussiness Line 04.10.2010
‘Every moment, day, month of each employee is critical'
| The growing relevance of workforce management solutions.. |
James Thomas, Country Manager, India Operations, Kronos.
Chitra Narayanan
One of the biggest HR scandals to rock Delhi was the discovery of 22,853 ghost employees on the Municipal Corporation of Delhi's rolls. The discovery came after the MCD put in operation a biometric attendance system. To its shock, the civic body found it was losing Rs 17 crore a month paying bogus employees!
Of course, that's pretty much a one-in-a-million scenario, and one you wouldn't imagine a private company would ever encounter. But James Thomas, Country Manager, India Operations, Kronos, a Workforce Management System leader, claims that time management, absence management, task management and scheduling solutions can result in significant cost savings for most enterprises.
The reality in many offices is that people are at work only 10 per cent of the time, “do punch and lunch” or get buddies to sign in for them, says Thomas. “Typically, world over, the leakages are to the tune of 1 to 1.5 days of extra days per employee going unaccounted. In India, it's two-three times that much,” he claims.
It's the second year of commercial operations in India for Kronos and according to Thomas the company has got 40-50 customers in 18 months.
Excerpts from an interview:
Workforce management systems are still very much in a nascent stage of adoption in India, right?
HR outsourcing is the last bastion of automation in the developed as well as in the developing economies and India is just adopting it. We see adoption is more in the IT companies, but slowly it's happening in other spaces as well. We are creating beachheads in retail and healthcare.
This is especially true now, with the centre of gravity shifting to markets such as India, skill levels improving and salaries shooting up. In such a situation, every moment, every day, every month of every employee is getting critical for companies and the strategic differentiator is the people dimension. How well you manage the time of your employees is critical.
What about the Government? Given the MCD scandal, that must be a big opportunity for you?
It's like an elephant moving. But we have seen tremendous transformation taking place — tenders are coming out.
What's the return on investment for the companies that implement it?
The return on payroll is 3 to 5 per cent. So if a company pays out Rs 100 crore as salaries, that's a straight savings of Rs 5 crore. Scheduling management in healthcare/ logistics companies or airports have a big impact on customer service too.
And how soon do the savings kick in? And how long does it take for system to get implemented?
In the US, it takes just two months for adoption. Here, it takes six months. Savings kick in in five to 12 months of the systems going live. And it is a recurring yearly saving.
It may seem like pretty much brasstacks, but the cost savings for a company is significant. You can call it low-risk high-return investment.
In fact, in recessionary times, the typical attitude is to lay off the workforce. The top-line is not growing, so to control costs, the only way out is to control payroll costs and the kneejerk reaction is to lay off workers.
And that's where we touch a raw nerve in companies when we point out the savings achieved through workforce management systems.
