Twelve Tips for Team Building: How to Build Successful Work Teams

Twelve Cs for Team Building
Executives, managers and organization staff members universally explore ways to improve business results and profitability. Many view team-based, horizontal, organization structures as the best design for involving all employees in creating business success.
No matter what you call your team-based improvement effort: continuous improvement, total quality, lean manufacturing or self-directed work teams, you are striving to improve results for customers. Few organizations, however, are totally pleased with the results their team improvement efforts produce. If your team improvement efforts are not living up to your expectations, this self-diagnosing checklist may tell you why. Successful team building, that creates effective, focused work teams, requires attention to each of the following.
Clear Expectations: Has executive leadership clearly communicated its expectations for the team’s performance and expected outcomes? Do team members understand why the team was created? Is the organization demonstrating constancy of purpose in supporting the team with resources of people, time and money? Does the work of the team receive sufficient emphasis as a priority in terms of the time, discussion, attention and interest directed its way by executive leaders?
Context: Do team members understand why they are participating on the team? Do they understand how the strategy of using teams will help the organization attain its communicated business goals? Can team members define their team’s importance to the accomplishment of corporate goals? Does the team understand where its work fits in the total context of the organization’s goals, principles, vision and values?
Commitment: Do team members want to participate on the team? Do team members feel the team mission is important? Are members committed to accomplishing the team mission and expected outcomes? Do team members perceive their service as valuable to the organization and to their own careers? Do team members anticipate recognition for their contributions? Do team members expect their skills to grow and develop on the team? Are team members excited and challenged by the team opportunity?

tips for effective team building.
Competence: Does the team feel that it has the appropriate people participating? (As an example, in a process improvement, is each step of the process represented on the team?) Does the team feel that its members have the knowledge, skill and capability to address the issues for which the team was formed? If not, does the team have access to the help it needs? Does the team feel it has the resources, strategies and support needed to accomplish its mission?
Charter: Has the team taken its assigned area of responsibility and designed its own mission, vision and strategies to accomplish the mission.

Has the team defined and communicated its goals; its anticipated outcomes and contributions; its timelines; and how it will measure both the outcomes of its work and the process the team followed to accomplish their task? Does the leadership team or other coordinating group support what the team has designed?
Control: Does the team have enough freedom and empowerment to feel the ownership necessary to accomplish its charter? At the same time, do team members clearly understand their boundaries? How far may members go in pursuit of solutions? Are limitations (i.e. monetary and time resources) defined at the beginning of the project before the team experiences barriers and rework?Is the team’s reporting relationship and accountability understood by all members of the organization? Has the organization defined the team’s authority? To make recommendations? To implement its plan? Is there a defined review process so both the team and the organization are consistently aligned in direction and purpose? Do team members hold each other accountable for project timelines, commitments and results? Does the organization have a plan to increase opportunities for self-management among organization members?
Collaboration: Does the team understand team and group process? Do members understand the stages of group development? Are team members working together effectively interpersonally? Do all team members understand the roles and responsibilities of team members? team leaders? team recorders? Can the team approach problem solving, process improvement, goal setting and measurement jointly? Do team members cooperate to accomplish the team charter? Has the team established group norms or rules of conduct in areas such as conflict resolution, consensus decision making and meeting management? Is the team using an appropriate strategy to accomplish its action plan?
Communication: Are team members clear about the priority of their tasks? Is there an established method for the teams to give feedback and receive honest performance feedback? Does the organization provide important business information regularly? Do the teams understand the complete context for their existence? Do team members communicate clearly and honestly with each other? Do team members bring diverse opinions to the table? Are necessary conflicts raised and addressed?
Creative Innovation: Is the organization really interested in change? Does it value creative thinking, unique solutions, and new ideas? Does it reward people who take reasonable risks to make improvements? Or does it reward the people who fit in and maintain the status quo? Does it provide the training, education, access to books and films, and field trips necessary to stimulate new thinking?tips for effective team building.
Consequences: Do team members feel responsible and accountable for team achievements? Are rewards and recognition supplied when teams are successful? Is reasonable risk respected and encouraged in the organization? Do team members fear reprisal? Do team members spend their time finger pointing rather than resolving problems? Is the organization designing reward systems that recognize both team and individual performance? Is the organization planning to share gains and increased profitability with team and individual contributors? Can contributors see their impact on increased organization success?
Coordination: Are teams coordinated by a central leadership team that assists the groups to obtain what they need for success? Have priorities and resource allocation been planned across departments? Do teams understand the concept of the internal customer—the next process, anyone to whom they provide a product or a service? Are cross-functional and multi-department teams common and working together effectively? Is the organization developing a customer-focused process-focused orientation and moving away from traditional departmental thinking?
Cultural Change: Does the organization recognize that the team-based, collaborative, empowering, enabling organizational culture of the future is different than the traditional, hierarchical organization it may currently be? Is the organization planning to or in the process of changing how it rewards, recognizes, appraises, hires, develops, plans with, motivates and manages the people it employs?Does the organization plan to use failures for learning and support reasonable risk? Does the organization recognize that the more it can change its climate to support teams, the more it will receive in pay back from the work of the teams?
Spend time and attention on each of these twelve tips to ensure your work teams contribute most effectively to your business success.

Indian talent in demand; seen as competitive threat

New Delhi, June 24 It seems desi talent is in demand, for 11 of the 26 countries surveyed sourced its foreign talent from India.
India closely follows China among the most popular countries for sourcing foreign talent, according to a Manpower Inc survey titled ‘Borderless Workforce’.
Incidentally, India ranks third in the list of top ten countries believed to be an economic threat to other nations. Of the 26 countries surveyed, all countries with the exception of Costa Rica and Peru believe that India provides competitive threat to their own country’s ability to compete economicallyMigration fears
The survey also highlights that 57 per cent of employers are concerned about the impact on labour market from talent migrating abroad. The findings reveal that only 21 per cent of employers in India think Government and businesses are doing enough to slow the outward migration of talent and attract these people back to India.
The survey gathered responses from 1924 respondents in India and 28,000 globally in 27 individual countries and territories.
Employers in public administration/education, services, finance, insurance and real estate and manufacturing are the most concerned, while employers in wholesale and retail, transport and utilities and mining, oil, gas and construction are least concerned.
The survey also indicated that employers in India consider China, United States and United Kingdom as the biggest threats to their ability to compete economically.
“While it’s true that we need to do more to keep our most talented workers, we must also consider how we can strengthen our collective employer ‘brand’ to attract more talented workers from overseas to fill our current and future talent shortages,” Dr Naresh Malhan, MD, Director Manpower India said.Taiwan most concerned
Within Asia Pacific, Taiwan has maximum percentage of employers (64 per cent) who express concern about talent leaving their country; the least concerned are employers in China (one per cent).
The survey also indicates that India ( $27 billion ) receives the highest remittances from nationals working abroad.

Indian wage inflation to grow

Indian wage inflation to grow

Indian companies are likely to keep raising salaries by about 15 per cent a year until 2011 as skills shortages overshadow concerns about higher input costs, according to Mercer, the consultancy.
The forecast, part of Mercer's annual Asia-Pacific compensation report, comes as India struggles with higher energy import costs. Economists expect India 's central bank to act soon to tighten monetary policy, such as raising interest rates, after the annual inflation rate breached 8 per cent in May.
India is one of only three countries in the region likely to maintain double-digit salary increases until 2011, according to Mercer, alongside Indonesia and Vietnam. The report covers salaries across all sectors in all categories of employees in 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. It is based on responses from about 500 companies, mainly multinational corporations operating in Asia.
Gangapriya Chakraverti, a senior India consultant for Mercer, said the situation was worrying because "the entire exercise of managing (salary) expectations has been missing.
"Given that companies are already struggling with higher input costs," she added, "there is increasing concern that these two-digit increases are definitely not to the benefit of any business. It will have to peter out at some point, and the earlier the better."
The rise in salaries is also more of a concern for India than a country such as China because services play a larger role in its economy, most notably in the outsourcing sector that has spearheaded India 's recent growth. Chinese annual salary increases are likely to remain above 9 per cent until 2011, according to Mercer, peaking next year at 9.7 per cent.
Employee costs typically represent between 6 and 8 per cent of total costs in the manufacturing sector, and up to 60 per cent of costs in the services sector.
The struggle by Indian employers' to keep a lid on salaries also contrasts with some more mature employment markets that are also facing severe labour shortages, including Australia where unemployment is at a three-decade low.
Australian salaries are expected to rise further, but at a stable rate of 4.3 per cent this year going down to 4.1 per cent in 2011, according to Mercer.
In terms of sectors, Mercer said that 2008 would mark "a change in trend direction" for high-tech salaries, with lower increases expected in most Asian countries amid a decline in US demand for consumer electronics.
In a recent report, economists at Lehman Brothers said that one reason to remain optimistic about Asian inflation was that there were "no strong signs yet of surging wages".
However, Lehman warned that low unemployment presented "a rising risk of wage-price spirals that could fan inflation expectations".

Good Interview

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High Attrition Rate: A Big Challenge

High Attrition Rate: A Big Challenge
Defining attrition: "A reduction in the number of employees through retirement, resignation or death"Defining Attrition rate: "the rate of shrinkage in size or number"Introduction: In the best of worlds, employees would love their jobs, like their coworkers, work hard for their employers, get paid well for their work, have ample chances for advancement, and flexible schedules so they could attend to personal or family needs when necessary. And never leave. But then there's the real world. And in the real world, employees, do leave, either because they want more money, hate the working conditions, hate their coworkers, want a change, or because their spouse gets a dream job in another state. So, what does all that turnover cost? And what employees are likely to have the highest turnover? Who is likely to stay the longest? Background of article The IT enabled services (BPO) industry is being looked upon as the next big employment generator (Nasscom predicts 1.1 million job requirement by the year 2008). It is however no easy task for an HR manager in this sector to bridge the ever increasing demand and supply gap of professionals. Unlike his software industry counterpart, the BPO HR manager is not only required to fulfill this responsibility, but also find the right kind of people who can keep pace with the unique work patterns in this industry. Adding to this is the issue of maintaining consistency in performance and keeping the motivation levels high, despite the monotonous work. The toughest concern for an HR manager is however the high attrition rate.In India, the average attrition rate in the BPO sector is approximately 30-35 percent. It is true that this is far less than the prevalent attrition rate in the US market (around 70 percent), but the challenge continues to be greater considering the recent growth of the industry in the country. The US BPO sector is estimated to be somewhere around three decades old. Keeping low attrition levels is a major challenge as the demand outstrips the supply of good agents by a big margin. Further, the salary growth plan for each employee is not well defined. All this only encourages poaching by other companies who can offer a higher salary.The much hyped "work for fun" tag normally associated with the industry has in fact backfired, as many individuals (mostly fresh graduates), take it as a pas-time job. Once they join the sector and understand its requirements, they are taken aback by the long working hours and later monotony of the job starts setting in. This is the reason for the high attrition rate as many individuals are not able to take the pressures of work.The toughness of the job and timings is not adequately conveyed. Besides the induction and project training, not much investment has been done to evolve a "continuous training program" for the agents. Motivational training is still to evolve in this industry. But, in all this, it is the HR manager who is expected to straighten things out and help individuals adjust to the real world. I believe that the new entrant needs to be made aware of the realistic situation from day-one itself, with the training session conducted in the nights, so that they get accustomed to things right at the beginning.The high percentage of females in the workforce (constituting 30-35 percent of the total), adds to the high attrition rate. Most women leave their job either after marriage or because of social pressures caused by irregular working hours in the industry. All this translates into huge losses for the company, which invests a lot of money in training them. If a person leaves after the training it costs the company about Rs 60,000. For a 300-seater call centre facing the normal 30 percent attrition, this translates into Rs 60 lakh per annum. Many experts are of believe that all these challenges can turn out to be a real dampener in the growth of this industry. This only raises the responsibility of "finding the right candidate" and building a "conducive work environment", which will be beneficial for the organization. The need is for those individuals who can make a career out of this. All this has induced the companies to take necessary steps, both internally and externally. Internally most HR managers are busy putting in efforts on the development of their employees, building innovative retention and motivational schemes (which was more money oriented so far) and making the environment livelier. Outside, the focus is on creating awareness through seminars and going to campuses for recruitment.Major Worries for the Industry
Reckless Start-ups- a vast majority of the 310 start-ups are headed for a dead-end (according to Nasscom). Their capacity utilization is less than one of the three shifts. Many of these companies that converted their empty basements and warehouses into BPO units or firms with $10 million-20 million VC funds that ran out of cash without creating anything more than white elephants. They have driven down prices to grab business, but have failed to deliver. They were always clueless about people, processes or technologies- the three key elements of the BPO business.
Poor Infrastructure- the industry has more to worry about than just reckless start-ups. Primary among those is infrastructure. While telecom networks are state of the art, getting a connection still takes up to three months. Unreliable power supply is forcing units to create their own back-ups. Roads are bad and airports are in dire need of repairs and upgrades.
High Attrition-another major problem is the high attrition and growth aspirations of the workforce. At least 60,000 of the 171,000 workforce change jobs every year. About 80% of them look for better leaders. Team leaders want to upgrade to supervisors, quality professionals or operations heads. The HR problem threatens to soon become grave. Good agents are becoming hard to find and with tardy infrastructure, big moves to the much talked about smaller towns will take longer. This means costs will rise making it difficult for small VC-funded companies to survive.
Attrition ratesUS 42%Australia 29%Europe 24%India 18%Global Average 24%
* Source-Times News New York
Purpose of Writing this ArticleStaff attrition (or turnover) and absenteeism represent significant costs to most organizations. It is odd, therefore, that many organizations neither measure such costs nor have targets or plans to reduce them. Many organizations appear to accept them as part of the cost of doing business - a sign of increasing job mobility and decreasing staff loyalty perhaps, a matter to be regretted but just 'one of those things.' They add a sum in their budgets for 'temp staff' and 'recruitment' and forget about it.However, it seems to be one of the areas in which HR can make a difference - and one that can be measured in quantifiable, financial terms against targets.An attrition rate in call (or contact) centres has become legendary. Indeed, the attrition rates in some Indian call centers now reach 80%. This is an extreme figure but the average attrition rates in Indian call centers are up around 30-40%.However, it is interesting to note that the attrition rates in India - and the costs associated - are so high that they can override the benefits of lower wage costs. While wages in call centres in Indian are less than one-eighth of those in Northern Europe, it has been reported that Hewlett-Packard have found the cost per 'ticket' (the cost of processing a query) has doubled "due to the inability of the staff to resolve customer queries efficiently because of language barriers and inexperience." It is said that this increased cost has made HP's move from Ireland to India "completely pointless," and that it can never recover the (substantial) costs of the move. It is further reported that GE Capital has moved a call centre back to Australia "after staff attrition rates of 70% wiped away any potential cost savings."The issue is not with the quality or education of the staff - and still less with the investment in technology. It is simply attrition - people do not stay long enough to be taught or to learn the job. The staff may be cheaper but if they cannot do the job, what's the point? Managing attrition is not just a 'nice thing to do' in Indian call centres. It is the route to their survival. Far from accepting attrition rates as part of the cost of doing business, it is surely something that all organizations should address, and equally surely it is an area in which HR can take a lead - measure attrition, seek its causes, set out solutions and target performance.Components to be taken into consideration, while calculating attrition rateI request HR professionals not to drive their own formulas to calculate attrition rate. In terms of numbers, attrition rate means:Total Number of Resigns per month (Whether voluntary or forced) divided by (Total Number of employees at the beginning of the month plus total number of new joinees minus total number of resignations) multiplied by 100. If calculating in monetary terms, it includes the following:Costs Due to a Person Leaving
Calculate the cost of the person(s) who fills in while the position is vacant. Calculate the cost of lost productivity at a minimum of 50% of the person's compensation and benefits cost for each week the position is vacant, even if there are people performing the work. Calculate the lost productivity at 100% if the position is completely vacant for any period of time.
Calculate the cost of conducting an exit interview to include the time of the person conducting the interview, the time of the person leaving, the administrative costs of stopping payroll, benefit deductions, benefit enrollments.
Calculate the cost of the manager who has to understand what work remains, and how to cover that work until a replacement is found.
Calculate the cost of training your company has invested in this employee who is leaving.
Calculate the impact on departmental productivity because the person is leaving. Who will pick up the work, whose work will suffer, what departmental deadlines will not be met or delivered late.
Calculate the cost of lost knowledge, skills and contacts that the person who is leaving is taking with them out of your door. Use a formula of 50% of the person's annual salary for one year of service, increasing each year of service by 10%.
Subtract the cost of the person who is leaving for the amount of time the position is vacant.
Recruitment Costs
The cost of advertisements; agency costs; employee referral costs; internet posting costs.
The cost of the internal recruiter's time to understand the position requirements, develop and implement a sourcing strategy, review candidates backgrounds, prepare for interviews, conduct interviews, prepare candidate assessments, conduct reference checks, make the employment offer and notify unsuccessful candidates. This can range from a minimum of 30 hours to over 100 hours per position.
Calculate the cost of the various candidate pre-employment tests to help assess a candidates' skills, abilities, aptitude, attitude, values and behaviors.
Training Costs
Calculate the cost of orientation in terms of the new person's salary and the cost of the person who conducts the orientation. Also include the cost of orientation materials.
Calculate the cost of departmental training as the actual development and delivery cost plus the cost of the salary of the new employee. Note that the cost will be significantly higher for some positions such as sales representatives and call center agents who require 4 - 6 weeks or more of classroom training.
Calculate the cost of the person(s) who conduct the training.
Calculate the cost of various training materials needed including company or product manuals, computer or other technology equipment used in the delivery of training.
Lost Productivity CostsAs the new employee is learning the new job, the company policies and practices, etc. they are not fully productive. Use the following guidelines to calculate the cost of this lost productivity:
Upon completion of whatever training is provided, the employee is contributing at a 25% productivity level for the first 2 - 4 weeks. The cost therefore is 75% of the new employees full salary during that timeperiod.
During weeks 5 - 12, the employee is contributing at a 50% productivity level. The cost is therefore 50% of full salary during that timeperiod.
During weeks 13 - 20, the employee is contributing at a 75% productivity level. The cost is therefore 25% of full salary during that timeperiod.
Calculate the cost of mistakes the new employee makes during this elongated indoctrination period.
New Hire Costs
Calculate the cost of bring the new person on board including the cost to put the person on the payroll, establish computer and security passwords and identification cards, telephone hookups, cost of establishing email accounts, or leasing other equipment such as cell phones, automobiles.
Calculate the cost of a manager's time spent developing trust and building confidence in the new employee's work.
Lost Sales Costs
Calculate the revenue per employee by dividing total company revenue by the average number of employees in a given year. Whether an employee contributes directly or indirectly to the generation of revenue, their purpose is to provide some defined set of responsibilities that are necessary to the generation of revenue. Calculate the lost revenue by multiplying the number of weeks the position is vacant by the average weekly revenue per employee.
Conclusion: It is clear that there are massive costs associated with attrition or turnover and, while some of these are not visible to the management reporting or budget system, they are none the less real. The 'rule of thumb' appears to be very inaccurate indeed and, while it depends upon the category of staff, it is probably better to estimate around 80% of salary as a truer rule of thumb - and this will be on the conservative side. What does this mean? Well it means that if a company has 100 people doing a certain job paid 25,000 and that turnover or attrition is running at 10%, the cost of attrition is: (Total staff x attrition rate %) x (annual salary x 80%)
100 staff at 10% attrition means 10 people leave and are replaced each year.
A replacement cost of 80% of a salary of 25,000 means the cost of each replacement is 20,000.
The cost of turnover is therefore 10 x 20,000 or 200,000 a year.
The oncost to the overall salary bill is 8%.
(Saving 8% of salary costs would make the average HR manager a hero.)

BEST HR PRACTICES IN INDIAN BANKS

BEST HR PRACTICES IN INDIAN BANKS
In the booming Indian economy all the industries are doing well in the market and Indian banks are also performing well comparatively. In the booming economy and the continuing expansion most of the banks facing challenges to perform well and it clearly brought out by the fact that, contrary to public perception, it is not just the new private sector banks that are doing well. There are few public sector banks are also doing well and got the place in top 10 best performing Indian banks. And it’s worth mentioning that these public sector banks have performed so admirably in spite of the fact that they operate with many handicaps, such as strong unions and the inability to offer market salaries and incentives and burdened with huge workforce. The secret of success of any company simply depends on how they treat employees and keep them satisfied. For that they have design their human resource process like recruitment, selection, training and development, performance appraisal and other based on employee perspective in order to benefit them.
In India the banking industry becoming more competitive than ever, private and public sector banking are competing each other to perform well. The executives of the bank are now in the position to modify their traditional human resources practice in to innovative human resources practices in order to meet the challenges from other competitive banks.
This paper tries to bring out those innovative and best human resource practices developed and found successful that made them more competitive in the present competitive banking environment in the various human resource areas where they want to gain competitive advantage over the rival banks in order to attract and retain the talents and to differentiate their human resources practice and other services than the competitive banks.