You Didn't Pick Things Up Quickly Enough

Is it an employee's fault they didn't know what to do?

My friend was released after just 20 days on the job.

She was given work assignments to complete that had never been discussed in the interview. At her exit interview, her manager admitted he had overestimated her technical skills in the interview. She had not professed extensive technical skills in the interview. She was given no notice that she was to be terminated, just asked to come to the conference room at 3 pm on what turned out to be her last day.

Reflecting back, she realized that there had been virtually no communication with her manager over her last three days leading up to her termination. What's ironic is that she was actually getting a lot of work done then. She felt that she was finally just starting to get the hang of things.

This was during the time when her manager was probably meeting with HR to work out and finalize her termination. At the exit interview, she was told that she "didn't pick things up quickly enough."

My friend had asked lots of questions of her manager while employed there, particularly when given work that was beyond what had been discussed in the interview. But whenever she asked her boss about her assignments, he talked about other things and never really answered her questions.

When a manager says something like "you didn't pick things up quickly enough," this can also be seen to mean, "I didn't take the time to manage you well."

Especially with new hires, managers have to invest a lot of time in integrating the new employee. When a new piece of equipment is obtained for the office, there is often instruction in how to use that piece of equipment, at least for the person who is responsible for using it. We may even send the person to training in how to use the machine.

Sink or Swim?

We don't seem to do that consistently with people. We throw them into situations and expect them to "sink or swim." We cannot afford to have too many new hires sink. It just costs too much money.

It costs a manager something more than money to admit that he may not have managed the person in the way that they needed to be managed. He didn't take the time to figure out how to motivate the person. He didn't figure out how the new person learns best, through careful instruction or trial and error.

The cost is that the manager has to admit that he made a mistake. That he was wrong. It's much easier to blame the now-terminated new hire:

• "You didn't pick things up fast enough."
• "You weren't communicating enough."
• "You didn't understand the culture here."
• "You were a bad fit."

In all these cases, the common denominator may have been that the manager didn't do a good enough job in interviewing the person or integrating the new hire into the workforce in the first weeks or months. In every case, the manager blamed the employee for what may have been the manager's shortcoming.

Managing is hard work. It's not intuitive. No one is born a manager. Some people are born leaders, but managing requires training and it takes time.

Good managers can be developed, but only if they are given the time to learn, also the same way new hires need time to develop.

Managers need to master a broad skill set to be effective in all phases of the role:

• Understanding how the department operates so that the right mix of jobs is created.
• Interviewing (which is so much more than just talking to people) to effectively determine whether candidates have the correct skill-match for the position.
• Orienting the new hire to the workplace and to the job and his or her colleagues. Integrating a new hire takes weeks, not hours. Too frequently, managers leave orientation up to HR. No offense to HR, but new hires are too valuable to be trusted only to HR. The HR team has a critical role to play in integrating new employees, but the new hire is going to listen far more to what their new manager tells them than anything HR has to say.
• Setting performance objectives so that the new hire clearly understands what is expected of him or her.
• Giving feedback on an ongoing basis, not just at the end of the year in an anxiety-ridden performance evaluation.
• Recognizing and rewarding people for their effort as well as for their accomplishments.

When you look at all the expectations that we have of managers, it's easy to understand why we invest so much in management development and training. It takes time to become an effective manager. Anyone promoted to management generally figures this out in the first few days on the job.

The piece that too often gets overlooked is training our managers in people management. How to interview candidates, how to select the right ones who can be most productive in their environment, and how to continue to get the most out of them on the job. Managers need to learn how to engage their staff so they give their best effort on the job as opposed to just doing enough not to get fired.

The good news is we usually give new managers the time to figure out how to do their new job, in part because of all the time and money invested in developing this person to the point of promotion.

No doubt, this new manager would certainly be annoyed if after a few weeks in the new position, their manager called them into a conference room and started in with, "You're not picking things up quickly enough."

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Manpower shortage hits Indian Animation Industry.

The Indian animation industry is expected to double its revenues to nearly $1.5 billion by 2010 but is still hampered by lack of skilled manpower, mainly due to lack of facilities and preference for traditional career options.

"At the close of next year, the industry will require at least 25,000 more trained hands to fill the gap and by the year 2012, the industry will have room to accommodate 300,000 professionals, if not more," Atul Vohra, in-charge of the education division of the Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC), told IANS.

 

At present only a little over 10,000 professionals are working in this techno-creative field.

Although there are about 500 private animation-training institutes, apart from a few government-run colleges having animation curriculum, India, as of today, has only a handful of institutes teaching high-end animation techniques.

"If there was earlier an anathema towards animation among Indian students, I would rather blame their parents and guardians for it. Because, until recently, the elders in this country had a misconception that animation was all about drawing cartoon figures and so they felt there were no career prospects in this field. They never encouraged their wards to take up animation as a professional course," Vohra pointed out.

 

The Arena, the animation division of APTECH, is the oldest of the lot in imparting animation training and it also has a variety of high-end training courses, while the six-year-old MAAC specializes on imparting training in 2-D and 3-D animation.

There are now about 100,000 students, who are now undergoing training in animation, VFX and gaming in different parts of the country. When the first batch comes out next year, they may fill the gap to a certain extent, but the want of skilled professionals is still the bane for the development of the animation industry.

According to Ronand D'Mello, managing director of Maya Entertainment Limited, the parent company of MAAC, the lack of animation training institutes in India is the chief reason why the misconceptions about animation among the elders in India persisted.

"When the IT boom started in India about 15 years ago, they rightly saw a bright future for their children in the IT industry. But they were not as much enthusiastic to push their children to take up animation as a course for full-time study even though it was largely an offshoot of the burgeoning electronics industry. This is one of the main reasons why there is a big manpower shortage in the Indian animation industry today," D'Mello informed.

It is with a view to generating interest in animation among the younger generation of the country that MAAC has now signed a tie-up deal with Mumbai-based Toon Club, a division of Climb Media, which specializes in imparting the basic animation training to the children.

Their joint venture, MAAC-Junior Toon Club, will get off the ground in Mumbai later this month.

"The venture is not aimed at giving full-time animation training to children. Our objective is to generate curiosity and interest among them about what animation actually is, so that when they grow up they would have had the basic knowledge about the field to pursue higher courses in it. The basic concept is to give their creativity a fillip with definite direction at an early age," Vohra explained.

MAAC already has over 30,000 students undergoing training in animation in its 60 centers in India, Nepal and the Middle East in 3D animation and visual effects.

Similarly, Toon Club's courses are also designed along international lines. It recently received the Award for Excellence - Special Jury Recognition for children Animation by ASIFA.

Despite manpower shortage, the Indian animation industry has made giant strides of late and the country has become the outsourcing hub for many western animation studios as well as for Hollywood.

"Though we are creatively superior to many other countries, we have still lagged behind in the technical aspects of the animation industry. While in many European countries and also in Singapore and Malaysia, animation training is being given at the school level, it is still not included in our school curricula. But next to IT, animation is going to be the next big thing in India in the next five years. We had better prepare our children to reap the benefits," said Vohra.

 

Viral Thaker
___________________________________________________________________________________
TeamLease Services Pvt. Ltd. #81, Vukan Towers,  Thirumalai Pillai Road, T.Nagar, Chennai - 600017.
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'IT, retail sectors emerging as two largest employers'

Information technology and retail sector have the potential to be two major job creators in the country in the next five years, according to Dr Ganesh Natarajan, the Chairman of Nasscom. IT sector has a potential of creating five million jobs while retail sector may create about 2.5 million jobs in the next five years.

"If one brings in the 4X factor, that is every job in the main sector creates four more in-related services business, these sectors have immense potential over the next five years," Dr Natarajan said.

Speaking at the ReTechCon, the annual Retail Technology Conclave here, he said that the IT sector now employs about 2 million people directly and another 8 million indirectly. "These projections may be difficult to believe. If one goes back 20 years, it would have been difficult to envision then that we would achieve $100 million in exports. But today, IT sector is a $63 billion industry in India. The current trends indicate that we will continue to grow at about 25 to 30 percent a year," he said.

Likewise, the retail sector is seen to be emerging as next major employer in the country, and significantly its impact is likely to cover a wider geographical footprint unlike IT sector, wherein about 95 percent of the current jobs are accounted by the top 10 cities.

Markets such as India, China and Vietnam are seen to be driving the next wave of retail growth. Interestingly, unlike in the past, we have interesting case studies of retail industry success for other markets to emulate, he said.

Technology is set to play a significant role as a predominantly unorganised retail seeks way to be part of the organized business. It is estimated that there are over 10 million kirana shops in the country and all of them, in fact, need some sort of automation/IT to stay competitive. The technology industry is innovating to offer them services and bring them on to the organized sector.

IT hiring may drop by 20 percent in FY-2009

It could dent the job prospect of the most sought after segment where the modern youth are keen on building their careers. If the recruitment projections made by leading Indian IT companies any thing to go by, there is a 10 to 20 percent drop in the number of people likely to be hired by the industry in the current fiscal year (FY) compared to the previous year, reported The Economic Times.

The $64 billion Indian software and services industry added around 200,000 people in 2007-08 financial year, as per industry estimates.

This is happening as Indian IT companies are not only grappling with the uncertainty of U.S. recession, but also the urgent need to improve their revenue per employee to remain profitable in the face of challenges like talent crunch, rising salaries and appreciation of rupee against dollar.

India's largest IT software and services employer Tata Consultancy Services, which recruited 35,672 people in 2007-08, may see an addition of only 30,000 in the current financial year.

Similarly, Satyam Computer Services Ltd is planning to hire 12,000-15 ,000 people in FY 2009, down from 16,000 the company hired last year.

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As U.S. demand softens, Indian firms eye Japan

Indian tech service vendors have set their minds to increase their foucus on Japan, which is the world's second largest economy. The Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Satyam Computer Services and HCL Technologies move are in response to the softening of demand for their services from buyers in a slowing U.S. economy, reported Livemint.

Traditionally, Japanese corporations have outsourced tech and support units to local vendors. There has been "a lack of competitive element which has not pushed them to think differently," said Sanjeev Nikore, Corporate Vice-President and Global Head of Sales and Marketing, HCL Technologies.

According to estimates by India's largest tech services firm Tata Consultancy Services by 2010, spending in Japan will touch $95 billion growing at an annual rate of 3.2 percent from 2005. Currently, work worth around $32 billion is outsourced, a number expected to grow by a quarter to $40 billion by 2010.

The top five tech service vendors in Japan are Fujitsu, NEC, Hitachi, a local unit of International Business (IBM), and NTT Data Corp. IBM Japan, set up in 1937, is the only?Machines non-Japanese firm with a strong presence.

TCS, which set up its subsidiary in Japan in 2002, today has some 1,800 workers servicing Japanese businesses, including more than 300 based in that country. An offshore delivery centre in Kolkata drives all Japan specific initiatives for the firm. TCS? revenues from Japan amount to around $100 million.

 

Viral Thaker
___________________________________________________________________________________
TeamLease Services Pvt. Ltd. #81, Vukan Towers,  Thirumalai Pillai Road, T.Nagar, Chennai - 600017.
Tel No: +91 44 4390 1111. Direct No: +91 44 4390 1139. Fax: +91 44 42067665.
Web: www.teamlease.com          Visit our Blog: http://teamlease.blogspot.com/             Putting India to Work”

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E-publishing in India may hit $1.46 Bn by 2010

Chennai: Despite facing the challenges of rupee appreciation, talent crunch and emergence of newer media, Indian e-publishing industry is estimated to grow annually by 35 percent and offer a $1.46 billion outsourcing opportunity by 2010.

During the world's first conference on publishing BPO services organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) hosted at Chennai, Integra Software Services founder-MD-CEO Sriram Subramanya noted, "With several global publishers offshoring their publishing BPO services to India, there is an accelerated trend of acquisitions, which is likely to intensify as more players look to acquire new capabilities, clients, market presence, offshore capacity and onshore capability."

Subramanya said the industry is facing challenges in terms of global recession, the appreciating rupee and the emergence of new media. "The publishers' expectations are increasing in terms of speed to market, consistent quality, end-to-end services, reduced pricing, multiple and complex deliverables and need to deal with fewer suppliers," he said.

SPS Technologies CEO Sharad Wasani said publishing has to encompass a gamut of services. Companies in this space have to learn to listen to the customer and put together a package that will offer additional value-add services, for full-service management has come to stay.

"The KPO industry is predicted to be anywhere between $12 billion and $15.5 billion by 2010, at an annual growth rate of 40 to 50 percent. The global opportunity for publishing outsourcing is estimated at $8.1 billion, and, if offshored, it is estimated to be valued at $4.86 billion," Aptara International chief technologist and senior vice-president Guruvinder Batra said.

Anna University retired professor Lalitha Jayaraman, in her address, said there is a perception among employees that the publishing BPO industry does not offer enough growth opportunities. Fear of stagnation, stressful work schedule and having to work night shifts, are among the primary concerns.

by VIRAL THAKER @ URL http://viral-hpower.blogspot.com/
Data Collection & Source Harvard, CNBC

 

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The Young and the Clueless - Promotion Dilemma!

The Idea in Brief

Hell-bent on sabotaging your company? Then promote your brightest young professionals into your most demanding roles--especially when they threaten to leave unless you fast-track them. Nonsense, you say? Hardly.

Promoting talented young managers too quickly prevents them from developing key emotional competencies--such as negotiating with peers, regulating negative emotions during crises, and building support for change--skills that come only with time and experience.

Worse, many "young and clueless" managers lack patience, openness, and empathy--qualities more vital than raw intellect at top leadership levels, where business issues grow more complex and stakes are notoriously high.

Aggressive and insensitive, fast-tracked managers may pooh-pooh relationships with peers and subordinates--not realizing they need those connections to conquer problems. Issues become crises, defeating managers. Your company, customers, and employees all pay the price.

The solution? Delay promotions so managers can mature emotionally. This isn't easy. You must balance confrontation and support, patience and urgency--and risk losing your finest. But premature promoting carries far greater risks.

The Idea in Practice

1. Deepen 360-degree feedback. Provide broad and deep feedback to help managers see themselves as others do--a must for building self-awareness. Give them verbatim written responses to open-ended questions from a wide variety of peers and subordinates, not just you. Managers may discount your views as biased or uninformed. Allow time for reflection and follow-up conversations.

Though his business acumen was unmatched in his company, a brilliant 42-year-old VP neglected peer relationships, earning a reputation as detached. Corporate wondered if he could inspire staff to support important new strategies. After an in-depth 360-degree review, he began strengthening interpersonal connections.

2. Interrupt the ascent. To help managers learn to move others' hearts and minds, give them special assignments outside their typical career path. They'll have to master negotiation and influence skills, rather than relying on rank for authority.

A quick-tempered regional sales director wasn't ready for promotion to VP. His boss persuaded him to lead a year-long team investigating cross-selling opportunities. He learned to use persuasion to win other division managers' support, building solid relationships. Now a VP, he's perceived as a well-connected manager who can negotiate on his team's behalf.

3. Act on your commitment. If you've warned managers that promotion depends on emotional competencies, follow through. These competencies are not optional.

A conflict-averse senior VP managed his own group well but avoided collaborative situations, where the potential for conflict increased. Exploring external alliances, the firm considered collaboration vital. The CEO demoted him, temporarily pulling him from the succession plan. Assigned to a cross-functional team project, he learned to handle disputes and build consensus. He's back on track.

 

4. Institutionalize personal development. Make it clear that success at your company hinges on emotional competence.

One CEO articulated corporate values emphasizing continual learning, including asking for help. He created incentives encouraging such behaviors and built emotional-skills requirements into the firm's succession planning. Known for learning and growing, the firm attracts and retains talented young executives.

5. Cultivate informal networks. Encourage managers to forge mentoring relationships outside the usual hierarchy. They'll encounter diverse leadership styles and viewpoints, gain opportunities for reflection--and mature emotionally.

by VIRAL THAKER @ URL http://viral-hpower.blogspot.com/
Data Collection & Source Harvard, CNBC

 

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