1. Introduction:

Tarun Tejpal editor of journalism magazine, Tehelka accused of attempting to rape a female colleague, a female physiotherapy intern beaten and gangraped in Delhi or even the infamous Phaneesh Murthy incident ; there have been umpteen examples of sexual harassment in workplace and it has been growing at a very high rate in the last few years. Though the government has stepped up to the task by enacting certain pieces of legislatures; the bigger question still remains, how to implement them in the organization.

Before going further let us look at the types of sexual harassment:-

Quid pro quo harassment

•  Equivalent to economic rape.
•  Can occur if a superior tries to force an employee for sexual advances in return of some benefit.

Hostile Work Environment

• It occurs when employee reasonable comfort level and ability to perform is hampered due to hostile work environment.
• In this case coworkers or even customers can cause it.

2. Problems faced by HR in addressing Sexual Harassment:

• The Definition: A harmless compliment like ‘I like your dress’, asking someone out for a coffee or even calling an employee inside a meeting room can be misconstrued in a very different way. The gray areas in the definition itself create confusion.

• Huge gaps in the law: Should a company stop internal investigation if a victim files a police complaint, what are rules for protecting women in extended workplace like office taxis and business trips, how to restore work relationship and reputation if accusation is proved false and can the law be extended to men or even the third gender- these are some of the pertinent question that the “Sexual Harassment of women at workplace” act of 2013 fails to answer.

• No protection for ICC members: The law mandates formation of an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) to manage workplace harassment complaints. The ICC will largely constitute internal employees who may be influenced or subjected to humiliation by senior management in real life scenarios.

• How to maintain gender diversity: With new laws coming into effects, managers are now dreading stepping on the fine line that may result in another case of sexual harassment. As a result more and more companies are becoming skeptical when it comes to recruiting female employees. In these cases the job of an HR becomes very difficult as he/she has to maintain the gender diversity too.

3. The way Forward: what the employees can do:-

• Just Say It: Many a times the employees themselves do not come forward to tell the issue thus making the matter more complicated. Ideally they should themselves come forward at the right moment and inform. In this regard they should be straightforward, serious and make direct statements which make the harasser accountable.

• Setting her own boundaries: Saying ‘NO’ clearly when asked to go to places, stay out late at office or do things which makes her uncomfortable.

• Create a witness to the behavior: Try to inform a trusted colleague about the harassment and make sure that he or she becomes an eye or ear witness when she is being sexually harassed next time. This will help her in future when she files an official complaint.

4. The way Forward: what the employers can do:-

Including Sexual harassment policy in the ‘Standing Orders’ Of the Organizations:

• One of the best steps the HR can take is to adopt a well-documented and clear Sexual harassment policy and then include it as a part of the organization’s Standing order.
• The HR should include the top management in enforcing these policies and take a zero tolerance approach.

Complaints Channel:

•  The HR should provide employees different routes that she can take file complaints. Informal methods of resolving conflicts should be focused.
•  Also complaint committees should be set up to listen to grievances of female employees at all time. The main qualities of its members should be empathy and subjectivity.

Sexual Harassment Awareness Training:

• Practices should be made consistent with policies. For this purpose training of employees should be done to communicate to them which behavior is acceptable and which are not.
• Training for members of complaint committee is also essential and it should include components like gender sensitization, and procedures of taking complaints.

5. Steps already taken:

• Hindustan Power has set up posters on zero tolerance of sexual harassment in its corporate office.

• Companies like Godrej have a flow chart showing steps which will be taken in case a sexual harassment case is registered. This type of pictorial representation makes it easy for potential victims to know what exactly should be done, and for potential assaulter to know the consequences.

• Companies like Infosys and Mindtree has e-learning modules, poster campaigns and mailers which stress the fact of professional behavior at workplace. Wipro on other hand has put up its policies and redressal mechanism on intranet and also has an online training module to understand which behaviors constitute sexual harassment.

6. Conclusion:

When asked in an interview one of the employee in a multinational organization replied “I know the policy exists because of the group mail and intranet. The company conducts quizzes once in three months, but it’s not mandatory, so most of us don’t take it. Many employees don’t really go through the policy document.” This statement reflects the poor execution of these initiatives in organizations and thus their limited impact. There could be several reasons behind it. One of the reasons may be companies now are following a minimal approach fearing if an employee knows more they will raise more complaints. Also now when companies are focusing on being fun workplaces this type of rules can impact the camaraderie between employees.

But at the end of the day for proper safeguarding of women employees must follow the policies laid down and also needs to change their behavior and perspective towards woman.

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Today everyone it seems is either on Twitter, Facebook or some other social media website. Though such websites are blocked by jammers in certain organization but with the advent of smartphone all these websites are literally on our fingers whims. The new entrant in the organization is already on the FB friend list of the General manager and gets a update even when the GM has gone out for a dinner with his wife. Is the social media really bring us closer and if it is so how does it affect the workplace and more importantly how does the HR ensure this changing culture. Let us look at some of the issues the HR might face in the coming days and how he/she can resolve it:-

1. Motivation: By seeing the reaction of an employee just after the company has given a bonus or in the other way round the employee has been given a huge work load; the HR can gauge what actually motivates an employee.
While some employees may be motivated by a fat pay cheque some others may be motivated by more praise form manager or by getting a week off.

2. Open door policy: Just like everyone is a friend on social media, The HR can ensure that everyone is on cordial terms inside the workplace too. He can ensure this by an open door policy which can help the organization in better team building and collaborative culture.

3. More engaging learning experience: The HR can take help pf websites like youtube and applications like skype to make meetings and trainings more informal and also save time and money needed to arrange meetings.

4. Hiring: Many websites like Facebook have the options of making groups or advertising in the website; the HR’s can take help of these to shortlist potential employees for a particular job. This option particularly reduces the hiring costs and saves a lot of time.

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The Indian Manufacturing Industry has always struggled to achieve gender diversity owing to the kind of work that is carried on. Issued like Stringent Labor laws in India which prevents woman employees to work from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m, research which proves female are less productive compared to male and retention problems since women tend to leave jobs after marriage and pregnancy have marred the chances of the manufacturing industry in taking steps towards achieving gender diversity. But with every other industry now taking steps towards achieving the same , it’s high time that manufacturing sector too gives a look into it. Thus the role of an HR comes into picture. Standing today here are some steps which followed can ensure proper gender diversity:-

1. Funding of  girl students interested in attending technical schools. This will also provide teachers new impetus for gender sensitive teaching.

2. Promotion of Manufacturing sector and it’s safety at engineering colleges. This can be achieved through talks and interactions.

3. Maternity leave should be extended from the existing 12 weeks to a longer period extending up to a  year, as women bear the major responsibility surrounding child care.

4. Since female employees shoulder majority responsibility surrounding the family organization, needs to recognize  their need for flexible work arrangements. Grants supplements should be offered to facilitate re entry of women who have taken time off to care for their family.

5. Networking and mentoring programs to improve retention and advancement of women.This is especially necessary in order to build a pipeline of women leaders.

6. Introducing diversity related Key performance indicators for all business leaders and establishing monitoring procedures for measuring progress towards gender diversity  goals.

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Most research analysis have shown a strong relation  between good HR practices like performance rewards; flexible administration; judicial administration of resources; effective communication and increase in shareholder value. When devising effective HR measurements tools, management should consider whether whether each of the HR metrics provide insights into assessing productivity thus helping the company achieve it’s goals.

HR metrics are  usually classified into 3 categories:historical, real time and forward looking. In industry mostly HR metrics are concerned with- attitudes,turnover and skill level of employees. Hr metrics may also be associated with utilization of training programs, recruitment process, outsourcing costs and employee turnover.Each of these metrics have few performance indicators. For eg: retention metrics may have indicators like employee turnover in key positions and financial impact of employee turnover. While an Learning and Development metric may have indicators like- learning contentment and opportunities for new hire.

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Dealing effective with workplace diversity has become utmost importance in today’s organization since discrimination on any basis like gender, religion , sex  or color of skin have long percolating effects on the overall culture of the company. It is a twofold process- becoming knowledgeable with anti discrimination law and monitoring closely what is happening in the company. Listed below are few steps which can effectively help managers to handle this sort of discrimination:-

1. Paying attention to what one doesn’t see.  Sometime employees just cannot prove or stop discriminatory behavior but that doesn’t mean it did not happen.

2. Avoid favoritism at levels of the organization.

3. Personal beliefs regarding caste, religion, sexual orientation should be kept personal.

4. Think before saying something that can be misconstrued in a different way.

5. Respond quickly when an employee raises some concern and see to it that the issue is settled amiably.

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Today India is grappling with issues concerning the outdated Labor Laws in India. The government has decided to revamp certain laws which it thinks are not relevant in today’s age in its current form. This is necessary since India has to keep up with the ILO and follow its mandate .In this regard we can look at one of the amendments to the “Apprentices Act 1961” recently brought about.  Some of the important points have been discussed below-

1. Section 3 has been amended to include the fact that for hazardous industries minimum age for recruitment of an apprentice will be 18 years.

2. Now the employer may engage apprentices from other states rather than only the native state.

3. Holidays, leaves and shift timings for apprentices to be at par with  regular workers.

4. Employers can now only be imposed fine of Rs 1000 for not adhering to provisions of the act rather than getting imprisoned.

5. Novation of contract of apprenticeship has been removed from the act.

This amendment, the government hopes will make the Apprentice Act more relevant in today’s India. It will be interesting to see how the government approaches some of the other backdated labor laws like “The Factories act”.

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The role of HR in start ups is not any different from the role of any other HR he too has to look after all the functions of an HR including recruitment, retention, training, helping in on boarding, performance management, appraisal. What makes his job more difficult is the amount of time and effort he has to put in for talent attraction. Start up’s generally start their operations with very few resources and then the HR manager is hired. His/Her primary job becomes hiring. At this juncture it is very important to point out that since a start up has just started it’s operation it needs talented and skilled resources to set up the operations of the organization. As because the organization at this point will not be able to provide huge salary and benefits, the job of a HR manager becomes more difficult. He has to go for different sources to hire talent and then negotiate with them to make them join the start up.On top of it he has to lay down rules for proper employment relations and design performance appraisal systems and compensation and benefit structure.

In conclusion, I believe that for a start-up, what is needed is a  partner who truly understands the criticality of talent management — devotes at least 50 per cent of his/ her time to it — and builds this understanding into the next rung of supervisors.

Yes, start-ups definitely need HR.

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Human resources analytics, also called talent analytics, is the application of sophisticated data mining and business analytics (BA) techniques to human resources (HR) data. The goal of human resources analytics is to provide an organization with insights for effectively managing employees so that its business goals can be reached quickly and efficiently. The challenge of human resources analytics is to identify what data should be captured and how to use the data to model and predict capabilities so that the organization gets an optimal return on investment (ROI) on its human capital.

Today the momentum for human analytics is growing but its potential is unrealized.  While many HR Departments use metrics today, their use and application are:

• ƒ Often inconsistent; different companies employ different kinds of metrics in different ways
• ƒ Data is collected for the sake of collection or to justify some activity
• ƒ Metrics are out there by themselves, and are not tied to business performance or adequately aligned   with organizational strategies

The reasons why analytics are not being more widely used are many, including gaps in stakeholder perspectives. Barriers to fully realizing analytics are:

• Investors pressure companies to meet short-term earnings rather than long-term milestones. Human

capital analytics and its predictive business value is not one of their traditional tools.

• HR has not yet reached the level where it can consistently and quantitatively demonstrate linkage to

value creation, causing many CEOs and CFO’s to view HR skeptically as a simply a cost-centre.

• This barrier is enhanced through differences between industry and organizational size.

The knowledge and experience is often lacking to turn metrics into analytics and analytics into strategies.

• Organizational cultures that foster silos inhibit using human capital analytics. Often data related to

human capital is disconnected from business operations, so the data is not integrated, and relationships

between people and business measures are not connected. Silos create gaps because managers focus on

their own area of control. Manufacturing departments report production output; HR reports people data.

• Lack of standardization of definitions, terminologies, and formulaic elements make metrics different

from one organization to other, and makes it difficult to build on generalizable knowledge beyond one’s

Organization.

•Regulatory and Financial requirements for valuing human capital do not currently exist.

•Whether standards should be pushed upon business and HR by regulators or pulled by demand is a key

question. (FASB, etc) Many believe regulation would be a good thing for HR because if human capital

investments such as training were treated as line-item investments, instead of costs, then investor

communities would see HC as the value driver it is.

•Metrics are often non-linear. Metrics are messy and sometimes composed of soft elements (Shared

valued, skills, style, staff) and can be ambiguous and hard to quantify.

While there are challenges to be met, much can be done to operationalize human capital data.

–Conceptualize metrics in three ways:

• ƒ Efficiency Metrics
• ƒ Effectiveness Metrics
• ƒ Predictive Metrics

– HR facilitates the process to involve managers about what metrics are relevant. These are metrics the

organization and managers own; not HR.

– Fewer metrics are better than more metrics

– Simpler is better than complicated

– Usually better to pilot a project with a smaller, human capital supportive/friendly department in your

Organization.

•Efficiency Measures

– Often we over-report efficiency measures because it’s easy

– Cost-per-hire, time-to-fill, number of training hours, HR Costs

• Effectiveness Measures

– Demonstrates how HR practices/measures relate to firm performance

– For example, increased productivity by RsX by lowering time-to-fill, lowered legal fees by RsX for

sexual harassment complaints through mandatory harassment training.

– Increase productivity by lowering voluntary turnover through key HR initiatives:

• ƒ Management training class.
• ƒ Team-building for areas where turnover was higher.
• ƒ Improved communication about how to utilize HR Services.

• Predictive Measures

– Reliably forecasts how HR practices/investments will improve organizational performance.

To Facilitate this process it is important to remember not to isolate the HR:-

– Build bridges with colleagues in other departments; seek to create consensus.

– Finance and Accounting are allies in this effort.

– Discuss with department heads about business metrics for which they are accountable.

– Ask them how employees contribute in achieving those metrics.

– Eventually pick 3-4 effectiveness metrics that you will focus on to report out.

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