As an entrepreneur or a business owner, you would come up across many challenges that you experience firsthand, but a majority of the challenges are encountered during the ‘scaling-up phase’. You have developed a Minimum Viable Product [MVP] of your idea, got a couple of customers for your product, and set up a Class-A core-team. But once you have to scale up your technical/marketing/sales team, you might need to go head-hunting searching for potential candidates who are a culture fit for your organization. There is always an option to hire people via references, but that approach may not be feasible in case you are planning to hire in large numbers.

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In such a scenario, you have to setup a Human Resource [HR] department whose core expertise will be in screening candidates, shortlisting candidates, scheduling interviews, on-boarding employees, and retaining them. All these activities are easier said than done as the quality of shortlisted candidates would depend on the approach that is taken by the HR team. There is a cost associated in scheduling interviews and the costs can multiply if the interviewed candidate does not join the organization [even after he accepts the offer].

Instead of having an in-house HR team, it is recommended that you partner with a company that specializes in Human Resource Management and one which has provided their services to companies [of different sizes]. One such company that has specialization in human resource management, Recruitment Process Outsourcing [RPO], Leadership development, etc. is the ManpowerGroup. Unlike HR teams that are housed in-house, an HR partner like ManpowerGroup can play a vital role in various HR activities like shortlisting potential candidates, scheduling interviews, negotiating for salary, on-boarding employees, and more. The same role can also be performed by the in-house HR team, but the primary difference lies in the implementation & speed with which results are achieved.

HR partners like ManpowerGroup are not HR generalists, but they are experts in their domain. Since HR partners have worked with clients across different sectors, they have an immense amount of experience & expertise in recruitment and retention of employees. Since the HR partners work in tandem with the top management team of the client organization, they understand the culture of the organization and ensure that employees who are hired are ‘culture fit’. Such an approach also ensures that the HR team in the organization can focus on other important tasks like Employee Learning & Development [L&D], Employee retention, etc. The HR team, irrespective of the experience can learn from the consultants who are associated with the HR partner & learn useful traits from them.

There are so many traditional recruitment agencies who call themselves as HR Partners for Human Resource Management, but they may not have the level of expertise that is required for managing different functions in HR. It could be possible that the charges levied by them could be much below the industry standards, but you should make a conscious decision to avoid them. Human Resource is an important department & HR folks are the ones who are responsible for building a ‘best-in-class organization’.

It is always recommended that you partner with the best like ManpowerGroup by having at a long-term plan, rather than looking at short-term gains.

When it comes to work, there is a common notion that employees in corporates have about their bachelor colleagues. They expect their bachelor colleagues to stay till late in the office citing reasons of them not having any other major responsibility apart from office work. On the other hand, there are many employees who are in the constant look-out for more recognition from their managers so that they can eventually get a better rating and salary hike.

Image Source – Workaholic

On the other hand, there are some who want to fill in office hours and consider that greater the number of hours spent inside the office, higher is the productivity. These are all growing symptoms of workaholism, something that can benefit in the short run but have adverse effects in the long run.

Wrike, a company that is a pioneer in project and time management software has come up with an interactive infographic that can provide you the answer – Are you a Workaholic

How to Figure Out If You’re a Workaholic - by Wrike project management software

Infographic brought to you by Wrike project and time management software

Do let us know your answer in the comments section and how you plan to get rid of workaholism…

A good project plan can make the life of a Project Manager (PM) as well as the team members easy. As a Project Manager, you have worked hard on the following activities:

  1. Collated and froze the requirements
  2. Formed a competent and diversified team
  3. Done the budget estimation and activity planning
  4. Done a detailed SWOT analysis

Many times things can drastically change once the project progresses and massive changes can have a major impact on the Project. It could also lead to a project closure e.g. The technology that is being used in the development becomes obsolete or holds no value due to which there are no takers for the product that was under development.

As per a report, more than half of the IT projects fail that result in millions of dollars in lost funds. Wirke that specializes in project management software has come up with an informative infographic that lists down some of the techniques that can be used to avoid Project Failure. The Cure for Project Failure - by Wrike project management tools

Infographic brought to you by Wrike hosted project management software

A good project plan can make the life of a Project Manager (PM) as well as the team members easy. Project Manger can do a detailed tracking of the activities that are listed in the plan and since the tasks are well listed out, team members are very clear about the deadlines as well as its deliverables.

Creating a perfect Project Plan is a daunting task and as a PM, you need to ensure that there is no stone un-turned in order to create a perfect project plan. Wrike, a company that specializes in development of project management software has come up with an informative infographic that can be used as a guideline by Project Managers to create a perfect Project Plan.

10 Essential Elements for the Perfect Project Plan - by Wrike project management softwareInfographic brought to you by Wrike project management online software

We hoped you found this infographic informative! What are some of the traits that you as a Project Manager use to create a Project Plan, please share your tips in the comments section…

How many times it has occurred that you plan to complete a certain activity in a couple of hours but end up spending much more than time what is expected. If you are leading a team, the same might also apply to your team members.

Image Source – Work Management

The delay could be because of unwanted meetings, resolution of blocker issues, unproductive use of project time, delay of dependent deliverables, etc. In some cases, the delay might enter into an infinite loop thereby adversely affecting the project deadlines and hampering motivation of team members!

It is estimated that 25% of the average worker’s day is wasted on inefficient work, which means that If you work an 8-hour day, that’s 2 hours wasted every day i.e. 520 hours/year. Hence, it becomes important to use right as well as efficient scheduling tools for project management.

Wrike, a company that specializes in the development of project management tools] has come up with a very informative infographic that highlights the challenges faced by leaders and team managers to ensure efficient Work Management.

Why Every Team Needs Work Management ToolsInfographic brought to you by Wrike scheduling tools for project management

Do leave a comment on the Work Management tools that you use for better management!

‘Meeting’ is something that is applicable in our day to day lives, more so in a professional’s life. Many times, corporate employees have to spend the entire day in meetings and some of them might turn out to be entirely pointless. We already see many of you nodding their heads 🙂

Image Source – Meetings

Sticking to the agenda of a meeting becomes very critical since it not only involves you but also a set of team members attending the meeting. Hence, it is the collective responsibility of the meeting attendees to ensure that they do not digress from the core agenda in order to make the meeting super-productive.

Meetings can sometimes be quite hectic and an unproductive meeting at the start of your workday could ruin your remaining time in office. It becomes imperative to decide whether you really want to call for a meeting or whether you can do away with ‘that’ meeting by using some effective project management tools so that you can collaborate with your team in a much better mannerIn order to be an effective planner of your activities, you need to use the right set of free [or premium] project management tools that can also be used for cross-site teams. Better project planning could eventually result in far lesser face to face meetings!

Wrike, a work management & collaboration platform used by high-performance teams has come up with a very informative infographic titled Should we have a meeting. We liked the overall presentation which is in the form of a flowchart with the core being ‘go vs. no go’ for a meeting. We hope that you use it for executing a ‘productive’ meeting!

Infographic brought to you by Wrike free project management tool

Should We Have This Meeting? - by Wrike project management tools

What are some of the methods you follow to have an effective meeting, do leave your suggestion in the comments section…

Mphasis & Knowledge@Wharton – the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, have partnered to discover Executive Strategies for Personal Digital Transformation. Digital Revolution, demands a new way of thinking.

The seismic shift in technology that began to shake the business world over two decades ago, will not just upturn it but will do it in compressed time frame. Corporate leaders today can suffer from a sense of digital disorientation because of all the noise in the market about technology and innovation. The condition is especially acute for CEO’s trained in the analog world who must now, steer the ship in uncharted digital waters.

The journey of discovering Executive Strategies for Personal Digital Transformation is through a collaborative series of C-suit practitioner interactions. One such forum is being hosted on November 2nd, 2015 at The Penn Club in New York City. The event titled ‘Fast Forward: Executive Strategies for Personal Digital Transformation’ brings together top executives from major brands to share first-hand experiences of digital transformation, ideal digital transformation methods and insights on digital technologies.

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The line between digital technology and businesses blurring, every business now faces the challenge of sharpening its competitive edge by making use of digital products and services. As forward-looking leaders, chief executives have the need for the digital transformation of their enterprise, people and prepare for a digital future.

Defining digital transformation

  • The personal transformative path to becoming a digital leader
  • A mind map for the forward-thinking C-Suite
  • Rethinking ROI, post-digital transformation
  • Incorporating collaboration around the customer into your digital transformation strategy

Sample list of speakers

For details, registration please refer the following link.

About Knowledge@Wharton
Knowledge@Wharton is the online business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The site, which is free, captures relevant knowledge generated at Wharton and beyond by offering articles and videos based on research, conferences, speakers, books and interviews with faculty and other experts on global business topics. For more information, please refer knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

[Image Credit* – Mphasis]

EdX, the online learning initiative founded by Harvard and MIT, had earlier announced its association with IIM Bangalore as the first Indian B-school member in its distinguished group of xConsortium members across the globe. As a result of this partnership, IIM Bangalore has now launched an exciting range of courses aimed at leveraging new technologies and delivering education via MOOCs with edX.

IIMB

Speaking about the association, Anant Agarwal, CEO, edX said

We are excited to announce the launch of these exciting and innovative courses by IIM Bangalore on the edX platform. India is an important market for us, and is home to the largest population of edX learners outside of the United States. We are pleased that IIM Bangalore has launched their courses on our platform. With this partnership, we aim to expand the learning horizon for our learners in India and around the world.

IIMBx is starting with four courses as its first offerings on edX, out of which two courses will be launching in July 2015 followed by one in August 2015 and one in October 2015. All courses are now open for enrolment. The courses will help students learn and acquire different skills for Business, IT, Statistics and Operations Management.

Courses offered via IIMBx

Innovation and IT Management, a 6-week course, will start in July 2015 and will teach key decision-making skills to better manage and implement IT and innovation in workplace. This course will cover basic concepts of information technology management and would be useful for anyone who is using IT in their organization, building or is planning to build IT-enabled products or services. Dr. Rahul De would be the instructor for this course, who is the Hewlett-Packard Chair Professor in ICT for Sustainable Economic Development at IIM Bangalore.

Statistics for Business, a 5-week course, starting in July, 2015 will be an introductory course to statistics and will examine data from the perspective of business scenarios and will demonstrate how to apply that data to make better decisions. It will be Part 1 of a 4-part series on Business Statistics, and would be ideal for learners who wish to enroll in business programs. This course will be taught by three instructors: Shankar Venkatagiri, Ishita Kumar and Sunil Kunduru.

Part-2 of this series, Statistics for Business – II, will be a 6-week course to examine data drawn from allied fields of business such as Finance and HR, and will teach how to simulate data to follow a specified distribution. It will launch later this year.

Apart from this, there is going to be another course, on Introduction to Operations Management, which will be a 7-week course starting in August, 2015 and will teach key aspects of business operations and lean management, including capacity, productivity, quality, and supply chain and will be taught by B. Mahadevan.

Students who register for these courses, will have the option to either pursue an honour code for free (with complete access to all course material, tests, and online discussion forum), or pursue a Verified Certificate of Achievement for about Rs. 1,500.

EdX offers more than 500 courses in many areas of study, including the arts and humanities, public health, law, maths & computer science. Faculty and staff from more than 70 partner institutions teach on the edX platform, and over 400,000 certificates have been earned by edX students.

More details about IIMBx are available here

About edX

EdX is a non-profit, open-source enterprise offering online courses from more than 60 member institutions, composed of both leading global universities and colleges and a diverse group of prominent organizations from around the world. Founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, edX is focused on transforming online and on-campus learning through ground breaking methodologies, game-like experiences and cutting-edge research on an open-source platform

[Image Credit – IIMB]