Intranets In Hr

It is the latest arriviste in the human resource management tool-kit. It facilitates on-line chats, processes payroll accounts in the space of a wink, does away with mountainous volume of paperwork and brings a matchless sophistication and zing to the business of managing people. No more snags, no more snafus. Human resource (HR) departments in many cutting edge corporations these days go about their work at the speed of light. Yes, for that is the pace with which data flows on the corporate intranets that many progressive HR departments have adopted. Welcome to the brave new world of wired HR.

 

The philosophy of human resource development (HRD) grew out of the notion that an organisations people are a resource whose use may be optimised rather than a cost which should be minimised. Put in very practical terms, the HRD department was conceived as a functional area that would provide value added services to the business of managing people, with the focus on the developmental aspect of an organisations personnel. Yet, as with many other management thoughts, the corporate world has seen how this idea has turned itself on its head many times over to emerge as the human resource department of many a modern corporation today. Bloated beyond recognition, bureaucratic beyond belief, many HRD departments have made existence their raison dOmegatre. Programmes run because there are certain budgetary allocations to be spent, training exercises conducted because there is a certain pride in saying that the organisation has achieved a certain target of training days per employee. But at the end of the day, has the employee or the organisation benefitted? Have the expenses contributed to the development of the organisations human resource? Is the organisations human resource practices consistent with its strategic policies?

These are questions that havent been asked for long, much less answered. But in not doing so corporations are waking up to the fact that they have a virtual gas-guzzler under the floor. It was in this context that Thomas Stewart of Fortune magazine in an article titled Taking on the Last Bureaucracy wrote, Nestling warm and sleepy in your company, like the wasp in Cleopatras bosom, is a department whose employees spend 80 per cent of their time on routine administrative tasks. Nearly every function of this department can be performed more expertly for less by others. Chances are its leaders are unable to describe their contribution to value added except in trendy, unquantifiable, wannabe termsyet, like a serpent unaffected by its own venom, the department frequently dispenses to others advice on how to eliminate work that does not add value. I am describing, of course, your human resources department, and have a modest proposal: Why not blow the sucker up? I dont mean improve HR. Improvements for wimps.

Deep-six it. Rub it out; eliminate, toss, obliterate, nuke it, give it the old heave-old, force it to walk the plank, turn it into road kill.

Faced with this reality of a department focussed on clerical and administrative tasks, the prescription in many organisations have been simple: Cut the HR department, if not demolish it altogether, and have specific services hired out to outside vendors at a much lower cost. The US steel giant, Nucor, today is running its entire 6000 plus workforce with a HR staff of just three, Johnson & Johnson has hired out its retirement, health and other benefits administration to independent service providers.

Yet, all do not seem to be lost. In the face of increasing criticism, many progressive HR departments are probing how they can deliver higher customer value while at the same time cutting costs. And in attempting to answer this question they are realising that they have to go beyond the traditional tools of the function and embrace technology. It has been well documented how many HR departments in companies the world over are using the Internet for the purpose of recruitment. What is little known is how they are using its lesser known cousin, the Intranet, to deliver a far larger range of services.

To the uninitiated, an intranet is an organisations own network of computer which make use of internet technology and protocol. Leading edge organisations have built large and powerful intranets which not only embrace their internal businesses but many a times also cover the entire supply chain from the supplier to the client. HR departments in many such organisations have been quick to recognise the potential of this medium and even quicker in tapping it to deliver HR services at the lowest possible cost and effort. The avowed aim of HRD is to concentrate on developmental activities; however, it can do so only when freed of its paperwork commitments. Intranets world-wide are helping organisations to achieve this goal. Sun Microsystems has constructed a complete human resource system on its intranet which not only allows its employees to view payroll data but also allow on-line processing of cheques.

A Human Resource Information System (HRIS) is an integrated computerised centralised employee database which ordinarily evolves gradually from previously separate systems like payroll, employee skill inventories, employee benefits manual, recruitment data, etc.

The intranet goes a long way in improving the quality of HRIS. While a HRIS is essentially a database available to the HR department for facilitating the execution of HR activities, intranets in a way make several HR activities the responsibility of the entire organisation.

Take performance appraisal. Many corporations have a policy of quarterly or even monthly performance evaluation. For many managers, the process of conducting performance appraisals of their subordinates and making salary adjustments is a bureaucratic hassle. Managers have to perform a very daunting list of time-consuming tasks starting with recalling which workers need to be reviewed each month, arranging appraisal meetings with them, collecting the relevant performance data, filling out the appraisal forms and documenting the employees performance. Next, they must send the appraisal forms to the HR department, after making copies for their own files and giving them to the employees.

With intranets, HR departments can automate the performance appraisal system. They can link corporate business initiatives with the goals of the individual employee and generate meaningful information from the vast data collected throughout the organisation. The system can save managers the trouble of having to remember a whole lot of things. At a specified date, say the first of every month, supervisors get a list of people they need to review and the review dates. The system can be programmed to provide the electronic documents required to complete the review along with such pertinent information as the employees previous performance review and current salary. Once the manager completes the form, he or she can instantly route it to the central HR information system where it is stored for all authorised parties to see.

Such automated intranet-based systems are very handy in case of 360-degree performance evaluation where a person is appraised by various people, superiors as well as subordinates and peers. Due to the large number of people involved in a 360-degree feedback exercise, the amount of paperwork generated is enormous and the logistics involved in the operation can be a nightmare for the HR department. With intranets, the HR department can create an evaluation survey and distribute it electronically to a host of individuals including the employee, the supervisors, peers and subordinates. The intranet can facilitate reduction in the respondent time, guarantee the respondents anonymity, if desired, and ensure automatic compilation of the results of the 360-degree appraisal.

Intranets can be used to develop employee-skill inventory databases of the purpose of internal recruitment. Take BBC. The Beeb not only allows its technicians to put up their curriculum vitaes on the corporate intranet for internal recruitment purposes but multimedia technology also enables them to upload clippings from their previous work alongside the traditional C.V. Producers in charge of specific programmes key in their requirement of camera handling skills and a networked PC leads them to a database of technicians who have done similar work or are capable of doing so. Such on-line recruitment is not only instantaneous but also far more efficient and cheap. In fact, BBCs intranet contains a daily version of Ariel, it weekly newspaper, a jobs database, a training database and various procedural handbooks.

Intranets are allowing corporate HR departments to facilitate fraternising in organisations whose operations run the breadth of the globe. The intranet of Apple Computers has an on-line singles site, as also several discussion groups. In an attempt to cater to the local tastes of its Hispanic, Asian and Jewish employees, the company has encouraged the development of intranet sites that cater to their specific interests and issues.

If you run a corporation with offices in over 100 countries, personnel stationed in over 1000 places all over the globe, what is the cost of conducting a HR climate survey or, any information gathering exercise for that matter? Intranets have demonstrated that such work can be done at a fraction of the cost of a manual survey. For many years, the global engineering giant, Schlumberger, tried to keep a computerised record file of its employees. Each month, updated information from over 350 locations around the world were sent on a computer floppy to the head office where the existing master file was updated before fresh updated copies of the master file were sent back to all the locations. This process was not only time consuming but the information was always at least 30 days out of date. Now Schlumberger has an on-line directory of e-mail addresses and phone numbers of all its employees. Each employee has a personal record in this directory and is responsible for keeping it up-to-date. Not only does it free the HR department from needless paperwork, it also allows it to devote its resources to far more important things.

How far corporates have progressed in this regard can be gauged from the almost futuristic mode of training in Cisco Systems Inc., the California based company which is the global leader in internetworking solutions. Not only does it conduct over 70 per cent of its business over the Internet, it is also trying to fully automate its in-house training programmes. In the management development page of the companys internal web-site, employees can enroll in a in-house training course at the click of a button. The system completes the registration on the spot, anytime, from anywhere. It then routes the training request to the employees supervisor for approval, and upon confirmation, enrolls the employee in the programme. In a latest experiment, instead of having employees from select sales offices spread over the entire United States fly over to the training premises, a cross-functional team at the company multicast a desk-top video seminar over three eight-hour sessions. The training was videotaped while simultaneously multicast over the corporate network. The system has the potential of having interactivity built into it to enable viewers to communicate directly with presenters in real time.

In India, the vast majority of corporates are yet to get on to the information superhighway, the odd exceptions being software companies like Infosys for whom getting wired comes naturally. And the few who have a presence on the net have gone little beyond the traditional recruitment teaser insert. The exciting possibilities that a good intranet offers still remains a foreign idea.

The effects of a wired network on the HR function have been many, the least being the lowering in the volume of paperwork. HR systems on corporate intranets have shifted the onus of

performing many routine functions to the employees themselves, thereby freeing HR to take a macro view of its mission. The automation of many critical functions has not only cut costs in terms of a leaner HR department, but also made it a lot more responsive and efficient.

A wired world would require a wired HR function. Therefore, not only does the function need to get away from its image of a clerical pen-pusher, but also provide that vital input that it going to be the great differentiator in the success of any modern corporation: its people. In the Great Leap Forward of HR, it is only technology that can give the all important push.

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Window-dressing for NT and Win 95

Bhalinder Singh

Windows 95 and Windows NT were huge successes when they were introduced. Today, Windows 95 is the most popular operating system in the micro computers market, and Windows NT in the server and workstation segment is gaining market share in large chunks. Concomitantly there is, as always happens, a race to develop applications for these platforms. So anyone who wants to gain a leading edge in this race would do well to read and keep the Win32 Application Programming Interface (API) reference guide. This much awaited offering in the Super Bible series of classic works on APIs, published by Waite Group Press, is here with the latest information on how to use APIs for developing applications for Windows 95 and Windows NT.

Knowledge of Win32 API is crucial because it is the common programming interface for Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT operating system. The purpose of this book is to save programmers time while developing applications for the two operating systems, and Microsofts commitment to the Win32 API means lighter work for the developer by providing applications across multiple hardware platforms. Since Windows NT can be installed on different hardware platforms, specific applications also need to be developed. For this, Microsoft has released compilers for each hardware platform that will optimise a Win32 application. The coming versions of the existing operating systems such as Windows CE will also be based on the Win32 API, which means the applications developed with these APIs should also work on those platforms with minimum effort or modifications.

This book is a complete reference guide to the Win32 API supported both in Windows NT and Windows 95, with the latest updates. Some APIs that are only implemented with Windows NT 4.0 are also documented. The focus is on Win32 APIs supported in both operating systems, not the entire Win32 APIs because most applications dont need specific Windows NT APIs. Comprehensive descriptions of each function with detailed parameters, supplemented by specific examples are a welcome feature.

The book is primarily divided into four sections based on the functions. The first few chapters deal with the study of new features that were introduced in NT andWindows 95 such as 32 bit systems and the new desktop. One of the chapters highlights the ease with which one can develop applications for these platforms with APIs and the conversion of Windows 3.x applications to Win32.

This section starts with the functions of simple APIs such as those used in creating windows and Windows-supporting functions such as creating menus, dialogue boxes, resources, scroll bars, user input functions including controlling and customising styles for Windows, etc. After this, it gives a detailed study and account of functions required for the process of memory management while running Win32 applications.

The second section of the book presents a study of Graphics Device Interface (GDI), support of picture formats, printing and outputting, Graphical User Interface (GUI) and functions related to the color palettes. GDI provides Windows applications with a device independent interface for screen and printers and functions as a layer between the application and different types of hardware. Windows 95 uses a 16-bit GDI and Windows NT, 32 bit coordinates but the functions are common for both. GUI means information is presented graphically, in charts, pictures and drawings. Win32 API provides more than 120 functions to be used to present applications graphically all of which are discussed in the book. The chapter also includes a variety of useful functions such as creating and managing colour palettes and colour matching.

The third quarter of the book discusses the system initialisation process and general system settings. The initialisation process of these systems is made easy by replacing all the initialising files with only one registry file, which makes it easier for configuring and error handling. Registry is a database in which configuration information is stored in the Win32 environment. It also supports networking and allows different users to store different preferences.

This book provides a thorough study of the role and working of registry files and registry architecture. System information helps applications to correctly present the resources of the system to the user and operate better within the system limits. Some of the general settings required by applications are local time zones and language support.

The last section deals with functions such as error handling, help files, atom tables and installation of applications. Win32 API provides full support for error and exception processing. This is important because of the dynamic nature of Windows, which could cause regular operations to fail in unforeseen circumstances. Gone are the days when applications handled only one document at a time; today, most of the Windows applications are Multiple Document Interface (MDI).

Help files need tight integration with the application - there are Win32 functions that deal with processes like creating help files, interface with help files, providing context-sensitive help and integrating help files with the application. DLLs are required to link the different programs within the Windows operating system.

The examples given in this book are simple and easy to understand. A CD-ROM is also included, which contains the source code for the example programme featured in the book. Source codes are arranged chapter wise in the CD, with a different directory for each chapter. Any progammer who is in the process of developing applications will find this book a handy, long-term reference guide.

Name Windows NT WIN32 API Super Bible

Publisher Waite Group Press

Pages 1510

Price Rs 570.00