Mistakes that HR Professionals Must Avoid

Often we hear HR leaders taking care of mistakes committed by employees and the management people. Now it's time for the HR Managers to take necessary steps and avoid making errors, so that people don't point fingers at you. Although a successful training will surely help to keep away from pitfalls, some HR matters may make them fall into the trap. So, what exactly are those errors which should be avoided committing?

Denielle Fisher wrote an article on Lexology.com mentioning some of the mistakes which an HR manager could possibly make in his career.  Here are some of them-

1. Education: It is the important in any industry to have a detailed knowledge about the domain, in order to carry out the responsibilities smoothly. Some people think they can carry out the job of a human resource without having basic knowledge in it. This is not true; HR work is not easy and you need to have at least a master’s degree or some formal training in the field of HR. This sector requires a vast knowledge regarding employment law, payroll system, company policies and disciplinary actions.

2. Bad focus: People with a bad focus can never be a part of a good HR department. The HR department as a whole should maintain its focus on the progress of the organization. HR leaders should always keep evaluating working practices to update themselves with the changing company policies and employment law. This will include overtime, turnover, performance and benefits.

3. Clear misconceptions with the staff: Since you are in HR, you must learn to be neutral and equal to both the sides i.e. management and staff. A successful HR department should always try to devote their time and energy to maintaining a peaceful working environment.

 4. Communication gap: HR leaders must make it a point to meet the senior management people every day. This will help you in getting in touch with the employee matters on a daily basis.  Often lack of communication creates a huge problem, mostly in the disciplinary part. It will also lead to under staffing and loss of client confidence, hiring the wrong candidate and ultimately wastage of time and money.

5. Maintaining breach confidentiality: HR staff needs to deal mostly with confidentiality policies. Employee payroll, employee details, company policies, and laws all these are private data and the organization faces liability in these matters. It is therefore advised to HR professionals to maintain a level of confidentiality with regards to their respective organization since a small negligence can put their career at stake.

All of the above mistakes are somehow committed by many HR personnel. To make you a successful HR professional, we recommend having complete knowledge about the field with a professional degree. However, practical is what makes you better than theory. Learn with your experiences. Good Luck..!!

10% of All CVs have False Information

For long, Indians have indulged in extrapolating their skills and hiding shortcomings while preparing their resumes. Despite changes in HR practices, the trend continues.

A survey done by recruitment consultancy First Advantage showed that the rate of faking has increased to 9.9% in 2012 from 8.1% in 2011, with Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai leading the pack. Chennai registered 7.57% discrepancies between October and December 2012, which means 76 of every 1,000 resumes had a bogus element in it.

"People create fake resumes when they don't get jobs on campus. The skill levels are low and people don't get good jobs immediately after graduation. When students lose time, they aren't seen as freshers by companies and hence they cook up 'work experience'," said Madhumurthy Ronanki, president, TalentSprint, a skill development firm.

While it isn't industry-specific, fake resumes are more common in the IT industry. With many fake resumes floating about, companies take everything with a pinch of salt and have tweaked their HR practices. "Companies em ploy private detectives for verifica tion before recruiting middle-level and senior people who have been part-time employees of another company," said an HR official of a software consultancy firm in Chennai. "Some companies have outsourced background screening to (external) agencies, which verify information such as previous employers and institutions where candidates have studied," said Chithranath Vadakkeppat, a senior human resource manager.

The bug doesn't bite private firms alone. "At least a dozen civil servants have been caught in similar crimes in last two years. They manipulate or forge documents proving age, caste, religion, qualification and even achievements," said a senior official with the state employment exchange.

"Most cases go unchecked or are ignored due to lack of provisions to verify facts," he said. Tamil Nadu has a separate government body, Professional and Executive Employment Office, to speed up recruitment processes.

Initiatives to curb faking resumes, like Nasscom's National Skill Registry, which has a database of all skilled talent and employable people for IT companies, haven't had an effect yet, Ronanki said. "About 20% of employees are fired within three months of joining the company when verification results show up discrepancies," he said.

Deep checks are really important to ensure good hiring in an organization or else what is ultimately hampered is the productivity of the business. So next time when you hire an employee, make sure his resume speaks complete truth.

Source:TOI 

Settlement delays by EPFO not to affect interest payout

There's good news for salaried employees who have transferred or closed their old PF accounts in the last three years, but have been wrongly denied interest on their retirement savings from April 2011 till their accounts were settled.

The PF office has been asked to ensure that employees are not penalized for its inability to settle accounts in a timely manner. The government had stopped crediting interest on employees' PF accounts from April 1, 2011, if they had been inactive for at least three years. The threat of losing interest, it was argued, may force employees to consolidate their multiple PF accounts from past jobs and transfer them to the account being operated by their present employer. The Employees' Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) had claimed that 3.04 crore PF accounts with Rs 16,000 crore were 'inoperative'. ET had reported last week that employees who sought to transfer their old PF accounts before that deadline have been denied interest from 2011-12 though their accounts were settled much later.

Worse still, employees who were paid due interest till the date of settlement are now receiving demand notices from the PF department seeking a refund of 'inadvertently' credited 'excess' interest.

The EPFO board's finance committee, which met on Friday, saw a last-minute addition to its agenda to discuss such 'exceptional' cases. "...If the settlement of a claim is delayed by more than a month after March 31, 2011, the member suffers a loss of interest on his accumulation, corresponding to the delay period. The more the delay, the more is the loss of interest," the EPFO conceded to its finance committee, citing several requests from employees for crediting interest on their claims submitted before the cut-off date.

Though EPF scheme mandates all claims and transfer requests to be settled within 30 days, it actually ends up taking much longer as the PF departments' archaic book-keeping system and business processes are unable to cope with the rise in account volumes. The EPFO now administers 8.15 crore member accounts with an underlying corpus of over Rs 5 lakh crore.

"The delay of more than 30 days in all cases is attributable on the part of EPFO... (They) have occurred due to various administrative reasons," the board's committee was told, stating that field offices have sought a clarification on whether interest must be credited on inoperative accounts where claims were received prior to March 31, 2011 but settled later. The committee has decided that in all such cases where the 'settlement delay' was not caused by the employee but by EPFO's 'administrative reasons', interest must be paid for the 'delayed period' at the prevailing EPF rate.

"We are quite anxious that EPFO fixes this, as such complaints have reached an embarrassing scale," said a member of the committee. "The modalities for ensuring all members get their dues need to be simple so that workers don't have to run from pillar to post to claim the amount they were shortchanged by," he said.

The EPFO's board of trustees chaired by labour minister Mallikarjun Kharge is expected to ratify the proposal on February 25, when it will also discuss the EPF rate for 2012-13. The PF office has proposed a rate of 8.5% as 'feasible.' The EPFO had declared a 9.5% interest on deposits in 2010-11, but slashed it by 1.25% in 2011-12 to 8.25%. Incidentally, this year's EPF income calculations don't factor in the interest income on inoperative account balances, though EPFO had claimed that it could be redistributed to active members.

Source: TOI

The EPFO Buzz This Week

Retirement fund body, EPFO has decided to put on hold the decision to make it mandatory for new members joining EPF scheme to provide Aadhaar number as credential for enrolment from March 1, 2013.

"In view of discussion with UIDAI official and the time required in the process of obtaining Aadhaar numbers, it may not be possible to obtain Aadhaar number by EPF members by March 1, 2013. Therefore it has been decided to not to make Aadhar number mandatory for EPFO members March 1, 2013", an EPFO order to the field staff said.

Late last month, Employees' Provident Fund Organisation's (EPFO) decision drew flak from trade unions, following which the body has now decided to put it on hold.

However, the field staff has been asked to make efforts to obtain the available Aadhaar number of EPF members.

The staff has also been asked to collect core banking account numbers of all contributing members. The EPFO order has observed that getting the Aadhaar is a time consuming process and the scheme covers 18 states only. The remaining states are covered by the Register General of India under the National Population Register which would be digital database of country's residents.

EPFO had envisaged replacing members' account numbers with their Aadhaar numbers to avoid inconvenience to people as they had to apply for transfer of PF money to new accounts while changing jobs.

Now, EPFO is working on creating a central data base where all members would have a permanent account number and would not require to transfer PF accounts on changing job.

Besides, this will help EPFO members, particularly construction workers, who often change their jobs or contractors.

The next news that buzzed from EPFO premises this week was that it may get 8.5 per cent return on their investment during 2012-13, higher than 8.25 per cent provided in the last fiscal.

The body's proposal is likely to come up for discussion during its apex decision making body Central Board of Trustees (CBT) scheduled on February 15, a source said.

"The EPFO has worked out 8.5 per cent rate of return for the current fiscal. It will not leave any deficit. However, the proposal has not been finalised as yet," the source added.

The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had paid 9.5 per cent interest in 2010-11, before scaling it down to 8.25 per cent in 2011-12 fiscal.

EPFO will place the proposal regarding the interest rate before its advisory body Finance and Investment Committee (FIC) at its meeting on February 14. Once approved by the FIC, it will go to Labour Minister-headed CBT for final approval.

The notification on interest rate is issued by the government after concurrence by the Finance Ministry.

Although EPFO announces interest rate at the beginning of the year, there has been a delay this time. Trade unions have been pressing for an early meeting of the CBT to decide on the interest rate for the current fiscal.