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A STUDY ON STRATEGIES TO INCREASE EMPLOYEES PRODUCTIVITY IN MANUFACTURING SECTOR AT KHOPOLI, RAIGAD DISTRICT , INDIA

Prof. Rajesh Kumar Agrawal Prof. S.Raghavendra Assistant Professor, MBA Assistant Professor, MBA Sinhgad Institute (SIBACA) Sinhgad Institute (SIBACA) University of Pune, Pune, India University of Pune, Pune, India aggyrajesh@gmail.com soderaghavendra@gm ail.com

Abstract

As the dynamics of business are changing it is very much evident to see the change occurring directly the way employees are treated in the organization to increase the levels of productivity which is required to get more and more profits. The change in employer perception of employees from commodity to being considerate by providing facilities and than giving the value as an asset and now it has turned into the strategically important part of business in framing strategies. All this took every long time and maintaining this asset motivated to work and increase their morale is the key for any organization to achieve higher productivity levels there by leading to competitive advantage. In this qualitative research paper researcher have tried to focus on the strategies which are responsible in increasing the productivity levels of employees in manufacturing sector by the means of informal meetings and interviews by random convenient selection of various companies where in the HRs heads were asked about means of increasing the productivity of lower level employees. The strategies are accountability; follow up, managing work force not micro management, total reward system and many more. The scope of the study is restricted to Khopoli area in India.

Key words: Productivity, Competitive advantage, Strategies, Accountability, micro management, total rewards

1. Introduction

Over the centauries of time the dynamics of

business has changed and also the employers’ perception of employees also changed from commodity to benefiter, benefiter to an asset and than to strategically important role. All these were evident predominantly in manufacturing sector as in the 1970s and 1980s the business function which was responsible for people was called "The Personnel Department." The role of

this group was to hire people, pay them, and make sure they had the necessary benefits. In this role, the personnel department was a well understood business function.

In the 1980s and 1990s organizations realized that the HR function was in fact more important

- and the concepts of "Strategic HR" emerged. During this period organizations realized that the VP of HR had a much larger role: recruiting the right people, training them, helping the business design job roles and organization structures (organization design), develop "total compensation" packages which include benefits, stock options and bonuses, and serving as a central point of communication for employee health and happiness. In this role, the HR department now became more than a business function: it is a business partner, reaching out to support lines of business.

We are now entering a new era: the emergence of "Talent Management." While strategic HR continues to be a major focus, HR and L&D organizations are now focused on a new set of strategic issues:

 Competency-based recruiting

 Create a sustainable leadership

 Identification of competency gaps so we can deliver training, e-learning, or development programs to fill these gaps?

 Manage people in a consistent and measurable way so that everyone is aligned, held accountable, and paid fairly?

Prof. Rajesh Kumar Agrawal Prof. S.Raghavendra Assistant Professor, MBA Assistant Professor, MBA Sinhgad Institute (SIBACA) Sinhgad Institute (SIBACA) University of Pune, Pune, India University of Pune, Pune, India

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 Identify high performers and successors to key positions throughout the organization

 Learning that is relevant, flexible, convenient, and timely?

These new, more challenging problems require new processes and systems. They require tighter integration between the different HR silos -- and direct integration into line of business management processes. Today organizations are starting to buy, build, and stitch together performance management systems, succession planning systems, and competency management systems. The HR function is becoming integrated with the business in a real- time fashion.
It is known fact that human resources are the key to success in today’s competitive world to get the competitive advantage. Organizational performance is the sum total of the performance of every individual in the company. Productivity is nothing but the outcome of individual performance.

Methodology Adopted

The work enlisted is qualitative research in manufacturing sector region Khopoli, Raigad district; India where in various HR heads were interviewed informally about the strategies to increase the productivity was discussed. The companies were selected purely on convenient random basis for the informal interview and discussion which is about 50 in number.

Limitation

• The focus of the study was limited to manufacturing sector located at Khopoli , India
• Time duration was not sufficient
• The data enlisted is only through informal interview and discussion.
• Respondents were restricted to HR
managers/ VP.

Findings:

The following strategies are prevalent in current scenario to increase the employee’s productivity.
1. Accountability: Every employee needs to be well aware that they are accountable for their actions and decisions, and they can neither pass the buck nor pass the blame to someone else. This will help them to work more meticulously, take cautious rather than
reckless decisions, and not take advantage of his place, position or relationship with his superiors.
2. Follow up: Employers often set targets and feel their job is done. No, every target or milestone set needs to be followed up as well, to see if the progress is sufficient and if not; whether any interim measures can be taken before it is too late to salvage a situation. It also keeps the employee on track, ensuring there is consistent effort throughout the lifetime of the project.

3. Manage the work force but avoid micromanagement: It is well known that a large pool of employees does need to be managed, provided direction and given assistance. But with this they must also be trusted, given freedom to operate in their style and adopt measures which they think are the best to deliver results. This freedom to act as they deem fit helps to keep them encouraged, motivated and happy in the belief that they are trusted. Micro management is a human tendency but one that is detrimental to achievement, since it makes mere puppets out of employees, who are expected to toe the boss’ line and not think for themselves. Employees need to think for themselves, analyze the consequences of every decision or action to be able to give their best to their jobs. And the employers must make it possible for their workers to do so.

4. Encourage, motivate, reward and recognize (Total Reward): The employer must ensure that on his part he always has words of encouragement for his staff. Encouraging those helps them move forward and do even better, and makes the worker feel happy. Innovative ways of motivating them spurs them even more. For example, holidays or conferences paid for by the company have been found to motivate employees immensely. Rewarding the hard work put in by employees makes them continue to work in the same fashion, and if the employee feels that his work is not appreciated in words or in material terms, he may gradually stop doing so, since he may feel that others working less are given the same too, so he need not work more. Rewards, and other ways of keeping employees happy makes them feel that their effort is being recognized.

5. Reach out to employees by seeking them out: Every employee loves to feel he has the ears of the management who will recognize him and listen to what he says. Display of inter personal skills in which the boss appears humane and one of them, rather than a larger than life, distant figure, helps to

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have employees warm up to him and feel happy working for him. A bit of effort to reach out helps them all do better. If this extends beyond the work place it may prove to be even more encouraging to increase employee productivity.

6. Demand realistic targets: Employers need to set realistic goals that are within the limits of achievement. While an aggressive employer may want his people to outstretch themselves to achieve farfetched goals, it may also burn them out.

7. Team work: Team work always helps in increasing workplace productivity since there is more input in the form of more ideas and minds at work. Working alone is not always the happiest situation either, especially in the field. Successful team building and working together is bound to bring out the best out of the employees. While selecting the employees we must see that candidate like to work in team or not and also cultivate the culture which improves the habit of working in team.

8. Ensure that people enjoy their work: Working environment should be healthy. Employer has to find ways of making his people happy. Besides working conditions and the work culture implemented, he has to devise ways of making the work seem challenging and interesting rather than mundane and boring.
9. Courses and improvement options: Employees are delighted when they can enhance their skills and get additional learning opportunities sponsored by the employer. This helps them learn, feel indebted for the money being spent on them, which also adds to their resume, and are obliged to perform better by applying all the knowledge gained in these courses.

10. Spend less time on meetings and more on action: The current trend to have more meetings and discussion rather than spending more time working to achieve results, leads to precious productive time loss. Meetings for reviews and sharing of ideas can be limited and kept short. Employees should have more time to show results.

11. Tools and equipment to raise productivity: Finally, the workplace must have the best machinery, devices and equipment that yield error free results in the minimum possible time. Efficient electronic equipment with no connectivity issues and breakdowns will help to save precious time. They should take the place of paper work, and yield fast results. Some of these include:

• Smart phones
• Laptops
• Tablet computers
• Latest applications and software that offers quick connectivity and access
• Digital recorders-these help to record thoughts and new ideas when they strike, when no paper is available and the fear is of forgetting the idea
• Bluetooth to stay connected
• Personal digital assistants or PDA’s
• GPS to stay on track on the road
Uses of Enterprise incentive management, Like- Infosys Incentive X, Oracle human resource management system, HRIS and SAP (HR)
Thus the idea is to have devices that enhance efficiency and subsequently productivity at the work place. The devices help to reduce the response time, improve customer service and cutting costs, all imperative for workplace productivity

12. Effective communications and feedback reduce errors and frustration: A lack of communications can frustrate employees and make them feel unimportant. Failing to provide effective feedback can lead to wasted efforts, increased error rates, and lower productivity.

13. Accurate manpower planning: Manpower planning is an important factor to drive and improve productivity. Planning happens at the business level and is aligned to the culture and approach of the organization. Whether the company wants to invest in technology or in people or a mix of both is a business decision after all. If the business plans to increase output or change the product mix, then the manpower planning happens accordingly.
(a).Planned leave chart be made to make sure no overlap of leave among workers.
(b).Have a system to track absenteeism
(c) For controlled the unplanned leave
(i) Attendance Bonus
(ii)Planned absence is always easier for a business to manage than unscheduled absence. Offer employees the opportunity to book unpaid leave up to a minimum number of days or buy additional holiday at the start of the year

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14. Unleash the hidden talents of your employees: Employees have hidden talent other than work they do in the organization. So identify that hidden talent of the employees and utilized for the organization which will increase the workforce productivity and cut the cost.

15. Recruit the Ex- Military Person: The military has a large pool of potential candidates Research say nearly one out of every six members of the Military return to civilian world each year. They are highly trained and experienced, professional and engineers and lower staffs. They are flexible, dedicated and ready for relocation. So recruit them.

16. Performance linked Pay Plan: is considered as a good HR Practice. Even in the sixth central pay commission of the Govt. of India, in report submitted in Mar 08, has made recommendations that performance linked pay/incentives for govt. of India employees. PRP is also widely prevalent in the private sector and multinational firms operating in India.

17. Career Plateau: is one of the reasons which make the employees dissatisfy while remaining in the same position for longer position without promotion. To remove the Career Plateau flattens the organization, Rotation of job, Challenging job to the person.

18. Abnormal Idle Time and (WIPE- waste identification and planned elimination):- This is the wastage of time which we can stop by good supervision.

1. Waste of time due to inefficiency of engineers.
2. Power failure
3. Delay of supply of material to factory
4. Strike and lockout

19. Treat employees as an internal customer: Treat the employees as an internal customer to increase the employee’s productivity.

20. Recreational facilities: Providing with world class facilities like gym, swimming pool, yoga and other recreational activities like dance, music classes etc will help the employees to overcome the stress levels and encourage them to persuade their passion apart from working.

21. Others strategies:-Home visit by the HR Manager for the worker, Tea with employees Flexible work hours and keep the employees engaged.

Conclusion: The strategies which help to increase the productivity are accountability, managing workforce not micro management etc but it is not possible for all the organization to follow all the strategies and it is also not guaranteed that all this will be equally applicable to all organization and to all employees but this will help as a guideline to set strategy or a combination of these will help to increase the productivity levels of employees. Care should be taken by HR manager to set the strategic protocol according to the requirement of their organizations which will make the strategy to which the goal of increasing productivity but at the same time external factors should also be considered like PESTLE which includes Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, and Legal & Environmental.

Referrences

1. Asea, Patrick K.; Corden, Max W.The Balassa-Samuelson Model: An Overview. Forthcoming Review of International Economics, working paper #710. 25 March
1994.
2. Balassa, Bela. The Purchasing Power Parity Doctrine: A Reappraisal. The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 72, No. 6. December 1964 (pp. 584-596). Published by The University of Chicago Press.

3. Kronos –people matters Survey-2012 “Workforce productivity India-201OECD Publications.Measuring Productivity – OECD Manual: Measurement of Aggregate and Industry-Level Productivity Growth.2001.

4. Rebecca Freeman (2008) Labour

productivity indicators, OECD Publication