Compliance Services – Can SMEs afford it?

Compliance is all about a formal legal framework that can assist and develop an organisation-wide understanding of the legal boundaries in which the organization operates. So, compliance and audits are essential management tools for any organisation. Compliance and regulations focus on the safety, transparency and soundness of the business, ensuring that organizations are not unduly exposed to concentration risk. Compliance also makes sure that companies are viable in the long run in terms of liquidity and profitability. In India regulations, therefore, need to be seen as facilitators of prudent business – rather than as restrictions to business growth.

But does a Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) need compliance and audits? Yes, they do, because today, compliance is mandated by lending banks, the legal environ and possible investors. But many SME’s are plagued by:

• Do I need a full time compliance person ?
• How do I keep track of what’s new in compliance regulations?
• Can I afford it?
• Or can I outsource the activity to a quality vendor ?
• Is there such vendor?
• Can someone advice on whether I am compliant or not?

These are some of the questions and challenges that the sector constantly grapples with. With Talent Pro’s professional team of HR & IT professionals by your side, leave your worries to us, as the team handling outsourced compliance services strives to keep your compliance and regulatory needs in order, saving you many sleepless nights.

Our expert team will handle the entire spectrum of compliance and regulatory services, ensuring that:

• Governance and regulatory information is submitted on time
• It is duly supported by a pre-defined calendar of returns
• Periodic regulatory interactions happen
• Train the key members, so that the organization co-operates with the regulators during inspections

Our services are flexible and easy-to-use, delivering all the benefits of compliance in a manner that seamlessly blends with your organisation's existing programs and processes.

Please call us today, for a clear understanding and audit of your governance, risk, regulatory and compliance needs.

Log on to www.talentproindia.com

Time & Attendance Management For Retailers

How affordable and reliable are time and attendance management systems? This is a question that often plagues small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and retailers, because everyone is concerned about the Return on Investment(ROI) on the requisite hardware and software.

There are many challenges that crop up, while choosing a payroll integrated with time and attendance management software. In addition, considerable amount of staff time must be put aside for review, selection, implementation and training phases, and investments for both the hardware and software have to be factored. In reality, small companies and retail outlets generally have only a time clock with some variation and some basic time and attendance tagging. Investing staff time and monitoring the part time and full time staff with complicated software may not be a preferred route for most of them. While it is a fact that any organization with 10 or more employees should have some level of time and attendance management software, adding more resources to keep track may not be a preferred choice for SMEs.

Talent Pro’s comprehensive attendance and leave management system, takes care of all these concerns of the SME. Talent Pro Employee Attendance Module (TEAM) is compatible to any of the attendance marking technologies that include swipe cards, bio metric devises etc. In a recent exercise, Talent Pro has fine-tuned this module specifically for retail outlets which need shift-related attendance to be mapped. The software is mounted onto in shop desk tops from where the attendance data recorded is then transferred as input for processing salaries. Organizations that employ large work force across outlets over a large geographic area – find this useful, specifically when the payroll is also processed by Talent Pro. While designing this module, Talent Pro has kept the outsourcing bottom lines of SME and retailer in mind. The result is a complete outsourced payroll processing software with time and attendance management integrated keeping the costs and affordability factor for this specific groups.

Track Employee Time

• Easily manage time and attendance, time off requests, and payroll
• Feature-rich, user friendly web based timesheets
• Smart e-mail notifications for timely timesheet submissions/approvals
• Easily manage part time, full time, xempt and non-exempt employees
• Configurable accrual policies and overtime rules
• Next generation calendars for users and managers to manage time off schedules

Special packages for SMEs and Retailers in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai!! For more information on TalentPro’s Payroll processing and Time and Attendance Management software, reach our Payroll sales team at TalentPro now at www.talentproindia.com.

India’s New Temping Trends

What is touted as the fastest growing temporary man power trend is catching on at a slow, yet meaningful pace in India. It is estimated that close to 3 to 3.5% of the Indian workforce will be hired as “temps” or temporary workers.

Temping as a solution is an accepted norm with MNCs and Indian enterprises too are beginning to see the benefits of leasing employees from reliable staffing agencies. Most organizations see sense in out-sourcing non-core functions to employee leasing/staffing companies, or temping agencies, which can offer a sense of belonging to their staff.

Temping Trends

TalentPro is a prominent player in providing end-to-end HR services and helps organizations augment their workforce with well-trained, quality people, who have a sense of loyalty to their agency. The retail sector has several of its requirements addressed, by providing seasonal workforce and flexi task forces. TalentPro is also a preferred vendor for many enterprises to meet their man power requirement for short-term assignments and to augment their needs during “leave vacancies” or sudden terminations. Some of these are specialized requirements, and TalentPro’s executives have been able to offer great flexibility to their clients who keep changing their requirements, as challenges arise depending on the market changes, consumer demands and shorter product development life cycles.

TalentPro offers temping solutions right across the spectrum of accounts, front-office, sales, marketing and back-end operations of finance, HR and technical support, over a wide range of sectors viz., banking, telecom, IT, retail and FMCGs. TalentPro has been able to offer a wider bandwidth through its people, as client service is delivered through superior technology and refined processes. Temps have a sense of belonging as they are trained, motivated and their personal issues if any, are addressed, keeping the temp happy – This goes a long way in curbing attrition and in the long run, TalentPro’s clients stand to benefit. In that sense, TalentPro is one of those rare HR players who offer complete end-to-end HR activity management solutions.

As the country is experiencing an exponential growth in the need for quality temping staff, it is the availability of resources that will enable a temping agency to offer meaningful solutions to enterprises. TalentPro has been very successful in delivering improved productivity, has the capability to bench, ensuring that the right candidate is placed at the right time, in the right enterprise.

The Future

While temping agencies in India have a large role to play in moving candidates from the unorganized to the organized sector, with better quality candidates, enterprises will soon get ready to outsource even core functions, making temping the most viable staffing option of the future. Candidates too will get to benefit from the many Temp to Perm options that will become available.

For a no-obligation discussion and assessment of your temping requirements:

Log on to www.talentproindia.com

Call: +91 44 42123497

‘Customise HR for young India or lose talent'

With an increasingly young work force driving corporate India, especially people-centric service industries which account for half of the country's GDP, HR practices will have to be re-engineered to meet the aspirations of individual employees, noted speakers at ‘Metamorphosis', an HR Summit hosted at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

Speaking on people challenges in start ups and scaling enterprises, Mr Pankaj Bhargav, CEO, HRMantra Software, underlined the need to keep every employee aligned to the vision. “The younger lot is not ready to accept existing HR systems to evaluate and reward performance. The days of grades and salaries are gone. Whether it is salary expectations or perks, they have their own set of expectations. We need to personalise the HR policy to address individual aspirations,” he said.

Mr Wahid Ansari, President - Operations at security services company TOPSGRUP, said, “The communication aspect internally has to be looked at not just by HR, but by every manager in the system. Organisations need to communicate to the last person in the line, and appeal to individual talents in each employee. Established organisations tend to be rigid with silos and systems. That doesn't work with the younger work force which demands instant gratification.”

Lending perspective to the discussion was Prof. Satyajit Majumdar, Ph.D., from TISS. He noted, “Smaller organisations and start ups are better at adapting. When you have no rigid rules, you can create your own rules.” He added, “This is probably the time to think of competency building at the organisational level. Such competency is lesser mobile than people. The ill effects of people movement can be countered by systems.”

On the need to recognise individual talent, Ms Kalpana Bansal, President, TalentPro, explained the need to explore what is equitable, not ‘total equality'. Mr Ansari said: “Putting a value on the individual employee has become important. It's very difficult to do using existing performance metrics.”

Be there at Metamorphosis on the 19th. Talentpro along with Tata Inst.Of Social Sciences and Bean Stalk, welcomes you

Metamorphosis – The HR Summit

With a growth rate of around 8% GDP year after year, India is pacing ahead to be a super power on its own. This growth has been fuelled by the emerging service sectors which has changed the Global Outlook towards India. As the Indian economy looks to grow further in the coming decades, new jobs and roles are getting created with increasing complexities and requiring specific skill sets.

The existing educational system is orthodo...x in its approach and is unable to churn out suitable candidates to cater to this demand from industry. Millions of educated candidates enter the job market each year; however the challenge before the industry does not lie in the supply of talent but rather that of employability. Education and employability are not in step with each other.

The three parties which need to play a critical role in addressing this skill-gap challenge are Universities, Training providers and HR Solution providers. Beanstalk, Tata Institute of Social Sciences and TalentPro have joined hands towards this goal.

Beanstalk is a leading solution provider in the training and content space with a vision to make today’s youth employable and productive by imparting in them the requisite skill set and in the process making the education system more business ready. Tata Institute of Social Sciences is a deemed university of great repute which strives to respond to the changing social and economic realities through the development and application of knowledge.

TalentPro is a end-to-end HR Service provider and a pioneer in Payroll, Staffing (temping), Compliances, Search & Selections (Recruitments), Training, and Consultancy services.

TalentPro in collaboration with Beanstalk and Tata Institute of Social Sciences have organized METAMORPHOSIS.

As Metamorphosis implies transformation, this enlightening summit is designed to be an initiative of a chrysalis in bridging the gap between academics and industry, taking up the responsibility in accentuating the skills of an individual, creating right job opportunities as per the skill sets and helping an individual to suffice and grow in the industry by either entering the market or opting for a career change.

Invitation for Metamorphosis - The HR Summit

Dear All,

It is our pleasure to extend to you this warm invitation to Metamorphosis, a HR summit in collaboration with Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Beanstalk on 19th February 2011 at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

As Metamorphosis implies transformation, this enlightening summit is designed to be an initiative of a chrysalis in bridging the gap between academics and industry in terms of Education system and the Industry taking up the responsibility in accentuating the skills of an individual before entering the fast paced Corporate Sector.

This would be a great time for you to have a change in your daily work routines as we are confident that this Summit will bring us together to share our knowledge and interact with our the experts of the industry on the current trends in the market.

We look forward to learning and benefiting from your presence and experience in our shared quest for excellence.

Therefore, we are delighted to personally invite you to join this Summit.

Understanding Corporate Compliance

Compliance as a Driver for Business Process Improvement

Outsourcing Your Business Payroll

Staffing companies value add services for higher rating

Chennai, Jan 16 (IANS) With staffing services fast turning into big business, major players in the field have started going up in the value chain, offering trained people or even guaranteeing performance so as to get a better billing.

Staffing companies provide temporary employees to firms. The service is also called 'temping' or 'flexi staffing.'

'Staffing is a matured service globally with multiple offerings like managed programmes, in-house management and vendor management,' P.S. Srikumar, vice president for sales and marketing at Talent Pro India HR, told IANS.

In countries like Britain, there are specialised staffing companies operating in niche areas like healthcare, leisure and tourism, and manufacturing. What they offer is a combination of people, productivity and management.

'The niche player offers the advantage of expertise and convenience and the client is willing to pay a higher value for the benefits received. These services border between temping and outsourcing, realising the benefits of both,' Srikumar said.

Speaking about Talent Pro's attempts in climbing the value chain, he said: 'We offer a managed programme - one of the first of its kind in India - to a multinational telecom operator.'

'We mapped the market completely and used a research-based approach to offer a comprehensive proposition. We did a detailed industry research to arrive at the benchmark norms. The scope of work includes regular monthly monitoring of performance against targets,' added Srikumar.

To execute its contract, Talent Pro built an employee dashboard for information, used productivity yardsticks and benchmarking that with the industry norms.

'Since the team is run by a professional as a managed programme, we agreed for performance guarantee. The fee structure here is very different from that of a normal staffing or temping fee. The research-based approach also has been cautiously applied to work out the productivity indices, as loss of productivity will impact us on billing,' Srikumar remarked.

'We have engaged a team from the industry. So it understands the nuances of business and hence can significantly value add. It gives a settling time for the client while his business does not have to wait till his people are in place,' Srikumar said.

According to him, this module works on a build operate-lease-or-transfer method. The team is transferred to the client at an appropriate time for a fee.

The service fee is of various forms - retainer-plus-handling fee, recruitment fee, administration fee, transfer fee and others.

'This is non-conventional and the risks of taking on productivity keep companies away from this module. The success key is to have national recruitment capabilities, time-bound activity and earmarking of exclusive resources,' according to Srikumar.

On the risk side, the liability is unlimited and staffing companies are bound by exclusivity agreements. They cannot offer the service to others.

The country's largest staffing company, Ma Foi Management Consultants, which is part of the Netherlands-based 12-billion-euro Ranstad Holdings, will soon launch its value-added service called In-house Services for its clients.

'Under this we will take care of the entire flexi/temporary staff at our client's place deputed by us. We will also assure performance guarantee and provide all the business analytical data,' K. Pandiarajan, chairman of Ma Foi Management, told IANS.

According to him, the company deputes around 60,000 people for 980 clients and the plan is to increase it to 100,000 in 2011.

Not all agree with such new models guaranteeing performance.

'They are basically outsourcing deals which staffing companies are not equipped to do,' Manish Sabharwal, chairman of the Bangalore-based TeamLease Services, told IANS.

He said: 'TeamLease offers trained personnel to companies which itself would be a great relief to the client companies. Staffing companies are not supposed to provide trained personnel.'

Last year TeamLease acquired a training company, Indian Institute of Job Training, and Sabharwal said the number of centres would be expanded to 400 this year from the current 250.

'We haven't started value-added services to our staffing activity. Our core focus is on offering labour law compliance services,' said Bharath K.S, chairman and managing director of Aparajitha Group.

TalentPro Moves Mumbai Office

Jan 12, 2011 – Mumbai, India – TalentPro India HR Pvt. Ltd., a leading provider of human resource services to small, medium and large businesses, has relocated their Mumbai office to a new, larger location at 110 Gomes Indl Estate, Near Lathya Rubber, Saki Naka, Andheri East.

Formerly at 203 II Floor, Hyde Park, Saki - Vihar Road, Andheri (East), TalentPro India chose to move in response to increased client need for services. The recent move is to accommodate continued growth and the expansion of service offerings.

“In addition to providing us with more room for additional staff, our new office is spacious enough for us to host in-house trainings and seminars,” says President - Sales & Delivery, Ms.Kalpana Bansal. “We’re happy to move to a place that meets our needs right here in Andheri”

TalentPro India provides a wide range of services including human resource and compliance audits, training and development, payroll processing and HR business consulting, assisting small, medium and corporate entities with making employment-related decisions that are cost effective and that minimize liability risks.

For more information about TalentPro India HR Pvt Ltd., visit www.talentproindia.com or contact us at +91 22 40300600 or sales@talentproindia.com

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About TalentPro India

TalentPro India is an end-to-end HR solution provider. TalentPro works with clients to solve their most complex human capital issues, designing and helping them through the entire value chain of talent management, maximizing the power of their people, lowering their costs and allowing them to focus on what they do best. TalentPro has a pan-India presence with regional offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of InterPro Global Pte Ltd., which is part of the Briley Group, based out of Singapore. For more information logon to: http://talentproindia.com