If we say recruitment is just the beginning of a long drawn process of people management, resignation of workers is in fact an inherent part of the system. Attrition is the part of any professional system today be it corporate, IT vendors, channels and our own constituency of media.
But from the channels point of view, as we view it, the challenges in managing HR are perhaps more than any other industry. The biggest problem faced by any human resource department is the retention of an efficient employee.
The channel business is more complex an employee leaving your organization will either join your competitor or become your competitor by opening their independent venture. He would lure your customers and exploit your database to his advantage.
There also seems to be an upward flow with employees moving from an assembler to a reseller and from there to a sub distributor, then a distributor and even a top vendor. Human resource, though resellers say are their best asset, in most cases they don t give adequate attention and time that the pressing issue deserves. In the process, there is every chance that the HR issue turns into a burden with most of your companies.
True, the success of any company depends on its people. This plain therapy applies to my company as much as yours. By people, I stress on the importance of team spirit in the running of any organization and every employee worth his or her salt should imbibe in them the spirit and commitment to work as a team. This takes us to the task of finding the right people. My reseller friends share with me similar views and quite strongly.
The complications in employee management are much more pronounced in the case of channel partners than distributors and vendors, as majority of these are entrepreneur-run setups. The HR aspect is largely unstructured where employment is still done based on informal recommendations and references.
Some of my friends in the resellers fraternity have cultivated quite ingenious policies albeit not in writing to recruit people. Some insist that it is still the best of options to employ people among the partners relatives and relatives and friends of existing workers. This ensures great improvement in terms of loyalty to the companies and also minimizes the attrition.
Another aspect is checking a prospective candidate s background in terms of both, academics and family. One school of thought has the conviction that those job seekers who are from a modest background still cherish the values of loyalty and should definitely be the preferred lot as against a new generation who is madly in a hurry to achieve so many things with less painstaking efforts. Such candidates with humble background but with essential qualities of sincerity and commitment to their work place can do wonders in terms of serving the company for a long term as well as improve productivity.
Even from my own experience, I agree that some qualities of good employees are inbuilt in them and are non-trainable. On the contrary, the trainable aspects include skill, domain knowledge but the need to be calm and composed under pressure, discipline and respect for co-workers are certain virtues that either an employee possesses or lacks.
In many cases, partners are now realizing the importance of a structured recruitment procedure than following the traditional word-of-mouth recommendations. A formal HR unit can help taking care of training and other such requirements. Some partners have already started giving personal attention to increase brand loyalty by opening floodgates of perks like special incentives, travel allowances, medical reimbursement etc.
Many partners have already devised a well-structured system of post-recruitment workforce to ensure greater degree of commitment from employees in an era where job switching has become an order of the day as also a way of position climbing both in terms of higher remuneration and bigger posts.
As experts would put it, around 12 to 15 percent of the revenue should be spent on HR activities and creating an ideal working atmosphere, right from organizing a cup of coffee to catering to financial issues of tax handling etc.
According to one esteemed VAR, channel organizations need to take into account three primary aspects if they have to retain their employees and minimize man power related issues, namely career growth, knowledge growth, and financial benefits for each of their workers.
These probably lead to employees remaining longer with a company and also returning, if they leave.