Managing manpower

If someone has the natural tendency of managing people, handling the most difficult work with a smile in his face, keeping cool even when the disaster is around the corner, he/she can be well fitted in the shoes of an HRA in retail. As the job of an HRA is to increase productivity and morale, reduce job turnover and create highly specialised workers, employers more and more look up to human resource experts to help create a workplace environment that will mutually benefit the employer and employee alike. Accordingly, human resource advisors search and select employees based on their skills, develop training programs for honing those skills, and communicate with employees to improve working conditions and job satisfaction. Good human resources stand for happy, well trained workers who create healthy and profitable organisations. Mr Nihar Ranjan Ghosh, Senior VP - HR, RPG Retail Sector shares, “An HR Advisor does different activities on monthly basis, on weekly basis and on daily basis. He spends 35 - 40 per cent of his time in monitoring the progress of different strategies. He does consultative activities, like giving sound business advice to the business heads. He keeps in touch with people examining the satisfactory level of an employee; he counsels an employee wherever required. He also executes people advisory.” To put it in simple words, a human resource advisor works to promote healthy relationships between employers and employees to bring out the best results. He/she bridges the gap between employers and staff through effective communication.

Key performance areas

Basically, the owner or the majority stake holder decides the objective of a business operation and the time required for achieving it. Based on that, the key performance areas (KPA) of an HR Head or Chief People Officer are finalised.

Mr BBM Rao, HR Head, Shoppers’ Stop opines, “An HRA help in creating the best company by hiring quality staff over quantity. He/she develops and retains high performing teams, thus providing superior customer experience.”

 Matching business with HR:  The HRA makes possible the alignment of human resources strategies with business strategies to make expectations possible. In this regard, he needs to give sound business advice to the Business Head.

Maintaining employee database:  An HRA maintains accurate database of all the employees and send the MIS on regular basis to the head office. He maintains leave records and gives accurate input to payroll. In some organisations, he also implements referral schemes at store level.

Recruitment: The HRA ensures the recruitment of right talent. An HRA supervises résumé scanning, monitors the interview process by managers, finalises the CTC and also assigns the KRAs of the employee. 

Checking employee satisfaction: After the selection, the HRA continues supervising the employee’s performance and attitude via his/ her managers. He/she manages payroll of the store and ensures that all the staff members are paid salaries and incentives accurately and on time. An HRA implements employee satisfaction surveys at store level.

Coaching to subordinates:  The Manager (Training) under the HRA, provides adequate training to the workforce. Hence, if the Manager fails, it gets reflected in the performance of the HRA, COO and CEO also. 

Statutory compliance: An HRA is responsible for ensuring statutory compliance at the store.  He ensures that the organisation is duly registered with a proper name under central & local state laws and files proper monthly/yearly returns. Some of the acts which require such compliance are the Shops & Establishment Act, Factories Act, Payment of Gratuity Act, Apprentices Act, Maternity Benefit Act, etc.

ESI, PF, gratuity, labor laws- An HRA thoroughly investigates the implementation of all issues relating to ESI, PF, Gratuity, etc. A retail business issues an ESI card to every employee whose salary is less than Rs 10, 000. This ESI amount is deducted from the gross salary @ 1.75 per cent.

Employee engagement programmes: An HRA in retail has to conduct different employee engagement programmes, so that store employees can remain engaged to various activities of the organisation, by which the feeling of belonging can grow amongst employees.

Team under HR advisor

As the HR advisor heads the team of HR in a retail business, he heads the following HR verticals - recruitment & selection, training & development, payroll management, legal & compliances, employee engagement & welfare and grievance committee. All the concerned vertical heads report directly to the HR Advisor.

Travel itinerary:

As per Ms Pooja Zadoo, Manager-HR & Training, Lilliput Kidswear Ltd, an HR advisor has to make frequent visits to the stores to keep track of the performance of sales people who are the representatives of the organisation. So one should have updates on their work and generate a sense of belonging in the team. One also needs to visit the branch/regional offices on regular basis.

Ideal candidate (Skills required):

A passionate leader with a vision of accelerating business goals through nurturing manpower suits the role of an HR Advisor in retail business.  Apart from this, an ideal candidate must have the following qualities:

• Proven experience of HR and Employee Retention (ER) in a branded environment and a track record of delivering high performance.
• Strong ability to build cross-functional relationships ( across departments relationship)
• Excellent decision making ability and confidence under pressure
• Ability to provide critical business support at all levels
• Comfortable in dealing with conflict management
• Able to be responsive in a demanding operational environment
• Comfortable in working in a highly complex matrix organisation (organisations having several hierarchy levels)
• A human resource advisor must possess good listening skills
• He/she must get into the details and analyse to find past-present-future continuum.

Qualification:

He/she should be a graduate in any discipline with post graduate qualification in Human Resource Management, and should have a minimum of 4-6 years experience in a generalist HR role, with exposure to core HR functions in a sizeable organisation.

Remuneration:

The basic salary of an HRA falls between Rs 2.50 lakh to Rs 5.50 lakh per annum. However, salaries for human resource advisors naturally increase as job experience accumulates. Mr Ghosh says, “In any big organisation, an HR Advisor may get Rs 25-30 lakh. It goes up to even Rs 1 crore if the organisation is of decent size and standard.” Apart from the gross salary, an HRA may get other benefits and allowances, depending on the size of the company. As Ms Zadoo shares, “CTC is entirely company specific and varies accordingly.”

End note

Leading business organisations know that developing their bench strength (the competence and number of employees ready to fill vacant leadership and their positions) leads to bottom line success. Top performing organisations are more likely than other firms to use a formal approach to identify potential leaders, develop leaders and track potential leaders’ performance that eventually bring in business success.