After the global economic slowdown, lay offs have become a major issue. Is there any solution for these lay-offs? Yes, says James Thomas, country manager, Kronos India, as he talks to V. Sudhakshina of CyberMedia News.

Human capital or workforce management is a relatively new term in India, can you elucidate on that?

India has still not evolved in the space of human capital or workforce automation management. For any businesses the three Ms - ie Material, Money and Man - are very crucial. The work force or the Man is the most valuable asset of an organization.

Work force management is nothing but ensuring that a employee is managed effectively by putting him at the right work in right place, at right time and getting the right output.

We at Kronos provide software and services solutions to the organizations for managing and empowering their workforce effectively. Our solutions enable organizations to reduce costs, increase productivity, improve employee satisfaction, and enhance the level of service they provide.

What are the issues in the current HR practices or workforce management for organizations in India?

There are four key dimensions to the workforce management - cost, compliance, productivity, and ROI. India is still a long way to go in handling labor cost and compliance risk. Most of the HR practices in our country fail in tracking an employee 360 degrees. Lots of errors in pay rules, work rules, scheduling, attendance, etc are still happening.

Tracking of whether a labor is paid accordingly and appropriately, scheduling and unexcused absence management is still done manually, which leads to lots of translation and intentional errors.

There is no match between the work rules and pay rules, due to which a labor is either over-paid or under-paid. There is no proper system to measure the availability, performance and quality of labor. This in turn leads to unwanted expenses to the organizations.

In this scenario of economic downturn, where every penny counts, labor continues to be an operating expense; most of the CFO and CIO are afraid of the increasing labor costs.

IT and ITeS industry contributes around 60 to 70 per cent towards labor cost. Automating the entire work force management will significantly have an impact on the labor costs and further in productivity for an organization.

Talking about the Economic crisis, lately organizations are witnessing lots of lay-off or job cuts. How can your solution help in addressing it?

The key driving factor for the organizations to lay off employees is the cost related to it. Today's scenario is such, where every organization is seeking possible ways to cut down on costs. As I had mentioned earlier, labor turns out to be a high operating expense.

Work force management helps organizations in measuring leakage in the entire system and eliminate costs. Through our solution, we help the organization to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, and improve workforce productivity.

Once an organization is able to measure the leakage, they can reduce on lay-off. Instead of sacking employees, they can put people at the right places and get them performing and increase productivity.

We think recession as the best time, where companies should adopt such a solution, as it will not only help in better management of work force but also save upon the unwanted and extra expenses.

What are your projects in India?

We are here in India very recently, just two years ago. We are still terms of creating our brand here. Indian organization, unlike in the US, are still lacking behind in work force automation. Hence, there is a very good opportunity for us.

IT, ITeS, retail, manufacturing, health care are the few sectors where we are focusing. We cannot name any specific project or customers in India, as we are still in the initial stage.

How about the government sector?

Government and education have been a huge sector for us globally and it would be the same in India too. We see lots of opportunity in the public sector. But, we still have a long way to go as government projects require larger money in terms of investment.