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Fredricks John, EVP and Site Head Personiv Coimbatore – Sustainability Champion of the Year

Fredricks John, EVP and Site Head, Personiv Coimbatore was honored with the Sustainability Champion of the Year at the India Sustainability Summit & Awards 2019 held in Mumbai on 12th April, 2019.

Fred has been consistently taken initiatives to make a long-term sustainable difference in the world. He has led solar panels installation, tree plantation drives, Silambam classes, offered assistance to students, conducted blood donation camps every year and conducted a Polio eradication campaign through Rotary club.

On winning the award John said, “Our Pillar of Strength – Giving Back, has made us rub shoulders with some of the Top Companies in India on a platform that recognizes Sustainable Social Responsibility. It is the involvement of each and every one of our associates in the CSR activities we do that touches the lives of people in our communities. We not only give, we ensure that it is sustainable – be it in teaching Silambam (Martial Arts) as a mode of self-defense for children in Public Schools or planting and caring for trees for the future or erecting Solar Power Plants that keep giving back for 25 years! I would like to dedicate this award to all of us who continue to believe that it is important to Give Back!”

The India Sustainability Summit and Awards discusses how leadership from businesses could play a transformational role to design future development pathways, measure business value and share the imperativeness to achieve the SDGs. The Summit brings together key thinkers and business leaders, who have delivered and continue to deliver strategies, ideas, and solutions for a sustainable business and future. The Summit aims to enhance awareness on business models, tools, technologies, solutions, and approaches followed by the global leaders towards building sustainable economics.

  The post Fredricks John, EVP and Site Head Personiv Coimbatore – Sustainability Champion of the Year appeared first on Personiv.

from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/fredricks-john-evp-and-site-head-personiv-coimbatore-sustainability-champion-of-the-year/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Another Honor Added to the Personiv Family – Annual Asian African Leadership Forum

Personiv Coimbatore was honored with the Service Excellence in the BPO Sector award at the Annual Asian African Leadership Forum on 23rd March 2019 in New Delhi. The Annual Asian African Leadership Forum recognizes business prowess and leaders who have made significant contribution in the industry and in the society at large. The Summit & Awards, powered by the Passion Vista, recognizes outstanding leadership and honors the change makers of industries from the Asian-African continent for their incessant zest for excellence, integrating best practices and pioneering strategies.

Fred, EVP & Site Head, Personiv Coimbatore says, ‘Everything is Possible. We are a result-driven organization and our teams across the globe stand by our pillars of strength – quality, people, and giving back. When we take care of our people, they take care of our customers.’

‘Quality deliverable begins with quality people. We value our people and give them a feeling of being partners of our business. We always strive for our associates’ happiness as they are our most important assets.’ says Sudha, Senior Manager – HR Personiv Coimbatore.”

  The post Another Honor Added to the Personiv Family – Annual Asian African Leadership Forum appeared first on Personiv.

from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/another-honour-added-to-the-personiv-family-annual-asian-african-leadership-forum/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Everywhere & Always On: How Tech Support is Changing

You may have noticed that customers today want it all: quick answers and detailed explanations, always-on support day or night, and customer care across channels. It’s no different with tech support. Over the years, there have been rampant transitions in the world of tech support as customers demand more. The period of traditional help-desk or service desk models catering to break-fix or incident management tasks is over, while the rapid evolution of technology has led to higher-than-ever customer expectations. To remain on top in the business of tech support, there are a number of strategies and technologies that businesses can adopt easily.

Understanding Customers Frame Of Mind Is Key to Achieving Tech Support Business Success

The present-day customer is impatient and fickle, in many ways because they have so many choices. Apart from having loads of service providers to pick from, customers also enjoy the luxury of communicating in the medium they are most comfortable with.

To meet the demands of the current audience there have been series of innovations to ensure customer acquisition and retention becomes seamless for tech support businesses.

Let’s talk about some of them:

Being Instantaneous –

The present-day customers are always on the run. In fact, over the years, one of the major complaints that customers have raised again and again is related to delayed response from a customer support team. In order to combat this issue, tech support businesses are settling in for automated customer responses. Employing virtual agents like chatbot, interactive voice response and computerized website agents has become a common practice as they reduce customer grievance response time. Bots and AI are modern-day innovation deployed to assist human professionals and achieve customer delight. However, a virtual agent completely replacing a human to resolve customer issues is not happening soon. Not should it. Keep in mind that the best strategy in terms of AI is a dual approach with chatbots opening the lines of communication and humans stepping in when needed.

Two-way Interactive Communication –

The world is evolving too fast for someone to wait for an answer. The days of dull and dreary text chat practiced to receive and solve customer queries is a thing of the past. Customers today are more than ever receptive to listening and ever-ready to respond. A direct way of communication is favored by the modern-day consume. Addressing customer concerns in real-time over voice or video chats is an efficient and pleasing way of communication that will win over even your most irate customers.

Self-Help –

Considering the deluge of data and information on the internet it is perceived that customers can solve all problems independently. Although this isn’t always the case, giving customers the chance to look for and find self-help resources can ultimately bring about a positive relationship with your company, even before they reach for the phone. To gain a superior position in their lives you need to empower them with knowledge and information in line with their interests. As leader in tech support, you can empower your customers with self-help guides, videos and the like to help them solve their problems, while also pointing them on the best path before they contact your agents.

Digitally Advance –

If you want to remain in the minds of your customers, you have to keep an eye on your digital platforms. Make sure you reply to all the queries that drop in. The transition from one medium to another (mobile to laptop to tablet) should be smooth and the content and design unchanging. Keeping your brand at the top of your priority list across platforms will ensure that no matter where your customers are interacting, they get the same, consistent and positive experience.

With all the advancements in the field of tech support, outsourcing remains a viable option to keep your customers engaged and happy. Find out our Top 4 Strategies for High-Performing Tech Support by downloading our white paper.

The post Everywhere & Always On: How Tech Support is Changing appeared first on Personiv.

from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/how-business-of-tech-support-is-changing/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Managing Your Digital Strategy with an Outsourced Provider

In today’s digital world, your business’ online presence may be one of the most important factors in your success. With the advent of digital platforms, managing a clean and easy-to-access digital presence has become a necessity for businesses regardless of industry, but the planning and implementation is no easy task. Your digital marketing approach must be crystal clear right from day one and, meanwhile, you have to stay on your toes to implement a strong digital strategy. Making an awesome digital plan and getting it executed requires specific expertise and intelligence to ensure your digital presence is synonymous to your brand.

For many organizations, singlehandedly implementing those skills to garner a remarkable business ROI becomes difficult, especially if you’re looking to scale. This is when a company proficient in the digital marketing business can come in handy. For companies who have that strategy in place but have trouble with the implementation, it makes sense to bring on board an outsourced digital marketing provider, rather than forming an in-house digital marketing team. There are numerous convincing reasons for hiring an outsourced digital marketing provider to manage your company’s digital presence and reputation.

In-house vs Outsourced Provider – Which One To Choose?

The increasing number of company owners are choosing an outsourced provider to cater to their digital marketing needs. You can reap a number of benefits by hiring external digital marketing specialists to manage your brand’s digital strategy. Let’s take a look at them in detail:

Talent Acquisition – Recruiting and managing digital marketing experts in your company is a time-taking and money consuming task. As you have less knowledge of the digital medium, you will not be able to differentiate between the most well-informed candidates and the mediocre ones. Here’s a solution – you can eliminate your worries by hiring an external partner who is a specialist in the field of digital marketing and advertising.

Control over Digital Trends – Digital marketing agencies are dedicated to staying up-to-date on all new innovations occurring in the industry. They are efficient enough to gauge the importance of the recent updates and whether incorporating them in your current digital marketing strategy will make a difference. They have the ability to learn fast and integrate the new updates as per your digital marketing goals.

Disrupting Your To-Do List – Having an external digital marketing outsourcing partner gives you the comfort to concentrate on more important aspects of your business. Many professionals are just too busy to spend their time managing campaigns, learning the newest tricks and keeping up with the latest algorithms.

Single POC – When you hire a digital marketing agency, you have one point of contact for all your digital marketing needs who you can trust. Whereas, if you have an internal team you can often spend most of your time tracking down whose doing what and managing different tasks (SEO, SMO, etc.).

If you have way too much on your plate in terms of managing your digital strategy, check out digital fulfillment solutions to see if it could be right for you or contact us for more info.

The post Managing Your Digital Strategy with an Outsourced Provider appeared first on Personiv.

from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/managing-your-digital-strategy-with-an-outsourced-provider/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Top 6 SEO Strategies to Beat Your Competition

Developing rich content can definitely satisfy the search intents of your audience. However, ensuring your audience can find you in the pool of all the content out there, is a tough task. You’ll need to undertake a lot of optimization and amplification to ensure that your well-written content reaches potential customers and your business growth goes sky-high. Simply put, you need to implement the latest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques while developing and promoting your content. The good news? We’ve highlighted some of the best SEO techniques to practice in 2019 that you can do today to dominate search engine rankings.

Top Rankbrain & User Experience Signs – Rankbrain is an AI used by Google to understand search queries better and provide better search results. For a better RankBrain, you need to improve the average time spent by a user on your website and boost its click-through rate.

Display Content in Featured Snippets – To ensure your content dominates over the internet you need to get it placed in the snippets. A snippet allows the audience to take a sneak peek of your website. If the snippet is impressive enough the chances of users visiting your website increases tenfold.

Content will Always be King – Evergreen content is here to stay and continues to rule the online. Writers need to make sure that their content is up-to-date. Finding obsolete content on your website will disappoint the audience and they might think twice before visiting you again. Efforts should be made to constantly create and publish authoritative content along with LSI keywords inserted naturally. Also, make sure to employ natural ways of link building.

Optimize for Mobile Usage – Blame it on the rapid increase in the number of mobile users or the ease with which it allows searching of content, Google considers the mobile version of your website to be the ‘Real’ version. More than half of all the searches take place through mobile and the number is not plummeting any time soon. Therefore, keep a thorough check to make the content of your webpages mobile-friendly.

Embrace Video Content – 2019 is going to be the year of video content. An increasing number of internet users prefer videos for gaining information instead of dull and boring-to-read texts. It is imperative for you to become active on YouTube and other video publishing platforms with valuable, well-presented, and easy-to-understand video content.

Optimize for Voice Search – Innovation in technology has gifted users loads of ways to search for content. Today, more than 70% of internet users use voice search at least once every day. Therefore, be wise and start optimizing your content for voice search as soon as possible.

Implementing the above SEO strategies will help you entice and engage more and more online visitors. Another tip? Partner with Personiv to create effective plans for your digital marketing needs. Personiv is one of the leaders in the domain of digital marketing and has been offering outsourced services to its clients for nearly 35 years.

Hope you have a digitally rewarding 2019! For more info on SEO or digital marketing services, talk with one of our digital experts.

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from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/top-6-seo-strategies-to-beat-your-competition/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Personiv Coimbatore Bags Top Honors at the World HRD Congress 2019

Personiv Coimbatore won a slew of awards at the recently held 8th edition of ET NOW Awards, which was organized by World HRD Congress 2019 at Taj Land’s End, Mumbai on February 15-17, 2019.

Personiv Coimbatore was honored with the “Dream Companies to work for” award in the BPO sector along with EVP and Site Head, Dr. Fredricks John, who received the “Visionary Leader” award and Manager – HR, Sudha Muthusamy, with the “Young HR Professional” award.

The applications were assessed on four levels of evaluation. The applicant scoring the highest amongst each of the respective assessment categories went through an evaluation by a high-powered jury. The results were then collated using OGPA (Overall Grade Point Average) scale which eliminated the extreme scores and helped centralized results to choose the winners.

On winning these awards, Fredricks John, EVP and Site Head, said, “Winning awards in three categories reaffirms our excellence in operations and people management areas. We are committed to creating a definite differentiated value to our people practices.”

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Staying Organized at Work: A Busy Leader’s Guide

If you’re like many employees in companies across the country, one of your New Year’s Resolutions this year was to (finally…) get organized at work. So, how’s it going? We made it through month one but staying organized takes concerted effort all year round. Plus, when you’re feeling frazzled, it makes staying organized at work and getting things done even more difficult. But before you can organize your work, you’ve got to organize your thoughts. It all starts with a clear head. Read on for some of our top organizational tips for busy leaders.

First: Get Your Head in the Game

First things first, are you getting the sleep, rest and exercise you need? Oh, and also, you better not be skipping meals. In order to get your work ready for peak organization, be sure that you take care of your mind and body first. Fatigue, frustration and burnout are sure-fire ways to derail your organization efforts.

Instead, take care of yourself. This means taking breaks. Be sure that you allow yourself time to reflect and chill throughout the day. For many of us that means putting a break right in the calendar, so it doesn’t get taken up by meetings. Your time is important and to effectively utilize it, you have use some of it to organize your thoughts.

Second: PlanNiNG Ahead, STAYING ORGANIZED 

Review Your Goals: Make sure your goals and priorities are spot-on and you are reviewing them regularly. If you look at your goals once at the beginning of the year and once at the end, you’re sure to fail. Keep them prominent and break down smaller tasks to be sure they are reached.

Don’t let the day-to-day chatter and business distract you from what really matters. Place a time in your calendar each month just to review your goals and take stock of where you are and how far you’ve come. It will shock you how much you’ve already done. This way, you’ll also be ready in case some of your goals need adjusting down the road.

Third: Use Tools to Help You Get There

There are so many online tools that are great for organization depending on what you are looking for. Trello is a great one. It’s an online vision board, that allows you to organize your projects using cards that are categorized any way you like. Add in the option to collaborate with your team and you have a winner.

Slack is another great tool. Everyone knows about Slack, right? If your team is looking for a platform to plan with the built-in ability to chat, this one’s for you. Finally, if you’re looking to bring all your tools together in one place, Zapier is the one for you. This tool goes one step further by automating your processes through workflows, allowing you to integrate more than 1,000 apps that you use on the regular, like Gmail, Dropbox and Slack.

  Now that you have the focus, the plan and the tools, organization will be a snap. Good luck with your resolution to stay organized this year. And if you’re looking for a way to take some things off your plate for good (from back office and accounting to customer care and creative), check out our outsourcing solutions for non-business-critical tasks, and let us do the hard work for you.

  The post Staying Organized at Work: A Busy Leader’s Guide appeared first on Personiv.

from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/staying-organized/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Motivating Your Team in 2019: Creating A Culture of Ownership

Everyone wants an engaged team ready to work hard every day, but motivating your team is tough. Also, with even the best motivation – be it rewards and recognition, positive reinforcement or ongoing training – all your efforts can fail if they are not done authentically. Motivation alone can only go so far, unless your methods authentically represent company culture. The key is to focus on a promise kept vs. a promise made and to make this a process continuously followed by everyone on the team.

A give and take respect relationship with employees helps to build a trustworthy culture, while a company culture that empowers employees to be part of the big picture and to feel like they make a difference, drives engagement.

Creating a culture of ownership requires that everything, from training and benefits to awards and motivation, is done authentically. Employees can easily tell the difference between a corporate initiative and an engrained employee-first culture. For example:

Training can do more than simply teach employees new skills. It is the perfect opportunity to show employees how those skills fit within the bigger picture of the company’s value-generating processes.

Benefits don’t just incentivize employee retainment. They also offer an opportunity to authentically share culturally important values.

Motivational awards are more than a means to formalize a reward system. They can energize an entire team to boost productivity and spend time focused on achievement.

Leadership has to reinforce a company culture that gives each team member a satisfying role in the big picture. They must be allowed to act like an owner no matter their position and be allowed to contribute ideas, creating a consultative approach vs. a top-down directive.

Looking for more ideas on how to engage your team in 2019? Download our eBook, Investing in Your People: Gain Workplace Efficiency by Focusing on the Needs of Your Team.

The post Motivating Your Team in 2019: Creating A Culture of Ownership appeared first on Personiv.

from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/motivating-your-team-in-2019/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Fred John Wins Role Model & Exemplary Leader of the Year

Personiv EVP & Site Head, Fredricks John who was awarded “Role Model & Exemplary Leader of the Year” at the “Stars of the Industry Awards” for Excellence in Outsourcing presented by ETNow on December 18, 2018 at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi, India.

ETNnow, India’s leading financial news channel participates in the Stars of the Industry Awards each year, choosing the best leaders and companies in the outsourcing arena to recognize.

“I am humbled to be awarded ‘Role Model and Exemplary Leader of the Year’,” John said. “This couldn’t have been possible without my team.”

Fred joined Personiv in October 2010, bringing more than 20 years of experience in procedure development, high service standards and policies for business process outsourcing companies. Fred’s experience includes more than a decade at Wipro BPS and Seyyone Software Solutions, and his skills in driving risk management, quality assurance and revenue management have facilitated Personiv’s growth. Fred has degrees in English and Personnel Management from St. Joseph’s Autonomous College, an M.B.A. from Barathiar University.

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from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/fred-john-wins-role-model-exemplary-leader-of-the-year/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Motivating Your Team in 2019: Creating a Culture of Ownership

Everyone wants an engaged team ready to work hard every day, but motivation alone can only go so far, unless your methods authentically represent company culture. The key is to focus on a promise kept vs. a promise made and to make this a process continuously followed by everyone on the team.

A give and take respect relationship with employees helps to build a trustworthy culture, while a company culture that empowers employees to be part of the big picture and to feel like they make a difference, drives engagement.

Creating a culture of ownership requires that everything, from training and benefits to awards and motivation, is done authentically. Employees can easily tell the difference between a corporate initiative and an engrained employee-first culture. For example:

Training can do more than simply teach employees new skills. It is the perfect opportunity to show employees how those skills fit within the bigger picture of the company’s value-generating processes.

Benefits don’t just incentivize employee retainment. They also offer an opportunity to authentically share culturally important values.

Motivational awards are more than a means to formalize a reward system. They can energize an entire team to boost productivity and spend time focused on achievement.

Leadership has to reinforce a company culture that gives each team member a satisfying role in the big picture. They must be allowed to act like an owner no matter their position and be allowed to contribute ideas, creating a consultative approach vs. a top-down directive. 

Looking for more ideas on how to engage your team in 2019? Download our eBook, Investing in Your People: Gain Workplace Efficiency by Focusing on the Needs of Your Team.

    The post Motivating Your Team in 2019: Creating a Culture of Ownership appeared first on Personiv.

from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/motivating-your-team-in-2019-creating-a-culture-of-ownership/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Personiv Installs Solar Panels at Little Angels Orphanage, Lowering Costs by 65%

Personiv leaders from four worldwide locations gathered with our clients on December 6, 2018 to celebrate the installation of solar panels at the Little Angel’s Orphanage in Tagaytay, Philippines, which will lower energy costs by 50-65 percent. The team donated food, supplies and Christmas presents for more than 30 children, aged seven months to 18 years old, who call the facility home.

The donated solar panels will reduce electricity costs at the facility for the next 20 years, allowing them to use the costs for clothes, food, medicine, and more. The children performed several song and dance numbers, displaying their talent, and later enjoyed lunch.

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from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/personiv-installs-solar-panels-at-little-angels-orphanage-lowering-costs-by-65/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Accounting Talent: In-house Vs. Outsourced Teams

It is no secret that finding quality accounting talent can be extraordinarily difficult in today’s hiring environment. In 2015, 90 percent of CFOs reported difficulty finding qualified talent for accounting positions. For all but the largest and most prestigious firms, this obstacle is the one most likely to shatter expectations of creating a best-in-class accounting team that will give your business an edge over the competition.

The Value of Top Talent

Achieving best-in-class accounting talent adds value to business processes in profound ways. A top accounting team can deliver higher-value services at about half the cost of their average peer by redeploying finance talent, transforming accounting delivery models and leveraging technology to optimize efficiencies.

With world-class accounting, customers appreciate better service stemming from faster, more accurate billing. At the same time, partners and vendors appreciate a more efficient collection of receivables and disbursement of payables, and the company becomes a trusted and valuable partner.

Why OutsourcE Accounting Talent?

The difficulty in finding top accounting talent makes outsourcing an attractive option. Instead of risking resources on talent in a field with a turnover rate of between 15 and 20 percent, organizations can outsource their accounting to established service providers – a manageable, scalable solution that takes much of the stress and uncertainty out of accounting.

Many organizations are hesitant to outsource finance and accounting talent because they believe their books are so complex and so unique that only the existing team can take care of them properly. Business owners also tend to react to accounting management changes with distrust – but adopting accounting changes in small, incremental steps makes improvement easy. This can be achieved by partnering with a service provider that is willing to move at your pace, perhaps starting with only the simplest of transactional processes until success is proven.

Outsourcing lets businesses leverage the expertise and resources of a dedicated finance and accounting service provider to achieve the same results large enterprises can. Instead of dedicating in-house resources to procuring and implementing new technology, organizations simply empower a third-party vendor for whom investing in efficiency-boosting technology is a top priority and constant need.

Combining Outsourcing & In-House Teams

The key to achieving best-in-class accounting for your organization is using outsourced labor to perform low-impact transactional processes and support your retained talent for business-critical, judgement-based process work. Outsourcing firms have better access to top-notch talent worldwide and are able to match qualified applicants to the specific needs of your business. Low-impact transactional processes such as AP/AR, taxation and so on, are a great place to start when outsourcing F&A. And this can be done all while keeping your in-house team busy with more important projects.

Find out how to build a best-in-class accounting team with outsourced accounting talent, but downloading our comprehensive guide, “The Winning Blueprint for an Efficient & Effective Finance & Accounting Team.”

Interested in how outsourced talent can augment your in-house team? Check out our finance & accounting programs or contact us for more information.

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from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/accounting-talent/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Personiv Coimbatore Places in Top 3 by Genius HR Excellence

Personiv Coimbatore placed in the top three nominations in the Innovation in Recruitments Award during the 8th Genius HR Excellence Award Ceremony on September 19, 2018. The Genius HR Excellence Awards recognize the best in-class HR Professionals whose performance excel in terms of quality, delivery, achievements, value and innovation in HR services.

Among the more than 900 companies who also submitted nominations, Personiv placed in the top three based on our large amount of employee referrals, our commitment to promoting from within, our training approach, and our excellent on-boarding and engagement process.

“Being nominated for this award is recognition of our people-powered business,” Sudha M, Manager, Talent Acquisition at Personiv Coimbatore said. “Our associates are so engaged and happy working at Personiv that they bring in their friends and family to join us. This nomination emphasizes our transparent, friendly culture. I’m so proud that I’m part of an organization that provides me a sense of partnership and accomplishment.”

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from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/personiv-coimbatore-places-in-top-3-by-genius-hr-excellence/ via https://www.personiv.com

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The Art of Decision-Making

By: Vishal Bora, EVP & Site Head, Personiv

People often say that they find it hard to make decisions. Unfortunately, we all have to make decisions all the time, ranging from trivial issues like what to have for lunch, right up to life-changing decisions like where and what to study, and which job to take.

Some people put off making decisions by endlessly searching for more information or getting recommendations. Others resort to decision-making by taking a vote, sticking a pin in a list or tossing a coin. Read on for some ideas to help if you struggle with the art of making important decisions.

What is Decision Making?

In its simplest sense, decision-making is the act of choosing between two or more courses of action. In the wider process of problem-solving, decision-making involves choosing between possible solutions to a problem. Decisions can be made through either an intuitive or reasoned process, or a combination of the two.

Intuition

Intuition is using your ‘gut feeling’ about possible courses of action. Although people talk about it as if it was a magical ‘sense’, intuition is actually a combination of past experience and your personal values. It is worth taking your intuition into account because it reflects your learning about life. It is, however, not always based on reality, only your perceptions, many of which may have started in childhood and may not be very mature as a result.

It is therefore worth examining your gut feeling closely, especially if you have a strong feeling against a particular course of action, to see if you can work out why, and whether the feeling is justified.

Reasoning

Reasoning is using the facts and figures in front of you to make decisions. Reasoning has its roots in the here-and-now, and in facts. It can, however, ignore emotional aspects to the decision, and in particular, issues from the past that may affect the way that the decision is implemented.

Intuition is a perfectly acceptable means of making a decision, although it is generally more appropriate when the decision is of a simple nature or needs to be made quickly. More complicated decisions tend to require a more formal, structured approach, usually involving both intuition and reasoning. It is important to be wary of impulsive reactions to a situation.

Applying Both Reason and Intuition

Decisions need to be capable of being implemented, whether on a personal or organizational level. You do, therefore, need to be committed to the decision personally, and be able to persuade others of its merits. An effective decision-making process, therefore, needs to ensure that you are able to do so.

What Can Prevent Effective Decision-Making at Work?

There are a number of problems that can prevent effective decision-making, especially in a corporate environment. Before you, and your organization, are derailed in your decision-making process be sure to implement some of these tactics when faced with the most common blocks to making a decision.

 1. Not Enough Information

If you do not have enough information, it can feel like you are making a decision without any basis. Take some time to gather the necessary data to inform your decision, even if the timescale is very tight. If necessary, prioritize your information-gathering by identifying which information will be most important to you.

2. Too Much Information

The opposite problem, but one that is seen surprisingly often: having so much conflicting information that it is impossible to see ‘the wood for the trees’. This is sometimes called analysis paralysis and is also used as a tactic to delay organizational decision-making, with those involved demanding ever-more information before they can decide. This problem can often be resolved by getting everyone together to decide what information is really important and why, and by setting a clear timescale for decision-making, including an information-gathering stage.

3. Too Many People

Making decisions by committee is difficult. Everyone has their own views and their own values. And while it’s important to know what these views are, and why and how they are important, it may be essential for one person to take responsibility for making a decision. Sometimes, any decision is better than none.

4. Vested Interests

Decision-making processes often flounder under the weight of vested interests. These vested interests are often not overtly expressed but may be a crucial blockage. Because they are not overtly expressed, it is hard to identify them clearly, and therefore address them, but it can sometimes be possible to do so by exploring them with someone outside the process, but in a similar position. It can also help to explore the rational/intuitive aspects with all stakeholders, usually with an external facilitator to support the process.

5. Emotional Attachments

People are often very attached to the status quo. Decisions tend to involve the prospect of change, which many people find difficult but also remember that ‘deciding not to decide’ is also a decision.

6. No Emotional Attachment

Sometimes it’s difficult to make a decision because you just don’t care one way or the other. In this case, a structured decision-making process can often help by identifying some very real pros and cons of particular actions, that perhaps you hadn’t thought about before.

How to Overcome Indecision

A structured decision-making process is essential to overcoming decision-making difficulties. Have a plan ahead of time will reduce more complicated decisions down to simpler steps; show how decisions are derived and plan decision making to meet deadlines. Many different techniques of decision making have been developed, ranging from simple rules of thumb to extremely complex procedures. The method you use will depend on the nature of the decision to be made and how complex it is.

When creating your own rules for decision-making go back to your intuition and reasoning. What makes you tick? What outcomes are important to you? When making decisions for your organization, likewise consult your foundation. What is your corporate culture? How will this affect your team both positively and negatively? Once you have gained an understanding of your foundation, decisions become much easier to make daily. As I like to say, “decision making is an art…if gained, you are made!”

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Today’s Top Recruiting Trend: Social Recruiting

Using social media to recruit employees isn’t necessarily new but with Facebook’s Jobs Dashboard update and LinkedIn’s recently launched Talent Insights, social recruiting is heading to the next level. In fact, experts say that social recruiting in a trend that’s here to stay. So how do you use these tools to their highest capability and stay relevant, all while attracting the best talent? Follow our tips to stay on top of social recruiting.

Be Authentic & Share Your Culture Today’s job-seekers have greater access to information on employers than ever before. Most job seekers read six reviews before forming an opinion on a potential employer, making the way candidates explore job opportunities a new frontier for hiring managers. They put a higher value on cultural fit, employee diversity, and a sense of purpose and inclusion more than previous generations did.

As candidates increasingly seek employers that speak to their values, lifestyles and identity, employers must demonstrate their company culture in new mediums. Social recruiting is how employers brand themselves to potential employees. These channels represent the best opportunities to feature your current team members, their priorities and the experience of what it is like to work alongside them.

If your company has pronounced corporate social responsibility initiatives in place, social recruiting is a great way to find candidates who are passionate about giving back (often to similar causes). It is your best chance to present company culture in a way that conveys a corporate identity.

Use ALL the Tools Naturally, when it comes to social media for business, LinkedIn is a key platform. Although your profile is a valuable tool for seeking out passive candidates, you cannot rely on it for your entire recruiting strategy. Hiring through LinkedIn is harder now than it used to be due to user privacy updates and premium recruitment services, but you can get better results without paying as much as LinkedIn charges by introducing campaign technology.

For instance, employers looking for very specific development skillsets often turn to GitHub to find individuals who contributed to specific projects and applications. Although GitHub has featured built-in recruitment tools since 2009, using them to find talent is neither smooth nor intuitive. But third-party tools like SeekOut can comb through GitHub for you.

Look Outside Standard Social Networks While Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter are undoubtedly important, other social sites specific to employment, such as Glassdoor shouldn’t be ignored. Glassdoor is an incredibly useful tool for presenting your company to potential employees, and since it allows users to provide honest reviews, it has become the go-to site many candidates rely on while job searching. Be sure to address any negative feedback that former employees bring up on the platform, and start to use it as a guide for what can be improved.

While you’re trying to find passive candidates, don’t overlook niche social networks where your top candidates go to interact with colleagues, whether Opportunity, Meetup or Xing. If you’re looking in a certain industry, let’s say tech, be sure to find LinkedIn groups and forums in that industry and court passive candidates there.

Want to find out all the top trends in recruiting, download our full ebook. Having trouble filling your open reqs? Let us do the recruiting for you with our contingency recruiting services.

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from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/todays-top-recruiting-trend-social-recruiting/ via https://www.personiv.com

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In-house Cloud Deployment Vs. BPaaS: What’s the Difference?

Business Process as a Service is the newest way to bring efficiency to in-house accounting teams. For many, combining the cloud and outsourcing sounds like an ultimate solution but what if you’re just interested in self-deployment of cloud-based solutions? Find out why BPaaS jumps leaps and bounds over an in-house cloud-based ERP any day in this blog post courtesy of Everest Group & Personiv’s white paper, F&A BPaaS: A Gamechanger for Mid-Market Companies.

The Difficulty with In-House Deployment

Many enterprises choose to deploy cloud-based solutions in-house. Unfortunately, this helps address only a part of the problem for them and comes with its own set of challenges. The biggest of these is finding people to learn and run the new technology. And once trained, they become highly desirable to the outside market.

The Talent Problem

Talent management is a multi-layered problem that includes hiring the right talent, training them, and managing attrition. SMB and mid-market buyers, with their small team sizes, are never able to excel in all three of these parameters. This leads to process inefficiencies, inconsistency in delivery, and added costs.

The concern that an in-house deployment does not address is providing finance talent. Again, the same multi-layered problem, it has been the primary reason for below-par service quality. Furthermore, these enterprises are still faced with the inability to scale the function without significant cost implication. Most SMB and mid-market companies have kept business processes in-house for a long time. This leads to significant cost ownership and dilution of focus for these rising enterprises. Unlike their larger counterparts, they have not been successful in reaping the cost benefits achieved through outsourcing.

Why Use a BPO Provider

All these challenges make using a third-party BPO provider to deliver an entire BPaaS offering a very attractive value proposition. A BPaaS service provider has the necessary resources to manage business functions and is responsible for hiring, training, and attrition management. A third-party BPO provider gives the buyer flexibility to focus on core service offering and not worry about the finance function. Additionally, they bring in years of domain expertise and industry best-practices. By leveraging economies of scale through multi-tenant cloud models and labor arbitrage, they can also help deliver significant cost savings.

Another advantage of BPaaS is the end-to-end bundled services that the service providers can offer. They club installation, maintenance, and services into a single service offering that allows buyers to focus more on their core business activities and not be bothered about managing several service providers. This also enables service providers to draw synergies from dependent processes and maintain high quality standards.

  Interested in learning more? Download the full white paper here. Or, join us for our webinar: From Spreadsheet Hell to Reporting Heaven – How to get out of Excel & Into the Cloud.

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from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/in-house-cloud-deployment-vs-bpaas-whats-the-difference/ via https://www.personiv.com

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Data Security While Outsourcing: How to Ensure that Yours (and Your Clients) Data is Safe

Data security is one of the chief concerns of American companies today. In fact, hearing news of another major data breach is becoming more commonplace, while the tactics used in hacking are surpassing even the most stalwart systems. For companies that outsource any of their functions to a third-party, this concern is one of the most paramount to address for a successful partnership.

Choosing an outsourcing provider is hard enough, but it can get more overwhelming when you think about all the security that should be in place with your provider. Right now you may be wondering, “And exactly, what security measures DO we need to have?” No worries. Lucky for you, we have a whole list.

After working with numerous U.S. clients, we have developed the capabilities and processes to ensure that we deliver the quality and security required by the programs we support, and we are more than happy to share. Read on for our guide to data security while outsourcing, and take the security worry off the table.

Certifications for Quality & Security

ISO: The first thing to consider in outsourcing security is which certifications your outsourcer has earned. For example, ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 are essential to establishing a security protocol and are recognized worldwide for their top security measures.

PCI: In addition, if you are using a call center, PCI compliance is also key to protect customer data, sensitive financial information and to take payments via phone. Without ISO and PCI, you may find yourself in a tough security debacle down the line.

Physical Security

Facility Security Measures: The location of the facility itself is an important first look at how the company handles security. Although critical, this is one area where many BPO providers fail. Before you even enter a facility, it should be located in a secure area. Look for a provider that houses operations within Special Economic Zones (SEZ), which require authorization to enter by local governments, and make sure to discover in which parts of the city their office is located.

Office Space Security: Office security begins at the entry to the production floors from the commercial space. The area should absolutely require access cards, while the employees should be using biometric fingerprinting access. This way, doors don’t open if one’s fingerprint is not recorded. In addition, highly controlled areas of the office (server rooms, etc.) with sensitive information should have a special card/biometric access for top-level management only.

Surveillance: It’s tried and true for a reason. Video surveillance works, as does security personnel. Your provider should have video surveillance 24/7 with security guards manning entrances round-the-clock.

On the Floor

Employee Policies: One of the biggest fears is that an employee of a provider will somehow leak information on their own. Not good. For this reason, at Personiv, we don’t allow employees to bring their mobile phones into the production areas. They are required to deposit them in lockers. Also, all desktops used inside the office have their CD drives and USB ports disabled.

Connection Concerns: Internet access should also be restricted to only top-level management or those associates who require it. This removes the risk of personal emails and social media websites being accessed while associates are interacting with sensitive data. And don’t forget a strong firewall as well. Also, you should definitely ask your provider to use only a secure VPN connection while working with your data.

The Legal Stuff: All employees should be bound by a Non-Disclosure Agreement that is effective even after they exit the company and as part of their onboarding, employees should undergo training regarding copyrights.

One Step Further

At Personiv, we follow all these essentials and more by also adding in a rigorous onboarding process for our team members that includes selecting employees based on the skills and experience required by the specific program; team training specific to required skills; qualifying tests; and more. To find out about our services, check out our solutions here.

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from Personiv https://www.personiv.com/data-security-while-outsourcing-how-to-ensure-that-yours-and-your-clients-data-is-safe/ via https://www.personiv.com