Solving HR Problems small IT Service Providers.

One of the biggest challenge that small IT Service providers face – is of HR (Human Resource). Its more alarming, because Human Resource, is the most important resource in IT Service business, as compared to any other resource. – Without proper team around you – you cannot do anything.

Let me give you one earth shaking thought first:
We all (IT Service providers – owners and their teams) work for more than 10-12 hours a day (& six days a week – sometimes 7 days also)
– whereas our counter parts in Microsoft, or Oracle or Infosys or Telecom service providers – work only for 5 days a week and that too for 7-8 hours a day.
then how come their average income across their company is much higher than ours. – Read the article till end – you will find the answer.

Lets try to evaluate & explore the reasons why this is happening.

• No salary according to Industry standard.
  • It may not sound good to hear this – but this is true.
  • That is the reason, our customers take away our engineers.
  • This is because other Industries have better systems to get more out of this person, and our systems lack that.
  • Other wise the Salary which is not affordable to us – how it can be affordable to others. (I mean if the person is not that productive)
  • if we think little deep, we find that actual reason, is that
    • we don’t know the actual output of the person.
    • There is no systematic evaluation method for this in our system.
• No proper (& systematic) work allocation.
  • Once team size grows to more than 5+, this problem starts.
  • Please understand that when team size is below 5, different systems are required, but when it grows beyond 5 or 10, challenges faced are separate.
  • You cannot afford managerial staff, because size is not large enough.
  • But you can at least afford certain system – which will help you do this.
• No proper increment
  • Since we don’t have proper work allocation & evaluation system – we don’t understand how much productive work is done by whom.
  • The Actual cause is not that our teams are not productive, but our system is not able to utilise their productiveness.
• Employee does not know his role (or his performance) in organisation.
  • Its linked with point no. 2 above.
  • Since there is no system, the person – he is which part of the whole system.
  • Job satisfaction level goes down. (consider this one very seriously.)
• No training / skills up gradation.
  • Firstly, we don’t know what is strength of whom.
  • Then question of understanding weakness and improving on it – does not arise.
  • As a owner you might not take this seriously, But, many people stay in their current job, because they see that they get to learn more and more there.
  • Some people have very weird idea on this – they think that if they provide training to team, their team members will leave them. – NOTHING CAN BE MORE WRONG.
• No proper delegation / division of responsibility or accountability.
  • I have seen most of the owners receiving around 80-100 calls per day.
  • Think again – almost 90-95 % calls are such which can be delegated to someone in office, but they are not – why ?
  • Because there is no system – which we can TRUST.

if we think, what is the reason of above problems, we can come down to few points, which we ignore.
Why does anybody work ? (yes anybody – you, me & all of us)
There are more than few reasons:

• Earn for living.
• Earn for Future Dreams.
• Learning new things (professionally and personally)
• Security of Job.

Now think again, do we provide all these ?

Ok, so Now i have made you think on these questions – let me also suggest answers to these.

• Salary and increment according to Industry standards:
  • This is only possible when you have something which can help you measure your teams productivity.
  • Enjay CRM helps you do EXACTLY that.
• Continuous Training:
  • Think, if your service engineer is making 100 calls / visits in a month.
  • Out of 40 are un-solved.
  • When you do further analysis – you find that most of them were relating to Server 2008.
  • so, if you provide training to this fellow in Server 2008, his productivity can be increased by more than 40%
  • and 40% is a huge thing.
• Setting targets and achieving them:
  • Enjay CRM helps you do that in a very distributed fashion.
• Delegation becomes easier and foolproof.
  • Thus everybody can perform 120% of their capacity and not what they are doing right now (without CRM).
• Controlling costs:
  • This can only happen if you have anything to monitor and you get a detailed – fine grain reporting on that.
  • Enjay CRM provides that.
• They key is not to increase work (or work hard)
  • But to work smart.