Work from Home a big question for HR?

                                        Dr. Priya .K, HOD, Department of MBA, SANSAC

          Due to this current pandemic situation all the corporate are following the work from home culture .Due we know what all the problems the HR has to face when work from home  becomes a reality  while recruiting a new candidate.

• When it come for recruitment of candidates the first things comes in our mind is location .If it is going to be work from home options the candidates can be sourced across the globe . As he/she need not come to office every day. Though it will remove the barriers in hiring across borders but this a HR has to set up new hiring practices for hiring nationally or internationally.
• Usually when the candidate is recruited he/she  is offered with various pay components like travelling allowance, car allowance etc but if it is going to work from home the candidates has to set up a office at home , so in this case does the hr need to add furnishings expenses etc .
• In case of work from home the candidate may not visit the office even after joining .in this case the Hr has to frame a screening process to filter the right candidate for the job.
• The role of a Hr does not ends with analyzing the candidates efficiency in technical skills but his interpersonal skills also has to be considered as he/she is going to  work remotely.
• Though we feel that work from home is alluring but the candidate has to have a proper work life balance when it comes to performance. So the Hr also has to assess whether the candidate can balance both work and life.

           Though this work from home will have more cultural diversity, opportunities for the women who take a break, prospective for freelancers to show case their talent. This will also have a new impact on the business but the HR has to undergo major changes in their recruitment policies.

What is the Secret of Cricket Success?

Dr.K.ThirugnanaSambanthan, Asst.Professor, Department of MBA, Sankara College of Science and Commerce.

During this Covid time test match cricket between England and West indies was played.   Many cricket lovers all over the world watched this test match. Many fans who don’t belong to these two countries were keenly watching the match.  What is the bond that connects people with cricket?

Cricket is played in more than 105 countries.  There are 12 countries which have been recognized for playing Test Match cricket as per ICC.  They are Australia, New Zealand, India, England, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Pakistan, West Indies, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Ireland. There are 20 other countries which have been recognized for playing One Day Match (50 Overs) as per ICC.  They are England, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, SriLanka, WestIndies, Afghanistan, Ireland, Netherlands, Oman, Zimbabwe, Scotland, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Namibia, United States, Papua New Guinea.  One Day Cricket is also known as Limited Over  International. (LOI).  There are many countries playing International T20. They are West Indies, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, England, Australia, SouthAfrica, NewZealand, Bangladesh, Netherlands, Afghanistan, Ireland, Zimbabwe, Scotland, HongKong, Nepal, Oman, Kenya and United Arab Emirates.  Other than this may countries are hosting local t20 matches like IPL in India PSL etc, Five over cricket matches are played in HongKong ,

Book Cricket is played by students. Street cricket are played by children where they set their own rules and regulations.  A ball and a bat is only needed to play cricket, even stumps are drawn on the wall, with a paper ball and test pad, students starts playing cricket with their own rules.  The success of cricket lies in the way it is marketed.  Cricket was originated from South-East England and has transformed and has grown to this height because of the way it is promoted.  Although the official game of India is Hockey, there are very less companies which are sponsoring it whereas many companies are ready to sponsor for cricket. Large amount of money are spent by the sponsor help in developing the infrastructure.  The ICC is very innovative and flexible organization which is the pioneer behind the success.  In olden days one day cricket was played as a Day Match.  ICC found that people who were working in offices were not able to watch the match so they started organizing Day & Night match which has become a big success.  Nowadays test cricket are also played as Day & Night Match.  . The usage of DRS, HAWKEYE, and other technologies in decision making has made it much more interesting. The new rule of concussion substitute will bring in new dimensions to the game. The field restrictions implemented in a one day game had made it more delightful.  The two ball rule which has made this game batsman friendly, the fans love their favorites’ to hit more boundaries.  There are many management lessons to be learnt from the game, they are strategizing, Innovation, Creativity, Collaboration, Diversification, Segmentation, Time Management, Changing according to the environment etc.  Although there are several issues like Betting and Match Fixing which were tarnishing the image of the game, Cricket is able to polymorphise it and has become a successful event.

 

A START UP ON PLASMA TREATMENT

Ms. V. Vidhya, Asst Professor, Department of MBA, Sankara College of Science and Commerce

“Necessity is the mother of inventions” the saying is true as far as the current situation is concerned globally. The World is in clutches of COVID 19 and it is really trying to get out of it in hundreds and thousands of means and ways. We may all know that the Biotech companies have introduced vaccine to control the spread of the Covid 19 virus. But usually it takes a year or two to set up the vaccination for the virus after many pre testing and trials. For e.g. Small pox virus, we don’t have it in this current era as we had eradicated it in earlier days with an invention of vaccine by Dr. Edward Jenner.

Similarly Polio virus has also been eradicated from world due to oral Polio vaccine IPV (Inactivated Polio Vaccine) invented by Dr. Jonas Salk. Likewise inventing vaccines for Covid 19 is not an easy task in this current community spread situation. So, now what is the treatment that can be opt for Covid 19 cases, one way is to go for Siddha, or to Ayurveda or else to Homeopathy which are the traditional ways of treating the cases. Other way the Doctors suggested is Plasma therapy, which has become a good start-up business in today’s world.

Plasma therapy means taking out the Plasma from the completely cured Covid 19 infected persons and injecting into the Covid 19 patients with severe symptoms like ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome). Plasma is the Liquid portion of the blood. The antibodies present in the cured Covid 19 patients are injected into the terminally ill Covid 19 cases so as to boost their immunity to fight the virus in a better way.

This pandemic has potentially led to new cooperative behaviours and creation of new systems, structures and new business models. Two young entrepreneur’s Dr Neil Pinto and Karina Thakrar’s, developed an online platform Pint Networks that aims to connect Plasma donors to the patients affected with Covid 19 cases to facilitate Plasma therapy all over the country. ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) has approved the use of Convalescent Plasma from the cured infected Covid patients to moderately ill or critically ill Covid patients. Initially the response was very good for them and they reach 100+ patients to 60+ donors across major cities in India.

The network Dr Neil Pinto and Karina Thakrar’s consists of two different work streams one for registered donors and other for registered patients. Once the details are verified their network matches the donors to the patients, exchanges their contact details, allows them to connect and go further to donate their plasma.

The hurdle they come across is the acceptance of the donors to donate their plasma for the treatment. Many of them have fear to get into the hospital again for donating their blood. The initiative is good indeed but the quality standards and importantly the data privacy are the issues to be looked into the network. Dr. Neil has said that they have installed the firewall so that data’s will be secured about the donors.

To conclude the current situation is a boon for the rising entrepreneurs to develop many new business models and pick out the opportunities from the crisis.

 

 

Economy Slow Down

Prof. S. Thilak, Assistant Professor, SIMS

India has seen an economy slowdown in 2019, with the country’s real estate, automobile, construction sectors and overall consumption demand facing a serious and continuous decay. The second quarter (July-September) of the current financial year (April 2019-March 2020) witnessed a severe decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate to 4.5 percent, even as international bodies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank repeatedly cut Indian economy’s growth rates. This was described as the lowest GDP growth rate in the previous 26 quarters, which means in over six years.

The main reasons credited to the fall in the GDP growth rate were – thin manufacturing activity, weakened funds, and narrowed consumption demand. Growth is slowing significantly and there is currently little fiscal space available to the government to spend more. Corporate and household debt is rising and there is deep distress in parts of the financial sector and unemployment seems to be growing. Repeated government suggestions to the 5 trillion U.S. dollars economy by 2024, which would necessitate steady real growth of at least 8-9 percent per year starting now, seem ‘increasingly unrealistic’.  The much-lauded economist and thinker also called for reforms in land purchase, labour laws, stable tax and regulatory rule, fast track bankruptcy resolution of developers in default, proper pricing of electricity, preserving competition in telecom sector and giving farmers access to inputs and finance.

The Indian government’s moves during the past quarter failed to revive the lethargic economy, even as the business emotions remained at one of the lowest. The automotive sector faced its worst segment, and the same was experienced in the real estate and manufacturing sectors. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced over 30 steps in various sectors to reverse the downturn, but none of them seemed to have worked, even as it is feared that the decline might soon reach the 3.5 percent-mark. Considering the constant slowdown in the Indian economy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) advised the Indian Government earlier this week to avoid a fiscal incentive to boost the drooping economy and instead go for an easier monetary policy.

Fiscal stimulus should be avoided given fiscal space is at risk and revenue losses from the recent corporate income tax rate cut should be off-set. It, however, stuck to its overall growth projection of 6.1 percent for the country during the financial year 2019-20. The IMF report also suggested that personal income tax collections could be increased by ending exemptions, reducing the minimum threshold for taxpayers and by raising contributions by top earners. The country’s real estate sector witnessed one of the poorest years, faced with a poor housing demand. As on date, according to rough estimates, there is an unsold inventory of around 450,000 housing units. There has been a strong push by the central government for the affordable housing, which accounts for nearly half of the total residential housing sales. Vice-President of India Venkaiah Naidu expressed hope for revival of the economy in near future and he expressed confidence that the Indian economy would rebound in the near future describing the current slowdown as “cyclical”.

Admitting that the Indian economy was facing “some challenges” due to the down fall in growth this fiscal year, the country had faced similar falls in the past but had “bounced back with a higher growth rate every time.” Data published by the government this week showed retail inflation in June at 6.09% — above the upper end of the Reserve Bank of India’s 2%-6% target band. In the same statement, the statistics office assigned data for April and May that showed consumer-price growth was well above 6%. With lockdowns, the fixed basket on which inflation is calculated is totally irrelevant as many of those typical items, particularly services, are no longer available or have a disappearing product problem. The share of products within the services category with missing prices in the headline index was 22.4% in April as imputed by the statistics office.

Hence extrapolating price trends of the overall CPI baskets which were largely determined by food and fuel sub-groups to the key core components such as clothing, footwear, etc. The central bank’s prefer core inflation measure, excluding transport and communication inflation, yields an underlying inflation rate of 4.4% year-on-year in June. Excluding gold, the rate falls further to 3.5% in June from 3.8% in May, 3.7% in April.

CYBER CRIME IN BANKING & CAPITAL MARKETS

Ms.K.SINDHUJA

Department of MBA

SANKARA COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & COMMERCE

 

“Technology trust is a good thing, but control is a better one.”

More than millions are those numbers of people or households affected by the worst five cyber attacks in the banking and capital markets sectors.

Cyber security capabilities and issues across the entire financial services industry, is based on findings by the researchers in finance sector, digging deeper into results specifically for banking and capital markets (banking), we can see several cyber security trends to worry about:

• High costs. The average cost of cybercrime for a banking company in 2019 was approximately $16.7 million, 28% higher than the average for all other industries surveyed.
• Greater concerns about malware and web-based attacks. Malware occurrences are experienced by 96% of the banking companies surveyed, with web-based attacks following at 87%.
• Global issues. Looking for a moment at the global study, we can see that the cost of cybercrime is increasing across all countries. The average increase in cyber attack costs for the countries in our sample is up to 26% since 2017.

In addition to these general numbers, We have to look more closely at two areas where we believe banks are under investing:

(1) The people/human aspects of cyber security

(2) Advanced technologies.

The human factor

Initially the cyber crime was initiated by the intervened of the employee working in a credit bureau who secretly copied all the details of the customers personal details including Identification numbers, credit card numbers, and addresses.

In another incident, a former employee stole and sold customer information to millions of mortgage loan applicants. These stories highlight the fact that malicious insiders are a real threat to banks.

 

 

The role of advanced technologies

Automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are being applied by only about one-third (34%) of banking companies surveyed (third-lowest deployment rate). Most investments are being made in security intelligence and threat sharing (79%), as well as advanced perimeter controls (62%).

Banks should be aware, however, that criminals always seem to find a way through their perimeter, sometimes by manipulating insiders through social engineering, as just discussed.

To help prevent this loss of economic value, banks and capital markets firms should:

• Place greater emphasis on protecting and educating people because of the rise in phishing, ransom ware and malicious insider attacks.
• Create controls such that no single employee or compromised machines can get greater damage across the entire organization. Use Privileged Access Management, a control mechanism to put greater scrutiny around the granting of higher access privileges. Also segment data such that people do not have access to a full set of data.
• Grasp the innovation opportunity and more proactively invest in breakthrough technologies to enhance cyber security effectiveness and scale. Use automation and advanced analytics to manage the rising costs of discovering attacks, which is the largest component of spend.
• Invest to prevent information loss and business disruption, which are growing concerns, especially given new privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Use pressure testing to identify your vulnerabilities. Criminals are constantly searching for your weak points. We should be very cautious in revealing our details. It’s our responsibility to save guard our account privacy.

 

Skills to be highlighted on a HR executive Profile/CV

Dr.S.Sundararajan, Associate Professor, Department of MBA, Sankara College of Science and Commerce. 

One of the trickiest aspects of writing a resume is highlighting your skills. The best way to identify which skills Executives need to highlight on their resume is to put themselves in the employer’s shoes. To accomplish this, look at the employer’s job description. Generally, human resource management refers to the management of all aspects of employment, from hiring to employee compensation to labor law and retirement.

Below is a list of the top five most important human resources skills that HR Executives need to emphasize in job applications, Profile/CV, cover letters and interviews.

Communication

Communication is one of the important soft skill required for people working in human resource management, as they have to communicate effectively with people across an organization, from entry-level employees to the CEO. The HRMs should be able to explain verbally and in writing all the information related to company policy.

Conflict Management

The human resource managers help in solving a variety of work conflicts, whether they are between two colleagues or an employee and his or her employer. The HRMs usually need skills like negotiation and mediation.

Decision Making

HRMs make lots of decisions for a company, ranging from whom to hire to how to resolve a dispute between employees.

Ethical

HR managers handle lots of personal, sensitive information about a company and its employees. They need to be discrete, only sharing the information with people when it is appropriate.

Organization

Most human resources employees have to keep track of numerous records and files related to each employee. They handle lots of paperwork related to hiring, firing, and various employee benefits. Therefore, HR employees must be able to keep this information organized and accessible.

 

Remote work policy

Dr. Priya Kalyanasundaram , HOD, Department of MBA, Sankara College of Science and Commerce

In today’s world our workplace is changing due to covid- 19 pandemic which has been the complete game changer and many corporate are implementing work from home for employees. Apart from that there can be problems related to email phishing, online scams etc. So a sound work policy can be framed for a smooth functioning of job.
• In remote workplace it is difficult to know how many hours our employees are working, But if the employees are salaried employees with no overtime then they are paid the same regardless of number of hours they work , but if they are paid on hourly basis and eligible for overtime . At this point of time you can ask your employees each day what they will be working and how many hours they’ll be active.
• All the employers are responsible for the health and safety measures . He should also determine whether the employee working environment is suitable for getting the job done
• List out the desired positions or designations that are all eligible to work remotely and include in your policies.
• Set up a time schedule for work or let the employees set their own time schedules.
• Set up a policy for immediate response from your employees and also state the modes of communication to be used.
• Specify how the employee’s productivity will be measured.
• Employees are in need of tools to complete their task in this case organization need to state clearly what tools they are ready to offer to the employees e.g. Computers, Laptop etc.
• The organization has to list out the technical support system that will be provided by them.
• The employees need to take utmost care while doing the work in public places and organization need to put rules to guarantee electronic security

Web Monitoring and Tracking Tools

-Dr.K.THIRUGNANASAMBANTHAN, Asst.Professor, Department of MBA, Sankara College of Science and Commerce

Web surfing, reading and trading on web are important in our life. After WWW booming, numerous people and Organizations possess their own site. To remain ahead, a few organizations are captivating their site for data servicing, such as company recent developments and simple data exchanging. Consequently modern web pages show up its updates frequently. Many websites give “fresh” information on web. Monitoring web changes manually is not possible. Web monitoring tools achieves reporting page updates to clients. Since establishing WWW, Intelligent monitoring tools are developed to watch websites.

CHANGEDETECTOR

ChangeDetector is a tool not only tracks changes but also outlines entire site, Whenever changes happen, the ChangeDetector identifies changes and reports to client. It means, the tool continuously watches websites for any writing or reading data in a page.

CHANGEDETECT

ChangeDetect is a proficient web checking tool. It is a replacement of prior tools. It spares client favored web pages for automatic mailing. Changes on are stamped with color codes for simple understanding. Page altering notices are too conveyed to client by ICQ (I for you), text message or indeed pager.

TOPBLEND

TOPBLEND has an excellent HTML differencing tool, identify changes by page comparison using HCS Heaviest Common Subsequence (HCS) algorithm. HTML parser and Jacobson-Vo algorithm are used in HCS problem.

WEBSPECTOR

It is a change tracking tool Webspector. It differs from server based checking tool.

WEBBEHOLDER

WebBeholder is a multi-web checking framework. It is created in Ishizuka-lab at Tokyo University. It has Service Provider Agent, a number of mobile agents and Mediator.

WEBCQ

WebCQ is a change detecting and delivering system. It monitors both static and dynamic changes. The changes on web pages are classified as sentinels to detect small change and reporting them to user.

INFOSPHERE PROJECT

Infosphere is a section of DARPA IT program. It is created by CaltonPu at Georgia Tech. It is focused on extracting new information from a group of sensors for personalized information delivery.