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Why Price Wars Are Killing HR Tech Companies and How Prajjo is Changing the Game

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Few customers pay for the utility, most for the perceived value. HR Tech solutions, for whatever reasons, fall in the first category. Utility buyers focus on functionality and cost; they pay for what the product does . On the other hand, Value buyers focus on outcomes, experience, and perception, they pay for what the product means to them. HR solutions do not mean much to the Business Fraternity ! Despite HR reaching a strategic position, occupying a chair on the board, the impression it still conveys is mere of Utility. Businesses often compete more on perceived value than on utility because perception drives pricing power and loyalty. Lower the perceived value, lower the price. Despite so many years being in the market, HR Tech companies have miserably failed to elevate their value proposition in the eyes of the customers. Who is responsible for it? Of course, HR Tech Companies.   HR Tech companies failed to increase the Perceived Value Technology is far awa...
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Straight from the Boardroom: Why Organizations do not know their own Business Strategies?

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Story goes back when I had just joined a large conglomerate. My reporting was to the  CEO . Following the 'corporate rituals' meant for the   CXO s, I too was asked within few days of my joining to formulate a befitting functional strategy for HR and present the same to the board. Although the company was having a 'working' strategy for the past more than a decade. Keeping in view the prescribed thumb rule that says that all the functional strategies should be in line with the overall Business strategy of the company, one fine morning I reached out to the CEO innocuously, requesting him for his time to discuss the business strategy. Additionally, at the back of my mind, I was carrying the impression that as he being my manager and also the CEO of the company, he is the right person to hear from him about strategy. My first mistake in the company. Anyhow, story went on like this. My first assumption was wrong, still I dared to continue with it. One day I got a c...
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Cultural Fitment: The Silent Killer of Organizational Growth

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In the first decade of the 21st century, the idea of “Cultural Fitment [Fit]” started gaining momentum. CXOs in general started recommending the practice to their respective organizations and ensured that it being followed in principle. People’s theories around the practice and HR interventions were in full bloom for its adoption. It continues even till now, although not as vigorous as it was. In events after events, HR professionals & 'experts' were astutely recommending it to fellow professionals. Companies after companies incorporated it in their basic HR structure. Everyone around could be seen following the recommendations. Most of us were swept away with this 'flavor of the time'. I, as an young HR professional also fell prey to the sweeping notion without realizing its pitfalls and started designing HR interventions around the concept. It went to the extent that I could influence one of my CEOs I worked with so much that he went onto announcing that e...
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HR Fragmentation - A reason for Worry for HR & Companies, Equally !

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On the periphery of a business stands HR . Its birth is circumstantial. Richard Arkwright, who is widely considered as the father of the modern factory system, did not conceive a place for today’s HR. He and other entrepreneurs of the day were only interested in people who were directly helping them in meeting the demand of the time. Later came in picture, a person who generally was seen riding a horse, having a felt hate on his head and a ‘ Productivity tool ’ in his hands, called hunter. He had only one mandate - highest possible production by all means. We can draw a lineage of HR of today with this ‘Gentleman’? Then came a ‘ Period of Revolt .’ Agitations by workers were common all around the world. Governments of the day were pressurized to write labor laws on the one hand; and on the other hand, good Samaritan psychologists started giving various people centric theories.   One the best to quote here is Edwin Locke’s Goal Setting Theory of Motivation . Things started chan...
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Competency Framework: HR practice that needs salvation

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Since many decades, organizations have been advised to have business centric Competency Frameworks, suiting to their unique business natures and defining the core of their businesses. Frameworks are must for organizations because they help in identifying distinct ‘ Organizational Capabilities ’ and their continuous development to provide much required edge over their competition. Products, Processes and Marketing, may provide initial edge to organizations but they remain vulnerable due to their easy imitations by the competition. What makes organizations impregnable is their organizational capabilities. And what does make organizations impregnable? Their possessing  right Competency Frameworks . Frameworks which provide comprehensive directions to organizations, right from defining & driving core values, chosen paths to tread through their thoughtful  purposes and visions; take into account proven hierarchical and functional contours in terms of requisite competencies....
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