MT India Newsletter - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MTIndia

08 Feb 2003
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ANNOUNCEMENT
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We have created a separate MT Jobs Newsletter for job vacancies, to
subscribe:
mailto:MTIndia-Jobs-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Also, the Job Section in the Classifieds has been taken down.
Please use the Job Center:
http://www.mtindia.org/JobCenter/default.cfm

The MTIndia Team
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Human Resource Management
~Rukmani Raghavan
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Dear Friends,

I am publishing a piece which was an entry to the professional
writing competition @ mtindia.org, 2002.

Enjoy and cherish!
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At the heart of every business venture is its 'human' capital. All
the state-of-the-art equipment and sophisticated software cannot
match the human behind it. Human resources is the real wealth of an
organization. It is therefore abundantly clear why every company
needs to focus on its manpower, if it has to attain true growth and
success. Whether it is Wal-Mart or Sony, the greatest of
enterprises have built their business empires by embracing this
philosophy.

Many businesses around the world, employ young management
professionals with degrees from premier business schools and pay
them astronomical salaries. Experience, however, has shown that all
that needs to be learned about human resource management does not
lie in the printed pages of lofty texts. To actually deal with
workers, to solve a tricky problem, to stave off a crisis, one has
to use common sense, possess a liberal approach and function
without prejudice. Many a knotty problem has been solved by giving
a patient hearing to affected workers, by gentle persuasion and by
demonstrating a will to arrive at an amicable settlement where the
worker feels happy that his problems have been addressed.

Managing human resources is at once challenging and frustrating -
challenging, because of the myriad complications that arise at the
workplace, and frustrating, because these problems sometimes are
seemingly intractable. It is evident that one has to deftly combine
a good monetary compensation with a welfare package and ensure that
employees are given a decent wage with benefits that should accrue
to them as per the prevailing law of the land, realistic promotion
opportunities and above all accorded due respect. On the contrary,
an archaic wage structure, lop-sided labor policies and lack of
proper communication with workers can result in the company being
saddled with a dissatisfied, disgruntled and unhappy workforce,
which can only spell disaster for it.

An organization has to primarily have a dynamic recruitment policy
that will enable the induction of the right people with the right
skills and then should set about nurturing them. Money is one of
the biggest motivators for any employee, so it is vital that
salaries are fixed according to individual skills and abilities. A
wage structure has to be realistic, keeping in mind the nature of
the job performed, and the minimum wage required for sustaining a
family on the basic amenities of modern living. It is a simple
truth that satisfied employees ensure the healthy growth of a
business. Often, entrepreneurs and companies fail to grasp this
truth. To stint on wages would only prove counterproductive for the
employer. It must be remembered right at the outset that employees
and employer together form a team, that can forge ahead and make
meaningful progress, but if an employee is perceived as a mere cog
in the wheel, he will soon lose zest for his job and will slide
back in his performance. Ultimately, it will hinder the growth of
the business and this is what a wise management should foresee and
avoid.

Wages have to be flexible, allowing for incentives for better
performance. What one often observes is that a group of employees
are placed in a certain category where there are performers and
non-performers. The hard-working diligent employee is bound to feel
discriminated against when he is equated with another, whose
quality of work does not match his, but both receive the same
salary. Money is one of the big rewards for a good worker and since
every employee has to provide for himself and family it is
understandable if he feels cheated, when clubbed with a poor
performer and takes home the same salary as his less-diligent
co-worker. A short sighted policy of cutting costs by paying meager
salaries, keeping short term gains in focus but losing out on long
term profit, can only emanate from a management that has not
studied or understood the true worth of its employees. Businesses
that commence their operations often complain that they are
burdened with a high wage bill, without their profits starting to
accumulate. The basics of costing should help an entrepreneur or
businessman to understand that 'standing expenses' like
electricity, telephone charges, rent and salaries will always be
present, whether or not a company is making profit, and provisions
have to be made for these expenses while chalking out a business
plan. Everyone is aware that there is a gestation period for
profits - short or long, depending on the type of product or
service that the business is embarking upon offering. If a company
is not seized of employee needs but has only set its sights on
profits "at any cost" it will certainly be a losing proposition
for it, in the long run.

........to be continued.
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Cheers!!!

Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM
Strategist / Founder ~ mailto:amit@...
MT India ~ www.MTIndia.org
"The Community of MT Professionals"

"It takes years to become an overnight success! Inch by inch, it's
a cinch."

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ADVERTISEMENT
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Infoscript, a 5-year-old leading MT company in Bangalore, invites
applications from experienced MT/Editors. Compensation will be on
par with the best in the industry. Come and discover the
refreshing, healthy and professional work environment. Contact us @
jobs@... or call us on (080) 5355512.

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NEWS AND VIEWS :
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1) Why Move Tech Work Offshore?

Companies choose offshoring for a simple reason: They want to save
money. Marc Herbet, executive vice president of Sierra Atlantic, an
application management firm with headquarters in Fremont,
California, and a global development center in Hyderabad, India,
says it is possible to "achieve pretty dramatic cost savings, in
the one-third to two-thirds range" with offshore projects.

Where will this trend lead? And how quickly? According to a survey
conducted in early 2002 by Gartner Dataquest, demand for offshore
outsourcing remains "immature" in the US, but growth will be
steady. The survey of US-based companies with 1,000 or more
employees found 5 percent were currently using offshoring or
planned to do so in the next 12 months.

"Up until September 11, the trend was accelerating very quickly,"
says Nadeau. "There was a pause, a hesitation, because of that."
But, he says, "in our discussions with clients, it doesn't seem to
be an issue anymore."

"We're just at the beginning of a long-term trend," says Herbet.
"It's all supply-and-demand, and it's on a global basis. Labor
movement across the world has become freer and freer. Even if you
don't import the labor, you can export the work. The trend is
irreversible."

http://www.brainbench.com/xml/bb/newsletter/article.xml?contentId=1
417

2) Down but not out

While young engineering graduates are prowling the corporate alleys
for some job, the non-technical ones seem to be more lucky this
year - in getting a placement in the campus calls, typically by
companies engaged in medical transcription services.
That the IT-Enabled Services (ITES) industry, particularly the
medical transcription business, is witnessing an upswing is
obvious.

In recent years, the home-based medical transcription business has
also started to grow. Transcriptionists with sound fundamentals
have started to work from home, say after two-three years of
experience in an office or hospital.

The demand for MTs (medical transcriptionists) is expected to
increase due to the rapid growth in healthcare industries caused by
a growing and aging population. "To capitalise on the MT business
opportunity in India, entrepreneurs need to understand not merely
the global medical transcription industry, but how the outsourcing
process works" says Ashok Bakthavatsalam, Managing Director of
KGISL.

Getting human resource with required aptitude is a problem MT
companies are encountering at present. However, what meets the eye
is the dramatic change in the way in finding a job today, compared
to what it was three years ago.

The employment in this occupation is expected to grow much faster
than average, with an increase of 61 per cent by the year 2005. A
survey has estimated the outsourced (to India) medical
transcription business volume at $2 billion annually.

http://in.biz.yahoo.com/030204/17/20spm.html

3) Athenahealth Delivers Real-Time Practice Management Benefits to
Professionals for Women's Health

Athenahealth, Inc., a provider of practice automation and revenue
cycle optimization services, announced that Professionals for
Women's Health has successfully deployed its service to automate
processes associated with medical practice billing and collections.
To date, the Ohio-based OB/GYN group has effectively utilized the
athenahealth service to reduce its accounts receivable cycle to
well below the industry average, thereby ensuring the prompt and
accurate payment of all patient bills and the ongoing success of
the practice, according to athenahealth. athenahealth is a
network-based business service provider for medical practices,
delivering online patient scheduling, registration, claims
processing and collections.

http://www.aishealth.com/MDPractice/11503.html

4) EDiX(TM) Expands Agreement with UCLA Healthcare Agreement

EDiX(TM), a subsidiary of IDX Systems Corporation and a market
leader in outsourced medical transcription services, today
announced an agreement to provide full medical dictation and
transcription services to University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA) Medical Center and UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. The
agreement enhances the current dictation and transcription services
that EDiX has provided UCLA Healthcare system since 1999.

The new, multi-year agreement provides UCLA's Medical Center and
Neuropsychiatric Institute with all major components of medical
dictation and transcription, including capital equipment, medical
transcriptionists, integrated transcription network, dictation
software and ongoing maintenance and support.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030206/neth010_1.html

5) Assam sees bright future in infotech

Assam Governor Lt Gen (Retd) S K Sinha said Assam would become one
of the leading states in information technology in the country in
the coming years since there was tremendous potential among the
youths in the State.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the expansion of Grace I-Net
Solutions (GiNS) medical transcription production centre, the
Governor said there was no reason why the State should lag others
when there was immense talent among the educated unemployed youth.

He said the North Eastern Council (NEC) would distribute 1,000
computers to educational institutions in the next plan, he added.

GiNS and C-bay systems of US have got together and could play a
significant role in the development of the IT sector in the State,
he said.

http://news.sify.com/cgi-bin/sifynews/news/content/news_fullstory_v
2.jsp?article_oid=12550494&page_no=1

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Thank you for your interest in MT India!

The MTIndia Team
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