Just like a heart gives forward momentum to a human body, the function of Human Resources or HR gives growth momentum to an enterprising entity. Although many companies fail to give due importance to HR, it is that core business department which keeps the entire management system intact.
Not only employee’s entry to exit process, but right talent recruitment, their induction, formulating of favourable HR policies, implementing of those policies effectively, devising compensation and benefit plans, retention strategies, workforce performance evaluation, and entire people management processes come under the purview of HRM.
In contemporary times, when many giant organizations are engaged in talent-hunting wars, other organizations with traditional mindsets still lack the awareness of the best business strategies revolving around HR functioning which could be entirely and successfully outsourced.
Falguuni Sheth, as the Head of HR for almost 15 years with MNCs, witnessed this mindset firsthand and using her rich experience decided to bring in the most needed change by founding her own HR agency New Horizon in 2011.
Scaling New Horizons of Business Success
As per Falguuni, Human Resources may be termed as one of the pillars of a business or a commercial venture, the reason for this is – without the help of human resources it is impossible to take an initiative forward. The diversity and strength that a team provides to a company, ensures that the company is on the path to progress. This implies that the best resource available must be hired for work.
Falguuni says, “Our team of expert HR consultants, make sure that they understand and relate to your business needs, so that they may be able to give you the best solutions for your HR needs.”
In 2011 – outsourcing HR Solutions was interpreted as outsourcing Recruitment. So, it took a while to make Business Owners understand that they can outsource to New Horizon to design their HR systems and Processes along with Recruitment.
Touching the Global Echelons
Falguuni recollects, “It was not easy to make people know that I am available as a Freelancer HR consultant. While I was a Head of HR in an Export firm – candidates used to come for interviews and we used to respect their time as the candidate has come at a scheduled time but when I started New Horizon and wanted to meet Business Owners, I was waiting in their reception for hours together just to meet them and explain our services.”
Gradually with help of current client references, networking groups and online presence now New Horizon is one of the Top 10 HR companies in India and in the year 2021 it is recognized as one of the Top 10 globally.
Founder Falguuni Sheth is a certified Graphologist, Numerologist and psychometric professional along with HR Consultant. Such type of combination is very unique as New Horizon’s philosophy is ‘Offer services to clients nothing less than the best.’
A Result-Oriented Mentor
Falguuni possesses many professional qualities and values that her clients, colleagues, and employees admire in her the most. Apart from her two decades of rich experience, her sound subject knowledge and functional expertise are greatly adored by people around her.
Falguuni strictly follows ethics and principles. She is also very disciplined and focused. Her result-oriented approach, deep involvement, sticking to timelines, assertive nature, and value transparency makes her a very good mentor.
Creating Growth Policies
Talking about New Horizon’s USPs, Falguuni says that the firm is into complete HR Solutions. It has two verticals, one is PAN India Recruitment and the second one is HR Consulting for designing HR Systems and HR Processes.
Its services include designing the entire life cycle of an Employee from entry to exit.
Falguuni states, “So, we create organizational structure, Recruitment and Selection Process, Salary and Benefits plan, HR Policies, Performance Management System, Reward and Recognition plan and Employee records.”
The firm is present in more than 20 industries. It makes customised solutions as per client industry, business, values, and culture which is unique about the firm. Even for the same industry, same business but two different companies the offered solutions will be different as they might have different team sizes, cultures, or future plans.
Strategic Operational Approach
Falguuni adds, “Another unique thing with us is we provide Strategic as well as Operation, both HR services.” Gone are the days when the HR dept. was just responsible for and was only to do documentation from employee’s joining till leaving. The need of the hour is seeing everything from a Business Perspective and become a strategic HR partner.
“In Recruitment, we are mainly into NON-IT recruitment for middle and senior level candidates PAN India and the best part is our selected and placed candidates stay for a long time as we also do a detailed analysis of candidate’s future plans,” reveals Falguuni.
Everything Digital
Being an experienced leader, Falguuni has high opinions on how the adoption of modern technologies like AI and ML is impacting the HR industry and how New Horizon is adapting to the change.
According to her, from creating a database of candidates to offer letter issues, attendance to the computation of salary, HR policies and code of conduct and finally Performance Management – everything is now can be managed with HR software. “We have helped our many clients get paperless and digitized,” says Falguuni.
Encountering the Talent Wars
Considering the current industry scenario, the kind of challenges faced by Falguuni are multiple. She accepts, “Since we are into providing HR Solutions to mainly small and medium size companies, our clients’ challenges become our area of concern.”
Post pandemic it is like a talent war. Hiring the kind of resource one wants, is not easily available. The salary expectation of the candidate while changing is more than 50% and at times 100%. Even after accepting the offer, the client is unsure if they will join.
“To get the right talent on board we have made a few changes in salary structure, benefits and introduction of a new bonus which is performance and retention based,” states Falguuni.
The second major area of concern is still many employees want to work in a hybrid system. They want to work from home for a small reason too.
To have a win-win situation and have better retention the firm has modified work from home policy, attendance bonus policy and introduction of team incentives for achieving targets.
Investment Centered Counsel
Falguuni’s advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into your space is strategic. She says that change is the only constant in life. “I would suggest to all Business Owners that change the way they think HR can be a cost center in the company,” says Falguuni. NO MORE. In fact, HR is the perfect investment function which every mid and small size company should have. If not in-house they can partner with any outsourcing company for strategic inputs.
Reaching the Novel Verticals
About envisioning scaling New Horizon’s operations and offerings in 2022 and beyond, Falguuni reveals, “Our both verticals, Recruitment and HR Consulting are growing rapidly. We have taken a couple of steps. I have increased my team size.
And we have started training the HR coordinator of our client in a very organized manner. So that all our systems and modules are implemented in the right manner. We do hand-holding for all implementation as the challenges only come in execution.”
