By now, it is certain that employees form the core of any organisation. Thus, to protect this core, the Government of India has developed a legal framework to safeguard its interests. Under these regulatory laws, businesses must, at all times, adhere to the statutory payroll compliances in India.
Here are 10 regulations you must keep in mind when operating in India:
The Minimum Wages Act, 1948
The Payment Of Wages Act, 1936
The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976
Labour Welfare Fund Act, 1965
Maternity Benefit Act, 1961
The Payment of Bonus Act, 1965
The Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972
The Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948
The Employees Provident Fund & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952
According to Simon Sinek and the #Lawofdiffusion, transforming work culture is to push the Innovators, thus converting the Early Adopters and the Early/Late Majority.
And there are 5 steps in transforming a company culture:
1. Create a safe environment
2. Focus more on your company’s values than making money
3. Become best friends with the law of diffusion of innovations
Our new feature updates provide better time and document management for teams. The Google Calendar integration allows teammates to know the exact availability period of others, thereby solving the issue of booking appointments into absent periods.
We also introduced a Document Management feature that stores all company policies and guidelines right on Grove HR.
Time off is now synced to Google Calendar
View employees' leaves right on Google Calendar
Here’s how it works:
Head over to Google Calendar to synchronize with your official Google Calendar account.
When you create a time off request, it is also created on your now integrated Google Calendar. You would see a PENDING notification alongside your name. After approval, you would get an APPROVED notification beside your name.
You can subscribe to your colleagues' Google Calendar so you can share each other's time off and schedules. This allows you to accurately plan your next meeting or task delegation.
Know when your team members take leaves right on Google Calendar
Input detailed hours when requesting time off
With this update, employees can now input the exact period in their time off requests. For example, they can select exactly two hours off in the afternoon on the 26th of May. This update is available on both mobile and desktop platforms.
A major perk is that the system can calculate their working period balance and suggest a perfect time off period.
Store all company's documents in one place
In this update, we're introducing an efficient Document Management feature that allows all the documents created by the admin to be stored in a general Company Document Folder. These folders are available to the employees for viewing, sharing and downloading. This feature is updated on Grove HR mobile app too!
Now, you can store and manage your company's documents all in one place.
View, share and download important company documents easily
So...
How can I manage my company document folders? As an admin, you can create, edit, or delete folders that can be set to be accessed by either all employees, office, department or only you. In folders, you can upload multiple files simultaneously and replace or delete selected files.
How can I upload files from Google Drive? You can transfer files and documents from Google Drive to Grove and make them more accessible to employees. After the files have been uploaded successfully, there's no connection between the files on Grove and the ones on Google Drive. This means if changes are made to the files on Grove HR, it will not reflect on Google Drive and vice versa.
Time Attendance enhanced for better tracking
We realized that there was no clear way to track and filter timesheets, so we're introducing a colour code and a new filter system for better tracking.
The system will automatically colour-code the invalid attendance records on employee's Time Attendance records. And you can filter the attendance records by:
Missing Clock-in/clock-out for the working day
Missing clock-out
Clock-in/clock-out on holidays/leave/non-working day
Edit Actual time worked
Edit Overtime
Instantly filter and see which time records need more attention
Display timezone for clock-in/clock-out records
We have updated the system to now display the timezone according to the timezone detected on the employee's device when they clock in/out.
HR and the manager will see the employee's clock-in/clock-out time based on the employee's timezone. For example, HR (GMT+8) will see that the employee clocked in at 8 AM (GMT+7).
New weekly payroll cycle
Lastly, it doesn't matter if your company runs payroll cycles every month or every week, you can now edit your Pay Cycle in Grove HR. Our updated system will auto-match the uploaded payslip with Pay Cycle and you can have a new weekly or monthly payroll cycle.
Tracking employees' time attendance gives us access to vital information. But there is a need for accuracy for that information to be useful. That's why we built the all-new clock in/out with location feature.
We also include features that allow you to customize time attendance and add your company logo. Lastly, we have a new dashboard for you!
A more efficient time attendance function
Introducing Geofencing for clocking in/out
This feature empowers HR to prevent time attendance fraud by setting the defined location. That means HR can now know and prevent an employee who is not at the designated area (e.g., the office) from clocking in/out.
Here's how it works:
You activate geofencing for each office by inputting the address (integration with Google to have the accurate address) and the acceptable radius. Those two inputs then form the geofencing circle.
Once an employee clock in/out on the web app and mobile app, you'll know if they are inside/outside the designated area (geofencing circle).
If the employee is outside the circle, they might be asked to input the reason or might not be able to clock in/clock out - depending on the configuration you choose.
Authorize QR Code access
Before now, all employees can have access to the link displaying the QR code - allowing them to clock in/out from anywhere (instead of coming to the office). This feature now allows HR to restrict permission to that link - if necessary.
You can choose any one of the two options:
Public URL for everyone: If this option is selected, everyone can access the URL.
Restricted URL with password: If this option is selected, an additional text field (password) comes up whenever anyone tries to access it. Hence, only authorized users can access it.
Configurable clock in/out feature
This new feature allows companies to define which platform their employees can clock in/out. That is, you can enable the feature either on the web app or mobile app, or both to ensure accuracy.
Here's how it works:
Each office will have the configuration to turn on/off the clock in/out feature.
HR can choose to turn on the clock in/out on the web app or mobile app.
The configuration is applied to the employee of said office only.
Customize your company's logo
Another good news is that you can now upload your company logo on the Grove HR web app to smoothen the adoption process. The logo will be displayed on the Navigation bar.
Fresh UI for the Dashboard
Lastly, we present a new, fresh, and more interactive UI for Dashboard. The Admin can now view statistics on employee's movement, attendance, time-off & payroll on the Dashboard.
Companies are seeking to get their employees vaccinated and resume work on a full scale. However, new studies reveal concerning problems about the state of the workplace and employees.
Only 10% of companies are prepared to support a flexible workforce
According to research by Willis Towers Watson (2021), only one in ten APAC businesses think their current job process can handle a flexible workforce. In light of this information, businesses that don't want to be left behind need to take a serious look at their organization's future, and accelerate their move towards a flexible workplace.
An Evive report (2021) reveals that businesses may need to improve their engagement with individual employees during the work lifecycle. In summary, employers have to adopt more personalized communication during onboarding, performance management, and offboarding to solve this problem.
1 in 4 employees plan to leave their employers after the pandemic
25% of employees have plans to leave their workplace once the pandemic subsides. To deter this impending turnover, employers have to create a supportive workplace, upskill and reskill their staff, encourage open communication, and embrace flexible work options
Weak leadership and below-expectation salary raise drive out Vietnamese talents.
In recent research of Grove HR and YouGov Vietnam, almost 50% of surveyors answered that weak leadership and below-expectation salary would lead them to quit a job. Not stopping there, the research also discovered that a vast majority of people expect at least a slight increase in salary in 2021.
Here are ways companies are incentivizing the COVID-19 vaccination: Dollar General, Kroger, and McDonald's pay employees to receive the vaccine, Target will give time off and pay for the transportation cost.
Recently, the Grove team and YouGov Vietnam have collaborated to conduct a research on how employee perceptions and needs have changed after the rough 2020.
Here are the key questions in the research:
💡 Factors attracting candidates to apply for a company
💡 Onboarding tasks employees considered as important
💡 The types of benefits are being highly appreciated
💡 Soft skills employees want to be trained on
💡 Top reasons why employees quit their jobs
Although it was made on Vietnamese workers the results highly resemble for most cases.
Some of the key findings of the survey are: "Job security becomes a top concern when candidates look for a job, even more than financial interests" (as depicted below)
Candidates prioritize job security over financial benefits
or the ranking of different types of benefits (as depicted below)
In an attempt to power up our community, build a prosperous HR knowledge base so everyone could share, learn, interact, and grow together openly, the Grove team organized the HRathon 2021 with a total award of up to $220.
🤼♂️The participants: All members of the Grove community.
⌛ Duration: 25th of January, 2021 - 31st of March, 2021.
🥇The final prize detail: The winner will receive the prize in the form of G-Coins which can be redeemed for Amazon gift cards in the trading store or saved for a bigger prize.
1st prize - $100 Amazon gift card.
2nd prize - $70 Amazon gift card.
3rd prize - $50 Amazon gift card.
📌Rules: The prizes will go to the 3 members with the highest reputation scores at the end of the event. The reputation score on the Grove HR community is the measurement of your engagement level. In particular, each of the following activities you make on the community will be rewarded with reputation scores, accordingly:
Reply or comment: +5 points
Create a post: +20 points
Ask a question: +20 points
Create an answer: +30 points
Receive like on a post: +10 points per like
Receive like on an answer: +10 points per like
These activities will not limit to any topics or groups. You can be active anywhere and it is all counted!
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to drop me a text.
Otherwise, no more time to lose, start engaging now! 🏁
👉 Small reminder: Don't forget to sign up before taking part in the race.
The reputation score on the Grove HR community is the measurement of your engagement level. In particular, each of the following activities you make on the community will be rewarded with reputation scores, accordingly:
Reply or comment: +5 points
Create a post: +20 points
Ask a question: +20 points
Create an answer: +30 points
Receive like on a post: +10 points per like
Receive like on an answer: +10 points per like
These activities will not limit to any topics or groups. You can be active anywhere and it is all counted!