PEOPLE is the most important and valuable resource every organization has in the form of its employees.

Dynamic people can make dynamic organizations. Effective employees can contribute to the effectiveness of the organization. Competent and motivated people can make things happen and enable an organization to achieve its goals. Organizations have now started realizing that the systematic attention to human resources is the only way to increase organizational efficiency in terms productivity, quality, profits and better customer orientation. HR can help deliver organizational excellence by focusing on learning, quality, teamwork, and through various employee friendly strategies. Today with a lot of MNCs coming in India, the amount of competition has increased to such an extent that organizations have further aggrieved their stress on proper man management.

Innovative HR Practices Introduction Innovative HR practices build competencies and capabilities for superior and winning performances today and simultaneously create long term fertility for innovation of business ideas and strategies for future. Employees who go the extra mile by performing spontaneous behaviors that go beyond their role prescriptions are especially valued by the management. This phenomenon is critical for organizational effectiveness because managers cannot foresee all contingencies or fully anticipates the activities that they may desire or need employees to perform (Katz & Kahn 1978, Organ 1988) Work behavior that goes beyond the reach of organizational measures of job performance holds promise for long term organizational success (Van Dyne, Graham & Dienesch 1994) because these types of action are purported to improve organizational efficiency, effectiveness and adaptability (Organ 1988).

Doing jobs beyond what is required without expecting to be rewarded is what is referred to in this study as Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB). Enhancing an organizations competitive ability is increasingly critical and behaviors which may improve individual and organizational efficiency, become more valuable. Although there have been many studies of OCB in organizations, no known studies have examined the linkage of individual innovativeness with OCB where the effect of superiorsubordinate as a mediator, is included. Innovative hr practices All managers have heard and read countless times how to build teams, empower your workforce and develop trust. The common place human resource practices prevalent across the entire business world are just as relevant to this business as any other. The HR policies must be integrated with business policies. The HR Professionals must have balance in terms of centralization or decentralization of HR practices are ethnocentric while others management be geocentric or regiocentric. Tomorrow HR practices In turn trends like these are changing the way firms are managed. Organizations today must grapple with revolutionary trends accelerating product and technological change, globalizes competition, deregulation, demographic changes and trends towards a service society and the information. These trends have dramatically increased the degree of competition in virtually all industries, while forcing firms to cope with unprecedented product innovation and technological change. Companies in such an environment either become competitive high performers or they die. The challenges facing the organization have never been greater

Issues coming on the radar of an HR Manager today are diverse; from micro level issues where an individual employee needs hand holding to the macro issues pertaining to a global workforce and virtual teams. HR managers are expected to offer instant solutions for these issues and strategies. As an HR Manager there are a number of areas where you might want to bring in an external consultant. Employee Motivation in work place A strong team needs individuals who are dedicated to giving their best at work. Highly self-motivated, committed, ambitious employees give the most to their company and get the most from their work. But if you are lacking employee motivation in the workplace the effects can be dramatic. Low team morale, lack of initiative, lack of energy, mistakes and high staff turnover are just some of the clues that motivation is an issue. One of the simplest ways to get motivated is to create a Self-Motivation Action Plan. By following this simple three-step process you can create an action plan that will get you motivated again. . STEP 1: Clarify the Goal The first step of your Self-Motivation Action Plan is to be clear about the end result. Identify a project that you lack motivation about. Let's use "Make some sales calls" as an example. Your goals should be SMART. In other words: Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic and with a Timescale. STEP 2: Identify the Obstacle The second step of your Self-Motivation Action Plan is to be clear about what is standing in your way. There are two types of obstacles - practical and emotional. Examples of practical obstacles are lack of time, resources or information. Examples of emotional obstacles are lack of confidence or fear of failure or rejection.

Make a list on your Self-Motivation Action Plan of all the obstacles standing in the way of you achieving your goal. STEP 3: Handle each Obstacle The third step of your Self-Motivation Action Plan is the most challenging. Go through each obstacle and handle it. If the obstacle is lack of time, ask yourself "How can I create time for this? What do I need to stop doing, start doing or delegate in order to create time?" If the obstacle is lack of confidence, ask yourself "What am I afraid of? What is the worst thing that could happen?" Often the worst-case scenario is not as bad as you feared. But if it is serious, how can you reduce the risk of it occurring? What resources do you have that will help you? A clear Self-Motivation Action Plan will help you complete projects without adrenalin, willpower or unhealthy stress. Innovative Human Resource Leader To join a dynamic, growing organization that knows where it wants to go. To make a significant contribution to business results by applying my unique talent for creating strategic focus and alignment, developing 21st century leaders and culture, and building an organizational community that shares a common mission, vision, and values Support needed for the Management of Change and Improvement of Human Capital Present industrial developments involve technology and organization, the performance of both being highly dependent on human resources. Knowledge will increasingly bring a key competitive advantage within human resources. Moreover, production tasks are being automated to an ever greater extent while the demand for a qualified workforce is growing dramatically. At the same time, when analyzing the workforce, we see a shortage of skilled people in strategic industrial areas. The available skills do not always correspond in quality and

quantity to the skills required. This contrast will place a significant strain on our society. The technology trend indicates that unemployment will rise amongst unskilled workers. This will entail enormous efforts in the field of education as well as a tremendous increase in continuous learning, and may require coordinate efforts towards the benchmarking of knowledge management within different countries, regions or organizations, and the implementation of learning schemes. Relevance of Human Resource Management The challenge of HR managers is to hunt for human talent and make sure the company selects the right person for the right job. Human Resource Management is much discussed in today's business world. But how well is it understood? In a world where people's competencies and skill sets are described in paragraphs rather than in a few words and where media reports of salaries make us do a double-take to ensure that seeing is indeed believing, it is becoming increasingly challenging to manage this high potential we consider as the country's asset. Over the past two decades, the world saw a complete makeover in the way Human Resource Management in organisations was defined, but in India, the change has been more prominent in the last decade or so, after liberalisation. Today, managing the expectations and motivations of a skilled workforce has brought with it attendant complexities in terms of the need for robust HR practices and organisational procedures. Earlier considered a support function for any business, HRM today is required to take on a more strategic role in order to align itself with the organisation's business strategies. Hence, the HR manager is expected to take on the mantle of a business partner along with managers of other line functions, in driving the firm's strategies.

The shift in focus from traditional HRM to strategic HRM was inevitable. Competitive advantage for an organisation lies not just in differentiating a product or service or in becoming the low cost leader but in also being able to tap the company's special skills or core competencies and rapidly respond to customer's needs and competitor's moves. HR management can play a role in identifying and analysing external opportunities and threats that may be crucial to the company's success. It is in a unique position to supply competitive intelligence that may be useful in the strategic planning process. Human Resource Accounting Over the years, some of the traditional HR practices have been revisited and analysed to evaluate their suitability in today's world. One such major practice is the concept of Human Resource Accounting (HRA). Initially, one might hesitate to accept a concept which tries to put a monetary value to human beings. How does one attach a number to a person's capabilities? However, HRA represents a way to gauge how strong and profitable an organisation's workforce is. Organisations have been claiming that their employees are their most valuable assets. The spate of downsizings and increasing job insecurity notwithstanding, the resurgence of interest in the area of HRA is perhaps testimony to this approach, where investments in human resources are now included as assets in a company's balance sheet, rather than expense heads in their profit and loss statements. The signals are clear the employee is an asset who can be groomed to bring in future profitability an asset which can define the company's image in the market today. HRA also involves accounting for investment in people and their replacement costs, as also the economic value of people in an organisation. A trend yet to catch up in the Indian industry, with a few exceptions such as

BHEL, Infosys, SBI and Reliance industries, it has been extensively embraced in the West. Competency Mapping With the growth of the industries in the `knowledge-verticals', human talent is undoubtedly the most important asset today. To make sure that a company selects the right person for the right job, and manages him/her carefully, processes like competency mapping are gaining ground. Competency mapping is a process of identifying key competencies for a particular position in an organisation, and then using it for job-evaluation, recruitment, training and development, performance management, and succession planning. In conjunction with the balanced scorecard, this can be an extremely robust tool to manage an organisation's performance. Despite the growing level of awareness, however, in India, competency development and mapping still remains in the nascent stages of implementation. As far as the HR function is concerned, the time has perhaps come where it needs to be treated as a line function with every manager having HR activities as part of his line responsibilities, rather than treating HR as a separate, supportproviding activity only. Today's manager is expected to wear multiple hats that of a leader, internal change agent, coach, counsellor, mentor in addition to his/her `technical' responsibilities. This would entail that every manager, irrespective of his/her functional area of specialisation, would have to have a thorough grounding in concepts and processes of HR. At the IIT-Madras Department of Management Studies, the curriculum followed in the HR area of specialisation reflects a response to these changing trends, where, in addition to incorporating the newest trends and best practices in the traditional HR course curriculum, newer courses in cross-cultural management, change management, and international HRM attempt to familiarise the students with new concepts.

It has become fashionable among organisations to use terms such as HRD (Human Resource Development) and HCM (Human Capital Management) as being representative of the changing trends in HR practices. Merely renaming the function is however not going to be sufficient. The need of the hour is for premier institutes such as the IIMs, IITs as well as other professional institutions to rise to the occasion and re-design their curriculum and pedagogical methods in consultation with the industry, in order to train their students to meet the changed expectations of the industry.

THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY IN INDIA: AN OVERVIEW With the largest number of life insurance policies in force in the world, Insurance happens to be

a mega opportunity in India. Its a business growing at the rate of 15-20 per cent annually and presently is of the order of Rs 1560.41 billion (for the financial year 2006 2007). Together with banking services, it adds about 7% to the countrys Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The gross premium collection is nearly 2% of GDP and funds available with LIC for investments are 8% of the GDP. Even so nearly 65% of the Indian population is without life insurance cover while health insurance and non-life insurance continues to be below international standards. A large part of our population is also subject to weak social security and pension systems with hardly any old age income security A well-developed and evolved insurance sector is needed for economic development as it provides long term funds for infrastructure development and strengthens the risk taking ability of individuals. It is estimated that over the next ten years India would require investments of the order of one trillion US dollars. PRESENT SCENARIO The life insurance industry in India grew by an impressive 47.38%, with premium income at Rs. 1560.41 billion during the fiscal year 2006-2007. Though the total volume of LIC's business increased in the last fiscal year (2006-2007) compared to the previous one, its market share came down from 85.75% to 81.91%.

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