A Healthy Workforce is the Key to Run a Profitable Business

In developing markets, especially in India, companies have had a tendency to focus on illness rather than wellness. This is despite the fact that issues of absenteeism, and presenteeism, have assumed alarming proportions,thus causing a negative impact on bottom lines. A predominantly sedentary lifestyle is resulting in high levels of stress, physical illness and low levels of productivity.
What evolved employers realize is that a healthy workforce is key to running a profitable business. Physical and mental health is critical to improving the top and bottom line. Leadership is responsible for profitability and a critical way to increase it is by protecting and providing for their most important asset - human capital.
Companies should focus on providing a simple, fun and relevant solution to maintain and establish a healthier and happier lifestyle - this gives employees who do not enjoy regimented exercise schedules, an opportunity to invest in their health. It was recently reported that almost 65 per cent of young adults in India have blood pressure within the prehypertensive and hypertensive range, and 60 pert cent of Indian companies have no strategy in place to ensure the good health of their employees.
Until recently, employer-initiated wellness programmes commonly included having a gymnasium in the office premises, with perhaps a couple of posters near the elevators to encourage employees to take the stairs instead. Organisations that value their employers are the ones that will invest in their employees' well-being: they are helping employees maintain a good work-life balance and, as a result, helping the employees deliver better performance. 

Stories of Successful Entrepreneurs

Stories of Successful Entrepreneurs – 3

Most Inspiring female entrepreneur of our time

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw



Kiran Mazumdar-shaw is an Indian business women. She is the Founder chairman and Managing Director of Biocon Limited, a biotechnology company situated in Bengaluru, India.
She was born on March 23,1953 in Bangalore, India. Shaw completed her graduation in Zoology from Mount Carmel College, Bangalore University. She completed her post-graduation in Malting and Brewing from Ballarat College, Melbourne University.
She worked as a trainee brewer in Carlton and United Breweries, Melbourne and as a trainee master at Barrett Brothers and Burston, Australia.
She started Biocon in the garage of her rented house in Bangalore in 1978 and spearheaded its evolution from an industrial enzymes manufacturing company to a fully integrated bio-pharmaceutical company.
Today Biocon under Shaw’s leadership has established itself as a leading player in bio medicine research with a focus on diabetes and oncology.
Her pioneering work in the sector has earned her several awards, including the prestigious Padma Shri (1989) and the Padma Bhushan (2005) from the government of India. She was recently named among TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. She is on the Forbes list of the world’s 100 most powerful women and the Financial Times’ top 50 women in business list.

Firing: A Tough Jo

A severance package requires careful consideration and when the employer has any intention of replacing the employee, these actions cast a question mark on the employer’s credibility. There often comes a point in the employer-employee relationship, where the relationship of the employer and the employee begins to sour and distances start to become larger. Always get a second opinion on a problematic employee situation – this goes a long way to prevent any termination decisions that are made out of anger or frustration. It is important to remember that you’re only human and it is entirely possible that a frustrating employee may cloud your judgment. Terminating any of your employees is never a pleasant task, your company should always avoid the employment landmines during the termination process. Even if you have a rapport and sympathy attached with the employee to be terminated, keep in mind that in most cases, firing them will make things worse. One should not expect that this type of conversation will be easy, or even necessarily to go well. One should go into this conversation with a positive attitude, but should be prepared for the employee to become disgruntled or defensive, this preparation will help to keep him cool throughout this difficult conversation. If you can keep this process consistent and in line with previously stated guidelines, all parties involved will benefit. The step of the termination process should never be overlooked. You and your business can’t afford to overlook any potentially harmful legal situations. This may seem obvious but, in the heat of the moment, self-control is paramount. A cooling-off period may not change one’s mind, but it will provide time to evaluate the decision and plan the termination. This idea would be better if one doesn't sugar coat or frame the conversation in a way that reflects anything but the truth. A well thought out termination can provide you and the employee with a clean slate moving forward. There are some points which should be considered when firing like determining if there is an ability problem or an attitude problem and the actual reason why an applicant left a former position because employees have a right to know what the consequences of their actions are. Remember that ability problems can be solved but Attitude problems are more difficult to deal with.

Hiring: A Big Responsibility

Reading people isn’t quite as easy as reading cards. A good employee is almost always worth a big bet; they are like the pocket aces of the poker world. If someone is good enough to find one, do what one needs to do to get them on board and keep them engaged. One of the most common mistakes that leads to failure involves hiring too many employees or too often. The hiring process is complex and should never be approached without proper consideration.

The journey starts with the hiring; most ideal situation can be stressful, but there should be a hope for the future of a potential employee. Good employers lead by example.  Promoting and motivating can be the valuable ways to build a robust workforce and motivate your employees to succeed. It would be positive step if one sets the tone early on and is consistent, will definitely create a working environment where employees will feel like they can work hard and thrive. Sometimes firing employees is not due their poor performance, but rather your own poor decision-making and understanding. The situations when you need to hire an employee are when you don’t have the skills and expertise to do a job, when it will cost you more to do the job yourself than to hire someone else to do it and when you hate doing a task that must be done. Hold all employees to the same standard and the best way to ensure you are treating all employee behavior equally is to have some sort of accountability.
Realistically, consider the high cost of turnover in personnel. It would be great if one checks on references and verify past experience listed of the employees and identifies the short-range and long-range personal and professional objectives. Betting large is a good thing, but only if you’ve taken the steps to figure out what kind of hand you’re holding.

A step by Government of India

It is critical that it is leveraged well through innovative initiatives. The Government has taken several very proactive steps to encourage entrepreneurship. We await to see how the implementation of some of these initiatives is going to be planned, especially the plans of start-up fund corpus. In order to create a conducive eco-system for the venture capital in this sector it is proposed to establish a 10,000crore fund to act as a catalyst to attract private Capital by way of providing different type of capital for start-up companies.” A “District level Incubation and Accelerator Programme” would be taken up for incubation of new ideas and providing necessary support for accelerating entrepreneurship. The proposed outlays for start-up funds and enabling processes for different categories of the population and industry sectors are a welcome initiative.
The government deserves to be commended for addressing the funding needs of upcoming entrepreneurs. The Rs. 10,000crore venture capital fund for start-ups is a great beginning for the financial architecture of small and medium-sized enterprises as they can be referred as the backbone of the economy. A fund, if structured well, could create the much needed ‘real early-stage’ funding support that start-ups in India need today and play a strong role in creating a much more seamlessly integrated funding mechanism as also in helping mature the funding ecosystem for start-ups. However, allocating money, being very positive signal, is only one of the key challenges in realizing the benefits from a start-up fund. The quality in the implementation of the fund, the government’s structure, the knowledge, professionalism and experience of the funding committees will all determine the quality and scale of outcomes and impact from this initiative. Private investors are ready to invest three times that of Government of India. Something similar will have to be implemented to make the fund efficacious. As in the fund, the participation of the key stakeholders would be critical to make the best of these proposals.
Additionally, another major challenge in the ecosystem is the ability of large numbers of entrepreneurs to access high-quality mentoring and training in order to grow their skills to tackle start up challenges. And some adequate and systematic efforts are required to tackle this gap if we expect that the fund would have a high-quality pipeline of entrepreneurs. However, India still ranks low in ease of starting up and doing business, as multiple registrations and clearances are required. A single window clearance mechanism would be a great step. We would be leveraging half of India’s population that has tremendous potential for significant contribution to the country’s GDP.
Then there are impact start-ups that work on solving social problems through entrepreneurship. These are different aspects requiring a large patient capital with a longer return horizon and some outright grant as seed capital. The actual value is embedded in how the programs will be implemented to suit the needs of each group. But the announcement of the fund is a step in the right direction since India’s economic future lies in creating millions and millions of jobs for the aspirational youth.
Additionally, the exit regulations and compliance for start-ups is immense. Any type simplification is welcome and will hugely benefit start-ups that are struggling to set up businesses and struggling to exit if they have failed. So this would pave way for easier “exits” for start-ups and smoother life after exits to entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneur as a problem solver

Basically entrepreneurship means a problem solving ability and an entrepreneur is a problem solver. Entrepreneurs are sometimes said as a businessmen which is quite true, They are the one who organize a business by utilizing the resources. Not only in our India but into all over the world there are many successful entrepreneurs who have been started their business from a very low level but today they are one of the most popular entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is like an art, which comes from the heart. Some people misunderstands that without knowledge entrepreneurship is like “to chew iron pellets” which is spurious. Because the most important thing for being an entrepreneur is to take decision. No doubt life is full of risk but without taking risk we can’t even go one better. And once you have taken a decision everything will come in a flow. And very well said that “ You may be dishearten if you fail but, you will be dead as alive if you don’t try”.

Entrepreneurship and your Future

Today everyone Is concerned about their future. When it comes to  future people find ways to earn money to secure their future, in this race some of them want to be an engineer, a doctor, banker, teacher etc.  What about an entrepreneur????

Entrepreneurship will lead you towards a bright future, the only need is of your decision, determination and your risk taking ability. Won’t it be so good if you are not bounded to do anything, you are your own boss. No one to tell you if you are not coming to your office at time, many employees are working according to you. Yeah!! It is possible if you are an entrepreneur. But in today’s scenario many people are not entering to this path, some of the reasons are as following  :

1.       Lack of motivation

2.       Parental pressure

3.       Lack of determination

4.       Fear to take risks

Basically an entrepreneur is a businessman, but we can’t address a businessman as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur is the one who  doesn’t stay at one place only but expands his business always. An entrepreneur will always be an entrepreneur, no one can stop him.