Inventory Management Techniques

The term inventory derives from the French word inventaire and the Latin word inventariom which simply means a list of things which are found. The term inventory includes materials which are in raw form, or are in process, in the finished packaging, spares and the others which are stocked in order to meet all the unexpected demands or distribution in the future. This term usually refers to the stock at hand at a particular period of time of all those materials which are in raw form, those goods which are in progress of manufacture, all the finished products, merchandise purchased products for resale of those products, tangible products which can be seen, touched, measured or are countable. In a connection with the financial statements and records of accounting, the reference may be to the amount assigned to the stock or the pile of goods owned by an enterprise at a Continue reading

Employee Turnover – Meaning, Causes and Effects

In today’s highly dynamic commercial work, it is becoming a challenge for job-seekers to find jobs that best fit their personality, and for employers to hire the right people who can do the job and also integrate well into the company culture. Failure to overcome this issue can be resulted in high turnover of employees. Employee turnover is a part of normal business activity; whereby employees come and go as their life situations change. Most employers realize this and, indeed, large firms typically have entire departments devoted to the management of human resources in order to make the transition as easy as possible for both management and employee and to minimize the associated hiring and training costs. Employee turnover is a ratio comparison of the number of employees a company must replace in a given time period to the average number of total employees. A huge concern to most companies, Continue reading

Challenges Faced by the Indian Outsourcing Industry

Though Indian outsourcing industry boast of a large pool of talent, low labor costs, excellent telecommunication infrastructure, a relatively mature domestic IT industry, an active industry association, quality certifications unmatched in the world and more, but it faces massive challenges which need to be overcome. The major challenges being faced by the outsourcing industry in India can be classified into internal and external challenges. The internal challenges include shortage of competent managers for the middle and senior management and the high attrition rates. The external challenge is in the form of opposition from the US politicians and the UK labor unions against shifting of the operations by local companies to India. The threat of real competition from other players like Philippines also exists, but doesn’t seem to need our immediate attention. There is an importance and value attached to the ‘people’ aspect in this service industry. The fact that this Continue reading

The Model Grievance Procedure

A grievance is a complaint by an employee that something in the management’s behavior has breached his or her employment rights and that he or she is unhappy about it. It may be real or it may be the result of a misconception or a misunderstanding. Managing grievance is, however, primarily a line manager’s responsibility. In this line managers require help, advice support and expertise from the employee relations procedures and training line managers to operate these procedures in a fair, reasonable and consist manager. Employee grievances are an outward expression of worker dissatisfaction which, if not resolved can result in unsatisfactory work behavior which has adverse consequences for the organization’s competitive position. An important aspect of grievance machinery is the reassurance given to an individual employee by the mere fact that there is a mechanism available to him which will consider his grievance in a dispassionate and detached manner, Continue reading

The Principle of Equity in Taxation

Taxation traces its origin to the ancient times as a major source of revenue needed for governance. Kingdoms, monarchies and even dynasties had an elaborate form of taxation imposed on their subjects to source funds that were used to run affairs of the government. These taxes were subjective and biased depending on those in power. Advancement in education led to important studies on the possible forms of taxation that reflected the aspirations and welfare of the people. Owing to this therefore, Adam Smith, accredited as the “Father of modern political Economy” carried out an extensive study in Public Finance seeking to give an in-depth analysis of taxation. Smith documented the findings in his book known as “Wealth of Nations” in 1776. It is in this book that Smith scripted the four maxims of taxation which were later globally adopted as the Canons of Taxation which are summarized as Equity, Certainty, Continue reading

Developing Self-Management Skills

Sometimes we believe our environment is responsible for our mood. For example, some people are troubled when it rains, and blame it for affecting their temper. Others have an early morning mood when they “get out of the wrong side of the bed.” Others are troubled by the shortness of winter days…..And yet others need alcohol etc to feel okay. A very common way people express themselves to describe the impact of this external environment is by using a technical metaphor, such as: “He just knows how to push my buttons,” “It’s a grim day,” “What a depressing environment,” “When they do such and such a thing, they make me mad!” However, when you ask apparently absurd questions, such as: “How interesting, where is your buttons? What shape are they? How many have you got? You get very interesting results….. Indeed such questions enable people to realize that these “buttons” Continue reading