Thursday, February 18, 2010

Wipro employee commits $4 Million fraud

Bangalore: IT major Wipro has tightened internal control in the finance division after it was noticed that one of its employees embezzled crores of rupees in the last three years. The employee, who was working in the 'controllership' division within the finance department in the last three years, stole a password and transferred funds from Wipro's account at a bank, reports M.V. Ramsurya and Pankaj Mishra of Economic Times.
Suresh C Senapaty, Wipro's CFO has also confirmed the incident. "This has been a case of embezzlement, which we discovered in December, and it's very unfortunate that this person succumbed to this," he said. According to him, the company has carried out an investigation and is undertaking actions with respect to stricter adherence to processes.Following this, Wipro has disbanded the controllership unit. Wipro officials have succeeded in recovering about half the money, but will still face a loss of about $2 million. The CFO said the incident did not involve more than one Wipro employee. "Our investigations have revealed that only this employee was involved, and nobody else in the team had any clue," Senapaty said. Apart from setting up an internal investigation team, Wipro has also taken help from external auditors and investigation experts who will vet its processes and certify the soundness of its controls. Wipro has always taken pride in the sound work ethics of its employees and in the strictness of its controls. "We have to be more alert in monitoring, and we need to tighten the processes for ensuring an early warning system and make it tougher," Senapaty said.Now, Wipro plans to make it compulsory for its employees to sign an undertaking about sharing of passwords and any unauthorized transactions. The company is also planning to frequently rotate its employees, who are working in sensitive functions within the finance department. Currently, employees in such functions spend around three years before a transfer.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Top 10 mistakes that bosses make

Bangalore: Calling the boss H - Hitler, A - Arrogant, R - Rascal and I - Idiot caught everyone's attention in Naukri's TV commercial, would you do the same if given an opportunity? Even though it was just an advertisement, it did reflect the plight of employees in the IT industry. After receiving interesting comments on "10 reasons why people quit jobs in IT industry", we decided to take it a step further to analyze what exactly is going wrong. We conducted a survey to find out top ten mistakes that even good managers and bosses make.

So I am listing below the top ten mistakes which are very common amongst bosses.

1 - Micro-management
Sometimes when bosses assign work to an employee they don't completely trust that employee will be capable of completing the work. They underestimate the ability of the people they hire and end up offending the employee. "According to me, the number one mistake is, not effectively identifying the strengths of the employee, thereby micro managing or not delegating or not trusting the employee's judgment. A good boss is one who brings out the best in the employee," says Sharda Balaji, Founder of NovoJuris Services.

2 - Using improper mode of communication
Some bosses have this weird sense that since they are boss they should order people around and create a military kind of environment. They feel the stricter the things are the better things are organized. If an employee is late for some deadline, then the boss starts labeling the work or the employee himself.

3 - Leading through intimidation
This is one of the worst kind of mistake that bosses make. They feel that if an employee is threatened to work they will perform better. What the boss does not realize is that employee under such pressure end up losing interest in work and will meet the deadline just for the heck of it. Such employees then would only do what is asked from them and will never happily give hundred percent to do something good for the company.

4 - Lacking empathy for employee's situation
There are sometimes when employees do make excuses to take leave or when they come late. But not every reason is an excuse. Bosses end up thinking that their employees are always making excuses and do not showing any consideration for employee's situation

5 - Becoming inaccessible to your employees
An employee wants to contact his boss for something important but he is busy with other things and does not give any weightage to employee's problem and hence he is scared to approach his bosss.

"I have had some experiences at one of the company I worked with, where the manager was just not approachable and accessible. I could not expect any kind of guidance from him. It would not be wrong if I say that he was too busy caught with meetings (not accessible). He was also not approachable at the same time because of bad temperament and everything depended on his mood," said Prashant Honnavar, who is a Manager of HR at NextBiT Computing.

6 - Not providing guidance or motivating employees
An employee should always have something to look forward to. A good manager knows how to motivate employees to make them perform better but for this they have to spend some time with their team. In today's IT work environment many of the managers have no time to spend with the team due to day long meetings. As a result they miss out on understanding a team member's problem at work and providing the right support and solutions for the same. Failing to support and understanding a team member will lead to recipe of resignation. A manager should always have the practice of having one on one to know more about the team member, and then provide right feedback at the same time to motivate with the right attitude.

7 - Not providing a clear picture - Transparency
Many times work is assigned by bosses to employees without clearly telling them the complete picture. Boss should always maintain transparency with their employee to make them understand what exactly they are doing. "If bosses start informing their team about the correct scenarios and maintain transparency about a project, then the employees will work more willingly and meeting the deadline will no longer be a concern of the boss alone," said Juilee Joshi, who worked as a Technical Support analyst at BMC software.


8 - Insecurity about their post
Some bosses prefer to do things alone rather than taking teams help as they are unsecure that someone will provide better solution, and thus they get a sense of insecurity about their post. "There is something unique about Indian bosses. They get this superiority complex about their position and I fail to understand why. There are many extremely capable folks who like to remain in the 'individual contributors' role because they do not enjoy people management," said Balaji. "You can deal with an egoistic boss, a demanding boss, an impatient boss... but the worst kind is the one who is insecure."

9 - Trying to be friend as well as boss or showing partiality
This is the trickiest part of the boss-employee relationship. Some of the bosses try to maintain a perfect balance between professionalism and friendship but it does not always work well for the company. Employees might become lenient in submitting at deadline or boss might start expecting too much from employees since they are good friend as well.

Another part of this equation can be showing partiality or favoring certain employees over others which create negative vibes in the team.

10 - Making fake promises
In order to motivate employees many time managers make fake promises of promotion or goodies but when the time comes they just stall it. This de-motivates an employee a great deal and might backfire badly on the company.

There are many other mistakes that bosses commit but we felt that these are the top ten reasons. You may think differently and have your own reasons. We would like to hear the top mistakes that your boss makes. Do let us know.

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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

FIRST FILM ON DADASAHEB PHALKE :: "HARISHCHANDRACHI FACTORY" :: GETS OFFICIAL-ENTRY TO 'THE OSCARS'










HURRAH !!! Finally, a film that re-lives the struggle that the Father of Indian Cinema went through to realize his first film - Raja Harishchandra in 1913. Director Paresh Mokashi's debut in Marathi ...







Monday, February 1, 2010

urmila dhangar winner of the 2009-10 Idea Sa re ga ma pa


SaReGaMaPa 2010 zee marathi on 31st January 2010
True to the saying that music knows no language and transcends all boundaries, for the first time, two of the three finalists of the music reality show, 'Marathi Sa Re Ga Ma', are non-Maharashtrians.

While finalist Abhilasha Chelam is a Tamilan, Rahul Saxena is a north Indian. The only Marathi in the fray is Urmila Dhangar, from Badlapur on the outskirts of Mumbai.

Sharing their experience with PTI, both Abhilasha and Rahul admitted that though initially Marathi was all "Latin and Greek" to them, now they have fallen in love with the language.

"I had auditioned for the show just memorizing seven Marathi songs," said Abhilasha, who moved to Mumbai a year ago.

"However, as we furthered in the show, thanks to our research team, now I know lot more Marathi songs with their meaning," she said adding, "I am impressed with the language."

Our research team used to explain its meaning, the conditions in which it was recorded, and the situation in which it was filmed in the movie, Abhilasha added.

Rahul, who came to Mumbai seven years ago, said, "I was always attracted to Marathi songs and culture. I used to sing Marathi songs on casual basis. Now that I understand its meaning, it all the more fun," he said

Rahul is a winner of Golden Voice Hunt of 'Hindi Sa Re Ga Ma' and a finalist of Indian Idol while Abhilasha too had participated in Voice of India.

After participating in 'Marathi Sa Re Ga Ma', now both are interested in making their careers in Marathi playback. "For sure, I want a career in Marathi playback," Rahul said.

Besides playback, Abhilasha has other plans too. "Once the show is over, I want to go to Chennai to learn Carnatic music. Besides this, I also want to take up playback project including those in Marathi," Abhilasha said.

Meanwhile, unfazed by any competition is the Marathi girl Urmila who believes in the saying that "let the best man win."

"All three of us are working hard. There is a healthy competition. But there would be only one winner. And everybody wants that he or she should win," Urmila said in a lighter vein.

The winner of the show, which is decided on SMS-based voting and marks by judges, Avdhoot Gupte and Salil Kulkarni, would be declared on January 31.