HRMIT : Mit's Human Resource Insights

This is a step-by-step procedure for conducting a Departmental Inquiry (also known as a Domestic Inquiry) in an organization setup in India. This process must strictly follow the Principles of Natural Justice to ensure the findings stand up in a Labour Court or Tribunal. Objective: To conduct a fair and impartial inquiry into misconduct in adherence to the Principles of Natural Justice .

While the National Pension System (NPS) has been grabbing headlines with its "Multiple PRANs" update, the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has quietly executed an even larger digital transformation in late 2024 and throughout 2025.

The HR Generalist Guide – Employee Relations & Investigations Chapter 6 of The HR Generalist's Blueprint We've now entered what I think of as the messy middle of Human Resources. You've hired them, you've onboarded them, and now you actually have to manage them. Employee Relations is often the most draining part of this job, because it's where human emotion collides directly with company policy. One day you're mediating a petty argument about who keeps adjusting the office thermostat. The next, you're investigating a serious harassment claim that could genuinely put the company at risk if handled poorly. In this domain, you're not really an Employee Advocate. You're a Neutral Fact-Finder, and your job is to find the truth and protect the organization, not to take sides.

The End of Privacy: How the New Tax Bill Turns Your Phone into an Open Book While scrolling through YouTube and social media recently, I came across some of the strict new provisions and expanded powers being granted to the Income Tax Department under the new Income Tax Bill, 2025, set to take effect from FY 2026-27, starting April 1, 2026. I thought it was worth digging into properly and sharing with my network, and honestly, the more I read, the more it surprised me. The IT Department is being given powers that can effectively bypass a taxpayer's constitutional right to privacy in order to track transactions, and in the process, expose deeply personal, non-financial information, photos, chats, location history, leaving very little in the way of digital secrecy for most people.

The National Pension System (NPS) has fundamentally changed. With the introduction of the Multiple Scheme Framework (MSF) and the December 2025 PFRDA Exit Rules, the old rigid structure is gone. We now have the ability to hold Multiple PRANs (one per CRA) and exit much earlier than age 60 without the "premature exit" penalty.

The HR Generalist Guide to Offboarding – The Art of the "Good Goodbye" Chapter 5 of The HR Generalist's Blueprint We spend weeks planning how to welcome a new hire. We tend to spend only minutes planning how to say goodbye, and that imbalance is a genuine strategic mistake. How an employee leaves your company matters just as much as how they arrived. Get offboarding wrong and you're exposed on two fronts at once: a security risk, an ex-employee who still has access to sensitive data, and a reputation risk, an angry departure that ends up as a detailed review on Glassdoor within the hour. The mindset shift worth making here is that an ex-employee isn't a traitor. They're a potential customer, a future partner, or even a boomerang hire who comes back a few years wiser.

The National Pension System (NPS) has undergone its most significant overhaul since its inception. Once a rigid pension product, NPS has evolved into a highly flexible, market-linked wealth creation tool. With the introduction of the Multiple Scheme Framework (MSF) in October 2025 and the revised Exit Regulations in December 2025, subscribers now have unprecedented control over their retirement corpus. This article breaks down the fundamental concepts of NPS, the new "One Person, Multiple PRANs" architecture and the enhanced tax benefits.

The HR Generalist Onboarding Strategy – Beyond the Welcome Kit Chapter 4 of The HR Generalist's Blueprint We successfully hired a top performer in the last chapter. The work isn't done, though. If anything, the risk just went up. Roughly 20% of new hires quit within their first 45 days, and the reason usually comes down to companies confusing two very different things: Orientation and Onboarding. Orientation is a single day of signing tax forms and collecting a laptop. Onboarding is a ninety-day process of actually learning the culture, building relationships, and understanding what success looks like in the role. As the Generalist, you're the architect of that experience, and if a new hire feels lost on day one, don't be surprised when they're quietly job-hunting by day thirty.

The HR Generalist's Guide to Talent Acquisition – Finding the Right Fit Chapter 3 of The HR Generalist's Blueprint In the last chapter we built your personal toolkit. Now we point those tools at the function most people think of first when they hear "HR": bringing new people into the organization. Notice I didn't call this chapter "Recruiting." Recruiting is reactive, filling an empty chair because someone quit. Talent Acquisition is proactive, a deliberate approach to identifying, attracting, and onboarding people who move the business toward where it's actually trying to go. If you're only filling vacancies as they open up, you're already a step behind, and this chapter is about closing that gap.

The HR Generalist Toolkit – Essential Skills for Survival Chapter 2 of The HR Generalist's Blueprint In the last chapter we defined your identity as the Swiss Army Knife of the business. But a knife is only as useful as it is sharp, so this chapter opens the toolkit and looks honestly at the specific competencies you need to actually survive in the role. Being an HR Generalist demands an odd combination of brainpower: you need to be soft enough to comfort a crying employee in the morning and hard enough to negotiate a vendor contract by the afternoon. That duality is exactly what makes the job difficult, and exactly what makes it matter.

The HR Generalist Foundations – The "Swiss Army Knife" of Business Chapter 1 of The HR Generalist's Blueprint Every lasting structure begins with a blueprint. You can't frame the walls or hang the roof until the foundation is poured and set, and this chapter is that foundation. Before we get into the specific tools of the trade, we need to sit with the strange, multi-dimensional nature of the role itself. If you ask ten different people in your company what an HR Generalist actually does, you'll get ten different answers. The Sales Manager thinks you recruit his team. The CEO thinks you protect the company from lawsuits. The Accountant thinks you manage payroll data. The junior employee thinks you're the person to complain to when their boss is being unfair. Every one of them is right, and every one of them is only seeing a slice.

The wage structure of a Cooperative Organization is often a historical relic, built over decades of settlements, circulars, and gentleman's agreements. While it provided stability in the past, today it faces a dual threat: the strict legal mandate of the Code on Wages 2019 and the existential need to shift the culture from Entitlement to Performance. This article breaks down the transformation journey into distinct steps, moving from the current legacy traps to a legally compliant, performance driven future.

Most Human Resource departments make the mistake of using a single performance appraisal format for the entire organization. In a Dairy Union, this approach is disastrous. A standard corporate appraisal form focusing on leadership, communication, and soft skills is irrelevant for a Boiler Operator or a Veterinary Route Officer. To measure true value, the appraisal system must be split into two distinct frameworks that mirror the operational realities of the field and the plant.

Manpower planning in a standard manufacturing setup (like automobiles or textiles) is linear: production targets determine headcount. In a Dairy Union, manpower planning is volatile because the raw material—milk—is highly perishable and seasonal. A staffing shortage of just four hours doesn't just delay production; it leads to spoiled milk, financial loss, and FSSAI compliance issues. Therefore, HR for dairy plant operations demands a dynamic, data-driven approach to staffing and skill assessment.

Human Resource Management in a District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union (Dairy Union) is fundamentally different from a typical corporate setup. Unlike a factory that controls its raw material, a Dairy Union relies on hundreds of thousands of farmers organized into Village Dairy Cooperative Societies (VDCS). This creates a unique HR challenge: the organization is split into three distinct operational silos- Field (Procurement), Plant (Production) and Corporate (Admin). A standard HR structure fails here because the competencies required for a Veterinary Doctor in the field are vastly different from a Boiler Operator in the plant.

Let's address the elephant in the room. We spend months finding the perfect candidate. We fight with Finance for the budget. We endure the excruciating notice period. They join, we mark the requisition as 'Closed,' and we finally breathe. Then, 60 days later, before they’ve even figured out who approves their leave, I get that dreaded email: 'I don't think this is the right fit. I resign.'

When we attend seminars on the new Labour Codes consultants often present the 50% Basic Rule as a simple mathematical adjustment. They say that if the Basic is low we should simply reduce the Allowance and increase the Basic Pay to solve the problem. This advice assumes that salary structures are flexible. For private companies they are. But for Cooperatives, Federations and PSUs this advice is not just useless because it is dangerous.

Lately whenever I discuss the upcoming Labour Codes with my HR colleagues and Senior Managers the reaction is almost always the same. There is a genuine concern that this change is going to bleed the organization dry. Many HR professionals and business leaders worry about higher PF and higher Gratuity liability and feel the Government has just given everything to the employees. When you look at the 50% Basic Rule the immediate impact on the balance sheet is undeniable. The cost of employment is going up.

The implementation of India's four new Labour Codes has been a topic of speculation for years.  While the Parliament passed the Codes (the Acts) back in 2019 and 2020,  recent updates suggest that the  Draft Rules  which operationalize these laws are currently under the framework stage and are expected to be ready for implementation around  April 2026 . This creates a unique "Twilight Zone" for HR professionals:  The laws are passed,  but not yet effective.

Many are in a dilemma regarding what should be included in "Wages" and what should not. To eliminate all doubts, we are presenting this article to decode the definitions and the math behind the Code on Wages, 2019. The most critical change in the new labour codes is the definition of "Wages." It is no longer just "Basic Pay." The law now draws a strict line between "Total Remuneration" (what you pay the employee) and "Wages" (the amount used to calculate PF and Gratuity).