IS Your HR all HR?

Building an effective HR department is more than you thought and ever attempted. To get a sense of how wrong you'd been all along, ask for a tour of HR departments of companies your admire and be prepared to get surprised. They don't comprise of HR professionals alone, the senior you go you'd find even lesser of them, in my last week visit to a top corporate, I met top two layers of HR department fully comprising of non-HR executives, in fact all techies :)

 Single most reason for such a mix is clearly a need for HR department to play leading role in business goals achievement, which may not be an HR expertise area considering the kind of education HR undertakes at B'school and their limited think connect with strategy formulation. Most of early years of HR professionals are spent in operational, downline rigor like calling candidates, coordinating interviews, processing attendance or putting together training facility and logistics. Limited participation of top management, specially the entrepreneur or CEO in driving HR function eventually leads to isolation of HR teams from business strategy, resulting in HR experience being devoid of think capacity development. So a 10 years experience professional would have done more of execution rather than thinking and planning.

 Let's see what all might be needed as expertise in your HR capabilities. Understanding of business modeling, commercial modeling, key business drivers and key accountabilities. Ability to create people budgets to achieve business plans, determine key influencing factors for talent as per competitive landscape, devise key initiatives and programs to achieve competitive advantage. Create clear actionable operational plan to attract, retain and develop talent in line with 3 to 5 year business plan. Ability to drive communication programs, media plan and content for engaging with talent both inside and outside the company. Ability to listen and continuously evaluate work place relevance to team members.

 It's very clear that you are unlikely to find HR professionals who would carry such capabilities, not that the an't any; there ain't enough. So creating a multifunctional HR function is a good way to develop an efficient, business focussed HR. It would also contribute to leadership pipeline development in the organization just like any other cross functional movement.

 Not all is lost for those who have an all HR department, you can begin with some cross functional training for your HR, it may take long but it's the right direction. By the way when was last that you sent your HR for training :)

 

Tagged Entrepreneurship HR Hiring Human resources Motivation Organization Organization culture Team building Workplace performance

Slowdown can get you more garbage

So three months into slowdown now, have you started getting brilliant people easily in your company. I am not surprised if your answer is no. If I ask, have you seen clear sign on better performance from new, improved employees who are joining now and your answer is no, I am not surprised again.
There's something so fundamental about attracting & engaging talent that market conditions seldom play significant role here. You have to answer one simple question, "why should someone join your company" and this question remains valid as long as the number of workplaces in the world do not shrink down to one.
So in absence of this answer, it would remain a challenge to attract & engage talent. Do not mistake attracting & engaging talent with hiring, so may still be able to hire. But its highly expensive to run the company with just hired employees and not the "attracted & engaged" ones. The behavior of engaged employees is very very different from the hired ones and most of the time when you are complaining about your employees its this difference that you are talking about.
So lemme add a few pointers about how you can try to build attraction:
1. Its a no brainer that if you can contruct a clear strong core purpose around your business existence, nothing attracts better. NGOs, Revolutionaries use this always.
2. You can be bigger than your competitor thus can offer people learning, training, handholding, bigger team, clear growth path....or you can be smallere than your competitor thus can offer them flexibility, multitasking opportunity, nearness to top management, less hierarchy etc.
3. You can be easy to reach office, fewer day's work office, no-office, fun office, open office, food at office, green-office, garage-office, but it must be attractive for one reason or other.
4. Again a no-brainer, talented people would expect you to know your numbers right and if your numbers seem too less for even their ambitions, they may not get attracted. When was the last time you got excited because someone was a chasing a business idea that could get as big as Rs.10 Lakh.
These are just thought triggers, point is, you must find answer to "why should someone work for you" to be able to attract talent. Is that enough? I am not sure, but its the essential. Till then keep hiring :)
Tagged Entrepreneurship Hiring Motivation Organization culture Talent Team building

HR in the Times of Slowdown

Slowdown may not be all that bad for organizations if they retain the balance to pull out all those quadrant two items that never saw daylight during long period of growth.


Here’s a list of things that HR departments may want to run through;

1. Take time from CEO and run through manpower plan just in case it was given to you before mid-September 2008.

2. If you’re still hiring, take a hard look at salary structures that you’d offer. You’ll be surprised how much de-risking you can do for your organization now.

3. Offer a salary correction rather than raise at interview. Remember if all assets were over valued, so was human asset and there is no reason that later shouldn’t get corrected. My guess is 20 – 25% correction is a fare call.

4. Functions where deliverables can be easily measured, keep performance linkages to payouts. You can provide for higher payouts on better performance considering value of high performance during slowdown can be much more than usual days.

5. It’s a great time to test senior management commitments, propose a salary cut. Up to 15% salary cut doesn’t hurt anyone’s lifestyle at senior level.

6. While you look at costs, please note that cutting a few cups of tea may not impact costs much but can cause discomfort to large part of the team, so avoid high visibility low impact calls.

7. This is a great time to bring everyone’s attention to performance. Leaders can inspire people to deliver unexpected performances in tough times. This has been seen during wars, natural calamities time and again.

8. Lastly do not stop smiling, playing, movies, rewards, recognitions. Interact with teams regularly and in high spirits. Listen to some Bob Dylan...times they are a changin... :)

Tagged Economic Slowdown Employees Entrepreneurship Human resources Management Performance Management Team building

HR can build a business

So I am at it again, professing the role of HR as one that builds business right from the core rather than playing people charmer in organizations. In most of our start-up accounts, we have started realizing that one of the severe limitations founders have here is their inability to put discipline in most of their initiatives. So you have a business desire with very little plan, you have hiring ambition with very little form filling, organization structure that resembles flow of neurons in their head and business ideas that move like Amoeba.

One significant contribution that plugHR team seems to be making at these places is forcing discipline across levels. Need to make a manpower plan is forcing founders to write their business plans. Policy structure document is making neurons work overtime and we have tried to save the organization from ever changing Amoeba. Can't say we've succedded all along, but attempting is pretty much half way through.

So when start-up goes on overdrive, you better have plugHR on the navigator seat :)

Tagged Business Corporate Entrepreneurship HR Management Organization Scaling up

The Economic Times High Flier talks of plugHR

The Economic Times on 25th December featured plugHR in its "High Flier" section while talking about "Out of the Box Successes". Article also highlighted the entrepreneurial spirit and courage displayed by plugHR CEO in letting go the high paying job opportunities in order to chase his ambition of creating something on his own out of scratch.

Here is the article copied and pasted below verbatim:

PLUGGED GLORY

Working in the telecom sector, post a degree from Symbiosis, specialising in marketing, basically means that your life is set for the next decade or so. And when other leading MNCs come to you and offer you a better job on a platter, would you jump to take it or ponder over it and refuse the job offer so that you can start something on your own? Prashant Bhaskar decided he rather take a chance then sit in a cubicle and work under someone. “It was during my early tenures, many CEOs and HR professionals expressed the need of grappling with the task of hiring and holding people. I realised that while hiring had got enough attention, there wasn’t much help available around holding people. It seemed like an untapped business opportunity and I got down to creating products around this,” recalls Prashant Bhaskar, Founder & CEO, plugHR. Starting something completely out of one’s skin seems like a difficult job. Though Bhaskar could have opted for any job he wanted, he decided against it. He says working under someone else doesn’t really allow one to innovate, take risk and attempt exceptional rewards. Does Bhaskar miss applying his educational knowledge at work? He disagrees, “Education is never a waste. I do not regret not taking those high paying jobs as I felt that I served my ambition.”

Tagged Ambition Career Entrepreneurship HR Jobs Motivation