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

Alone and Together - distributed work model

May be to plugHR it came naturally, I realized only through other's observations that our corporate team wasn't really sitting close. I brave Mumbai, our India operations Head stays firm in the seat of power at New Delhi, advocacy manager hangs down south in Hyderabad and Head of Brand shuttles through Mumbai, Kolkata and New York.

It works really well for us and having worked like this for over three years now, I am tempted to share it as a well tested model. Rather than giving it a fancy jargon that could then do the rounds in HR circles like omnipresent beblades, I've called it "Alone & Together" model. Let me jump straight to the merits.

The A&T (thats just the short form, not a jargon...come on...) model is based on the premise that being alone allows for higher concentration, flexibility & creativity to be deployed at work, apart from getting less disturbed by the presence of others. Moreover, one is less likely to get drawn into unplanned operational mundanity (overlook the vocab invention). Members structure routine and work styles the way it works best for them and each achieves more.

Does that make the team any less together, naaah. With all kind of things popping up the lappi, you can't be more closer. Skype, Twitter, Facebook, BB messenger make sure that I can sense team members facial expressions, count their coffees and sometime even wake them up from afternoon siesta. We don't even miss meetings (the favorite corporate passtime), thanks to sabsebolo.com and the likes.

Its amazing to realize how some of these tools have made us all pretty much at work almost always and being at a particular place (erstwhile known as office) to be able to begin work has become distant memory. Did I say begin work? Well can't say even that exists anymore, the ends have blurred, work and life both simulcast around but for the time we sleep.

But that was before Inception became so believable ..... ahh, let me catch sleep while lines blur further... you got the model right?

Tagged Corporate HR Human resources Leadership Management Organization Performance Management Training Workplace plugHR

SMEs offer great experience - do they?

Last month, I attended two efforts around understanding human resource’s resistance towards working with small & medium industry. First as a panelist at SME mentoring session put together by Dare & Dell at Bangalore and more recently at SME roundtable held at WE School Mumbai. Incidentally while two forums were slightly different in their participation and agenda, I could see a common pattern emerging.

In both, amidst lot of democratic distribution of knowledge & sympathy, I could sense a somewhat frustrated cry from SMEs around the fact that professionals including fresh MBAs do not like to join SMEs. In Bangalore discussion, MNCs were blamed for bringing this curse on Indian SMEs while in Mumbai, way and means were being discussed to push young MBAs by force into SME workplaces.

There was talk abound, of the great work experience that awaits professionals once they join SMEs.

Somehow, I hold a slightly different view and I did raise it in both the forums but may be I couldn’t say it enough. So here it is once again.

Let’s for a moment look at a typical SME set up that one can see, on any bad day walking through some by-lane of Andheri East in Mumbai. The workplace would for sure look far from inviting and one can be almost certain to be greeted by a rude, smelly, cluttered reception. If you feel thirsty or get nature’s call, you can rest assured to catch an infection without much effort. Imagine how motivating this workplace would be for professionals to come in every day and gain that valuable experience.

Now, in most cases, during interview not much would be told about the role & career progressions, in fact the whole discussion might revolve around how part of money would be based on performance. If you expect that you’d be told about performance parameters, you’re being a typical MBA. Your interviewer may not have any idea about what kind of targets exit in business plan; in fact business plan itself might not exist.

If you join, don’t expect good appointment letters, Induction is a joke and training – you are supposed to have taken during MBA.

Now frankly, I haven’t met many young MBAs who would have slogged to get through a competitive exam and then read best of management work through two years, dreaming about a career opportunity at an SME of the kind I just helped visualize above. So my take is that rather than focusing on hiring MBAs, SMEs would do well to sponsor few of their existing employees to evening education and they’d do well by joining one such class themselves.

I am not saying that SMEs do not offer good experience, may be they do, but you can’t figure that out in absence of any communication around it. Also absence of basics and indulgence of top management in mundane stuff completely gets professionals wondering how long will the ship sail; it doesn’t sink you’d say but remember the experience of turbulence during flights; now imagine traveling like that all through.

SMEs must look inside and focus on turning themselves bit more attractive to be able to attract talent. Blaming MNCs or blaming MBAs for getting attracted to great workplaces won’t help. Good news is that its not all that impossible but that’s for another day….....

Tagged Business HR Hiring Human resources MBA Management SMB SME 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