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

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

Verdasco won, you didn't notice may be

First one to realize was Nadal himself. He jumped over the net to hug one of the best player I saw this season, Verdasco made Nadal sweat it out for every point for some 5 hours finally double serving the match into the net. If not a winner he's no loser either, this was probably the best Tennis of the tournament.

World loves the underdog and there's so much support for anyone who tries hard. Scenarios in organizations is no different. While there is so much hue and cry about organizations focus on training, its interesting to see that very few people actually try harder. While employees want the perks, lifestyle and recognition of a Nadal, they do not want to sweat it out for 5 hours. Fact remains that for those who try harder, there is no dearth of support and encouragement from organizations, even companies want new winners, more winners.

To turn into a winner is tough, even attempting to win is tougher, no one else can make you one, not even your organization no matter how much they spend in training. First you have to decide to run for the win.....and the sweat, the cramps, the breath, the focus......

Do you have it in you?

Tagged HR Management Team building Training 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