10 things HR won’t say – A review

Ten things HR won’t say was published recently in the Wall Street Journal. We take a re-look to discuss and understand the points mentioned from HR perspectives and reflect why it happens so.

“We are squeezed too”: This address the fact that HR function are changing in terms of the structure and processes.
HR Review : Lets take a look at this point a little closely. The recent economic downturn has put maximum pressure on the business to cut ‘costs’, hence HR being a ‘Cost-centre’ underwent the scrutiny. The processes were compressed to be managed by minimum number of team members. Tasks which could be managed or regrouped were reallocated. Such as, single point of contacts for HR was made from the members in operation or production to create a closer knit with the employees. This allowed HR to listen to the employee complaints through their representatives. It reduced the number of line HR required. Similarly, online or software based processes were preferred to the bigger team composition. For e.g: Time Office adminstration and resume refining were primarily done through software to cut down on the team members in recruitment and administration. Now, almost every activity in HR gets measured to justify the cost. These trends have shifted the focus from running the operational activities within the function to creating values and truly moving towards the ‘profit centre’.
“We are not always your advocate” : This point discusses, how an employee may trust the HR to be its advocate, yet it doesn’t hold true.
HR Review: Let’s take a step back to relook at this point. The HR is expected to balance being an ‘employee champion’ and a ‘business partner’ at the same time. Here decision making becomes accurate when both the areas are weighed and given the due importance. The stand taken may not seem favourable by the side which remain shadowed. For e.g.: During recession, when retrenchment was at its highest. The HR in a company may have suggested pay cuts to save job. An organization with a progressive management may have agreed to it and tagged HR as ‘Employee Champion’. Whereas in an organization with authoritative management may have rejected the recommendation and cut down the jobs, the employees would have tagged HR as more of a ‘Business Partner’. Consequently, the balancing act leaves no one feel that the HR is advocating their side.
“….But we can help your career”: This point addresses the fact that the employees are unwilling to share their career aspects with HR. whereas it helps to keep HR in the loop. Sharing the initiative taken and interest areas with HR may help a next role change even a life saver during recession. HR are required to put a recommendation during the retrenchment.
HR Review: To understand this point lets take a step back and see where the ‘thought ‘ of keeping HR at a distant arise from. The employees are supposed to be mentored by their immediate reporting leaders. Incase they have any question or need to escalate any concern, they meet HR. This communication may not always be handled rightly. Leading to mistrust and undermining the HR offering. Managing employee expectation is a principal area. The non-verbal cues and un-discussed wish-list builds up a belief system. It manages to push the employee away. Several HR initiatives such as One-on-One with HR, Brown bags, Steering Committee and etc fails because the trust have not been completely built. The credibility of the HR depends on the initiatives taken and how it is delivered.
To continue reading: http://www.citeman.com/11432-10-things-hr-wont-say-a-review/

‘Little wonder’ – Attracting talents for small firms

Here’s a discussion on CiteHR, to find ways that can attract talent for small firm with 30 members. The situation is parallel to many start-up and similar firms. They are required to hire the most competitive talent yet lack the situational advantages as compared to the bigger firms. In certain situations, they may not even have a huge budget to pay lucrative salary and an established brand name. Under such circumstances, strategising recruitment becomes a challenge. Here’s the link to the discussion http://www.citehr.com/287724-how-attract-job-seekers.html

The swot of a small firm would be as follow:
Strength

1. Visibility: Small firms offer high visibility to every talent. The opportunity to work in a complete cycle is available to any employee at every level. This gives them a tremendous exposure to handle escalation and complete business intelligence in much shorter span to what they would have learnt in bigger organization.
2. Roles: Fewer number of employees delivering more specialised role: The headcount would be very low, but not the jobs to be delivered. The tasks would be divided to the team members including operational and strategic. Whereas in a large organization the roles often get pigeon-holed into repetitive tasks. 

Weakness:

1. No brand name
2. Size of the firm
3. Low salaries and benefits
4. Apparently lower opportunities until openly discussed

Opportunity:

1. Higher degree of empowerment through an entrepreneurial environment with soaring accountability to the job
2. Freedom to implement as the environment is dynamic compared to the bigger firm with lot more rigidity.
3. An inclusive culture. In a small organization, it’s the culture that binds in. The freedom to express oneself and the opportunity to be understood and accepted gel the employees together. 

Threats:

1. Dissatisfaction and friction from talents constantly comparing the job with the small firm to that in a bigger firm.
2. Losing the talents to the bigger brands once they become employable
3. High impact of the decision maker: As the size of the firm is small, the attitude of the decision maker would make a very high impact on the employee morale.

To implement these advantages the firm needs to target the right talent base
To continue reading: http://www.citeman.com/11278-little-wonder-attracting-talents-for-small-firms/

Revisiting HR Failures

A question was raised in CiteHR , to understand the reasons behind the failure of HR. Certain areas including the alingment of HR and the focus from operational activites to strategic were discussed http://www.citehr.com/289282-where-do-you-think-hr-fails-organizations.html
Human Resource is the custodian and enabler to organization. Managing talent is the mainstream to an organization’s success. Just as a cog in the wheel enables the rotation, so does HR. Certain implementation of programs or the lack of it, can create a dissonance in functioning of the organization. These letdowns become a yardstick for future. The reasons for the debacles will remain at variance with the sector and immediate environment. Yet they can be categorised in few principal areas.
Business focus: If the business goals are not aligned with the HR initiatives it may create disaster. The best practices will not yield to any result if it doesn’t correspond to the next business targets. For e.g.: Technological integration remains a focus during a merger. This is planned on the basis of scalability. If the focus of the merger is to gain technological leadership in the market, HR needs to align the data integration accordingly.
HR Focus: It’s essential to review the HR Processes and audit them regularly. The economic environment changes, so does the business prerequisites. The HR processes would require refurbishing the SLA defined on the processes. Dr. John Sullivan in, ‘The think piece: How HR caused Toyota to crash’, identified eight HR processes contributing to the failure. It begins with reward and recognition that fuelled rapid growth in production and sales, ignoring the reward for acknowledging the safety based inputs. The training focussed on the plan/do/check/act. The spotlight should have been to the last two accentuating on the negative external safety-based information. Hiring failed as the assessment couldn’t identify the talent who would not sweep the error under the carpet and stand up for truth to the management. The performance management system didn’t detect the group think. The corporate culture was biased towards the positive information, consequently diminished the red flags on security.
To continue reading: http://www.citeman.com/11300-revisiting-hr-failures/

Managing headcount when the Iceberg is melting

“We believe strongly that the world needs much more action from a broader range of people—action that is informed, committed, and inspired—to help us all in an era of increasing change.” John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber had shared this in the book ‘Our iceberg is melting’. Change impacts responses in every individual. In an organization, it creates in a multi-level impact. Managing headcount is mainstay to HR Strategy. It is annually planned along with the business workflow. Yet there are unexpected situations where an organization may need to re-strategise workforce to meet the sudden change. These situations can come up due to alteration in business scenario. There are revamping and retrenchment planned to manage the variation in the volume of work.
The increasing work volume in an organization may require it to double its headcount. This percolates to increase in recruitment. But if due to an economic depression or sudden loss of business the new positions created, may no longer exist. This puts the organization in a tricky situation where, they may not be able to hire the talents, to whom the offer letter have been issued. If the offers are reverted, it would impact the future hiring programs of the organization. It would send very hostile sentiments to the talent base. Simultaneously, if they are inducted it would add on to the headcount which may damage the situation more. As the work volume gets reduced justifying the existing headcount may stand a challenge on the top managing additional employees would completely shove off the balance. The point to ponder is what needs to be done at this stage. Either consider withdrawing offer from the new employees or put poor performer in Performance Improvement Plan.
The challenges stand equidistant from both the options. If offers are withdrawn, it would affect future hires. If existing employees are put on PIP, it would create a fear factor in everyone, hence might drive the top performers away. It would affect the trust consequently create disgruntled and stressed employees within the organization. Even though this would be incremental individually, it would affect the productivity collectively.
The solutions discussed here would depend on the state of the organization. Incase it is flexible enough to commiserate, it might differ in implementation. Whereas if there is no scope for any consideration due to a business halt or other dire situation within the organization, it would require adopting a completely different approach:
To continue reading: http://www.citeman.com/11206-managing-headcount-when-the-iceberg-is-melting/

Business Process Reengineering – Start to Finish

This was a discussion in CiteHR to understand Business Process Reengineering . http://www.citehr.com/288656-business-process-re-enginering.html
Business Process Reengineering as defined by Yogesh Malhotra, in “Business Process Redesign: An Overview,” IEEE Engineering Management Review, is the analysis and design of workflows and processes within and between organizations (Davenport & Short 1990). Teng et al. (1994). BPR is defined as “the critical analysis and radical redesign of existing business processes to achieve breakthrough improvements in performance measures.” Ideally, It begins with detecting certain backlogs and defects in an existing business process. This leads to a complete review of the enterprise where duplication is eradicated and several process are integrated to create a better workflow. These entail redesigning the jobs and reorganising the deliverables. It may create a number of challenges such as losing positions consequently job loss.
Let us take a look at the steps to implement BPR. As mentioned in Business Process Reengineering: A consolidated Methodology by Subramanian Muthu, Larry Whitman, and S. Hossein Cheraghi, there are different methodologies which further include several steps. It begins with developing a vision and strategy including the customer requirements and goals for the process. This sets the direction motivating the BPR. Next is to create a desired culture by measuring and mapping the existing process. Subsequently, benchmark to justify the reengineering. This is followed by integrating and improving enterprise by analysing different processes. Technological problem solving is involved to develop the BPR in an alignment with the social design. Finally implement change and validation by targeting continuous improvement.

Reduce HR Outage ‘Foot Print’

My study on HR Outage and how to reduce such foot prints published  at Citeman Network Management Article.
A travel booking website shared an option to reduce the carbon footprint created by the airplane. It offered a variety of choices to buy a sapling, which would be planted by an NGO. The exact measure of the carbon foot print was calculated to find the accurate number of saplings required to eliminate them. As shared in the advertisement, “if the trip will generate 282 Kgs of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). A single tree can absorb 20.3 Kgs of CO2 in a year. A traveller needs to contribute Rs. 182 for 14 Saplings to completely eliminate carbon footprint for the trip.
This advertisement shows a clear representation of how consumption can lead to perishing of a non-renewable source and suggests a way to regenerate it. This strategy can be implemented for processes where a cost is incurred for a return. Yet when certain expenses end up as outage, newer ways to moderate the impact can be located. Accounting Coach defines, a cost might be an expense or it might be an asset. The expense is a cost that has expired or was necessary in order to earn revenues. Here we consider ‘Outage’ as the expense that brings no returns. We glance at different process in HR where this concept can be implemented.
Employee engagement have cost attached to every employee. The cost however becomes an outage when the employee leaves the company. Let us suppose the cost per employee in an employee engagement program is Rs. 10000. The term duration calculated for the program is one year. The employee leaves on the eight month of the program. The outage here would be Rs. 2000. This outage can be directed to be a future benefit with HR initiative such as forming formal and informal alumni with the employee to make them a better future hire. Generally the employee joins either the industry leaders or in some other company in the value chain. This makes their knowledge and experience enriched with time. Consequently they become excellent re-hires. HR needs to strategise to garner them back to the organization .The challenge lies in managing the friction which takes place when an employee decides to resign. The negative impact in the work-flow management infuriates the reporting manager. To make the matter worse, the employee can’t always plan the right path to exit. The serving of notice period becomes a point of negotiation. Incase the retention strategies on the employee do not work, it’s important that the HR creates an exit which can builds on the relationship with the employee that survives beyond the employment with the organization. The loyalty of the employee will get restored by the way they are treated when they leave the organization.
Resource management stands a high dependency on the availability of the resource to the job to be delivered. Jeffry Gandz explained Zero-talent outage as the continuity of a position even when a talent resigns through a talent pool.
To conitune reading http://www.citeman.com/11192-reduce-hr-outage-foot-print/

Managing HR @ Transition

Here's my understanding on managing HR during different kinds of transition in an organization. Business models alter with the economic cycle and market swings. Additionally, the change in government policies towards the industry impacts in transformation within an organization. As the production adopts a new model different areas including spending, talent billing, and employee management vary with the flow. Due-diligence allows the transition teams to weigh the impact of the implementations. These transitions results from business scaling up, mergers and integration, de-mergers, revamp and restructure. Here we look at the challenges, their point of differentiation and the polarity of the issues. We introspect how these situations are different yet may have certain parallel issues.
Mergers and Acquisition: The due diligence brings in all the areas of concern on the radar. HR Programs including broad banding, mapping of HR Systems, Integrating technologies, abiding by the legal guidelines, compensation alignment tops the priority list . Numerous Integration management tools allow to manage the work on the books, yet managing the human quotient remains ephemeral. The expectation and fear needs to be addressed up-front including concern areas such as, ’What’s in it for me’ and ‘How will my values creation still remain visible’. Communication holds the key to the human challenges. As the programs are rolled out, repeated town halls, team hurdles and one-on-one communication helps in managing the employee buy-ins. As mentioned by jack Welch , ‘“Think of a merger as a huge talent grab – a people opportunity that would otherwise take years of searching … Make the tough calls and pick the very best – whatever side they’re on.”
Demergers: Just as the paradoxes are true so are the HR initiatives during the demergers. As the organizations splits into two different entities so does the process which requires new process owners, vendors and sometimes even new domains. Often during the demerger the new entities differ in size. Consequently it can leave a company with bigger strength with far more processes to be managed than its smaller counterpart. Newer registration for the legal entities, more specialised roles for the employees, building the new brand as valued as the earlier joint-entity remains the hub of the HR .
Expansion: The process that impacts the most is recruitment and training. The chief focus remains on getting talent on board and train to place them as billable. This does impact the compensation bench marking to bridge the salary gap between the new and the old talent during the annual performance appraisal. The concept which the HR accentuates in this situation is ‘What it means to work here’.
Restructuring: Every business cycle goes through a phase where the process of productivity is reviewed to scale up production and minimise cost. The revamping of production percolates to the restructuring of the work-force. The jobs are mapped to the talent with best-fit. Levels are brought down to few bands and grades. Tata Steel had revamped the work force from 13 to 5 levels redesigning 5100 officers to 4300 officers. The Human factors to be dealt in this situation are the stigma of termination and transparency to build on the trust, of the talent which remains behind. The outplacement offered by the organization, severance pay and elucidate that the employees did not lose the job as they were bad, but that position no longer existed.
The common challenges in all these situations are managing perception. Few HR processes may bear the effect from such transitions. This fundamentally includes compensation, performance management and HR operations. Recruitment and Training and development which may stand impacted selectively. Human fears of losing identity, expecting shrinkage in compensation, low visibility remains principal. These transitions may often seem paradoxical, yet the biggest learning lies in being able to manage them. In the words of Carl T. Rowan,” We emphasize that we believe in change because we were born of it, we have lived by it, we prospered and grew great by it. So the status quo has never been our god, and we ask no one else to bow down before it”.

HR Budget – A part of the whole

How to prepare HR Budget is a question in CiteHR http://www.citehr.com/287691-hr-budget.html
HR Budgeting is a powerful financial tool that can estimate the expenditures made by the HR vertical . This strengthens and allows the HR to control the cost rather than letting it control the HR initiative. The budget is drawn parallel to the goals of the organization. If the organization expands and requires to register a double digit growth in terms of its strength, it percolate to apportion funds in different areas including recruitment , retention, up-skilling, global mobility management and etc. The allocation of funds would be governed by the HR Strategies. The decision makers in an organization remain the main players to approve the budget. The recommendations and inputs are taken from different sources including operation, marketing, logistics and every other vertical within the organization. Macro areas including employee retention, recruitment and training and micro areas including programs designed for incremental benefits are all mapped into one complete budgeting program. It can be zero-based budget with no reference to last year’s expense.
To continue reading : http://www.citeman.com/11080-hr-budget-a-part-of-the-whole/

Designing Authority Matrix

A discussion in CiteHR http://www.citehr.com/284165-authority-matrix.html


Here we have a situation where a matrix needs to be designed to share the decision making . We understand in an organization there would be different projects managed within the company with support from cross functional teams. There are leadership at different levels, who are either accountable or required to make recommendations .

Definition: Authority matrix is fundamentally an arrangement where the decision making is divided in different levels to empower specialised task. The division of authority includes different areas such as accountability, responsibility, recommendation and consultation finally information sharing. Accountability is directly associated with the person who delivers the job. Responsibility would be from the person who is responsible for the one who is delivering the job , i.e. the reporting manager. Every job would require certain degree of indirect association , i.e. through consulting where the employee may not be responsible for the end result yet require to recommend. Finally information sharing about a task processed is essential for the employees who might be associated to the process and would be required to respond. For e.g. in a technical firm the engineer would be accountable for developing the product , the Project manager would be responsible for the project completion, the subject matter experts may require to consult finally the senior management needs to be informed about the job completion.

Designing the Matrix Structure : CEO leads the org structure with core decision making capabilities. He would be accountable for making the prime decisions, such as what business charter should be agreed with the client. Strategic decision making would be entirely his purview. The next level of executives including the Directors responsible for operations, would take operational decisions. This would remain an internal activity. The approval to any situation related to operations , including any purchase or hiring would be made by them. Hence they might be the signatories to bills, appointment letters and other internal circulars. The next level leadership including the General Managers and Senior Managers would require recommending and providing consultation to the Directors .

To continue reading : http://www.citeman.com/10713-designing-authority-matrix/

The Road to HR Matrix

A discussion in CiteHR http://www.citehr.com/277924-hr-matrix.html to understand how to build a matrix structure in HR.


The matrix structure comes in consideration when an organization has either geographically located centres or too many different business units processing or producing at different levels within the org value chain. The understanding of business processes. The structure of its units is drawn to manage production. Here we take a high level view at the Org structure, Work flow and Centre-based structures. For e.g.: An organization has five processes before the finished product is sent to the client. These five processes are further clubbed in units two make it manageable. The logic behind clubbing the processes can be similar nature of work or shared resources between the processes. The production may need support from quality, project management and business analytics. These functions would form the production support functions. Hence we have three clear units including Unit A and Unit B from production and the Unit C from Production support.

Now we take a sneak peek at the employees in this structure to understand the work flow and chain of command. The employees would be a part of the org structure accordingly. It would start with Production Executive, who would process the work at the primary level. This would further get finished by the experts in the team before moving the work to the Unit B. A batch of 12 -15 Production Executive would have a team leader who would report to the Manager. The manager would be responsible for 3-4 team leaders who would be responsible for production executive respectively. This structure would remain the same for every unit.

Aligning HR with Business Unit

The alignment of Human Resource to business is quintessential as the former supports the later. The business performs as a result of the talent management. The innate nature of the talent affects the HR functions. The talent behaviour can be categorised under each vertical , as the lookout of each talent resonates with the vertical they work for . Here we look into different areas required to be considered to align Human Resource to business.

Business Acumen – The first step to align HR function is in understanding the core business .the study starts from drawing the core value of what the business produce . This includes the operations, finance and strategic functions of a company. Hence the HR needs to know:

1. What does the company do?
2. Who are its clients?
3. What are the services and products offered by the company to its client?
4. What is the production model is it batch processing? How do they work?
5. What are the technologies used?
6. What are the skill and academicals requirement?
7. How does the billing cycle work? What are chief sources of revenue? How are the products and services billed to the client? What is the billability per each talent?
8. Who are the competitors to the organization? What is the organization’s competitive advantage?
9. What are the recent miles stones achieved?
10. Where are the prime sources for the talent? Where does the talent go after leaving the company?

Building Process Know-how – This list of questions should add on to the business knowledge. This further needs to be deciphered in terms of the talent. Suppose if the company offer the technological service the reference for the HR is the nature of talent required i.e. the educational background may need to be technical with certification required to deliver the job . The information needs to be processed in three main areas including

 

To continue reading : http://www.citeman.com/10683-aligning-hr-with-business-unit/