How strategic can an entry level HR profile be?

I was at an HR fraternity forum early this month and this was pretty much the question on most of our minds when we were discussing about how HR can make a difference in today's changing business environment and how HR folks may therefore be motivated to think differently.

It would be ideal if all HR profiles had a healthy blend of transactional and strategic deliverables. However, what we also know is that practically, expecially at entry levels, this seldom happens. Most impressionable youngsters in the field are bogged down in their formative years with heavy transactional work and pushing papers.

What is doubly challenging for junior associates is that sometimes when they're eager to contribute to new areas and be heard, the need for delivery and deadlines on their transactional assignments stop them from treading in that direction. I know this for a fact simply because I've been there!

How do we strike a balance then, make our jobs as fresh executives more relevant? Well, I sincerely believe that during goal setting, we must all incorporate a small percentage, maybe 10 to 15% to innovation i.e. doing things differently. for e.g. the deliverable could be suggesting and implementing one process improvement in one of the years' focus areas - Employee Engagement.

In addition, talking about the highs and lows on our jobs with team members is a great way to share knowledge and pick up interesting pointers. An organization I was a part of had a weekly highs and lows meeting every monday morning for the team where each member would talk about what he did best during the week and where he could have improved. The energy and enthusiasm in the room at that time had to be felt to be believed!

While all this may not take the focus away from the job at hand which is bound to be routine and standard, it will urge the professional to look at the same job from different angles, talk to people about where he's stuck and gain satisfaction when he is able to make himself and his process infinitesimally better everyday.

I thought I'd post a couple of interesting articles from www.jobdig.com which are on the subject.

http://www.jobdig.com/articles/1373/HR_Role:_Strategic_Versus_Employee_Advocate%3F.html

http://www.jobdig.com/articles/1435/Ways_Entry_Level_HR_Professionals_Can_Be_More_Relevant.html

Jai Ho!!

Aparna Krishnan

Employee Engagement-A myth or reality????

I wonder if there is something known as 'active employee engagement'???

Well!!! the several surveys lead to the conclusion that it exists. Even Professor Google has numerous definitions for it.

But when I ask the meaning of 'active employee engagement' to a few senior professionals. They say that it's all about keeping the employees happy enough through recreational activities/fun activities'.

I do not endorse that at all. I will explain /justify that through an example. If an 'actively disengaged employee' gets to participate in your company's so called 'Disco Dandiya event'. Will it help the HR team to stop him from bad mouthing about the company or raise his work performance standards????

No!!!! most likely!!!!

He will get a good excuse to get away from his work and also have a social gathering which he can entertain through his bad mouthing about the company.

Let's apply common sense and change our approach towards employee engagement.

The purpose is to get the associates excited about their job and perform better through greater involvement and ownership.

Include the following in your employee engagement tool kit:

1. Superior Learning and Development.
2. Competitive Compensation.
3. Most importantly, foster a culture of 'goodness'. A place where the right virtues and values are recognized and appreciated genuinely.
4. Have some real 'fun' after getting the above three points right in place.

Jai Ho!!!!

Saikat Saha

If Chanakya teaches B School students!

"What would you ask Chanakya if I vanished and the great Scholar appeared here in my place for only 5 minutes?" I asked of the nine Gen Y students whom I was asked to have a Group Mentoring session with..."What tips would you give me as a management student?" said the first. "How would you suggest I get ahead in life?" expressed another.... "Give me some advice for getting a good Campus placement" mumbled the third, quite sheepish.

As the bright youngsters continued their spontaneous responses, I pondered what my own question would be and further, what would be the wise counsel from this first Management Guru of India (if not of the world)?

"Please guide me on how to kill my first boss (like you killed the Evil King Dhanananda and his six brothers)",I imagined and then quickly banished the thought - Chanakya would not be impressed. Besides, outside of my first boss, I had been very fortunate. I quickly visualised my next question to be "Tell me your Top 3 principles for Leaders". How boring, I thought to myself...I modified that further to "How can HR be practised best?"

Here are Chanakya's responses:

1. Use HR to unite the Nation (Chanakya was not only a kingmaker but primarily a Nation builder). Don't think just for your company or your city, but how the Human Resources of the country can be leveraged.

2. Focus on the Youth, they are the future of the Country and will build a better, stronger one if they appreciate the power of HR - to catalyse teams and team - building (after all, this brilliant Karmayogi from History had traveled from village to village, inspiring young blood to work for the Nation)!

3. Nudge the Youth and especially students to follow their natural inclination and make a life of it - this should be the most quintessential goal of academia and industry - especially HR, who often influence careers.(Chanakya believed his Swadharma was to teach/ mentor and did not crown himself king. Infact after finding an able successor, he retired to his hermitage to continue writing, his other love). Incidentally, Rancho came much later.

I was completely absorbed in my thoughts on my poser to the Great Guru and his advice, when I was shaken out of my reverie by a student who said "Actually, only 5 brothers of Dhananand were poisoned by Chanakya, the sixth one escaped alive and I am his descendant down several generations...Swati Nanda!"....

Jai Ho! Jai Chanakya!
Rajesh

There’s the urge to grow in the corporate ladder and somewhere along the way… there’s company loyalty.. mutually exclusive you think??

I dare say that these days I’ve started looking back at my life a lot and recalling fun times in college, at family vacations, the craziest conversations you had and a lot more! Signs of ageing you say? Well, maybe but right now I’m in a ‘Glass half full phase’ so I’m gonna say it’s the experience talking J

Anyway, so I was on one of these reflective moods one day when I remembered a random chat I had years ago in B-school with some of my classmates. The conversation was about whether if we really got into a company on campus, would one of our goals be to stick with the company for more than 5 years?

So while I recalled that conversation today, I realized that the stuff that matters most to young professionals today methinks is growth and compensation. They go hand in hand. One without the other does not work for retention from my humble experience. Much as organizations try though, most of the time, it becomes virtually impossible to keep every young professional engaged enough to perform to his optimum. Somewhere something gets missed and every appraisal season, we are faced with some demotivation and angst. I have had to counsel a number of young folk who believe that somewhere their contributions were not recognized and that they worked very hard but nobody noticed!

On the one hand we have continued to reinforce for years that proper career development, goal setting and performance management mechanisms must be in place to ensure that talent and contribution are measured and recognized in organizations irrespective of the scale or nature of operations. And that continues to be a challenge for all companies, big and small. In addition mentoring and buddying the young employees with a proper induction to the company values and their jobs also goes a long way in ensuring that the employee is attached to the organization.

While I sincerely believe these should continue to be the focus areas for all HR practitioners to achieve,

Let’s think out of the box for a minute and approach the challenge in a different light….

The young professionals today consume and spend so much more than before. Their aspirations for luxury and desire to achieve the same also comes in at a very young age largely because everything is so easily available now. Most people want to own homes in cities, cars, club memberships etc. in their late 20’s which was not only a dream but wasn’t even a desire a few decades ago. These aspirations will probably only increase with time thus making it increasingly difficult for organizations to match them.

Definitely the compensation structure is getting more and more flexible now to increase take home pay per month. This is one of the ways in which these aspirations can be met.

However, it is my belief that if organizations started looking at hiring most of their workforce on fixed term contracts (FTCs), things may start to look up in terms of employee engagement and performance.

Creating a growth path for 2-5 yrs is much easier in the current, uncertain environment that doing the same for 10-15 yrs. In addition, FTCs also allow more room for delivery based incentives and penalties if we were to get even more radical. I have noticed that young professionals are extremely particular about executing tasks as soon as possible, are willing to work late if the situation demands it and are very willing to keep everyone concerned in the loop and steer clear of office politics. Security, belongingness and bonding have taken different meanings today. Earlier, people were inspired more by the leaders that made the company, the values it represented. Today for a youngster it’s about instant recognition, a team that sees things the same way and great friends at the workplace who he can share experiences with.

Therefore, the way I see it is if we’re in a scenario where Company ‘A’ signs someone in for a period of 2 yrs for achieving deliverable ‘X’ – the progress on which will be reviewed every 6 months; and based on this progress, there are linked incentives and on successful completion of the stint, he receives say a personalized recommendation letter from the CEO and an opportunity on any other assignment, don’t you think that will be a great way to create goodwill, motivation and more importantly – performance? Isn’t this the best way for any professional to grow and be loyal to teams and companies at the same time?

I leave this thought open for comment…..

Jai Ho!!!!!!!!!!

Aparna Krishnan :-)

HR from kids :-)

Yes the conquest of observing activities and trying to learn from those to improve my skill inventory as a HR moves on and the recent place from where I observed a lot of it was on 10/01/10 or the 10th of Jan when it was the nationwide pulse polio campaign and millions of kids were administered with two drops of medicine two eradicate polio from India.

I had gone to this little suburb outside of Chennai to serve as a volunteer for one of the camps and what I had considered initially as a burden turned out to be a stress busters this was because when you deal with kids who are 0-5 alone the worlds seems such a nice place but some of my crucial learning’s were

1) Patience to ensure all the kids are administered with the dosage and thus ensuring you complete the job effectively and efficiently. Reluctance was highly there but it was persuasion which succeeded

2)A trust building process with a kid that the liquid we were giving was not bitter but rather sweet thus I wondered if an innocent kid needs quite a bit of attention and focus to get its approval how tough will it be with much matured and well planned individuals when they have to addressed for an Organizational Change

3) It’s not over till it's over - I certainly learnt that whenever we believed the crowd was over and we could take a breather! Pop the next bunch of kids came in and thus it went till the end

4) Contingency is crucial- For all predictions and levels we exceeded our targets and more and more kids coming for the dosage, it was necessary that we had adequate contingencies to complete our work as we had national interest at stake!

All in all a great day

Jai Ho!!

Arvind Srikantan ;-)

Rancho's views on Human Resiource Management

I watched the bollywood movie '3 idiots' few days back. A truly fantastic experience.I especially loved the character of Rancho played by Aamir Khan. I could relate with the character. Rancho is a witty engineering student who is truly passionate about machines and applies his theoretical knowledge in as many real life opportunities as possible. He doesn't chase high paid placement offers or an American dream. He wants to pursue excellence alone. He is passionate about people especially his friends and can go to any extent to help them in the most dire situations. He is also an impractical optimist who turns impractical possibilities into practical realities.

No wonder, I am influenced and inspired by the character. So I am attempting to post Rancho's views on managing people if he was a real character with strong and sincere opinion on HR issues.

Here it goes:

1. Finding out your employee's true passion in the business is worth it. Set him free and have faith in him.

2. Ensure that your employees do not turn cynical and always try to preserve their goodness.

3. Be there for your employees in their good times as well as bad times.

4. Be a constant learner and strive towards contributing towards the future of your domain.

5. Know what is right for people first and then for business. That's the only way to be the best business partner.

6. Help to fulfill your employee's dream by empowering them and they would empower your business.

7. Know your self priorities but try to be as selfless as possible. HR is a tough domain because of this reason but it is beautiful because of the same reason too.

8. Be candid about your opinion on people and business. But try not hurting others' sentiments in the process. Be sensitive.

9. Put theory knowledge in practice wherever possible.

10. Be an impractical optimist. At times, it is the most practical thing in business.

11. Whenever in self doubt or problem, say to yourself 'All izzzzzzzzzzz welllll' ... It might not solve your problem but it would give you the courage to find the solution...

Jai Ho!!!!

-Saikat Saha