The 2 Authors you don’t want to miss if you are a HR professional.

As HR We enable people to work, we manage their aspirations for growth, we enable decision making. If there is any time left we think and work towards the welfare of employees and organization. Irrespective of the function we are in within HR – Recruitment, compensation, business partnering, Learning and Development, the main challenge remains to be meeting the expectations of individuals and bringing in changes to keep them happy and motivated. We sell, try to convince, bulldoze. But after all these being done, every now then we get disappointed by the so called "irrational expectations" of employees like someone is not happy with the percentage of hike  though we think he/she got a decent pay raise, we complain the business is not co-operative, lacking long term vision. It is easy to get frustrated and say we are dealing with a bunch of unhappy minds and disappointed souls which we do comfortably. But that by any chance will not solve the problem we are dealing with every day

Now these 2 authors I am talking about are going to revolutionize the whole landscape of HR thinking. Few organizations have already started embracing their ideas.

The biggest influence I think would be -HR leaders realizing the need of shifting the fundamental concept in managing people from “group of people” to “The Individual”.

The second one – HR departments are going to spend less time on mulling over bell curves, budgets or trying to make the statistics about percentage of hikes look good. Beatifying turnaround time or employee turnover. For the very basic reason that these guys are advocating the staggering theory of  “Money is not the biggest motivator.

Daniel Pink

When I started reading the book Drive – the surprising truth about what motivates us, I thought I have a serious disagreement with the author because he says money/extrinsic rewards are not the prime motivators, but as I continue and complete the book I realized – his idea is around money could be a basic motivator but what comes on top of it matters a lot to achieve excellence. Which is a truth. We don’t come to office everyday thinking about the hike we are going get after 12 months, the challenge for that day, things we need to finish, a meeting where we present our ideas matters a lot to us than the performance review at the end of the year. This theory is not far from what Maslow said - to keep it simple - we look for something else once the basic needs are met. What makes Pink great is – so far nobody dared to translate this truth so effectively and presented it to the world so far.Interestingly he mentions the example of Wikipedia  - how a bunch of self-motivated volunteer built the most comprehensive knowledge base. Would it be possible with a group of 1000 employees working for salary? The answer is no. In the same way think about the scientists who have given most valuable things to human race, did they work for salary? What motivated them??

His blog - http://www.danpink.com/

Dan Pink TeD talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

Dan Ariely:

I first encountered his masterpiece TeD talk on YouTube and immediately bought the book Predictably Irrational. What makes him so attractive and compelling to listen/read is: he deals with the day to activities we do and the kind of decisions we take in our life. He brings out the point of “we making decisions by the temptation of that moment rather thinking long-term” so well and convincingly. Paying attention to Dan Ariely can help us do away most of our day to frustrations because he helps us understand the anatomy of Decision making, motivation. One of the cute examples he gave is “if you are passing by and saw someone who struggling to fix  car Tyre which went flat” if you are asked to help, you might consider and help. What if “he offers 1 dollar for the same?” the possibly of not helping him is 99%. The point he makes predominately is money and motivation is not directly proportionate.

His blog - http://danariely.com/

Dan Ariley TeD talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aH2Ppjpcho

Books of these authors are not expensive, even if you want to test the quality and practicality of their thoughts you can watch them on YouTube, I wish Indian universities consider including their work in the curriculum for at least HR students across India.

Courage Quotient: How many organizations have the courage to hire and retain the best people?

Courtesy -Google images

When it comes to hiring - most of the organizations set up noble mission of hiring the best of the best – at least to hire best people by their respective standards and no organization in the world disagrees with the fact that hiring inferior quality leads to destruction of the organization. In same way every organization tries to put together all possible measures to retain them, the Irony is it is the best they lose every year, and add “not so great people” to replace the best. I think organizations end up in this paradox because of the below reasons. It will be good if HR teams monitor and put a check otherwise all the efforts will go in vain.

“The sin called – “he is overqualified, let’s not hire him”

All of those who are part recruitment would relate to this statement really well because they  would get to hear this sentence frequently, Organizations reject candidates because someone has couple of years of more experience than what the job description says, their argument would be “He/she will be expecting a bigger role” and we cannot keep them happy. Sometimes feedback will be like “he has done better things already I don’t think the work we have will excite him” It could be true in some cases, but the crucial point that the interview panel/Organization miss here is that particular candidate will not remain in the same role over period of 2-3 years, he/she will grow and need to grow to help organization better. So keep the future needs in mind and hire people. Hence it is worth enough to hire such people that will help organization in the long run even it means paying 2-3 lakhs more than the usual salary.

Action from HR Teams

Keep a track of number of rejects under the heading of “Over qualified” every month, talk to the interview panel and later find out for what they might suit better.Have courage to create positions/Roles for such candidates who are really good, don’t lose them  

Sometimes best things do not come so easily

Great people are most sought after too, hence it becomes difficult to attract best people in to the organization, most recruitment teams settle for compromise here because we have the pressure of filling the role and they ant be blamed for the same. It is the organization who should support Recruitment teams to escape from the routine of SLAs and peruse excellent candidates, give a pat on the back to recruitment team for each great hire made. Leadership teams should identify at least few open roles/positions as “does not fall under the SLA’s – get the best” and gradually the culture hiring the best will become usual, recruitment teams will not succumb to the pressure of SLAs. If organization don’t show courage to do this. They would have to live in a scenario where people are not scaling up and not delivering expected results.

Interviewer’s insecurity closes doors for rock stars

All recruiters agree with me with the point that there are bad interviewers not because they conduct interviews in a bad way but because they get scared by bright candidates and reject them. It is wise to deal this issue from the other side.

Think once, have you ever recognized a good interviewer? If so how frequently? This does not happen in organizations. This is a costly ignorance; applaud people who are getting “best material” in to your organization. This might sound idealistic but think again once who would not like to get noticed for doing good. A thank note to a good interviewer means a lot, that sends a right message to rest of the interviewers.  You could ask me how exactly I think this is possible. Well end performance appraisal season J is the key time here; prepare the list of “great performers” who joined a year back - now go back to your files and check who interviewed these guys, that’s all, if you see a consistent trend with a particular interviewer selecting best performers award him. In the same way if you find a trend between an interviewer and poor performers caution them. It consumes some time for sure but it is worth it and volume of the recruitment and number of employees does not cause a problem at all.

Retention is high, great! But who are you retaining?

It is great to have high retention rate /low attrition rate but it is important see who are we retaining? Retaining 50 B players will not be equal to retaining 2 A players. An organization losing A players will become a huge bunch of mediocres where there is no innovation. So while doing attrition analysis, do try to know on how many rock stars have you lost this year as per previous year’s performance rating. Dont worry even your attrition rate is 30%, but worry a lot if  5-10% of them are “great players”. Retaining “Rock stars” does not mean spending more money always and giving to them regularly. In most cases it could be done by just moving them in to the team they want, changing their work, changing their manager.

Do you have the courage to listen to the outgoing employee?

We all say oye yes! We do exit interviews religiously for all leavers and document the summary of them. But what we do after that is the big question, exit interview is just a formality and the moment an employee resigns in most of the cases that employee becomes insignificant; the feedback he gives becomes even more insignificant. It is true that leaver throws out their frustration during exit interviews; it is also true that they give useful feedback because there is no need for them to impress anyone anymore. HR team should have courage to face the criticism from leavers and pay attention to them, think honestly to bring their feedback in to the strategy.

It is more important to keep your peer happy than your boss

Image courtesy - Google

Keeping your colleague happy is very important because you don’t want to fail in your job, you do not like having a stressful environment at office, and for sure you would not want to spend your time thinking what the next door guy is cooking up against you. Your manager has an obligation to be nice with you, to accommodate you and protect you but your colleague does not have any obligation what so ever. Hence it is extremely crucial to have good relations with your colleagues for positive reasons like below

·         To succeed : No matter how good you are , you still need a lot of support from your peers, it could be just a positive word about work to standing by you to support in your work.

·         To learn & grow: Most of the learning comes from colleagues by seeing them do things we will learn what not to do. We will acquire new skills with the help of them , good relationships lasts beyond the current organization – they will take you where they go or can refer you in a good place when you are looking out for change

·         To have a companion: We may be the strongest person on earth but – we still need someone to talk, we need a shoulder to lean on  a difficult day – to share things which we can’t share with our boss.

Am I saying you should keep pleasing everyone around?

No, one does not need to try hard to keep everybody happy; you don’t need to be nice all the time after all that is not the purpose why we are working.it is advisable to invest enough time to understand our colleagues well and operate. The ones who are difficult to manage or create obstacles on your way needs to be handled in a different  manner – flag it up to your superiors proactively if you see a potential threat, trouble on your way. Going back to the point of how we can maintain good relations without being submissive or trying to please everyone all the time. The naked fact we should remember here is our colleague also needs good relations with us; he/she also needs a friend at work. Hence we are playing on an equal field.

There are 2 ways of building good relations at work.

Avoid clashes: First let us think why clashes take place? Very few times we end up having a confrontation with a colleague because we are fighting for credit over one thing, or we may be competing for one promotion. But most of the times it is because of the reason that we don’t understand each other’s requirements well. “Transactional analysis” helps a lot to manage this particular problem. Look at the below image if anyone of them does not match we end up disliking our colleague.

Someone wants to be regarded as an intellect, other might like to be seen as a cool dude once we understand this part it becomes easy to sail through. Based on this we can build our conversations and rest all will fall in place slowly.

Understand who you are dealing with?

Everyone is not the same person, there are few people we need to be really careful of, and there are other we can just get along really well. I am classifying them to the below categories there could be more – this is purely based on my encounters and experiences so far.

Snakes: Very dangerous people, by nature manipulative, they do not need a real cause to fight, on a slight indication of danger, it could be completely wrong indication also – they will bite you. One should be sharp enough to identify this kind of colleagues early on make sure you have “stick” that they are sacred of – it may be your good relationship with your manager, or your ability of influencing bigger people in the organization – make sure they are aware of your influence so that they are careful and will think before targeting you. The below are must when dealing with people like this, I have seen this type in my career so far.

·         Maintain hello– how are you? Relationship – do not go any further, if you need to work with them closely, make sure a third person is involved and is aware of what is happening.

•         Never share your personal interests, opinions on others
•         Never talk about your failures and your weakness
•         Talk about your success if possible tell how you taught a lesson to a cunning fellow before

Foxes: Have all the abilities, smart, can work on their own that is the reason other will get attracted towards them initially only to the disappointment of knowing they are really dangerous and contagious. – Cribs all the time. Brags about themselves ever as if they are bearing planet earth on their shoulders. Always look for an opportunity to grab credit from others. Has foul mouth about anyone – can give any information about all most everyone but don’t fall pray – if you are getting along well closely with them – they might be telling others (Including your manager) that he/she guiding you all through. Not good for your career and life, at the same time you cannot afford to have him as an enemy unless you yourself is one like him, or a Tiger/Lion.

•          Massage his/her ego and giggle within yourself
•         Feed him/her with non-controversial information just have the relation going on
•         And finally do not try to do anything except the above J

Birds: Most of the people will fall into this group, they are not happy neither unhappy. Minds there work and go home. They don’t fail in their job and will not exceed exceptionally also. Very good people to trust and go along with – that is there maximum expectation too. They will stop talking to you the moment they realize that they are not important for you. But will not cause any harm. Good to have a colleague like this – you can go on on a party, movie and enjoy – they will not talk about work too much. But also remember they are not powerful people – will be of no help if you want to climb up the ladder.

Lions: Ambitious, hardworking people, very powerful – they know where their prey is, do not harm people unnecessarily but are capable of doing so if you scratch them on the wrong side. Very open in their agenda; you will know when they are hitting you. Good to be friends with them as long as you treat them like lions – massage there ego, talk hunting, exhibit ambitions. If not they will treat you like an insect. Never fight them until you are a lion yourself and also please be cautioned if you are a bird or if whole team is filled with birds you might mistake a fox for a lion.

Sages : Know it all people – they are really knowledgeable, but often get in to the filed they are not quite sure of too. Does not harm anybody – not interested in completion or in day to day politics. If your manager is also this type – he/she can be Lion too. So not to fight with. Make most of their presence, ask for a suggestion they will be over critical sometimes but it does help. If you do not ask for their opinion they will try to grill you in open forums. Very easy to manage them by just asking for their advice on things you are doing.

There is nothing wrong with managers, just that they aim a completely wrong target

Image courtesy - Google

A group of people under any name needs some one to manage them,we all are conditioned to the model,even the best Self -motivated person in the world also needs some kind of management over him to guide what is right or wrong- in his case his/her inner sense might do the majority of the job but for rest of us we need managers and that is the reason there are number of managers you find at every corner of each office.The irony is most of these managers are stressed  and predominantly this is caused by their own team members or by his boss.Even more ironic angle to this is most of the team members are stressed too and without any hesitation they say these stressful conditions are created by their managers who are  impractical,push them too hard and what not. A very few managers are respected by their teams rest all managers are called "Damagers".

So from both the sides tension exists, this is a result of sheer confusion for which managers must be hold responsible though are some genuine complaints from managers.Mangers get frustrated with things like below.

• Team not getting up to speed
• Lack of commitment
• No updates till the last moment
• Escapism
• Code of conduct

The above all are genuine, they do exist and that is the reason manager exists to manage all these calamities and get things done.Managers are supposed to resolve all these issues, this is the fundamental reason why teams need managers it is funny that managers complain about same things that they are supposed to solve because they mistake the whole purpose of their job, I've done that few occasions too, it is important for managers to come out of this situation as quickly as possible.

Team's success is a byproduct - don't run for it crazily

Manager is not a robot or a computer programmed to achieve success and success is not fruit juice which comes out of a mixer after grinding.Manager should focus on getting few things right in first place before worrying about results.Manager must be a catalyst, The very purpose why manager exists is

• To cater to the emotional needs of the team to get psychological balance in the team
• To be the best knowledge base,enable team to leverage on his skills and knowledge
• To channelize efforts in the right direction

"Individuals" are the only reality, rest all - Team, Company they are all just names

There is no specific tantra, or code for team management except few fundamentals remains same.There is no such thing called team management, we manage individuals that eventually becomes what we call "Team Management", so team never fails or succeeds it is individuals who does.So to ensure you are on track managers need to do a "Talent mapping" within the team and assign tasks based on that, if the KRA's/KPA's are same for the whole team members you have a fundamental flaw, just because they are in one team they shouldn't be performing same tasks, most of the manager make the mistake  of assigning all tasks to all in the name of having balance in team - this is extremely wrong.You team members should complement each other not compete among themselves.By assigning same jobs you are asking your team members to compete which leads to non-cooperation among them.This should be avoided strictly.

Most productive time in life spent at work - manager remember that!

All of us spend our most efficient time at work, that is when our senses are at their best, we can think better, have the energy to execute things better during this time.Everyone excepts the return from this time, your team members are no exception to this.While it is crucial to reward appropriately,recognize them when done well, the most important manager needs to do is "Allow them to have satisfaction for the day"  put every effort to ensure your team member is not going home with stress, that gives them a sense accomplishment, it brings peace in to their mind.It reduces cribbing, dissatisfaction which in turn leads to harmony in the team.

You are not running for an election - Don't hesitate to be assertive

The most frequent and difficult dilemma every manager face everyday is being nice VS being right. In search of "nice manager" image most of the managers pardon fatal wrong doings of Team members, without

realizing the fact of one small drop of poison spoiling a pot of milk.If a non-performing team member is surviving for long it set ups a wrong precedence, it builds a way towards team's failure.Also note the fact that strict managers never lose their team members but incapable manager does.The so called worst managers in any organization are not the ones who fired non-performers but they are the ones who could not take decision on them, this gives strength to non-performers, the not desired ones to further malign manager;s ability,character as a result nobody listens to the manager.Be assertive, be fast.

You are paid to take the blame, not to rule!

This is another critical one that no manager can afford to miss.Managers do a great justice when he protects his team member by providing a cushion to them especially when someone fails.Attribute your success to the team publicly, you would need to make a point on what you would expect them to do in one on one discussions.Ironically every time something has been delivered the credit goes to manager and when something goes wrong it will be cascaded down to a particular individual.Get this right.

Success will be a byproduct of all these.

Two crucial aspects HR should focus on - measuring value addition and stop taking undeserved blame

Image courtesy - Google

I was just a college pass out when the most famous (now) critic of HR Mr. Keith H. Hammonds opened up his thoughts on HR professionals and HR as a function to the whole world. I was shocked when I came across this article later, started doubting my decision making skills – did I make right choice by choosing HR as my career? But as time flew I forgot about this like any other young graduate fresh out of college. But now after having spent good time in HR, I strongly feel his criticism is not all true, but there are genuine issues we still need to address and improve on, tragedy is after 8 years of his article we still look the same in few of the areas he wrote about.

It is extremely crucial now that we focus on these areas to sustain this extremely dynamic world where the war for best talent is getting fierce day by day and taking an ugly, brutal shape. The two critical aspects HR should focus on are – creating more value, measuring that value and stop taking undeserved blame.

Does HR really add value? What kind of value is that and how can we measure it?

World called HR and still calls a necessary evil, a bureaucratic setup which kills flexibility and innovation. Few organizations saw and continues see HR as the living system which keeps everything intact, which adds life to organization, which prepares and leads them in to future. As a matter of fact most of the successful companies today have most successful HR department. So then why there are divergent perceptions, where does HR fit in to the pyramid of value addition? Take an example of a mother, who is a “home maker” ( not mean to say mother can’t earn, it is strictly about a home maker) , she ensures everything is in place at home and makes everything available for the family, she guides, consoles, sets up guidelines and code of conduct at home, brings up children, takes very key decisions, helps in decision making, the only thing that misses here is she going out and earning money, it is done by the “father”. So a home maker mother does not earn money on her own but helps the whole family to earn it. I think in an organization’s scenario HR does the same job of home maker (excluding HR consulting, where money generation is directly related), while HR does not earn money on its own it helps the whole organization in doing that. HR helps the organization deliver by delivering in its own area. In business return/Money/Tangible value takes the ultimate priority, where in a family set up there are much more things attached to it than just return/Money/tangible value addition, that is how I think people start perceiving HR as a cost center, non-value adding function. The other side of the coin most of the HR professionals perceive their function as supreme and argue that without HR an organization cannot survive or it will not exist, the fact of the matter is HR exists because of business, and ultimate decision making rests with the business itself, HR for sure will play a key role, but cannot decide what to be done over and above business’s decision, when I say business I meant the one who funds, runs the business with an objective. Coming back to the point - work of HR and its value addition touches every aspect of an organization like the mother at home, so you cannot fit HR at a particular level and spot on the pyramid. It is everywhere. So the parameter for measuring HR value addition should always be what impact its presence will have on the organization rather what felonies its absence can cause.

So when HR is everywhere obviously it becomes extremely difficult to measure its value addition, however we all know what major areas in  HR  makes it as the living blood for the whole system. They are Talent Acquisition, Training & Organization Development, Performance management, HR operations.

Adding bodies or pumping in Talent?

Talent acquisition attracts a great deal of attention whenever somebody wants to evaluate HR effectiveness, but traditionally for years the way we measure recruitment effectiveness by number of positions filled, time taken to hire, source mix  which does not reflect the real value addition of recruitment function. Parameters mentioned earlier reflects activities performed by recruitment team not the value, take an example of driving a car – if you drive a car with a speed of 100 Km per hour and reached a place in 30 mins, that is a great driving performance, not the real value, you will know value when you compare with what is that you wanted to achieve by driving, if you have reached a different destination that of you wanted to reach the effort is mere waste. Hence while measuring the value of recruitment we should get in to the very purpose of recruitment, why do we recruit people? to add great talent in to organization so that we deliver a great service/product. If this is not met, you probably are not recruiting the talent your organization wants, now how can you measure the value here, would you attribute every product success or profitability of the organization to recruitment? Answer is no, there are much more critical aspects which contribute to success and profitability. It is wise to take the data of employees recruited in a year and analyze – what percentage of people left early, how many non-performers you have from this group (for both cases they could be various other reasons why people leave, can’t perform – you would know those reasons for sure – so do not include them while measuring the value of recruitment), how many of these employees are star performers, what percentage of these have been already identified having potential to move in to the next level or perform more difficult job, take feedback from manager against each role he filled in his team, as to check is he able to get the what he wants from this resource, he might have recruited one with an aim of adding a new skill, if that skill is not added, your recruitment failed of course there is a contribution from that respective manager too for that failure. After having done all this exercise identify those areas where recruitment team needs to focus for next year, pat on their back for the areas they have done well.

Performance management – shake its fundamentals; make it fairer, understandable

I have a fundamental problem with the whole idea behind performance management, the entire HR fraternity is in love with bell curve and forced ranking may be because it looks to be scientific and more because it serves various purposes, like it helps identifying and cleaning up bottom-line, it also helps manager to satisfy their vengeance. So essentially with the model what are we expecting from employees, we are clearly telling look folks only 20% of you will make it in to the top performers so you must compete and do better than your colleague. But imagine what happens to the whole team performance, what happens to the organization, that’s where organizations fail and also results in your best guys leaving. Imagine if everybody on Indian cricket team competing to do better than the other rather striving for team’s success, will we ever win? just imagine Sachin Tendulkar and Virat kohli competing to score a run more than the other, that will result in one guy not giving strike to other, will we ever win. Might looks funny but this exactly what happens on the floor, employees look really amicable and helping each other but majority of them will not share the big ones he is working on because he does not want to give share in the salary hike/bonus to his colleague. It is time we re look at the overall philosophy of performance management and change it in a way that drives team’s performance, like let the whole organization decide what are the most valuable deliverables they had for this year – award all of those who are in those projects, couple it with 360 degree performance management for every employee , so that everybody knows and cognitive of the fact that his colleague’s feedback has value so he/she better cooperate and co-exist to succeed, not in way of Quid-pro-co, any way each feedback should be justified with examples and tangible activities. Take feedback from every employee on performance system at the end every performance management cycle. Improve, innovate it consistently.

Training or capability building?

I think this is the most difficult part when it comes to measuring value, like the recruitment most training departments traditionally measure the activity rather than value, you speak to any L&D professional they talk about how many employees participated in a training program, what percentage of total employees they covered in a year, how many hours each employee spent in training which is again a transactional piece. It is like a person going to most sacred place 1000 times and remain as what he was before, you might visit amaranth 1000 times in your life time but what is the use if it does not make you a better human being? Measuring the value of training department should start from asking are we doing the right kind of trainings that organization really needs?Do an objective analysis do not do trainings that does not add value , over a period of time it will reduce the importantance of whole training function altogether, after every training we ask for feedback asking how was the trainer, environment, facilities provided rather asking the important question – where do think this training will help? Which part of your job you will be able to perform better after this training?

Let us go back to the point of how do we identify right set of trainings to be delivered over the next year, take an example of a software firm having a product, at every release which part of the product you will find more bugs? UI side, Database? That is the area you exactly need to focus and get your resources trained. Track individuals who attended training whether he/she able to contribute in a better way in the areas he got trained, does he still needs someone helps even after getting trained? If this happens on a large scale it is time to look at the whole training function and start fixing it.

HR is not changing at the speed the environment it operates in changing, we need to catch up with the pace and keep reinventing ourselves, after all said and done sometimes HR role looks like a wicket keeper in cricket , you catch 99 balls and drop one, the whole stadium stands up and says his wicket keeping skills are bad, the only way to stop this undeserved blame is keep updating ourselves and being proactive before business comes back to us.