How much is very much!

I was not very sure whether I wanted to pen this down. But the magnitude is so overwhelming, at least in my mind that it started occupying a lot of my mind space and I started becoming restless. What followed was my frantic mental efforts to structure my thoughts in a meaningful way since this is not something which I have done in the past. Not very sure though whether this has fallen into a proper structure and I have experienced this long enough to do full justice to what I am doing. Now that I have made up my mind, this is going to be an ongoing series of short write ups in some of the areas of HR as I perceive through my exciting and a very eventful journey in the domain of HR.

No doubt HR plays a very significant role. However, from what I learnt so far, whether it runs ahead of business or behind really depends on how the CEO's perceive HR role in that Company.  For HR on the other hand, irrespective of what their stature and positioning in the Company is, it appears to be a continuous exploration and experiment to come up with initiatives and actions that result in higher engagement, motivation and retention; and the seemingly never ending need to establish the linkage to the final business outcome to justify the investment in HR. 

I read about Vineet Nayyar talking about employees first and customer next. To me, this looks to be it. For HR, on being in the ‘talent ready’ state, the sole motto should be to engage, motivate and retain.  In one of the NASSCOM HR conferences that I attended not very long ago, it was opined that 75% of the HR bandwidth is spent on fire fighting and running the processes rather than building for future. This has to change – whether perception or otherwise this has crept into the leaders minds.

Therefore, rather than spreading our-selves thin all over and taking on new initiatives and priorities almost every day, continuously exploring and experimenting, focus on a few yet impactful initiatives but pursue these as if the life hinges on it. All these should ultimately lead to engagement, motivation and retention. Also, my own individual view is to draw HRs full attention to People rather than leading indicators such as Revenue & Profitability. If we do take care of People, all of these must fall in place and this by its own justifies our existence.

The core issue that I want to talk about is two-fold – one of course ‘how much is very much’ meaning the series of initiatives that HR should undertake – in short the role of HR; and secondly how does one really establish the linkage to the final business outcome to justify the investment.

People or Talent have always been the key differentiator. I would only like to add JIT i.e. Just-In-Time Talent to it; whether it is infusion from outside or talent pool available in-house. Are you ‘talent ready’ is the big question. For hiring talent, one caution is what is ahead of what – Time or Quality; people who have lead time as their goal should not be made solely responsible for final hiring decisions. This may result in compromised decisions and entry of the wrong or not so right talent into the company. HR must create a frame work that measures the core attributes one must definitely look for being ‘talent ready’ in today’s context. In addition to the core functional/technical/behavioral capabilities, the framework must mandate the following attributes – whether in-house or infusion from outside. Learning Quotient, Technology Quotient, Innovation Quotient, Networking quotient. Talent who wants to continuously upskill, looking for opportunities to learn something new; familiar with and willing to be hands on with the emerging technologies, looking for how these some of these emerging technologies could be deployed at the work place; the one who questions the status quo, being always on the lookout for learning something new, looking for the next big thing as soon as one get into a new one and lastly the ability to network and build and maintain partnership to continuously explore and expand business opportunities.

Capability building should be at the core the performance management process – mandated and non-negotiable. Quite often, the focus shifts to what is here and now – the key financial & customer metric and the people aspect takes a back seat and is fully left to the managers with no real consequence if no real discussion and actions are initiated around this most important aspect of the process. One could time this discussion in such a fashion that it does not coincide with the annual performance review cycle where often the focus is on performance data, performance rating and compensation. So, for a starter, it is an absolute must to have a skill/competency frame work clearly defined for each role in the Company Secondly, this should therefore form part of the mandated section for the performance conversation and future plan worked out for each individual towards capability/skill building. This will also enable the organization to create the always needed pull for the performance management process too.

For the Culture, a few aspects I consider as a must, in addition to the other core values and what the organization stands for etc:

o  Entrepreneurship: Don’t do micro-management; make the team fully responsible and accountable for the final output; drive team goals; reward for achievement (include profit sharing where possible) and negative consequences for falling short. Make the process transparent.

o  Innovation: Promote risk taking. Reward and look for incentivizing for new learnings. Incorporate learning as a part of benefit program, if possible. Provide a structured window for idea generation to reach the top. No filtration at any level of hierarchy. Widely publicize ideas accepted and involve the person part of the implementation team. Make this as a big movement in the Company.

o  High performance: Build a fair and transparent process to identify high performers and people who wanted to upskill and grow. Ensure fairness. Differentiate significantly. Reward instantly for significant milestones/event-based achievements.   

o  Transparency: Insist on building transparency and fairness in the core of all the people process. Reward and recognize leaders who people look up to for this trait. Introduce feedback process where people can rate leaders and have fairness/transparency as an important parameter.

For the performance management, define key business metrics, cascade down and have a process to track and publish dashboards frequently.  Have the organization invest in performance data tracking. Don’t measure some thing that cannot be tracked. Once the performance data section is automated, frequent (even monthly?) check- ins become possible and the focus shifts qualitative discussion on the ways and means to achieve goals. Also try and define a process to review the IBUs aggregate performance (all individual performance put together) and how the IBU fared on key business metrics. If there is a misalignment, time to review the goal setting process.

Build a structured process for continuous performance and career conversations; provide for more frequent (NOT YEARLY for sure) career/compensation growth. Promote and drive internal mobility for lateral positions. Remember, the competency/skill frame work is the core of this process. Introduce a Resource Manager who could be the program manager to drive mobility in the Company. Remove all barriers – seniority/years in the current role, manager consent and such with the criteria being the closest fit to the role and the person’s aspirations to get into the role. Companies do it as a reactive measure when a top talent wanted to resign or high cost redeployments due to redundancy or many other similar reasons. Succession planning would also fall in place once this process has enough rigor and managers doing these conversation are capable to conduct career conversation.    

Managers as Talent Managers - Enable & equip Managers to do people management. Train them to win the full trust of the team. People are the responsibility of each Manager (and not of HR !) – drive the culture change – transform every manager as Talent Managers. HR provides frame work, train, enable and equip. Building pressure does not necessarily result in higher outcome all the time. Stretch to an extent is welcome while stress is not. People will be far more productive in a stress-free situation. Enable, promote and imbibe this too in Managers. De-hassle the Managers lives too; after all what they are expected to deliver is to manage talent and deliver business outcome!

Construct and mandate a very robust immersion program – whether it is for internal mobility or new hire immersion. No compromise as once they are unleashed to the role, there is no looking back and bandwidth will become a big challenge. Do not let any dilution of the process. All of them should hear straight from horse’s mouth and no delegation please. 

Flexibility @ work place is one of the important benefits the Gen Y look forward to. It is however important to define the expected output for each job/role to provide this flexibility organization wide and if one wants to convert this as a Win-win both for the employee and the Company. For many roles in the Company, this could lead to “working from anywhere any time” one of the asks by the Gen Y work force today. Self-motivation, discipline become the key. Define SOP for the complete process. Build safety net for data/information security.

Get the Company to commit a benefit program kitty. Construct a contemporary benefit program. Continuously review and innovate to be contemporary if not pioneer. Do crowd sourcing to choose and prioritize.  Remember to have wellness initiative woven into it – show that the Company is equally concerned if not more about the well-being of the employees. Package properly and market adequately. Publish dashboard, educate and drive utilization.

Link to the larger cause which the Organization is a part of or contribution to. Have a convincing script, be consistent and communicate continuously both internally and externally. Link every job in the Company to show how it is connected and contributing to this larger cause. Also provide a structure and platform to ‘give it back’. Build enough and more programs where the company demonstrates its willingness to ‘give it back’ to the society and opportunity for people to participate. Also build opportunities for the employees also to contribute. Participate, sponsor events for social cause extensively. Remember, these will contribute to increasing stickiness and are also pull factors for finding new talent outside.    

The plate is more than full. But with these initiatives becoming the core of HR agenda are bound to create magnificent final business outcomes and the organization becomes ‘talent ready’ with the focus on people capability/skill building. Let these practices be not colored as HR interventions and initiatives – these are people interventions and to be driven that ways while HR will enable, train, equip and facilitate but driven by business. But remember, no compromise on people, the talent and the processes around it.  So adoption becomes the key. Leaders and Managers become the super critical success factors. Create the pull – both internally and externally. Transform your company into one of the aspirational employers. Ultimately talent is the only differentiator and the key focus is to engage and retain. Business success has to follow and the organization becomes capable too to sustain it!