Why HR does not get its due in India and why that may be a bad news for you (and everyone)!

In this piece, I argue about the importance of HR based on my personal experience and why it not getting due recognition in most of the organisations (in India atleast) is bad for everyone's career and happiness.

At Internshala, we constantly reflect on what is our culture and how we are living it every day; what really makes an organisation a great place to work and what specific steps we can take to get there. Consequently, I spend lot of my time either executing projects that would traditionally fall under 'HR domain' or helping/grooming members of our HR team in their work. 

I do so because in 7 years of Internshala, I have realised that eventual growth and success of Internshala would depend on one and only one thing - whether we are able to create a workplace that would excite best of the minds in the world to work with us and would help them grow and succeed individually. I believe building a strong culture and an equally strong HR function should be one of the top 3 priorities for a startup CEO (other two being sales and product). Personally also, as an employee of Internshala, I want to spend my working hours surrounded with people who are smart, committed, and genuine, working on a mission that is exciting, in an environment that is free from pretenses and friction. Who doesn't want that?

So making this investment in building a strong HR foundation for Internshala has helped us tremendously over the years. For example, empowering our HR team for recruitment not only means we get colleagues who are a great culture fit (which saves LOT of time later on) but at times this also prevents us from making wrong hiring decisions under short term business pressures that would prove costly in long run. The HR team also invested lot of time in designing an appraisal framework that is fair, objective, and transparent and this resulted in it becoming a great feedback and L&D tool for everyone. Building a strong culture that all of us believed in means things get done faster and better - almost as if on auto pilot. More we progress in our journey to become a great workplace, more obvious the need for a strong HR function to lead us there.

However, I understand this excitement of mine regarding how crucial HR is for a company's success is not shared by everyone. In my experience of working with 3 companies before starting up and interacting with thousands of companies who we help hire interns at Internshala, I have seen only few examples of HR being taken as seriously as it should. At many places, it is perceived as a party planner function and worse still, at few places it acts as a mere rubber stamp which always gets steamrolled by other business functions. And this both baffles me and makes me sad.

HR as an individual

For me a consummate HR professional has almost all the skills that an entrepreneur needs to have. When he* goes out to recruit the smartest of the lot, he needs to be the best of the sales people. In building your brand and image as a great place to work, he needs to display all the creativity and oomph of a marketeer. In solving the day to day issues of employees, he needs all the empathy and patience of a customer service champion. In working with different business units to understand their plans and manpower requirement for next 12 months, he dons the hat of a strategist. In organising all the events, outings, and celebrations, he is being an excellent event manager. He needs the precision and punctuality of an operations team to ensure all the salaries are processed in time. In ensuring we are compliant with all the labor laws & regulations, he acts like a legal eagle. And I have not even mentioned the core HR functions - building a great culture and workplace, performance appraisal, reward and recognition, and learning and development - things that only he can take care of.

Just the sheer diversity of skill set needed for an HR professional is proof enough that it should be one of the most important functions for a business and it should be staffed with some of the organisation's most talented and smartest people.

If so, why doesn't HR get the recognition it deserves?

I do not have any data but I feel it happens in the organisations where building a culture and a strong HR function wasn't among CEO's top 3 priorities - either since inception or somewhere along the way - and it was conceived and grown as a support function and not as a core business function. Since benefits of a strong HR function (or cost of a weak one) are often indirect and difficult to measure, it requires a CEO's commitment to invest her time, energy and resources into building and nurturing this function. Without it, it will not happen.

How to spot if HR is really important function in an organisation?  

Three quick tests - 

1. Does HR have an ultimate and complete authority in deciding who gets recruited and why?

2. Does HR have full ownership of designing and implementing a performance appraisal process that other units follow in spirit and not just pay a lip service to?

3. Is the company known for its culture?

If the answer to above questions is yes, I would believe that this is an organisation which takes its HR seriously.

Why HR not getting due importance in your organisation is bad news for you too?

If you are an HR professional in any such organisation, it can surely be frustrating. But even if you are not in HR, it is a bad news for you to be in such organisation. Here are 3 ways in having a weak HR function can impact you and your happiness negatively - 

a. The quality of people you will be working with - if you have ever worked with a colleague who was simply a pain in the back, you know how frustrating and demoralising it can be. A strong HR function would do a lot better job of finding great people who are culturally aligned and who you would enjoy working with.

b. A broken or non existent performance appraisal process - a cause of heart burn among majority of us. Nothing hurts more than your hardwork and contribution not being recognised in a fair, objective and transparent manner. A weak HR function would mean that this process is left to the whims and fancies of individual managers or function leaders and is unlikely to be as scientific and evidence based as it should have been.

c. No investment in your learning and development - A weak HR function is likely to mean there is no formal and organised effort and investment by the organisation to identify next set of skills that you should learn to succeed in your role. And if you are not learning, you are not growing.

So next time you make fun of your HR team ('Does HR have any real work?') or think their work is limited to organising chaai-samosa parties only; pause and reflect for a minute – you may be laughing at your own misery :).

If you like the approach we are taking to build Internshala as a great place to work and would like to experience working in such environment yourself, we are hiring – https://internshala.com/careers

* - I used ‘he’ to depict an HR professional, as against my common tendency to use ‘she’, on purpose. I wanted to challenge the gender stereotype associated with being an HR professional.