Know Your Gossip Quotient :)

Employee communication through informal means works fastest and rumor mills always reach faster than any formal channel of communication. Grapevines has been always considered as a powerful communication network and as per wiki a study quoted in Forbes magazine concludes that 75 percent of employees hear about matters first through rumors on the grapevine.

Robbins states that rumors flourish in an organization because of three elements. They are a response to situations that are important to employees, where there is some ambiguity, and under conditions that arouse anxiety. From a management perspective, the grapevine acts as a filter and a feedback mechanism to identify issues that employess consider important and relevant.

The Political Calculation blog has come up with an interesting tool which can help you decide if, and also how, you should join in the guilty pleasure that is office gossip at your company.

Managing Internal talent

Career planning and talent management in organizations are subject to various challenges today. Organizations may not always be able to attract and develop talent internally; especially it’s difficult to keep pace with the kind of growth organizations have seen in the last decade. At times home grown talent is often over looked in favour of outside talent in the name of fresh blood and out of box approach. This often leads to unhappy senior and middle management as they feel left out due to the fact that they have grown internally. Interestingly Jerry Yang co-founder of Yahoo who has recently taken over as the CEO faces this challenge as well.

"Being an insider is comforting to the organization as current employees see one of their own in charge," says Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli. "Insiders also know a lot, especially about the culture of the organization and what is important to preserve. Founders, in particular, have an advantage in that they remind employees of what were, in Yahoo's case, more glorious days."

Experts at Wharton say that Yang's biggest priorities should be boosting employee morale and finding key insiders to promote into leadership roles. Yang has said that recruiting talent -- internally or externally-- is one of his biggest goals. Yang should play to his strengths, including his knowledge of Yahoo's inner workings. Since Yang already knows the internal landscape, he's in the best position to identify future leaders from within. Wharton management professor Keith Weigelt agrees. "I would look for talent internally first rather than recruiting it," he says. "If you look externally first, people inside wonder, 'What's wrong with our people?' He has to mine Yahoo and then find the most talented employees."

Sometimes in the hurry to quick fix a problem organizations end up hiring outsiders hoping they will start afresh and bring a new perspective and fix deep rooted cultural issues which the organization has developed over the years. When organizations face crisis employees need some familiar face which represents the culture and values, it’s a kind of reassurance to them which helps to keep motivated and positive.Crisis situations demands a deeper understanding of the softer issues and a historical perspective of organisation ability to respond to challenges ensures that the decision maker is aware and appreciates the rationale for decisions taken, which may appear strange to external stakeholders but are made keeping in mind the organizational culture and dynamics .

What HR does ?

This Business week article made me think how challenging and diverse can be the job of a Human resource professional.

Apart from conveying really bad news—a workforce reduction or a painful reorganization—there are a few other less-than-sensational aspects of an HR career, depending on your temperament and the companies you work for. Lots of HR people I know, for instance, complain about the constant cost-cutting that turns them into the bad guys who must inform employees on a regular basis of reductions in everything from travel allowances to flavors of tea in the break room.

Other HR people wish that the role they play could be more instrumental in making the company a great place to work and less focused on policy and documentation. Still other HR folks spend more time than they'd like protecting the company from employee-relations lawsuits and wage-and-hour claims.

The attention which HR gets, challenges it faces and kind of impact which HR actions have on the employees in the organization is profound and long lasting. I am sure if we all look back at our career as in HR we truly cherish those moments of great joy when we see people dreams come true and also have learnt few lessons when we have to take some tough human decisions at time.

Be it business partner, decision enabler, championing people’s cause or defending policy decisions it’s a challenging and ever demanding job. One has to walk on a tight rope; you are everyone friends yet can’t afford to take sides. You have to stand for fairness and consistency, be mentally prepared to face challenges and answer all odd questions. You are the quintessential nice guy yet some may look at you as part of them (management). You are the change agent and also the custodian of culture and values.

The role has been evolving continuously and best part is that you have the scope and space to scale new challenges by bring about change and move from trusted business partner to transformation partner.

On HR Metrics

A century's worth of MBAs would seem sufficient to propagate a by-the-numbers approach into every nook and cranny of the business world, but it hasn't worked out that way. By most accounts, companies have done a respectable job of mastering financial metrics, but have largely taken a flier on measurements of operations or intangibles such as customer satisfaction or brand loyalty.

Fifteen years ago the advent of the "balanced scorecard" sought to redress this imbalance by demonstrating how nonfinancial metrics could be captured and used to help managers "see their company more clearly — from many perspectives — and make wiser long-term decisions," according to its creators, Robert Kaplan and David Norton. But despite the popularity of that approach at a strategic level, many consultants and academics say it left thorny questions unaddressed at more tactical levels.

Use of HR metrics for measuring the impact and efficacy of practices and policies seems to be similar problems. Measuring the Intangible has multiple challenges and the success lies in identifying the top metrics which captures the critical indicator of organizations deliverables. Identifying key HR functions like recruitment metrics, training metrics, performance management and employee engagement metrics are widely believed to capture the deliverables for HR function.

As Sullivan rightly said “The most common error that I find is that of HR managers trying to create and implement metrics in a vacuum. Instead, I recommend a collaborative approach, in which you take a list of strategic HR metrics that you can live with to the CFO and let him or her select the specific ones that are most likely to measure business impact and be easily understood and considered strategic by top management. By letting the CFO play a role in the selection process and allowing them to make the final decision on what metrics you will move forward with, you eliminate many of the roadblocks you may encounter — and you'll recruit a high-level champion at the same time.

It’s important to understand how you are reviewing and analyzing the metrics and then setting new measurable realistic targets to improve on the key metrics. Sometimes we intend to address too many issues at the same time and then loose focus. Metrics under functions like recruitment and employee engagement which has a more direct impact of business performance can be linked to organizations overall metrics and also made performance measures for various roles so that it has a more direct linkage with individual and organizations goals as well.

HR as Leading Indicator

I'm sure some of us have seen or heard it before in our profession.

Makes me wonder how many of us come forward and take ownership of our actions.

Accept failures when things go wrong.

Come forward and say yes this is my idea and I have a plan to achieve this result and have this target in mind for this action plan.

One can't expect HR to be a leading indicator unless we have leadership which is driven by metrics and linked to bottom line results of the organization. I’m sure we need more HR leaders who lead by end results rather than mere thoughts.

In case if you are doing this then you need to share your experiences and train the rest of the HR folks around. I’m sure we can do better as a professional community by sharing our learning and experiences on this account and raise the levels of HR benchmarking and best practices.

Talent Retention Challenges

As organizations grow they face the challenge of attracting and retaining top talent. Talent strategies may work fine when the organization is small and has the space to offer challenging and fast growing opportunities. It becomes difficult to sustain the organizational growth and continue to offer the same kind of challenge and career growth for talents.WSJ reports how the Google is also facing this challenge of attracting and retaining top talent.

Google had more than six times the number of workers at the end of the first quarter than it had at the same point in 2004, which some former employees say tends to slow decision-making and make it harder for individuals to feel like they're having an impact.

Google stock option are beginning to finish vesting for thousands of employees brought on during a big Google hiring spree in 2003 and 2004, lessening the financial incentives to stay.

On top of all this, a new generation of Internet start-ups has matured enough to attract top technical talent and offer a real possibility of riches from a stock offering or sale to a bigger company. In contrast, Google's shares hit a record level this week, suggesting the stock simply doesn't offer the same potential gains it once did. The concentration of many of the start-ups within a few miles of Google's headquarters, which Google itself has exploited in the past, can make poaching staff a faster and easier pursuit.

Still, Mr. Bock says Google executives spend a lot of time thinking about how to attract and retain top talent as the company grows in size. "We don't want to become a victim of our own success; we're aware of that risk," he says.

The company acknowledges that creative and entrepreneurial people are the core of its success -- that's one reason Google lavishes them with extravagant free food and other perks. "If we do not succeed in attracting excellent personnel or retaining or motivating existing personnel, we may be unable to grow effectively," Google has acknowledged in regulatory
filings.

Best talent continues to aspire more as they achieve success and try to repeat the same experience at a faster and more ambitious pace. Organisations typically find it difficult to keep pace with the growing aspirations of its top talent and this is when the point at which companies needs to rethink the ways they plan to engage employees. As this article clearly outlines that when it comes to human resources, one size no longer fits all.

One set of rules dictated everything from the kinds of benefits and rewards the company offered to how employees were trained and evaluated. That approach made things easier for the human-resources department and ensured a degree of efficiency, equality and fairness. Now some executives are finding that this model isn't adequate for getting the most out of existing talent or attracting and keeping new people. To be competitive in the marketplace and in the race for talent, companies must understand and address the diverse needs of their work force. In fact, they must treat each employee as a "work force of one."

Following this efforts are being made by HR folks to ensure more flexibility, create more opportunities for career growth ,allow individuals greater space in deciding and planning different career paths within the organization .

Sun Microsystems Inc. asks employees to identify the type of physical setting that suits them best -- a private office, team room, satellite center or their home office. Microsoft Corp. goes so far as to ask certain types of employees to design their own career paths. The company offers software engineers both a management-focused and technical-specialist career track and allows them to move back and forth between the two.

Surely this indicates a marked shift in the way talent is being retained and developed in organizations. Career decisions are not just being made on the challenging role and compensation and ESOP’s being offered but how one gets the opportunity to plan his career and try different things in the same organization.

Global HR Transformation

“The definition of HR transformation has evolved out of a number of perceived and real pressures on the HR function. The function is expected to support the business, provide the right direction for the people management strategy and then execute the strategy. It also has to demonstrate an improvement in value, yet at the same time carry out cost-heavy administration.

In response to these challenges, the transformation process that many companies have embarked on involves examining the HR strategy and how it supports the business strategy, and then changing the HR operating model to achieve optimum delivery.”

According to the 2006 Global HR Transformation Study by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, half (50%) of organizations are in the midst of transforming their HR functions, while 12% completed a transformation within the past year and another 10% plan to begin the process within the next year.

HR transformation is the process of recreating or reinventing the HR function with the specific intent of enhancing HR’s contribution to the business.

Technology and service delivery improvements were the focus of the first wave of transformation activity, 5 to 10 years ago, coupled with an expectation that this would enable HR to transition into a more strategic role," says Mike Theaker, principal in Mercer's HR Effectiveness Business. "HR functions are now challenged with delivering against the expectations set--to deliver human capital strategies and initiatives that demonstrate a significant contribution to business operations and the achievement of business goals."

HR leaders reported that their top challenges are: acquiring key talent (43 percent), driving cultural and behavioral change in the organization (40 percent), and building leadership capabilities (40 percent).

Just as HR activities have remained traditional, so has its skill sets. According to Mercer’s survey, 53% of organizations worldwide list skills and competencies of the HR staff as one of the most significant obstacles to enhancing the overall role of the HR function. The capability of line managers to supervise staff and the business’ perception of HR’s value are other leading barriers holding back the development of HR.

“In order for the HR function to move forward with its transformation, organizations must implement a talent strategy that arms HR with a range of skills, especially those that relate to finance and business, so that they can be more effective business partners,” explained Ms. Piercy

Perils of talent crunch

ET reports on the talent crunch at the CEO level in India Inc.

“Few candidates allege that search consultants aren’t being transparent enough, luring them into assignments that were very different from what they were told. “I met a company on a search consultant’s insistence, and they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Now I find that my job is half of what I was promised. I told the headhunter, ‘You are just a bloody broker’,” says a stung candidate. But is there an honest broker? “It’s an oxymoron. To what extent you can be an honest broker while you are selling a job — that’s often the deciding factor,”

Some clients allege that headhunters also try and push the candidate’s compensation higher, so they get a higher cut — a headhunter usually receives up to one-third of the annual package, bonus included. Some firms are said to take on a mandate and pocket a first retainer – one third of the annual salary for the position — even when they know they don’t have the expertise and bandwidth to complete a search successfully, says a headhunter: “For some it’s a free for all, grab all you can. Even some of the big firms are indulging in this behaviour.” But for now the hunt is on.

The current market trend clearly indicates that there’s dearth of capable leaders at the top. India Inc. has not been able to keep pace with the growth and develop leaders and adopt succession planning successfully. The fallout is that too few candidates are being chased for various openings. This has also lead to some unfair and unhealthy practices as recruiters are over promising and candidates having multiple offers are bargaining hard, what it means is that higher salaries, higher perks but not necessarily the best fit for the job.

HR competencies and future ahead

HR competencies and its impact on the role performed by HR has been evolving at a very fast pace, the fast pace of business growth has meant that HR function also reinvents and moves from basis transaction oriented role to more meaty and result driven function having tangible impact on business results and facilitating organization growth and talent development .

SHRM article talks about Dave Ulrich, and his associates who have been on a quest to provide the answer to the competencies required for HR professionals. This year, they’ve released an all-new 2007 Human Resource Competency Study (HRCS). The findings and interpretations lay out professional guidance for HR for at least the next few years. The study outlines six future competencies for HR professionals in the days to come.

The six competencies and the elements that make them up offer the outlines of what it takes to be successful. The Credible Activist is respected, admired, listened to and offers a point of view, takes a position and challenges assumptions by:
• Delivering results with integrity.
• Sharing information.
• Building relationships of trust.
• Doing HR with an attitude (taking appropriate risks, providing candid observations, influencing others).

The Cultural Steward recognizes, articulates and helps shape a company’s culture by:
• Facilitating change.
• Crafting culture.
• Valuing culture.
• Personalizing culture (helping employees find meaning in their work, managing work/life balance, encouraging innovation).

The Talent Manager/Organizational Designer masters theory, research and practice in both talent management and organizational design by:
• Ensuring today’s and tomorrow’s talent.
• Developing talent.
• Shaping the organization.
• Fostering communication.
• Designing reward systems.

The Strategy Architect knows how to make the right change happen by:
• Sustaining strategic agility.
• Engaging customers.

The Business Ally contributes to the success of the business by:
• Serving the value chain.
• Interpreting social context.
• Articulating the value proposition.
• Leveraging business technology.

The Operational Executor administers the day-to-day work of managing people inside an organization by:
• Implementing workplace policies.
• Advancing HR technology.

It’s also interesting to see how the role of HR has been facilitating and encouraging the culture of Innovation, productivity and high performing organisationals.Consider this , according to a survey by Human Resource Executive over half (54 percent) of respondents to a survey on "HR's Role in Fostering Innovation" indicated innovation is very important to their businesses' success.

In other areas, the significance of HR in the processes was rated as follows:

* Fostering innovation -- 36 percent indicated a somewhat significant role.
* Training and developing talent -- 49 percent indicated a very significant role.
* Making innovation a part of the performance-management system -- 47 percent indicated a significant role.
* Establishing incentive and reward systems that are tied to innovation -- 44 percent indicated a significant role.
* Communicating successes to management and employees -- 56 percent indicated a very significant role.
* Tying innovation to succession and promotion - 41 percent (the highest percentage) indicated a significant role.

When asked whether the HR leaders in their organizations participate in brainstorming sessions related to business and product innovation, over half (56 percent) of respondents indicated yes, while 39 percent said no and 5 percent of respondents were not sure.

Clearly indicates the significant impact which HR can have on future of business as Innovation is has been driving growth for organizations.

Previous Posts on Innovation.

Future of Innovation

Key to innovation

Focus on Innovation

HR and Nobel Prize

Can HR ever win Nobel Prize? Joseph Rasquinha and Mohammed Zaheer Hussain opine that the problem with HR is that the overdose of irrelevant jargon and a lack of objectivity, measurement and empirical study.

What HR desperately needs is a new body of thought which should be termed quantitative HR.’ This should be independent of what present practitioners and theorists of the subject are doing. Quantitative HR should look to take a leaf out of the Economics’ book and start by incorporating ‘measurement of the residual’ which is a major part of econometrics.

Today, everyone accepts that HR is important. But very fewcompanies actually practice what they preach and put HR people in strategic positions. If Quantitative HR is in place this will happen automatically, as the statistics will show that the HR people have made a difference to the company. Finally, it is people who make a difference to a subject. The Nobel prizes have been given to people. The possibility of larger numbers of people being attracted to HR due to quantitative theories or measurement will be strong. A lot of these people could be from other disciplines (like mathematics) as is happening in economics. This would be the best indication that HR has really arrived on the ‘science’ scene.

It would also be the best chance for HR to become a Nobel prize for the 21 century. Effective ways of measuring these people processes will ensure that these people processes are credible. Logically, we must accept the assumption that one per cent measurement of a situation is better than no measurement at all.

I really didn’t know how to react to this article. I don’t think the authors are aware about the quantitative practices which have been the adopted over the year by HR students and practitioners to bring more objectivity and predictability in HR practices.

I am not sure if we as HR professional have ever considered Nobel prize as a way benchmark for recognition of HR as a body of knowledge and acknowledging its social impact. HR is a discipline has evolved from multiple subjects and efforts to compare it will traditional social sciences may be futile.

The comparison with economics is also inaccurate as it’s a common error which people make while comparing beahvioural and social science. Wiki defines it as “The term behavioural sciences is often confused with the term social sciences. Though these two broad areas are interrelated and study systemic processes of behaviour, they differ on their level of scientific analysis of various dimensions of behaviour.

Behavioural sciences essentially investigate the decision processes and communication strategies within and between organisms in a social system. This involves fields like psychology and social neuroscience, among others. In contrast, Social sciences study the structural-level processes of a social system and its impact on social processes and social organization. They typically include fields like sociology, economics, history, public health, anthropology, and political science.

Also, Behavioural sciences include two broad categories: Neural-Decision sciences and Social-Communication sciences. Decision sciences involves those disciplines primarily dealing with the decision processes and individual functioning used in the survival of organism in a social environment. These include psychology, cognitive organization theory, psychobiology, management science, operations research (not to be confused with business administration) and social neuroscience.

On the other hand, Communication sciences include those fields which study the communication strategies used by organisms and its dynamics between organisms in an environment. These include fields like Anthropology, Organizational behaviour, Organization studies, Sociology and Social networks.

Human Resource as a field of study has evolved from both these aspects of behavioural science and also relies upon statistical and mathematical analysis as much as economics.Herbert Simon who won the Economics Nobel Prize in 1978 for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations has also made considerable impact in the field of HR /OB and there’s no way HR can be considered as an independent field of enquiry as it draws its origin to other behavioural and social science.