HR Challenges -Time to act

Prioritizing key activities and focusing on strategic areas of concern continues to be a challenge for majority of HR professionals. Most of the studies which focus on challenges faced by HR professional continues to highlight the ever increasing pressure of attracting, engaging in retaining talent.

In a recent study by i4cp when respondents were asked about the main barriers facing HR in 2008, 44% of the 355 responding companies rated lack of time as having a high or very high impact on HR’s ability to achieve its goals.

“HR professionals are singing a familiar refrain,” said Donna J. Bear, senior research analyst at i4cp. “They’re citing not enough time, talent or money and too many conflicting priorities as top impediments to accomplishing their employers’ goals.”

Besides not having enough time, nearly four in 10 respondents cited “conflicting organizational priorities,” “scarcity of workforce talent” and “financial resources” as having a high or very high impact on achieving their goal of filling their employers’ ranks with high-potential workers.

Regarding their own ongoing development, HR professionals recognize the need to develop competencies that are both broad and high-level. The study’s respondents ranked leadership first among all the competencies needing further development, with 55% of all organizations ranking it as high or very high in importance. Also, 50% of organizations ranked change management as a high or very high priority, and innovative thinking is also a competency that HR professionals must develop, according to the 47% of respondents who said it ranked high or very high in importance.

HR links for the week

Here are some of the interesting posts from the HR blogosphere for the week. I’m sure readers will enjoy going through the posts.

Career bright on working from Home and how it is important to be self-directed and self-motivated to be able to work from home completely.

David Zinger has an interesting post on Employee engagement where he illustrates through this video on the concept of learned helplessness that contributes to disengagement at work.

Heather Hughes shares her personal experience of how she escaped her newspaper job to start her own Business -- and how others can leaern from her experience as well.

Rowan hosts the Carnival of HR 30 .

A Bob Brady post on no I-PODs at work has most of readers disagreeing to the idea.

Alltop list and HR Guru

The new layout of this blog got some good news as well.HR funda got featured in the ALLTOP list under careers section. Guy Kawasaki took less than a minute to confirm the inclusion after my request.

I also joined the HR Guru community (part of Monster group) and got the invite from TessaT to contribute as a featured blogger. Looking forward to share and connect with the HR community on HR Guru.

HR Value Proposition

Where should HR focus more - on internal customers, business partners or external vendors .It’s a catch -22 situation which many HR teams are unable to crack, some just can’t figure out the areas the top areas of priority. They continue to be driven by change, rather than playing the change agent role.

Dave Ulrich has called on HR to be more in tune with business issues to deliver real value.

Speaking at a Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) annual international conference based in Rome, Ulrich told more than 400 HR practitioners to focus on outcomes - ie, what they deliver for their organisation and key customers, rather than what they do inside.

He urged HR to have an opinion on external changes in technology, economic trends and demographics, and to understand their chief executive's expectations of the business.

"The challenge in HR is not what we do, but what we deliver how we add value," he said. "For decades we have been too focused on what we do. The world of HR for the future should not start with HR it should start with outcomes of HR."Ulrich urged HR to ask how they can use the knowledge they have to help their business leaders.

Ask any business leader and chances are that they will all agree that HR teams continue to deliver day in day out on transactional activities. They meet the expectations and partner effectively on all key deliverables, but when it comes to contribute in leading from the front on strategic areas they are just unsure of the role they can play. They just don’t dare to take up challenges which are up for grab; sometimes they just feel it’s not their cup of tea.

As Ulrich rightly says that instead of starting a discussion with chief executives on training, staffing, recruitment and so on, it is better to start with the outcome - how what HR does adds value to the customers, which ultimately should shape the business agenda."It's important to get customer and investor focus - not what HR thinks should happen, but what's the external reality facing this company in the next 10 years?"

HR @ Web 2.0

The evolution of web based social and professional networking has been quite interesting over the years. On an average I spend almost 40% of my time on net on many of these networking sites. In the early days we all started with Ryze and then linkedin, face book and today I get almost 2-3 invites every week from different networking sites. Although as a user I clearly distinguish between a social and professional networking site but now the lines between the two is getting blurred. So be it orkut or its own desi cousin Big adda our generation is increasingly getting hooked to web based networking.

Linkedin recently launched its new version which has more upgraded features and better integration options and even access via mobile phones and PDA’s. Increasingly I see more and more recruiters using web based networking tools for hiring middle and senior level managers. Members are also directly approaching employees from different organizations to explore options in the organization of their own choice. This is an interesting tread as more and more people are using the networking tools to directly get in touch with the prospective employers. LinkedIn is supposed to have more than 20 million registered users and with the new users joining every day it has a user base which allows plethora of options. Unlike facebook which started as a tool for connecting to campus buddies, LinkedIn is seen as a professional and no-nonsense application.

Web 2.0 and hiring philosophies have been widely used by small and starts up as it gives them the depth and breadth to choose the selected few as they have some niche roles to offer. It’s interesting to note that Facebook hired many of its early employees through LinkedIn. E&Y has a page on Facebook, through which it interacts with prospective employees

Consider this survey, entitled Recruitment Advertising: Moving in New Directions, from companies ranging from $5 million to $5 billion in annual revenues (and from a variety of industry segments) -- said they would spend more on business-networking sites, social networking and employee-referral programs in 2008 than in 2007, but less on print and traditional job boards.

On the other hand some argue that your social profiles on these sites may even backfire in case your prospective employer, client or even business partner decides to search your web footprints using goggle or social networking sites. This interesting conversation on Business week has some interesting observations.

A public profile is a vehicle for casually interacting with others in an informal setting, on personal free time. When companies use these profiles to find not only a professional but also an ideological match for a job, they’re misleading themselves and building ill will with talented prospective employees, who might decline to apply for a job for fear a comment about China on their blogs makes them persona non grata.

Meanwhile organizations are finding it increasingly difficult to make out the difference between and social and a professional networking site. It often seen a waste of time when people spend hours spending time on social networking site. Some sites like Linkedin have clearly articulated that it’s not meant for social loafing. LinkedIn vice president Patrick Crane told Portfolio.com in an interview "Because we're professional, we're not about having people waste time; we’re all about people saving time."

A recent survey of 700 HR executives found that 64 percent said their companies block access to social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, while 63 percent block access to blogs and nearly 70 percent prevent their employees from accessing video or photo-sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr. The study, conducted by Redwood City, Calif.-based security firm Clearswift, also found 54 percent of the HR professionals have had to discipline employees for "wasting time" on the Internet.

While the use of these technologies in the open talent market is wide spreading I’m not aware of many organizations which also using these features of Web 2.0 to engage employees inside the organizations.

I was just wondering how a twitter, facebook or linkedin will help organizations in creating a passionate community of niche users within the organizations. Bulletin boards and blogs have been tried but engaging them through intranet portal will be something really interesting. Given the size and spread of huge big organizations it may be a good tool for creating a more diverse and better connected workforce.

This HRE article has some interesting examples on the latest web 2.0 tools used by organizations.

Some companies that have implemented Web 2.0-type tools in the workplace have found they're a useful way to spark creativity among employees and increase engagement and interaction among -- and between -- employees and customers. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard recently launched HP Uncut, a YouTube-like
system that lets HP employees make their own videos that demonstrate best practices for using and maintaining HP products and then upload them to the corporate Web site.

Taleo has built its Taleo Business Edition application on Facebook Platform, which enables companies to integrate their recruiting applications with Facebook, giving them access to millions of users (and potential job candidates).

Penny Davis, head of HR operations at mobile phone operator T-Mobile says “ it's time for HR professionals to take a fresh look at Web 2.0, and how it can help them tap into new talent pools, encourage staff to collaborate, and build their employee brand”.

In the past year, for example, Davis and her team have used Facebook to help new graduate recruits make the transition to the world of work. "We set up a group on Facebook in May for the 2007 intake so that they could network informally with each other and the T-Mobile recruitment team before their September start date, enabling them to get to know each other and air concerns in a friendly, supportive environment. ."

Management consultancy KPMG, for example, the Royal Bank of Scotland, or data storage giant EMC. All three held careers fairs in Second Life during 2007.

Exciting times ahead for HR professionals as they will find these tools really handy to overcome the challenge of attracting and engaging people.

Is it just about Talent

It’s an old engrossing debate and even today we keep hearing about rechristening of the HR function. What started as Industrial Psychology by Taylor and underwent many changes over the last few decades is still considered little hackneyed as Human Resource. Seth has his views on why we should call HR as Talent department.

Like it or not, in most organizations HR has grown up with a forms/clerical/factory focus. Which was fine, I guess, unless your goal was to do something amazing, something that had nothing to do with a factory, something that required amazing programmers, remarkable marketers or insanely talented strategy people.

So, here's my small suggestion, one that will make some uncomfortable.

Change the department name to Talent.

The reason this makes some people uncomfortable is that it seems like spin, like gratuitous double speak. And, if you don't change what you do, that would be true.

Interesting thoughts, many organizations already call their HR teams as talent development or talent Management functions. I guess HR is the only function which has undergone so many rechristening with changing times, perhaps also a reflection of the challenges this function has faced over the years. Evolution of Human resources function also indicates shifts which business has undergone.

Personally I feel that the word “People” best describes this function.

It’s simple, engages one and all conveys what we stand for in this role.

Everyone will find it easy relate to, it’s not just about the scarce “talent”, every person can be talent.

So let’s replace some of the terms that we have been using with people “employee engagement, talent retention, talent development, talent attraction with people and voila: D it feels better than ever before.

I would rather call myself a “People Manager” than a Talent or HR manager.

Steve's talk at Macworld Expo 08

So in case if you missed the buzz about the world’s thinnest note book, don’t miss this awesome presentation by the best showman in the business today. I’m amazed and thrilled by the passion and child like zeal this guy has for innovation. He’s inspiring and really makes you think how your dreams and passion can drive your efforts towards making a big difference in shaping up the way things are going to be.

Career Progression and Promotions

GG started an interesting conversation on performance rating scale and promotion practices in organizations.

The competencies needed for the new role is fundamentally different from the past role's? No matter how well you've done the performance appraisal for the current role, promoting on its basis for the next role is fraught with danger.One thing you could do before a promotion is assess the person for the competencies for the next role. However that is easier said than done, specially when there are 40,000 employees up for promotion.

My take is slightly different from Gautam’s view that the competencies needed for the new role is fundamentally different from the past roles. I don’t think that different roles in a particular career stream fundamentally don’t differ when it comes to functional competencies. If that’s the case then the role competency mapping is something which needs to be corrected.

In any particular career stream upward movement/role progression will be linked to the basic competencies required for superior performance in that career stream. For a higher role the scope and content of the job will change but essentially the technical and behavioral competencies required for any role in a particular stream will be sub set of different competencies identified for the stream. So when a sales person moves to a sales manager role his core stream will continue to be sales, manager role may change the scope and impact of his activities but to be a good manager he should have performed the role of a sales person effectively to be ready to move to the next higher role.

Assessment for next role should be based on weighted average assessment of current performance, and then the potential assessment for the higher role before the promoting the employee. If an employee knows that his promotion to the next level will not depend on his current performance but based on the assessment of how successfully he is likely to perform the higher role, chances are that the employee will not be able to focus completely on his current role.

When employees move to the next role they are not expected to be the best performer in the new role from day one. Promotion or any career /role movement is made on the basis of the initiating competencies (read-necessary conditions/competencies).Once the employee has played the higher role for a while ,he will be able to differentiate in the new role.

Career progression is also linked to the differentiation the individual is able to bring about in his current role and when it comes to relative comparisons these differentiators are most likely to be mapped to the next role in the career path. Most of the organizations have the practice of promoting employees only after the employee has performed the higher role for some time before the formal assessment and promotions happens.

More than just HR...

Veritude came out with a survey titled “Working together, Working apart”which looked at business and HR leaders working relationship and common understanding of each other issues.

Overall, the research reveals that in many companies, HR must improve their business leaders' perceptions of theirs skills and abilities and business leaders must learn to turn to HR for support in addressing workforce issues. There is ample room for optimism that both business and HR leaders in this study recognize these trends are working toward effective plans.

1.Strategic Business Challenges: Both business and HR leaders agree that talent acquisition and recruitment top the list of strategic business issues, but one in five business and HR leaders see HR as only involved in "implementing " strategy, not participating in plan development. What's more, a common perception is that HR is lacking adequate financial aptitude and therefore is not asked to contribute to strategy development because they do not speak the language of business.

2.The Relationship between Business and HR Leaders: Many business leaders indicate they do not have an established relationship with HR or it world not occur to them to include HR in implementing workforce plans. In general HR leasers agree that business leaders minimize the role that HR plays in workforce planning and don't consider the full scope of HR's ability and expertise.

3.The Impact of Business and HR Leaders' Relationship on Operations: Business leaders perceive HR as "resource constrained" and, as such, unable to effectively implement workforce plans. In turn, HR believes business leaders set unrealistic timeframes, lack an understanding of workforce issues, and are inconsistent in implementing initiatives.

Frankly to me all these survey reports don’t come as a big surprise. I guess I’ve been reading about such “observations / findings” and “recommendation” and the more things change the more they remain the same. Off late I’ve become a big critique of the word “strategic HR” and terms like “HR leaders”. To me it doesn’t make any sense to have them in the best organizations around. No organization today would be great just because it has “strategic HR plans” or it has the “best HR leaders”. Any business challenge today is also a “strategic HR challenge”.

It can either be the growing competition to acquire talent or develop competencies or even explore new market opportunities. Its time so called HR leaders talk about business strategy and take ownership for the business plan rather than just the HR plan. No CEO of an organization expects that functional leaders like HR, Finance or quality should stick only to their piece of pie. Only the ones who dare to break the shibboleth and take the stride to add values with business insights are truly recognized asthe Business leaders and go beyond the cliché of “HR leaders”. I think the expectation today is very different as so called HR challenges are not just being handled by HR leaders .It’s a decision taken by the think tanks as the impact of such decisions are huge. So apart from owning the execution of the HR business plan, today’s expectation is what value one can bring to business plan and its execution.

Even the client model of HR partnership is something which needs to be re-looked at considering the varied situations which the decision makers may find themselves. As far as the transactional and operational activities are concerned the client approach works well to bring about speed and quality in execution and resolving operational issues. However when it comes to business decision making the “consultant approach” is something which HR leaders must do away with. It reinforces the notion that the HR continues to adopt “global approach” to solve and own challenges. The funda is simple “take ownership, go beyond your role, and challenge the conventional wisdom”. Trust me you’ll never be called just another “HR leader” as you would be respected for being a business leader who knows HR and comes from HR background :)

Business challenges for the year ahead

So what could be the likely challenges for the Business leaders in 2008? HBR’s conversation invited some interesting observations.

"With changing attitudes and values, it becomes increasingly necessary for organisations to undergo culture change in order to attract and retain high quality young staff." — Mark Greenshields

"The biggest challenge for managers in 2008 will be giving employees 'permission to play', making work more meaningful and keep it real." — Kathryn Aiken

"Assuming 'management' is a people-oriented activity, I would presume the biggest challenge will be to openly deal with the wants of employees while still making a profit." — David Malouf

IBM global human capital study says that developing the right skill for future business will be the biggest challenge in the coming years.

Today's business executives face a host of pressures, including volatile markets, global competition, and the emergence of new business models. These are forcing organizations to be more responsive to shifting market needs; more flexible in how they operate; more focused on their core competencies; more nimble at partnering; and more resilient to external threats. Success in any of these areas is dependent on the organization's ability to develop a workforce that can adapt to these changes.

The figure below will give you some idea.

Business challenges today are not just external but growing internal challenges give hard times to leadership. We always believed that a happy workforce will help in keeping customers happy. It’s somewhat predictable to assess and work for customer satisfaction but keeping employees satisfied and engaged is becoming a bigger challenge.

The coming years will see more innovation in people practices and as the war of talent gets more intense the work place is going see changes in the way organizations share the future of the enterprise with its internal customers. Policies will be thing of past and more and more organizations will move from the standard, conformity approach to more personalized approach.

Employee empowerment will mean that an employee gets to decide what he wants to do, how he wants to do and the team he wants to work with. Empowered teams will be reviewed and rewarded as special units in all large firms. That’s the challenge for all growing firms in today’s world, every Google success story will be shadowed by facebook like emerging stories. Being big and smart is good but being small and savvy will be great.Here's one interesting video on employee engagement.