#OddEven Rule – How does HR make the most of it?

New Delhi has woken up to the new year with much lesser traffic, thanks to the new #oddeven rule put in place by the Delhi government. I found a very interesting gif image on ibnlive depicting the traffic situation in Delhi today.

Let’s hope that this translates into a noticeable impact on the pollution levels as well. While the authorities are doing what they can, what can we, as HR professionals, do to make this initiative successful?

• Carpooling – The first thing that comes to mind is to encourage carpooling. What the HR team can do is program manage the car pooling initiative in office. This would require a certain amount of discipline and getting used to. However, positioning it as a win-win situation (a chance to develop new friendships, network, and even gossip :P) can go a long way towards employee engagement.

• Office Buses – For organizations that do not already have this option, give the employees the luxury of relaxing in a comfortable ride home which is managed by the office. Believe me, this will take away a lot of stress for them in terms of thinking everyday about their commute hassles. Plus it’s a much safer option as well.

• Healthy options – This can be used as an opportunity to drive health initiatives. Try and get a place where employees can park their bicycles if they use those to come to office. A further step would even be incentivizing this behavior to encourage employees to start using this mode of transport.

• Workplace Flexibility – Employees will love this. Try and institute a policy of working from home once a week. Ok, I know I’m pushing my luck here but at least some flexibility in working hours would go a long way in soothing the frayed nerves of employees every morning. 

While we all are working towards a less polluted city, let’s try and make the most of it and have some fun as well.

Do write in with your suggestions as well to make this a hassle-free transition for everyone.

Top 5 HR trends in 2016 - My two cents!

The year 2015 can safely be called the year of startups. With a plethora of options for almost everything, technology and innovation entering our daily lives, we saw a host of changes in the way we live. Whether it’s a simple thing like traveling (think Uber, Ola) or something as mundane as ordering veggies (think Bigbasket, Grofers), we all have seen a shift in our lifestyles in 2015.

From an HR perspective, all this meant a shift in our ways of managing employee expectations. From blocking / unblocking ‘time wasters’ like shopping sites (thnk flipkart, myntra, jabong, amazon) to the end of the road for employee concierge services, most things became available at employees’ fingertips.

Let’s hope 2016 will be an even more exciting year for all of us. From my conversations with HR ‘Gurus’ across industries, these are my two cents on the top 5 HR trends that I see for 2016:

• Employee Social Networks – These enterprise-wide social networks have long been touted as the death knell for Enterprise e-mail. However, this has really not happened. But as we move towards more and more collaborative working and functional interdependence, these networks have built in a lot of capabilities that might eventually not be able to kill email, but act as a very strong supplemental tool for organizational collaboration and project management. Yammer, IBM Connections and Salesforce’s Chatter are only a few options in this space.

• Rise of video – With the cost of broadband coming down by the second, and the eventual launch of the much touted 4G speeds in India, there is no stopping the video bandwagon. Right from on-the-go learning programs (think Massive Open Online Courses, MOOCs), to video candidate profiles supplementing the traditional resume (think locations where the employer might not be present), to Online and offline webinars, whatever employee related initiative one talks about, 2016 will see the explosion of video content. A simple showcase is ‘Video’ becoming a prominent tab in any Google search.

• Workplace Flexibility – As we see the newest generation, Gen Z, entering our workforce, we see a lot more young employees who are very confident of the kind of work they do and their own capabilities. Plug it with the startup storm that is taking us into a new world of innovation and opportunity, we see a new trend of freelancing (or doing your own thing). I see 2016 as being the year where more training is required for the traditionalists to handle the new kids on the block.

• Tier II & III Cities – The contribution of tier II & III cities towards the workforce has been steadily increasing over the years. However, the ever ongoing war for talent, coupled with tools being available now for mentoring to become an on-demand service, we are going to witness a new set of skilled employees who are employment-ready in 2016. These tools essentially bring the experts from the likes of Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi etc. to the doorsteps of students / job seekers sitting in obscure locations in the country.

• Employee First – Customer first has been the long standing ‘mantra’ over the years. However, organizations are realizing that a happy customer is a result of a happy employee. The kind of stress that employees face on a day-to-day basis has to be mitigated over a period of time. So ‘Employee First’ initiatives, like doing away with the bell curve, using Wearables (health bands like Fitbit and Mi bands) to track employee health and wellness, etc., will start taking concrete shape in 2016.

Let me know your thoughts on these.

Wishing everyone a happening 2016!

What we miss in Leadership Development - Redundancy!

Yes, you read it right. I am saying that there needs to be a certain element of employee redundancy for a function / organization to prosper. Why am I saying this?

Because unless you are willing to move your high potential employees to explore other areas of work in the organization, they will never develop to become ‘General’ managers. We will continue to promote (read re-designate because the role will never change except volume) employees basis current performance and not think of developing rounded skills which are vital at leadership levels in any organization. Learning out of your comfort zone will never happen if there is no one to take the place of the high-performer.

Job Rotation as a concept has been much talked and written about. However, one tends to miss out on certain basic pre-requisites before thinking of this:

• Top management will – This is a no-brainer. Unless the top team is willing to make a few sacrifices at a tactical level to make sure that we have ready leaders in future, no job rotation program will ever work. Long-term vision has to precede shorter-term decisions.

• Sustainability – Typically, our top performers become indispensable. However, sustainability over a period of time cannot be person dependent. That’s why the redundancy is much needed to keep things flowing smoothly.

• Mortality – Who is responsible for the mortality of the organization? In owner driven firms, this one is easy. But for so-called ‘professional’ organizations, one needs to constantly be on the lookout and create new leaders. Not easy.

Assuming all this in place, how does one go about operationalizing the job rotation programs:

Identify your high potentials (HiPos) – Mind you, not the high performers. Keep a ratio of least 3 aspirants for a critical position. I won’t get into the tools required to do this. There is a plethora of them available in the HR market.

Ask them – Telling them that they are in the HiPo list will cut down the possibility of losing them by more than half. You don’t want your investments in getting them ready going down the drain just because they didn’t know. Ask them if they are interested at all. Some of them might be happy with the functional growth. Shifting them elsewhere will only demotivate them.

Manage collateral damage – At this point, you might end up losing some high performing employees since they would have wanted their names in the list. Anticipate this and be ready before it happens.

Mentor the HiPos - Leadership readiness is not a 100m sprint. Think of it like a marathon. Have a 5 year plan and give enough time in each of the functions. No function is more or less important for an organization in the long term. Assign long term mentors to them who have no direct interest in their growth / failure. Mentoring services can also be got from industry / HR experts outside the organization. The HiPos will need only guidance on a fortnightly / monthly basis.

The schedule is sacrosanct – Have a rotational program for at least 18 months in one project / role. Do not give in to the lure of extending the time limit for the project / role even if it’s working very well. Remember the long term vision at this time.

And keep remembering again and again, the leadership development program as a whole is for the greater organizational good. While some maybe born with the requisite skills, others can be made into leaders. And it’s our job to do that.

Bye-bye to the bell curve

“Bye-bye to the bell curve” – These words will sound like music to employees and managers who have long been ‘victimized’ by the unfavorable wrath of the %s defined for the appraisal bell curve. Lately, all of us have heard in the news about major organizations including Infosys, Accenture, Cisco, Microsoft, Adobe, Kelly, and the likes having axed the bell curve out of their performance management process.

However, in conjunction, there have been muted questions on how the new system will work? How will we differentiate between performers and non-performers? Will there be any sort of documentation of facts / evidence on which the performance appraisal was based?

I had written on the need for bringing in leniency in the percentages defined for the bell curve based on organizational performance a few years back “Is the bell really tolling”. However, what we are witnessing today is the complete junking of the annual appraisal process and renewed focus towards quarterly discussions and the hope that these will be more productive and lead to greater employee motivation as well as developmental input. While some organizations (like Infosys) will still retain the ratings (eliminating the strict %s for the bell curve), others like Microsoft have chosen to follow a completely new system for evaluation of employees.

While this is a fresh new perspective on the way of looking at performance management, it does rely heavily on the maturity of the managers conducting these discussions. The role of HR here becomes even more important here as the onus of maintaining a system which is perceived to be unbiased falls completely on them. Evaluating managers will have to be constantly goaded and trained on the sensitivity of the discussions and a need to showcase unbiased performance orientation in all their decisions (whether it is of promoting someone, or deciding the pay for others). However, this is easier said than done. And hence the need for HR to be present in all performance discussions till the time this process stabilizes and gets institutionalized. We need to get answers to two basic questions from the assessing managers, albeit, in a sensitive manner:

·         Would you want the employee in question as part of your team going forward?

·         Is he / she ready for the next step towards greater job responsibility?

The answers to these will give us valuable data which can then be used to take other employee decisions in the performance management process.

This is a fresh change and we are hoping that this gives us what we have been vying for all these years through the use of the bell curve – employee performance orientation and clear differentiation. 

Employee Engagement – Not all Song n’ Dance

A few days back, I came across this graphic which shows Engagement of Employees as blocks of a house. Being in the Real Estate sector, this obviously aroused my curiosity.

What is interesting is that the foundation of employee engagement is the Organizational Culture and the Values being espoused at the workplace. This in turn shapes the job / organizational content for an employee. This content might include everything from the nature of the job, the work conditions, the associated rewards, the perceived value of the job, the attitude of the management towards the role, the person, and expectations along with a feeling of contributing to the success of the organization. All these factors in place, one can expect a great attitude from each employee, thereby leading to what is fancily called Organizational Citizenship.

However, this is a long list of expectations to be fulfilled, especially in the millennial workforce where the average job tenure is starting to be counted in months rather than years.  Hence, HR managers of today have to focus on what is most relevant to the workforce and what will have maximum impact in the shortest time.

Now what’s relevant might differ from one employee to another. Here the HR team has to do some legwork in identifying areas of concern / impact for employees to show to employees that the organization cares. I’ve seen an organization where the average age of the workforce was below 30 and they tweaked the compensation structure to maximize the take-home for the younger lot. The relatively senior ones were still given the option to safeguard or maximize their retirals. Small change, but high impact.

Some obvious quick-wins visible in the graphic:

·     Communication – I have seen examples of leaders / top management who go out of the way to make sure that the employees stay ahead of the rumor mills. Employees love such leaders. It gives the impression that the top management is accessible and human and makes the employees feel involved in the longer term vision.

·    Happy Workplace – As  Jack Welch famously said a happy workplace gives us happy customers, leading to better cashflows. Small things like impromptu public recognition meetings, go a long way in sustaining the morale of employees. Elaborate song n’ dance routines are effective if it is ensured that the involvement is from the larger workforce, and not restricted to the HR / Marketing teams. The process is more important than the end result.

·     Flexibility – Treating employees as humans. The line between ‘work’ and ‘life has become blurred. So practice it both ways. Not only work time encroaching into ‘family’ time. Give some flexibility in letting it work the other way. And see the results for yourself.

These in no way should take one away from the fact that the biggest X factor in employee engagement is the immediate manager. Most other factors impacting this metric are the responsibility of the immediate manger. Hence, a more longer-term ongoing imperative is training managers to become human and treat their team members as humans. The message has to be that in the longer term, only the creative and agile organizations will survive. And creativity is fostered in a positive environment only. So trust the team and treat them like you would want to be treated yourself.

Do we trust our employees!!

We all have seen elaborate HR manuals and policy documents specifying strict rules / procedures / systems around what an employee should do or not. Enormous amounts of time, money, and human resources are being used to set these systems in place and to efficient execution and strict adherence. But do we really need these?

Can we not ‘trust’ the people we hire?  If that’s the case, are we hiring the right set of people? And if either is not true, then why waste humongous resources to act like watchdogs over them.

Some simple examples:

• Leave – Most organizations have a standard range of Privilege Leave, Casual Leave, Sick Leave, Maternity Leave, Paternity Leave, Study Leave, etc etc. Why not treat your employees as mature adults and let them decide when and for what they want to take leave?

• Work Hours – Does this concept exist anymore? With technology and mail-on-the-go, the ‘seven day weekend’ can also be read as the ‘seven day work-week’. With almost all of us being available for office work during our waking hours, and work interspersed with our personal lives, are we not eligible for time-off during the so-called work hours. Are your mature and adult team members not smart enough to figure what and when something is important and needs to be completed?

• Attendance – Organizations have evolved biometrics, mobile check-ins, swipe cards, and lots of ‘sophisticated’ technology to track this. Why not have the default as the employee being ‘present’, and have systems to let employees inform only if they are absent.

• Travel & Stay – All Policy manuals have specific limits defined as per the level in the organization. Why not have the employees themselves decide how they want to travel and where they want to stay.

• Performance – Months and months of employee time is spent on assessing the performance and documentation of the results. Most of the times, the results are in your face and everyone knows where they are in the ‘normalized’ curve. Should this not be an ongoing exercise and a developmental one rather than focusing on the ‘rating’ and the related increment / promotion.

I admit that you will have 5-10% of the population taking advantage if you do not have the ‘watchdog’ systems in place. But I’m sure these 5-10% employees will be visible to everyone over a period of time. Does it then warrant subjecting the other 90% to painful approval processes and impediments for simple things? Is it fair to not ‘trust’ them? Think for yourself.

How effective is your HR function..

We all keep hearing about the strategic role HR needs to play, HR presence in the boardroom and the impact that HR can have on business decisions. But how many of us have sat back and ever evaluated the current functioning of our HR teams.

Is the HR team geared up to cater to the requirements of the business..Is there some way of reviewing the efficiency and effectiveness of the HR function in relation to what is expected out of them..While there is no quick answer to these questions, it can be done in a structured manner thereby providing a mirror to the HR team reflecting what they do best and where they need to improve.

I will talk about an outside-in approach as displayed in the image below:

1. Step 1 would entail understanding the expectations that your internal customer has and the perceived effectiveness of the services provided. This would also help us understand the process and performance expectations out of the HR team.
   
2. The next step is a cause and effect analysis of what is causing the perceptions gathered in relation to the findings in Step 1. Where is each member of the HR team spending his / her time, what activities are they performing? Are they playing an advisory role to the business or are their functions more administrative in nature? Is HR playing a solution providing role and facilitating business requirements? All these questions need to be answered in this step.
   
3. The final step is the assessment of the skills and capabilities of the HR team against the roles / responsibilities / competencies defined for the HR function. This needs to be mapped against the results of step 2 which will give us an idea of where skills need to be redeployed, new skills brought in or existing skills to be improved.

An analysis of the steps above will showcase an assessment of the service delivery model of the HR function, its structure and reporting relationships, distribution of activities between corporate and regional HR and where automation can be brought in the HR function.

However, this entire exercise should not be done in isolation. The inputs of the key stakeholders need to be incorporated at each step. Because while process improvement is an ongoing exercise, we should not forget that the end result has to be adding value to the business.

How we love Stories...

We all love stories – whether its telling stories, listening to stories, making up stories or finishing stories, the fact is that we, as a race love stories. Right from childhood, when we make our parents read out stories to us, to the most read fiction bestseller; stories have a way to ignite our imaginations.

Then why not make use of this penchant and love for stories to try and use it to build employee connect. Easier said than done – because employees like only interesting stories, and not all of them become bestsellers within the organization. But just like we have the huge rows and columns of shelves in large bookstores, and we choose the books we like, employees do lap up stories that affect them, that strike a chord with them, that make them laugh.

So, what does an HR person do.

Step 1) Find out the folklores within the organization. Easier for legacy organizations which are 100+ years old, lesser for startups which might be a 100 months/days old. But try and build these tales around personalities – the ones who have been able to survive the years of onslaught the organization has gone through / who are stars in the organization and employees look up-to them

Step 2) Have a catchphrase for your story a.k.a, brand your initiative. Take help if you have a marketing agency working with you or you have an in-house art/edit team. The visuals should be eye-catching and the tone must reflect the feel of the story.

Step 3) Market the story. Ask the people in the story to explain formally and informally (to juniors and newcomers) what they went through, how they were able to do what is showcased, and how things have changed.

Once you have this in place, you will find people aspiring and contributing for your next set of stories. And slowly and steadily, you will see a cultural shift towards the kind of stories you are showcasing. What one needs to be careful of is that the stories should focus on the direction in which you want your employees to think.

Each story we like leaves a little bit of it in us. Because we all love stories..and we remember them…like the race between the rabbit and the tortoise..:)

Engage your critical employees..

I came across this very interesting article in McKinsey Quarterly focusing on engaging critical employees in the organization. It speaks about mapping the probability of an employee leaving the organization vs. the difficulty in replacing him/her. Essentially, it talks of a matrix that looks somewhat like this:

So what this is saying is that an employee falling in the red zone has a higher probability of leaving the organization (based on factors such as market demand, salary trends, family situation etc.) and it will also be very difficult to replace him / her.

We tried to implement this in our organization but came across some roadblocks. We found that somehow the criticality of the role that was being played by our employee was getting missed out. We wanted to get in the job role aspect rather than only focusing on the person. This was because we were not sure of skills being the only differentiating factor. We tweaked the matrix as follows:

This gave us an idea of how important the person was to us with regard to the work that he was performing and his/her Replaceability. The definitions for the boxes in the matrix were tweaked to build in the probability of the person leaving and the difficulty in replacing him/her.

This is a great tool to help your line managers engage in discussions and help them understand each of their subordinates in a deeper manner. This gives great insights into identifying the motivational anchors of the team and these can then be clubbed together to identify themes on engagement. In this particular case, this matrix was used for succession planning in the organization to identify and keep a ready pipeline for the ‘red box’ positions / persons. 

Impact of a frustrated employee

While we have all heard of one-off extreme (and violent) reactions of a frustrated employee in office, most times things don’t reach that level and people leave. However, I have seen organizations trying to retain employees in the guise of performance even when they know that the mere presence of the frustrated employee is not good for the rest of the team. These are just some of the effects that a frustrated employee might have on others:

- Negativity – A frustrated employee is a constant cribber. He would rather see the glass half empty than half full. This becomes a habit and co-workers are fed on constant negativity and how things are bad in the organization. It takes a very mature co-worker to filter this barrage of negativity flowing round the clock.

- Going slow on work – A frustrated employee does not see value in the work he/she is doing. Hence, his/her productivity goes down and the delivery expected almost never happens on time.

- Glorifying what’s happening outside – A frustrated employee starts comparing and pointing out the perks / benefits available in other organizations vs. yours. This in turn inspires and makes other employees think that the grass is greener outside.

- Inspiring others to leave – A frustrated employee might even start helping others in their job search thereby aiming at inflicting maximum harm to the organization.

A frustrated employee aims at vitiating the atmosphere in the office. Considering the fact that we end up spending most of our awake time in office with the same set of people, is it not logical on the part of organizations to let go off such employees rather than persisting with them?

Weaving your Work Web

While I generally find seminars and classroom training programs a drab affair, I recently attended a 3 day training program where a few concepts were implementable. The trainer spoke about the complexity of the informal organization and how important it is to build your own network inside as well as outside your organization.

While this might sound obvious, its easier said than done. And the more difficult part is to track and understand how big and strong your network is. Adapted from “How to Manage” by Jo Owen, there are certain role definitions for each member in your network. Classify your contacts as follws:

Informers – Sources of vital information, trends and developments. They know what is going on, so you ought to have as many as possible.

Connectors – Open doors and connect you to others. These are people who know people. These may come from your business as well as social network.

Sponsors – People with power and influence and can be relied upon for support when required. Essential for leverage.

Promoters – are your supporters and increase your visibility by advertising your strengths

Advisors – provide guidance and feedback on your development plans (both business as well as personal).

Experts – People with specialist expertise to complement your own and can provide argument in your own area. These can also be useful when you need to get buy in from groups with a specialist background different from yours.

The classification is not as easy as I thought it was and found that there was a lot of overlap in terms of one person falling in more than one classification. However, try and keep away from one person appearing more than once.

Use the following circle to understand your own web network. This will give you an idea of who are the people you hang out with and where all you need to develop in terms of making a more intricate web of people.

We will need 3 different colored pens :

- Put your name in the centre of the circle
- Use a red line for someone who is not very critical in your web ending with the name of the person
- Use an amber line for someone who is critical to your web ending with the name of the person
- Use a green line for someone who is extremely critical to your web ending with the name of the person
- The length of the line denotes the strength of the relation you share. A name close to the circle denotes a close relation.

Once you are through with this exercise, your web might look something like this. I have omitted the names for clarity and put an initial as an example:

This gives us a clear idea of the following:

- The uniqueness of our network and the areas where we need our network to develop
- Which are the relationships that we need to work upon and are essential for our long term success
- The relationships that we take for granted and understand their criticality in our success.

Your network can be reviewed every 6 months and updated to see what progress you have made in developing your own work-wide web.

For me, my first insight was that I hardly had anyone in the Advisors box. And I have started to work on developing some of them for myself. And I also made a few calls to rejig my old boys’ network…:D

Gen Y – The Mindset Challenge!

The definition of Gen Y varies from source to source but let’s take the more generic one – the ones born in the late 80s and after. Essentially which form a large proportion of junior and middle management in most organizations.

The problem starts when we have the Baby Boomers and Gen X being part of the top management and expecting Gen Y to behave and act the same way as they did when they were in their 20s. So how do we go about resolving this imbroglio?

While there is no concrete answer as people strategies differ from culture to culture and organization to organiation, it would be best for both sides to understand that they can co-exist in a productive manner.

Some things have evolved…

- Slicker and faster presentation – Modes of presentation as well as confidence to use those modes has come a long way. So while you have Gen Y carrying presentations on their phones and making last minute changes, it’s a far cry from the printouts carried by the seniors.

- Always-on communication – with Whatsapp and Facebook messenger topping the communication list of Gen Y, information is beginning to travel to far-off places real time. So we might find a teen who is relaying what is being said in a discussion to a remote location reducing the time lag considerably.

- Reduced need for job security – The post-liberalization phase has got various types of opportunities for the new generation. After all, who would have heard of a social media marketer till a few years back.

- Need for faster gratification – Gone are the days when you could tell your team members that things would be taken care of in the next appraisal cycle. Gen Y is looking for instant gratification for their efforts and have no qualms in moving ahead if they feel that they have been shortchanged. That is why we see a large number of employees leaving without a job and not being overly concerned about finding another.

- Greater self-confidence – With more exposure and information at their fingertips, Gen Y is forever confident about themselves. They are ready to take on the most difficult of challenges at the earliest in life and are not scared of anything.

While some others have not…

- Need for recognition and differentiation – Gen Y needs to be recognized and appreciated for the work they do. And this is no different from our seniors. There has to be a clear line of sight of what they are expected to deliver and the underlying rewards.

- See value in what you do – Gen Y is very conscious of what they do and their need to bring in value to what they do is very similar to what the senior management is looking for.

- Responsibility and Ownership of work – While Gen Y maybe perceived as being obnoxious and aggressive, they are as responsible and like to maintain ownership of what they do as their predecessors.

- Need to make an impact – Gen Y wants to make an early impact in whatever they do. While the timeframe might be different, the ideology is similar to what the senior management thinks and desires.

So there are some areas where Gen Y is different, but the basic ideology is still very similar to what is desired at the top. Our management needs to understand that things/ideas/modes have evolved and channelize these energies to make the best us of them.

How do effective HR people relate to the line function!

While this may sound easy to do, I have seen lot of senior HR people struggle to relate themselves to the same people they are supposed to provide service to. HR is a support function after all, and its best to work towards the best interests of the line function. Not that one ought to compromise on the ‘policies’ of the organization, but too much of red tape and the line function starts hating the HR function.

How does one do that? Some very basic but effective tenets are as follows:

Understand the business – Whether it is a manufacturing, sales, or any other kind of service organization, it is essential for any HR professional to be conversant with the kind of business it is operating in. It is surpising to see so many HR heads who have no clue of the product, the work conditions in which their employees operate in, or the drivers required for an employee to succeed in the organization.

Understand what the top management is thinking – There are so many times when we see the HR function playing a reactive rather than a proactive role in understanding the direction of the organization. The HR function has to position itself as an important cog in the whole scheme of things rather than play the role of just an administrative function.

Speak their language – There is lot of HR jargon that creeps into our daily vernacular because of the kind of work we do. However, this is not always appreciated by the line function who do not care about the HR models and concepts that we harp about. Very few HR professionals are able to explain the concepts in their head to the line employees (both in a presentation or a written document).

Identify the cliques – Every organization has its own set of cliques that are critical in the day-to-day operations of the line function. It is essential to identify these and decide on which cliques one wants to be part of and which ones to stay away from. This choice would be critical in determining the HR function’s success in the organization.

Network – The HR team has to be on top of what is going on in the organization. Both formal and informal sources of information have to be identified, nurtured and then harnessed to keep a constant track of the pulse of the line function.

While all of these may sound obvious, there are times when we get lost in our domain / functional knowledge and try to push things down the throat of the line function. This may not be appreciated over a longer term and its best to align ourselves to the line function to be more effective.

After all, lets not forget, HR is an enabler !!

How the Work Ethic has evolved!

The concepts of ‘work’ and ‘job’ have undergone a sea change over the past few years. Our parents’ generation believed in the ‘One life one job’ concept and we see numerous cases from that generation where they have spent their entire lives in one organization.

The work ethic has evolved over the years and the concepts at the workplace have also changed. The ‘Pentium’ kids (those born with a computer at hand all the time) are most comfortable with communication and digitized mediums and have very different concepts relating to the age-old definitions:

Loyalty – While our Parents generation believed in spending one life in one job, the Millennials are most comfortable with their own development and look at constant and accelerated growth for themselves. This is the reason we see a lot of resumes these days with an average of 1.5-2 yrs per job. Organizations are also waking up to this fact and are realizing the value of employees who can contribute well over a period of 2-3 years.

Respect – Our Parents grew up with the concept of respecting seniors at the workplace because of their age and the fact that a senior might have a spent a decade more than them working in the organization. Gen Y, on the other hand, has a practical approach towards the concept of respect, They respect you if they feel the need to. Respect at the workplace is earned by your actions rather than the number of grey hair that you have.

Communication – Our parents grew up in the age where there was no Internet, no mobile phones, no ‘Google’, etc. The Pentium kids take all these things for granted and resources such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other networking mediums are available 24X7.

Work Timings – The conventional work timings of 9 to 6 which existed a few years back have also seen major changes. There has been a blurring of lines between working at office, working from home, working on the move, and so on.

Networking – With resources like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc, gaining momentum, the way we network has also revolutionalized. While networking was restricted to office parties for the previous generation, this has turned into a 24X7 activity with ‘always available’ tools gaining ground.

The greatest challenge for the HR department lies in the fact that the expectations of these two sets of employees have to be brought together. The top management team has typically been brought up on the previous generation values but they. in turn, have to manage the millennial employees with a different set of expectations. The HR team has to ensure that both sets of employees are educated about this. It has to be clearly communicated to both sets that different people may have different styles of working. No one style is really wrong. One has to maximize productivity by trying to make the best out of both and breed creativity rather than contempt.

Facebook and Twitter – Should they be blocked in office !

A vociferous NO!!

There are numerous times when we see the page shown below (or something similar telling us that its against organizational policy) in our offices when we try to login to Facebook, Twitter or any of the other social networking websites.

The traditional arguments supporting the blocking of these pages have been:


i) Employees will waste time on these rather than doing actual work – My take on this is that employees are an innovative lot. If they HAVE to waste time, they will find numerous ways to do it. The analogy to this could be that you do not provide telephones at workstations because employees might call up their friends during the day and waste time!!!


ii) Employees might leak confidential information – First of all, employees are not stupid and they understand that this will not be taken lightly by senior management. So they will be extra careful. And if you really have an employee doing this deliberately, then he really has no business being part of the organization in the first place.


Even if organizations keep banning these websites, smart-phones are an obvious option that the employee has to access them 24x7. Smart-phones have penetrated deep into the Millennial and the Gen Y population and are no more restricted to the corporate boys, as signified by the new Vodafone-Blackberry ad.


From the business point of view, I will take the example of 2 types of organizations to push my case for NOT banning social networking websites and how these could help in the long run:

• Service based Organizations – It is critical that these types of organizations keep an open ear to what is being said about them in the marketplace. And Facebook is the biggest marketplace in the world today. Last heard, if Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd biggest in the world. So that’s the size we are talking about. Consumers who thrive on sharing information are on the rise and they do not hesitate to put real time feedback on Twitter for ex.,
• “Having Cappuccino at XYZ Coffe Place..the service sucks!
• “The new XYZ mobile service rocks!....Just had a smooth conversation in a lift 3 levels below the ground floor ”

One can imagine the kind of impact these simple tweets can have on the group of people listening to this conversation on the web.

• Sales based Organizations – With social networking websites garnering huge membership figures, it is essential that the conversations in these maintain a positive note. Any negative discord has to be handled quickly and efficiently. These websites have taken word-of-mouth publicity to levels never ever imagined a few years back.
  
  
  
  
  
  Just imagine if a marketer was listening to the natural conversation above…

And users consider this publicity GENUINE, simply because it is coming from people they know and it is taking natural conversations onto the cyber space. Apart from the genuineness, marketers can use these to increase visibility as well as get on-the-spot feedback on what people think about new schemes/ launches / products, etc.


In effect, what I am trying to say is that these websites can actually add value to the business. And my belief is that the HR function’s role is complete only when it can help in adding value to the business.


So we need to come out of the old mindset and start exposing employees and our marketers to this ongoing revolution and modify our policies to accept these changes. The insightful Dilbert sums up my discussion:

Listening to Employees

In continuation of my post on retention of employees, I got some queries on what to do when we conduct Stay Interviews…

While Exit Interviews have been a traditional tool for trying to understand the issues employees face, the general feeling is that almost always, it is too late. We have all heard of employees saying:

‘What is the point of these questions now?’

‘Why couldn’t these questions be asked earlier?’

and even worse !!

‘Why did the organization not do anything when I had raised this earlier?’

In a country like India where almost all organizations are grappling with the issue of retention of quality talent, these are interesting questions. They tell us that the employee is waiting to be heard. He is willing to give the organization a chance. However, if the issues faced by him are not sorted out, he will not hesitate to move on.

For this, we need to understand from the employees the key imperatives that help him stay in the organization. Stay Interviews can be used as a forum where we focus on the +ve, we focus on why employees would want to stick with the organization ‘in spite of’ the constraints he faces.

Stay Interviews can give us interesting insights into the employee mindset thereby assisting in 2 key elements of the HR loop.

i) Engagement

ii) Development

Engagement – Stay Interviews will give us interesting insights into how our key employees think, thereby, giving us an early warning mechanism for identifying employees likely to leave. Our engagement initiatives can then be centered on critical employees (who are likely to leave and whose skills are pivotal in the organization)

Development – Stay Interviews throw up a lot of areas where the organization needs to improve as well as employees coming up with areas where they would want to improve in order to move on to the next level in the organization.

However, a word of caution around Stay Interviews: While employees understand and admit that changes cannot be made overnight, if they do not see a sustained effort towards change, they will start thinking of the whole exercise as hogwash. Hence, one needs to be very careful and take care of employee expectations. Any organization should venture into this exercise only when there is a clear mandate and effort towards making a difference.

The best ways to disengage employees

Organizations spend a lot of time figuring out how to keep their employees engaged. What they fail to avoid are basic tenets that are real put-offs for high performing employees.

I just thought it would be worthwhile to put down the top ways to disengage employees.

• The ‘Culture’ at the workplace – Little things said or informal rules in the organization go a long way in employees forming an opinion about the workplace. Simple things like having to wait for the boss to leave or a casual comment like “Half-day today?” when someone is leaving at the official closing time goes a long way in forming the opinion in minds of the employees.

• The “dictatorial” managers – The best way to make an employee hate his/her job is giving them a “bad” boss. A “bad” boss could be defined as, but not limited to, anyone who:
  - does not value your time
  - expects you to be on his beck and call at all times
  - treats you as his “flunk”
  - shouts/abuses
  - does not guide you and expects you to deliver what he ‘thinks’
  - has no solutions when you go to him with a problem

• “Bad” work – A lot of employees, more so those who are fresh out of campus come to the workplace thinking that they would get ‘strategic’ work from day 1 without understanding what is going on at the grassroots. So any work you give them is not up-to the mark. This is not to say that there are cases where there is no realistic job preview at the selection stage thereby leading to dissatisfaction – both at the employer and the employee end.

• NO work – What is even worse than “bad” work is NO work. As they say, an empty mind is a devil’s workshop. Employees that have no work tend to spread their disgruntlement to others as well. They tend to waste their own time as well as that of others. Lot of employers tend to think that employees will get the message and leave when they have no work. However, I have seen employees who love it when they have no work and they are most comfortable in this setting.

• Poorly implemented PMS – A sure shot way of disengaging a high performer in your team is to keep giving him/her feedback throughout the year that he/she is god’s gift to the organization but conveniently forget this during the appraisal process. A high performer will most definitely leave if he/she feels that the ratings in the Performance Appraisal Process do not justify the effort put in relative to others.

• No Parity in Recruitment/Designation – I have seen a lot of organizations give a higher level/designation to newcomers. While this may be a good tactic to attract talent from the market, this can have disastrous consequences if you forget the existing employees in the organization. The reward for time spent in the organization has to be visible to everyone. If this does not happen, we can be sure of the attrition figures hitting the roof.

• Stagnant Career Path – If employees start to feel that they have hit a ceiling with regard to their growth path in the organization, you will see their performance dip with time, ultimately leading to attrition. This could even happen with a new manager coming in thereby giving the message to the team that they are not ready for the next step.

• Compensation – This is most often thought of as the first and the only way to keep employees motivated and engaged. I have deliberately kept it for the last because this is not true. While a threshold amount of money is always desirable, compensation is not the prime reason to leave any organization for most employees, unless it is a huge jump in the absolute amount. Compensation can serve as an effective tool for attraction – but most companies forget that as far as retention is concerned, compensation can only play a limited role.
  

So instead of giving flowers in the induction process (which is seen as a tool for engagement), let us try to get the basics right and try not to disengage employees.

Why do we not want to retain employees?

These thoughts of mine might hold little weight in today’s times of recession when employers are demanding what they want unlike how it used to be the other way round till a few months back. However, this feeling struck me more since now is the time for employers to deal with their best talent in the best possible way and get their house in order.

How many times have we heard an employee say this?

“Why was all this not thought of when I had not resigned? Why did I have to resign to make myself heard? Why am I being offered all this now?”

We have all heard of ‘Exit’ interviews. The set of questions sometimes asked by your HR partner or your HR rep or sometimes even your line manager when you are leaving the organization. These questions are centered on the basic theme of what is wrong with the organization, the environment, the manager, and how things can be changed to set things right so that we do not end up losing any more capable individuals. But I do not understand the point of asking all those questions when a person is leaving.

Shouldn’t these questions be asked when a person is performing well in the organization? We tend to assume that an employee would be feeling good about himself if he/she is performing well. Can it not be the case that he/she is doing well INSPITE of what he is being subjected to? Should he/she not be asked that what are the things that the organization should/could start doing, stop doing or continue doing? Why employees are rarely asked what needs to be done so that they stick to the organization.

The fact of the matter is that very rarely do we see managers and senior management lending an ear to an employee when he/she comes up with issues that he/she is facing in our work environment. And when the inevitable step (of a resignation) has been taken, the management has a last trick up its sleeve. This may be a salary hike, a promotion, relocation or whatever best the high performing employee wants. While 1 in 10 employees might fall for this, most times the organization loses a high potential employee.

I have seen that the focus of most HR teams is only towards attracting the best talent possible. They do brand building exercises that get external people to feel that this is the ‘best place to work’ under the sun. However, once they have the so-called ‘right’ employees on board, why do they conveniently forget the same employee? And everything is attributed to the ‘culture’ of the place.

The point here is to understand that every time an employee resigns, the cost is not just of replacement. The employee is a brand ambassador of your firm. Everytime he speaks ill of the firm, he is dissuading everyone listening to him from joining you. So unless the reasons of leaving are purely personal, there is a huge cost you are paying when you are losing an employee. And I am not even getting into the opportunity cost of the time spent to find the replacement, cost of training the replacement, and the time taken by the replacement to come ‘up the curve’.

So let us start asking employees ‘Why would you stay?’. And this needs to be asked when employees are doing well in the organization. And NOT when they have put in their papers!!

Training Effectiveness – “Level 0” Measurement

I was attending a training program (an internal one on a new system being introduced) and I was amazed at how many people present thought of this as a break from their work. A lot of them entered the program late and others who were there earlier were more interested in the snacks that were given rather than in the course content.

This led me to think of our age old models that we use for measuring training effectiveness. The most frequently referred to and one which comes to mind first is the 4 level-evaluation made popular by Donald Kirkpatrick.

Very briefly, the 4 levels measure the following:
Level 1 – Reaction: How the participant feels after the training or learning experience
Level 2 – Learning: The measurement of increase in knowledge
Level 3 – Behaviour: Extent of application of the learning on the job
Level 4 – Results: Effect on the business or environment

The 4 levels are perfect if we are assuming that the effect of training is limited to the post training program scenario.

However, in a practical scenario, we see a number of employees who have already closed their mind to the training before even entering the session. This may be due to various reasons: thinking that they don’t need the training, the trainer is not good enough, viewing it as a break and time to enjoy, perceived as a filler in times of recession and so on.

If this is the case, it is highly improbable that the results of level 2, 3 and 4 would be positive (Level 1 may still be positive – these employees may still feel nice because of the food and the facilities.:). But why would you blame the trainer and deem the training program as ineffective when the employee already has a closed mind.

Hence, is it not essential that we understand the mindset of the participant and take that as input before trying to measure the effectiveness of the program in the various levels of the Kirkpatrick model?
We need a “Level 0” before we get into the training program. This would essentially look to answer the following key questions:

- How was the training need identified – Was it purely a ‘nomination’ given by the line manager or is it backed by other sources of data? Is the employee aware of the process of Training Needs Identification?
- Has the employee been informed why he is being sent for the training program – Is it a developmental need, a motivational tool, or a job requirement?
- Does the employee perceive the need for the training program – Has the employee understood and does he agree with the reason being given?
- Will the program add value – Does the employee think that he will be able to implement what he goes through in the program? Will this help the individual and the organization?

Understanding the employee mindset around these areas would be an important input to other levels and help us identify if interventions are needed at the employee end, the trainer end, or the facilities end.

And this might also save a lot of effective trainers from being kicked out because the employee is not ready for the training program that is going to be delivered. After all, we must not forget the all important EMPLOYEE in measuring the effectiveness of the training being provided.

Employee Satisfaction vs. Engagement vs. Commitment

This started with an innocent question I was asked in office.

”What is the difference between an Employee Satisfaction Survey, an Employee Engagement Survey, and an Employee Commitment Survey”

While most HR consultants/HR practitioners use these terms interchangeably, I ventured to dwell on the difference between them. Let us think of the difference between these from three perspectives:

a) If we go by definition: Looking at the pure definitions (Source: Dictionary.com),

Commit: to bind or obligate, as by pledge or assurance;
Engage: To gain over; to win and attach;
Satisfy: to fulfill the desires, expectations, needs, or demands of (a person, the mind, etc.);

So looking at the definition, it looks like the HR managers might have to fulfill the basic needs of the employee first, what we know very well as hygiene factors. These might range from something as basic as the seating area of the employee, the compensation being offered, or transport to and from the office.

Once the employee is fairly satisfied with his working conditions, the next step for an HR manager would be to try to win over and convince the employee that the organization cares for him/her beyond the work environment. These could range from outbound programs for a relatively younger workforce to bringing in the families of the employees for various engagement programs and other work-life balance initiatives.

Employee commitment can be garnered only when the satisfaction and engagement measures are backed by strong career growth measures, a feeling of trust and constant development in the personality of the employee.


b) From the Employees’ perspective:

I have seen very few employees who are “satisfied” with the compensation they are getting. While other “hygiene” factors might be taken for granted, a typical employee is satisfied only when the right engagement measures are put in place.

In terms of commitment, there is a school of thought that says that a lot of it is intrinsic. However, I have seen a number of employees who are highly committed in the initial few days in an organization. But they lose steam over time simply because the other factors (those essential for satisfaction and engagement) are not in place. So while I agree to some extent that commitment comes from within, it has to be backed by other factors and constant reinforcement for it to remain on track.




c) From the Employers’ perspective:

As far as the organization is concerned, the first step is to segment the population of employees and try to identify what would satisfy and what would engage which group of employees.

For the critical set of employees, the organization would want to identify a clear gradation of measures moving from satisfaction to engagement to commitment. For others, depending on the budgetary constraints, they may decide on identifying the key measures to be taken.




So we see that the 3 terms are different and have different meanings for the employee, the employer and even the dictionary. Let us not club the 3 and project them all in the sane vein!!