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!

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.

Eliminating HR

This is the first of a series of writings towards exploring the possibility of eliminating the HR function. By eliminating, I don’t mean that we will hold the function by the scruff of its neck and throw it out of the window (as much as all non-HR people would want to do it..;). What I mean by elimination is that is there a possibility of slowly and steadily transferring what is being done by the HR function to the employees who are handling the business. I know that you would say that who has the time to do that. But let us try to look at the various sub-functions covered by the HR team and then decide. Almost always, the first function that comes to mind when you think of HR is Recruitment & Selection. Let us discuss this here:

The Recruitment & Selection process has the following key steps:

1) Realization: The first step in a Recruitment Process is the realization that you need to recruit. You might say that this is stating the obvious, but I have seen numerous organizations where there is a disconnect between the Business and the HR function in who is to realize it first. Business says that if a guy has left, why do we need to inform HR and HR says that how we are supposed to be so sure that a replacement is needed. So a manpower requisition process is conjured up (this may be online or paper based going through a series of approvals at various levels). This essentially means that the business is informing HR that a new person is required, along with the listing of the kind that a person should be.

2) CV/Resume Generation: After the HR team has “realized" that the organization needs a new person, we move on to the next step. The HR team then activates what is technically known as the process of Recruitment (in simple language, this means generating as many wanted CVs from various sources as possible). This process could vary from giving advertisements in newspapers, contacting the network of recruitment consultants, browsing through professional networking sites a.k.a Linkedin, or just looking for referrals from current employees. Essentially, at the end of this step, the HR team is looking for a long list of eligible candidates for the prized position.


3) Short-listing: So now that we have a list of eligible candidates, we start the selection process (a.k.a a ‘swayamvar’ of sorts, the only difference being that the bride is replaced by a job). The first elimination step is left to the HR team where they have to match various criterion required by the Business. HR may follow a comprehensive exercise of elimination (even an Assessment Centre) or at times just a cursory glance at the CV and forward the first shortlist to the Business. Business would in turn approve / reject the CVs and the selected participants would then be called for interview.

4) Business Interview: This is often the decisive step in the whole process and the “go – no go” decision is based on this. This might again involve multiple rounds of interview, tests, and other selection tools based on the kind of profile that we are looking for. HR has to do the job of coordinating and making sure that everything is in place for this interview.

5) Offer Generation & Acceptance: If all stakeholders (HR, Business and the candidate) agree, then an offer is generated by the HR team and sent to the candidate. This might be as simple as a one-page document detailing the address and date of joining along with the salary details. Or this might be a comprehensive contract letter along with details for Medical Tests and so on. However, the purpose here is to communicate that the candidate has been selected basis certain conditions and needs to join on a particular date at the given address.

6) Joining Formalities: This is the day of joining for the participant where he/she is taken through an induction program. Again, this program may vary from a drab filling up of various forms (Employee Details, Bank Account, Mobile, PF and so on) to a week-long induction detailing various aspects of the organization.

Now that we have an idea of the broad steps in the Recruitment and Selection process, let us see if these processes can be covered by the Business itself:

1) Realization: This step itself becomes redundant since there is no HR team to be informed. Business can itself decide if and when they need a replacement to be hired or a new position to be added. This will in turn take care of the limits on the costs involved.

2) CV/Resume Generation: Supposedly, this is the step where HR adds most value and no one in the Business team would have the time to do this. However, the most relevant CVs and the right contacts can be generated by employees within the team. Moreover, GenY is tech savvy enough to generate the right CVs through the various portals available.

3) Short-listing: HR often does the initial short-listing based on the competencies required for the job. Most times, these are based on subjective criterion in an attempt to drive a common culture through the organization. However, my argument here is that it’s the Business that drives the culture and the HR team is just a medium to drive that.

4) Business Interview: Most times, we find that this is the most neglected step in the process. I have seen irrelevant external “experts” being used to take this decision for certain organizations. What I am trying to drive in here is that most time should be spent on this step and should be conducted by relevant managers/team members.

5) Offer Generation & Acceptance: I propose that instead of a full fledged HR team required for this step, we can have an admin team looking after this step.

6) Joining Formalities: The admin team can also look after coordination for this step. This may be a common step conducted once a week / once a month. However, again we do not need a full fledged recruitment/training team for this.

Is there a step in the Recruitment process which cannot be conducted by the Business. My answer to this would be a resounding “NO”. It’s just that the Business team should have the will to do all this.