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..:)