HR in the Times of Slowdown

Slowdown may not be all that bad for organizations if they retain the balance to pull out all those quadrant two items that never saw daylight during long period of growth.

Here’s a list of things that HR departments may want to run through;

1. Take time from CEO and run through manpower plan just in case it was given to you before mid-September 2008.

2. If you’re still hiring, take a hard look at salary structures that you’d offer. You’ll be surprised how much de-risking you can do for your organization now.

3. Offer a salary correction rather than raise at interview. Remember if all assets were over valued, so was human asset and there is no reason that later shouldn’t get corrected. My guess is 20 – 25% correction is a fare call.

4. Functions where deliverables can be easily measured, keep performance linkages to payouts. You can provide for higher payouts on better performance considering value of high performance during slowdown can be much more than usual days.

5. It’s a great time to test senior management commitments, propose a salary cut. Up to 15% salary cut doesn’t hurt anyone’s lifestyle at senior level.

6. While you look at costs, please note that cutting a few cups of tea may not impact costs much but can cause discomfort to large part of the team, so avoid high visibility low impact calls.

7. This is a great time to bring everyone’s attention to performance. Leaders can inspire people to deliver unexpected performances in tough times. This has been seen during wars, natural calamities time and again.

8. Lastly do not stop smiling, playing, movies, rewards, recognitions. Interact with teams regularly and in high spirits. Listen to some Bob Dylan...times they are a changin... :)

Monday Morning at Diamond Mine

"There's a Diamond in each one of you" - were the words with which we started this work week. Not a bad start would say even the pessimists.

Team members of Rigved - The retail Infrastructure company headquartered in Mumbai were not showing any signs of Monday morning blues when I walked in for the session. A neat rug on the floor of the conference room was the seat for all from CEO to the Office boy all sitting at random. And while the facilitator moved on to variety of things from small prayer to, moments of silence, deep breathing, praising the colleague, some self discovery, I remained amazed at how an hour on Monday morning can energize teams for the day, the week and may be longer. For some members, this was the first session to see how each member has things to deal with, for some the rare praise from someone they never thought even looks at them.

I have by now met at least 100 - 200 CEOs who have spoken about transformation of their teams. I have seen less than 5 really attempting that. A few more have delegated it to senior people (you can guess the result).

So what did Nirav do? You walk into Rigved office and you'd realize the attention of the CEO in everything around. Colours please you, walls talk, reception lets you catch a breath, you can visit rest room without infection worries and I can go on and on... point is, these are not small things for Rigved, these are essentials. No surprise then, that Nirav doesn't find it difficult to find that hour on Monday morning, when team members get their concentration right and warm up with other members to head into the work week.

Rigved operates in fiercely competitive space and they know how to fight it out. So next time you want transformation, don't talk.....take a walk around work bay, you'll know where to start...

Got the guy...Induct him Boss!!!

Having gone through number of functional induction presentations, I thought it might be a good idea to just write about what we want to achieve through this induction. So here's my view....

Objectives of functional induction

1. To reassure the new member about her decision of joining the team.
2. To introduce the member to other members in the team.
3. To connect the member to History and Decorations of the team
4. To pictorially depict departments delivery commitments to company.
5. To describe department work flow.
6. To describe work styles and things that matter.
7. To apprise of frequently faced challenges.
8. To suggest names of team members who can be approached for initial handholding.

Apart from this, member should be taken through demands of her role, work relationships, KRAs and intial training if need be.

Please note that induction can be interesting or boring, based on how the presentation is made and delivered. Do not hesitate in taking professional help from designer to put together a great ppt. This is also the first time the new member would be judging you, so be the Boss :)

Happy Birthday Rachana

Where's MOM?

You can make out the difference between companies that respect MOM and those that don't.

Yes, I am talking about "Minutes of the Meeting". Its a surprise to find that though such a simple tool, MOM gets sheer neglect in so many organizations. I find MOM simple and highly effective tool to drive weekly kind of routine. In fact I think MOM can replace every other planning tool that people juggle with in day to day work, just paste last week's MOM right in front and keep striking.

May be it starts at taking notes right during review or weekly meetings, but once recorded along with action items and timelines, it can act as a single tool binding all teams and all committments.

So while corporate India, gets down to learning Chinese, spending an hour on how to write MOMs can be highly rewarding.

Next weekly meeting, ask, Where's MOM :)

Get a Manager - set KRAs right !!!

How to make a manager do his job?

A run through the manager hiring process in companies tells a story - that no one differentiates managers from frontline staff and hence hiring basis remains the same - is he good at work.

Now the big question is "What is work for a manager", writing codes, getting sales orders, attending client complaints or hiring team, making plans, communicating, motivating team, reviewing performance.

Love for action orientation of entrepreneurial leadership teams has completely eroded role for managers which has become almost same as frontline. What can managers do, leaders themselves are doing frontline work themselves leaving no space for managers to do their real job. And frontline is wondering why they were hired in first place.

Job of a manager is not doing but getting done and only if this is clear can a manager focus on right deliverables like team formation, risk mitigation, monitoring, coaching, redundancy building. This way managers can contribute significantly towards organizational goals.

Starting point in this direction can be setting manager's KRAs right. Try not to put more than 50% weight on core output putting rest across team building, planning, review, derisking their deliveries, coaching teams, innovation etc.

Similarly while hiring managers, assessment must be done on managerial qualities as indicated above. Remember a good manager can give performance upside from whole team, so do not waste talent letting him write codes.

Comments/ questions can be directed to prashant@plughr.com

Indian Appraisal Time

Its appraisal time in India - an activity where whole corporate India would spend time and effort. Believe it or not, performance appraisal is one of the most wonderful activities in the entire gamut of human resource management for managers.

Here is a list of advantages that performance appraisal offers to all stakeholders.

It is an opportunity for individuals to take stock of the whole year’s effort which would have seen good days and bad, accolades and brickbats, upbeat moments and stressful nights. Annual appraisal is time to unwind a bit and look back at those moments with the luxury of having passed through them.
For managers, its time to spend some quality time with team members when the agenda is not around consuming alcohol. Almost 80% managers would find this as the only time they got discussing work-life one to one with team. Smart managers would also find huge value in feedbacks from their team members around their own performance, behavior and get direct insights into what works directly from their consumers.
For organization, its an opportunity where by virtue of quality time being spent in the belly of management, huge value can get generated. Appraisal also provides for normalization of relationships, smoothening of operational kinks etc.

Now I can write a book on possible gains but I guess you’ve got the point. This whole gain rests on one fact i.e. Quality time spent during appraisal. So here’s a way to spend that quality time.

1. Appraisal is a two way process and should be conducted that way. Its important to check convenience of people to set appraisal appointment. Both people involved must do some preparation in terms of putting together indicators of performance. Preparatory notes should be made for discussing conflicts, confusions or disagreements.
2. Its advised to chose business hours to conduct appraisals, avoid early morning or late evening when unnatural pressures like reaching in time or leaving for home apply. Remember appraisal discussion is not additional work, on appraisal day, this discussion is THE WORK.
3. The value of learning, exploring and discussing would get realized if listening and talking is balanced properly. Managers must give their team members opportunity to talk enough. Members should be encouraged to discuss facts and data behind their assumptions. Insights would come out only if both work together on highlighted areas.
4. If for some reason argument erupts, it’s a good idea to take a break and again start discussions. There is no hard and fast format of conducting appraisal, mutual comfort is paramount. Also note down things on paper after some amount of talking has happened, its not required that from first sentence everything should be written down.

Quick points to remember

1. Appraisal is a much team member’s activity as it is for manager.
2. Any conversation that begins on pleasant note has higher chances of creating value.
3. Lot of times perceptions speak where as fact have to be found out. Find facts together.
4. Outcome of appraisal is not the paper, neither is it a rating, true outcome is the quality time spent between member and manager discussing performance issues, organization issues and methodologies to do better over time.
5. Increments, bonuses and other rewards only have a connection with appraisal process but that’s not the purpose of doing appraisals.
6. Last but not the least everyone has a right to disagree.

Please feel free to write to prashant@plughr.com if you have a direct question around the subject. Be patient for the reply, its appraisal time :)

Ethical dilemmas in field research

Human Resources teams across organizations represent managements, managers, employees and are most of the time privi to lot more information than others. Either formally or informally HR professionals do engage in information collection at various levels in the organization to be able to do their job better.

I came across this very interesting article on research ethics in IJME (Indian Journal of Medical Ethics) that talks about dilemmas faced by professionals while they undertake fieldwork with a defined objective. How they end up involuntarily gathering information which is different from and more than required, how interest of respondents becomes important, how current scenario can create a diversion to planned research. Read the full article on www.ijme.in/161re22.html

Interesting reading for HR professionals who can relate this to field research that they do in their organizations and around.

Article is written by Qudsiya Contractor - a social scientist based out of Scotland. The piece was written during her stay in Mumbai. She also happens to be an alumnus of TISS Mumbai. Comments can be mailed to qudsiya.contractor@gmail.com

HR can build a business

So I am at it again, professing the role of HR as one that builds business right from the core rather than playing people charmer in organizations. In most of our start-up accounts, we have started realizing that one of the severe limitations founders have here is their inability to put discipline in most of their initiatives. So you have a business desire with very little plan, you have hiring ambition with very little form filling, organization structure that resembles flow of neurons in their head and business ideas that move like Amoeba.

One significant contribution that plugHR team seems to be making at these places is forcing discipline across levels. Need to make a manpower plan is forcing founders to write their business plans. Policy structure document is making neurons work overtime and we have tried to save the organization from ever changing Amoeba. Can't say we've succedded all along, but attempting is pretty much half way through.

So when start-up goes on overdrive, you better have plugHR on the navigator seat :)