Bringing convergence between what HR thinks constitutes a good company to work for and what employees think

Posted by PeopleStrong under Thought Leadership

In general, what makes a ‘Good Company to Work for’ is a derivation from two sources:

a) The survey designed to evaluate the same by the organization/HR , and
b) The perception of the existing employee workforce

Organization however, exists in an ecosystem. Leavers and potential hires are as much a part of the ecosystem as existing employees are. The responses from only the existing employees would make the findings skewed, hence convergence is impractical. A holistic model is which is driven by the complete talent pool in market whether

• Working,
• has worked, OR
• will work

with the company will probably give us an accurate picture.

Also, an employee is driven from perception, whereas HR and company is on the other end of the spectrum. The convergence will happen only if individual perception and company aspiration converges, because that’s the focal point which can be benchmarked with reality. Hence, we should look at perceptions in light of aspirations and they put together will give us the reality. We can therefore call it perception -> aspiration -> reality (PAR). It’s time to challenge the status-quo and build new realities and if I may say so they should be at PAR!!!

Finally, the Best Companies to Work for 2010 has challenged some conventional and long standing wisdom. One of the most interesting findings when we analyzed the data from the study is how different groups of employees think. For instance:

• While creative people like the ones in Advertising/PR/Media seem to give least importance to their organization’s brand value, administration staffs seems to value it the most.
• Finance professionals does not attach importance to the stress at work, a staff at the manufacturing unit values it a lot.
• Similar differences are present across regions, salary brackets, education level and many other parameters.

Management guru, C.K. Prahalad talks about serving customers by treating them unique through his famous, n=1 strategy. Now, think if organizations treat its employee groups with n=1 strategy meaning treating every employee group as a unique entity. ‘One size does not fit all’ is something that HR professionals must realize and understand.

The more we bring things at PAR the better will be the convergence!!!

-Pankaj Bansal, Co-founder and CEO

Thumb-rules of a good relationship between the CEO (or promoter) and the HR head of a company

Posted by PeopleStrong under Thought Leadership

HR often has been caught in ‘what is the coolest program’ and ‘what is the most innovative practice’. The question is not about ‘what’ but about ‘How’. Focusing on the basic rules of Business is what would drive HR from backroom to boardroom.

1. Productivity: HR’s focus on productivity with getting the basics right will be key to drive the organizational success. HR will act as the facilitator to create balance by keeping the focus on both task and people. Also economic downturn helped the corporate world to get the focus of HR back on productivity.

2. Bottom-line orientation: Tie everything to Business objectives.

• Turn performance management into productivity enhancement;
• Turn training to capability building
• Compensation management to talent pool cost
• Hiring to quality of hiring
• HR operations to Shared Services

Make every sub-function of HR measurable and driven through metrics which tie outcomes to Business results. Understand SG & A (selling, general and administration) expense, since HR is a part of it and understanding it will help in driving returns on every non direct or un-billable resource.

3. Understanding the Business deeply: HR might be making everything measurable and building fantastic Cost benefit Analysis (CBA). But if the organisational operational objectives are not aligned with what HR are presenting, it’s bound to get knocked off in the first instance. What gives HR credibility is astute understanding of Business facts.

4. Employee advocacy: Business view is a must for HR however how HR relays the employee perspective to management is equally important. Can HR provide this fair and firm view without losing sight of business is the question which wins trust and confidence of the management?

5. Finally you have to be best at your core function. All the above is achievable if you have build your credibility by delivering and over-achieving your objectives.

The business of business is after all BUSINESS and every stakeholder must understand it.

-Pankaj Bansal, Co-founder and CEO

Correlation between the quality of HR and sales and profit growth

Posted by PeopleStrong under Thought Leadership

India as a nation is fairly young- only 60 years old and much younger in terms of free markets. We have operated in an open economy for less than two decades after the onset of liberalization. Business and economy has seen maturity of Business processes and markets only since late 90s.

The HR scene in the country is a reflection of maturity and evolution stage of the economy as well. Historically it has been true that ‘wherever market competition is hot, Talent process maturity is high’. Let’s look at the IT industry where market competition enhanced the talent processes maturity and HR was able to create a short term and long term impact for Business.

Since economic maturity has started to come in the last decade, HR in India in inching towards linking its process with business outcomes, however there is a long road ahead. The current situation might give us a view that HR is not able to create an impact or at least not visibly apparent but the same is not true.

All said and done, HR however will have to focus more on outcome based practices than remaining a subjective function. Power of HR will not come from the number of people in HR department but from the say it has on organizational decision making and its impact on bottom-line

-Pankaj Bansal, Co-founder and CEO