HR associations start blogging

Well social media is primarily a grassroots movement and embraced by the people in the fringes and edges of the mainstream.

A lot of HR folks in India have heard of "blogging" but really have no idea what it is or the power of social media  at large itself.

So it's quite heart warming that two of the biggies of the professional HR bodies - the Society of HRM (SHRM) and the National HRD Network of India have started blogging.

The NHRD Network blog - HR Talks Blog,  is posts by senior HR professionals who are also office bearers of the NHRD Network on some interesting topics.

The SHRM Blog is about their 2009 annual convention where they are communicating the various speakers to prospective audience. SHRM has gone a step further and the COO China Gorman is on Twitter  along with the SHRM Public Affairs too, having twitter conversations with people attending the conference.

So what's the verdict? Well for starters, they are great initiatives. The SHRM one is focused on a specific event and the NHRDN provokes some great thoughts by the big leaders and practitioners of Indian HR.

For a lot of HR professionals I think these blogs would make them look at blogging in a new perspective.

Yes, the establishment has embraced the edges.

Will we see the establishment embracing HR based internet communities like HR Professionals too? Too early to think on those lines :-D

HR's new role- Chief Firing Officer

Dr. Madhukar Shukla has an interesting conversation with a HR head of an organization:

"...and how has the current recession affected you?" This was a curiosity for me: what would the HR professionals be doing with people when there is not enough market demand to keep the employees productively employed.

"Not much, really!! We have managed it well," he said. "In fact, we just concluded an Employee Alignment and Optimization initiative last week."

"Employee Alignment and Optimization" seemed such a sexy term. It conjoured up images of a happy bunch of people being helped by my friend and his HR team to bring their interest and capabilities in-synch with their work and performance.

"That’s really nice! You mean, you assessed and re-allocated them so that they get to do what they are really capable of doing, and enjoy doing?”

He looked aghast and uncomfortable. “No! no!,” he said. “This was actually an initiative to disengage about 200 of them from the organization.”

“You mean, you fired them?!!” I was startled, not being sure how can one “optimize” and “align” people by firing them.

“No, actually, we didn’t have to fire them, at all,” he beamed, happily. “ In fact, as we had planned, it was a voluntary separation. It was really a very smooth process.”

I was thoroughly impressed. “That’s really remarkable!,” I said with awe. “ It says so much about the level of commitment you must have fostered among the people, that they could make such a sacrifice for the larger good of the organization. Imagine!... you send out a mail saying that we need 200 volunteers to leave the organization – and people actually volunteer.”

My friend looked at me as if I had lost my beans. “Of course, Not! It was not like that at all!!” he almost choked. “This was a very systematic and thorough exercise; we planned it with precision, and with full confidentiality; and we trained our HR and line executives to communicate the choice to the 200 of our employees who had be separated.”

Read on to find out the rest of the conversation and what really happened.

Be found via Google Profiles

If you have a common name or share it with a famous person you can be sure that being found on Google's first page is going to be tough.

Earlier, you had to invest a lot of time in social media and networks to build your personal brand for search engines like Google. Blogging. A linkedin profile. A facebook profile. A twitter account. All these help your ability to be found by the search engine bots. Because, let's admit it - in today's world for a lot of people if you aren't found you're simply not relevant. It's like the old location dilemma for stores. Unless one was on main street one lost out on a lot of customers.

Now there's an additional way, by opening a Google Profile. Here's what google profiles are about . And here's where you can find mine .

So when today I searched for my name on Google here's what I found:

The interesting part is that the search engine is now asking you to also search on social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and Linkedin. So now you have a better chance of being found even if you have not much of a web presence.

See also Time article on Why Google Wants You to Google Yourself (hat tip Anindita Sengupta )

Making workplaces inspiring

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Sujit asked on twitter - why are most workplaces uninspiring and boring ?

Workplace culture is shaped subtly by the physical layout and colors of one's place of work. How much can a cubicle or bland greys and cream colors inspire you? In fact they may be making a manager's job more difficult.

What organizations are communicating subconsciously to people is that "You are just a cog in the wheel"

While many people in organizations do end up personalising their workplace with personal decorations, photographs - however really reimagining the workplace is a complete no-no in most organizations.

Here's a tip to organizations: if you want ownership from your employees - try giving them ownership to shape their own workplace.

Of course, I am not saying that alone will give rise to a great organizational culture, but it is a variable that will go into it.

Will organizations be brave enough and take the plunge?

Social Media and Job Losses

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Michael has a good post on how the media is going overboard on reporting how people are losing jobs due to social media goof-ups like putting up Facebook status messages that communicate a bad impression about your employer.

Yes the lines between work and life - and offline and online world are getting blurred to a large extent.

As an employee who is also active on social networks here are some pointers how not to give your employer an excuse to fire you:

1. Don't Facebook/Orkut/Twitter on company time, unless digital communication on behalf of your company is part of your overall job description.
2. Don't post organizational documents/photos on to websites if you're not authorised to do so.
3. Don't use Facebook/Orkut status messages to show your disdain for your employer/ fellow employees
4. Don't use Flickr/ Youtube to showcase how you waste time in your firm - or treat customers/ co-workers badly.
5. Don't blog about how your workplace sucks - or at least don't do it with your name and picture splashed all over it. 

What else would you add to being social media savvy in the times of job losses?

On Leadership

Prasad again has a thought provoking post on what he calls the "leadership sandwich"

So if we can say that "Team Leaders influence without formal authority because they don't have any formal authority and Business Leaders influence without formal authority because they choose not to exercise their formal authority" - then we have the description of a phenomenon that follows the U-curve - that too perfectly!

I personally think that even managers are using formal authority rarely. This is when the decision is unpalatable for their direct reports. The formal authority role gets restricted to implementing people processes, and choosing a high performer vs leaving out another when looking to reward behavior is the one example of exercise of formal authority.

So even managers are starting to make the move to becoming facilitative leaders. So what does that make the sandwich into?

Want me to help in your job search?

I get a lot of emails, with vague subject lines - and all the recipients on bcc. These usually have a resume attached - and state along the lines of:

"I am xxx post graduate/graduate from yyy institution - I would be very obliged if I can get a job in your esteemed organization

Well here are some of the pointers that I'd like to give folks who are doing this:

• If you are taking my email id off this blog and mailing me as part of a mass mailer campaign without any personalisation - without establishing any personal connect - whether you are a PR guy or a job hunter - I will delete your mail.
• Not all HR consultants are executive search consultants/recruiters. I am part of a OD and Training consulting firm. Other HR consultants focus on compensation and related areas. Some HR consultants are Recruiters. Do your homework before you shoot off a mail.
• The body of the email is the electronic version of your cover letter. Don't just state facts - show how you'll impact the performance of the place you are applying to. If I don't see that I am not going to forward your resume to friends of mine who might be looking out for people. Because every time I send a mail out to them I impact my own credibility. To take that decision your value has to be clear to me.

Appreciating to Engage

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Interesting study that was emailed to me by some PR folks. Do you agree with the findings?

A new global study commissioned by employee appreciation firm O.C. Tanner shows that appreciating employees can boost engagement by 20-30 percent. And during this time of economic uncertainty, increasing productivity with something as simple as “thanks” is a message all managers can use.

The 2008 Global Recognition Study conducted for O.C. Tanner by Towers Perrin took place in 13 countries, surveying more than 10,000 employees on topics such as company communication, trust, opportunity and well-being.

“While employees in China and Russia value team recognition more highly than individual acclaim, the more modest British prefer private recognition from their boss,” says Gostick. “It is clear that every country places a high value on the power of recognition."

Employee engagement is a significant predictor of business success and an indicator of organizational profitability, customer satisfaction and employee longevity. According to the study, this level of dedication is driven by feelings of pride, trust, and an overriding sense of opportunity and well-being. While it might take years to rebuild these feelings if they are lost, implementing a program of appreciation brings direct and immediate bottom line results, boosting engagement in low-trust companies up to 63 percent—nearly level with companies where trust is already high. This same dynamic proves true for other factors of engagement, like accountability and goal setting.

“Many companies in our industry would say that in dark times you have to cut programs like recognition to the bone, but they are dead wrong,” says Linda Ross, Senior Analyst of El Paso Corporation, a client of O.C. Tanner. “When people feel unappreciated they are unwilling to bring their best to the table. And if you want to grow as an organization, you need everyone to be willing to give their best.”

HR challenges for Tech Mahindra - Satyam

So the uncertainty about my ex-employer has ended. Thankfully Satyam has not gone the Enron and Lehman way to implosion but in 100 days has been acquired by a smaller niche player Tech Mahindra.

Here are the big issues that I see for the merged entity:

1. There are reportedly 12000 -13000 people on the bench in Satyam. While the government controlled board was there they had some job security. However once the acquisition process is complete how will TM decide on their future.
2. Support groups. Tech Mahindra has internal support groups for HR, IT, Marketing, Finance - however it would need to keep a large part of Satyam's team also - because of the diversity of Satyam's business. However there would be some redundancies.
3. Top management. I feel that the group that could see a major churn is the top management - perceived to be close to the former Chairman.
4. Headquarters. The location of the headquarters plays a major part in the identity of the organization. Satyam was always a Hyderabadi origin company - how will it's image change if the headquarters are moved to Mumbai.

A comparison of Tech Mahindra's services and Satyam's services .

Related articles by Zemanta

• India's Scandal-Ridden Satyam Computer Finds a Buyer (time.com)
• India's Tech Mahindra: $500M for Satyam (money.cnn.com)
• Is the Worst Over for Satyam? (businessweek.com)

Infosys signals tough times ahead

According to this news report:

With companies keen on maximum utilisation of employees and low tolerance to poor performance in the backdrop of global economic turmoil, nearly 2,100 employees in software firm Infosys have faced the axe.

 the officials said the sacking was part of the annual routine, which usually formed 5% of the total number of employees but this time it was much lower.

Some of the employees had been “outplaced”, Kris said, which refers to the firm hiring the services of placement agencies to help the employees to get placements in other firms.

Infosys has a workforce of 1,05,000, including trainees.

And its results signals more tough times ahead:

Infosys Technologies has decided to freeze wage hikes and hiring for fiscal 2010 and maintained that it would honour all campus offers made last year.

“Employees will not get salary hike or promotions this fiscal. At the same time, there will be no salary cuts,” said Mr Mohandas Pai, head of HR and board member of Infosys.

Infosys has maintained the salary structure for the employees that includes a variable pay component which ranges from 15 per cent of the compensation package for junior employees to about 50 per cent of the compensation for the board members.

“The board members have taken a steep cut and received only 58 per cent of the variable pay for the year,” Mr Pai said. Senior employees got 65-75 per cent of the variable component for the year, while junior employees received about 85 per cent of the variable pay. Mr Pai said Infosys would add some 18,000 employees for the year ahead including 16,000 freshers for whom the offer letters have been issued last year. (The company made 20,000 campus offers and assumes an 80 per cent acceptance – hence 16,000 offers.) It would add 2,000 laterals including some 1,000 laterals overseas.

“We will absorb all the 18,000 people to whom offer letters were given (including lateral hires) last time despite staggering their joining dates over the fiscal,” Mr Pai said.

However I think there is more caution in these actions, and things are on the upswing at least in industries that address the Indian consumer. Smaller IT firms that target the domestic industry might grow much better as SMEs look at ramping up their IT systems

Making it worthwhile

Sometimes I keep forgetting why I keep maintaining this blog. Then a message like this arrives on Linkedin and makes it all worthwhile.

I'm a regular follower of your blog and I had attributed my getting placed ( a student from B School from Western India - which was your blog post also) to your able guidance.

Developing Yourself in the Downturn

When the economy slows and organizations are not making profits as much as they used to do (if at all!) then most probably people are not being sent to too many knowledge and learning development programs and seminars.

However as an employee you probably know that this time is critical to build and continue developing your existing skills - so how do you do it?

1. Read a book: Ok, this is a personal favorite - but books are one of the best ways to develop at your own pace. The good parts are - you can delve on it for as long as you want - taking it along with you, and there is one book typically for each level of the organization - from the early career starter to the CXO level. A recommendation, read not just books directly related to your domain - but also related to other domains - including biographies of achievers. Sometimes inspiration can come from unexpected sources.
• Idea: Make a group of book lovers like you - buy books and share the cost and reading time. Make a synopsis to crystallise your thoughts and enable others to learn from it too.
2. Take on an additional assignment/project: Experimentation is key to learning and developing. One of the most potent way to develop is taking on an additional assignment that calls for new skills. Negotiate with your organization to do a project that is linked to the new role you want to aspire for. My guess is this economy organizations would be more than happy to have people to take on additional responsibilities. What really needs to be negotiated is how much you would be responsible for the project. Make the learning your priority - and negotiate and align your organization on that. 
3. External Programs: All said and done external events like training or conferences are great to build new perspectives - learning is an incredibly social activity. However since your organization is probably cutting down on budgets for such events, here is what you can do
• Identify the event/training you want to undertake
• Communicate benefits to your manager and organization
• Get the impact of the training by talking to earlier participants - people from your organization preferably - or external people - don't rely only on the organizers' promotional material
• Commit to an outcome you will deliver to your organization after the training - like either sharing the knowledge with team members - or implementing learning by way of a project in a group - tying up the principles of 'knowing and doing' - this would let your organization view the fees as 'investment for the organization' rather than as 'expense for an individual's training'. Big difference.
4. Read Blogs: If you are reading this then you probably don't need to be told this - however you need to do it smartly. Would recommend an RSS aggregator like Google Reader or FeedDemon. Blogs enable you to constantly discover new related content and get to know a practitioner's thoughts and ideas - for free! With offline capabilities Google Reader and FeedDemon would enable you to keep reading stuff on your notebook PCs during times when you are waiting for other things to happen. 

What are some of the ideas you'd have for developing an individual's knowledge, skills and abilities?

Using Linkedin Status Updates

I've started noticing an increasingly innovative trend to catch on through Linkedin.com's feature - status updates...

See how some recruiters are looking for people - thereby bypassing the paid "jobs" feature of Linkedin.com

 

Signs of the recession?

Obviously this is useful only when people have sufficiently large networks - and a lot of recruiters ensure that their networks are large by showing off they are open networks by keeping an acronym LION next to their name - LION standing for LinkedIn Open Networkers - and also keeping their email ids visible to people to connect on their own. 

Nice service for job-seekers - though I don't know how Linkedin views these - as they're obviously cutting Linkedin's ability to make money.

Why are HR people looked down upon

I got this interesting email from a person who's been selected to join an MBA in HR course:

Query: Why are HR people looked down upon in Management Circles? Although i am very much interested in subject and am exited about reading it but whenever i tell this to my peers who also study at top B-schools,i get weird reactions. I fully realize that the scope of this feild is immense as i have read your blogs and also those at pagalguy. Why dont other streams of management realise the importance of HR? Why is it under-rated?

My reply:

There are lots of answers to your question, but the biggest two are:

1. Organizational structures and processes often pay lip service to the importance of people processes. Ultimately organizations get boiled down to profit and growth. HR people need to speak this language to impact their organizations.
2. All said and done of the millions of HR professionals, there are very few talented HR professionals – and largely the profession is staffed by mediocre (at best) people – even in reputed and successful businesses.

So welcome, it’s not an easy function – but that’s the big challenge to work in it

What would you tell this prospective HR professional - and why do you think HR gets 'weird' reactions ?

On Personal Branding

Dan Schwabel guest posts on Penelope's blog with his reasons on why Generation Y is the personal branding generation (familiarity with gadgets and online personas, knowledge that jobs are not for life)

Dan has released his first book Me 2.0 and it's currently number 356 on Amazon.

Oh, another thing. He's 25.

Reputation was earlier a field with high-entry barriers. You had to slog over a long number of years to get to be known by a sufficient number of people to be recognized as an 'expert'.

You still have to slog today - but the reach of the social technologies has amplified to a huge extent and crunched the time and entry barrier.

However, be careful... these tools can be double edged swords - and handled stupidly can amplify things you would rather hide.

And yes, not all in the generation would be savvy marketers...however when compared to the previous generations, and the context they find themselves in - Gen Y would be savvier on the whole than Gen X.

The question to ask is - is the same true for Gen Y in India? Maybe for the miniscule group that has access to these tools, maybe yes... what of the rest?

P.S. Dan's got a 52 page free PDF download to Blogging Your Brand here.

Article featured in What Matters McKinsey on Organizations 2.0

An article on the What Matters site Thomas Malone writes on something that resonates with me...are you ready for the new chapter in management? :

To manage effectively in this new era, we need to move beyond the centralized mind-set that worked so well in the large corporations of the 20th century. We need to move from the top-down view of management as “command and control” to a much more flexible view I call “coordinate and cultivate.”

To coordinate is to organize work so that good things happen, whether you’re “in control” or not. You may be able to do this just by creating a crowd of competent people who are motivated to solve your problem, even if no one in the crowd works “for” you at all.

To cultivate is to bring out the best in a group of people through the right combination of control and freedom. You need to understand and respect the group’s natural tendencies at the same time you try to shape their actions. Managers cultivating organizations sometimes may need to take drastic top-down actions like closing divisions. But at other times, their main work is just to help groups of people find and develop their own strengths and desires.

So coordinating and cultivating aren’t the opposites of commanding and controlling. Rather, they encompass many management approaches, from the completely centralized to the completely decentralized. Thinking of management in terms of coordinating and cultivating opens a range of new possibilities that go beyond the old centralized mind-set. That’s one of the key things successful managers in the 21st century will need—the ability to move flexibly back and forth between centralized and decentralized thinking as the situation demands.

Gapping for learning

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Hindustan Times has an interesting article on the trend of gapping:

Whether it’s backpacking across South Africa, or working in disaster zones, Indian youth today seems to love the idea of doing exactly what they want to, just to walk that path of self-discovery. The only thing that matters is being able to afford it — both time and money wise.

While younger gappers ask their parents to help them financially while they travel and rough it out, there are others who work for a couple of years and design their own gap project.

One can look at it cynically and say in these times of economic crises taking a year off from work is probably a good thing - or look at it another way, and say why take the risk now...

However I think that changing one's context - by way of learning a new language or immersing one self into new cultures and realities would help in one invaluable way. It helps to build an approach to learning for people who are accomodators , i.e. who learn most by feeling and doing and convergers, thinkers and doers.

So go ahead if you want to. In a globalised world it helps to build new perspectives and real life understanding of new cultures and to appreciate your own culture better too.

Shumeet Banerji, Booz CEO on Economic Crisis

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Some interesting words by Shumeet Banerji CEO of Booz & Co. in an interview with Businessworld magazine

There are two most important lessons that a company should learn. One is that debt is a good thing, but you have got to watch capital structure where you have debt deployed for acquisitions. The second lesson — one that we did not learn from the 2000-01 dotcom bust — is that chasing valuation is a bad basis to build companies. If you build fundamentally strong companies, you get good valuations, but it doesn’t work the other way round. Good companies pay attention to ensure that they achieve an adequate balance between top line investment and operating costs.

And...

We said that for companies that have a level of strength, there are tremendous opportunities that will emerge in this situation. And in order to make that happen we take two or three ingredients. One is industry structure and dynamics. What do you think will be the shape of the industry in two years from now? You don’t have to be right, you have to be more or less accurate. Second, what role are we as a company going to play in that structure? What is the shape of assets we would like to own? What kind of capabilities do we need, and where will we get them from? And third, that cash is king has never been truer. Do we have the balance sheet strength and the capital sources to ensure that we can move fast when opportunities emerge? We have seen again in the course of the past few months that opportunities have risen dramatically and very, very fast. And being in a position to act on those is very important.

And on an interesting note here's an interesting study by Booz & Co.

40% of senior managers question the credibility of their company’s plans to navigate the crisis—including many who presumably wrote the plans themselves (!!)

Naukri.com's JobSpeak gives clues to hiring trends

According to the data shared by Naukri.com the following trends can be seen:

Industry Analysis: Job Index of Auto, Insurance, Oil and Gas moved up significantly

Job creation improved in industries like Oil and Gas, Auto, Construction, Pharma and Insurance. Hiring in the Oil and Gas industry picked up by 24%, the index moved to 910 as compared to 732 in Jan ’09. The index for Insurance industry moved to 922, up 20% as compared to Jan ’09. The Auto industry cheered up after the slump in the past months, the index moved up by 15% from 501 in Jan ’09 to 577 in Feb ’09

Witnessing a sudden shift, the index for the education industry moved down by 16%, from 1112 in Jan ‘09 to 940 in Feb ‘09.

Functional Area / Department Analysis:

Sales and Business Development professionals continued to see an increase in hiring, the index moved up from 849 in Jan ’09 to 953 in Feb ’09. Banking and Insurance professionals saw an upward trend in hiring, the index moved up by 10% from 665 in Jan ‘09 to 737 in Feb ’09.

The demand for professionals in Hospitality saw a downward trend in Feb ’09. The index moved down from 1046 in Jan ’09 to 925 in Feb ’09

Experience bucket: Senior Management hiring picked up by 10%

The maximum number of jobs continued to be in the 4-7 years category. However it was the senior management category that saw a push in hiring in Feb ’09. Senior Management hiring picked up, with jobs for 16+ years of experience moving up by 10% as compared with Jan ‘09. New jobs for the experience band of 13-16 years picked by 6% as compared with Jan ‘09

Methodology

The index has been calculated based on job listings added to the site month on month. July 2008 has been taken as the base month with a score of 1000 and the subsequent monthly index is compared with data for July. Data has been sourced from Naukri.com and it reflects of job listings and therefore hiring trends on the site.

HR consultant takes to politics

DMDK in Tamil Nadu has an unusual candidate for the elections:

K Pandiarajan, founder of Ma Foi Management Consultants limited, a public limited HR Consulting company, figure among the first list. He would test the election waters from the Virudhunagar Parliamentary constituency.

He also has a website. Check it out here .

Managing Context

Gareth Morgan wrote on the importance of context. Offered here, without any additional comments. More here .

In recent years, managers have become well aware of the need to understand and keep in touch with changes in the external environment shaping their organizations. The importance of this aspect of context seems well understood. But they have been far slower in recognizing the significance of internal context and how it shapes almost everything they do. True, there is more attention being devoted to corporate culture, but culture is just one element of context.

When managers create organization structures or develop job descriptions and reward systems, they are creating context.

When they urge the adoption of new business ideas or try to develop a new sense of vision or mission, they are creating context.

And when they are ponderous and indecisive, dodging difficult issues, or communicating unintended messages to their staff, they are creating context.

Context-making is the fundamental art of management. It is performed for better or worse throughout the working day. Yet for the most part, it is sorely neglected and misunderstood.

Formal theories of leadership and management style are partly to blame. They usually focus attention on the personal qualities of the leader or manager, or on managerial behaviour. For example, leaders are urged to "take firm control," "be collaborative," "manage by walking around" or whatever is in vogue. The focus is on the figure of the leader, rather than on the ground that he or she influences and thus helps to create.