Some great HR blog posts

The HR vigilance blog posts about the desperation of a job hunter and the predicament of a recruiter in a plant in central India.

Wipro's Chief Marketing Officer Jessie Paul has a response to my post saying that Marketing is the new HR. As I tweeted back "HR is too important to be left to the HR people!" it's great if Marketing sees itself as the new HR!

Penelope Trunk has 6 tips on doing a long distance job hunt

Dub Dubs still can't resolve between competencies and critical experiences. I would think that critical experiences go into building context specific competencies - but I agree that it's not a either/or affair.

Mike blogs on using Social Media in Recruiting and Selection

Jon Ingham posts on organisational mojo! 

Ford Harding reflects back on some lessons he's learnt

HBS working knowledge is looking at what's the solution for excessive Executive pay

JJ Hunter has his insightful strategic posts on the Future of HR

The Downturn and the Future of Work

Remember the scenario planning report by PwC that I blogged about almost two years ago?

Well I received an update from them which talks about how three fictitious companies (one each for the Blue, Green and Orange worlds they talked about earlier) emerge from the current downturn and where they'll reach in 2020.

So the metrics driven global organization emerges and thrives by taking the following approach to managing people:

1. Foster a small-business culture
2. A meticulous search and selection process
3. Invest in employee development, both in- and outside work
4. Link employee engagement, productivity, retention and customer loyalty
5. A competitive atmosphere and high performance equals unique rewards

Whereas the Green World company focuses on
1. Rich rewards instead of short-term incentives
2. People metrics paint the whole picture
3. High levels of employee engagement

The network based organization (Orange organization) focus on the following ways to managing people

1. Rich rewards instead of short-term incentives
2. Create careers in motion
3. Market individuals as companies, rather than freelancers
4. Shift from buying talent to buying product

You can download the report from this PwC site.

Overall I think it's an interesting premise - that slowly all organizations will veer towards three distinct kinds of firms (irrespective of ownership or national origin) depending on what drives them - and how they are structured.

In fact, the question about the vision of an organization and how it is structured is an oft overlooked one.

Structure influences the actual processes, metrics even the goals that people follow - than merely the ones they "should" focus on.

Coming back, I think there would be some organizations that would be hybrid of these organizations that PwC envisages - I can see Orange structures influencing the Blue as well as Green organizations too

Competencies of HR professionals in Singapore

The largest ongoing study of the competencies of HR professionals across the world conducted by RBL Group and The University of Michigan, came up with six key findings that constitute the competencies of HR professionals.

I got the following press release from the Singapore Human Capital Summit 2009, a premier conference on managing and developing human capital (or human resources), organized in Asia. Three studies focusing on HR in Asia will be released between now and the beginning of the conference on September 29th.
Over the last 20 years, The RBL Group and the University of Michigan have conducted the largest ongoing study of the competencies of HR professionals across the world with a database of more than 45,000 people from North and Latin America, Europe, Australia, China and India. In the most recent round of their global research, The RBL Group found that six categories or factors constitute the competencies of HR professionals:

1. Credible Activist,
2. Culture and Change Steward,
3. Talent Manager / Organisational Designer,
4. Strategy Architect,
5. Operational Executor and
6. Business Ally.
7. 
   

The preliminary findings of the Singapore study revealed that while local HR professionals do the best job at being a credible activist, they need to strengthen the rest of the competencies, especially the Business Ally competency, in order to add greater value to business results. These findings are similar to the global results.

Another finding showed that the impact local HR professionals can have on business results and their personal performance is noticeably greater than the impact of their global HR counterparts (by up to 12 per cent) when they can harness these competencies effectively. This is despite the finding that they are rated consistently lower in all categories of HR competencies compared to global findings. This may indicate that the expectations on local HR professionals by their business partners are greater than elsewhere in the world - their line management colleagues expect them to be better and to contribute even more than their global counterparts.

Commenting on the implications of the findings, Professor Dave Ulrich, Partner and Co-founder of The RBL Group, said: “With a higher expectation by their line management colleagues, HR professionals in Singapore need to more effectively translate their business knowledge to strategy formulation and implementation for business success.”

Professor Wayne Brockbank, Partner of The RBL Group and principal investigator for this study, added: “Singapore HR practitioners also need to have greater knowledge and skills at aligning their HR activities to create effective business cultures and to be a more effective change management agent. Essentially, they need to understand their roles and agendas through which they create more customer-focused organisations. The internal clients of Singapore HR professionals expect them to add greater value. The HR community in Singapore has a mandate to develop greater knowledge and skills that enable them to add greater value to the business.”

This Blog has moved to a new URL

Hi, I finally bit the bullet and bought a domain name http://www.gautamblogs.com and from immediate effect this blog would be available there.

So if you've added this blog to your link lists/blogrolls, please update the link :-)

Apart from that you have to not do anything else.

If you're reading this blog using the RSS feed then the new posts would be redirected (thanks Blogger/Feedburner) and even the old blogspot.com URLs should hopefully be working and be redirected :-)

This was done using Google/Blogger's custom domain service buying the domain through Blogger itself, and I got a free Google Apps account with it too :-)

Quite painless - specially for someone as technologically challenged as me.

Yes, I am a little scared about things like - will I build my PageRank back to 5 - and will the number of inbound links and Technorati authority - but I figured that sometimes you just have to let go of all the laurels of the past and chart a new course - and I am feeling excited for the future!

Trainers Need to Build Their Skills Too

Most people get into corporate training accidentally - after being a subject matter expert in various areas like sales, customer service, HR.

With the result that many Training (or Learning, if you will!) professionals are either self taught in the process of training - or have modeled themselves after a particular trainer whom they have been an apprentice under.

Even when someone like me - who chose to get into training as a personal choice after my MBA - works in the training function (which is becoming more and more distinct from the HR function - at least in large organizations) a large part of the initial years is spent in managing the function along with learning the ropes of training.

However, a decent training of trainers is rare - and most of the time becomes a hybrid between presentation skills and public speaking. The skills of facilitation are taught as an afterthought - and these skills are rarely ever taught:

1. Needs analysis to segregate skill related needs with other factors interfering with learning - so that one doesn't really look at every business need with a 'training' lens
   
2. Linking learning gaps directly to business needs
3. Understanding Adult learning principles and models like Kolb's theory, Bloom's Taxonomy, Donna Walker's cycle so that one can design a learning intervention with a high level of impact
4. Knowing how to use various developmental methods (like case studies, role plays, self reflection instruments, videos) to build specific skills

The Cultural Fit

Image via Wikipedia

Very often - if you are a job seeker - you will get a response to your interview which is something like this:

"Thank you for your interest in our organization, and though you have impressive credentials we regret to announce that we do not find a profile fit in the organization for you"

That is a load of jargon to say : Hey, you'd be a round peg in a square hole if we hired you.

Cultural fit is what recruiters and hiring managers suddenly discover in a time of recession. It describes the congruence in the values of the organization and the individual candidate.

However, the big problem is that nobody ever really measures the values - both of the organization and of the individual.

How it is assessed is by subjective hunches by the couple of individuals in the staffing process - in which the thoughts of the hiring executive is something like this:

"Hmm, this guy seems like a risk junkie, he won't do well in our conservative culture"

Often, these subjective inferences are usually correct - and hiring processes weed out the highly suitable for the role but unsuitable for the organization people out.

However, I think that's not the way to go about it.

That is because it strengthens the existing culture - and a strong culture is a liability in the churning changes of these times.

A strong culture can come in the way of change - resisting process and structural changes - and hiring people who don't fit the norm is one of the ways in which organizations can test their tolerance for things outside their norm

So what do you hire for?

Cultural non-fits or cultural fits?

Employees are the new media

I posted about how in the age of social communication via the net, Steve Rubel talked of how all employees are marketers.

Now comes a post how HR is the new marketing and employees are the new media.

Some top of the mind thoughts:

1. Employers need to deal with the fact that their employees will be online - often showcasing their organizations' affiliations (you have heard of Facebook networks, right?)
2. Employees are impacted by their friends' social circles more than they realise.
3. Sharing and connecting is not just a frivolous need - it could be the antidote to passivity
4. Understanding the employees who join such networks could be the key.

Traditionally, HR and Marketing have been diametrically separate functions - even if they have both roots in human behavior and perception - the depths of organization behavior.

So now when getting a message across becomes as easy as No Money Marketing and so is it time for HR to learn from Marketing and vice versa as Abhijit keeps telling me?

HR becomes Humor Resources?

An article in the The Times of India puts together examples of how HR people are injecting a little bit of fun in the workplace.

The trend is not new - quite a few organizations specially in the new-age industries driven by knowledge workers - like IT and BPO- have identified that young people who work in their organizations need to lighten up sometimes.

And don't forget, even in the industrial economy HR was earlier called welfare - where 'taking care' of employees was seen as the first duty - and organizing family events and picnics were often more central to the perception of employees in the organizations.

However, if you're a person who's keen to pursue a career in Human Resources just because you think you're great in organizing such events - sorry to burst your bubble :-)

Events like these are merely the tip of the iceberg, and to really build a culture of fun and openness and transparency in a firm requires it to be the DNA of the organization by building it into the structure and processes of the organization.

Without that, these would seem like artificial artifacts.

Don't get me wrong, I think having a sense of fun and humor is extremely important to HR people - most of the time we are a serious and stuffy lot - hiding behind terms like 'confidentiality' (more on that sometime later!).

However if one wishes to join HR only because they like organizing fun events maybe he/she should try being an event manager than a HR manager :D

Listed as a top 50 Career Management Blogger

Ok

This was a surprise for me to find out when they emailed me

Thanks for reading and liking the blog, dear readers. All this wouldn't ever be possible without your attention and support!

Check out the list, there are tonnes of great bloggers listed from some of my favorites to some I've come across the first time.

Congrats to Joel Cheesman

Image via Wikipedia

I've made quite a few connections over the years of blogging, and one of them has been the always innovative Joel Cheesman who blogs at Cheezhead.

Joel was one of the first people who blogged on HR Search Engine Optimization and almost single handedly changed the tech awareness of HR bloggers.

On a personal level, he included me as a member of the Cheezhead ad network - enabling me to earn a few dollars :-)

Now he's announced Job Search website Jobing is acquiring his blog and he's joining them as a SVP.

Here's what he says:

This post serves as official news that Cheesman Group and its properties, including Cheezhead, have been acquired by Jobing.com. I’ll be joining their amazing team as Senior Vice President in Phoenix.
For loyal readers, questions will likely abound and hopefully be answered in due time via follow-up posts and commentary. However, rest assured, the timing, the organization (especially its people) and the opportunity were ideal, both from a personal and professional level. As Jobing’s newest employee, I will assume duties that take me everywhere from blogging to community building to search engine optimization to interactive marketing to, well, you’ll just have to stay tuned, I guess. But it should be lots of fun.

Here's wishing a truly innovative guy lots of success!

Congrats Joel!

Recruiting industry analyst John Sumser summarises the deal here

Jobs at Gautamghosh.net

This is a small announcement - if you're looking for talent - or are a job seeker, I'll be posting openings (for free) on behalf of companies that are hiring at

http://gautamghosh.net/category/jobs

If you'd like to stay updated on the latest jobs there you can sign up via email here.

Taking Learning out of the classroom

We've always known that informal learning/ on the job learning/ real time learning - whatever you choose to call it, is always more valuable than formal classroom learning.

Now a survey by Bersin & Associates (and tweeted by Josh Bersin) shows that 64% of Learning Executives believe informal learning approaches have higher impact, more than two-thirds of corporate training budgets are spent on traditional formal training.

Why should that be?

1. Well to begin with - social and informal learning happens in the real time work environment. It's a space where learning executives are not present
2. Spending budgetary dollars would necessitate the need to set up control systems - to find out if they are well spent - and that would actually stifle learning
3. Current learning leaders are people who have learned primarily how to impart skills using classroom and e-learning - they understand that world - with its imperfections and shortages. Getting them to think about alternate method of ensuring learning is scary for them

What can organizations do?

1. Clearly formalising informal learning would lead to counter productive results - but firms have to provide infrastructure to aid the process
2. Getting people to agree to be observed - and conducting a ethnographic research - to actually find out how this learning actually takes place.
3. Collaborate with Knowledge Management professionals - this is overlapping area for both groups in the organization to achieve results
   

What's the difference between an Executive Coach and a Career Counselor

Posting a comment on my earlier blog post, Madhur asked if I could elaborate between a career counselor and an Executive Coach

Some of the basic differences IMHO are the following:

1. An Executive Coach focuses on developing the employee to be successful in his/her current job or the next role. A career counselor helps an employee look at various career options to choose the one that most suits his/her strengths
2. Most Coaches are paid for by employers (although news items are showing that employees are also taking their own initiative and hiring coaches) while Career Counselors are provided either by grad schools or by the individuals
3. Executive Coaches usually work with middle and top level executives - while Career Counselors work with people looking to start their careers 
4. Coaching can be focused on specific skill building - from technical functional skills to interpersonal skills - hence a person can be working with a variety of coaches at different points of his/her career. Career counselors might be working with an employee at only one stage of his/her career
   

What is common to both of them:

• Both help the employee/candidate to come to his/her own conclusions 
• Both assess the strengths and opportunity areas for the person and show him/her the mirror
• Both seek to 'facilitate' rather than 'direct' the employee to action.