Stories and Purposes for the HR Community

Over the last few weeks I have been having conversations with members of the HR community on attending the 16th National conference organized by the National HRD Network. The reasons for attending and not attending were interesting to hear. “I hope to carry one learning that I can implementThere’s hardly any learning” “There’s hardly any learning, I only go there for the networking”

Some would say that perhaps the HR community is suffering from “conference fatigue”. However, it is my belief that while that may be true, a conference like this is important for the dispersed HR community., which has its credibility and reputation questioned in organizations most of the time. It is a time for HR professionals to tell themselves stories.

Stories are not just entertaining – they are also tools for sensemaking of all the data and information we are inundated with. Stories are what adds meaning to experiences and gives us the space and time to step back and reflect. Many believe that values are communicated by myths in the form of stories across millennia. So what are the stories that HR professionals are telling in this conference?

In the first part of 29th November, the stories we heard (by the Young HR Thought Leaders paper presentation and the Best of Breed HR Showcase) were about thought leadership and innovation – of understanding how others and their teams faced an issue and had done something innovative to impact their businesses in a positive way. These are stories which I hope we will carry forward and spread – to learn from and spread positivity in the larger HR community.

The second half of the day was for stories for the future – of creating meaning and larger purpose for the HR Community. To stop thinking only in organizational silos and contributing to the larger community. About defining our role differently – from moving from drivers of engagement to becoming Happiness Champions.

Stories were also communicated by what was left unsaid - the lack of diversity in the conference speakers and lack of topics dedicated to the long term challenge to the HR community.

NHRDN Seminar on "HR & Social Media – What more can you do?" at Mumbai

National HRD Network and NHRDN Mumbai Chapter along with FORE School of Management, are organizing a one day Seminar on "HR & Social Media – What more can you do?" on Tuesday 11 December 2012 at ITC Maratha, Mumbai.

The Seminar seeks to deliberate and discuss on hitherto less tapped opportunities for HR professionals to use social media effectively and make a uniquely positive difference at the workplace, and in the process, be seen as the profession that is leading the adoption of this technology from the front.

I would be speaking on a panel discussion on "Using Social Media to foster a culture of Innovation"

If you're in Mumbai and want to attend the seminar here are more details on how to

Looking forward to seeing you there :)

Going to the 16th Annual National HR Development Network Conference

From tomorrow I would be attending the 16th Annual Conference of India's largest HR body, the National HRD Network.

I was lucky last year to be involved in a small way with last year's conference in Bangalore.

This time I am looking forward to attending the following sessions:

• Special Session on Beyond Strategy by Robin Speculund, Founder & CEO, Bridges Business Consultancy Int Pte Ltd - UK
• Decisions by Design or Accident: The moments of truth in HR Strategy - a panel discussion by Sameer Khanna, Saurabh Das Patnaik, Azim Jamal
• Big Fight: Is HR in a Box? A discussion between S Varadarajan, Ishant Manaktala, P. Dwarakanath
• Mega Session: Humans First, Resources Next: The Missing Focus - A panel discussion between Guy Dillela, Deepak Mangla, Anand Shankar 

Look forward to a flurry of blog posts :)

And if you're going to be there - would love to meet up :)

Disrupting LinkedIn - who will do it? An excellent answer

I came across this fascinating answer on Quora to why hasn't been LinkedIn disrupted yet, and I so agree with it. The answer points to "Talent Communities" built around specific domains as the places where people learn. Something that I have often talked about in the past :)

Read Quote of Jon Bischke's answer to LinkedIn: Why hasn't anyone disrupted LinkedIn yet? on Quora

Career Advice to a young HR professional

Someone asked on Quora:

>What advice would you give to a young professional who is just starting his career in Human Resource?

I have just graduated from college and wondering what can I do to stay ahead of the curve and ensure my long term growth? I try to keep up with the latest trends in HR, Management and Technology, read the books that senior fellows recommend and also religiously follow HBR. But I find that many of my friends are also doing that. Also, I am not great at networking and find it difficult to strike up a relationship with strangers quickly. Will it prove to be a handicap?

This is what I answered:
Read Quote of Gautam Ghosh's answer to Human Resources: What advice would you give to a young professional who is just starting his career in Human Resource? on Quora

On Employee Attrition metrics

Someone asked a question on Quora , and I answered

Read Quote of Gautam Ghosh's answer to Human Resources: What metric do HR departments typically use to measure employee turnover? on Quora

Job specifications are changing

A friend, Atul Karmarkar, shared this picture of a job description he came upon.

Shared without comment.

Thoughts?

The paradox of HR in a people dependant business

I just finished reading Anant Rangaswami's free ebook "Elephants in the Room" on the future of the Indian advertising industry. You can download the book for free here.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a copywriter in the advertising industry. Then I sat for XAT and got into XLRI and discovered HR. But the fascination with the (what I thought) glamourous world of advertising never went away. When I was at 2020 Social my colleague went to the "Cannes of the Indian ad family" Goafest, and I so wanted to go for it too.

So when Anant's book was free for download, I was amongst the first people to download it. He talks about the big challenges facing the advertising industry (the "elephants in the room") and how the industry can meet it.

There were two big "elephants" that stood out for me when I had put on my HR hat. One was, clients were dependent on "people brands" like Piyush Pandey, R. Balki, Prasoon Joshi in the ad industry. Anant says that the clients want great creative people to work on them, so creating a second line of "people brands" is critical once the older folks retire. And yet, no one seems to be doing anything about it.

The other interesting part of the book, is where Anant draws out the HR challenges of the advertising firms, starting with the fact that many of them to do not have full fledged HR managers or follow HR systems and processes.

That triggered this thought in my mind, "why does an industry which is so dependent on people, not invest in HR"

Thinking about it, I have come to the same sorry conclusion as in the past - great HR happens when work is commoditised. When work/people are a differentiator to bring in revenues as in a case of an ad agency or a professional services firm, HR is seen as expendable, without people realising then that it's the most critical.

Even tellingly, better HR professionals don't think of joining as HR managers/heads in industries like media and advertising adding to the vicious cycle of mediocre HR practices and people decisions being taking whimsically by business heads.

The downfall of Michael Porter's strategy consulting firm Monitor Group

Michael Porter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Steve Denning has a scathing take on the fall of the former blue chip strategy consulting firm, Monitor Group. Founded by Strategy uber-guru Michael Porter, who propounded the five forces model. In fact I had questioned the model on this blog way back in 2005 - but of course Steve Denning does a much more detailed analysis.

The shocking part of the analysis is this:

it (Porter's model) was “lacking any foundation in fact or logic.” Except where generated by government regulation, sustainable competitive advantage simply doesn’t exist. Hype, spin, impenetrable prose and abstruse mathematics, along with talk of “rigorous analysis”, “tough-minded decisions” and “hard choices” all combined to hide the fact that there was no evidence that sustainable competitive advantage could be created in advance by studying the structure of an industry. Although Porter’s conceptual framework could help explain excess profits in retrospect, it was almost useless in predicting them in prospect.

Read the full article here.

Also read The Economist's Schumpeter's take on Monitor's demise

Related articles

• Consultant, consult thyself: Gaddafi's former spin doctor, the Monitor Group, files for bankruptcy
• Monitor Group: A Failure of Scenario Planning

Book Review: Socialized by Mark Fidelman - A book on building a Social Business

I received a copy of Mark Fidelman's book, Socialized a couple of weeks ago to review. I have "known" Mark via Twitter where we've had many conversations over the last couple of years. I've avidly followed his column on Forbes, where he's profiled a lot of executives and organizations who are driving change within their companies to leverage social technologies to drive a cultural transformation - as businesses move away from primarily a "command and control" era to "driven by community" leveraging the power of their fans, advocates, influencers and employees.

Mark starts off the book saying that this "social age" is the fifth age of business - after the industrial age, the broadcast age, the management and telecommunication age and the information age.

As each business age changed, some companies could adapt and thrive, and a lot of others actually couldn't and died along the way. Mark's belief is that if organizations want to survive they cannot wish away the reality and if they do so, they are doomed. Some like IBM have made the transition from various ages with nimbleness even with their size, and they are leading the charge in the social era too.

He quotes Andy McAfee, MIT’s principal research scientist for digital business, “analog companies eventually are going to get swept aside by digital companies. It’s my firmest belief about the future of business.”

Interestingly, Mark makes a point that would make most HR and senior business leaders sit up: The old "control and command" structure demotivates employees. While customers are more loyal to socially engaged businesses.

In the rest of the book, Mark lays out the process of change and operations needed to transform a business - from people to vision to assessing the gaps, to getting the organization to rally around a common purpose.

What I liked was the reference to "internal/enterprise social networks" as a "digital village" by Mark, including customers and partners. On HR's role he says "Human Resources should focus more on developing internal communities within the digital village (via the social platform). HR’s role will be to ensure that the platform’s user experience, aesthetics, and collaborative elements support the HR mission of employee recruiting, satisfaction, and retainment. If analytics and sentiment about employee discontent are trending, HR can take meaningful steps to stop the trend or learn from it."

Socialized! How the Most Successful Businesses Harness the Power of Social (Bibliomotion, November 2012), is available 11/15 at US bookstores as well as at all major online retailers.  You can get your FREE copy of Socialized!, when you register for BusinessNext Social, the world’s premier social business conference by November 21st.

Employer Branding, Recruiting in India and Social Media

A couple of days ago it was my pleasure to moderate a roundtable organized by LinkedIn India and People Matters on "Employer Branding" and how social media is impacting it.

There were about 20 HR and Recruiting leaders from Mumbai at the event, and my co-moderator was Irfan Abdulla, LinkedIn India's Director of Talent Solutions.

Irfan started off the event by showcasing the first India Recruiting Trends survey they had done, along with their annual global survey. Some interesting facts that emerged were:

• 53% of respondents said they would hire more
• 50% of respondents said they would have a budgetary growth in recruiting.
• The biggest obstacles to attracting top talent is (a) Competition (b) Compensation (c) Location (d) Lack of awareness/interest in employment brand
• Recruiting leaders are concerned that their competitors will (a) Invest in employer branding (b) Improve their referral program (c) Invest in new recruiting tools
• Top last landing trends were (a) Utilising social and professional networks (b) Boosting referral programs (c) Upgrading employer branding
• 81% agreed that employer brand has significant impact on ability to hire great talent and 90% companies are increasing or maintaining investment in their employer brand.
• India is ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to regularly measuring employer brand.

So there was a healthy discussion on how the HR professionals present see these trends and what they are doing on the employer branding front. My insights were:

1. Most organizations have defined an Employee Value Proposition, however very few measure their external brand.
2. Most companies seem to be focusing on branding when it comes to B-School and Tech-Schools but very few seem to focus (or know) on employer branding for middle and senior levels
3. Understanding of how sites like Glassdoor and discussions on Twitter are shaping employer brand was very low.
4. About a quarter of the organizations in the room had some kind of social media policy.

Need help to leverage social media to understand what the perception of an organization's employer brand is? Contact me :)

If you want to go through the LinkedIn report here it is

India Corporate Recruiting Trends from LinkedIn Talent Solutions

Related articles

• LinkedIn attempts to quantify the Employment Brand

Interview on Social Media, Human Resources and emerging HR Technology

I gave some talks as part of the Oracle HCM Executive Briefing seminars some months ago, and the communication folks at Oracle took the opportunity to interview me on the latest trends in HR and Technology.
You can watch the interview here :)