I thought the blog post : http://www.hr-esources.com/03/12/how-to-build-effective-working-relationships/ on http://www.hr-esources.com/ was great!
The article is especially insightful on how to improve poor working relationships by identifying barriers, being willing to adapt, acknowledging other's viewpoint, showing appreciation and by recognizing that we all dependent on others to be successful.
But what can you do when the relationship is just not working? Do you withdraw, leave it to be or try and still do something about it......I guess the answer lies how important that working relationship is and how much effort has already gone into making it work. Sometimes no matter how much you try, things wont be smooth......What can one do then? The best approach in my view is to live with it! And continue to go about it as you would if the relationship was working well (i.e being willing to adapt, acknowledging other's viewpoint, showing appreciation). This is harder done then said but worth a try!

Workplace Harrassment

Laurie Ruettimann blogs on http://punkrockhr.com/ and she posted an article on sexual harassment at workplace. Here is the link to that article:
http://www.lemondrop.com/2009/02/26/two-words-that-will-stop-any-type-of-sexual-harassment/

Laurie's point of view is that it’s a difficult decision to report an incident and sometimes the trouble is not worth it. But in today's times where jobs are scarce, it’s equally difficult to look out for a job and get out of the toxic situation as there are no jobs out there!

My point of view is that, there is only one person who can stand up for you and that's you. But one needs to take a conscious decision taking into account various things that Laurie highlighted. Reporting an incident is probably the most courageous decision you can take. Most organizations don’t have trained investigators or a committee to look into such incidents and this some times makes the person who reported it feeling like the perpetrator......The onus on proving it happened unfortunately is sometimes placed on the person who reports it.

But one sure way of facing a situation of harassment (sexual or otherwise)
1) Stand up and assert that this is not appropriate (in clear and strong voice)
2) Save any evidences (if any), though it might be disgusting to even think this way
3) Report the incident the second time it happens (yes, there are no second chances you can give someone who is harassing you)

Indian workplace is evolving and while we all might like to believe that there is a lot of respect for women in our culture, sexual harassment at workplace is a reality. Turing a blind eye and thinking my organization culture is too good is bad leadership response. Most organizations now have a policy against harassment and basic framework to deal with it........The few I worked with have extremely robust systems and channels which are constantly reviewed to ensure workplace harassment is prevented and if it were to be reported / happened the situation is dealt in a fair and firm way.

Time to focus on yourself

Every single day we keep hearing from business, world leaders and economists on how grim the economy scenario is and how that is forcing tough actions. There have been massive layoffs, high unemployment rates, salary freezes, projects spends frozen etc.......By now most companies have announced that there would be no salary hikes for this year, flat headcount and paired down bonuses and incentives. This is not the year when you will get a incentive / bonus / reward for doing your job........yes its tough but the bottom line is you still have a paid job and that is incentive enough in this year to do your best work.

Its time to focus on yourself and what makes you happy as no one else is going to care about whether you are happy, recognised or motivated. Do all that you wanted to do but did not find the time to do or did not do as you had big stuff happening at work. Its time to focus back on basics and think of how you can see opportunites to learn and do work that will keep you motivated and engaged during year when good news is hard to come by.....

Its also time to stop reading into the gloom news and focussing on how you can do things that are in your control........

Round Up of the NHRD Conference in Chennai

The NHRD conference was organized in Chennai this time around. The participation was really high even though we had the incident in Mumbai and Chennai was in two feet of water. There were student delegates, industry professionals, Academia but my sensed is that delegates from HR service providers outnumbered other groups.


The topic's seemed interesting and the speakers from respected organizations with tons of experience in HR. However the overall experience was not so great as many speakers did seemed to have been briefed well about the topic of discussion or they simply did not spend time preparing.


The topics and speakers list is on NHRD Chennai website: http://www.nhrdnconference2008.com/


I am not going to write about what everyone spoke about or said....... There were some sparks of delight when Prabhakar spoke about the future of trade unions, when Gurucharan Das spoke about India and its growth or when the topic of shaping the new HR manager and role of Hr in uncertainty was presented. There were other good speakers too, but they were really few and far between……….what the conference really taught me was “what not to do” when presenting or speaking about a topic in front of people who already know a lot……….

- Listen to the brief carefully and understand what you are being asked to speak about (personal views / org practices / strategy / research)
- Think about whether you are really the right person for the topic
- Even if the same topic is to be presented, there will be a lot of difference in the way you present it depending on the angle you take (personal views, org practices, strategy, research etc)
- Prepare and practice……….you audience can see it
- Keep it brief and simple (no one complains if its brief)
- Present balanced views and in a calm and composed fashion…people are not paying 12k to hear you rant and rave
- Last but not the least, don’t let the podium get in the way of your interaction with the audience, move around (the color mike is just a ask away)
- If you are not a confident speaker a big conference is not the stage to practice……

So that’s my round up of the NHRD Conference 08, I hope and wish that the next year would be better experience and learning.

Why year end feedback does not make sense.

Most organizations have a feedback / appraisal session between the manager and his employee at the end of the performance year. Its the much dreaded time of the year, most managers and employees are stressed out at the prospect of writing and discussing how the year went by.....The HR manager would have done the mandatory process training and spent a hour or so on "how to give and write feedback", and managers would have attended this workshop feeling "easier said then done".......

The reason I think most people feel stressed out about giving feedback is due to the fear of being opposed / not liked / or seen as critical. If one has not been in the habit of having a regular rhythm with their team to review work and performance, then the end of the year exercise will most definitely be a stressful time as its like "breaking the surprise".

Its humanly impossible to remember what the person did during the last 12 months if regular reviews were not there to track progress, achievements and misses, and especially if one manages a large team and the manager has not kept notes or track then it would mostly be a discussion on recent events which is unfair to the employee.

Year-end feedback session is a wrap up exercise of what has already been discussed and achieved. It cannot be a postmortem of how things went or revealing the climax of sorts.

If the culture of regular feedbacks has been missing, most definitely year-end appraisals are a time for stress and heart-burn. One important aspect which we miss is also about focusing on building trust, we know that its always easier to take feedback and give feedback where there is trust between people.

Here’s wishing all those who have the tough job of giving and taking feedback all the best! J

Why every manager cannot be a leader?

A leader puts team first and thinks through impact of decisions....
A leader does not shy away from taking tough decisions
A leader works with stewardship...long term impact rather than short-term gain
A leader shares personal viewpoint and not organizational spiel
A leader puts his own insecurity / fear / disappointment behind quickly and thinks how he can help the team overcome this tough situation

Being a leader is tough during the times we are in, but as someone rightly said "tough times clear the grey lines between leadership and management"

Are women bad at negotiating salaries??

I read an article recently in a popular women’s magazine on how women should negotiate salaries when applying for jobs and that women are bad at negotiating a salary. Most of the data cited there was based on studies and surveys done in North America. However it was interesting to see the stats that were cited in the article on how much women lose if they don’t negotiate!


Perhaps what women look for in a good organization goes beyond just the salary it offers or may be they just don’t like to negotiate. I also think that many women candidates don’t negotiate as its difficult to talk about money, secondly they may worry that they are perceived as aggressive or needy when it comes to money. To negotiate one needs to overcome these personal barriers as well as possess the skills required to negotiate, but coming to think of it, I saw my mother bargaining all the time and some how that tells me that while you cannot equate bargaining to negotiating a salary, at a level they are the same. Its largely boils down to knowing the what you are worth, the pay range for the job and ability to convince the hiring origination that you deserve that pay (relate this to how your mother always told that vegetable vendor “that’s what others in the market are selling this xyz veg for”, “I always bought veggies from you from “xyz” years”, “the quality of these veggies is not so good to deserve that price”) J

I have personally not seen too many women candidates in India I have hired negotiate hard and but mostly the one’s who had did not go beyond basic level of negotiation. My recruiting friends also think the same and agree that they have been exceptions but really they are few and far between. This gets me thinking on two things:

1)What would come out of analyzing data of last one year on salary offered to women and male candidates for the same type of jobs?
2)Do we as HR professionals act differently considering the that most women candidates don’t negotiate their offers (in the context that male candidates negotiate and may drive up the salary offer made) ?

I think we should look hard at each offer we make especially if the analysis above shows that indeed the salary offered is lower for the same type of job in the case of women candidates given the same level of experience as male candidates and competency as assessed in the interview. A robust system of evaluating experience, competence and a data driven approach to salary positioning will reduce the probability that women candidates get lower salary then male candidates, but I wonder what has your experience been as a hiring manager or recruiter in this regard!

Uncertainty and testing times……….and the learning process

No matter which country you are in or which industry you are part of its uncertainty and testing times all around. Whether it’s the US economy in the debt trap or our own India facing slower than expected growth in terms of GDP, these are times where confidence is low and financial results are not so great…

For someone like me who started their career after the economic boom in India, downturn was not something one thought of…India was booming and jobs and pay were great. I suspect its still the same but its just that there is so much uncertainty that everyone is going slow on hiring and candidates ability to negotiate has come down to a certain extent due to the lower number of jobs up there for them to apply.

I remember a time when I was working with consulting and services firm when a European manager on a assignment to India asked the India HR team how they would face a economic downturn. There was pin drop silence in the team and I guess that’s because many of us in that room did not ever hear of what a downturn was or how it would be to operate in a situation like that. I am glad now that 4 years later, I am going through these testing and uncertain times as this is going to help me and my team learn that there are business cycles and what we as HR can do and how we do what we do has to change to support the situation the business is in.

Bad times teach us a lot and what you learn through this experience is what matters when you look back a few years down the line and reminisce.

A great manager is a talent scout!

What makes a manager a great manager is the ability to scout for talent and then groom them. Talk to people and ask them what they look for in their manager and most often you would hear them say “someone who brings the best in me”.

But is it really possible to bring the best out of each and every individual in the team?? Many would tell you that its your duty as a manager to bring the best out of your people and you should give equal importance to bringing up those who are lagging behind or need that extra push / coaching to be their best.

I am not so sure though! I don’t believe that everyone can be a star and therefore as a manager one needs to conscious that the best of each person wont make him or her the star of the team. More often than not, I have wondered who needs the maximum effort from my end as a manger, is it the top talent or the solid soldiers or those who are failing to meet the minimal expectations. I really have not worked this out yet, but I slowly realized that effort spent on top talent pays more than trying to be socialist in my approach to developing everyone. Of course, you need to understand the strengths of each individual and help them build on that, give them a fair chance to perform and give them the coaching and feedback they need but, trying to distribute projects, rewards and much coveted assignments in a socialist way will only harm the motivation of the top talent and bring down the overall performance of the team.

It pays to be like a talent scout who knows that every talent that walks up to give their audition is not a star and only a select few have what it takes……..

HR competencies…

I was working on a HR reward and recognition model recently and while doing so referred to the HR competency framework in the organization I work for and research that Dave Ulrich, professor of business administration at the University of Michigan, and his associate Wayne Brockbank, also a professor of business at the University of Michigan did. Last year they released an all-new 2007 Human Resource Competency Study (HRCS). They came up with findings and analysis that tries to unravel the new set of skills that high achieving HR people need have in next few years to come. Here is a look at the competency model: http://www.shrm.org/competencies/
What's great to see in the model is how it has evolved over the years and kept pace with the dynamic nature of the function. Ulrich states that someone who was a successful HR person even 10 years ago may be wont be so successful unless they have some of the new competencies the model talks about.

The model places credible activist at the pinnacle. The Credible Activist is respected, admired, listened to and offers a point of view, takes a position and challenges assumptions.
Ulrich says if you have to prioritize then its the Credible Activist. And one cannot agree more, while all others are important, I cannot imagine an HR personal without credibility. It’s practically dangerous to have HR leader without credibility or strong ethics. Imagine a great strategist but with poor ethics and you have a time bomb waiting to go off.

When your manager is the office bully……….

Office bullying normally consists of offensive, insulting or threatening behavior.

It may start with bulldozing your ideas and thoughts and can be as severe as calling you names and threatening to fire you or give you a poor raise or rating.

You can confirm your manager is a office bully if:
He threatens to give you a poor raise or get you fired if you disagree with his thoughts or ideas.
He thinks you are a wimp if you don’t stand up to him and if you do he threatens to fire you.
He thinks 99% of your ideas are good for nothing and calls you an idiot or other offensive names.
He insults you in public repeatedly but in a humorous or sarcastic way.
You hear him spreading malicious stories about you and when you confront he refuses to even talk about it and goes on to insult you.

BBC published a article practical way to tackle office bully’s:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2949646.stm

I finally said yes for a Blackberry

I fought this for quite sometime and the fight has been with my own belief that its a nuisance and will throw my personal work-life balance into a tizzy.....I reasoned that I would constantly check mail and not pay attention to my poor husband and my poorer daughter with the blackberry in my life......I also said to myself only workaholics took blackberry and I am not one of them or I don’t want to be one of them.........

But you know I now realize or let me say may realize that it’s not the technology that will throw one's work life balance into a tizzy but it’s one's own ability (or inability) to prioritize and strike a balance. Only time will tell (I give myself 2 months) to make up my mind on whether to keep it or lose it.........I only hope this works out and I wont be sorry I took it.

Career Planning and how it’s not what it used to be………

Old school thought around career was it’s a straight steady climb to the top and career ladder was the term used to describe the approach. But new age thinking suggests that there is nothing like a career ladder and instead there is a career lattice would be multi-path and built around people’s needs over time (like balance of work-life).

Here are some more thoughts on how career planning and thinking around the same is changing………

New Thinking:

• Careers would be an undulating journey of climbs and lateral moves.
  
• You don’t have to necessarily work what you never did before; it’s ok to specialize.
  
• Its ok to play on strengths and do jobs and roles that suits you.
  
• You manager at the end of the day is interested in getting the best out of you.
  
• When you are looking at career advice don’t depend only on him, get yourself different perspectives.
  
• There need not be one role model you look up to all the time, career role models can change over time.
  
• Training is not the only way to learn new skills.
  
• You cannot work on more than 2 areas of development at one point of time
  
• There is a no glass ceiling for women.
  
• Executive presence is not just about dressing well, communicating well and confidence it’s also about delivering results, maintaining composure under pressure, knowledge about business.
  
• Forget what companies have to say about career development, eventually you own your career so start taking ownership and taking lead in planning it.

The tough get going during tough times

Yes, that's true folks.....Its tough times for India Inc and organizations old and new are facing business uncertainty and the prevailing tough economic situation like never before. Attrition is down, Jobs are few, travel and recreation budgets have crunched or disappeared....but what are you doing as a HR leader...

Start with looking at your own spend and headcount: Its not business as usual and you should take a hard look at that flab you have in the recruitment teams, HR operations and everywhere else in your team. Its time to be lean and mean......and this is not meant just for your business guys. If no one asked you to re-look at your team budgets (headcount and spend) you better start before someone does.

Attrition is down: Good news and bad.......yes the number has gone down, but have you looked at the quality, I mean like who exactly is leaving and who is not......When the economy is down and there are fewer jobs outside, your least effective and non performing employees find it more difficult to get a job outside and stick around. Your top performers who always had it good still find the jobs. You need to start working on having stronger measures to nudge the non-performers out.

Take a hard look at your communication: While you wont see too many people leaving you now because of the job market, their motivation may be down due to uncertainty over job security or pipeline of work. Times like this need more focus on communication. There is lot of news (good and bad) floating around and you would want to ensure that the right messages reach your employees and you quickly address the bad news with tact and swiftness.

Tell your leaders to work on his body language: Your leaders might be the most impacted by this situation but they cannot walk around looking like heavens have fallen.....employees look up to them for assurance.

Keep your flock engaged: Your team is also prone to all the pitfalls of this situation and while you do all you can for the business you need to focus on your team and their engagement.

I am sure there is plenty of other things you should re-look so, go on get back to work!
Here is a good post I came across that talks about good things that happen to HR during recession.......http://www.workforce.com/section/01/feature/25/51/04/index.html

Building a Recognition program

Establish the need for change or introducing the new program:
You need to be clear on the end objective before you even start thinking about scoping, budgets, process and making that deadly pitch (which is going to be essential in the end to get it across to people)

Positioning the program:
Are you going to position this as a informal program or is your program looking at bringing in formality around the same, in whichever case you should draw very detailed plans on the roll out and the actual rewards event.

Scoping:
Think about categories, which are the target population, budgets in terms of % coverage (informal awards % coverage is usually quite big, while the formal / management award coverage would have to be around 10% to 12%). You should also think through the budget in terms of money you need and this should include some allocation towards communication and celebration event expenses.

Criteria:
This is the most important bit and you will spend a fair bit drawing detailed criteria. Make sure it has linkages to the contribution areas and competencies you want to reward people at your organization.

One issue you might want to think through is whether you should look at tight linkages as people might say but that’s what our performance management process and compensation philosophy addresses. Don’t fall into this trap, all ongoing reward and recognition programs are part of total rewards (which compensation is part of) and you don’t want to reward anything that is not aligned to organization goals and competencies the organization wants its people to develop and be recognized for. Moreover recognition programs are going to create more traction around behaviors and initiatives that organization is looking to push.

Setting up the process:
This includes the nomination process, approvers / sponsors of the awards and how the whole process will open and close. Think though on a tracking process so that you keep an eye on usage of budgets, coverage in terms of people etc.

Communication:
Very essential if it’s going to be a change over the existing program you had. Usually my experience tells me that this is more difficult then bringing a program for the first time. Spend time to get buy in and on the actual launch, as you don’t want to have any surprises.

Last but not least Recognition programs work best when they are viewed as fair and objective and stand the test of peer understanding as well.

All it takes.........

Most organizations today recognize the value that HR brings to the table and gone are the days when you had to fight to be heard or valued. But what does it take to keep that table.......

HR summer internship season is towards its fag end and most interns would now be going back to their college to finish their course work before they sit for placements and those lucky few who have PPO’s must be eager to get started.

Wait! Have you wondered what you learnt in your internship and what are the skills you need to wade though your first year of real job and what will take you further ahead! Now, I am not an expert but, I probably learnt the hard way and here you go with some thoughts!

Develop your independent perspective on various issues:
This is going to be extremely valuable as the firm hiring you may not be looking at someone who is just text book or class room thought. Independent perspective on issues is going to be sought by your manager and people you are working with and not having one might not earn you respect.

Actively seek cross functional interactions:HR does not operate like an island, what is happening across other functions and with the front line will definitely have a bearing on the HR strategy. A lot of learning of the business comes in from your interactions with other functions and you should seek opportunities to build network out side HR. (Stop having coffee / lunch only with your HR gang now!)

Learn to include peer review:
Your peers are going to be your worst and best competition. You don’t want them to trash your idea or presentation in the formal launch or report out you are doing in front of your manager or your leader. Learn to include them when you are building your recommendations and even when doing your analysis. Its not college buddy, so go ahead and learn to work in a team!

Don’t start finding faults:
The HR processes and polices that you are finding faults are someone else’s work and most times they might be still around and no one likes it when their work gets trashed. It does not make sense to find fault and criticize everything (while it might be true that this co does not have the best of polices and processes) until you build some credibility.

Don’t stop taking to your ex-colleagues:
Today every organization is looking for best practices and continuously looking at what others are doing in the market. Your best source of information is going to be your ex-colleagues and your friends from college. Don’t ditch them keep in touch with them!

Doing the dirty work!:
Well don’t worry as its going to help you be sensitive tomorrow to your team (when you get one eventually) and also it never helps to know how things work at a very operational level. And remember all operational work is not dirty, it teaches you the nuts and bolts of the processes.

Go head have fun! HR is a great place to be in at this point of time and I guess if you love it as much as I do for a long long time!

Gender Diversity and Women's Networking Initiatives

Corporate India has latched on to gender diversity and doing more than it has ever to attract and retain women employees. The benefits being rolled out include flexi time, extended maternity benefits, safe work environment, affirmative action and establishing women's networking chapters.

The idea behind the women's networking chapters is to have a platform for women employees to gather, network and also learn from each other. Some organizations like GE, Deloitte and Microsoft have really taken their women’s networking chapters to new levels and leveraged them effectively to manage their diversity and talent management initiatives. Take a good look at the majority of the organization which are trying to do better on this and you will find that what helps is: -

Having a clear focus or vision for the chapter
Top / senior leadership championing the chapter
Making it local and relevant
Leveraging it as a communication and feedback channel

While having hooks in the beginning like networking lunch, fashion shows and rangoli competitions will help drive participation the true value of the women's networking chapter will be felt if it goes beyond these hooks and provides a channel for feedback, development and refinement of talent attraction and retention initiatives.

Contradiction???

Last time when I blogged about how to get though the first few weeks in your new job listening more and talking less, a friend of mine questioned "so how do you make a good introduction without sounding too verbose?". Her view was that while you don’t need to talk a lot and give complete details of what you did in the past, one has to have a introduction akin to a "elevator pitch" that is so popular across the world.

So what is an elevator pitch and how to make it, well I did some goggling and came across this link.

http://www.wikihow.com/Develop-Your-Personal-Elevator-Pitch

Mass Career Customization

The other day I was reading an in-house magazine of Deloitte and came across this article on Mass Career Customization. (quite a mouthful isn’t!)

Here is a quick lowdown on Mass Career Customization:

MCC is a model that has been designed to respond to the new workplace trends which include more women at workplace, gap in demand and supply of knowledge workers, changing expectations of men, evolving expectations of generation X and Y and increasing impact of technology. Developed by Cathy Benko and Anne Weisberg, both principals at Deloitte.

The model is based on the premise that there would be no normal career path (meaning straight climb up the ladder) and careers would be multipath and built around people’s needs over time (like balance of work-life). The authors coin the word “career lattice” to describe how careers would be an undulating journey of climbs and lateral moves. . The model is being tested out in the few organizations namely Deloitte, along with SAS, Ogilvy & Mather, and law firm Arnold & Porter. Read more about this model at www.masscareercustomization.com

While the model itself is exciting and may be really the cutting edge practice in career development and management, it might be a difficult proposition for smaller organizations that do not have the different roles / career options to implement this model. The success of this model will largely depend on long-term commitment of the organization and employee. And since the success of career development and management programs can only seen over time, only long term players will buy the model and its approach.

Don't talk, just listen for the first few days in your new job

Yes, curb the tendency to talk about how great you are and the big shot you were in your previous job. Stick to talking about your previous responsibilities in a brief fashion and you could add the learnings you had.

This will help you in: 1) people will not be prejudiced about your interest in this new job 2) expectations will be moderate and not very high 3) you will not come out looking like someone who brags 4) will help people open up and talk more about themselves as they wont feel any lesser then what you are.

The key is to listen, probe and figure out the dynamics. But this does not mean you clam up, just ensure that you have a brief description ready when people ask you where you are from and what you were handling in your previous job / company. Focus for the first few days / weeks would be to understand people and "how things get done here" and therefore listen more and talk less!