Facebook the new menace

Networking is the need of the hour and especially for HR but this new report released by ASSOCHAM (The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry) shows how productivity is going down thanks to "FACEBOOK"

According to the report

Facebook is becoming a problem for employers at offices in India, as employees have started spending so much time on the social
networking site that it is beginning to affect productivity, a new survey has revealed.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) have found in their survey that office staff on average spend an hour a day on sites like Facebook, resulting in a loss of productivity measuring 12.5 per cent.

The study noted: "Close to 12.5 per cent of productivity of human resource in corporate sector is misappropriated each day since a vast majority of them while away their time accessing social networking sites during the office hours."

Seemingly, the workers use Orkut, Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin for "romancing".

"As a matter of fact, [the] growing use of browsing sites can be dangerous for overall productivity and IT companies have already installed software to restrict its use," the BBC News quoted Assocham secretary general DS Rawat as saying.

As part of the study, a total of 4,000 employees between the ages of 21 and 60 from different cities in India including Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai (Bombay), Pune, Chandigarh, Lucknow and Kanpur, were questioned.

It was observed that nearly half of office employees accessed Facebook during work time.

Moreover, four in every 10 workers built their entire Orkut or Facebook profile at office.

Also, 83 per cent of the employees think there is no harm surfing at work during office hours.


This report puts one question to me is whether access to Facebook, Myspace and other social networking websites is allowed in organizations? If yes does it put to rest the myth that these websites were banned which may encourage more employees to use it using proxy links or is it access via mobile phones? And the usage of these websites for romancing? I think this puts a serious question on the long standing question of employability. If people cannot resist the temptation of romancing while in office through a social networking website then how trusty can this employee be ?

Questions to be answered

Cheers

Arvind

Organizational romances

It is but obvious that in any organization where a large number of people work for sparks to fly between and flirting to go on. There has been a huge question pondering me was “is it alright if the staff of your organization to display romance of their private life with someone of your same organization itself into the office premises.”

Does the organization allow couples to work in the same office premises? Many organizations ensure that both husband and wife should not work in the same organization even if it were different locations and offices.
Is it advantageous or is it outrageous?
My major question of concern was as a HR is it a moral policing job we must take up trying to stop the romance or let it be as it is?

Some advantages of it can be

1)The productivity could increase given if their services were used aptly
2)Staff absence could go down
3)Will give a good impression about the organization

While the demerits could be

1)It could lead to gossiping among other employees which can hinder the group morale
2)It could hinder productivity
3)It could reduce social capital as people will be preoccupied with their partners and may forget others
The Jury is still out on what could be the impact but the question still wrangles in my minds do we have the job of moral policing?
Cheers
Arvind

Matrix management

There is famous saying "The farther you pull back the forward you go" and this is something i can relate in context with the matrix management. Fredrick Winslow Taylor created the functional foremanship where one person had to report to many superiors for various needs. This concept was thrashed by the purists saying it violates unity of command and it was thrown out and thus in the past few years we have this Matrix system of reporting where a person may have to report to more than one boss, If we look at the sheer structure of functioning of this style it is atleast to say the least inspired from Taylor's model and that made me think on certain things about this matrix style its Pro's and Con's

Advantages

1)Loss of communication through channels can be decreased
2)Direct interaction with clients and customers
3)The employee knows what is required by the customer and can modify accordingly

Now to the critical part its flaws

1)The communication if in Oral may not be the same for different reporting heads as it depends on the interpretation of the superior
2)It cause conflicts especially in certain conservative Indian organizations
3)The need for competent employable individuals for ushering in this kind of system

Now if we analyze it we can easily see its like a dynamite !!! give it to the right guy who may use it for cracking up mountains or if it ends up in the wrong hands it has deadly implication.

Cheers

Arvind

PAPA approach

The most hated and often most used word in the HR dictionary has got to be "ATTRITION" and with the economy picking up expect salary packages to go up and poaching and raiding to get in full flow. Though we can talk about this being unethical and all we have to analyze something is that if an employee is not interested in working with an organization he will move out for a new job in the same sector regardless of what is on the table for him.

in a recent conversation with one of the GM HR of a pan India organization i put forward this question and he answered and he said that most of the time this attrition is high because of a lack of proper induction of the employees into the organizational fabric and ensuring they fit in well he talked about a technique which resembled to like what a father does for a kid. It is essential to understand not all candidates who enter a job are Industry ready and it is essential to guide them it does not mean put them in training program but rather in the field of work where he should be guided in his activities he said it was like what a father does with a kid going to school

1) Like a father who needs to get the confidence of the kid that the school will help him the manager or superior needs to assure him that he can perform well and give him a buffer time for performance.

2) It is essential that like a father who drops his kid at school and guides him the manager should do essential acts that ensure confidence and help in development of skills.

3) Keep progress on his performance and like a good father coach him during the tough situation to overcome it.

These things appealed to me as it appeared to create a sense of belongingness which will help the employee to perform efficiently and thus helping his productivity to grow up and enabling him to stay with the organization. But the success of this plan depends on the temperament of manager and the employee.

Cheers

Arvind

Ideating

The past week has been quite a learning experience in terms of skill lab sessions. There have been various moments and learning’s which have groped my attention and one of those was a session on idea generation.

I could sense one thing which was very key that most of the idea's which the employees generate are considered but how many of them generate idea's and by generating we don’t only talk about getting an idea or prompting an idea but rather putting it in a framework and shaping it out so that it can upgrade any process or downsize the time in the process and an idea can be from any source and it is essential to ideate but one thing which is obligatory is to accept the ideas which most line managers are unable to, because of the work load and deadlines thus my belief is that HR can accept in helping this out this idea process because they become like the face of the organization to them and can open up to them easily but for this it is essential the HR's of the organization are in sync with the business and services to ensure they can find out employees flair for innovation

But for an idea like this to succeed it is critical that HR is a strategic part of the organization and not a support function and thus requires more skilled people with the need of the hour being not just people skills but business knowledge

Cheers

Arvind

Pranav mistry a legend

A change in topic and i was checking my mails when i saw this amazing talk by this guy called Pranav Mistry on his invention called sixth sense please watch the video its for 13 mins and regardless if you are a tech guy or not u will applaud his work

Football and HR

During the last NHRD conference I heard this beautiful anecdote by Mr. Natarajan Sundar a man of great experience and great knowledge. He was started off with this question "Name the only activity in which all the people compete are not different" people came close with the answer but the answer was football where it is 11 vs. 11 and the intentions of both teams are same to put the ball in the back of the opposite team's net and winning the game and the job of a coach is to motivate them

He talked about using Welch curve while grading the players as indispensable the essential ones and the ones who could be replaced and it was the most interesting anecdote as it combined the two passions i shared in football and human resources
and one special person i remembered was a footballer called ole gunnar solskajer a person who sacrificed his personal choices for the team and helped the team to do personally an under rated player who is a legend

U rock Ole Gunnar Solskajaer, coz of the fact he was able to take a backseat and excel in the role he is given just like in any corporate world where a manager expects his subordinates do well in the job they are given and it was more special because when he came to Manchester united from Norway he was prolific scorer who averaged a goal per game which was so high and starting every game and then to come off the bench which was not a certainty as it was up to the manager to use a substitute so he could never play during a game if the coach felt if it was necessary but to be focused and do the job on the keen occasion was great work.

And this is even more admirable because if I was in his shoes I would have quit and moved on to another club but to see what sustained persistence can do is breathtaking.


Cheers

Arvind

The goal and the decision

There are days you get up and you just cannot wait for the activities to begin and there are days when u feel sandman has cheated on you and well it was the latter case when I had to go attend the soft skills class for this semester and as usual there were people talking on usual aspects of self confidence, goal setting and all stuff and I never had any expectations from these classes but today I had a really good class on decision making by a person called Mr.G.Ramasubramanian and the crucial thing I liked about his whole session was the way he finished it off, It was a great way to end of a session. He performed a small activity and told the essence behind it

The activity was simple. He called a person as the volunteer and asked them to collect six objects from the class and keep it on the table and then he asked the volunteer to first remove three objects and then two and finally the remaining object was a pen and he asked to lift his diary where there was a plain paper and on the reverse of the paper the word "PEN" was inscribed everyone was amazed how it was done and came up with long theories of attention, ignorance and blah blah!!! But he put it to us in a simple way and it was as follows

He had already written down the word pen on the paper and when he asked the person to volunteer he ensured if they took a pen from someone as a object if not he would offer it and then when it came down to eliminating he said that among the objects if the pen was when which the volunteer selected he would ask them to remove the non selected ones and so on to somehow ensure the pen comes and this he said is how we should be in our life with our goal should be firmly set and our decision process around it whatever be the target it is essential to ensure you have the goal and work to ensure the goal is reached

I personally felt so much attracted to his thoughts and just wanted to share it

Cheers

Arvind

Straight from the gut

i had this magnificent chance to read the autobiography of jack welch and what a book it was aptly titled straight from the gut rather it should have been about his guts. A beautiful book on how he succeeded in life through tough situations and there were a lot of things you could relate to and some of them which i could relate and found very motivating were

1)The role his parents had in shaping him up their insistence on religion and also to encourage him to venture out

2)The way he waited to find green pastures with education rather than take up a job even when he was offered

3)Accepting the rejection of a higher university and moving to a lesser known university which helped him to do much better and strive much more harder in life

4)The way he wanted to learn and keep move forward

5)to trust his instincts and take on a new challenge and prove it. Not believing on the doubts people lay on you but rather on your abilities

6)The willingness to fight bureaucracy by taking it head on

and many more it is a must read book for any management graduate

Cheers
Arvind

Keep standing to view the top

It's so often easily pointed out on how as Human resources professional it is indispensable to ensure we stay connected with the employees and no denying how bare essential but at some time you have to question is it the duty of HR to dig out information from employees and help them out ?

In an interaction with a senior HR professional I posted this question to which she pointed out one thing which was very crucial was that it is essential we don't stoop too much into a simple issue relating to a particular case and if we do that we are not able to act as the link between organization and the workforce but rather we end up taking sides and thus we leave ourselves short of Hara-kiri, but if we dint do that properly where will we go?

Here came the answer that the responsibility was there but it is also to remember the level because only if you are standing up only you can see the top of a tower and in this context the tower refers to a business and pinnacle refers to the peak performance so in order to do this it is essential petty things are cleared out and important issues are focused.
A famous incident she said to connect with that was of a famous Indian conglomerate where there was the position of AGM was open and the existing HR mangers were given a chance to see if they fit the bill and one senior manager with over two decades of experience was shortlisted and when asked the question what will he change for better efficiency he started pointing out individual cases of employee grievance rather putting it as a complete picture to make it appear big and get the solution and thus he was put out of running highlighting how pointing out small things can lead to !!!

Cheers
Arvind