Not just HR ! By Arvind Srikantan

"Steve Jobs" The Doubters mind

2011-10-21T22:38:00.004+05:30

There Will be few people who would want to stand Toe to Toe against Steve Jobs If it came down to Marketing their products. Jobs was a master at getting attention and convince the fickle Minded American customer to switch regularly. Personally I have a lot of Respect for Jobs as a man who fought against adversities and troubles throughout his life. His Journey to the top is a sheer representation of his Grit which has also landed him in trouble. But once he got to the Top he never looked back or looked at the world. He looked to go forward but not help others get along. He was a great marketeer but not a great leader. I found a great article on DNA by Neeraj Thakur which captures many of my Thoughts

“ What makes you great to the world, so much so that you become the ‘greatest’ of your times? Is greatness the title for those who become successful in their respective fields? Or is it that everyone who appears on TV has the chance of attaining greatness? Steve Jobs, who died fighting pancreatic cancer, being showered with so much love and respect raises this question.

While any celebrity has a right to an obituary, posthumous encomiums by way of comparison with other greats should not happen just because of the bankruptcy of a particular age in producing truly great individuals.

What defines Steve Jobs? The fact that he could make people go crazy about his company’s products?

If marketing is what makes you great, then our Indian politicians are the greatest, because they market themselves so well that even after their failures in one term after another, we keep voting them back to power. If making a new product is what makes you great, then there are many new products being invented everywhere in the world. Yes, the claim to launching the first personal computer goes to Jobs, but he was not behind its invention; he was the chief of the company that invented it. Any man heading the company that has a product to sell can do what he did.

To those who think he revolutionised cell phones, the fact is he just re-packaged his products by mixing up what was already out there in the form of already available gadgets/software like Blackberry, Palm, Windows, etc. A man becomes truly great for humankind and his passing away deserves mass mourning only if he has done something to better the lives of his fellow beings, overcoming personal greed and lust for power.

While all of us take our newborn kids to have ‘Do boond zindagi ki’, to save our kids from the life-crippling polio virus, very few would know why those life drops come for free. There are many other diseases, medication for which does not come even at a reasonable cost, forget having it free.

The man who invented the polio vaccine, Jonas Edward Salk, decided not to patent his invention. After seven years of rigorous research, when he had the chance to become a billionaire, much like Jobs did, he refused to do so. When someone asked him ‘Who owns the patent of the vaccine, he replied, ‘Can anyone patent the sun?’ In civilisation’s history of one individual bettering the lives of fellow humans, can Jobs stand anywhere close to Salk?

Jobs did not even eradicate poverty with the immense wealth he accumulated by selling his so-called great products, invented by scientists who worked in his company. Instead, he rather stopped all philanthropist activity by Apple in 1997, saying philanthropy can ‘wait until we are profitable.’ Today, Apple is one of the world’s most valued companies (sitting on $40 billion cash) and ironically, it is perhaps the only one in its category that has no philanthropic contribution worth talking about.

I don’t own any Apple product, and most Apple aficionados would accuse me of commenting on something that I don’t use. I am not commenting on the products he sold; I am commenting on the tears that are being unjustifiably shed on the death of a rich man. I am not taking anything away from Jobs as an entrepreneur, and the fact is that he was an inspiration for his company. But I find it difficult to accept the belittling of the very notion of greatness by bestowing it on those who worked for themselves and promoted the noxious idea that ‘profit motivates humans’, a theory that would have never given us the polio vaccine.”

There Have been past accusations against apple that there are Underage Labours Working in the Factory In China. Which he merely acknowledged as a problem but never took steps to resolve it, At a time when companies where getting the Flack for not giving jobs to Americans, Jobs escaped the Perview Blame Roulette because people where so magnetized to his products.

Steve Jobs was the True Capitalist leader and thanks to his company we are connected across the world and his charisma captured audience across the world regardless of Age groups.

Cheers !!

Arvind

Soaking up the small pleasures of Life

2011-09-15T22:01:00.002+05:30

We are at our pinnacle when we feel we have got a mountain of our back and have the feeling of being on top of the world by accomplishing something which is considered worthy by the world. But often we miss out on cherishing some of the small joys which we encounter daily and which makes a huge difference in the way look at the next day.

If we were able to understand a small joy joy of crossing a kid across the road or offering food to a hungry man/woman who blesses you. These small things we overlook on what could they matter to us and we get engrossed on a major work but if we give a minute's attention and enjoy that it would make a world of difference to what is happening around us

Cheers !!

Arvind

Magnanimous, Inspiring

2011-07-24T20:37:00.003+05:30

I have always had the phase where i wondered if i got the best out of life, there were things which appealed to me but out of my reach and those desires which were unfulfilled and i grew bitter about life during that phase till something cheered me up.

I came across this video today about Dewey Bozella and for a man whom life has truly been harsh, it was amazing to see that he was not bitter about it. He fought for his Innocence and i felt i should share this with everyone.

While receiving the award he said a quote by Cus D'Amato "The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters."

You can never keep a good man Down.

Cheers !!

Arvind

Growing Social Media

2011-05-09T22:11:00.002+05:30

The following article appeared in Economic times on 09/05/2011

"KOLKATA: Indians are increasingly depending on social media for job change . The latest findings of Ma Foi Randstad Workmonitor 2011 - Wave 1 reveal that 82% of Indian employees are confident in using social media in order to find a relevant job.

Statistically, 90% of Indians have individual accounts on facebook , twitter, etc of which 81% use it for professional purposes. Employees with higher income brackets are the largest users of social media websites.

"Social media has become a potent tool for both employers and employees and as a low cost - high return option, recruiting through Social Media will soon become a key differentiator in the current global recruitment market." says E Balaji, MD & CEO of Ma Foi Randstad.

Cities like Mumbai and Delhi has an alarming rate of 85% and 83% employees respectively, who are confident in using social networking sites in order to find a job.

The survey also says that employees of Bangalore and Mumbai are given maximum access to websites by employers at 97% and 96% respectively.

Though globally the social media activity is pretty low, the Indian workforce is much more active using social media, with 79% of the workforce who have updated their social medial profiles in the last month itself."

A quite a revealing survey which has proved out how technology has become essential in helping people to find out new openings and the fulcrum will be to find out how many companies have successfully leveraged it.

The case of employees is mentioned here i believe might be in the mid to junior level who have an avid interest in electronic media unlike the senior folks have not displayed a penchant for updating their linkedin and facebook profiles.

But it reinforces a fact to all the companies about the "f" word which is "Facebook" on how much they are losing if they are not on facebook

Cheers !!
Arvind

Talent Swallowing

2011-01-28T23:44:00.002+05:30

With Shortage of talent and a booming It/ITES sector there is a major problem of Talent Swallowing leaving the R&D companies grasping at Thin Air for precious talents.

I believe in India we are facing a dynamic issue of anyone for any role and not the right person for the right role. This is happening because of

(i) Lack of time
(ii) Unclear view about roles
(iii) The desperation for a job

All these factors make a major problem and the accusations from most of the Brick & Mortar companies are that they do not have people for R&D work. We want to enjoy the best vehicles with the best technology but we do not have the adequate labour force to create that possibility which shows us a daunting challenge of increasing our systems o equip more people to graduate focusing on niche domains and places like R&D need to be given special impetus.

Till then its a war for talent and unfortunately like the jungle the big hunter leaves very little for the smaller ones.

Cheers !!

Arvind

My interaction with Exchange Students

2011-01-28T22:55:00.003+05:30

Recently i had this wonderful chance of interacting with a group of very sweet ladies from Finland who had come to India as Exchange Students and it was wonderful to share ideas and thoughts which resonated and projected the problems faced by a Country with a population less than the City of Mumbai.

We discussed on issues ranging from Economic and Monetary Stability to Social and family relations

The major points i learnt from them were

* The ageing population of Finland is a challenge where Productivity is Slumping

*People like to follow rules and instructions and if they don't their neighbours care to inform the authorities ensuring they are forced to follow

*Quite like India there is a growing divide between the Rural and The urban or the City and the Country Side

*Unlike India which has Bollywood,Food varieties and IT as it's Soft power Finland only possessed Nokia but even that is taking a backseat incidentally

*The World is not looking towards them as they are not in news unlike India or China which is generating new news everyday

*The government is becoming more right wing which is making the rich happy while its making the poor Unhappy

*The social Subsistence scheme is one of the best and allows a person to cover all his needs

*The income for this Subsistence comes from taxes which is high on rich people and thus they want this rate to be decreased

*The students get an income for studying

*Social Problems in Finland thanks to the Rules Compliance

and Finally Indian Spicy food is India's Biggest draw to lure other country nationals

Cheers

Arvind !!

LPG of Today's generation

2011-01-28T19:54:00.003+05:30

For the Generation X and to a large extent for our academic purpose LPG stood for Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization in Economic terms, Which has put India on the Global Map as a force to be Reckoned with.

For the New Generation i.e. Gen Y the LPG Concept is an internal and an integral component for their Career but here the LPG is Modifies and it stands for

L- Learning

P-Pay

G-Growth (Professionally)

This has become the Mantra for today's graduating generation who look at a job and see if it fulfill these three criteria's to the desirable extent and this has became the continuum in which any job is measured by assessing the

i) Learning opportunities in terms of working in variable locations and variable departments/operations,creation of a bigger role offering wider challenges and newer perspectives, Ability to work with varied teams and also the authority to lead a team could be the major factors of interests.

ii)Pay- While this may not be the most important factor it's vitality can never be underestimated and this is displayed in terms of the situations where people have stepped down a position to go for a bigger better paying organization and also the structure of pay in terms of the variable pay is it linked on Individual's performance or on Company's performance about which i had previously written about and finally the

iii) Growth - This is the most crucial aspect and i had once heard a veteran HR expert Mr. Ravishankar of Mahindra Group put forward a point of great notice. He said that "The majority number of people who switch organizations regularly are mostly from the tier 2 B-Schools who often feel that they don't get treated on par with the Tier-! colleagues and thus take the effort to get the recognition"

What he has said is absolutely true and i guess organizations may need to re look at the way they rate institutions and the profile they offer to students

Growth is the most important aspect everyone looks for and infact one of the often repeatedly asked question during Inductions is "How long will it take me to reach the Board"

long hierarchy do not help the cause and similarly organization with a Big workforce also thus these aspects need to be kept in Mind while the career planning process of young associates who join organizations

It is essential you have a proper career management plan which could be depicted to them if not it dents your organization's image

Cheers

Arvind !!

Choose your Boss

2011-01-20T19:23:00.003+05:30

Often i have wondered about the term "Organizational Democracy" and people trying to change the structure of an organization so that it appeals to the newer generation.

I recently had a thought about the whole hierarchy based system followed in most organizations in which the Bosses can select their subordinates but why not vice-versa? It is most often said that "People join Organizations but leave because Bosses" and we are always discussing ways to curb attrition in a economically booming scenario. This is when the idea of Boss selection came into mind. This can work very well in a particular type of situation i.e.

When the team which is going to work under the person is set and works like a well oiled Machine knowing their roles and duties at that point if there is a need for a new boss for the team why not also bring them into the foray and allow them to be a part of the process giving critical inputs as ultimately they will be the people working under them regularly. And this will be a component which will enhance employee ownership as he has selected a person to work under this, Making him more accountable.

This is Inspired from democracy where we vote for our leader but the subtle difference being once we vote we forget them till next elections but that is not the case in an office. Though this may have grave repercussions and may not fit in all organizations i believe this will fit very well in conservative organizations because

(i) Concentration of senior employees at junior and Mid level Positions
(ii) They need to accept a young turk in their midsts
(iii) They cannot be forced into corners
(iv) They hold a huge reputation inside the organizations and they may be like Father figure to many new people.

Thus considering all this factors it could work well in a conservative traditional organization and the new entrant will also know the methods he needs to use to get the work efficiently done and not clash with them which happens in many cases as there is an Age difference

Cheers

Arvind !!

The Josh factor

2011-01-03T06:56:00.002+05:30

On the outset my New year wishes to everyone hope this new year brings you success and happiness.

The first post of 2011 is on my favorite area of Employee morale and engagement and in particular to the ideas contributed by Ganapathi Subramanian of Britannia, One of my foremost Mentors and Gurus in HR, Interactions with him have widened my horizon and knowledge base and am deeply grateful to him for that

Over the past week we were discussing about employee engagement and i was a staunch supporter that the best way to raise the morale of an employee is through having proper office environment and good boss subordinate relationship and other concepts like family day-out and group trips din't make a great difference. But his thoughts cleared up the air and showed me how these extra acts do help in creating a morale which is in a primary stage called the "JOSH" which needs to be tapped on and it will ultimately increase the performance

The Josh and performance are like the science concepts of potential and Kinetic energy which are both inter-dependent and can transform into each other. The science connection can be seen with the help of a swing which has a highest potential energy when it is kept on a height and gains kinetic energy when it is dropped towards the ground as all the potential energy gets transferred into kinetic energy.

In the regard with an employee a simple act of wishing him on a birthday by the top boss or celebrating his achievement will increase his morale and thus his Josh which can be built up by similar activities. The key concept comes in on how this Josh can be converted into high performance and eventually into number crunching results when its possible.

Riding on the back of the Josh and keeping on emphasizing about good work will surely help in the conversion over a period of time. It is also essential that this Josh needs to be built up as the lack of it will be a Hara Kiri act.

Cheers

Arvind !!

The tier II challenges

2010-11-21T17:57:00.002+05:30

The world's attention is On India thanks to our demographic advantage and the young population. It also brings its fair share of challenges which needs to be addressed by the HR community.

A major change is going to be the number of first generation population graduating from colleges who may need peer support and guidances on handling various office relationships and moving to new urban areas.The y may need people to hand hold and lead them through some tough personal and official relationships.

Another curious but important challenge would be curious parents, a problem that has often propped was the case of parents visiting to their children in office regularly and another strange case was narrated by Shahikanth Jayaraman who was addressing us.

This was the case of a curious parent in the Interior part of Karnataka where his company was conducting an induction program for new joinees in the sales positions and there was a parent who was insisting that he would sit through the induction at any cost while the company's policy dint allow that and thus the parent had to be forcibly removed which would have disturbed the individual and his impression about the company.

Another challenge is that many of the are simple and honest who could be easily tricked by others and thus may not be get the due attention they want thus laying key emphasis on the Line Managers to notice about individual performances and the effort and not just the ratio of work which gets completed.

A key piece of advice which was shared was that it is essential regardless of whatever transpires in the office if there has been an bad moment for thge individual would be calling and encouraging the individual "Before he hits the sack" as a person who takes grudge to sleep never has a good opinion about the person.

A very interesting thought to ponder on

Cheers

Arvind !!

The long awaited C-Suite

2010-11-01T17:44:00.002+05:30

"Yasho Verma was the head of HR, who also oversaw the product diversification strategy at LG Electronics. Recently , he moved into the role of the company’s chief operating officer (COO). Santrupt Misra , in addition to being director of group HR at Aditya Birla group, was also recently given the reins of the group’s Carbon Black business as a CEO.

Just two of the many stories in executive hiring which are pointing to a growing trend of HR people being picked for key CXO roles like CEO and COO, a role till now reserved for chief technology officers or the number crunching chief financial officers.

During the mid-nineties to early 2000s period, technology was perceived to be the main driver and technology personnel dominated the higher management . Techies like Steve Jobs of Apple, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google and closer home, S Ramadorai of TCS, were in the saddle.

Recently, during the economic slowdown, companies were forced to cut back and this marked the emergence of chief financial officers (CFOs) as the commanders-in-chief . Lean and mean were the buzzwords and the CFOs made every dollar count.

But with Indian companies growing bigger and going global , people management and leadership skills are much in demand. So Pranesh Anthapur, who had earlier served as vicepresident (Global HR) and more recently vice-president (International HR and M&A ) for Yahoo Inc, was made the COO of Yahoo India R&D in 2006.

In some other places, even though the official designation might not represent it, HR managers are increasingly playing a more dominant role in the running of the company.

It all started with large public sector undertakings (PSUs). S K Chaturvedi, who served in senior HR functions in companies like SAIL, NTPC and PowerGrid among others, was made the chairman and managing director of PowerGrid in 2008. Arun Balakrishnan, who was earlier the director (HR) at Hindustan Petroleum, took over as the CMD in 2007.
“Unlike earlier, HR is no longer just a human resources function but a business function that affects bottomlines,” says Deepak Kaistha, director and managing partner of Planman HR , an HR consulting firm. “HR managers are now getting a chance to lead organisations because they spend a lot of time in the organisation and understand the business and its processes very well, know the employees and their ways of working from the grassroots level.”
And it’s not only just attrition that organisations are looking to reduce. Companies are paying greater attention to overall organisational culture and employee engagement which can have a big impact on productivity.

“Around 70% of a CEO’s role relates to people management . So companies look for either someone with an HR background or a strong HR talent ,” says J K Agrawal, consulting director and head of BTI Consultants , an executive hiring firm. “Today, no CEO takes a major decision without consulting the HR.”

But this trend also depends on the work culture at companies . “An HR manager should also be aware of other departments ’ function to make a good CXO. So, only companies which have a good functional rotation policy can go for such changes,” says D Rajiv Krishnan , managing director of Development Dimensions International (DDI), an executive hiring firm."

Though there have been past instance of people like Bhaskar das of Sutherland who have oved from an HR to the Management team it is important to note that even in sectors which were considered core industries and not knowledge oriented. The only thing which has elevated them is their desire to go outside of the function and focus on the organization to be more efficient.

Hope this adds fuel to the dreams of HR student

Cheers !!

Arvind

Employee Branding = HR's work ?

2010-10-05T00:08:00.003+05:30

It;s always nice to meet and discuss opinions on varied subjects and one of the persons i ran into at the ISTD/SHRM Conference was Vinod from Carpediem who looked as much to learn from others and share as much as spread information about his organization and it was wonderful learning many things from him. One of the key things on which we started chatting up was the story of Zappos.com and how Jeff Bezos ratified his buy by saying "He had bought a culture and not a company" but later we went on to a crucial topic of Employer branding about which everyone seems to talk about so much. the craze of a Google or HCL and what creates it.

There is a subtle way in which the organization promotes itself about being a good employer and that is not by excessive promotion but more through word of mouth and through the right meetings like Summits. The most essential fact i realized is that the concept of HR people trying to create a brand is pure falsehood and the fact is it can only facilitate the process but for the process to take off it needs immense support from the Top Management and from all the departments involved

Take the example of HCL

*They have a system of an internal Social media which needs support from IT
*The manager can decide the increase to be given to each employee instead of rating and Blaming HR which needs support from Finance
*People performing skills they are good in like Music and Dance which needs support from the various teams

With all these people involved in as Stakeholders can we pinpoint HR for creating a brand ? HR needs to be involved as a partner and driver of implementation but not as the only one.

There are examples of organization who take great pride in creating Seminars sponsoring and promoting about it which acts as a salesman and its a simple Mantra "Organization wants to show its the best the, commitment must come from the rest"

Cheers

Arvind !!

Social Media is a Pied Piper

2010-09-25T09:56:00.001+05:30

As a part of the ISTD conference the last session of the first day was conducted by Rajiv Dhingra the founder of WAT media. Who spoke about Social Media and how it has really taken off and gave us a critical insight and rubbished the myth that Gen Y grew up with social media at all time.

The social Media revolution took off only in 2004-05 when Hi-5 began to operate and people could start reaching out to their friends, peers through a digital platform and the people who took up to it were between the age of 18-22. Why you ask ? Blame it on the hormones is what I would say ! Social needs started to grow and individuals needed to be a part of it as it was the coolest thing around. Imagine what it is like for an Eighteen year old to have the latest edition of A Ray Ban Glasses or Levi jeans. It morphed into a type of craving which people have and it gave them a second chance of virtual existence as the Digital friends you have may have never met you and you can talk about your positives to them and start boasting but no one will recognize. Then like a Blitzkrieg “Orkut” Emerged and it quashed Hi-5 and it was a rage because it was not open to public and you had to be invited by someone who was already a member to be a part of it !! What more would you need to add to the Ego than being invited to the newest thing on the planet and it was drawing a huge crowd in India and it gave us a global platform to connect and collaborate with Global friends.

For eg: I had friends in orkut who were from brazil and they were friends with me because they wanted to sharpen their English skills and I networked with them to get access to the latest Music and coolest downloads which led to a symbiotic association but soon the darker side of orkut emerged and there were issues about privacy and profile hacking which triggered women to move out and slowly but conformingly emerged Facebook with improved privacy and security and soon the women folks moved out to that and the men soon followed facebook offered more than Orkut as it allowed you to post notes, tag people, Update what you were doing and play games like Farmville and the best you just showed it to people who you want not to everyone. But as you have noticed a trend emerged and soon came Twitter but unlike its predecessors Twitter was a real time people to celebrities interaction and something which Rajeev Mentioned and I was in total line with it “Twitter is an Exhibitionist and submissive platform” people follow you to be in touch with you appears over the top.. But it has not only been social networks business networks like LinkedIn have also been growing rapidly and In India. LinkedIn has added 2-5 million members in the past Six Months and the number does not seem to go down this all just point to one direction that people need connectivity people need an appearance be it physically or digitally

Gen Y are we scared of Thy ?

2010-09-24T14:21:00.001+05:30

The hottest topic around the HR and HR scene is about Gen Y and how in the next 3-5 years they are going to enter into the workforce and change the organization, How to work with Gen Y is the Million dollar question and the ISTD student convention is aptly titled “Leading in Gen Y”

As One of the speakers Usha Devaguptatu rightly said Gen Y are like the the David Ogilvy quote “The consumer is not a moron,she is your wife” The employee is also not a moron but neither is he a threat.

The Convention has been very good in the fact that it has thrown light into the areas what are required to “collaborate” with Gen Y. This is essential as the recent Harvard Business Review talks about these crunch issues

• One out of every three high performers is not engaged
• One in every four high performers feels their aspirations are not met
• One out of every five high performers is doing a job which does not interest them
• Four out every ten high performers are not in sync with the vision and value of the company they are a part of

These sort of issues need a top down solving approach and it cannot be solved overnight and other key area where Indian Organizations miss out is a strong Induction system so that the people can relate themselves to the organization

And as a member of Gen Y I can strongly relate to the facts like “Work to live not live to work”. I look at the value I can add to the organization and what the organization can do for me, If they cannot reward me instantly I would try to find out someone who will reward me. I want learn things by doing it and not reading about it, But that does not mean am standalone I need a team I need a coach I need support I need a peer section together with me I need to be looked after I need my personal life.

We all have wants and immediate gratification and Gen Y looks at ways to fulfill and not have the “chalega” attitude. We want the horse to drink water and gulp it down.

I wanted to blog about this fantastic event event and am doing it right now :)

Jai ho Gen Y

Bajaj's Branding Chaos

2010-09-22T21:02:00.004+05:30

Quote often i love to introspect on marketing and Branding strategies of organizations as they ultimately seek to reach prospective customers and also employees sure people love to say "I am an IBMer" and so on.

The last few years have witnessed the upswing in the two wheeler automobile sector and Hero Honda faced great competition mainly from Bajaj and to a lesser effect from TVS and Yamaha.

Bajaj Revolutionized the Bike world with the launch of its Iconic bike "Pulsar" and apt with catch lines like "Definitely Male" which took on the Section of 150cc and later in 180cc 200cc and 220cc. Simultaneously it launched Discover which packed style and substance meant for the middle class as it had style and then Platina which rocked the 100cc market thanks to its low price and high mileage.

Thinks looked all right till they launched Bajaj Xcd in the 135 sector and it also proved a success but then they made a catastrophic error they pulled out of 100cc market and made platina also 125 cc and discover as 135cc and Xcd was dropped

2009-10 was the ultimate chaos where i was personally baffled by what Bajaj was upto

They released Pulsar in 135cc version and released Platina in 125cc and discover in 100 cc and 150cc and finally platina in 125cc which is unlike its competitors like Hero Honda which has kept clear names to distinguish its product lines this kind of mixing creates chaos and confusion if i were a customer. The iconic Bajaj Chetak and Bajaj 150 was the Hallmark of this company which grew by 1000% in the 1980's. Lots of money and creative energy is spent on creating these brands and a brand lines but this melange creates ruffles on the product.

This shows the company's inability to drive home a message or a policy of exiting from the 100cc or also of having a premium 150+ segment. Hope Bajaj Sorts this mess out or it could lead them into a lot of chaos and dilemma

Employees are ....... Resources ? Capital ? Talent ?

2010-09-13T22:32:00.002+05:30

Since the revamp of personnel department into the current forms there has always been a question which has been irking me ? Thanks to Neeyamo for reviving it up and this asks about the basic question of how do organizations look at their employees.

There are the Organizations who look at their employees as resources and the term human resource for those who help the organization in optimum use of this resources who like any other are not abundant

There are the second type of organizations and are emerging more in number who like to look at the people as capital and an investment for the organization and like any investment they want the capital managers to identify unprofitable investments and sort them out or sell them off

Finally the new set which looks at employees as talent and has clear distinctions as
talent Acquisition,talent management,talent development and try to ensure that their organization can have the best talent and enhance them and retain them.

These varied approaches on viewing the people of an organization baffle me. Branding may not make a huge impact on the type of people the organization is employing or its views towards them.

What needs to change is the way the organization looks at the value add from the individual and how it can share its passion of success with its people.

In this regard i would like to bring up about the open Book Management system made famous by Jack Stack where all the employees were stakeholders and dint do a firefighting job but enjoyed their work. That is where i wish people would give optimum performance

Flexicurity

2010-09-08T23:38:00.003+05:30

The recent NHRD session was held at Hotel Savera on 30th and the speaker for the day was Saundarya Rajesh who spoke on the Broad areas of

(i) Diversity

(ii) Flexible working culture in Indian organizations

In terms of Cohorts classification India is almost same on the west but with few differences which are

Generation X in India grew up with a socialist Mindset but has adopted capitalism and Delayed Capitalism is not hindering them. They often rue about chances

E-Gen: This is the generation born between 1970 to 1980 which is very specific to India only. A very unique set which has had the best of both sides of culture. Contributes the highest number to attrition data. Very homogeneous in the desire to be heterogeneous i.e. in terms of career planning and orientation

Gen y: Who are aggressive consumers and are self motivated to be rewarded

An interesting fact which was shared was that annual attrition rate of Indian organizations is 17%

Diversity can be used to combat this type of attrition as has been used by companies like IBM and Accenture who have a seperate Diversity and Inclusion criteria.

In these organization Diversity and Inclusiveness becomes one of the KPI for the top management and has to be followed. The main criteria of diversity are

i) Gender

ii) Age

iii) Religion

iv) Experience

this helps a lot in organizations as it was explained because to grow in an organization you need the so called "Tribal Knowledge" which can be realized only by direct interaction with individuals and also in creating innovation which was explained with products like "Kurkure" which were developed by a diverese work team
and it also helps in battling attrition which was demonstrated by an example of an ITES sector where the average age of employees was 23 and it resembled a college locker room which was not pleasing the guests and management.

They were asked for solution and they came up with a diversity pattern of employing older men and women who brought in some calmness to the organization and thus helping the culture issue

The major topic was flexibility of work and work from home which was mostly themed on the Indian Working women and how on implementation it could help organization following which they moved on to talk about their organization's I-WIN product.

A crucial thing which struck my notice was the fact that while hiring people who have taken a break it is not the cost of recruitment which will trouble but rather the cost of re-skilling them to take on tougher challenges and that will only help people to help climb up to the top

Cheers

Arvind !!

Business is in the family

2010-09-01T16:58:00.002+05:30

The month of July and August has transformed Wall Street into overtime working office thanks to the number of mergers and buyouts which are happening. McAfee, Hewitt Associates, 3Par have all become fully owned subsidies of Intel, Aon and Dell and more deals are in the offering which could see the merging of big names. The recent acquisition of CAIRN India by Vedanta also made the global headlines.
I was struck by the amazing pattern of mergers and was curious to find mergers or acquisition news between Indian companies and found that the only approved major merger was between Bank Of Rajasthan and ICICI bank and nothing else which is clear indication of our conservatism

It struck to me the essence of a business to an individual or an organization is much more than an entity to an Indian context there have been very few investors who have sold their company when it was making profits and was doing well. Mostly company sell of the loss making arm or the non profit one. Rarely has there been a breed of entrepreneurs who have dreamed about being a serial entrepreneur like H Ross Perot who created Successful enterprises like EDS and Perot systems which were later sold off to HP and DELL. Somewhere we romanticize about our organizations as a part of us and our social system and dream of the generations to follow be associated with it and that is why we have family run businesses which may not always look at profit maximization but more for social existence and the pride associated with it.

The day India will progress is when it starts treating business like an entity and not as an extension of themselves and their Identity. We may grow more if we could find serious innovators who could become serial entrepreneurs

Deutsche Bank's Fix

2010-08-26T11:44:00.004+05:30

The search for the successor to Ratan Tata has just got heated and the rise of Noel Tata just adds fuel to the fire and creates an immense speculation on who may succeed the modern day legend but that search seems to be a far more liberal one than the problems faced at Deutsche Bank.

“ With speculation reviving over who will succeed Josef Ackermann as chief executive officer (CEO) of Deutsche Bank AG, the company will have to decide how German the leader of Germany’s biggest bank must be.
The answer may reveal whether the 140-year-old Frankfurt-based institution embraces its role as a global investment bank that makes most of its money trading securities on international markets, or whether long-standing business and political ties to Germany remain paramount.

The rise of Anshu Jain, 47, to sole head of the investment bank last month put him in charge of more than 80% of Deutsche Bank’s profit and reinforced his position as a frontrunner to become the CEO. One catch: he was born in India and doesn’t speak German, a potential handicap for an executive who must negotiate the corridors of political power as well as global markets.

“Based on performance, Jain is the crown prince,” said Lutz Roehmeyer, who helps manage about $15 billion (`70,050 crore) at Landesbank Berlin Investment GmbH in the German capital. “But Deutsche Bank has a split personality—a global investment bank being run out of London and a German lender with a very political role. Any successor’s key challenge will be bridging these two worlds.”
Deutsche Bank ducked the issue last year by extending Ackermann’s tenure for three years after the board failed to agree on a replacement.

The Swiss-born Ackermann, 62, rekindled speculation about succession in May when he told shareholders that he’s been holding “intensive” talks on the topic with supervisory board chairman Clemens Boersig for months.”

The Tata’s search looks much simpler considering the fix Deutsche bank has gotten itself into and ducking the problem has increased its magnitude with Global coverage, Speculation, Rumours and even Betting.

The clash of Past Present and future and the organization caught in a whirlpool realizing it has a danger if it ducks any of these issues.

Anshu Jain represents the best person to take over as the CEO but it has a risk attached of not being in line with the values and tradition of the company especially considering the political links in Germany.

But if the company wants to have its local image and does not want to change it then it could go for a local CEO it may well lose its best employee and the person who heads the cash cow division considering upto 80% of the revenues are coming from the Investment bank division to which they cannot turn a blind eye.

The suitors for Anshu Jain won’t be low. He would expect anything but the CEO and anything less than that may cause an issue as he would realize that this weakness over the language would encourage him to defect

The future is compromised because without the man who has increased the profits exponentially the company could stutter in the short run and may concede ground to its rivals and it will also project a bad image for any potential Non-German speaking employee realizing that they could never ascend till the top.”
The company is at cross roads and on the verge of sacrifice and damage reduction.

Authority Is what we crave for ?

2010-08-17T23:54:00.005+05:30

"I want to be the most powerful man/woman on earth"

Except immortal Souls and Barrack Obama who doesn't share this dream ! this is what we aim for when we watch Super heroes and also at a later stage, Suddenly we grow older we become less sheepish and then realize that we should have been born in USA to be eligible, now the maximum we can hope for is be the most powerful person in India but 99.9% of us are not born into political families thus it is again ruled out and finally at least in the organization ? much more realistic needs lesser effort ! EUREKA we could finally be what we want and that is necessary that means i can wield power and control people and do whatever i want put all the travel bills in company names. Recently i was interacting with one of my friends (An aspiring journalist
) who explained a bizarre situation

"Boss on the other day on NDTV i saw Prannoy Roy reporting and not hosting a show"
to which i said he is a Journalist who can handle all facets of reporting to which he replied "But if he wanted to report he could have just remained a journalist why did he have to start NDTV and create so many things. If he has started these things then he should not be a reporter" i was amazed i believed people create something by choice and they love it but this statement took me off guard

if authority is what we crave for then i think we should all become entrepreneurs there would be no love to what we do

and there outlays the change which we need to initiate. Make people happy and proud about what they do. One of my favorite books on Human relations and employee motivation has to be the "Great Game of Business" by Jack Stack and he motivated all his employees by a single tactic. His organization was into re-manufacturing and auto components and he made them proud by creating open days where families came and realized the work done by them which created a pride in them.

But ultimately the winning and authoritative desire is needed if we need to have entrepreneurs

Chief Bullying Officer

2010-08-11T23:28:00.003+05:30

The primary inspiration of this post is Sidin Vadukut and Cubiclenama

His satirical writing style has fascinated me and so is his desire to criticize the HR department. But in all honesty most of the situations portrayed by him come up true because of shortcomings of HR.

Based on reading his articles and interning with 4 organizations i was able to come up with this unique character of "Chief bullying officer" they are spotted commonly in most offices and found in abundance in government offices. As their name suggests they are mostly in the top strata of the company and which gives them the right to bully officially also. Some of the characteristics of this creature is

#Belongs to the top rung of corporate ladder

#Loves to impose rules but does not apply to themselves

#May very well be your boss

#Short tempered. His anger is unpredictable just like him

#Will never say no to his/her boss and will go to any extent to keep them happy

#great communication skills which they show off and have often used to climb up the corporate ladder

#Might forcefully add you as a friend on Facebook

#Will love to disturb you in the weekends

#Will love to comment on your twitter updates while you are enjoying food

#Will love to insult you and make others laugh over it if possible

#Everybody in the office are scared of him and respect him because they don't want to pick up a squabble with him/her

#Wants you to take everything in good spirit without even consulting you

If your boss satisfies any 5 criteria's congratulations you have the apathy of working under "Chief Bullying Officer" and they only way to escape is wait for him to jump to another company so that you can take over as the "Chief Bullying Officer"

Cheers

Arvind !!

office secrets

2010-08-05T20:19:00.001+05:30

A confession ! the first article i love to read on a Sunday newspaper is "Water-Cooler Moment" in the Sunday Times to listen to the office Gossip or the way in which it is portrayed.

Ramblings by employees are crazy, few of them are

# "My Boss is GOD - Good Old Donkey"

# "This HR dude at my office has zipper on the side pockets of his trousers. God knows what he can pull out"

#"There are 25 people working in my process, out of which 11 are resigning tomorrow!"

#"I see dumb people."

#"Sadly my boss is bullied by a bunch of females in my team…(they) threaten to quit or act pissed off.. (just) like GFs!…boss ain’t the boss here!"

#"I hate everyone in my department!"

#"Boss is out today, which means I am checking out mentally. Will continue job search until he returns"

#"I just wanna run away from my office – well actually I am but, still cant feel the same"

#"My neighbour is always on call!!! Don’t know whom he calls!!!"

#"I was in a meeting and this lady started fanning herself and took off her sweater b/c of menopause!"

#"Her pen clicking is driving me crazy. STFU!"

#"I swear my colleague is wearing a wedding dress"

#"I hate female bosses"

#"Why does the CEO always come late to the office"

#The canteen food Smells awesome"

# "No one in your family is allowed to work if you are working except if you are the owners or CEO ! Hypocrites "
Office Secrets

A site about which i learnt after my brushing's with Cubiclenama. The anonymity and the
forum gives anyone who is frustrated at work and 90% od the comments are aimed at the boss and colleagues mostly because they may not find it apt to tell them directly.

Somewhere this represents an extension of our educational system where we like to say pleasing words about our teachers and professors but on forums where they cannot access or where we would be anonymous.

But for the moment enjoy the ramblings

Cheers

Arvind !

The Boom of HR

2010-08-04T00:00:00.002+05:30

The evolution of HR has taken a steep curve,

Deeply entrenched in the manufacturing mayhem it was compliance driven and required people

#Who were authoritative and could force their way

#Who knew the legal system

#Finally who could handle the unions and make sure the compliances are done and if strikes occur then to solve it

This was mostly the scenario till 1990's till the IT revolution and service sector boom happened in India. Suddenly people were operating from a higher level they were not shopfloor workmen or they had union to resort to when they felt unhappy they just had one technique "Leave The Organization" and there was huge gap which we as HR could not fulfill.

We started drawing the Ire of people and we were concerned from being the most important people to now being support function a lot of ego's got trampled and got crushed under the weight of expectation which people have.

I think its time we realized that the Boom in services sector ask for a drastic measure of the Hr systems

HR should not totally be the sympathetic character but the one who rewards the best and drains out the worst. No organization wants leftovers thus it has moved from centralized to an extent outsourced.

More and more organizations have started developing a shared services center where the transactional work is done. thus the bottom line is clear unless we improve ourselves it doom time.

Cheers !!

Arvind !!

HR as a strategic business partner

2010-08-03T00:10:00.002+05:30

The recent session in NHRD was about Hr the business strategic partner and it was a thoroughly insightful session as people have all been saying about being a strategic partner but how do you bring in the change. The case study of Standard Chartered was shown and which showed how it can be done. The speakers for the session were William Paul and David Nallathambi from Scope international (Standard chartered )

Some key points were

#HR as an SBP (Strategic Business Partner) should focus on creating and delivering strategic people agenda and ensure business goals are achieved

#We need to move out of transactional HR and into transitional HR though there is a doubt on what work will be done if transactional part is taken out

#Crucial to ensure that people can add value to the business and how they can be a business partner

#Any change should be Simple Scalable and Sustainable which will make light of the work

#To transform the HR you need to add responsibility to the Line Managers and give them a part of the work

#To excel in services sector you need to be ahead of the curve and assess what business needs

#Look at areas of Engagement Retention and Talent Management

#When this process of transformation is complete HR will be more efficient and manage cost growth

#A shared service center expertise in other areas cannot be matched by Managers

# To deliver bottom line performance and increase bottomline by changing people in it

#Time to be a Coach, Consultant and an internal business advisor

#proactively manage attrition and last be ahead of the curve

#important factor only if you have people and right system initiate change orelse do not try for a drastic change

The final comments were given By Dr PVR Murthy who concluded Change is like movement of an Orbit to move to a higher level you need to drop mass

Viva la Espana

2010-07-18T22:30:00.003+05:30

The biggest spectacle of the year is over and what an event it was ! The world cup promised Surprise and it dint let down.

The world cup started slowly with the Jabulani looking more like Jackie shroff not ready to move at all , But as the tournament progressed it was the referee who looked like the scapegoats with glaring errors. Some suggested "karma of 1966" during the England - Germany game. But due credits to the winners Spain who proved that playing Good quality and attractive style can actually win you games. But what i more loved about the Spaniards were the way they lined up and how they clicked as a team outsmarting other tacticians.

The important aspect they had is the backbone of the Squad plays the club football together thus the understanding was very high and the Defence was rock solid which allowed them eke out 1-0 wins in all of their knock out matches and then the skill of the players they had a squad which had multi talented players who could play in various positions and change them which fooled the opposition's strategies and this is what any organization needs to beat competition the joker who can help you perform well.

The crucial part is that they did not over rely on any part i.e. unlike others either going out all attacking or going out too defensive they had the skill to handle any situations and finally they had match winners, Its often said you win a game by playing to your strengths and when you have people who can work under extreme conditions and delver the best can you ask for more and that is what this team had in abundance creating a winning mark. They may not have looked the best every time they took to the field but they made it counted when it mattered

Cheers !!

Arvind !!

Softer competencies

2010-07-11T20:26:00.002+05:30

Competency Mapping based recruitment was the summer project of one my Good buddies and this is the area where i have to thank Web2.0 for giving a chance to interact with fellow students who share similar interests. He was talking about developing a system in which based on the skill set of current employees and by taking the Job description requirements he was creating a Mapping system for talents which could be recruited soon.

The idea seemed and fantastic and really well and it was implemented for a manufacturing plant at the workmen level proving an immense success but suddenly when it was taken over by an FMCG company to replicate the similar model it failed causing him to wonder what went wrong and during the analysis we found the following things

1) The higher your pay and rank the work is more planning than execution and people are different when it comes down to planning.

2) Values are inbuilt within us and comes down to our basics thus the value system of one individual cannot be replicated and thus becomes irreplaceable.

3) With organizations looking at efficiency Multi skilled Multi lingual people are the need of the hour and they are not easily available and if they become available they are sure to burn a hole in your pocket

4) It ultimately also plans to work out on how is the relationship with the immediate superior and subordinate and that may not be replicated

With these thoughts in Mind i was wondering how could we create a model with which we can work and am still waiting for that answer

Cheers

Arvind !!

True India

2010-07-09T19:18:00.002+05:30

The best part about a train journey is when you meet new people and have a conversation with them on wide ranging topics. This time i made blunder which helped me in finding a voice to interact with during the onwards journey. We were all tired when we boarded the train from Mumbai it was 2 in the morning and were vaguely sleeping on some seats when some one woke me up at 5.30 and claimed it as their seat. I was half dazed and trying to find what happened and sooner i realized my mistake and started a conversation with him on various issues ranging from SIFE topics and what we can do to the society and agriculture and so on and so forth when he mentioned one point which was something we have rarely observed.

When we go in a train travelling for 24 or 30 hours we observe that only signs of modernization and growth seems to be for about 5-6 kms surrounding a station other than that there is only barren land or agricultural land. Only during 10% of the trip you see modernization and urbanization orelse it is all rural and still agriculture contributes so low to our economy in comparison so all the people who wants agri to flourish at the expense of industries should suggest ways and ideas in which it can be improved if not let us industrialize we have abundant resources which are being wasted by infighting amongst ourselves.

For all my life i have been travelling long distances in train and i suddenly was able to relate to him and what he was saying. A country like Israel which has Desert soil is able to export foods after having surplus and barely has lands we have so much resources invested and we wait for transgenic foods? Time agri experts golden words are listened

Cheers !!

Arvind

SIFE Story

2010-07-07T08:34:00.004+05:30

Last week was the most fulfilling week in my journey as a student of Madras School Of Social work When i was a part of the team which reached the National Semifinals of SIFE.

A brief Introduction about SIFE : SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) is an international network of students, academics and business leaders.
Working in partnership with business and higher education, SIFE "mobilizes university students around the world to use the knowledge gained in the classroom to address real world business and economic issues in their communities. SIFE students form teams on their university campuses and perform community service projects that teach market economics, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, personal success skills, business ethics, and environmental sustainability."

The team was selected in Nov.2009 and it was an honor to be a part of the team considering the Mark set by our predecessors who were national finalists and along with the other core team of Hadeeja, Madhumitha Sowndararajan, Prashanthi, Adline Sophia, Sowmya Mathews, Harish, RakeshKumar Patil, Tanvir Ahmed we identified and tried to find out various communities with which we could work in creating our projects and after a month of searching we narrowed down to two communities

*Tsunami Affected women community near Thiruvanmiyur

*Tsunami affected Women community who were involved in Making of office stationery made out of recycled paper

Personally the icing on the cake was the fact that the second community was identified by me thanks to my association with the Theosophical Society which through its sister body the Theosophical order Of Service helped in setting up the recycling plant

In essence we worked with totally about 55 women affecting the lives of about 165 people. The experience was full of rich memories like Boating Trips and Travel and also the testing times of trying to find a community and working with them.

We were selected as Winners of the regional Competition and we finished just short of National Finals which was our aim leaving us disappointed. But in the end when we question ourselves on the fact whether this was worth burning our weekends and free days ? the answer would be an Emphatic "YES" the experience of setting up a business model for them has surely revived the entrepreneurial spirit in me and coupled with the chances in the wings the dream is not far away !! Thanks SIFE !!

Cheers

Arvind !!

The Waterfall

2010-06-26T22:04:00.003+05:30

For the first time in my life i was happy with politicians of my state because they announced holidays for 3 days which coupled with the weekend suddenly reminded us of 2009 which was full of extended weekends which allowed us to attend the wedding of our classmate and then we went to this tourist place called Suruli waterfalls and it was in this waterfalls where the first scenes of Raavan were shot ! My god it was breathtaking place. The climb up to the top of the hill scared me as it was a pure forest and it was steeping at about 80 degrees straight up. But we settled for a falls lower which was not at all crowded and was covered with boulders and the river water flowing. nothing but picturesque and we moved around till the source to enjoy it. The best part was travelling up and it was exhilarating because were we thought we would spend an hour being there we spent close to four hours and many of them on empty stomach. When we were crossing a lot of people influenced my thoughts and ideas which i could relate to HR and Visualize it, Some of them are

(i) When in trouble wait for help - When mostly we are in trouble we refuse to ask for help believing they may not help or they would rather ask more questions and compound the problems but the issue will be that when we itself have no ideas there is nothing wrong in waiting for help to arrive. This was an incident where i was caught confused between taking two paths and ultimately decided for others to come who already gone through it once and then i went via that path which could actually help me get out of that sticky situation.

(ii) Rush but don't hurry: We often realize that when the time is short we rush up things randomly but we ultimately do it in a bad way which would require further sweeping up from us. Most of the times we do not realize that there is more time than we think, if we sequentially follow an order of doing we would very well end up doing the work.

(iii) Do not attract distractions : in a forest its crucial to be silent and be focused on your goals unnecessary attention will create trouble which happened when Monkeys invaded our area and we were scrambling for place with them fearing them.

(iv) Showboating is necessary : It may not be wrong to showboat and take pictures when you have enjoyed something fully and the picture is worth cherishing for but a picture at every instant and every place might make you happy but could put off others similarly its best to celebrate an achievement and not any incident but do celebrate.

A lot more great things but mostly on which i have already written

Cheers

Arvind Srikantan

Extending HR

2010-06-19T08:58:00.004+05:30

"Recently i had a strange encounter in the offices of one of India's leading ITES organization which baffled me. In the waiting lounge while reading the paper i noticed a north Indian woman barely about 25 or 26 with a toddler and she looked poised and focussed waiting for someone. When the HR executives of the organization came to meet her there was an obvious sense of fear when they were walking towards her and later listening to their dialogue i was able to configure out that her husband was working for the organization and was absconding she was not willing to move and was creating a scene which was making a huge blemish they were explaining that he was in another city and even made her converse with him through mobile but she was not buying any of it and stood firm demanding him to come to office or asking for his new address"

Well when these kind of awkward situations arise in an office its tough to ignore them and stop rumors. And here is where am wondering are fresh graduates trained to handle this kind of a crisis situation ? A hysterically possessed woman threatening and there is pile of work lying inside to be completed like recruitments to be done, shortlisting candidates is left, calls to business partners to be made, forms pending, mails stacking up.

And you have someone who is not ready to listen to you what do we do and am intrigued by the fact i could be in the position of HR folks in a year, The time has come with work from home and other ideas where the line between office and home is vanishing in Thin air which could leave people gasping for breath if they are not trained to handle these kind of scenarios.

Stressed out employees are a huge factor which could affect the organization many people believe if an employee is ready to work overtime or holidays it might be that he is committed to their work which could be very true but also there is a high chance that he is using office as a solace to escape from home where the situations are not good and thus it is essential to identify the stressed ones out and it is good if people are not workaholics then they are done with all the jobs and at the end they might be ready to move on.

Tiger Conservation

2010-06-15T20:08:00.004+05:30

When the whole campaign of 1411 tigers and save the tigers was started i was very cynical towards it and I had blogged about it that there was nothing which i could do.

But thanks to my association with the Vasantha Youth Lodge of Theosophical society i had the privilege of watching a special screening of "Truth about Tigers" a movie by Shekar Dattatri the eminent wild life photographer which focussed on how important it is to conserve the tigers.

The essence of it we have to understand is that the Tigers have existed on Earth even before Humans came, if we believe the Evolutionary theory and its a shame that our national animal needs to depend on our intervention for its survival.

The fact remains that when we are bloating of being an emerging economic superpower it will be a huge vacuum if we become cynical and throw our hands saying we are hopeless in saving our national animal. The tiger has been pushed from the free roaming forests all out India to just 1% land and even here we humans still fight for space with the tigers which for a fact can live in any sort of forests. The current forest coverage is low but research experts its still enough for close 10,000 tigers to survive in the wild.

The truth which should astound environmental conservatives is that a healthy tiger population is a clear indication of a healthy vegetation this is because the tiger is the apex hunter and thus when there is healthy tiger population it shows that there are good herbivores and thus a good vegetation which will help in fighting global warming. With illegal demand of tiger products to China never seems to decrease every part of it is wanted including the Whiskers which are used for tooth ache.

The reality is that Tigers die when they do not have proper food, a tiger needs approximately a prey per week and thus for every 5o deers that are hunted we lose a tiger as it starves without food. We have celebrities going on dear hunting escapades and mostly even the courts let off people saying its only a dear and charges them a meager amount of fine but this compounds and has put this grave situation. We can replicate a good system which was used in the Bhadra forests of Karnataka where the government offered 1 million Indian rupees to any family which is ready to move out of the forest and thus the tiger count in that forest has remained steady unlike the famed forests of Sariska, Panna and Ranthambore where we have lost the tigers because of

(i) Faulty methods to count them
(ii) Poorly trained rangers
(iii) Denying gtruths given by experts
(iv) The greed of the poachers

The major activity which we as common people could do is press the issue a call to all lawyers please if you can take up cases of NGO's and fight as the ratio of poachers caught to sentenced for crimes is less than 5 % thanks to lack of good legal support. An urge to use recycled paper which will save forests and finally let us stop living in Ignorance that government will do anything we need another revival like project tiger or else we could better start looking for a new national animal

And please visit this link if you are interested about tiger conservation and feel something should be done for the national animal

"The Truth About Tigers"
Cheers

Arvind !!

"Redefining HR"

2010-06-13T22:09:00.003+05:30

Any person should consider themselves lucky if they were able to attend the event on 11/06/10 organized by one of the legends of HR in Chennai Mr.GD Sharma. The chief guest of the day was Mr. HN Srinivas Senior Vice President (Human Resources) of Taj Hotels who spoke about the redefining parameters or changes in HR.

The key aspect he focussed on was that HR was not limited to the office space or office premises as it earlier was. He pointed out to the fact close to 60% of Employees in US software firms work from home, Thus the physical role of HR is decreasing and then he spoke about what can be done in this world where every one seems to be threatened by the offset of Gen Y who present a huge challenge as the Job Security factor for them rates very low in their needs list and recognition is the most desired one.

He spoke with certain instances of the bravery of the staff of Taj Mahal Hotel during the Cowardly Terrorist act of 26/11 and special was the story of a 23 year old executive named Mallika who was in charge of a event which consisted of Global CEO's of Unilever. This young lady took charge when she got a message from the security department about miscreants and locked the door for protection and took care of the whole event including risking her life to get a proper Wine glass for the guests and later arranging car at 3 am

He gave another instance of a young waiter in one of the restaurants who understood the plan of the terrorists and helped the guests escape by guiding them in an alternate pathway but ultimately sacrificed his life in saving theirs.

These instances were shown to say about the importance of company value which gets embedded in every employee and it is the base which should never be compromised on and also on which only further additions can be done.

The event was loaded with the facts on what TATA's did after 26/11

A small note of it from the Asian correspondent

The Taj Hotel in Mumbai is a Tata property and one notes that the property is largely restored. Lives too were shattered by Islamic terrorism. What did the Tata's do? I didn't hear about it until I came across the following forwarded account. (HT Raj Iyer)

The author is one Dileep Ranjekar. [I have a few comments in parenthesis.] (Pardon the horrid formatting. The interface makes it difficult to do much about it.)

October 10, 2009

Meeting with H N Srinivas - Senior Executive Vice President, Taj Group of Hotels

A. Terrorist entry

1. They entered from the Leopold Colaba hotel entrance and also from the northern entrance - spraying indiscriminate bullets on the Taj security personnel and guests in general.

2. Though Taj had a reasonable security - they were surely not equipped to deal with terrorists who were spraying 6 bullets per trigger.

3. The strategy of the terrorists was to throw chunks of RDX in an open area that will explode and burn - creating chaos so that the guests and staff run helter skelter so that the terrorists could kill them. The idea was to create maximum casualties.

4. There were several critical gatherings and functions happening in the hotel on that day - a Bohra wedding, global meet of Unilever CEOs and Board members and 2 other corporate meetings were being held in the hotel - besides the usual crowd.

5. The firing and chaos began at about 8.30 p.m. and the staff including employees on casual and contract basis displayed exemplary presence of mind, courage and sacrifice to protect the guests who were in various halls and conference rooms.

B. Stories of Staff Heroics
1. A young lady guest relation executive with the HLL gathering stopped any of the members going out and volunteered 3 times to go out and get stuff such as ice cubes for whiskey of the guests when the situation outside the hall was very explosives and she could have been easily the target of the bullets [That's not heroic -- that's stupidity. AD]
2. Thomas George a captain escorted 54 guests from a backdoor staircase and when he was going down last he was shot by the terrorists

3. There were 500 emails from various guests narrating heroics of the staff and thanking them for saving their lives

4. In a subsequent function, Ratan Tata broke down in full public view and sobbed saying - "the company belongs to these people". The wife of Thomas George who laid his life saving others said, she and the kids were proud of the man and that she did not know that for 25 years she lived with a man who was so courageous and brave

5. The episode happened on 26th November, a significant part of the hotel was burnt down and destroyed - the hotel was re-opened on 21st December and all the employees of the hotel were paraded in front of the guests [What's this supposed to mean? AD]

6. It was clearly a saga of extra-ordinary heroics by ordinary people for their organisation and in a way for their country. The sense of duty and service was unprecedented

7. The young lady who protected and looked after the HLL guests was a management trainee and we often speak of juniority and seniority in the organisation. She had no instructions from any supervisor to do what she did
a. She took just 3 minutes to rescue the entire team through the kitchen
b. Cars were organised outside the hotel as per seniority of the members
c. In the peak of the crisis, she stepped out and got the right wine glass for the guest [They were elegantly drinking wine at the peak of the crisis? AD]
8. People who exhibited courage included janitors, waiters, directors, artisans and captains - all level of people

C. The Tata Gesture

1. All category of employees including those who had completed even 1 day as casuals were treated on duty during the time the hotel was closed

2. Relief and assistance to all those who were injured and killed
3. The relief and assistance was extended to all those who died at the railway station, surroundings including the "Pav-Bhaji" vendor and the pan shop owners
4. During the time the hotel was closed, the salaries were sent my money order
5. A psychiatric cell was established in collaboration with Tata Institute of Social Sciences to counsel those who needed such help
6. The thoughts and anxieties going on people's mind was constantly tracked and where needed psychological help provided
7. Employee outreach centres were opened where all help, food, water, sanitation, first aid and counselling was provided. 1600 employees were covered by this facility
8. Every employee was assigned to one mentor and it was that person's responsibility to act as a "single window" clearance for any help that the person required

9. Ratan Tata personally visited the families of all the 80 employees who in some manner - either through injury or getting killed - were affected.

10. The dependents of the employees were flown from outside Mumbai to Mumbai and taken care off in terms of ensuring mental assurance and peace. They were all accommodated in Hotel President for 3 weeks

11. Ratan Tata himself asked the families and dependents - as to what they wanted him to do.
12. In a record time of 20 days, a new trust was created by the Tatas for the purpose of relief of employees.Tatas were covered by compensation. Each one of them was provided subsistence allowance of Rs. 10K per month for all these people for 6 months.
14. A 4 year old granddaughter of a vendor got 4 bullets in her and only one was removed in the Government hospital. She was taken to Bombay hospital and several lacs were spent by the Tatas on her to fully recover her
15. New hand carts were provided to several vendors who lost their carts
16. Tata will take responsibility of life education of 46 children of the victims of the terror
17. This was the most trying period in the life of the organisation. Senior managers including Ratan Tata were visiting funeral to funeral over the 3 days that were most horrible
18. The settlement for every deceased member ranged from Rs. 36 to 85 lacs in addition to the following benefits:
a. Full last salary for life for the family and dependents

b. Complete responsibility of education of children and dependents - anywhere in the world

c. Full Medical facility for the whole family and dependents for rest of their life

d. All loans and advances were waived off - irrespective of the amount

e. Counsellor for life for each person

D. Epilogue

1. How was such passion created among the employees? How and why did they behave the way they did?

2. The organisation is clear that it is not something that someone can take credit for. It is not some training and development that created such behaviour. If someone suggests that - everyone laughs

3. It has to do with the DNA of the organisation, with the way Tata culture exists and above all with the situation that prevailed that time. The organisation has always been telling that customers and guests are #1 priority

4.The hotel business was started by Jamshedji Tata when he was insulted in one of the British hotels and not allowed to stay there.

5. He created several institutions which later became icons of progress, culture and modernity. IISc is one such institute. He was told by the rulers that time that he can acquire land for IISc to the extent he could fence the same. He could afford fencing only 400 acres.

6. When the HR function hesitatingly made a very rich proposal to Ratan - he said - do you think we are doing enough?

7. The whole approach was that the organisation would spend several hundred crore in re-building the property - why not spend equally on the employees who gave their life?

Pyramid of Success !

2010-06-06T16:10:00.003+05:30

The words of a great Sports leader

Cheers !!

Arvind !!

Quotes from John Wooden

2010-06-06T15:33:00.004+05:30

John Wooden is an all time legend in Basketball and a great coach. He passed away on June 4th. He was popular off the field thanks to his widely used quotes some of them are

"Be prepared and be honest".

"Ability is a poor man's wealth".

"A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment."

"Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then."

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. "

"Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights. "

"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."

"Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability. "

"Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be."

"I'd rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent. "

"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over? "

"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes. "

"It isn't what you do, but how you do it"

"It's not so important who starts the game but who finishes it."

"It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen."

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."

"Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters."

"Never mistake activity for achievement."

"Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming."

"Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts. "

"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming. "

"Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful."

"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out."

"Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character. "

"You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one."

"You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. "

The final quote is a truly awe-inspiring and something which every individual should ponder upon. The secret to these wisdoms lie in a closely followed creed which are

1) Be true to yourself.
2) Make each day your masterpiece.
3) Help others.
4) Drink deeply from good books.
5) Make friendship a fine art.
6) Build a shelter against a rainy day.
7) Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.

Rest in Peace John Wooden and hope the world learns from his teachings

Cheers !!

Arvind !!

Underplaying ourselves

2010-06-03T18:15:00.003+05:30

It's quite often when we say about best practices it’s either

a) Japanese when it comes to quality

b) Americans when it people practices

But more often than not I have felt us as Indians as managers could do a better job of man management if a little bit of free reign is given. We often are proud of the fact that Indira Nooyi and Shantanu Narayen and Sanjay jha are CEO's of top organizations.

But when Mr. Ravikant retired from Tata Motors we had to wait for Carl-peter Forester to take over and adding a global perspective which baffles me. With due respect to Mr. Forester and his achievements are we trying to say we do not have adequate talented individuals when warren buffet looks for his successors in India we in India are wondering if Arun Sarin will replace Ratan Tata.

Why are we painting a picture ourselves deficit of talent when the world is looking out to India for talents?

I basically believe we have some of the best man management skills because you look at indian kid the roles it has to play right from school are

I) Diligent Student

ii) Multi talented Individual

The weight of expectations is very high, and these roles keep growing to a stage of an adult where he has to juggle multiple roles simultaneously and most of them succeed.

I believe the reasons why Indians appear less People oriented compared to Americans because

i) We have never enjoyed work or life It has always been cut throat

ii) The fear of failure

iii) The burden of expectations

iv) We always measure performance by the outcome and not the effort

v) We are never convinced and tend to be pessimistic

vi) Very low gestation time for an Individual to settle.

It is not easy to remove these hurdles overnight and will take years but what we need to understand is that by following Japanese styles of Pokayoke or American methods is not going to pull us up because we vary from them it is time we accepted the change and created a system for our fellow Individuals to flourish and help Indian Organizations to grow

Cheers!!

Arvind!

Performance appraisal

2010-05-22T22:34:00.002+05:30

The above cartoon kind of portrays the image which an employee shares about the performance appraisal process. At the recent SHRM India Chennai forum on 22/05/10. An enthusiastic bunch of professionals, consultants, Academicians and students tried to address the burning questions of Performance Management systems which often become the base for most Dilbert lampoons. We wanted to probe these questions

# What are the key expectations of a PMS system

# What are the major roadblocks in implementing an effective HR system

# How do we remove the roadblocks and what are the techniques which we can follow

# What will be the effects after removing the roadblocks and some effects which we can see

The members sat around tables trying to find out the various ways of answering this issue and finally we reached on this conclusion

*The system will be effective only when it is credible and for that we need to cut down on the subjectivity part of it

*Time we had a change and looked at a performance appraisal process as handing out report cards but more as a Talent Management with a view of finding the best employees and keeping them.

*To analyze if there are avenues of a co-creation of a PMS system

And finally we were deliberating on the issues of change in the system and how can we facilitate the change but that is where sometimes i felt out of sync we often look at changing the system but what we should rather realize that change is not something which can happen overnight it may take months or even years to convince the top management and then the employees about a new system which can come in place till that time we need to find some "Jugaad" to ensure the system runs effectively.

There was one nice point which was intriguing was the question of in how many sectors is pay liked with performance and in most of the manufacturing sectors which is like the backbone of our country it is not and the second one was if there are any punitive actions which are taken against any appraiser for not completing the process of appraisal. We give them warnings and memos but do we penalize them ? if we may what will be the effects but does this kind of policing approach bring out best results or does it cause hatred towards HR.

The happiest part was that i got a chance to document a case on the real time change in PMS and I believe once it is done i can share it with all

Cheers

Arvind !!

The most challenging profession ?

2010-05-19T22:01:00.005+05:30

It is common amongst us people to normally boast on the level of toughness of our work/projects and everyone wants to be brag about proving their mettle.

In that i list i was trying to find out the most challenging profession in today's context and based out of personal experience i thought it would be a door to door salesman or an Industrial relation officer or the Chennai Bus driver (during peak summer months) and then i found an unexpected answer it was a "DENTIST"

Being under the knife of a dentist for three hours made me realize how difficult their work was. Mouth along with eyes can be considered the gateways to a person's mind in terms of to smile, to talk, to eat and so on and so forth and to imagine the prospective of an alien third man meddling with our mouth seems like Frankenstein playing Ludo with you and there is outrage but that's just what a dentist exactly does.

Something i was able to realize is that his job demands extra ordinary patience because most of the clients you have to deal with are kids who are scared of a dentist or old aged people who realize they dint achieve their dream and want to talk,talk, talk and even more talk based with these two types as customers to be a professional is tough and to be an extraordinary professional it is a great attitude and amazing talent.

Normally people visit a dentist only when they have an issue with their tooth or gums rarely do people go for a regular visit and in a lot of cases the state of these may not be pretty and let us not imagine the odour.

He has to work with the most uncontrollable organ "The Tongue" which cannot stop whirling skidding rushing amongst other things and then comes the tough part when they have to work on your teeth. It is not that hard to work with your lower teeth but imagine when they have to work with your upper sets of teeth there is no clear mage and then based on instincts and limited vision they have to repair that which is very tough.

His negotiation skills are way of the mark and so is his perseverance and commitment.
You can always hear its going to be over from him very frequently to comfort the patient

The crucial aspect where you as a dentist have to realize that is that if they botch up anything this man will be vehemently angry and they have destroyed the Appearance of a person

Cheers

Arvind !!

Quotes from alchemist

2010-05-18T22:55:00.002+05:30

When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream

Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure. You've got to find the treasure, so that everything you have learned along the way can make sense.

Don't think about what you've left behind.

Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.

When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.

To die tomorrow was no worse than dying on any other day. Every day was there to be lived or to mark one's departure from this world.

For the eternal dreamer in me there is nothing more satisfying than reading the alchemist by Paulo Coelho which every person should read not just as a book but rather step into the shoes of the protagonist Santiago and feel the vibe which you can get from the book. The first quote is something which truly sends a chill down my spine whenever i think about it the more i start believing in what i can do. this is very much like our Indian Epics but it does not have that larger than life reel feeling to it.

In many times we are like Santiago caught between choices afraid of failure afraid of the world and we look for the push to propel us forward and we look outside for it than realize it within us on how much it is in us.

As it was famously said by Aerosmith "Dream on Dream On Dream On Dream on till your dream comes true .

Cheers

Arvind

The professional: In brief

2010-05-11T19:21:00.003+05:30

Everyone around us wants us to act professionally at every stage from where life takes a reckoning. In the western world it’s from school when you start working part time.
When it comes India m mostly it is in college but sadly we ignore the fact that being professional is something internal and has a deep effect on and not a coat which you can acquire.

A big thanks to Venkatnarayanan sir for suggesting me this book and I owe you a lot for this sir.

The book is the third in the series after "High performing Entrepreneur" and "Go kiss he world" by Subroto Bagchi the Gardner of Mindtree ltd.

The book is divided into Seven parts

i) Integrity

ii) Self Awareness: Where competence ends and professionalism takes over

iii)Professional qualities

iv)Managing volumes

v) Managing complexity

vi) The new world imperatives

vii) The professional's professional

Each part is carefully divided and is to be read in the sequenced order and with its blend of current incidents and everyday problems this book reaches straight to the heart hopefully to make sense for the head

The first part integrity speaks about the story of a young man in Bangalore who is forced to take up doing last rituals of unknown bodies as a source of lively hood and rather taking a hate in it he shows so much dignity and respect towards his job that people appreciate him and even reward him.

He also speaks about how integrity is a very personal thing which cannot be taught and there are certainly areas where i feel some striking similarities in the people from whom we have learnt Integrity. My father is very much like Mr. Bagchi's father who even though was a government servant took pride in their job and strictly separated professional and personal things which are the view young men and women should develop.

The second part speaks on understanding who you are and to stop false comparisons which are mostly done in monetary terms and could lead to breach of ethics. It’s time we looked beyond money and see that money does not define us it also speaks a lot on humility an area where the hospitality sector is where the GM of a hotel acts as the gatekeeper or shoe polish man which shows the humility they have and also on taking charge most of them I see people around me crying that things are not right and things are bad but they do nothing to change the situation sometimes you could be the best in talent but if you can't take charge you fail. He cites an example of a situation in which he takes the top brass of the company out for training and puts them in a real time cliché situation where two young men ahead of all the others take charge which earns them special respect.

The third parts speaks on qualities which define a true professional areas like time spent on required areas and saying no as well as the comparison of a job into marriage where you ensure when you leave it you don't cause a behind.

There is some inspiration from tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell when he talks about Mavens Connectors and evangelists

The fourth part touches on asking pertinent questions and realizing the fact that we are Humans and everybody should be treated Humanely and the great rewards of transparency

The fifth and sixth part talk about critical questioning and the pain of personal life with the example of Anu Aga. and also on new world lust like IPR and also on gender and cultural diversity

The final part is the yen for professionalism where he recalls about incidents in Japan where professionalism comes ahead of everything else he narrates the example of a bellboy in a hotel who took offense when he was offered a tip.

The book concludes with a quoting about an incident from death where an unclaimed body is sold off to signify what starts with death should end with death.

Personally a book I loved and should be made a must read for all budding professionals. The concept of part time jobs when young can induce a steep culture of professionalism at least Internships from where students learn how to be PROFESSIONAL

2010-05-06T10:47:00.002+05:30

"Mumbai. After having observed increased level of happiness and satisfaction among the employees in the past few weeks, the HR team of Hindustan Companies Limited (HCL) met today to discuss innovative ways of reducing employee pleasure to bring it down to the acceptable levels. The three member top level team is expected to finish its brainstorming session by 5.30 PM sharp and submit its recommendations to the top management tomorrow.
“We had received specific information from our sources that employees were seen generally happy and jovial in the past few weeks. No important announcement or managerial decisions were taken in the concerned duration that could have logically added to the overall well-being of the employees. At best, the development could be termed an aberration.” Hari Sadu, HR head of HCL said.

After having personally witnessed the increased happiness among the employees yesterday, when he saw a group of employees laughing and cracking jokes during the lunch break, a puzzled and concerned Hari Sadu called for an emergency meeting today morning, which continued till reports last came in.
“I too have seen these guys spending too much time in cafeteria, near coffee-vending machines or in the smoking corners and being jolly for almost no apparent reason.” Nitya Udaas, senior HR manager, shared the concern, further adding, “Maybe the workload has reduced of late. We have to check with the sales department if we are getting enough business.”
“I have noticed that even the toilets are occupied for longer duration these days.” quipped Anand Anjaan, third member of the top-level team, wondering what was going on in the office.
After discussing various problems and irregularities in employee behavior, the HR team also discussed employing some innovative techniques to control employee pleasure.
“We could make the coffee-vending machine operative only after swiping it with the identity cards. We can get data on which employee is spending maximum time drinking coffee and accordingly deal with the problem.” proposed Hari Sadu, directing Anand to find out how much will such a swapping machine cost and to send a proposal to the Finance department.
“Also find out the cost of that toilet-timer that switches off the lights in toilets after ten minutes. This will make sure that no employee spends too much time over there, while we would project it as an electricity saving initiative towards making HCL green.” interjected Nitya, which was well appreciated by Hari and Anand.
HR team was still in the board room when this report was filed, with smiles returning to their faces as they discussed and analyzed the problem at hand in detail.

The above article is taken from the Fakingnews.com and for someone who is passionate about HR this article looked superb but what really caught my eye were the comments made by the people who said most of things like measuring time in coffee joints were being measured and it irked them.

This brings me a scenario which we are facing now

(i) DO we feel that if people spend too much time having coffee or in the rest room then rather than looking at it as decreased productivity, did we have an interaction with them on if some issue is affecting them and how probably we can assist them.

(ii) Do we need to spy on our colleagues to find out what they are doing and what they should do? Rather than that shouldn’t we be creating plans of making them involved in work if the work. Even after that if the nature of work is making them restless, we ought to find out if they are suited for it. If not change them to an area which they prefer

and finally guess the anger and hatred towards HR is probably the fact that steeped in tradition are the basic aspects of moral policing, compliances and regulation maintenance which are not for the taking of the new generation at work, Its time we should adapt our way of working rather talking what is written we should find out more and add value to the business not just maintain the values.

These will ultimately make the HR more respected it’s a fact that in the best organizations people working prefer to call themselves as the employees first and then as their department staff or people that is all down to how the organization values their people which will ultimately make the difference we always like to point out on great plans of futuristic looking proactive organizations but that far outweigh the conservative personnel organization and changing that would mean a show of success for the HR fraternity

Cheers

Arvind !!

When traditions collide with

2010-05-02T19:18:00.003+05:30

More often than not we look at business from a financial perspective and on jargons like EBDIT's and cost sheets we somewhere miss that it is people who start a business its people who are employed in a business and finally people who buy the products of a business directly or indirectly.

A sector in which India has seen rapid growth other than politics is the outsouricing industry especially Voice based Call centers who take care of customer support and feedback and answering Questions to people who they cannot even imagine what runs their world.

most of us have always painted the picture of foreigner in our mind as the firanga rich white guy who comes to look at the Taj mahal and the spicy indian food. Movies dint help they showed the same description and even James Bond movies wanted to show India as a land of snakes and tigers. Perceptions changed and suddenly India became an outsourcing focal point and also in the area of web 2.0.

Recently i had an interaction with my erstwhile junior from college a very successful entrepreneur Ashwin Ramesh and he recounted a fact that one of his clients in USA asked him if there were a lot of snakes India to which he said i have been living here for 20 years and i have never seen a snake.

Why was i making that point to put in the bigger picture with outsourcing how long do organizations think they can exist with it. I had a friend who worked in a call center doing work for major London Tabloids and his work involved calling people and asking the routine questions of if they got the papers and all but he had to wear an identity and cover himself up with an accent

1) Will this help him in working ? No he is creating a personality and
2) Will it help the customer ? Maybe but in many cases they start to yell realizing its a youth from India (and nowadays south east Asia)

so what is the satisfactory outcome for the organization other than profit. Guess what will happen when a guy from Scotland with a heavy Scottish accent calls up a Sholapur kid who wont be able to breakdown what is he even trying to say or it will take a lot of time and will they have the patience it depends. People sometimes face even more racial barrage on revealing their religious beliefs which is not helping them

To wrap up am questioning the concept of outsourcing where people who have no idea with softwares explain on how to use them makes no sense it complicates life for everyone because its a major culture shock in an environment which is not matured to take it

CSR ! not by chance but rather by choice

2010-05-01T10:59:00.003+05:30

It’s been time since I wrote a post and i think this deserves the space

I had a chance to attend a great seminar thanks to my friend Priyanka KS on CSR 2.0 by
Dr. Wayne Visser and was fascinated by his vision and expertise into the subject (He holds a PhD in CSR) and how CSR is just considered an additional activity. A lot of people want to help the society but wander off in this thought frame " Ah... first let me earn money then let me help the society by giving it to some organization"

He spoke on a concept called CSR 2.0 which is very much based like web 2.0

Web 1.0 was for a few and select and included things like shell objects and coding and thus people did not take it up but as Thomas Friedman said "the arrival of Netscape had a whole new effect suddenly web changed"

Web 2.0 where we are sharing and reading all this is pull driven there is freedom, connectivity with projects like one laptop per child web 2.0 is gaining power it has empowered people. Social media has shown its true strength weighing in to campaign and helping people.

CSR 2.0 should also empower people and not should be based on the shiny annual social report if small things which can help the society and can help the business be integrated that helps the business and community at large.

One of the common examples was mobile phones the average life span of a mobile phone in UK is 9 months and thus there was no idea what to do with these old phones which had heavy metals like Nickel and Cadmium. An organization called "Fonebak" gave free shipping and got these phones and recycled them. Same was the case with a US carpet organization which made artificial carpets and once it got old they gave them a free replacement and used the old materials to make a new one. This made absolute business sense because

1) You are giving a customer a free upgrade and no one feels sorry for freebies

2) Your loyal customer base will spread good word about you and finally

3) You have raw material which with a little bit of work can work into a new carpet.

Unfortunately organizations do not realize that another example was with Wal-Mart which started selling Cotton and Fish based on some regulations and only when these were cleared they were kept on the Shelves for viewing which made sense as customers did not look at the norms they were happy with what is available.

There were ten essentials for CSR 2.0

1. Inclusiveness – involving stakeholders directly from beginning to end

2. Market driven – no longer expert driven

3. Innovation – smart companies turn market pressure into stakeholder led innovation

4. Sincerity – you can no longer uphold an image that is not real

5. Co-ownership – a truly embedded value-based culture requires involvement

6. Dynamics – standards and annual audits replaced by 24/7 engagement

7. Quality – CSR as immersive business strategy

8. Personal – It’s about you, not your sector! What are your own ethics?

9. Pluralism – number and nature of CSR projects will expand dramatically

10. Proximity – local impact is global

Hope that organizations realize that its not about growth its about how you grow

Cheers

Arvind !!

Pay and attrition

2010-04-16T23:40:00.002+05:30

BANGALORE: Infosys Technologies will offer up to 17% salary hikes for over 100,000 of its employees this year, as the company seeks to retain staff and also attract new recruits in the year when most of its rivals are expected to lock horns in the war for talent.

With top customers, such as General Electric, British Telecom and Microsoft, expected to send more projects offshore to lower their operational costs by half, multinational rivals, such as IBM and Accenture, apart from Indian offshoring firms including Infosys, will have to deal with double-digit attrition rates, and ensure uninterrupted delivery of services. “There will be a war for talent and it’s one of our biggest worries in the medium-to short-term,” said S Gopalakrishnan, chief executive of Infosys.

This year, India’s $60-billion outsourcing industry is expected to hire around 150,000 new staff in order to cope with higher demand for offshore outsourcing.

Indeed, nearly 4,500 Infosys employees decided to quit the company after introduction of a new employee rating system called iRace — a new grading programme started by Infosys to grade employees last year across different levels according to their roles. Of these, nearly 2,500 staff were given promotion, while the remaining were retained at the same level.

The salary hike will translate into $135 million, as a cost for the company, and also affect its profitability by 3%. “This is the largest-ever salary hike given by any company in the IT industry,” said TV Mohandas Pai, V-P, human resources, Infosys. The company, which began the FY10 with no salary increases due to the recession offered an 8-10% mid-term increase in salary during October last year. The latest salary increase will be effective from April, while senior managers will be getting the same in July.

Besides iRace, the reason behind this hike is the improving market conditions and search for talent. Despite the improving conditions, employees in many companies are holding on to salary levels of 1-2 years ago. According to a senior company official, this salary increase is also a message to its competitors who are indulging in “irrational pricing” and would now be forced to look at salary increases.

For its onshore employees, Infosys plans to give a 2-3% raise in salary. At the end of FY10, the total number of employees in Infosys stood at 1,13,796 and made a gross addition of 27,639 during the fiscal. For FY11, Infosys plans to hire 30,000 people, of which 19,000 would be trainees.

However, the attrition rate of Infosys went up during the fourth quarter of FY10 touching 13.4%, against 11.6% in the third quarter.

However, about 3% of the 13.4% was involuntary attrition of trainees, which Infosys claims were unable to pass its ‘benchmarking’ tests. According to Mr Pai, the company expects the attrition rate to stabilise in the next six months.

According to Mr Pai, the remaining impacted employees can expect promotion during the next promotion cycle in October. The iRace programme created a furore in the organisation, on blogs, in town hall meetings and even on websites. The company is now trying to pacify those employees, and plans to promote them too. “Our learning has been that managers need to communicate with employees better. For an employee, it’s the manager who represents the company to him,” said Mr Pai.

The above article shows the situation of one of India's leading It organization Ifosys. the organization which proudly puts up ads about employees who have stayed on for 10 years and all but am not able to understand how they are able to make a rudimentary mistake. The attrition rate has gone to 13% and they have actually reacted and not responded to it. If this was the pattern over atleast two quarters they could have gone for this Move of increasing the pay by a drastic 17%.

The financial implication wont be exorbidant for an organization like Infosys because if we understand their business structure they have probably the highest billing rates among the so called SWITCH companies (@ about 18-20% compared to 4% previously followed by Satyam).

They have also mentioned about a new PMS system called iRACE. This is an organizational change and probably this may not have been implemented properly which requires a look into how the people have accepted if they have not then that could be the prima force for this exodus of people from the organization.

This kind of inflating salaries is actually a good sign for the employees but they will be well aware that it is more of an organizational policy and not to reward individual performances. the recent Watson towers studies indicated that we have 40% engaged employees and the rest were not engaged. How effective has been their Engagement programme.

Finally how has been the Human touch of HR in the policies somewhere we need to understand Humans may not always liked to be considered as a physical resource like a machine but rather by their emotions and feelings which stresses upon the human factor to help them personally !!

I just hope this does not follow suit by other organizations as We are just forgetting our concepts that Money is importnat but not most important

Cheers

Arvind !!

HR from Rowing

2010-04-08T23:03:00.002+05:30

The unique beauty about HR as a body of knowledge is that if you look into any activity with close precision you can find keen elements which can be incorporated in HR activities and make the Business more efficient. A recent boating adventure gave me some new Insights

1) The perfect Balance : TO ensure the boat floats properly it is critical to balance by having the heavier and lighter people on both sides. If they are stacked up on opposite sides then its time to pick up the life jacket. Same case when there are various teams working together it is crucial to ensure that people with strong profiles are complemented with weaker ones on both sides for optimum performances.

2) The helping hand: For most of the people to get on boat it is essential that at least one of the passengers extend out to reach for them and help them get into the boat. In an organization this is the duty of the HR team to pull them in properly and smoothly and the reaching out process is the Induction programme which sadly is neglected or done in a bad way.

3) The enjoyment: Its an initial anxiety when the boat starts it is shaky but everyone then enjoys the ride. Similarly it is essential that people understand that everything may not take off smoothly but when its smooth everyone can enjoy so its not wrong to satisfy your personal interest in benefit of team's need.

4) The expert: When you are out on the ocean then the best thing to do is trust the sailor who is navigating as he knows the route and at stake is the lives of people. Similarly when there is an expert who knows a specific area its better to give him a free reign than form a team and sort out an issue.

5) Trust: When you are on the boat with a team you have to trust them and trusting them is the only thing. You cannot afford to distrust anyone as it will hinder you only.

6) Big Picture: Business is like sailing anytime a wave can carry you but the same wave in another form can drown you. The consumers who make the company great can also take the shape of shareholders and lenders and drive the company for their interests so be aware of the wave.

Generation Gap

2010-03-25T08:48:00.004+05:30

Probably the new age term which every one wants to use is Generation Gap. Earlier there was a Generation Gap for every 10-15 years but now it seems there is a generation Gap for every 2-3 years and some interesting Observations I made which cause this gap show that this is so called Gap has nothing to do with Individuals but rather with the Economy and the society which has the ultimate influence on it. this i can say because

The factors which define a generation are more to do with the physical objects and things around which an individual has grown or got used to

1) The generation i grew up can be associated with things like Shaktimaan and the Landline phone

2) For earlier people it could be the commentary of cricket on radio of and so on...

What we can strangely observe is that after 1991 in India is that this Generation gap has been expanding faster than the universe in outer space. This i believe is mostly due to the economic reforms which were brought in like a steroid to boost up a flagging economy but what it did not consider was the human effects of it can do. This i say because after 1993 the people who have come look like they have been struck up in some vortex and this has been because by the time they reach maturity and start associating with certain products or individuals it may cease to exist.

With shorter product life cycles and high growth for innovation suddenly the parameters which was used to understand the individuals has slowly been fading. people are so curious to know about Gen Y because they have never been able to study them well.

One of the key components of Gen Y is Gratification and to an extent even attrition represents gratification to me.

The individuals are so pressed for Gratification that if your organization is not providing they don't mind going to another organization to get it. Which can explain the reason why there is a high exodus of top performers and that is because they feel the gratification which is long awaited won't come so being a go getter they move towards it.

The point of generation Gap fits in as we are confused under where we come. When i observe the "KID" next doors and the language he speaks am shocked as its only laced with profanity and he believes no one understands him in the whole world and this kid is barely 8. this kind of depressing things are a big concern as i may have to select and employ these people and its going to be a unique challenge. To sum it up this cartoon speaks volumes

Cheers

Arvind !!

The Ewing theory

2010-03-25T08:40:00.005+05:30

I am gonna love this post as it mixes two of my favourite topics Sports and Human resources.

If we are talking on sportswriters there is one person who i always love for his honest opinion and straight from heart approach and for his Slapstick and sarcastic humor. It's none other than Bill Simmons. One of the top sports writers in USA.

A specific area of his writing which i was admired was his creation of the "Patrick Ewing theory"

On the outlay it looks it makes absolute no sense as it talks about the team morale after losing a star most of them should go down and depressed but it rather points out at how teams often perform better because there is no burden of a star and having to play with the star.

Its more so often when you have a star the team depends on him to perform and everyone may not come up with their true skills and may not perform to their max. potential but without a recognized star the following things can happen

1) All the players can consider themselves integral and have to step up their effort

2) There is a huge strength when playing without a Star as he he/she can draw the major spotlight and thus if the team feels dependent on one individual they can go down but here everyone play out of their skin thus it may not be easy to identify who will step up for the day

3) The team is motivated to fight as everyone has written them off

4) The fearlessness of every individual will make the team better on most of the occasions

I think the easiest example for us people to relate would be the T-20 world cup in South Africa where the team won the World Cup without it’s so called big stars led by a rookie captain and players who were on the fringes of the squad and people who were making comeback a package which proved unstoppable on its day.

The best part about this theory is that it speaks volume on how a team needs to be. In today's context when organizations prefer teams working on key projects this rule could shape up things.

There have been organizations which i know have tried to implement the normal grading system inside a team. In a hypothetical world this theory could put normal grading even in a team to find out the high performers and the non performers but if there is a team which is working on this level then there is a problem. The high performer of a team could be a relative high performer among other while if we compare the other high performers they may not be of that level. Thus this creates controversy for high performing teams

It’s a great topic for discussion!! And am waiting for eager responses for or against it :)

Cheers

Arvind !!

parity

2010-03-21T09:19:00.003+05:30

Hey am back after a hiatus !

The so in thing nowadays seem to be recruiting which organizations are doing in full flow. The level of recruitment in one of the leading outsourcing organizations is so high that they had to conduct interviews in the "CAFETERIA" and even in the parking lot.

But is it alright for this kind of a surge in recruitment ? We had the huge lull of 12-14 months where no one was ready to hire people and suddenly this mad scramble which will ultimately lead to over staffing as every is hiring forecasting demand. Companies like software giants are hiring close to 30,000 people next quarter and one thing this will lead to is the over staffing of organizations.

Its shame we can't find a balanced level which is optimum for the organization and HR is the one who gets stuck in this context because

1) When it is a boom the people just want employees regardless of other factors of salary and when it delays HR take the blame.

2) The recruitment goes on in such an odd fashion it is hard to comprehend and get a grip of situation people are focussed with that other activities of interaction take a backseat

3) To get the best you have to offer the best and in many cases the HR's offer to a candidate looks really nice but it may not be in essence of what is there so it needs parity.

4) Finally in the normal grading for every 100 people brought in 10 have to go out. Thus it is the HR who has to give the bad news of asking these employees to leave which is a shame.

The worst part to all these things is organizations will hire consultants to suggest their opinions and ultimately end up not following them which always confuses me.

Still waiting to find the organization which has a stable level.

Cheers

Arvind

Opinion

2010-03-11T08:54:00.002+05:30

In the recent past i saw this article

With health-coverage costs going up, especially for high-risk employees, more and more employers are looking at put smokers on the “need not apply” list. Is it legal?

The quick answer is: It seems to be legal — so far — but that depends on what state you do business in. Consider:

Federal anti-discrimination laws don’t protect smokers. So the Feds’ approach is it’s up to the employer.
There are 16 states that do have laws prohibiting employment decisions, such as hiring, based on the tobacco habits of a candidate. (But those laws usually don’t prevent employers from making life miserable for their workers who smoke — banning smoking in the workplace or charging more for health coverage are pretty much legal.)
In most states, your official application can contain a question asking if the applicant smokes. You might ask that to make determinations about the cost of health coverage. What if the applicant lies by checking the “no” box on the application? You might be justified in using the lie to refuse to hire or to later fire the person if hired. Laws vary from state to state on that one.
At least one employer has tested the waters and refuses to hire smokers. Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, TN, doesn’t hire new employees who use any kind of tobacco products, on or off duty. How does the hospital do it? Nicotine screenings are part of Memorial’s standard drug test for new hires.

This talks about the legality or the possibility of not hiring smokers but i think we have take some time to deliberate if it is ethical ?

1) Most of the smokers in our country are from Urban areas who know its effects.
2) Is it fair to discriminate someone based on certain of their habits ?
3) Now its with smokers how about consumption of Certain types of food tomorrow and so on to speak.
4) Rather than not allowing them to work or increasing their Insurance cap is it not easy to have an employee assistance policy to help them break out of the addiction.
5) And like any addict the more you try to stop him more intense will be his urge.

I think we as HR can play the role of helping them out in coming out of this habit.

Most of them smoke when they do not have some work or when they are left free if its possible to engage them in some work and delay their dependence on nicotine for ideas it could work in the long run.

Agreed that nicotine calms down stress and for many people gives ideas but isn't it making a person be Dependant on it ?

But the tough question is that many of the HR folks also have a liking for nicotine and when these kinds of policies come where are they going to hide their faces ?

Lots to think

Cheers

Arvind !!

"HR : The change manager"

2010-03-07T21:49:00.002+05:30

A beautiful session which focused on the role of HR post recession some of the key learning’s from the key speakers are

Mr. B.Santhanam - Saint Gobain

1) To work in realism and not swing between blind optimism and excessive pessimism.
2)10 million people get added to Indian workforce every year and out of that only 10,000 are an HR professional which creates a great divide between divide demand and supply.
3) Hr is a body of practice and it’s about "common" common sense which people fail to use.
4) As HR it’s crucial we should sell values and credibility and to go back to the books use the knowledge as they hold a lot of value and use it for processes like restructuring.

Swami Sukhbodhananda

1) To respond to a situation and to react.
2) Reaction leads to stress and makes us lose opportunities.
3) Dissatisfaction of past leads to distaste of present and distrust of future. Make sure "Failure is the fertilizer for success in the future".
4) Be a part of the solution and don't be victim to a problem.
5) Winning in a rat race won’t make you great. It will make you a rat.
6) Don't work for happiness work from happiness. Have Body will, Emotional will, Spiritual will, Intellectual will.

Adil Malia - Essar Group
1) We should work at punctuated equilibriums.
2) Development happens in periods of turbulence.
3) Do not build an environment which can last build an environment which can last the change.

B.Ramamchandran – Motorola India

1) HR to business should be like coffee beans to hot water which can spread the aroma and colour while not losing its own colour and smell.
2) Hr is like an elephant's Mahout.
3) If you cannot face a beast steer around it.
4) Have eyes on profit and Cost.

Ravishankar – HCL Tech
1) Pampered for 6-7 months in boom screwed for 2 years by recession.
2) Change is painful for everyone.
3) Key on value addition and value integration.
4) Lack of quality professors in India is one of the main reasons of Unemployability.
5) Do not aim at quarter targets but a long term targets.

G.D. Sharma BGR Energy
1)4M's of Performance Management System.
Management of system
Motivating the employees
Mindset of the Organization
Measurement of the reports
2) PMS depends on quality of leadership, Quality of excellence, a set of ethics and guiding principles.

Manmohan Buttani - Fiserv
1) Most of attrition happens because of manager and Career path.
2) Reduction of subjectivity in PMS to 20-30 %.
3) Linking individual to organizational Objectives.
4) Proper and efficient feedback.

Aparna balakkur – Yahoo India
1) PMS is not a report card.
2) Try to have positions ready when people are also ready mismatch will lead to attrition.
3) People are not plug and play professionals so it will take time to settle into the system.

Surojit Moitra - CSC
1) Work is not with us but with clients.
2) Client should be a business partner and it’s good to compare PMS system of organization with clients for best solutions.
3) People have to take up what they are given and not what they want.

Narayanan - Raymond’s
1) HR is like Doctor.
2) Identifying talent ahead of time is a major issue.
3) Succession is becoming a major issue.

K.S.Bakshi - Indigo

1) Hr should be a mirror and sounding bow to the HR
2) Have to work on things as promised
3) Unions arise because managements are not sincere
4) Physical connect with employees is crucial

K.Raghavendra – Infosys BPO

1) Success begins with strategy and strategy leads to success
2) HR are happy in cocoons have to get functional expertise
3) To drive business and not align with it
4) We as HR have to decrease the Use of Jargons
5) We have to move from numbers to analysis

Is Pareto principle possible instead of normal ranking ?

2010-03-03T23:59:00.004+05:30

Over the course of past couple of weeks there have been a lot of discussions on Performance appraisal systems in most of the organizations and how a Bell curve which is commonly used creates disparity and to make things clear let us first explain what is a bell curve

Example of Bell curve

Bell curve is a normal curve which believes that in any normal grouping that there is one extreme which is highly efficient and the other extreme is highly inefficient while the majority is rated as average. This system does not make sense to me as what is the great act when you want to term your employees as average and as there are extremes only some should get into it which becomes a source of power. But ultimately one thing which strikes me is the fact that nothing in the world is normal if it were then we would not need a performance appraisal! But we may not fall in the levels as expected and thus the fact of saying someone is average and poor does not seem good to me.

A strange idea occurred as I was reading "Fooled by Randomness" by Nicholas Nassim Taleb. Who suggested the Pareto principle as a much better option to the normal curve and seriously thinking how it can help in the performance appraisal process.

For starters Pareto's principle also known as 80-20 rule talks that 80 % of problems come from 20 % of causes or 80 % of sales come from 20 % of clients. How this can be applied to performance appraisal is in a simple way. Take the performance levels of all the employees of a certain cadre or level and find out the top 20 who have contributed the most and see if the rule does work over there if it does reward them as extraordinary and congratulate others for coming in the 80 % but make them strive heard to come to the 20 % group and as there is no negativity involved it will motivate the people to work harder.

Just an idea which I hope could decrease the use of normal curve

Cheers

Arvind

IT is white collared manufacturing

2010-03-03T23:38:00.003+05:30

It is often advised in HR that you learn about human resources and its true shape only after working in a manufacturing sector.

It is even truer for students like us who are from a background which is enriched in law, counselling and psychology. But suddenly with other sectors emerging sectors like IT and Retailing who can pay more people are at crossroads if it is worth going to manufacturing sector where the pay may be comparatively lesser?

In a recent conversation with a senior practitioner who has had diverse experience mentioned that in today's world unlike 25 years back when they started it is not a must to go to manufacturing as it is not an IR dominated industry like what it was. He advised us to go to any organization where learning is high which should be the criteria and the key points he said were

1. In most of the manufacturing sectors today the staffs are outsourced.
2. Most companies have no union at all
3. Manufacturing projects are coming up slowly as we are shaping up to be a knowledge based economy.

His most crucial point was the way he remarked that today's IT sector is actually White collared manufacturing sector in terms of grievance counseling and earlier it was management who used to threaten staff to leave now management begs staff to stay. Manufacturing is not what it used to be where you had to keep a straight face to both parties any malice on any side could cost you a lot.

For people who may not be familiar manufacturing is one of the most challenging areas for a HR to work and the incidents of HR officers having lost life thanks to violent reactions is not unheard of. Unlike Manufacturing where people may have been tested for patience in terms of dealing the HR job in IT sector is more like firefighting where you have to buckle up pressure from the business heads so in essence it makes sense to call "IT A WHITE COLLARED MANUFACTURING JOB"

Join the HR CONFLUENCE movement now

2010-02-25T00:15:00.001+05:30

Hi all,

A few of us early practitioners and students of human resources began connecting online a few months ago to discuss the future of the HR practice in India and where we as the early practitioners can contribute to that future.

Many candid discussions, blog posts and tweets later, this community has now become ‘HR Confluence’ – a group of like minded, progressive HR practitioners with one strong mission – to make a difference to the HR Community in India with revolutionary, original thought! Through an aggressive social networking initiative which we have already sparked off, we hope to challenge the existing myths and misconceptions about HR that exist today.

We see ourselves now on our way to becoming HR 3.0 – A generation of HR professionals with its pulse on the future!

Our initiative includes:

The HR confluence blog: http://hrconfluence.blogspot.com/

The HR confluence Facebook community: http://www.facebook.com/pages/HR-Confluence/272308934627?ref=ts

The HR confluence Twitter group: http://twitter.com/hrconfluence

We invite you to come be a part of HR Confluence and help us in our journey to HR 3.0! Please be a part of our groups, visit all of our pages listed above and leave us your comments and email. Your opinions will add value to our cause and generate more avenues for all of us to be a part of!

We look forward to having you on board!

Jai Ho HR Confluence!!!!

Save tiger ? But how

2010-02-23T22:40:00.003+05:30

Save something is what people have begun to market themselves to show their social inclination and patriotism.

But this idea of spreading on “save the tiger” baffles me! This is because unlike paper or plastic or fuel which is used by everyone. According to 3rd standard textbooks and other wildlife experts Tigers live in jungle and into most of which we have no access (And if we are given an access most of the people would be scared by the mere thought of facing a tiger).

it is not something which we can save by reducing consumption ! Or even the promotion about saving them confuses me! In the same part of the world the poachers are also feeling bad that only 1411 are left but they won’t mind that they won’t even mind if only 14 of them are there.

It’s high time we realized that most of these tiger poaching goes off to China with whom our Govt does not want to have a dialogue and how rampant corruption and bureaucracy has killed our forest and the flora and fauna. It’s no use trying to protest online.

The forest ranger has no equipments, no technology, no weapons to thwart the poachers they are as vulnerable and as the animals and our environment minister will prefer addressing on Climate change and BT cotton and others rather than looking to help them.

The basic pay of a forest ranger is lesser than the pocket money of many of us and we are not even bothered about it such is the system they fall victims for corruption and before they can get out they are sucked in

If we want to help saving them then think small in terms of living area for yourselves, leave forests open for animals and do not promote your own interests which helps in mass clearing of forests as we have to remember its animals who came before us we have no right to take their place.

Social Media

2010-02-21T10:55:00.000+05:30

Is training for freshers that necessary

2010-02-14T23:45:00.003+05:30

When we talk about training the first one which jumps out is the training given to fresher’s when they are joining an organization. Organizations spend a lot of time with some spending 18 months in training. Even if it’s a technical training how much can a person learn in a class room or even in a simulated place?

At the time we are questioning about whole education system and how there is a lack of employability we have to also question do these kinds of training do any value addition for a person who has been stuck with the bookish knowledge for 20 years can a training program of months in a classroom change it ?

Simulation is a great tool for training but can it replace the real one? I am sorry to say no the only way people will learn is by first ensuring they understand the business and for that they have to be on work to learn on that!

I believe that on the job training can provide an answer but not the final answer

In the recent NHRD meet I heard about a great practice at a great organization like the Marriott Hotels the CEO had originally joined in the Organization as a watchman and worked his way up which will be a sign for people to follow

Training for fresher’s especially technical is not something I personally believe on we have to let these people see how system works on their own ask people to take responsibility and that will only ensure a stronger work force. We cannot spoon feed them they should have the drive within them to perform

Thanks to my good friend and budding actuarial professional C.K.Varadarajan for the inputs

Cheers

Arvind

Productivity at what cost

2010-02-13T10:24:00.002+05:30

The animosity towards HR is always high and i found an online venting of it here

"The Top 5 Reasons to Hate Your HR Department
July 9th, 2007 · 8 Comments

Your human resources department might be a fantastic resource for you in the workplace. Some organizations have taken the responsibility of relating to their employees seriously and approached the task with subtlety and attention to detail. If this sounds like where you work, love your HR department.

For the rest of you, however, you want to see this top 5. Without further ado, here are the Top 5 Reasons to Hate Your HR Department:

They think you are a resource
Petroleum, water, lumber, and humans. One of these things is not like the others—unless, that is, you consult the HR department. They view you as a resource, and they are not shy about it. This helps make things a lot simpler, and it helps the decision-makers in the organization feel better about making “difficult decisions” involving people. After all, it’s much more comfortable to talk about squeezing the last drop out of your resources than it is to talk about pushing people beyond their limits.

While subtle, the name indicates a desire to be unaware of your problems, pains, goals, and frustrations unless it will get them sued or cost them money, and that’s about right in most cases. In fact, the name “Human Resources” is a little refreshing in its honesty. It’s just a matter of time before a gentler term is adopted to describe the same practices.

Talking to them accomplishes nothing
While your meeting with the HR rep may be the closest you get to being heard, the fact of the matter is, he or she is probably someone who can’t change the landscape very much, if at all. The people who could do something about, the ultimate decision-makers, do not want to be bothered by a sea of personal stories. Therefore, your meetings with HR are the equivalent of having a pillow to shout into. You may feel better for getting it off of your chest, but you probably haven’t accomplished much else. The exception to this being, of course, a legitimate opportunity for litigation. That one will be run up the flagpole.

No real understanding of you or your job
With a professed disinterest in the details of your job or your life and the complete lack of ability to do anything about either anyway, it’s not really surprising that the HR department makes little to no effort to really understand what’s going on in the trenches. On top of that, they are removed from the sort of casual venting and frank discussions that most of us share because if it hits their ears it might have to go in a file and up the flagpole. As a result, the HR department is detached from the very employees that they are supposed to be the front lines of communication for, and it’s probably the last place you want to go with your problems rather than the first.

Inflexible policies and red tape
The policies of the HR department are designed to cover a ridiculously broad range of circumstances with one fell swoop. Making blanket statements about how much of a raise you can give someone, how quickly you can promote someone, and how to move an employee from one role to another laterally is just another step toward oversimplification and homogenization of human dynamics down into human resources. I understand the professed reasons for having such standards, but for the most part, it just seems like a lack of ability and effort to make wise decisions concerning the individuals in the company.

They pretend to be on your team
As the employee relations branch of the company, the HR department bears the responsibility for the false claims companies make about how they plan to treat their employees. Mission statements and other motivational blurbs abound with proud declarations of how much employees are valued and respected. “Our people are our key asset, everything we do is informed by our constant vision of teamwork and shared opportunity…” Well, it doesn’t take long to realize how far that is from the truth in most cases. Most companies try not to see people at all—they see resources. The game, for them, is about getting away with whatever you can without causing such a disruption in labor that profits are affected.

While most HR people are well meaning and while some HR departments are helpful to their employees, there is a reason why so many negative stereotypes exist. If your HR department doesn’t fall into these categories, that’s great. For most of us though, there’s a lot of truth to be found in this list. Don’t forget, the entire concept of the HR Department is geared to help the company, not the employee".

what i can infer from the last line is very disturbing in a sense if as HR professionals we are not accessible to the employees then for whom are we working ?

Its not easy to differentiate between the organization and the individual but at some point of time is it not our duty to listen to them, help them, and ensure they perform their best cause that will only make an organization better ? I think we are starting to lose the "Human" element of "Human resources". The person has voiced his opinion against being called a resource and being compared to physical objects.

and finally we listen to the venting out on policies and calls it red tape-ism. This is just an expression of how we are failing to see and recognize the employees and have fallen in love with recruitment, performance appraisal, PF , Gratuity ! that we have failed to even think of the people for whom w eneed to help. Personally i just pray that this is a temporary blip and we will start doing what we love

Cheers

Arvind

I Perform but ?

2010-02-07T23:32:00.008+05:30

One good quality I am pretty boastful about and which I have newly inculcated is my ability to break out and interact with people.

This happened with an IT professional who was waiting at a local bus stop and was struggling to find the transport to his residence and fortunately we were travelling to the same location and I started up a conversation with him the guy who was quite distressed because he was new to the city and had lost his main source of communication i.e. his mobile phone and I felt that I need to help him and he opened out his ideas thoughts and emotions ! He had joined one of the leading American organizations which had a strong base in Chennai and he was basically from Mangalore.

After brief Introductions we had a discussion on the HR and the role of recruitment though he was not a HR but his knowledge of the subject was commendable he was talking about the various offers he had from Indian Companies which were aimed at enticing him to offer his services in those organization but he chose not to work for Indian organizations because of pay related reasons which I will magnify but one thing which I was stunned by was his desire to work for an Indian organization and to start up his own enterprise. His reasons for not working with Indian org. were

1) For a certain position your experience is counted first even before your talent
2) No emphasis about you! You are a part of the Ocean
3) Lack of proper motivation
And finally the biggest reason was

The pay package! The pay package was the key area and it was not the monetary part which affected him it was the incentive and fixed part. He said that if you are working for an Indian firm they give you hypothetically 60,000 as fixed and 1, 20, 000 as variable while it’s almost the same in American based organizations the crucial difference was how the term Variable came

1) In Indian firm variable is based on Company's performance
2) In a American based organization the variable is individually calculated by performing certain duties and goals set by them

His major bone of contention for an Indian firm was "Arey i will perform well but I know some other person will screw up so why should I take a hit for that"

For all the Psychologists Gen Y is rocking!!

Cheers

Arvind

Passion Power

2010-02-03T00:14:00.005+05:30

The latest session of NHRD was based on employee engagement and there was a great session from Mr. Gurmeet Singh on what employee engagement can do to your organization but one thing Which caught my eye and according to me were more essential than the ways and methods in which it could be implemented was his emphasis on passion or the desire to do anything well and that is the vital cog to make an organization and an employee better because

1) No one wants their job to be a burden. If we could stir up the passion to perform what they are supposed to then expect only positive to happen

2) People have an inherent quality to be inquisitive for the right and wrong news (more in the second case if its sensationalized) if we can ensure that whatever news is there reaches the people clean and fair with no element of modification then the staff in the organization will back you.

3) If you’re passionate about your work then you will go the extra mile to ensure you perform your job well

And finally if you are passionate about your job then you don't worry about yourself and your job !! you worry about you organization or "My Organization"

Cheers

Arvind

Mistake

2010-02-02T23:53:00.003+05:30

It was great pleasure for me to be a part of a leadership summit organized by KPMG and it was a mind blowing session on the various areas which are like litmus tests to separate the good from the excellent and one piece of advice which I am in love with was given by Mr. Kalyan Krishnan who spoke that people continue to ramble saying "Don't make the same mistake twice" but in the society where we live today before you realize you have made a mistake once you would have done it a couple of times as no one will look to point it out.

So what he said was that take sound advices and "Don't make the mistake once in the area where you had good advices". Even though this sounded preachy in all its form it was worth pondering upon as what he said was nothing but bull's eye requirement of what people want today. What is the guarantee that a person who has made a mistake once will not do it once again. It is turning out to be a mad rush for the best

Even though am of the opinion that career should not be rat race competition it sadly is

And as Mukesh Ambani Said "Money is not everything in life but earn a lot before saying that"

Cheers

Arvind

The Right Shoes

2010-01-27T00:05:00.005+05:30

Employee retention! Wow what a concept and something which Indian companies are emphasizing and something which needs to be well in place to differentiate a good organization from just another.

We the HR will take great pride and pains in implementing it but I guess the foremost place it should be implemented should be the HR department.

In a recent interaction with an OD intervention expert he showed a research compiled document conducted by them which revealed that the Career span of a HR at junior level is 1.5 years and lesser and about 3 years or lesser at the middle level and about 5 years in the senior level position in any organization.

Long gone are those days of one organization employees where a family would have worked but these numbers present a great threat

1) How is an employee going to trust a person who has recruited him in the organization and acts as a face of it and suddenly within a certain time the person he considered as the omnipresent face may not be seen as he is lost in search of better pastures.

2) A short career span may not indicate a negative factor because good things can happen in smaller times and we could argue even the President of America has a tenure of 4 years only

3)The problem which poses is “ if these people who may not have the adequate foundation at the lower levels ! can they cope up with the rigors of middle and top management” and this brings a thought “is it one of the root causes why there is animosity towards the HR dept in some of the Organizations”

Its time we have serious insight towards it

Cheers

Arvind !

Support or Startegic partner ??

2010-01-23T23:21:00.003+05:30

There has been a recent question on the role of HR ? is it a strategic partner or a support function and the case for strategic partner is gaining ground and during a recent event i saw this question was put to senior Hr practitioner who gave a wry smile and instead of the long swirling answer he gave a short one saying "Support". This surprised me for a minute as i was long awaiting an answer of a strategic partner and when i asked him why he gave his view point

He said that being considered a strategic partner is not something which should worry about but it is implied we should be support staff and support to the management and to the employees in his organization he pointed out to examples where the people of other departments were not able to connect with their functional heads and approached HR for the support. This support was in terms of praising their work and understanding their problems and ideas which their line manager was not ready to listen and this caused a rift but that where hr steps and gives the support for an employee to do well

And I think anyone who takes up HR does this to act as the face of the organization to the employees

Cheers

Arvind

Position or pay

2010-01-18T23:22:00.004+05:30

The eternal question packaged in a new form which is the bigger temptation to resist or rather falling for.

Is it the paisa or the position? Which is the bigger thing to attract and employee though it has to be argued that factors which can tilt the favor are as follows

1) Age
2) Maturity
3) Experience and Need
4) Which is easier to offer from an organization's perspective?

With all these in perspective we still need find out the important weapon to attract the best talent needed for the organization and every individual who is reading might just analyze which is going to be the important factor to pull them is it the money or the position

Will they settle for a managerial role in a major MNC or will they prefer to jump ship and work with a local concern which could offer for example a post of head HR or VP HR but the pay could be substantially lesser than that of an MNC if this kind of situation arises what will be an answer?

It is like a question of Heart or Head and it’s on each individual to follow but let’s just allow that eternal question to run through our grey cells

Cheers
Arvind

The difference between a good candidate and a suitable candidate

2010-01-12T23:44:00.004+05:30

More often than not we are unable to distinguish between a good candidate and a suitable candidate for any level or managerial positions in any form from workplaces to relationships and we need to spare a minute why it does not happen so,

I had a good discussion over the past couple of days with experts about these two things and I could get a feel of the difference and why it is not proper. The basic reason is the belief that people who are good in something should be good in everything which is a notion we need to grow over with which I can illustrate with an example

John Wright was a great coach for the Indian cricket team and was helpful in developing our cricket team to the heights it reached and he was succeeded by another great coach Greg Chappel who was not able to lead the team to achieve greater results and that truly showcases the difference

Both were great coaches but it was Wright whose interest and attitude fit well in the working system over Chappel whose culture dint fit in, Similarly people make the mistake of selecting people if they are good without analyzing if the company needs them or if they have the right factors and this could lead to a huge margins as studies show the difference between an Average Performer and Good performer is a shocking 90% which I will narrate about in the coming posts.

Its about so many factors which make an employee fit for an organization in the above illustrated. In the case of Greg chappel his style and what he wanted to do dint fit with the organization, while John Wright was not insistent on any special thing which made the difference.

Cheers
Arvind

HR from kids

2010-01-11T23:22:00.003+05:30

Yes the conquest of observing activities and trying to learn from those to improve my skill inventory as a HR moves on and the recent place from where I observed a lot of it was on 10/01/10 or the 10th of Jan when it was the nationwide pulse polio campaign and millions of kids were administered with two drops of medicine two eradicate polio from India.

I had gone to this little suburb outside of Chennai to serve as a volunteer for one of the camps and what I had considered initially as a burden turned out to be a stress busters this was because when you deal with kids who are 0-5 alone the worlds seems such a nice place but some of my crucial learning’s were

1) Patience to ensure all the kids are administered with the dosage and thus ensuring you complete the job effectively and efficiently. Reluctance was highly there but it was persuasion which succeeded

2)A trust building process with a kid that the liquid we were giving was not bitter but rather sweet thus I wondered if an innocent kid needs quite a bit of attention and focus to get its approval how tough will it be with much matured and well planned individuals when they have to addressed for an Organizational Change

3) It’s not over till it's over - I certainly learnt that whenever we believed the crowd was over and we could take a breather! Pop the next bunch of kids came in and thus it went till the end

4) Contingency is crucial- For all predictions and levels we exceeded our targets and more and more kids coming for the dosage, it was necessary that we had adequate contingencies to complete our work as we had national interest at stake!

All in all a great day

Cheers

Arvind

Happy new year

2010-01-03T21:01:00.003+05:30

Mother earth has been carrying me for over 20 years and I have recollected 14-15 new year and every new year brings with it the large burden of expectations which could outweigh Santa and his gift packets. The year 2010 has outweighed all expectations in terms of what is expected in all sectors from corporate, Individuals and sportsmen to name a few.

The year 2009 saw the depth of the economic slowdown and then the subsequent ongoing effort to come out of it which has been pretty successful so in corporate view they would be hoping for the demand to grow and increase and so that the business can expand and the profits can grow.

Students in colleges would also be in sync with the corporate view hoping for more opportunities in the job market
For the AAM AADMI the main concern would be on when the negative inflation which is negative numerically but is inflating more than the wallet of Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan and just be praying for the levels to be back normal and prices to go down and also he would be grimacing on the amount of potential days of rest in form of public holidays which was available is now part of the weekends
And coming to professional sports athletes!!! In specific one by the name of Eldrick Woods was craving for the arrival of 2010. 2009 was a year in which nothing went right and topping it up was has his affair list which could overtake Salman Rushdie’s list time for tiger get out of the woods and coming to our own Desi athletes they would be hoping the construction of CWG can be completed before time we don’t want to replicate an Athens 2004 and then coming to our religion of cricket all the players would just love if they just had to play IPL and then just stretch around but another full packed year thanks to BCCI.
Here is just hoping that 2010 does not lead to further demand and creation of states and hopefully some positives views on HR where it can be finally accepted as a strategic partner.

Cheers

Arvind

Employability

2010-01-03T00:21:00.002+05:30

The hottest topic when it comes to recruiting and talent management is the term employability and quite rightfully. The current economic slowdown gave a good idea of that most of the companies spurred on by the growth recruited in large numbers and suddenly when demand plummeted so did the manpower but one thing which needs to be kept in mind was that the organization tried to ensure it had its best performing employees and thus the employability issue came even more under scrutiny.

I have not been a spectator of the recently released movie "3 IDIOTS" but from clips I could see it taking it out on the education system which has largely been at fault and am one of its most vociferous critiques, But do we at sometimes needs to question where does the problem of employability arise from ? Is it from the bottom i.e. in the education system or from the top which is the organizations who employ people?
Now this may sound outrageous but have we ever wondered during recruitment we are always needed to follow a salary bandwidth and other compliances that may make us amnesiac to the quality of the employees. During this downturn many organizations as a process of cost reduction settled for employees with lower skill sets and lesser proportions of employability because they demanded lesser pay and if this trend continued in cases where organizations have not shelled out the right amount on good candidates then how will you get top notch employees and once you get into the so called “CHALLEGA” mode then systems follows leading to reduction in skill set.
This is personally my opinion where i believe organizations should set a standard by probably ensuring candidates have the right arsenal of talents to enter into the fields and to ensure they are happy with the basic needs of money are met.
Cheers
Arvind

Facebook the new menace

2009-12-22T22:21:00.002+05:30

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

2009-12-21T22:17:00.008+05:30

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

2009-12-16T23:14:00.003+05:30

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

2009-12-13T22:36:00.007+05:30

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

2009-12-13T22:16:00.004+05:30

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

2009-12-08T23:35:00.004+05:30

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

2009-12-08T20:09:00.005+05:30

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

2009-12-07T23:59:00.003+05:30

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

2009-12-07T00:09:00.003+05:30

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

2009-12-06T23:48:00.003+05:30

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

I QUOTE

2009-11-26T22:26:00.003+05:30

This quote was said to me by a senior HR manager who has had diversified experience and this quote epitomizes the role of a HR person.

all the products in the world come with a product catalog the only exception to it is humans

And i have a chosen a profession which deals with people and i emphasized on the inner meaning behind that was the unpredictability of what you could face and how to face it

Cheers

Arvind

Talent retention and prediction analysis a critical view

2009-11-25T22:37:00.003+05:30

I was recently at the Chennai chapter of NHRD and the topic discussed was talent retention and management which was thought provoking.

But there were certain things which I felt needed proper addressing the speaker Priya Gopalakrishnan was talking about her experience in HLL and "how a person was almost shaped up to take over from others because of the sheer experience under them and today it is not possible so and people have to be promoted early.

But I felt that this was the case cause if we take the scenario 15 years back employees still had the lingering sense of loyalty as changing jobs very often was not socially acceptable unlike now where it is a part of the culture.

And based on that I was reading this article on prediction analysis where people try to find out how long an employee can stay with a firm. My frank opinion is it that I can’t figure out how it works? Now if you are pessimistic with your predictions then you expect nothing from your people and that is worse or if you’re too optimistic you end up banking on one guy which violates the basic HR principle.

So my take on this is that prediction analysis needs more time to grow to be assessed how powerful it can be as a tool.

HR at its worst

2009-11-17T10:49:00.003+05:30

The reason why I am writing this post is still unclear to me. This was about the practices in an organization which disturbed me to an extent that I was questioning myself how I can share the same profession with these people. The actual incident was when I was speaking to a family friend of mine and in a general discussion about his office and my foray into asking for fieldwork and internship. His organization is one of India's biggest private organizations in renewable energy with a concerted presence pan India and then he revealed me the facts that it was worthless to try it in his organization as the HR managers do not even interact with the staff and only talk with their bosses. I felt shocked but this was just the tip of the iceberg the next incident he narrated caught me off guard and I was stunned. He told me about a HR practice which is followed on the presence of the managing director he described the incident so vividly that showed the anger in him. He told me that whenever the MD arrives to the office in Chennai. The office of the organization is bolted inside and people are supposed to stand in a queue like school children to wish him this is a must for all employees and then when he leaves this process has to be followed again and he was venting his fury at the HR department. I was wondering in the time we are wondering on employee engagement and employee morale we are seeing these things also. If anyone has heard practices like this I would be more than eager to listen and just hope this acts are removed.

Cheers
Arvind Srikantan

Solid start to the season

2009-10-29T23:32:00.005+05:30

It's that time of the year when I analyze the performance of Valencia and we have made solid but not a spectacular start to the season sitting on 4th but as usual all the action is off the field with the David’s being linked to man utd. Now this season is crucial minimum targets

1) Top 3 finish
2) Later stages or win of Copa Del Rey
3) Later stages or win of Europa Liga

If these are not happening or things are not on the right path I think the worst would have come then and we would have to see our stars leave
Hope it does not happen
Cheers
Arvind Srikantan

"Walking in the fire"

2009-10-25T14:14:00.007+05:30

Being in the firing line is pretty common but walking between two lines of fire?? To clear up am not blabbering but this was the fire walk activity conducted by priya Kumar at the MTHR SHRM event in Chennai on Saturday and her session was a breath of fresh air for the following reasons
1) She did not talk and motivate like others
2) She was very genuine and was talking about fears what everyone has gone through
3) She did not make herself a larger than life image which trainers normally do

Normally people will just start leaving towards the final session of a daylong event but no one dared to walk out she had every single person's attention fixed on her and man she was good

Then we had the fire walk exercise where initially it appeared it was like the Tamil movies where you had to walk on a bed of coals but later when i mustered up the courage to walk I realized it was just grass and mud and the path was surrounded by flames.

Then I wanted to do it again and I did it!!! But the important thing was to break out of the fear and go in it. So many people shied away from it but only those walked on fire will be the one who can face the barrage!!!

Cheers
Arvind Srikantan

Thank you saikat saha

2009-10-24T22:58:00.004+05:30

Not what we give,
But what we share,
For the gift
Without the giver
Is bare.
~James Russell Lowell
Reflecting back on a hectic day of activity i think it is essential to thank people who helped you. i used to blog but in my old blog I only thought of making money it was never even an idea to express your thoughts and views till I met Saikat Saha my senior at MHRM in Madras School Of Social Work who told me about blogging and how he has taken to it and how it has helped him and now I can realize how it has helped me !!! I think the poem on top reflects for that

Thanks a lot brother
Cheers
Arvind

Human Relations and Media

2009-10-19T21:32:00.004+05:30

When you talk about people and perception the biggest contributor to it is media and this has a profound impact. How?? Being in a profession which deals with humans and which ask people not to make judgment of people based on appearance ironically I am blessed to be in an environment which exactly does not do that. I was talking with my friend and she was talking about her family and she was commenting how harsh her mother and how bad she is and that a mother should not be like that and all. I thought how does a person know how a mother is supposed to behave??? The following are the major sources
1) Surroundings
2) Neighbors and friends
3) Media

Now why do I highlight media is that in an environment where social interaction is lowering day by day the electronic media is rampaging and portrayals of mothers as larger than life who will sacrifice everything for their kids but I just would reality to be as true as that and it is not ??? Why because every individual is different with different characteristics and they behave different the portrayal of a Chinese to be a martial arts expert or a German to an engineer won’t take us anywhere and the Biggest contributor to it the cinema is bad in India and horrible in Tamilnadu. It is a simple deal you make a good movie which is logical and good we will ensure you don't make a movie again and that is the sorry state of affairs we are forced to cope with unless our people grow over and make their own judgments stand back Sardars you are the butt of jokes stand back blonds you are brains are not given and everyone else

Cheers

Arvind Srikantan

2009-10-18T16:36:00.001+05:30

Attitude

2009-10-18T16:07:00.004+05:30

Well this is one of my most favorite video's where you can listen to Zig Ziglar one of the top motivators of all time and this is to all my friends who want to think negative and eradicate the negative mindset.

Lack Of Commitment

2009-10-13T22:36:00.006+05:30

how do you ensure u get the best satisfaction from an event ?? You do so much and at the end of the day we are humans and would expect some recognition for it. Well there is a great way for you to satisfy yourself i was speaking with my senior Saikat saha the famous blogger on this and he gave me two tips to get the best out of any event

1)Show your full passion for the event in the prepration
2)And jus before the event show a tinge of dispassion in a sense don't be so involved mentally but do all the work you are supposed to do properly and dont worry on other aspects this will ensure that you get the ideal recognition for the work done by you

Cheers
Arvind Srikantan

Ethics And Human relations a look into it

2009-10-10T17:33:00.004+05:30

The perennial question and the moderate answer Ethics and Human Relations can it go Hand in Hand ? Now why am i bringing this topic is of recent developments.

This issue popped up in my class when my good friend Tanvir put forward a question that in terms of a conflict between Management and Workers whose side should we as HR be and this boiled down to Ethics and HR and thus from an impromptu discussion it became into a fracas with people aligning them with Ethical or Unethical and this threw open some serious questions and it was a brilliant session.

Important Questions which came up
1)Isn't ethical practice for one company become unethical ?(ERP and raiding)
2)How do you stamp your authority with respect to being ethical
3)Will being Ethical reward me in short run and Long Run
4)Should Ethics be a facade am putting to distance myself
5)Who am i loyal to the Organization or Myself

Now these Questions drew varied answers from varied people but something people are not aware of is rating companies by what they have heard of them and not trying to find into it.

People consider Infy to be a great company (Even i do) and Satyam to be a fraud company but lets be honest has Satyam done anything wrong with its employees or had any sort of major case by employees against it ???? It was only their CEO who made the mistake and it had nothing to do with work of employees and he came out and accepted the mistake it was not discovered.

So i just hope people do not classify anything based on face value

Cheers

Arvind Srikantan

Is attrition good for a company ???

2009-10-02T22:38:00.006+05:30

The first thoughts of anybody on reading this topic would be ensure if am sober or not gone mad. As a HR professional even the mere thought of a high attrition can cause madness to a person more than Rakhi Sawant stunts. But i was discussing with my cousin Satish Salivati (Head Services Delivery, Asses people) and i was discussing enthusiastically about exit interviews and attrition when he put forward a nice idea which he said was shared by quite a few in the HR community that an attrition is like an inflation to a moderate extent like 20-25 % its actually good. Why?? well the potential answers can be
1)Brings fresh employees and freshness into the organisation.
2)Ensures the burden of promotion job increase is removed.
3)No use of trying stop people from leaving not all people can be same
4)Ensure you use his help to find an adequate requirement

It does not matter which people are leaving even if the highest performers are leaving take it for good after all the organisation is bigger than the individual and then it will open chances for others

Let us take an instance of employee D who is winning the best employee award and has been outstanding in contribution for five years and when he decides to move on this will create for someone else to come into this space and ensure they step up so that is the whole deal

Cheers
Arvind

Why we don't trust !!!!!!!!!!!

2009-09-25T07:27:00.005+05:30

During HR symphony conducted by us there was a plenary session on corporate goodness by dr M.V.Cherian DGM HR National Head ONGC Schools. He gave a brilliant narration on one of the important topics of today it was on concepts of paperless office and using less paper. He took a dim view of this and told it would be close to impossible to have a paperless office in india !! Why ? Because it is based on the fact that we never trust each other and every little thing has to be in writing and is preferred like thatand what is the root cause of this issue is in childhood itself where i can say every Indian child would echo this the parents always say to their kids do not meet with x person or y aunty do not trust them do not talk with that person and so on and so forth with this being inculcated into us how would we change after a quarter of lifes are over and when we come to office where we are supposed to trust others. I think its like those great facts its sad but true and hopefully atleast the next generation grows up on a more trusting relationship with the society

Honestly words straight from the heart and i was really taken aback during this

Cheers
Arvind

The feeling of gratification and accomplishment

2009-09-18T22:52:00.004+05:30

My first major event in my PG program was "HR SYMPHONY" and it was based on theme of HR trends in 2010 and the chief guest for the evnt was Dr.Kanimozhi Karunanidhi the evnt started of slowly and was actually pretty dim and there was a tea break for which people were craving for it. I think the tea had the magic in it the session after that was enthralling to say the least the panel discussion was amazing with Mr.Muthukumar Thanu(VP)as moderator who livened up the whole crowd with his anecdotes and quirky jokes and the highlight of the day for me was Mr. G.Udaykumar of coremind i think i should thank my classmate Madhumitha Soundarajan for bringing him his points and views were like a tracer bullet he hit the nail on the head when he spoke and any budding HR practitioner should have listened to it i have jus three words for him. "TAKE A BOW" sir it was so eye opening and then it was our event the corporate event me and my partner Upasika had practiced our lines for about 5-6 times and were so much tense cause we were behind schedule and many corporates started to leave but we spoke with a few of them and ensured they stay back and i was so scared cause during the practice i was putting all sorts of accents and i dint know what to do. But there was some divine intervention thanks to which i was able to do really well and i was commended by all for my performance and you know that feeling was so nice to be said that it was done really well and i felt i had the crowd in my controls they would laugh to my jokes and empathize my feelings of appreciation and that was a moment of glory i was basking in that moments of glory and what a feeling it was !!!!!!!!!

But the came the dark moment when the vote of thanks was announced i felt i had done so much work and thought it will be acknowledged but it dint happen and it was bad but the feeling sulked in and i jus took the positives in it ................ :)

Nostalgia

2009-09-14T23:37:00.003+05:30

The many people i have interacted in the past 2-3 months have emphasized on youth and to ensure you are young at heart. Nostalgia is what i was experiencing today i was travelling in the local MRTS from my house to my institute and i was reading "false impressions" by jeffrey archer till in the mylapore station i saw a boy aged about 10 and his sister who was a year or two younger than her and then their mom enter the train from the moment they came something kept striking me of how these siblings looked like me and my sis and then i was not able to read the book and was seeing them both had an exam and had finished it the boy took away his sister's crayons and she was crying for it in between the mom was asking if they had written the answers on the paper properly to which they gave reasons like only 2 lines were there and not responding to the questions these strangely reminded of 12 years back when i used to squabble with my sister like this uninhibited not bothered by what is around but just that wish to get what we want. seriously miss those times and hopefully i can have some of those good times with ma sis again...

Teacher

2009-09-05T22:39:00.005+05:30

For people who have seen me age has always remained a mystery!!!! They are never able to believe that am the youngest person in most of my classes and activities but am one of those people who stands up for all the activities!!!! This was never my persona I was always the timid shy character who always preferred to stay alone and think and read I was in the shadow of my sister for 12 years where she bagged all the honors(deserved every one of those) and I was running to all nooks and corners to hide myself. My parents knew i was supremely talented but never had a chance to show what i was capable of I was like hanuman of Ramayana supremely talented but never knew what he was capable of , Like he had a Sriram i also had a Sriram in my life before any wrong conclusions are reached i will clarify Prof R.Sriram HOD Dept. of Business Administration RKM Vivekananda college(evening) was the person who put my career on track i remember my first meeting with him a short stocky man but one thing which was and always will be bigger than his frame was his energy and enthusiasm he took an interview for 2 mins and selected me for the stream and thus began the great journey for a person like me who was so scared he put me in office bearers position and allowed free interaction with him I could talk personal problems and anything under the sun to him i still remember the day he said about selecting me for an inter collegiate quiz I had barely been in the college for 50 days and i was pushed into the spotlight ahead of quite a few seniors and said "i trust our team to do well" we may not have then but any event we went after that we ensured people stood up and noticed us and this was the case for 3 years he trust he had on me was great

On this teacher's day I have jus few words for him "Sir thank you for guiding me like a parent hope you do that lot of students and one day I will know I will be famous and that day I will still cherish these beautiful memories about you"

HR recession and CSR

2009-08-16T22:36:00.002+05:30

the following is an article i have given for the newsletter of my college magazine

Name the only thing which can grow during recession in corporate world? Obviously not the balance sheet and yes layoff list but what can actually grow leaps and bounds is the CSR initiatives taken by major organizations. This is because of the fact as there is a perceived lack of demand in the market for products and thus the production marketing and sales are all cut back and people have to be fired or retrenched.
The question of CSR initiatives growing was highlighted by Infosys when it asked many of its employees who could not find projects to work on to service for INFOSYS FOUNDATION and where paid close to 60% of their original compensation this created two good things for the organization
One it was able to generate goodwill among the rural society from where they could get future employees
Secondly it prevented them from having a confrontation with unions and political institutions regarding layoffs
One who truly believes that society awareness and social initiatives will go up is local entrepreneur E.Sarath Babu in a recent session with him he was mentioning that as the job market is pretty tight the organizations can use this time to increase CSR and secondly with Corporate governance and CSR coming up high on agenda of many organizations one soft skill improvement of freshers could be their community involvement activities which are now being recognized
He stressed on the fact how important HR should play in encouraging this they should talk to the employees on taking CSR activities and involving themselves there should not be a feeling that as there is no work they are doing this because this will ensure they will perform not to their best standards they should try to affirm people that changing the society in which they live should encompass them and then it will move forward
So hopefully community activities get better and recession gets over soon

The best explanation for recession

2009-08-16T22:35:00.002+05:30

The Paul Krugman's and Amartya sen's are trying to slog out the causes for the economic slowdown and the job losses but no one can give a Slobberknocker answer like the people of chennai now its upto you to classify it great or bad

The exercepts of a conversation between the driver and conductor of an MTC bus regarding the slowdown translated loosely

The bus was packed throughout the travel and only by the last but one stop when it got empty and thus the discussions during a traffic jam i overheard

dri: what a crowd not even peak hour
cond: Yes my head is paining need to go to the terminus and have a beedi
dri: You know smoking beedi can ensure u lose job !!!!!
cond: what
Dri: all these young kids smoke and drink everyday and thus do not go to work everyday and that is why they are fired and there is no jobs
Cond: Yes very much they have no limit we only drink a quarter a day and go home properly (lol) these kids lay flat
Dri: Unless the govt takes action for the job cruch the recession will go on
Cond: Hope they wont take our jobs i will ensure i do not show my activites in public
Dri: Better do that

I was literally laughing my head out after listening to this move over economists here comes the new financial experts lol

HR sangam

2009-08-16T22:34:00.002+05:30

A lazy Sunday afternoon as it was put was the time for the august gathering of HR sangam an informal forum for people from industry and students to discuss on various issues and also to build contacts.

This was the first time i was attending a conference of this nature and as expected i was a little bit apprehensive on meeting with industy people and knowing about them but i later came to terms that if i have to break out and talk with people this is the chance i met with quite a few industry people and then there was a session on "employee misconduct and disciplinary problems from a HR perspective" which was the most interactive corporate session and topic i had sat for a long time people were questioning and answering them randomly but that was the best part people were ready to share their ideas with everyone hope this goes to the next level till then adios

Confessions of a crooked mind

2009-08-16T22:24:00.004+05:30

The title is plagiarized from Hollywood movies and i don't mind it but this post after a long time will speak on my mind on what i intended to and on my thoughts.

Whenever people call me out on weekends i mostly say no unless they are my close friends and thus people branded wrong stuff but the truth was that i spent that crucial time with my best friends my parents and this close relationship has had its advantages like peace of mind but it has had its drawbacks how?

One thing is that my mom is a very orthodox Brahman (She was born and bred up in Delhi) One thing she always said to me was never mingle with smokers and she kept repeating to that level they were demons in my mind and then when i came to coll i saw people addicted to tobacco vapors and i considered them bad and kept away but after coming to my PG i have forged a good friendship with a person who is a chain smoker and this is when i realized by inhaling tobacco no one becomes a devil and that's a point am trying to put in myself do not discriminate anyone esp wid my career dream as HR no space for that and to close out my first blog with indiblogger...:)

The big Etoo Ibra Swap !!!!!! who wins

2009-08-02T22:55:00.004+05:30

The biggest story to hit rafters after the CR7 transfer seems to be the Etoo Ibra swap between Barcelona and Inter Milan !!! the whole football world was saying barca got better and inter lost a star but honestly i have a gut feeling that barca are going to suffer from this deal and inter might not get better but if it is more a question who losses more i have to say Barca ! why? just rewind 3 years back when they had Henry Ronaldinho Messi and Etoo and they failed miserably. They were so successful last season because if u watched them hey were so exciting coz iniesta and xavi were the creative minds and you had Henry Etoo and Messi to finish of all the chances in Etoo they lost a true 25 goal a season poacher look at the guys record 108 goals in 145 games thats an average of 75% which is terrific and they lose him now Ibra is not the quickest and not a poacher he is a great striker and will work well with a system like inter where he instigated most of the openings for himself or for others

now in guardiola style they have to run to the box and score which i doubt of ibra on other hand inter get a top class poacher in etoo and if the deal for Snejider is confirmed then they have got a brilliant creative midfielder and two poachers in sammy and milito

to conclude this will not make inter champions league winner contenders but will make them firm favorites for SERIE A

arrivideci

The group dynamics

2009-08-01T10:11:00.002+05:30

In any organization or an educational institutions the first thing the members are asked to do is not form clique's but inevitably we end up with many of them

Now this is what i can make up of why they are formed

1) Insecurity hat they may be left out so trying to forge a group and taking initaives to ensure they are satisfied
2) To adhere to the stereotypes they have seen in the movies of groups while being in college
3) To try to brag and show that i have a group of friends and boast it over others
4) To ensure they have a power coterie for their personal works

I have never been part of a clique and am not sure if i want to be but they make great groups to study

HR

2009-07-21T21:29:00.002+05:30

is hr a career for me ?? thats the belief i have and hope the decision i have taken will be correct

I am shy of interacting with people and think of 10 times before interacting them but i have a gut feeling with its practical approach and my analytical mind i will be able to kick it up

Tough times for Mitch Kupchak

2009-06-19T13:43:00.002+05:30

now tha lakers have wrapped up the NBA championship redemption for Kobe, jerry buss and Mitch after trading Shaq now lies the important decisions for mitch. Is phil coming back ???? he must if this team succeeds or can he get mike kryzeswki ? what about Odom,Ariza and shannon brown ? they were 3 crucial players and all free agents ? what about draft i would love 'em to take nick calathes wont count on cap next year and will be a great addition in 2010