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HR in Inida: Managing Talent $9.99 RS380

HR in Inida: Managing Talent $9.99 RS380

With India being touted as a haven for outsourcing, talent management issues in the industry have become a focal point for BPOs and KPOs. India’s ambitious attempts to climb to the highest levels of the outsourcing value chain rely heavily on the availability of skilled and committed professionals. This Chillibreeze report highlights some critical, but oft-ignored HR issues in outsourcing. For instance, it reveals that the biggest reason for attrition in the industry is not compensation - as many assume - but career ambiguity. Based on insights from the industry, the paper suggests proactive measures to develop talent as the Indian outsourcing industry’s strongest competitive asset. AVAILABLE FROM India-reports.com

HR: Managing Talent in India's Outsourcing Industry $9.99 from India-reports.com

HR: Managing Talent in India's Outsourcing Industry

With India being touted as a haven for outsourcing, talent management issues in the industry have become a focal point for BPOs and KPOs. India’s ambitious attempts to climb to the highest levels of the outsourcing value chain rely heavily on the availability of skilled and committed professionals. This Chillibreeze report highlights some critical, but oft-ignored HR issues in outsourcing. For instance, it reveals that the biggest reason for attrition in the industry is not compensation - as many assume - but career ambiguity. Based on insights from the industry, the paper suggests proactive measures to develop talent as the Indian outsourcing industry’s strongest competitive asset.
               

Designation Disaster

A man is known by the designation he keeps. This universal truth cannot be proved more correct than in India. Designation is all. A manager will accept low pay, long working hours, unreasonable demands being placed on him, forsaking his family and friends etc. as long as he has a nice designation with a company car and big office to go along with it.

He will do any work as long as the designation makes him happy. The office stationery executive may not be proud of his role and may do only what he needs to get by. But call him the Deputy Additional Associate Assistant Vice President for Essential Documentation Policies and you have a happy camper. With this designation you can push him twice as hard and he won’t mind. After all, as a VP (kind of!) he knows what management pressure can be like.

Providing him with a company car and a bigger office costs nothing because you can get rid of everyone else in the department and work this willing slave to death. I know it sounds funny, but it is not. Many companies use designations as a carrot to squeeze more work out of employees. It’s also the cheapest way to keep people happy. But this is a short sighted policy and will backfire in the long run. Besides all the problems it can cause, which I’ll get into next time, how would you feel if you worked for an organization with a Senior Executive President in charge of Floor Sanitation?

The Joint Family Syndrome – 3

So how do we deal with this? After all, today everyone is looking a flat informally structured organization. Town hall meetings are the in thing. Everyone works as a family.
How do you explain to the failing manager that what fine with the “home” family does not make it with the “office” family?

You do it by explaining to him that there is a huge difference in the two families. The home family is based on affections, shared personal goals and delegated responsibility, in that order. The office family is based on managerial skills, a corporate financial goal and delegated responsibility – all equally important and interlinked. In the home, love and affection can make up for weaknesses in the other areas. In the office you cannot be weal in any area. Office friendships may be there, but there is no familial love that allows one’s failings to be ignored.

You explain to the erring manager that his weakness affects everyone else in the company and ask him to give you one good reason why his flaws should be overlooked. He won’t be able to come up with one. That’s when you put it on the line. No one in the office will tolerate someone whose non performance slows them down. That person becomes the black sheep of the “office” family. And we all know what happens to black sheep.

This is an unusual kind of problem and those of you who have not worked in the Indian Sub Continent may think this is a joke or a one off. Believe me, it’s not. And if it occurs in a company and is not stemmed in the bud, it can rapidly infect the whole organization and soon everybody is relying on everyone else to get things done.

The Joint Family Syndrome - 2

This manager looks upon the office as a joint family. He’s everyone’s friend. He’s always talking about his family and their problems and asks about others’ families. In the office he does, to some extent, what he’s told to. But that’s about it. The criticality of his performance is not something he comprehends. Things are to be done by the “office.” Actions are undertaken by “we.” There is no “I.”

At no time does this person stop and examine his roles and his output. It’s not as simple as passing the buck. I wish it were. This manager just does not comprehend that he is accountable. The company will continue to grow, but what is his contribution?

This manager cannot understand that while friendships and emotions are part of every organization, they are not the driving factors, as they are in a joint family. He treats the office like his family, a place to tell people his troubles be friendly and participate in the “process”, with no understanding of his specific role and what is expected of him. If you talk to him about underperforming, he’ll tell you about his family problems. Ask him why something has not been done and he’ll say “we” are working on it. Who’s the “we”? He was given a specific task but he drags others into it. He makes it a “family” project.

He can’t understand how badly he’s screwing up. After all, if it’s okay in the family, why not in the office?

The Joint Family Syndrome in the Workplace

The joint family system is still very prevalent in India. It is a situation where 2 or 3 generations with numerous siblings all line together. It’s a great system, but when the joint family attitude invades the work place, it can cause all kinds of problems.

A company I work with recently appointed a manager in his mid thirties. He came with experience in a big foreign bank, spoke well and was well educated. I was hoped that he would be able to hit the ground running and start contributing to the company very rapidly.

Four months down the road and – nothing! No results, no initiatives, no achievements. Did we make a mistake? Possibly; but if so, the mistake was not in the selection but in the person selected. All this manager can do is follow orders and even then is often unable to close the loop. The natural reaction is to question his competence. I did that. But he’s not incompetent. He’s not unintelligent. He has the capacity to provide the output that is expected of him. He can be a great future asset for the company. So what’s wrong?

What’s wrong is that he suffers from the joint family syndrome. A joint family functions because of emotional ties. Performance is not a key criterion. If someone does not do something, there is always a mother, brother or sister to do it and ensure things run smoothly. That’s not the way a company runs.

Small Town HR - work force characteristics

I have been asking a lot of questions and I guess it’s about time I gave some answers. I only wish I had some complete ones. So here goes. Some more background first.

The company did persevere and over a period of two years were able to get an intelligent, committed and hard working labor force. I wasn’t easy – the attrition rate was very high with people unwilling to accept accountability. Or even work responsibly. An example – A girl joined the company and within a week took a day off claiming to be unwell. It was not the first time something like this had happened so the company investigated. The result – it was the death anniversary of a close relative and she was needed at the religious rites. If she had mentioned this when she joined, the management would have understood. But having grown up in a place where the only leave culture is the Government leave culture, she took the Government employee’s way out. Of course she lost her job.

The other problem was that nearly everyone was a fresher with no experience. Those who had Government jobs never leave. Those who do not get them became shopkeepers or something on the same lines. The few who have some ambition leave for greener pastures. And the very few with experience were those who had left the region, tried their luck in the metros, had been unable to fit in and then returned home. Not exactly the best recommendation.

Small Town HR: Circumstances define behavior

In my last blog I asked the question of taking a chance on people. Before I attempt to answer that, let me elaborate more on the peculiar circumstances of the North East. Every region has its own cultural characteristics, but the North East is unique

One of HR’s main functions is to motivate and drive people. But what do you do when people are conditioned not to be motivated? From the time of India’s independence The North East has been both ignored and pampered. Ignored because no significant development was ever done. Pampered because the Government at the center took the easy way way out of dealing with this “sensitive” and unstable part of the country. They created a vast number of needless Government jobs where no one is accountable and lifetime job security and a pension are givens. So we have had three generations of people who take it for granted that job security will always be there and that just as non performance is not punished, excellence will never be rewarded.

There being almost no private sector industry in this area, they presume that what the Government offers them is what they will get everywhere. And their performance need only be the same – no point doing anything beyond the minimum since there is no punishment or reward.

What does HR in a private sector profit driven company do when this is the talent pool it has to draw on? Give up and go home?

Small town HR- Motivational challenge

As I wrote in my last blog, motivating and getting young people in the North East out of their comfort zones is a big challenge. In the company I was working with, there was a staff of about 20, mainly in their mid twenties and with reasonable, if not high, levels of education. The talent was undeniably there, as was the will to work and earn money.

But, and this is a big but, they could not look beyond the work they were doing. As long as they finished their scheduled work by the end of the day, they were satisfied. But the company needed something more. It was a growing company and needed leaders and managers. Since the lack of industry in the region meant that there was no local talent available, the directors of the company hoped that after 2 years, some managerial talent would emerge and could be given greater responsibility in taking the company ahead. Sadly, none did.

How do you motivate a software engineer who’s aim in life stop at one promotion – being a team supervisor? Or a team supervisor who’s ambition ends with doubling the size of his team? As long as they get a regular reasonable salary raise, they are satisfied.

It may be a great way to work an assembly line, but what happens when you need to grow and the only talent available is what you hoped would develop internally. And it didn’t? Do you forget the experiment and the huge potential in that part of the country? Or do you keep trying? Do you experiment not just on business but also on people?

Small Town HR

I recently spent some time in the North East of India doing some HR for a young innovative company. What I found there was very interesting. Be warned, my findings may be “politically incorrect.”

For those you who do not know North East India, it is made of 7 states called the Seven Sisters. It is a mainly tribal area, geographically remote from the rest of the country and still very insular in its outlook. Foreigners, including those from the rest of India are viewed with suspicion. The central Government has pumped vast quantities of money into these states, not for development but for subsidies and creating needless Government jobs as a way of keeping people happy.

Young people here grow up looking at a Government job as the Holy Grail. It ensures security (your work and output is not important) and reasonable standard of living and social respect. And that’s all they are looking for. Personal and professional growth and a vision of a better quality of life are absent. Since there are almost no private sector companies here there is no other culture.

The company I was associated with started about 2 years ago and has grown.

Outsourcing HR

Everyone is outsourcing everything these days. The latest “in” thing is to outsource HR. Well, if you can outsource Finance, Marketing, Logistics and so on, why not HR? I’ll tell you why not – because HR is as much an art as it is a science. Getting the best out of people and doing the best for them means dealing with intangibles. There are issues not covered by rules, policies and procedures; problems that cannot be analyzed by the use of logic; factors that cannot be dealt with by using set formulae. These issues, problems and factors can be summed up in one word – People.

You cannot press a button and get what you want from people. You can’t develop them and enhance their skills by remote control. To deal with people, you have to deal with people. That means being on the spot and interacting with them as much as is required. That how you get to understand them and know how to deal with them.

There are accepted ways of dealing with, say, insecure employees. But each person is different and if you don’t know the person, you don’t know how to modify accepted practices to get the results you want. One way of dealing with an insecure person is to show faith in him by giving more work. It could work for some but for others it may feel like they are being backed into a corner so the management can prove his incompetence. If you don’t know the person you are dealing with you could destroy the person and lose a valuable asset.

Outsourcing HR? Why not outsource the people and the management of the company also?

The Last KRA

Every HR guy worth his salt knows the importance of KRAs (Key Result Areas) and spends a lot of time and effort working with department heads to define and refine them. KRAs are an extremely useful tool performance management tool. But an over focus on them can, at times, limit the employee’s potential contribution to the company. Let’s take the case of John

John has 7 KRAs. His last evaluation was average and he wants to do better the next time. Every action of his is aimed at producing results in his KRAs. That’s a good thing, right? That’s what the system is supposed to do, isn’t it? Yes. But the system is not an end in itself.

One day while driving to work John has a brainwave – an idea that could save the company substantial amount in power costs every year. But that’s outside his KRAs and he puts the idea aside and it is soon forgotten. But suppose there have been an open KRA, for new ideas and thinking out of the box? Suppose John had developed his idea and presented it to the management? And if the management accepted it, the 8th and last KRA would kick in, either elevating his performance rating or making up for an area where he had not done so well. Not only has John benefited but so has the company which is formalizing a culture of encouraging new ideas and out of the box thinking.

Jewels and Thorns

“Jewel in the crown” and “Crown of thorns”. It sometimes gets difficult to make out the difference. You have a great performer in your company. A future leader or even the CEO. He’s still young and needs to be encouraged and given the tools and opportunity to develop his skills. What’s the best way to do it? A career map with a constantly expanding set of challenges that will take him to the level where he can occupy the CEO’s chair.

This is accepted practice; it makes sense and is probably the best way to do it. But, and this is a big but, you cannot just create the roadmap and set the hot shot free to sink or swim. Circumstances change, he will change/mature and what was a challenge yesterday could become needless or impossible to achieve tomorrow. If the road map is not corrected in time, he may soon be doing boring needless work which will blunt his edge. If he’s faced with the really impossible he will either leave realizing the stupidity of the situation or destroy himself with his efforts to achieve the impossible. Whatever the outcome, you have lost a huge future asset. And put more pressure on the next in line who will have seen what happened to his predecessor.

Remember that the career map you have for the jewel in your company’s crown needs to be constantly cleaned and adjusted, failing which the Jewel will have it own crown of thorns.

KRAs – The means or the end?

There are a lot of buzz words that have appeared on the HR horizon over the last few years and one of the most popular is Key Result Areas or KRAs. It looks fairly simple and easy to understand – you define a persons work and the expected results over a defined period of time and brief him about it. Sometime you may even negotiate the KRAs with him/her so that everyone feels comfortable with them. So now you’re set; everyone knows what they have to do and by when. If they do well they expect to be rewarded and if they don’t……..

The system works, and works well. It’s a proven method of measuring performance of an individual. The problem is that many companies tend to over focus on the KRAs and so does the individual. The employee’s world shrinks to the KRAs and everything he/she does if focused on doing well in these areas. This often leads to tunnel vision which is dangerous, especially in the case of senior managers who need to view their operations in the wider company or even industry wide context. Focusing only on specific set tasks can lead to frustration, over competitiveness, burn out and a loss of perspective about ones role and contribution to the company. This in turn affects the employees overall performance and growth prospects. Why don’t companies use one more KRA for everyone – “Active involvement in company culture and vision?”

Performance Appraisal or Personal Appraisal?

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that a performance appraisal is about a person. It’s not. It about performance at work and about that only. It is a cold blooded and calculating machine to see how well a person does his or her job. The person may be the nicest person in the organization and also the worst performer. The performance appraisal system does not take the niceness of the person into account. The system will, if it is working properly, just record that this is a substandard performer so that the management can take the appropriate decision on what action to take. Ah! But it doesn’t end there.

Where Do You Start?

You are an experienced HR guy and you join a young dynamic company on a rapid growth curve. The only problem is that the company has been growing so fast that there wasn’t time to put HR policies in place. Also, most of the employees are youngsters on their first job who are technically skilled but know knowledge of how they need to function in a structured environment.

So do you go in like Rambo, bringing in policies and system so fast you leave people in a state of “shock and awe?” After all, they need to know that this is no longer a mom and pop operation but a professional organization on the fast track. Most people will tell you to go slow. Don’t overload people. Too much change can paralyze the functioning of the company, or at least of a lot of people. Do it slow and steady, everyone will say. Don’t rock the boat. After all HR is a long term process.

I beg to disagree. Going in hard and fast will let people know the importance of the systems being put into place. Yes structured Performance Appraisal systems can make people nervous. So can concepts like KRAs and Balanced Scorecards. But at the same time, if it is done properly it can create a lot of confidence in people that the company must have big plans if they are looking at all these things.

So go in fast and hard. Just keep emphasizing that everything is being done to enable people to grow as fast as the company is and not be left behind.

HR’s Ivory Tower?

A trap many HR people fall into is living in an ivory tower. Their world is limited to how people in their company are being treated and watching how other companies’ treat their staff. They then look at picking up ideas from these organizations and, corporate constraints allowing, transplanting them into their own little worlds. No harm in this, do I hear you say? Actually, there is none, as long as the introduction of new working conditions/benefits is done with an eye on the end result.

Let’s look at the example of Google where people can bring their dogs o work, go to the in house massage parlors, eat at many 27/7 bistros etc. There’s no question that it works, and works well. But what many forget is that it works for Google with its unique culture and a system where output is measured in terms of creativity, not just time and effort.

Now look at a traditional brick and mortar company, say a car manufacturer. Here we have a situation where X amount of material has to arrive at X time to enable X cars to be produced so that X number of cars can be shipped out every X hours. Who has time to think of your pet or go for a massage or even go to an in campus bistro? These people work on defined schedules to produce defined output. At the end of their time on the job, be it 8 or 16 hours, they are free to go home and that’s all most of them want to do. Google type working conditions are not relevant to them.

HR managers need to be selective on what they bring in from outside. What is trendy, glamorous and exciting may not be relevant for their companies. They also need to be innovative like the engineering company in Germany that allows each employee to order, from selected restaurants, a full family meal once a month, at the company’s cost. The food is delivered to the factory in time for the employee to take it home to his family so they can all spend a relaxed evening together without any house work. For a company whose employees are married and older than Google’s young crowd, is this not more appealing than solitary massages?

HR guys – think out of the box!

What About Me?

The HR guy’s job is to look after the well being of the people in the organization. He’s not a social worker. The wellbeing of the people affects the wellbeing of the company. It’s an essential management function. So working in accordance with corporate goals and the various operational constraints that always exist, he does his best to keep people happy and motivated.

But who looks after him? He works out the remuneration, incentives, motivation schemes and training needs of others. Who does it for him? How does he enunciate his own needs? Can he be objective about himself? If he expresses his needs, will it be seen as him say “I want….”? Giving to others is one thing. Asking for yourself is another.

Does he leave it to his superiors – the Directors or whoever the powers that be are – to decide what he needs and deserves? Sure they know his value, but they are not experts in the field. Can they make the right judgments? They may give him what they think is best for him but that may not be what he, the expert, knows he deserves.

Most HR people feel shy about asking for what the want and deserve. Often, they don’t get it. So they feel frustrated and their performance is affected. The HR man must learn to be objective and present his own case logically and without the feeling that he is asking for himself. He is asking for the HR Manager, not Mr. So and So. He needs to look after the HR Manager so that the HR Manager can function to the best of his ability for the good of the company. Any compromise on this compromises the functioning of the corporate entity.

The HR Guillotine

Does this concept intrigue you? Are you asking yourself what it could be? It’s nothing new – in fact, it is a most common practice, but rarely spoken of. The HR Guillotine refers to the policy of getting rid of corporate trouble makers and misfits.

Every company has them. People, who always make problems but never help to resolve any, people who, by their very existence in the organization are a disruptive influence and have a perpetual negative influence on the company’s ethos. HR has tried to help them change their ways but nothing works. The only option is to get rid of them.

The easiest way is to tell them to go on their own before they are fired.  And wither quietly or kicking and screaming, go they do. But the problem is not over. What about the seeds of doubt, mistrust and discontent they have planted?  These insidious influences are often impossible to immediately spot and counter. Sometimes they fester under the surface for months or years before they erupt in a volcano of corporate chaos.

This is where HR has to play detective. HR must go back over everything the trouble maker did over his tenure, or at lest the last few years. Examine his work, his associations in the company as well as with other stake holders, watch all the departments he worked in over the last 2 years, talk to his friends in the office, speak to his supervisor etc. Do it very discreetly and tactfully. It takes time and continued observation but it just may help you to defuse a time bomb set to go off long after the guillotine has dropped.

The Flat Tire

The “flat organization” is the new corporate mantra. It makes sense and usually works well, if it is well implemented. But with an almost non existent hierarchical structure, which is what companies say they are aiming for, what happens when hard decisions are to be made or unpleasant tasks need to be performed? Who will bell the cat?

Group decision making usually leads to everyone understanding the rationale behind a decision and the need for them to do their part. But suppose there is a small company that has to lay off a significant proportion of its work force. The group decision has been taken. Everyone says its HR’s job to tell the affected staff. HR will say it for Production to do it since they are the ones directly involved. Production will say Sales should do it because they can explain the market conditions that forced the move. Sales will say…..

Sounds simplistic? I’ve seen it happen and days lost while this is argued. Heated arguments and much talk. The flat organization is flatulent. These matters are usually resolved when someone asserts his authority. It’s always been there, but hidden in the flat structure. Someone steps up and say “This is how we’re going to do it. Because I say so.”

So the flat organization suddenly has a high point. Maybe it’s not a bad thing.

Wanted – Skilled Designers

This one is a happy offshoot of the retail boom in India. With demand for apparel, accessories and the like growing, the sector (which is likely to balloon into a Rs 50,000 crore giant) is seeing an acute talent crunch in terms of designers.

India needs about 8000 to 10,000 designers a year, but produced about 3000 designers in the last four years, not all of them practice their art. The big question is - with an upsurge in talent, will companies also spend more on design than they do now?

Never Compromise!

When I say never compromise, I am talking of operational and line level decisions. Never compromise on who is in charge. Let’s say you have asked your managers to come up with a launch plan for a new product. Two equally senior managers come up with equally good plans. But they are operationally different. It’s difficult to decide between them and you do not want to demoralize the one whose plan you do not chose. So you compromise and using the best – and complementary – aspects of both plans you create a new one and put both in charge.  Happy ending? No way! Neither manager is happy at his plan having been changed and compromised. Neither will make a whole hearted effort to make it work. One or the other may even work against it.

The way out is to avoid this kind of compromise. Make a decision on using one of the plans and put that manager in charge. Make him accountable. Now he has to produce the results, Its his plan and he is in charge. Tell the other manager that his turn will come. Do some ego massaging and keep him happy.

Why Does HR Interfere in Everything?

This is a common question. The perception is that HR departments, although essential to a company’s operations, tend to try and justify their existence and garner more importance for themselves by poking their nose in everywhere. Many managers resent this and look upon it as an intrusion into their territory.

This is understandable; but let us look at the reason why this happens. Unlike production or sales or any of the other areas of corporate operations where at the end of the day there are production volumes or sales returns upon which success can be measured, HR deals in people and intangibles. Companies’ value their people but tend to take the support structure the organization needs to provide them for granted. Everything is fine until the Sales Manger quits because he is frustrated with the working conditions. Then HR is asked why they did not see this coming and take pre-emptive action. The problem is that unless they know what is happening in the sales department, how can they know what the Sales Manager’s condition is? And if they don’t know, how can they act?

So the next time you hear people complain about the interference of HR in other departments, remember that it is being done only to support the work and people in these departments.

System inefficiencies at retail stores and hospitals

The retail and healthcare boom is happening but inefficiencies are high due to poorly trained manpower.

You shop at a store in 10 minutes flat because you have your list ready and time is short but when you reach the billing counter it takes 10 minutes in the queue- because the team working there is slow and on the learning curve.

A similar experience at my visit to Columbia Asia hospital- the appointment with the doctor is scheduled before hand and the consultation is quick. When you want to buy the prescribed medicine at their drug store, you are waiting for 20 odd minutes or more. Similar is the wait at the billing counter.

One of the critical factors for success of medical tourism and retailing will be the quality and efficiency of manpower deployed for support services.

Talent mis-management?

There’s a new buzz word going around in HR circles these days – Talent Management. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? It conjures up a picture of an HR department spending its time on nurturing all the talent available in an organization to create “state of the art” people. This is Utopia! Unfortunately, that’s not what it means or how it works.

The basic function of HR is to develop all the people in an organization to their maximum potential so that the company can best utilize its most valuable resource – its people. This is fine in theory, but in practice, next to impossible. Every person is different, with different abilities, aptitudes and motivations. An HR department so big that it can focus in detail on each person’s needs will be the largest –by far – cost center in the company. So, many companies focus on those who, at first blush, appear the most promising – the most talented. They are given everything in the way of support and training to take them to the top. It sounds okay, but how do you define talent? And what of those efficient performers who do not make the cut? Could anything be more de-motivating for them?

Are we looking at Talent Mismanagement?

Coming Soon:Managing Talent in India’s Outsourcing Industry

A New Report is Coming to India Reports Soon.

Here is a quote from the report
Managing Talent in in India's Outsourcing Industry

The second, and arguably more serious type of skill shortage is the dearth of professionals with specific skill sets and competencies to fill in high-end or knowledge-intensive roles. Manpower in terms of head count may not exactly be a problem in a nation of 1.1 billion people - the real issue is that of skill-job compatibility. As B. Ramalinga Raju, Chairman of Satyam Computer Services puts it, “

India

produces three million college graduates every year, including 400,000 engineers. But most of these are uncut diamonds…., and the trade requires only polished stones”.[1] Besides, though the remuneration in BPOs/ KPOs is competitive, many professionals shy away from plunging into the sector due to negative stereotypes about the industry as being nascent and unstable. The typical applicant-to-hire conversion rate for the outsourcing industry is as low as 8% in voice-based BPOs and even lower in KPOs.

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[1] “

India

’s Outsourcing Industry is Facing a Labor Shortage” - The New York Times,

Feb 6 2006

Knowledge Workers in India

Knowledge Professionals and the Indian KPO Market $19.99

This report presents the human resource profile of the Indian market, supply, the potential areas for outsourcing, and guidelines for investors zeroing on outsourcing knowledge work to India.