The economic reform started in 1991 during the P.V.
Narsimha Rao government under the stewardship of Mr. Manmohan Singh has brought
about a radical change in Indian Economy. The Indian economy grew by leaps and
bounds thanks to liberalization, privatization and globalization. The country
withstood a massive global economic slowdown in 2008-09 and managed to grow at
6.7% in 2008-09 and 7.4% in 2009-10.As the nation weathered the storm of
recession thanks to a consumption driven economy ,the entire world stood up and
noticed a resilient economy taking
strong steps towards
consolidating its stance. Today India is emerging as an economic powerhouse and
marching fast towards the magic moment of becoming the fastest growing economy
in the world. This shift from a developing to a developed economy will bring
about massive change in the social framework and the psyche of our workforce. As
HR professionals the onus lies with us to prepare ourselves proactively for
this imminent change.
Tomorrows work force
will be a much younger group, they will expect more professionalism, better
transparency, quicker problem resolution and a value and empathy driven
organization. With the number of double income couple increasing the demand for
work life balance will increase and the lack of it will create a social mayhem.
And the need of the hour is to visualize this transformation and slowly and
subtly bring in systems to address these needs.
The most important thing that comes to my mind is
transparency or the lack of it in handling the Human Resources function. There
are very few organizations where HR is respected or trusted (and I don’t mean
being feared upon). How many persons walk into a Human Resources Managers cabin
and discuss their problems and seek solutions. How many of us are at least good
listeners, a basic requisite for the function. In India in most of the
organizations people don’t trust HR and many HR managers think their job is
just maintaining confidentiality and policing. Yes I fully agree we need to
maintain the hygiene and there are documents which are confidential. But most
of the times we over do it. We need to understand society is changing rapidly
and the new generation is more open and forth right. In order to deal with them
one needs to be transparent. Business has taken a paradigm shift and one can
not replicate the same practice which was followed in a manufacturing set up in
service sector where the unlike a rigid union we have an informed employee.
Most of the times the practice of keeping everything confidential leads to the creation
of unnecessary rumor and ruins the work culture. HR gets branded as a
diplomatic function and loses its credibility among employees. Hence the need
of the hour is to build in transparency in the system by talking to the
employee as often as possible, by addressing their queries and by providing
them with a platform where they can raise their voices. Recently Infosys came
up with an online platform called “Infy Bubble” where employees can vent their
concerns as well as are open to give negative feedback. The important aspect is
to take the negative feedbacks as areas of improvement and work on them in
order to rein in positive change.
With the shift in economy retention will be major challenge
for most of us. From an employer’s market it will soon become an employee’s
market. We need to be innovative in our approach in order to counter attrition.
Most of the employees give enough hints before they decide to leave. Our role
is to identify those triggers and work collectively towards addressing the
issues. How many organizations take the EXIT interview seriously or even bother
to conduct one. Any HR who wants to know the health of the organization and
improve the culture must take constant feedback from its employees. And to do
that successfully one needs to win the trust of employees and make them believe
that his concerns are being heard. With the increase in disposable income,
money will cease to become the most important tool of retention. The generation
that will work an average of 30 years in private sector would look beyond money
and crave for good work culture, best practices and good people managers to
work with. The sooner we realize these challenges the better.
Work life balance will play a pivotal role in the years to
come. Today in most of the cases both the partners are working. With the kind
of work pressure one has to undergo it is extremely difficult for most of the
employees to manage their personal and professional life and draw a balance. Organizations
need to take stock of an employee’s personal need as well. With the change in
economy, money will not be the single most influencing factor for Indian
employees. We also need to realize today most people are starting their career
in early twenties. If proper care is not taken burn out will happen by the time
the employee reaches forty years of age. Hence it is the prerogative of every
human resources professional to treat the employee as an asset and convince
business to put importance on employees
work life balance. Many IT companies have adopted concepts like flexi working hours,
work from home, providing recreation facility and gyms at work place etc. Google
leads the pack with its employee friendly work place concept. These models need
to be replicated in other sectors too. Only a satisfied employee will be able
to perform to his full potential and in turn will positively impact the
productivity of the organization.
Nurturing talent and developing them to lead the business
will be a challenge for most Human Resources professional .The new generation
employees will be impatient and will get bored with their profile very soon.
There lies the challenge for an HR to provide him with suitable opportunity and
adequate learning through job rotation and empowerment. During one of my
discussion with a senior professional of
a public sector Navaratna company ,I was surprised to find the amount of effort
they put even on a non performing employee in order to improve their
performance. I being a part of the new “Hire & Fire” generation could not
fathom the fact when he stressed on the point that they try and nurture their
resources rather than firing them at the drop of a hat. The conviction with
which he emphasized the collective responsibility in terms of grooming a talent
is a revelation. Though he stressed being in a public sector company he has
time, scale and patience at his disposal to groom a new recruit and try his
capabilities in different verticals to access his role-competency matrix. He
was convinced that every single individual’s performance can be improved by
providing him with the right opportunity, timely counseling, an inspiring boss
or proper recognition provided the employee is not insane and has the correct
attitude.
This kind of conviction is a rare quality in our generation
of HR professional who in their urge to become Business Partners (a term which
now a days is often being misused and abused by HR professional) are forgetting
the inherent role of HR. One must understand HR is a leadership function. Few
important attributes of a HR leader are understanding the basics of human
psyche, transparency in dealing with process and people, trustworthy, a
compassionate attitude, a knack of catching the pulse of the public, the
understanding of the business and being innovative. I fail to understand why
such sudden urge to become business partner. The question is are not we already
partnering the business by acquiring, nurturing, retaining and growing the most
important, valuable as well as vulnerable, flexible and potent asset in a
business the Human Capital. If we are performing the core job then we need not
worry. But if there is this sudden wake up call then either we were not doing
our job as per requirement or we are coining a fancy term because suddenly we
realized that business is not taking us seriously. And often we put the blame
on the court of the organization by stating that we don’t get adequate say or
respect because we are not revenue earning vertical .But then so are finance
and supply chain. Does any one dare say that they don’t put importance on
Supply chain or Finance? We are targeted because we have horribly let ourselves
down by not sticking to the basics. We need to understand ours is a leadership
and people oriented function which runs on trust, faith and skill.
Another big challenge
that lies ahead of us is to maintain a balance between system and human
intervention. In spite of the development of various tools and techniques HR
essentially remains a Human function. The tools and techniques should be used
to support us in our endeavor to serve people better and faster. We need to
provide practical solutions to employees within specified time frame. This
would help in creating a positive impact and give the function the much needed
credibility.
With the progress of
time the Human Resource function has evolved manifold. But there is a huge
opportunity for us to improve and bridge the gap in terms of the execution
ability. We need to pull our socks, be innovative and act proactively in order
to build a potent workforce, a productive work –life management system and a
profitable business module.
