This weekend got an opportunity to attend the “Building New generation HR Leadership” meet conducted by the CII. It was a welcome relief from my horribly hectic and often repetitive job. And one good thing about attending any talk is it arouses your grey matters (it is just a co incidence that the seminar was co-sponsored by “Grey Matter”, a Kolkata based consultancy firm!!!) and gives one an opportunity to go beyond the contour of a clerical (err…managerial) corporate way of thinking and helps one to delve deep. One such accident happened when the General Manager –Human Resources of a public sector Navaratna company was delivering his talk. As the discussion veered around nurturing talent, an important topic came up related to how long one can bear with a non performing resource. We being a part of the new “Hire & Fire” generation could not fathom the fact when the speaker 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 was a revelation for most of us. Though he stressed being in a public sector company he has time, size 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 recognization 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 and it does not require much of a qualification to become a successful HR practitioner. But few important attributes of a HR leader are understanding the basics of human psychology, transparency in dealing with process and people, trustworthy, a compassionate attitude, a knack of catching the pulse of the public and the understanding of the business. 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 vertical 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.
I would put a basic question forward. In how many organizations 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. As per my limited understanding this secretive nature of HR can be attributed to the manufacturing sector where the IR manager worked as an agent of management and kept everything under the wrap from the eyes of union. But business has taken a paradigm shift and one can not continue the same practice in service sector where the unlike a rigid union we have an informed employee. Most of the times these unnecessary practice of keeping everything confidential leads to creation of unnecessary rumor and ruins the work culture. HR gets branded as a diplomatic function and looses its credibility among employees.
Have we developed with the passage of time? In order to prove that we are an important function we are using many tools, techniques and jargons. But most organizations still follow the Bell Curve for an important career enhancement activity like PMS, not because it is a full proof technique but due to the lack of any other technique. It’s a pity that very few professionals understand the logic or would go and explain the Bell curve logic to an employee. It is always good to take help of number but for a humane function like ours I m afraid we must not end up being a slave to numbers. A balance has to be maintained.
With the change in global economy retention will be major challenge for most of us. Do we have a strategy for that? 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 do 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.
Else we will end up being neither People Manager nor Business Partner. The next generation HR professional will end up with designations as Head Count Manager!!!!!!!!!! Hence it is imperative for a HR manager to understand he is a leader and he has to perform as one go get the much required credibility back.
