HR Behaviour - People Practices

Bad 10 HR Practices

2011-07-28T03:51:00.001-07:00

1. Employee has no access to personal data (over-confidentiality): Can’t view, can’t update personal information; has no access to his/ her Leave records, salary data, attendance record, training & promotion details. Not sure if the management’s decisions are based on correct information. This breeds suspicion since there is a perceived lack of transparency.. Impact is on employee-employer relationships.

2. Lack of clarity on Deliverables: Absence of a well-defined job-description leads to lack of accountability. Nether the employee nor his/ her immediate superior (boss) are able to define the job-deliverables. Result is the loss of focus & interest.

3. Absence of Goal based performance: Employee is unaware of the goals to be achieved during the year. There are no quarterly targets and no process to track their completion. The organization carries out merely an end of the year postmortem of an employee’s performance. The unaccomplished tasks go unnoticed. Difficult to build a performance culture in such organizations.

4. Employee development without his/ her involvement: No opportunity is given to an employee to project his /her development needs. Training manager nominates employees on various development programs. Even the Line Manager is bye-passed. There is no formal process to collect training needs and do gap analysis of skills & competencies. All this leads to unplanned employee development, a wasteful effort, both in time & the dollars spent on training.

5. Rusting of Talent: Long tenures in the same position with no avenues for job rotations make people rust & relax. In the first 2-3 years in a job position an employee experiences new challenges, innovates & contributes. Thereafter the routine takes over. Even a change of location, if not the job, can provide the requisite challenge to an employee . This is enough to remove the rust and make the talent bloom again.

6.Non-performers lobby: Each non-performer remains glued to his/ her chair. The worst happens when a non-performing manager has to appraise subordinates who are professionally competent, high-energy youngsters. Some of them leave the organization per-maturely and add to the attrition rate. The end result is the building of a non-performers lobby which impedes the progress of the organization. It is a vicious cycle which can be stopped only by filtering out the non-performers.

7. Absence of schemes to retain performers: Getting rid of the non-performers is important, but to be able to identify, develop & retain high performers is equally vital. If your best talent is being lured by other companies, your schemes to reward performance are simply inadequate.

8. Shyness to obtain Feedback: Employees have individual opinions about the quality of leadership in the company. They know their engagement levels at the workplace. They understand what hinders their performance & satisfaction. Unless the management is prepared to receive and analyse their objective feed back, no worth while initiatives can be launched to apply timely corrections. The end-result could be lower productivity and increasing disharmony.

9. Line Manager not a People-Manager: If a Line Manager only performs his/ her operational/ technical role and has not been groomed to become a people - manager, who is to blame? H R has probably faltered by not institutionalizing a system which ensures that before appointing an employee as a Line Manager, he is given training on how to manage people. Competencies are needed for understanding your workforce, deploying HR processes, motivating people & uniting them as a team. A good engineer at the work place has to be transformed into a good manager for organizational growth.

10. Technology Phobia: Many old timers, even in some big organizations, refuse to acknowledge that introduction of technology can empower HR staff to provide timely, accurate & quality information for employee oriented decisions. They sometimes feel that IT staff will need to be hired to manage computer based systems. They probably need an exposure to SaaS technology which neither requires elaborate hardware platforms nor software expertise within your premises. The Vendor must do everything for you to implement & maintain your systems as long as you like. Shed your phobia at least.

If we can introspect and shed the prevailing bad HR practices, we are sure to transform and be one amongst those companies who build talent and drive performance.

Best 10 HR Practices

2011-07-28T03:44:00.000-07:00

Best 10 HR practices

1. Safe, Healthy And Happy Workplace

2. Open Book Management Style

3. Performance Linked Bonuses

4. 360-Degree Performance Management Feedback System

5. Fair Evaluation System For Employees

6. Knowledge Sharing

7. Highlight Performers

8. Open House Discussions And Feedback Mechanisms

9. Reward Ceremonies

10. Delight Employees With The Unexpected

1. Safe, Healthy and Happy Workplace

Creating a safe, healthy and happy workplace will ensure that your employees feel homely and stay with your organization for a very long time. Capture their pulse through employee surveys.

2. Open Book Management Style

Sharing information about contracts, sales, new clients, management objectives, company policies, employee personal data etc. ensures that the employees are as enthusiastic about the business as the management. Through this open book process you can gradually create a culture of participative management and ignite the creative endeavor of your work force.. It involves making people an interested party to your strategic decisions, thus aligning them to your business objectives. Be as open as you can. It helps in building trust & motivates employees. Employee self service portal, Manager on-line etc. are the tools available today to the management to practice this style.

3. Performance linked Bonuses

Paying out bonuses or having any kind of variable compensation plan can be both an incentive and a disillusionment, based on how it is administered and communicated. Bonus must be designed in such a way that people understand that there is no payout unless the company hits a certain level of profitability. Additional criteria could be the team's success and the individual's performance. Never pay out bonus without measuring performance, unless it is a statutory obligation.

4. 360 Degree Performance Management Feedback System

This system, which solicits feedback from seniors (including the boss), peers and subordinates has been increasingly embraced as the best of all available methods for collecting performance feedback. Gone are the days of working hard to impress only one person, now the opinions of all matter, especially if you are in a leadership role (at any level). Every person in the team is responsible for giving relevant, positive and constructive feedback. Such systems also help in identifying leaders for higher level positions in the organization. Senior managers could use this feed back for self development.

5. Fair Evaluation System for Employees

Develop an evaluation system that clearly links individual performance to corporate business goals and priorities. Each employee should have well defined reporting relationships. Self rating as a part of evaluation process empowers employees. Evaluation becomes fairer if it is based on the records of periodic counseling & achievements of the employee, tracked over the year. For higher objectivity, besides the immediate boss, each employee should be screened by the next higher level (often called a Reviewer). Cross - functional feedback, if obtained by the immediate boss from another manager (for whom this employee's work is also important), will add to the fairness of the system. Relative ratings of all subordinates reporting to the same manager is another tool for fairness of evaluation. Normalization of evaluation is yet another dimension of improving fairness.

6. Knowledge Sharing

Adopt a systematic approach to ensure that knowledge management supports strategy. Store knowledge in databases to provide greater access to information posted either by the company or the employees on the knowledge portals of the company. When an employee returns after attending any competencies or skills development program, sharing essential knowledge with others could be made mandatory. Innovative ideas(implemented at the work place) are good to be posted on these knowledge sharing platforms. However,what to store & how to maintain a Knowledge base requires deep thinking to avoid clutter.

7. Highlight performers

Create profiles of top performers and make these visible though company intranet, display boards etc. It will encourage others to put in their best, thereby creating a competitive environment within the company. If a systems approach is followed to shortlist high performers, you can surely avoid disgruntlements.

8. Open house discussions and feedback mechanism

Ideas rule the world. Great organizations recognize, nurture and execute great ideas. Employees are the biggest source of ideas. The only thing that can stop great ideas flooding your organization is the lack of an appropriate mechanism to capture ideas. Open house discussions,employee-management meets, suggestion boxes and ideas capture tools such as Critical Incidents diaries are the building blocks that can help the Managers to identify & develop talent.

9. Reward Ceremonies

Merely recognizing talent does not work, you need to couple it with ceremonies where recognition is broadcast. Looking at the Dollar Check is often less significant than listening to the thunderous applause by colleagues in a public forum.

10. Delight Employees with the Unexpected

The last but not least way is to occasionally delight your employees with unexpected things that may come in the form of a reward, a gift or a well-done certificate. Reward not only the top performers but also a few others who are in need of motivation to exhibit their potential.

Fun @ Work Place - What Is the Practical Value of a Fun Workplace?

2011-07-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

What Is the Practical Value of a Fun Workplace?

Q: How could we create a workplace that is both fun and focused? And is it even desirable?

1. Start by having people address the question: "Is it possible to have fun and improve performance?"

Stimulate both sides of the brain through a team discussion and team drawing exercise. Divide participants into diverse groups of four or five and have each group grapple with the following: "What are the sources of workplace stress and conflict and what are the barriers-from the personal to the organizational-to having fun and being creative, passionate and risk-taking (CPR)." After 10 minutes of discussion (with a tape recorder rolling), the groups are then challenged to come up with a thematic group picture or a logo that captures and unifies the individual stress and CPR issues into a visual metaphor.

Consider this example: Years ago, a burnt-out CEO was running his engineering company into the ground. Actually, he was hardly running the company; more likely, he was off flying his small airplane.

Finally, he hired a vice president who called me for some help with stress and team-building. In the workshop, one group drew a picture of a menacing creature, calling this big stalking dinosaur a "Troublesaurus." All the little people in the plant are scattering in fear. However, one person, bigger than the rest, is totally oblivious, has his back to the dinosaur with his head in the clouds while watching a plane fly by. Helps you get the picture, doesn't it?

2. Recognize humor, laughter and creativity connection.

A workplace that encourages fun likely will free up creative juices, and an imaginative and innovative work environment surely blends a sense of individual and team purpose, passion and play.

3. Encourage ongoing team structure and spirit.

Regular meetings provide an ideal time to cultivate and sustain the "fun and focus" approach. Here are some tips:

a) Supervisor wears two hats: Encourage the supervisor to be a team player as well as a member of management. The challenge will be both helping the supervisor loosen the leadership reins and encouraging employees to take more meeting responsibility.

b) Facilitator rotation: To help members take more initiative for running the meeting, including setting the agenda, have employees facilitate the meeting. Consider rotating the facilitator positions every month or two.

c) Wavelength section: Leave 10 minutes or so at the end of your team meeting for extra-ordinary connections-i.e., continuing to solve issues identified earlier, having team members check in with each other around areas where people are bumping heads or around uncommon mutual support or goal accomplishment, etc. And, of course, you can start or end a meeting with a fun story.

d) Team competition: Consider contests among teams or departments with "Organizational IRAs"-Incentives, Rewards and Advancement opportunities-for the most innovative and helpful ideas and procedures.

4. Plan for food, festivities and fun.

I like how a branch manager at the National Institutes of Health connected with her team. Twice a year she invited the members to a barbecue at her house. The agenda: "How can I, how can the branch, how can the institute help you advance your career?" While having fun and strengthening employee motivation and loyalty, she was really generating every day, long-range and global ideas for being more productive and creative as a team and an organization.

Change Management - Key elements in reducing resistance to change

2011-07-26T23:50:00.000-07:00

Key elements in reducing resistance to change

Managing change has always been difficult and will always be fraught with danger because it is so easy to introduce change the wrong way. So the logical question to ask is if there is a perfect way to introduce and manage change. The answer is no. There is no universal solution which applies to all change programmes. Organisations are different, the reasons for change are different, timescales and budgets are different.

Each change programme will have to be implemented on its own merits. But there are things we can do to reduce the level of resistance.

Ways to reduce resistance to change:

Be timely — Announce an impending change as quickly as possible – rumors start very quickly. Delivering bad news is one of the biggest challenges managers face
The need for change — Find lots of ways to demonstrate why the change is necessary. Change management require a compelling change story – communicating it to employees and following it up with ongoing communications and involvement
Involvement — Involve interested parties in the planning of change by asking them for suggestions and incorporating their ideas. If people are involved in change and understand the reasons for it they become supportive of the whole idea and the change process. If people are given the opportunity to take responsibility and accountability for certain parts of a change programme their sense of ownership will make them even stronger advocates
Communication — Lots of it. Change is unsettling because it brings with it an element of uncertainty. And it is the uncertainty which is a major cause of resistance to change. People can relate to facts – good or bad – but uncertainty and contradicting messages breed unease and resistance. Therefore, it is important to communicate with everybody about everything in relation to the upcoming changes in order to reduce the uncertainty. Use any communication channels available and remember that it is impossible to over-communicate change
The past – You should make statements that honor the work and contributions of those who brought such success to the organization in the past, because on a very human but seldom articulated level, your audience will feel asked to betray their former mentors – whether those people remain in the organization or not. A little good diplomacy at the outset can stave off a lot of resistance
Watch for staff reaction — Look for signals that something is not going well with the new change. Rather than trying to force a change, find out what staff doesn’t like about it. Work with their concerns or even rethink the proposed change
Control staff anxiety — Change means a new way of doing things and most people are fearful of the unfamiliar. Provide assurances that there will be support and time to become familiar with the new change. It takes a while for people to adjust
Use social media — Social media platforms are ideal mechanisms to facilitate change because much of change management boils down to ongoing conversations and dialogue in a company. Business leaders should start asking how can social media platforms help achieve business objectives beyond marketing: shaping company culture, strengthening change management initiatives, improving execution of corporate strategy, facilitating corporate communication, and increasing employee engagement.
Storytelling — Story telling can be a powerful tool when you want to drive organizational change. Good leaders tell stories that “cast” them and their organizations as agents of change, rather than defenders of the status quo. As a leader, you cannot eliminate fear, abolish uncertainty or avoid the prospect of change for your company. But you can leverage these emotional navigational stakes to your greatest advantage by telling a purposeful story
Increase engagement by asking questions — Have you ever been “talked at” instead of had someone “talk with”? It doesn’t feel good to have someone talk at you. It leaves you feeling like you might as well not have been there at all. It is much more powerful asking questions. Increase engagement by asking questions when leading change
Creat small wins — Large change management problems are best broken down into smaller ones with concrete achievable goals. Otherwise it can be so overwhelming that solutions seem unattainable – therefore, people often avoid tackling them or come up with single, grand programs that fail. Don’t forget to pour champagne on it.
Training programs — Deliver training programs that develop skills that is needed to suppoert “the new way”
Don’t change for the sake of change — Continual change leads to resistance. Making a change for the purpose of shaking things up makes it more difficult to get acceptance of necessary changes. Save your energy for more important changes
Don’t be afraid to change your mind — Some changes don’t turn out as well as others. Why not say “forget it”. Nothing is gained by forcing staff to accept a change they know isn’t necessary.

Companies most likely to be successful in making change work to their advantage are the ones that no longer view change as a discrete event, but as a constant opportunity to evolve the business.