Gautam Ghosh on Human Resources

Find and know your experts using social tools

2009-11-04T16:08:00.000+05:30

Interesting article in the WSJ how social technologies can help tap into and be aware of an organization's expertise systems.

To date, most such systems are centrally managed efforts, and that's a problem. The typical setup identifies and catalogs experts in a searchable directory or database that includes descriptions of the experts' knowledge and experience, and sometimes links to samples of their work, such as research reports.

But there are gaping holes in this approach. For starters, big companies tend to be dynamic organizations, in a constant state of flux, and few commit the resources necessary to constantly review and update the credentials of often rapidly changing rolls of experts.

Second, users of these systems need more than a list of who knows what among employees. They also need to gauge the experts' "softer" qualities, such as trustworthiness, communication skills and willingness to help. It isn't easy for a centrally managed database to offer opinions in these areas without crossing delicate political and cultural boundaries.

The answer, we think, is to use social-computing tools.

Activities and interactions that occur in blogs, wikis and social networks naturally provide the cues that are missing from current expertise-search systems. A search engine that mines internal blogs, for example, where workers post updates and field queries about their work, will help searchers judge for themselves who is an expert in a given field. Wiki sites, because they involve collaborative work, will suggest not only how much each contributor knows, but also how eager they are to share that knowledge and how well they work with others.

While I agree with the premise - let us agree that social tools won't just enable adoption - specially if the organization has treated external social networking with a different standard (i.e. by banning access and firewalling them :-)

Adoption of tools will also be slow in organizations where automation is being viewed as something to be suspicious of, or if it entails duplication of work and effort.

The other aspect is - not all experts would like to write about their expertise or might not have the skills needed to cultivate readership or networks.

What does one do then?

RiseSmart CEO Sanjay Sathe on the new direction

2009-11-03T17:58:00.001+05:30

I've already interviewed Sanjay Sathe once last year, and that was at a time when RiseSmart was trying to establish its own JobConcierge service for senior management.

RiseSmart is now trying to establish an outplacement service too.

When it recently got $ 4.6 million in VC funding it seemed like a good time to catch up with Sanjay again and to understand what is in the future for RiseSmart.

Here are Sanjay's answers to some questions I sent to him via email:

1. What is RiseSmart planning to do with the latest VC funding?

At this point we’ve proven the business model of our outplacement solution, RiseSmart Transition Concierge, and it’s time to grow market share. So we’re going to expand our sales team while continuing to invest in operations and client service.

It’s really been remarkable that we’ve been able to walk into Fortune 500 companies and win their outplacement business away from longtime, and in some cases deeply entrenched, incumbents. We’ve done it time and again. This reinforces our belief in our vision — that our way of doing outplacement will become the dominant model in the future. If we use the investment from Norwest Venture Partners and Storm Ventures wisely, we’ll be well on our way to making this vision a reality.

2. How is the new strategic direction being received by existing clients?

Nothing has changed for existing clients of our consumer service, RiseSmart Job Concierge. What’s changed is our marketing strategy. When we launched, we planned to build a B2C offering to compete with TheLadders — and we believe our service is a better value than TheLadders. But TheLadders is spending millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads, and the consumer market in general is crowded, so the investment required to cut through the clutter and build a brand is high.

With RiseSmart Transition Concierge, on the other hand, we are dealing with a smaller universe of prospective clients and the noise level is a lot lower. Corporate clients are hearing the facts and connecting with our message. As a result, we’re bringing thousands of jobseekers into our system much more cost-effectively than by trying to reach them individually through a broad-based ad campaign. And because satisfaction levels have been very high among users, we can count on reaching new B2C customers through word of mouth.

3. What are the biggest challenges that a firm like RiseSmart faces?

Any upstart company faces challenges in going up against the big players and old guard. Outplacement is a $3 plus billion industry, so the entrenched players have a lot to protect; they have been enjoying very nice margins for a long time. Now, we are threatening to permanently reduce the cost structure of the industry, and they don’t like it. We expect them to throw the kitchen sink at us from a sales and marketing perspective as we continue to win away their clients. But we enjoy a good challenge.

4. What other players in the industry are you watching very closely - and with respect :-) ?

We watch the traditional players like Right Management and Lee Hecht Harrison closely — and we do respect them for all they’ve accomplished. They built this industry. We’re just ready to take the baton and move things forward. We expect our competitors to adapt and to begin offering services similar to ours — but we’re confident they won’t be able to do it as well, and certainly not at our price point.

5. What should job seekers do to land jobs of their choice?

The most important thing is to use your time wisely. You had a routine in your job that filled your days — and now that is gone, like a rug pulled out from under you. How do you fill all those hours?

What you shouldn’t do is sit in front of your computer searching different job boards for hours at a time. It’s a time filler that can make you feel productive, but it’s not a good use of your time. This is particularly true because job boards are notoriously inefficient — how many times have you searched for “executive” jobs and wound up reading job descriptions for executive assistants, for example?

That’s why our Job Concierge service — which is not only our B2C offering but also the core of Transition Concierge — is so valuable. We do the online searching for you so you can focus on tasks that are more important, like leveraging social networks, sharpening your resume, crafting custom cover letters, and networking at industry and professional events. This is the smarter route to finding a new job.

Changing the name of the Blog

2009-10-30T10:20:00.000+05:30

This is just an administrative post :-)

I realised that the focus of this blog has moved from purely HR to aspects in the new way of working within Organizations - that impact organizational design, structure, systems, tools, processes and development.

Hence thought that a name change was in order :-)

Hence my moniker for this New Way of Working is Organizations 2.0 - focussing on how people, communities and companies are integrating this new approach to working :-)

Knowledge Work and Collaboration

2009-10-30T10:11:00.000+05:30

A very insightful article in McKinsey's What matters column on the challenges of measuring productivity of collaboration in Knowledge workers, and also insightful comments.

Primarily the article argues that while technology is deployed - productivity of collaboration is different than the way productivity is measured in the traditional deployment of technology.

The article states:

Our research suggests that improvements depend upon getting a better fix on who actually is doing the collaborating within companies, as well as understanding the details of how that interactive work is done. Just as important is deciding how to support interactions with technology—in particular, Web 2.0 tools such as social networks, wikis, and video. There is potential for sizeable gains from even modest improvements. Our survey research shows that at least 20 percent and as much as 50 percent of collaborative activity results in wasted effort. And the sources of this waste—including poorly planned meetings, unproductive travel time, and the rising tide of redundant e-mail communications, just to name a few—are many and growing in knowledge-intense industries.

The steps the article suggests are:

Defining knowledge workers and how they work
Applying technologies

I would add that other support processes and structures followed by the organization must be analysed to understand how it is impacting collaboration too.

One of the main issues that become bottlenecks is the disincentive to collaborate and a tact approval or even explicit reward system that focuses on contra-behaviors.

For example if a new worker sees that the people being praised and held up as star performers are lone workers - that becomes a very strong reinforcing psychological mechanism to not collaborate.

Tweeting Better than Facebook within Organizations

2009-10-27T06:01:00.000+05:30

Interesting post in the Blogspotting blog :)

SocialText CEO Eugene Lee argues that Twitter might be a better model than Facebook for next-gen communications within companies, so-called Enterprise 2.0. Facebook's trouble? Reciprocal friending. The problem, he says, is that employees on corporate social networks start collecting friendships of execs. "Because the Rolodex is public, it becomes a matter of VP trading cards."

A preferable model for corporate relationships, he says, is Twitter, where people lend their attention, not necessarily their friendship. In SocialText's Twitter-like corporate offering, Signals, more people are likely to "follow" the CEO--assuming he or she has anything interesting to Tweet.

For those who don't know - Yammer is a tool which is said to be Twitter for the organization!

Are you using it? Do you like Yamming (!) in your firm?

Culture and Collaboration

2009-10-27T04:59:00.000+05:30

Jack Vinson posts his reaction to this Web Worker Daily article, Corporate Culture, Not Technology, Drives Online Collaboration by Will Kelly about what kind of culture will facilitate collaboration.

My take on this is that the elements of culure/context are important, but also as important are structures and processes to enable collaboration.

One big example is: what behaviors are rewarded?

We can try until we cry, and deploy the best collaboration tools - however if people get assessed for individual work and contribution - collaboration will not be the first thing they think of.

And we come back to what we call "the ladder of engagement" in 2020 Social. People will adopt the tool naturally - and most of them will be consumers and curators - not collaborators and creators - which should be the goal of the team leading the change.

How to get a professional services firm started on Social Media

2009-10-23T22:36:00.000+05:30

Here are a few ways in which a professional services firm can quickly establish a presence and connect with prospective clients and stakeholders

Integrate the Website and the Blog

The website and blog would probably be the "mothership" of any firm's web presence.

Content (text, pictures, videos) would be the reason:

a. Search engines would get keywords to index the site
b. People would find the site – and subscribe to get the updates.
c. This content could then be syndicated to other websites – by RSS feeds.

Linkedin

Linkedin is a business networking site – and firms and their employees can build visibility and brand equity by engaging with groups and in Q and A. They can also utilize the event feature to showcase organizational events.

Facebook

A firm's page on facebook page does two things - it builds a community of fans and can also syndicates the blog's RSS feeds (for example the 2020 Social FB page) – so that every time the blog is updated the fans would get the update on their facebook home page. The ability to upload pictures would also focus on giving a firm a human face.

Twitter

Twitter is a status updation service by which people choose to follow users. A firm can start a twitter account that also syndicates the RSS feed. This however would be most useful when people choose to follow the firm's status on Twitter (example 2020 Social) - and the firm can get its employees to tweet individually and have conversations with interested people.

Other services like Slideshare, Scribd

These are services which help in sharing documents and presentations which can then be embedded as widgets on the blog/website of the firm. This also helps firms to come out favorably on searches engines as these sites get ranked quite highly by search engines.

Discussion forum

Various services like discussion fora where influencers of the domain and various e-groups on Google Groups and Yahoogroups where professionals congregate- engaging in conversations there would also provide a firm with huge exposure to a firm.

Next steps for a firm after exploring what suits its needs...

1. Define metrics for objectives
2. Focus on a couple of tools
3. Training and skilling employees on engaging in social media/web presence

Now also blogging at...

2009-10-22T09:35:00.000+05:30

The good thing about joining a Social Business Strategy firm is that you get to blog about work related stuff :-)

So join me as I explore how organizations can utilise social tools and emerging technologies to facilitate communities, communication and collaboration - on my 2020 Social blog :-)

Making Organizations Social - am joining 20:20 Social

2009-10-19T23:26:00.000+05:30

Ok, here's an announcement that I want to make. Tomorrow, 20th October, I am joining 20:20 Social, India's first social business strategy consulting firm

I guess, what you're asking is - what the heck is a social business strategy consulting firm?

Social business is the new term (or meme, if you will) that is emerging to describe organizations that are leveraging social software and tools to connect with customers and other stakeholders - that's right folks, bringing the social web into the organization.

As I have believed - such tools (call them web 2.0 or whatever) help in facilitating transparency and openness and help achieve the true goals of Organization Development

In my role in 2020 social (follow it on twitter) I would be looking at the enterprise practice - or essentially how organizations can deploy social tools to empower employees, build collaboration, develop knowledge and positively impact business. Yeah, some people call this Enterprise 2.0 too.

It takes me back to the starting point of my career - when I started out looking at organizational processes for Knowledge Management and then e-learning.

However as much as I love tools - I know that culture always trumps tactics, tools and even strategy. So I am looking at leveraging my HR and OD learnings to help client organizations deploy these social tools.

And I am super-excited to be working along with the amazing 20:20 social team that includes an old blogging acquaintance Gaurav Mishra who blogs at gauravonomics.com. What makes Gaurav a kindred spirit is his openness and transparency as CEO - he blogs about the organization as he manages it :-) Check out Gaurav's posts on how to build an Open and Collaborative Professional Services Firm, and Top 10 FAQs on Building a Social Business Strategy Firm in India.

Am also looking forward to working with a true blue Thought Leader Dave Evans (not the AC/DC guy ;-) author of a book on Social Media Marketing who blogs at http://readthis.com

You can download 20:20 Social's position paper on Social Business Strategy as a pdf, or read it on scribd.

Who are the other folks who are doing something similar?

Well there are two that I know of - the Altimeter Group and Dachis Group.

20:20 Social has just started its journey and I am very excited to be part of something so new and emergent.

Whee! Wish me luck!

Tribalization of Business study by Deloitte

2009-10-13T22:54:00.000+05:30

While there are trends - Deloitte's study says that businesses are still some time away from leveraging the full power of social media and networking communities

As the study says:

Some of the biggest obstacles to creating a successful community are getting people to:

Join (24 percent)

Stay engaged (30 percent)
Keep returning (21 percent)

These can be easily remedied through partnering and new management practices. However, the study indicates that very few companies are taking the steps necessary to overcome these challenges.

While 58 percent of respondents evaluated partnering with existing communities, complementary vendors or end users when developing their community, 55 percent of the companies that evaluated a partnership did not actually partner.

The study also revealed significant gaps between community goals (such as generating word of mouth, customer loyalty and brand awareness) and how success is being measured.

The top two analytics for measuring success are:

Number of active users (34 percent)
How often people post/comment (32 percent)

These results indicate that participation is still considered to be the biggest measure of success. Potentially more useful analytics, however, such as increase in search engine rank and citations/links on other sites, are less often utilized, highlighting a mismatch between the desired outcome and how that outcome is measured.

Additional Findings

Of the companies surveyed, a majority agreed that the following continue to be top business objectives of online communities:

Increase word-of-mouth (38 percent)
Increase customer loyalty (34 percent)
Increase brand awareness (30 percent)
Improve idea generation (29 percent)
Improve the quality of customer support (23 percent)

However, in the majority of companies surveyed, marketing continues to be the primary driver of online communities, resulting in a significant gap between community goals and the organizations’ capability to fully leverage these communities on an enterprise wide basis.

Of course, these findings are US centric but we are seeing Indian firms also starting out leveraging the social web.

OD and HR Consulting Case Studies

2009-10-09T11:58:00.000+05:30

On the Vyaktitva website we recently uploaded some interesting case studies.

They are:

Developing Hiring Managers' and Recruiters' skills in conducting Competency Based Interviewing
Leapfrogging an Organization's Training Capability
Building frontline leaders' skills in Coaching and Developing their employees

Would love your comments/suggestions etc on the site :-)

New Social Business Careers: Technopologist?

2009-10-09T10:56:00.000+05:30

The Fast Forward blog pointed me to this interesting article on someone in P&G who is the marketing brand manager for Digital Business Strategy.

I've always believed new careers emerge from a hybrid of earlier careers/skill areas and Dave Knox reiterates my belief. As he says:

In its most simplistic description, a Marketing Technopologist combines the skills of a Marketer, Technologist, and Social Anthropologist. As a Technologist, you might not be a “coder” but you know your way around the language and culture of tech. You understand things like API and Open Source or why Facebook Connect working with Open ID is a big deal. Through the lens of a Social Anthropologist, you can then look at that technology and understand the impact it will have on society and culture. You can recognize that the technology behind the Social Graph can actually have a huge impact on how we make decisions or shop. And finally, the marketer will build upon both of these elements, recognizing the business potential created.

Interesting to note how social businesses is giving rise to new careers.

Tomorrow's HR professional

2009-10-08T10:37:00.000+05:30

This piece below is a work of fiction - by an hyperactive imagination. Taking career decisions on its basis might not be advisable :-)

Year - 2025 AD

Month - January

8:30 am - Anita grabs her coffee and boots up her communication device - it's been a long weekend and she doesn't know what to expect from her day at work.

Tonnes of h-mails. One is from her best friend with a collection of pictures and videos and an audio from their last vacation. Anita smiled
The next h-mail was from the HR Director of MegaCorp. He said he had an assignment for her. Could she go through the employee database and identify trends and suggestion areas? He needed an approach from her tomorrow if she wanted to accept it.
It was followed by a h-mail was from the People Strategy officer of GlobalBank - her voice came through the comm "Anita, we came across your thoughts on the learning professionals network on one of the HR networks, and wanted to explore if you can oversee our strategy to mentor the high potential employees of our finance function?"

Anita smiled. She was bored and tired of the employee database analysis kind of work. MegaCorp could go take a walk. However, before she agreed to GlobalBank's assignment - she had to do her own research.

Anita took a big gulp of coffee, fired up her personal search assistant and spoke into it: "People Strategy history of GlobalBank" - in instants all the videos, documents and inferences by the search assistant (who knew her areas of interest) was there for her to go through.

After an hour Anita grinned. She liked the challenge that GlobalBank was throwing her way.

In the next 30 minutes she put together a high level approach note about how she would like to go ahead with it, attached her HR skill certification which meant a specific fee structure that she would charge for the project.

She then attached her videos and texts on the specific intervention and sent it off by h-mail.

Phew that was a good morning's work. She needed a coffee.

11 am - Anita had finished her morning sandwich and salad and looked at her to-do list. She still had to recruit 4 people to work on a project for a real estate firm. Over the next 2 hours Anita dipped into her contact lists - furiously working her virtual rolodex and got some great leads. Five people asked her to h-mail the videos of the project and one actually h-mailed back his Real Estate sales proficiency level to signify interest in the project.

At 1 pm Anita needed to eat something more substantial. She got into her electric car and drove to the nearest organic eating joint.

Back on her desk at 2:30 pm Anita decided to connect with some folks and merely chat up. She pulled out a h-mail video and saw which ones of her contacts was reachable.

Neil, a specialist in helping organizations mould their culture in these changing times was online and smiled when she pinged him. However he was on text only mode.

Anita spoke "hey Neil, what interesting stuff are you doing?" knowing that it'll show up instantaneously on his screen as text.
Neil typed :" Am on a boring conference call with the top team of the Distributed Collective and they're wondering how their new vision needs to be supplanted with a new organizational structure" he grinned into the video.

Anita spoke "That sounds exciting, Neil. Ok, I just wanted to share that there's a talk of a mentoring project for a big bank's high potentials and it seems that it'll be a long project. Possibly like 3-4 years. It's exciting for me to venture into this field - and it's thanks to your suggestion that I share my thoughts on the HR learning channel."

Neil smiled and typed "That's great news. Congrats!"

Anita typed: "Still too soon to congratulate me, but I want you to mentor me during this project. I'll need your help!"

Neil grinned "of course, and you know what my skill level and therefore rates are."

Anita made a face "Yeah I know and you'll surely get your fees"

Neil typed: "Great, I gotta go now. They want me to say something now" he grinned

Anita said "Ok, take care. Live long and prosper"

"Live long and prosper" Neil typed back.

Anita stretched out and turned off the h-mail. She needed to get out and exercise now. She grabbed her stuff and headed for the gym. Tomorrow seemed to be an interesting day ahead.

Actually tonight was an all night virtual conference where she was presenting the new compensation philosophy for GoodElectric - a client of hers, and the other HR project leads as well as project teams from Ops and Sales and Marketing worldwide would be there to poke holes into her proposal - she was sure of it. They had already left suggestions in the h-wiki of the GoodElectric HR collaborative space, but she was sure tonight they would not pull their punches.

She grinned.

Let them try, she thought.

No vulgarity in salaries please!

2009-10-05T00:01:00.000+05:30

The government after its austerity drive - now seems to be picking on corporate India to catch the fever and start cutting salaries.

By calling CEO salaries vulgar the Corporate Affairs minister is caught up in the wrong battle.

Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Sunday (October 4) said the government will keep a tab on what kind of salaries the country's CEOs will be paid adding that nobody in politics or outside, has reached a level of liberalism where vulgarity is also a fundamental right.

The issue regarding remuneration of company CEOs is to be debated by the Parliamentary Standing Committee, which is scrutinising the provisions of the new Companies Bill tabled in the Lok Sabha in August.

Just to put it in perspective the annual remuneration of some CEOs work out to be 50 crore rupees, which is 12,500 times the per capita income in India.

What Mr Khurshid seems to forget is that in the corporate world even if promoter CEOs pay themselves "vulgar" salaries, wagging a disapproving finger at them is not the answer - introducing measures to safeguard the shareholders and encouraging good corporate governance is the way to go forward.

Something that politicians and bureaucrats seem not to remember when they run things like national carriers to the ground!

Jobs situation improving in India

2009-10-04T23:48:00.001+05:30

I guess we all knew it, but now the numbers prove it. However I'd have to say that 2009-10 is looking much better!

New job creation dropped by over 40 per cent in 2008-09, with 469 companies studied having recruited 1,35,987 employees during the year under review, compared to 2,28,968 in the 2007-08.

The banking sector, State Bank of India in particular, has come to the rescue, while software service companies are employing less numbers compared to the previous year. The latter sector was a major job creator in the past five years and is now facing a slowdown in business from BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) sectors on account of the financial crisis abroad. Of 36 software services’ companies studied, hiring increased by 69,430 in 2008-09, compared to 103,118 in 2007-08.

The crash in stock prices after the liquidation of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 had hurt new employment in securities and commodities trading service firms, while the liquidity crunch saw construction companies pruning staff strength due to the slowing in demand for housing and commercial offices. Sectors such as automobiles, steel, textiles, hotels and media also pruned hiring due to the slowdown.

The HT tells us the good news :-)

Automobile firms, some of which clocked record sales in September mirroring strong consumer demand, appear to have recruited the most. A labour ministry survey showed the sector recruited 18,000 additional employees in April-June.

Information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO), sectors heavily dependent on overseas contracts, appear to be doing well. The survey showed that the “non-exporting” (companies that do not earn significant revenues from overseas clients) IT and BPO companies hired an additional 15,000 employees during the April-June quarter, the survey showed.

Recruitment agencies and headhunting firms confirmed that enquiries by prospective employers have started trickling in and many expect hiring to grow sharply after January.

“Leadership positions are opening up but jobs across the board will open up only by January to March as employers are cautious of over hiring,” Rajesh AR, vice president at Bangalore-based staffing firm TeamLease Services.

HR Outsourcing to get more jobs to India?

2009-10-04T23:45:00.000+05:30

Interesting article in the ET - however offshore HR outsourcing which is being done is comparatively low end currently in India.

There's however potential for this work itself to be done cheaper in the level 2 and 3 cities in India - as metros become more and more expensive for doing it.

Most of human resource outsourcing (HRO) contracts coming up for renewal are likely to witness a significant restructuring .This is likely to see more such work being offshored to India.

Everest Group, in a study ‘Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO): End-of-Term Market in HRO’ said the areas of restructuring range from modifying the number and type of in-scope processes, to enhancing delivery models through global sourcing, to introducing alternative pricing models.

According to the research firm, about 75-85 % of engagements will likely be extended while 15-25 % will be repatriated or transferred to new suppliers.

Some great HR blog posts

2009-09-28T23:38:00.000+05:30

The HR vigilance blog posts about the desperation of a job hunter and the predicament of a recruiter in a plant in central India.

Wipro's Chief Marketing Officer Jessie Paul has a response to my post saying that Marketing is the new HR. As I tweeted back "HR is too important to be left to the HR people!" it's great if Marketing sees itself as the new HR!

Penelope Trunk has 6 tips on doing a long distance job hunt

Dub Dubs still can't resolve between competencies and critical experiences. I would think that critical experiences go into building context specific competencies - but I agree that it's not a either/or affair.

Mike blogs on using Social Media in Recruiting and Selection

Jon Ingham posts on organisational mojo!

Ford Harding reflects back on some lessons he's learnt

HBS working knowledge is looking at what's the solution for excessive Executive pay

JJ Hunter has his insightful strategic posts on the Future of HR

The Downturn and the Future of Work

2009-09-21T21:09:00.000+05:30

Remember the scenario planning report by PwC that I blogged about almost two years ago?

Well I received an update from them which talks about how three fictitious companies (one each for the Blue, Green and Orange worlds they talked about earlier) emerge from the current downturn and where they'll reach in 2020.

So the metrics driven global organization emerges and thrives by taking the following approach to managing people:

1. Foster a small-business culture
2. A meticulous search and selection process
3. Invest in employee development, both in- and outside work
4. Link employee engagement, productivity, retention and customer loyalty
5. A competitive atmosphere and high performance equals unique rewards

Whereas the Green World company focuses on
1. Rich rewards instead of short-term incentives
2. People metrics paint the whole picture
3. High levels of employee engagement

The network based organization (Orange organization) focus on the following ways to managing people

1. Rich rewards instead of short-term incentives
2. Create careers in motion
3. Market individuals as companies, rather than freelancers
4. Shift from buying talent to buying product

You can download the report from this PwC site.

Overall I think it's an interesting premise - that slowly all organizations will veer towards three distinct kinds of firms (irrespective of ownership or national origin) depending on what drives them - and how they are structured.

In fact, the question about the vision of an organization and how it is structured is an oft overlooked one.

Structure influences the actual processes, metrics even the goals that people follow - than merely the ones they "should" focus on.

Coming back, I think there would be some organizations that would be hybrid of these organizations that PwC envisages - I can see Orange structures influencing the Blue as well as Green organizations too

Competencies of HR professionals in Singapore

2009-09-20T22:46:00.000+05:30

The largest ongoing study of the competencies of HR professionals across the world conducted by RBL Group and The University of Michigan, came up with six key findings that constitute the competencies of HR professionals.

I got the following press release from the Singapore Human Capital Summit 2009, a premier conference on managing and developing human capital (or human resources), organized in Asia. Three studies focusing on HR in Asia will be released between now and the beginning of the conference on September 29th.
Over the last 20 years, The RBL Group and the University of Michigan have conducted the largest ongoing study of the competencies of HR professionals across the world with a database of more than 45,000 people from North and Latin America, Europe, Australia, China and India. In the most recent round of their global research, The RBL Group found that six categories or factors constitute the competencies of HR professionals:

Credible Activist,
Culture and Change Steward,
Talent Manager / Organisational Designer,
Strategy Architect,
Operational Executor and
Business Ally.

The preliminary findings of the Singapore study revealed that while local HR professionals do the best job at being a credible activist, they need to strengthen the rest of the competencies, especially the Business Ally competency, in order to add greater value to business results. These findings are similar to the global results.

Another finding showed that the impact local HR professionals can have on business results and their personal performance is noticeably greater than the impact of their global HR counterparts (by up to 12 per cent) when they can harness these competencies effectively. This is despite the finding that they are rated consistently lower in all categories of HR competencies compared to global findings. This may indicate that the expectations on local HR professionals by their business partners are greater than elsewhere in the world - their line management colleagues expect them to be better and to contribute even more than their global counterparts.

Commenting on the implications of the findings, Professor Dave Ulrich, Partner and Co-founder of The RBL Group, said: “With a higher expectation by their line management colleagues, HR professionals in Singapore need to more effectively translate their business knowledge to strategy formulation and implementation for business success.”

Professor Wayne Brockbank, Partner of The RBL Group and principal investigator for this study, added: “Singapore HR practitioners also need to have greater knowledge and skills at aligning their HR activities to create effective business cultures and to be a more effective change management agent. Essentially, they need to understand their roles and agendas through which they create more customer-focused organisations. The internal clients of Singapore HR professionals expect them to add greater value. The HR community in Singapore has a mandate to develop greater knowledge and skills that enable them to add greater value to the business.”

This Blog has moved to a new URL

2009-09-19T00:00:00.001+05:30

Hi, I finally bit the bullet and bought a domain name http://www.gautamblogs.com and from immediate effect this blog would be available there.

So if you've added this blog to your link lists/blogrolls, please update the link :-)

Apart from that you have to not do anything else.

If you're reading this blog using the RSS feed then the new posts would be redirected (thanks Blogger/Feedburner) and even the old blogspot.com URLs should hopefully be working and be redirected :-)

This was done using Google/Blogger's custom domain service buying the domain through Blogger itself, and I got a free Google Apps account with it too :-)

Quite painless - specially for someone as technologically challenged as me.

Yes, I am a little scared about things like - will I build my PageRank back to 5 - and will the number of inbound links and Technorati authority - but I figured that sometimes you just have to let go of all the laurels of the past and chart a new course - and I am feeling excited for the future!

Trainers Need to Build Their Skills Too

2009-09-18T09:58:00.000+05:30

Most people get into corporate training accidentally - after being a subject matter expert in various areas like sales, customer service, HR.

With the result that many Training (or Learning, if you will!) professionals are either self taught in the process of training - or have modeled themselves after a particular trainer whom they have been an apprentice under.

Even when someone like me - who chose to get into training as a personal choice after my MBA - works in the training function (which is becoming more and more distinct from the HR function - at least in large organizations) a large part of the initial years is spent in managing the function along with learning the ropes of training.

However, a decent training of trainers is rare - and most of the time becomes a hybrid between presentation skills and public speaking. The skills of facilitation are taught as an afterthought - and these skills are rarely ever taught:

Needs analysis to segregate skill related needs with other factors interfering with learning - so that one doesn't really look at every business need with a 'training' lens
Linking learning gaps directly to business needs
Understanding Adult learning principles and models like Kolb's theory, Bloom's Taxonomy, Donna Walker's cycle so that one can design a learning intervention with a high level of impact
Knowing how to use various developmental methods (like case studies, role plays, self reflection instruments, videos) to build specific skills

Yes, as my colleague Gagan Adlakha says "Training is both a science as well as an art, knowing the science behind it and practicing it well will enhance one's art"

Here's presenting a training program for Learning Professionals by Vyaktitva called The Big Ticket (Disclaimer: I am associated with Vyaktitva, and I have undergone this program) that enables you to do all of the above - and arms you with tools and techniques to become a much more impactful trainer.

The Cultural Fit

2009-09-17T23:09:00.000+05:30

Image via Wikipedia

Very often - if you are a job seeker - you will get a response to your interview which is something like this:

"Thank you for your interest in our organization, and though you have impressive credentials we regret to announce that we do not find a profile fit in the organization for you"

That is a load of jargon to say : Hey, you'd be a round peg in a square hole if we hired you.

Cultural fit is what recruiters and hiring managers suddenly discover in a time of recession. It describes the congruence in the values of the organization and the individual candidate.

However, the big problem is that nobody ever really measures the values - both of the organization and of the individual.

How it is assessed is by subjective hunches by the couple of individuals in the staffing process - in which the thoughts of the hiring executive is something like this:

"Hmm, this guy seems like a risk junkie, he won't do well in our conservative culture"

Often, these subjective inferences are usually correct - and hiring processes weed out the highly suitable for the role but unsuitable for the organization people out.

However, I think that's not the way to go about it.

That is because it strengthens the existing culture - and a strong culture is a liability in the churning changes of these times.

A strong culture can come in the way of change - resisting process and structural changes - and hiring people who don't fit the norm is one of the ways in which organizations can test their tolerance for things outside their norm

So what do you hire for?

Cultural non-fits or cultural fits?

Links for 2009-09-16 [del.icio.us]

2009-09-17T00:00:00-07:00

Employees are the new media

2009-09-16T22:23:00.001+05:30

I posted about how in the age of social communication via the net, Steve Rubel talked of how all employees are marketers.

Now comes a post how HR is the new marketing and employees are the new media.

Some top of the mind thoughts:

Employers need to deal with the fact that their employees will be online - often showcasing their organizations' affiliations (you have heard of Facebook networks, right?)
Employees are impacted by their friends' social circles more than they realise.
Sharing and connecting is not just a frivolous need - it could be the antidote to passivity
Understanding the employees who join such networks could be the key.

Traditionally, HR and Marketing have been diametrically separate functions - even if they have both roots in human behavior and perception - the depths of organization behavior.

So now when getting a message across becomes as easy as No Money Marketing and so is it time for HR to learn from Marketing and vice versa as Abhijit keeps telling me?

HR becomes Humor Resources?

2009-09-15T12:07:00.000+05:30

An article in the The Times of India puts together examples of how HR people are injecting a little bit of fun in the workplace.

The trend is not new - quite a few organizations specially in the new-age industries driven by knowledge workers - like IT and BPO- have identified that young people who work in their organizations need to lighten up sometimes.

And don't forget, even in the industrial economy HR was earlier called welfare - where 'taking care' of employees was seen as the first duty - and organizing family events and picnics were often more central to the perception of employees in the organizations.

However, if you're a person who's keen to pursue a career in Human Resources just because you think you're great in organizing such events - sorry to burst your bubble :-)

Events like these are merely the tip of the iceberg, and to really build a culture of fun and openness and transparency in a firm requires it to be the DNA of the organization by building it into the structure and processes of the organization.

Without that, these would seem like artificial artifacts.

Don't get me wrong, I think having a sense of fun and humor is extremely important to HR people - most of the time we are a serious and stuffy lot - hiding behind terms like 'confidentiality' (more on that sometime later!).

However if one wishes to join HR only because they like organizing fun events maybe he/she should try being an event manager than a HR manager :D

Listed as a top 50 Career Management Blogger

2009-09-13T20:15:00.000+05:30

Ok

This was a surprise for me to find out when they emailed me

Thanks for reading and liking the blog, dear readers. All this wouldn't ever be possible without your attention and support!

Check out the list, there are tonnes of great bloggers listed from some of my favorites to some I've come across the first time.

Links for 2009-08-19 [del.icio.us]

2009-08-20T00:00:00-07:00

Study: New PR Hires Must Blog, Tweet, Use SocNets
Top Social Media Wish-List Social networking, blogging and tweeting are the top-three most important social media communications skills for job candidates to have, according to the PR and marke ...

Links for 2009-08-17 [del.icio.us]

2009-08-18T00:00:00-07:00

Survey says Networking, Social Networking Best Job Search Tools
Forget job fairs and spamming potential employers with your résumé. If you're looking for a new job, networking should be your primary job search strategy, according to the results of a recent ...
Top Indian Blogs by Indian Eye
The Top Indian Blogs list is a showcase of some of the most interesting blogs in the country, and was selected after much consideration. ...

Links for 2009-07-23 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-24T00:00:00-07:00

Small Businesses Marketing via Twitter
For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing. It is far easier to set up and update a Twitter account than to maintain a Web page. And because s ...
10 Indians Twitter Users to Follow
We have compiled a list of 10 active twitter users you might like to follow. This list consists of famous Tweeps who are all quite frequent on Twitter and have an healthy interaction with thei ...

Links for 2009-07-17 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-18T00:00:00-07:00

Hilarious: Goldman Sachs Internal Memo
I’d like to thank everyone who made this possible—for a second time. Respect to President Obama for keeping us in the green. Thanks to the big guy upstairs (me). And let’s not forget all t ...
Top 10 Celebrities Who Filed Bankruptcy
Check out this list I found at totalbankruptcy.com Abraham Lincoln, Larry King amongst them ! ...
Business Journalism Is Dying?
There is more interest, argument and passion surrounding the condition and future of American business than there has been in several generations. And yet, in the space of three months, two busi ...
10 U.S. Jobs for the Recession
AccountantEntrepreneurPolice OfficerNetwork and Computer SystemsNurseNutritionistPhysical TherapistTeacherMathematicianGovernment Manager via time.com Interesting list by Time.com - as th ...