Farewell of an HR professional

I have recently moved on from my assignment as Head – HR, Admin. & IT Services. I worked with the Company for 4+ years. When I joined the Company, it was less than 200 resources and when I was moving out, the resource count has crossed over 550+.
This was an IT product Company and the large component of the workforce comprised that of software engineers / technocrats. They are generally not very expressive / descriptive in their feelings and hence you always keep on wondering regarding their feedback on various HR initiatives that you would have taken. To my surprise, I started getting lot so email & phone call as soon as news of my departure was made public. Though I had resigned 3 months back giving 3 months full notice period, we had decided not to make the news public in view of the kind of role one plays as HR Head and it becomes difficult to perform the role once the news becomes public.
On the day of the farewell, there was gathering of more then 300+ resources. I was really touched by the gestures shown by most of them. Many of them were unable to express what they wanted to say but they just held my hand and told me “we wish that you keep smiling forever and bring happiness to people wherever you go” – As an HR professional, you really fill that you have justified your role in whatever you have done. You get satisfaction of achieving purpose in life. When you are working you do not realize that how many lives you are touching upon by your actions or (inactions). It is really gratifying that you played a role in bringing in positive change for the people working around you. Most of the cases, you have just done your job professionally for which you are paid for. This is such a bless situation, you are paid for doing something which you like and people feel that you have done a great job.
These kinds of incidences bring in more sense of responsibility and accountability on you as an HR professional.

Employee relations – Risk mitigation

Case on “Expectation Management” and “Employee relations risk mitigation”

Background:

 The ABC Company is in the business of Market research & data analysis
 Headquarter in Baroda and branch offices across 19 locations in India including all Metros, A & B type cities.
 The existing Company was a result of M&A of 3 different business entities over a period of 4 years
 Total employee strength of 1200 nos. – Management = 170 Staff = 700 Resources on voucher payment = 330
 Management and Staff are on rolls of the Company as known as Full Time Employee (FTE) while resources on voucher are considered as temporary resources.
 The average service of resources on voucher is 5 years.
 The resources on voucher payment are primarily engaged into the data collection activity which is a vital link / input for the Company’s core business i.e. Market research
 The resources on voucher were not entitled for their legal dues like Leave, leave encashment, bonus, PF, ESIC etc.
 Based on the HR due diligence report, the Management agrees to make this entire arrangement legal with a condition that they would not be taken on the rolls of the Company

Challenges:

 With the above background, the only feasible option that HR had was to outsource them to a contractor and hire his services to make the entire arrangement legal
 The resources on voucher have nurtured an expectation over the years that they would be absorbed on the rolls of the Company
 With this arrangement, resources would not get the opportunity to be on the rolls of the Company as FTE
 IF the resources do not accept this arrangement and approach the Govt. authorities with the grievance then there was a great risk involved form the labour laws non-compliance perspective
 It was also difficult to find the Contractor who will agree to provide this kind of arrangement
 If this impacts the routine data collection work of the resources involved, it would directly impact the monthly / fortnightly Market research report generation activity of the Company which is core business of the Company.

Process followed:

 The Management approval was taken with a detail description of the risk involved
 A contractor was identified who was ready to be part of this strategy and was ready to match the execution speed required for such kind of activities
 A database of the resources was prepared with all the required details
 A strategy was worked out to attempt this location-wise and the location with less number of resources involved was chosen first and relatively difficult locations were chosen subsequently
 The regional characteristic of the resources was a major consideration
 A detail brief was prepared to address the resources with the benefit analysis of this entire initiative
 The informal leaders within each group were identified and they were given briefing on this entire activity
 The entire activity was completed over a period of 60 days with all the resources on voucher converted thru the Contractor as a ‘Outsourcing Model’

Learning take away:

 Role of HR as business enabler
 Balancing resources expectations v/s cost & Management verdict
 Planning & execution of the entire process without disturbing routine business activities
 “Strategy” angle of the entire initiative
 Deliberations on “HR due diligence”

Competency mapping programme @TVRLS – Experience sharing

I was actively looking for some certification / diploma programmes which would help me hone my skills as an HR professional. I was going thru all the literature available on net regarding this but was not very convinced on the programmes. Of course, with my own criteria of Cost, time involvement, potential of value add in my profile etc.

I was sure of one thing that I wanted to do this for not sake of doing this OR to add in to the list of qualifications but to really upgrade my understanding on core HR processes.

I met Dr. T V Rao in the one of the programmes organized by National HRD Network, Ahmedabad chapter. I have always seen him as “Guru” in the field of HR and his contributions & commitment to the cause of HR profession do not require any elaboration, He is founder Chairman of Dr. T V Rao Learning Systems (Known as TVRLS) and they conduct short duration programmes for working professionals.

I was under dilemma on the various aspects of the programme. I immediately realized that this requires a change in the mindset. To accept yourself as student after 15 years of work experience itself is a great challenge that I had to counter with myself. The practical difficulties like not having time due to busy schedule, not able to devote time to family in the first place then why to add additional load on the time allocation for this activity etc. etc. were the thought in the mind.
Countering all these arguments with self, I decided to enroll myself for the programme. The course was spread over a span of 6 months involving self study module, assignment submission, contact sessions & final project. All the course material started flowing in with all self-study assignments. It was time to revisit theories which I would have mugged up during my masters’ programme without actually much of understanding. Now, I was getting a different perspective to all these theories when I was relating them with my experience. All these helped me get reassurance that I was doing the right activity for myself.

My motivation reached to its peak when the time for contact session came. We were a batch of 27 professionals who came to gather to share our experience & learn application orientation of Competency mapping process. Team comprising Dr. T V Rao, Ms. Tejal & Mr. Sumit Verghese were our mentors during the 3 days workshop. The average experience of our group was 5 yrs.+ and it was ranging from 3 years to 20 years band. This workshop helped me understand the intricacies of the CM processes and its interrelation. It actually took us thru mapping process for various roles as part of our group assignment and we realized the challenges involved.

At the end of the workshop and the course, I submitted my assignment on CM model in the organization where I am working i.e. Elitecore Technologies Ltd. (www.elitecore.com).

The programme has helped me increase my self-esteem as HR professional, helped me prepare a roadmap for myself as an HR professional and also helped me clearly differentiate HR role between operational & business partner domain. I implemented Competency Mapping programme at my organization which helped me apply all the theoretical learning to test & experiment. Of course, the credit goes to my team here in transforming my expectations into reality. I will share this experience some other time.

White Paper on switching of Performance Appraisal Cycle

Anniversary System of PA and its rationale:

 Anniversary cycle of appraisal i.e. – appraisal is carried out annually based on date of joining.

• This system has its advantages like
  • Incremental cost getting spread across the year – helpful in cash flow management for SMB units.
  • Reduces impact of appraisal on the organization
  • Gives higher flexibility to respond to business needs.
• As the organization grows big (typically 250+ resources) this system starts showing concerns such as
  • Leads to unpredictable HR budget
  • On an average, 25 to 30 appraisals in a month – this keeps the concern Managers and HR team busy every month
  • Difficulty for PLs to set up KRAs of the team  members which are comparable over a define time frame as everyone from the team will have different appraisal cycle
  • Relative chain of dissatisfaction starts with extreme (positive) cases of appraisal
  • Manager focus from the core job gets diverted every month as he has to spend considerable time and energy in appraisal of his team mates.
  • Increase in uncertainty over retention of resources as appraisal of team member in the respective month will have bearing on his inclination to play a longer inning.

 Anniversary PA cycle and its rationale

 Appraisal process is conducted during the specified time frame during the year

• This system helps us in addressing concerns of the Anniversary system and additionally it helps in:
  • Managing expectations
  • Streamlining HR budget
  • Increased focus on the process
  • Increases HR team bandwidth

 Challenges in switchover process – resistance to change!!!

ü      Resistance to change from Management & resource perspective

ü      Considerations are different in both the perspectives – HR needs to play a balancing role

ü      Requires strong conviction and process understanding of HR team and its leadership

ü      Requires concept selling at all levels in the organization i.e. Resource – Manager – Senior Management – Finance Team

 Implementation Strategy  

• The entire exercise should be timed properly and requires meticulous planning
• It’s not advisable to switch directly from Anniversary to annual appraisal system wherein PA is conducted only once in a year
• It is advisable to follow Bi-annual PA system i.e. Appraisals will be conducted twice in a year – April & October of each year – However, it will be once in a year for a resource.
• Appraisal cycle will be triggered in the month of April for all the resources eligible for appraisal in the months of Jan to June
• Appraisal cycle will be triggered in the month of Oct. for all the resources eligible for appraisal in the months of July to Dec.
• For streamlining the cycle, we shall give onetime retrospective appraisal effect for resources eligible in the months of Jan, Feb, Mar., July, Aug, Sept. They will follow a fixed cycle from the subsequent appraisal cycle.
• Employees on probation and due for confirmation shall also be included in the same cycle. However, probation confirmation will not be pre-poned for aligning the resource in the appraisal cycle. It will be ensured that increment at the time of probation confirmation happens for those resources who have been committed this at the time of joining.

 Strategy angle to this process

•  Resistance will be minimum if we make switch over in this pattern
• If we do not do this, we will not be able to change this in future as well
• Will also help in managing incremental salary cost for the year – good strategy for an SMB unit till it migrates to next level of financial stability    

Connect to world & express

I am really feeling very much thrilled today after opening my account @wordpress. I considered myself technically challenged though I work for an IT company. I always had a good neck of writing official communication / circulars / approval notes / memos etc. as par of my job requirement. However, I had never thought that I would expresse myself thru this wonderful medium. I am very indebted to Rama Moondra who has really motivated me to open a blog and start sharing my experiences on various HR application areas.I know her for the last 5 years now and really admire her as a wonderful professional. Initially, I had a feeling that people keep in touch to take care of their professional objective and there is no scope for sharing of knowledge inthis process. This might be true for most of the cases but I found Rama an exception to this understanding. I really respect her for this quality of her and will continue sharing my professional experience with her which would mutually benefit us and to the HR fraternity at large.

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