Saikat Saha's Blog

My innocent thoughts on Ra One...

2011-10-29T21:54:00.006+05:30

This is not a movie review. I have never felt intelligent or qualified (if needed) enough to clinically assess any movie. Also especially when it comes to a SRK starrer I struggle to remain objective as I am his die hard fan.

Let me just attempt to share a few thoughts on the movie 'Ra One' and also 'SRK'.

I feel 'Ra One' is a landmark movie.

A true entertainer right from the outset. Every frame of the movie is an ode to the paragon of entertainment in itself as I have never watched any Bollywood movie which packs so much of entertainment in varied & engaging forms like the visual delight of VFX/ 3 D, the action sequences, a few tersed & emotional poetry in the midst of kick a@# action, Kareena's thumkas, the foot tapping music, the promising kid, the hideous villian and so much more.

There are those initial scenes in the movie like the ones where Shahrukh speaks in Tamilglish (Tamil + English) which can be a bit disturbing to the extent of being amusing for someone who has stayed 7 years in Chennai. However, these scenes give me an oppurtunity to laugh at
SRK and in other instances I laugh along with him. Either ways I am left entertained.

Rajnikant's guest appearance creates an impact on the audience even in a Kolkata cinema hall. Many might argue that the timing and logic of Rajnikant's guest appearance was not sensible 'enough'. Can those critics name a single bollywood movie where a guest appearance was sensible 'enough'?

However, what caught my imagination completely was the sheer investment SRK has done in this movie. Investment in terms of money, passion, time and effort.

The movie actually personifies his core philosophy: "Even if you are not hungry, be greedy. "

The 'Greedy' bit can be a little misconstrued but he had once explained this bit many years back in an exclusive and very candid interview with Vir Sanghvi. In that interview, he very beautifully articulated that he has greed for 'life' and in his last 10 years then (read it as 'at that point of time') he had put in 20 years, in his last 1 film then (read it as 'at that point of time') he had pushed in 3 films, in his last shot then (read it as 'at that point of time') he had pushed in 18 shots.

Hence, Ra One is a very inspring spectacle for me.

It inspires to try something new with logic, intent, passion, ownership, courage and above all 'heart'.

And when you try something new then critics who are either intellectuals or pseduo intellectuals (majority) might all point their guns at you shamelessly waiting to pounce & defame you. In that case you follow SRK's recent tweet which says "New things make us uncomfortable cos they fall beyond the scope of our usual habits. Allow it to breathe & soon it becomes One with us..."

You might be 'some' 'one' or 'the' 'one' or 'any' 'one' but do not ignore 'Ra One'. Give it an innocent try, not an intelligent one. You will be left delighted.....

Seven years in Chennai...

2011-06-19T18:58:00.004+05:30

It was year 2000 when I watched a movie called 'Seven years in Tibet' starring Brad Pitt. Even as a kid I liked the movie, there was sense of serenity in the movie which I was drawn towards. As I grew up and so did my candor (quite an unlikely progression :-P), I told my parents about how much I wanted to do something similar to what Brad Pitt did in the movie.

As expected they did not endorse my crazy and adventurous ways. My pursuit of being 'Brad Pitt' ended there.

The last few years at school in Delhi just passed by without much of significant memories . In 2004, I came to Chennai and I 'lived' there. Yes!!! I lived every bit of it.I lived every bit of the 'Chennai' experience.

Those action packed experience in the moments of nothingness in Madras Christian College brought me closer to myself. It blessed me with a sharp sense of awareness, whether it was mindfully observing the scenic beauty hurtling by on either side of that mystic road inside the 350 acre of flora and fauna inside the campus or exploring the facets of friendship with some wonderful people. In the little spare time I could manage, I would also study a bit. Whatever little study I did, I actually enjoyed it. My priorities in life were very clear. Studying BBA in MCC also made me determined that I wanted a career in Human Resource.

Then I got recruited in TCS BPO as a process associate. Idealism was at its peak then with little room for patience. I wanted to get into their HR team in a jiffy. I could not get into the HR team for variety of reasons and all of them were reasonable. But it was a significant experience where I understood what it feels like to be on the other side as a customer of the HR guys. It made me more grounded than ever (I assume so).

The third phase of my life was in Madras School of Social Work studying MA-HRM. It was wonderful to study the subject of my passion. It was fun. It was fulfilling. I enjoyed my HR field works the most. It was a contrast to my MCC experience. I was more engaged in my academics here and in my spare time I hanged around with my MCC friends who suffused me with a joy that was exclusive to the days spent in MCC.

TCS came for campus hiring and I did not appear for the interview this time. Honestly there was no ego involved as my TCS experience humbled me in many ways. But I did not feel connected enough to let the marriage between me and HR happen in TCS. It was an emotional decision.

This was followed by another emotional decision of appearing for the Cognizant interview which was my first interview in Campus. I felt connected to Cognizant then and I feel so even now after one year.

Most of my decisions in life have been in the midst of emotions. I dont regret any decision. My experience in Chennai taught me that the deepest of my emotions originated from the bottom of my heart. And when the heart is fine then the the emotions cultivating from it are also fine.

The above para is indeed the best lesson I have learned in Chennai.

Also the last 6 months in Chennai was the most defining period of my life as I literally became part of a big family. As a Campus Talent Manager in Cognizant I was able to meet many trainees who became my friends and at times my teachers.

As I type this post in Kolkata sitting in my drawing room, I realize that the seven years spent in Chennai did not help my childhood (or rather teenhood) persuit of becoming Brad Pitt even an iota bit. Yet it helped me to become 'Saikat Saha'.

There are many more experiences waiting to embrace me in Kolkata and i am ready for it. But the 'seven years in Chennai' shall remain ethched in my memory....in my heart....

It's time to switch off my lappie and make further sense of this ethereal connection........

In conversation with my mentor....

2011-04-03T18:54:00.009+05:30

There are few people who influence,impact and inspire your life as a student and continue to do so in your formative period as a professional. Rajesh Kamath is one such mentor I found during my final year in MSSW. He not only enriched my learning curve as a student but provided me various oppurtunities during my association with SHRM India and MTHR Global which I deeply value till date. My conversations with him has always been scintillating and invaluable. Please read on as I capture one of my recent conversation with him:

Saikat: Since the time I have known you, you have been very passionate about the student community. What fascinates you the most about 'Youngistan'?

Rajesh: Too many things fascinate me about Youngistan but I am most excited at how different they are from the earlier generation, in terms of lifestyle, work style and interpersonal characteristics. I feel that it is extremely complimentary and creates opportunity to learn and enjoy.

Saikat:What is going to be the New Age HR ethos which will be fostered by upcoming young HR leaders?

Rajesh:You’ll know better Saikat. Yet, my observation is that young HR leaders (mostly) are characterised by more openness to ideas and transparency in communication. I also find them more energetic.

Saikat:The first few years of any professionals life is very eventful? What is your advice to young professionals so that they can fully leverage their early years with greater clarity?

Rajesh:I am sure that young professionals have more advice to offer me than me to them. The principle I follow is what comes to Youngistan rather easily: “Question every Answer” (this was prominently displayed in Northpoint Learning Center years back). One advice I can offer is respect age and experience.

Saikat:You are one of the founding members of MTHRG. MTHRG has been associated with very engaging and knowledge intensive seminars where the members are not even charged a penny. How do you and your team manage it?

Rajesh:Its rather simple: It has no business or even a basic not-for-profit commercial model because its powered by passion for learning. Partners who are equally passionate about knowledge and community fund the Events. The partner benefits by way of visibility and the community and facilitators, by way of unbridled learning.

Saikat:What has been your most defining moment in professional and personal life?

Rajesh: This is an impossible question since I truly have many such moments each year. I can share that they have one common factor: the moments are always caused by great men and women, from day to day life.

Saikat:You recently went for a brief spiritual journey What were your key learning from this spiritual journey?

Rajesh:I took a short 4 day break to Rishikesh, Dehradun and Haridwar. I do this every alternate year though I wish I could do it more frequently. These are with a Spiritual (neutral to religion) Group called Ananda Sangha. Learnings were too many but I would pick two:

1. Certain places and people carry a phenomenal energy about them which rubs on you.

2. As one Swamiji at Doon shared – “There is unrest, strife and disharmony around because everyone is right”

Saikat:Please share a few quickies:

Your life philosophy: Respect every person for what each one is, something to learn from everyone
Blog or Twitter: Twitter
An evening with Dalai Lama or an evening with Jack Welch: Morning with Dalai Lama
I Phone or Blackberry: I’m a Blackberry Boy
All rounder or specialist (Who is a more promising future talent?): Specialist

My learnings from Robin Sharma's workshop 'Leader without a title'

2011-03-06T14:55:00.006+05:30

Last week I was fortunate to attend Robin Sharma's Live workshop on 'Leader without a Title'. Three hours of listening to Robin Sharma was incredibly enlightening. I paid Rs 3000 (the cheapest ticket available) for the ticket which I felt was an investment.

It's a privilage to share a few of my key learning from the session:

Most of the times we get busy being 'busy'. We keep climbing the wrong mountain and realize the same much later. Do not live the life of regrets. We deserve the best and not 'mediocrity'.
2.1 hours are wasted on distractions and it takes 25 minutes to refocus at your work. Ensure distractions at work are completely removed.
Three duties of a leader: Creating impact, Influencing, Inspiring.
You double your income at triple the rate of your learning.
The king and the begger would be buried next to each other's grave. What matters towards the end is not the car you drove or the castle you lived in. What really matters is how much value did you add in others lives.
Ideation without lazor sharp execution is only dillusion.
Your behavior broadcasts your values.The way you do one thing, the way you do 'everything'. Disipline is indeed the key.Get rid of silly excuses.Get addicted to results.
If you lead only by the virtue of your title, then when you loose the title , you loose the people.
Lead yourself first before leading others. Aim at being a great human being.
When you were born, you cried and others rejoiced. Live such a life that when you die, others cry.
Always learn and embrace change. Successful people are inspired by change.
Unsuccessful people are the ones who are impressed by celebrity, by people's names and titles. Shift your focus from entertainment and gossip to education.
Find a cause bigger than yourself and give your soul to it.
Secret of passion is purpose.
Leadership comes from bringing passion to the workplace by making each person realise his true potential. You can be the Lady Gaga of autodrivers or the Mick Jagger of the mailroom. Be a rockstar at work.
Managers develop organisations, leaders develop people.
Connecting and collaborating is what Leadership 2.0 is about. You need to remind people at your workplace that each of them has a purpose and can be a leader if they work with focus and passion.
Consistency is the mother of mastery.
The little acts of risk taking, authenticity and kindness REALLY matters.
Secret to genius is specializattion. Geniuses are really good at FEW things and not everything.
Make sure when people leave you they feel better than the time they met you. They should become the brand ambassadors of your company and not brand vampires.
Edit + Amplify: Nothing fails like success. Ensure the growth is purposeful. Let's not grow for growth sake.
Keep your video in sync with your audio: Walk the talk...Practice what you preach...
Pleasing everyone and being liked by everyone is a major hinderance to innovation.
Successful people want to make history with their work and not money. They want their work to remain alive even after their last breath.
8 traits of a leader without a title:

APR: Absolute Personal Responsibility
OAD: Obsessicve Attention to Details
LBE: Lead By Example
ABBOU: Always Be Delivering Outrageous Value
NSI: Never Stop Improving
BIW: Best In World
BRBO: Put you Best Resource in Best Oppurtunities
KMF: Keep Moving Forward

High productivity practicees:

Get up early- You will have enough time to sleep when you die ;-)
Do not check e mails in the morning. Creativity appears best in morning. Spend some quite time in solitude.
Learn to say 'No' with respect.
No gossips and critisicm. Truly world class people talk about ideas.
Clarity provides focus and creativity.
Eat less and in a purposeful manner.
Drink lots of water and super hydrate yourself.
Be aware of your environment. The external environment inspires internal creativity.
Practice & preparation are the key as all of us are in show business.
Ensure you make 5 daily wins. They need not be revolutionary in nature, but should be evolutionary.
Develop 'leadership language'. Your words energise you and others.
Leave your ego today

Hope this helps :-)

The reminder - A (Very) short love story

2011-02-13T14:36:00.007+05:30

Love can make us do crazy things...Love unleashes our smarter self...Love makes us look gullible & meek...Love is mature...Love is kiddish...

Love makes us feel empowered...Love is intimidating...Love is charming...Love is suffocating....Love is liberating....

So many contradictions yet thats what keeps us going....

It's been 40 years since we grew in this relationship and will continue to grow. Times have changed since we met. Our love has been witness to the changing times. The changing times has been witness to our love.

As I sit next to your grave, I understand you will not be with me. But your love has always been much larger than your own sweet self. Your love has been selfless. Your love will continue to grow in your physical absence and it will help me to enrich my life.

But I am feeling incomplete.I feel like a lesser being.I don't feel any amount of optimism will ever fill the vacum that has been created by your absence.

[The cell phone rings. It's a reminder message which reads "Water the flowers in the garden or else honey shall scream ;-)".]

I guess I should make a move. A move from 'this graveyard' to 'our garden'.

Dhobi Ghat- A cine painting with grey shades....

2011-01-22T17:39:00.006+05:30

Dhobi Ghat(Mumbai Diaries) is a piece of Cine art...a painting that captures the shades of Bombay with all the colours it offers to its inhabitants...

Colours which are seemingly bright but as we delve further it appears grey...colours that often suffuses our hearts with joy and in other times haunts us to the point we feel ridiculously intimidated.

The movie revolves around the lives of 4 characters-Arun (Aamir Khan)- a painter,divorcee,loner middle aged man; Shai (Monica Dogra) is an Indian banker who is in Mumbai on a sabbatical to pursue her passion 'Photography'; Munna (Prateik Babbar) is a washerboy by the morning & rat killer by the night who dreams of being a bollywood superstar one day and Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra) is a lower middle class migrant from UP who is newly wed.

Inspite of the disparities in their social status, views and circumstances, their lives are intertwined. Shai (Kriti Malhotra) gets fascinated by the art work of Arun (Aamir Khan) and progresses into an intense relationship which lasts only for an iota of times. Shai (Monica Dogra) meets Munna (Prateik Babbar) and gets besotted by Munna's charm and innocence. Along with Munna she captures the lesser known essence of Bombay through her camera lenses.

Arun increasingly gets drawn towards the video diaries of Yasmin which encapsulates her delightful fascination with Bombay yet exudes her conflicted & gullible relationship with her husband. This inspires (as well as depresses) Arun to capture the elements of his interpretation of Yasmin's video diaries and her short yet impressionable relationship with Shai in a painting.

To what extent these relationships between the four characters are interwined?

Only the fifth character of the movie 'Bombay' which closely witnesses their lives getting interwined can answer the question.

As mere viewers of this Cinematic genius we can only make an effort to interpret the multitudes of possibilities yet not seek the answer.

The joy is encapsulated in making the effort to interpret the possibilities. Possibilities which might be promising...depressing...bright...dark...but most certainly with shades of grey....At times a darker shade of grey ...and in the other times mercifully lighter...

The Royal Ganguly snub and a few lessons...

2011-01-10T22:33:00.008+05:30

These are hard times for Sourav Ganguly. Similarly, these are hard times for me to keep my objectivity intact for purely cricket reasons.

Tough to understand why Sourav, who displayed one of the best batting performances in the last IPL edition (Amongst the top 5 run getters with an impressive strike rate) get ruthlessly snubbed in the IPL auction.

First inference is that he was snubbed not on the basis of performance.

Was he snubbed because of his age?

Not really!! Warnie, Gilchrist, Dravid & Laxman also found place in the auction.

Was it because of his larger than life approach to cricket?

Naaah!!!! Remember his performance in the Sri Lanka tour after his comeback from a considerable break due to a spat with Aussie Dimwit 'Greg Chappel'. He integrated with the team fabric in an effortless manner and even won the 'Man of the series' award.

Was it because he doesnot gell well with Aussie coaches (Most of the team coaches in IPL are from the Aussie land)?

Maybe Yes!!!

Whatever be the reason, here are a few lessons one can learn from the 'Royal Snub':

Be careful of your image: His 'Prince of Kolkata' image probably went against him. Team management might have found him tough to be handled.

There is nothing like 'over-communication': Ganguly is an honourable man, yet he should have seeked complete information from various teams to gauge their interest in buying him.Only after that he should have made himself available for the auction.(He could have also gone the Kumble way)

Honour versus Idealism: Shahrukh Khan extended the olive branch to him offering a chief mentor role in KKR. He has not been very kind to the request. But if he truly cares about KKR then he might just accept the role of a mentor and play an integral role in fulfilling KKR's mission of 'Korbo..Lorbo..Jeetbo Re!!!(We will do..fight & win)' .Of course with KKR in context, there would have been too many mentors and there is certainly nothing official about it.Saurav is intelligent and let him decide the rest.

Keep the passion on!!!: If the intent and passion is right then many seemingly significant (otherwise insignificant) outcomes do not matter in long run. His fans will always love him. His critics will always make ridiculous judgements. But he will be respected by all forever and beyond. Till now his batting did the talking. It's time his silence does the talking. And if he ever gets the bat he will ROAR!!! In the true ROYAL BENGAL STYLE!!!!

Do you have enough HEROes (Dabanggs) in your team???

2011-01-02T15:16:00.007+05:30

There are two places in Chennai where you can locate me on a Sunday late morning:

My room or Landmark Bookstore!!!

While surfing the books I came across 'Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business'.

A few random turning of the pages & I found an insightful matrix:

The X axis signifies 'the quantum of empowerment one feels at work' and Y axis signifies 'quantum of resourcefulness with which one acts in his workplace'.

It's depressing to know that only 20 % of US Information workers fall under the category of 'HERO-Highly Empowered Resourceful Operatives'.

So who has a greater onus in ensuring that the employees fall under the 'top right hand quadrant of the matrix'??? Employees themselves or employers???

I would not recieve any brownie point for giving the lucid answer. But the answer is 'Both'. In the age of Co-creation, it's both the employee and the employer who have to work in an ever inclusive manner to 'co-create' many Heroes.

However, the most conflicting issue is that when companies want to create more 'HEROes' and employees themselves desire to become 'HEROes' then why dont we have enough HEROes (Based on the above matrix)?

According to my ever innocent opinion, I feel the conflict often arises when it comes to paying the right price for either enabling or becoming an 'HERO-Highly Empowered Resorceful Operatives' from both the employee & employer's end.

The singlemost important attribute in creating enough 'HEROs' at workplace would be the 'mutual confidence' in 'co-creating HEROs'.

I wish everyone a Glorious & Dabangg('Fearless' in Hindi spoken in Uttar Pradesh, India) new year in the persuit of finding the 'super heroes' within & around themselves.

'Walk & talk' to resolve conflicts...

2010-12-12T20:42:00.009+05:30

The impressive ads from Idea Cellular with the tag line 'Walk and talk' has many lessons to impart. Most of these lessons have been lucidly disseminated by Abhishek Bachan in the ad itself.

However, we can learn one more rich lesson specifically from the tagline.

Many years back, while my fascination for HR was growing, I asked an HR expert about his opinion on how to resolve conflict?

He gave a quintessential HR answer to it saying "Get both the parties to face each other and let them talk(& listen) their way to the solution".

It did sound sacrosanct then but with all due respect the HR expert, I would dare to modify his statement "Get both the parties to walk alongside and let them talk (& listen) their way to the solution".

There were a few triggers to this thought. One being the idea cellular ad with the above mentioned tagline but more importantly this TED video where William Ury, Senior Fellow, Harvard Negotiation Project speaks about 'negotiation' under the theme "the walk from 'no' to 'yes' ".

According to him one of the basics in negotiation is to identify the third party who can always remind the two parties at loggerheads about what is at stake?

It also explains how walking side by side with the two parties (symbolic) while finding the resolution is more effective instead of facing them in opposite direction.

Walking side by side is symbolic of moving in the same direction towards the persuit of finding a resolution instead of facing each other which is symbolic of confrontation.

Most certainly a simple technique which should not be overlooked.

Managing the career aspiration of Youngistan

2010-11-07T21:48:00.005+05:30

In a recent Conference organized by MTHR Global in Bangalore , I particularly got fascinated by an interesting analogy given by Mr Sangeeth Varghese.

The panel discussion revolved around managing career expectations of freshers.

More specifically it was a discussion on the after thoughts of presentations by 3 incredible students on their 'Dream Company'.

Mr Sangeeth Varghese spoke about how he also was in a simmilar quest of finding something perfect a few years back. Just like the students were chasing their dream of finding the perfect company/job/career, he was in the quest to find the perfect life partner. He met the 'perfect' girl and had the 'perfect marriage'. The situation remained perfect for a few days after marriage but soon he felt it was far from perfect. The relationship was not perfect anymore!!!

This made him retrospect for sometime. He did realize that his wife probably did not meet his expectations but did he ever make any effort to know if he met his wife's expectation? On further retrospection he felt that he did a worse job.

His wife also had expectations which were probably overlooked. He then decided to work on the shortcomings and gaps. The relationship did improve and today he feels he is blessed with a 'perfect wife' :-)

Whatta perfect analogy!!!!!!!

Indeed, freshers (including me) often ask how much has the company done for them and how much more it can do for them. Often they measure their expectations from the company. It's equally important to reflect on how much we are able to live upto our company's expectations.

I remember Mr Sangeeth saying that 'Perfection is a frame of mind'. I feel in order to achieve that frame of mind one has to sincerely reflect on their own & others' expectations and more importantly work sincerely on meeting those expectations.

This also reminds me to share an insightful post contributed by Gautam Ghosh & written by Sunit Sinha. Here are a few excerpts from the post:

A job is what you make it. If you look at your function as only a job (show up, fill a desk, answer a phone, pass on a report), that’s what it will be. But if you recognize the time you spend in your early, entry or junior position as a process of career building, then that’s what you will have: a career. Always play your role with dignity, looking for ways to learn from it.
The real keys to success are not smarts or qualifications or belonging to a brand-name firm. Rather, success is derived from courage, drive, energy, passion, ambition, enthusiasm, excitement, initiative, discipline, a dream and enough self-confidence to keep trying.
Don’t be intimidated by senior people. Remember, they also started somewhere, and if they are purposely intimidating you, they can’t be very secure themselves. Don’t, however, confuse intimidation with respect. Even if you don’t agree with a senior person, they have earned and deserve their due for what they have achieved in the organization.
When you feel underappreciated (or undercompensated) take a deep breath. Even if you are doing better work and have more responsibility than someone earning more or being treated better, show some patience. It’s the long term that counts!!
Broken promises are remembered more than kept promises. Do what you say you are going to do. It’s better to have the guts to say up front, “I’m not sure I can get that done,” than to accept a task that you can’t deliver on.
It is important to , listen to the assignment and carry out what has been asked. Again, remember that you are the directee, not the director, at this point in your career. You may not like the assignment, but do it with the same enthusiasm that you show for those projects you do like. Pencils must be sharpened, and everyone (even the CEO) has taken his turn.
Remember that success is not spontaneous combustion; you have to set yourself on fire.
Last but not the least – remember who actually pays for your salary – the client. Never lose your connect with clients, and always put them at the centre of what you do.

More on 'Employer Branding' lessons from SHRM India Monthly meet

2010-11-05T18:46:00.004+05:30

I am keen to share a few learnings I recieved on 'Employer Branding' from Mr P Ravishankar, Chief Human Resource Officer, Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd during the last SHRM India Meeting held two weeks back.

Following are my key learnings:

Employer Branding is essentially the reinforcement of Company's values.
Key messages that the HR function can transmit using company's employer brand are: Redifination of leadership competencies, living your core values,redefination of performance,renewed code of conduct & governance.
How you drive change in your organization, community and the ecosystem is also a major value lever of your 'Employer Brand'.
In the persuit of branding one should remember to 'balance' both internal and external employer branding.

Game for testing your 'employer brand'?

2010-10-21T21:31:00.003+05:30

I have been invited for the SHRM India monthly meet to be held in Chennai tomorrow evening and the theme to be discussed is 'Employer Branding'. Would like to share a few innocent pre discussion thoughts on the topic.

Here are a few questions a business leader might ask himself to test his company's 'employer brand'(Answers should not be on a likert scale. A plain 'yes' or 'no' would suffice):

Do people join your company to 'build a career' instead of just having a mere job?
Do they market the success of their company as if it's their own?
Do your employees get riled up when the company's brand becomes a victim of unjustified critisicm?
Does your employees always look for the next 'big or small' oppurtunity to talk about their company with great enthusiasm?
Does your employees take a major onus in ensuring that the new recruits get fitted into the company's proud organizational fabric?
Can your employees find a world of oppurtunities, moments & friends within the company which they can cherish?
Is your company able to attract the talented yet passive job seekers in the market with minimum visibility?

An 'Yes' to each of the 7 (a spiritual number according to numerology) questions might make your 'employer brand' an incredible brand :-)

TEDx Chennai 2010

2010-10-14T00:20:00.003+05:30

I had an incredible time listening to diverse list of speakers during the TEDx Chennai 2010 conference on 9th October 2010 held at IIT-Madras.

All of you who have missed the show and want to get a snapshot about the event, just click the following labels which will link you to interesting posts from the official TEDx Chennai Blog:

Collaboration in the midst of competition....

2010-10-08T00:19:00.005+05:30

Two precursors for success in any team would be 'Competitiveness & Collaboration'. Yet if we consider them as a pair then it would definately qualify to be an oxymoron of the highest order.

So how can we ensure that a team has the right amount of competitiveness juxtaposed with the right amount of collaboration???

To answer that question we must reflect on what is the 'right' amount of competitiveness & collaboration???

The 'right' amount would be definately relative. An A R Rehman or Yanni concert would require higher amount of collaboration among the musicians & singers. However, a number chasing sales team would not mind ensuring high amount of competitiveness among it's associates at the cost of collaboration.

However, in the above context, many would associate 'competitiveness' with a sort of negativity and associate 'collaboration' with postivity. The real recipe of interwining competitiveness with collaboration lies in coating both with 'goodness'.

If there is a spirit of 'goodness' infused in 'collaboration' & 'competitiveness' then both would start complementing each other. Look around to find the best team you have ever come across and you will witness that sense of goodness in their collaboration and competitiveness.

The underlying philosophy should be that collaboration must enhance other team member's performance and one should compete with the purpose of completing the other team member's performance.

So dont let the competition kill your collaboration within the team and dont let the collaboration die down the competitiveness.

Compete with the purpose of collaborating and not vice versa :-)

Those first few days....a poem....a prayer...

2010-08-30T21:23:00.007+05:30

The first few days...
the days of fun & frolic...
even though a little chaotic...
the aspirations are high...
so is the perspiration...

In the midst of all the anticipation...
here comes a realization...
to realize the brighter shades from anything that is remotely Grey...

While I pray, my heart gets suffused with a bright ray...
a ray that shall guide me if I am ever in utter dismay...

From the shores that provide me the depth to be human...
to the terrains that aspire me to chase the dreams...
I shall embrace the beauty and the filth of all...

as I stand between the black & white...
may I become the lightest shade of Grey in the times of the steely white...
and the times of hideous black...

may the first few days be in the remembrance..
whilst the future actions gather the courage from the innocence of the first few days...

In the times of melody or the cacophony...
may i remember the first few days...

-Saikat Saha

Picture above from http://www.faithassemblywp.com

G Ravindran's Blog

2010-08-12T22:11:00.002+05:30

The latest HR leader to join the blogging universe is G Ravindran, Managing Director, SHRM India.
Have a look at his first post which is incredibly candid with a message that most Interviewers overlook. A job interview is one of the first and most credible check point in a professional's journey into a company.

Yet at times HR professionals willingly allow their ego to supersede their common sense.

One of the finest post that's simple yet immensely powerful. A post that extols a valuable lesson to shift from knowledge perspective to 'heart' perspective.

NASSCOM HR SUMMIT 2010

2010-08-07T22:54:00.001+05:30

Let me make an innocent attempt to provide a snapshot of my learning at the NASSCOM HR SUMMIT 2010:

The knowledge summit started with the Inaugural talk by Som Mittal, President, Nasscom followed by a panel discussion called ‘Indian Townhall: CEOs in conversation’ where the conversation primarily revolved around managing the Gen Y aspirations and other emerging talent issues.

The eminent panelists for the event were R Chandrasekaran,President & MD,Cognizant; Aparup Sengupta, MD & Global CEO, Aegis Ltd, Krishna Kumar Natarajan,CEO & MD,Mindtree and Som Mittal, President,Nasscom.

Some of the key inferences that emerged from this discussion were as follows:

S Chandrasekaran: We have to create enough scope for the mavericks to perform in the best of their capacity in order to leverage their creativity. He mentioned that there is always a risk of being complacent while sustaining growth. Especially in such instances it’s very important to be open to ideas of all formats from everyone. Since the majority of the workforce today is Gen X & GenY. We must connect with them in the right manner. He explained this with an analogy. He explained how a Gen X & GenY employee experiences a seamless virtual connectivity through social networks/media like twitter & facebook where his concerns and inquisitiveness is satiated in a shortest time span on a Sunday but on the Monday morning he again gets into the rigmarole of following HR manuals and time consuming processes. The real challenge is to recognize and sincerely act on repeating that Sunday experience into the Monday experience also. He also focused on the need to collaborate seamlessly and identify enablers that can help to collaborate better. The need for infusing appreciation in the performance mgmt ecosystem, fostering an entrepreneurial climate, infusing fun in the work culture, being tech savvy and embracing the global talent were also key insinuations from his conversation with the panelists.

Abarup Sengupta: In order to witness transformation at work, we must start measuring the task in terms of the impact it creates on the solution and not the task in itself. For example, we must stop measuring the number of associates reporting at office or the number of hours invested by the associates. Rather we should measure what kind of impact their presence and task has on solutions. He also emphasized how a strong belief must be transformed into a collective behavior through repetition of the tasks firmly based on the belief in a consistent manner. While commenting on framing the right ‘vision statement’, he said that the vision statement must be simple and uncomplicated so that everyone can easily internalize it.

Krishna Kumar Natarajan: He emphasized on how the transition of Gen Y recruits from their campus to corporate happens at a very quick pace and hence it’s important to restore campus experience also at the office. The office needs to be recreated as a campus. While speaking about leadership he said that the ideal way to build leadership is not always the volumes approach but it’s about narrating the right stories and inspiring anecdotes. He also mentioned that one of the indicators to know whether HR has graduated as a business partner is to observe whether the HR associate can be prepared to make a business presentation infront of the client.

Som Mittal: Leadership must never be distanced from the people and must ensure that people release their energy in the right manner and in the right direction. He also emphasized on the need for having strong code of conduct within the industry in the midst of the turmoil [high attrition & poaching] so that there is a method in the madness.

Session II: Knee Jerk HR: Was there a better way to handle the downturn.

Speakers: Dr John Sullivan, Professor of Mgmt, San Fransisco State University & Kris Ramachandran, advisor to Chairman, Higher Education Project, Aditya Birla Group.

Chair Person: Prithvi Shergill, Lead ,Human Resources, Accenture India.

Prithvi Shergill: Whether HR played a pivotal role in handling the downturn is based on whether the HR team was having a place in the table during the strategic discussions? Did the HR team ask the right questions in the right time? Did the organization genuinely invest in HR to become more strategic? These were the few questions through which he set the platform for the discussion. Dr John Sullivian also added the question that did we call our CEO’s during the down turn and specify the areas where we should have invested in order to position ourselves better after downturn or did the CEO call the HR leader and ask him about his opinion (even better)?.

Kris Ramachandram: Two extremely contrasting examples of GE and South West airlines were given in order to explain how both the companies had completely different approach in being global leaders in their respective fields. GE was synonymous with very objective and aggressive approach of fixing, selling or even closing down their business whereas South West airlines had a much lenient approach of having no layoffs. Yet even though the approaches of the two companies did not have any convergence but both are still leaders in their respective industries. Similarly, there is no ‘one’ right way to deal with the downturn. He mentioned the 5 dimensions of the Hofstede model and how understanding the respective cultural dynamics are important in framing out the approach towards dealing with downturn. He mentioned the following points to be kept in the minds of the employees in order to deal with a future downturn:

Realize that there are no free lunches in this world. We are never ‘entitled’ for the company benefits; we are only ‘eligible’ for the benefits.
Keep yourself employable through superior performance, constantly improve your skills.
Be an influencer.

As an Employer we can do the following:

· Focus on continuous productivity (Repair the roof when sun is shining J)

· Manage expectation, beliefs & values.

· Connect & communicate.

John Sulivian: He categorically mentioned that the following went wrong by HR in downturn:

· It went into a reactive mode and was not anticipatory enough.

· Did not realize the new economic reality of continuous ups & downs, with little warning.

· Being overtly optimistic

· Not having any warning precursors for identifying what occurs prior to a major problem.

· No contingency labor plan.

· Lack of prioritization.

· Cost cutting focus rather than productivity & innovation focus.

· Solutions adopted with no data on tools effectiveness.

· No midcourse feedback loop metrics.

· No accountability.

· Only ‘guessing’ when to resume talent growth.

Must do list for HR before the next downturn:

· Conduct failure analysis.

· Benchmark best practices.

· Focus on innovation/productivity.

· Establish contingent labor component.

· Do surgical layoffs based on performance.

· Substitute technology for labor (No people first approach)

· Continue to outsource ‘non core’ activities.

· Use ‘peak time & Seasonal empoyees’

· Next time do countercyclical hiring & poaching [;-) not my thoughts]

Session III: Open House- Are Indian players ready to handle a globalized workforce?

Speakers: D P Singh, Director,HR, IBM Daksh & Saurabh Govil, Senior Vice President, HR, Wipro Technologies.

Chairperson: C. Mahalingam, Executive Vice President & Chief People Officer, Symphony Services.

C Mahalingam: ‘Money is what money does’ and similarly ‘Globalization is what globalization does’. The context for the discussion was lucidly set by putting into perspective the thoughts of Thomas Friedman where he considered that Globalization 1.0 was influenced by the government, Globalization 2.0 was influenced by major MNCs and the new age era of Globalization 3.0 requires major role from Individual companies.Mr Mahalingam gave case examples of how Mc Donalds & Coke acted as catalysts in globalization and can be considered as icons of globalization. The following ‘distance issues’ were highlighted as they are to be carefully studied in course of embracing Globalization 3.0:

Culture, Administrative, Geographic & Economic [CAGE].

He also mentioned that the key drivers for success in globalization 3.0 must recognize that global workforce will have different aspiration, ability and engagement. Hence, it will become important to constantly manage as we learn and constantly learn as we manage.

D P Singh: The key levers for success in globalized economy are going to be Shared Visions, Policies, Processes, HR system & Communication. Companies have to leverage technology, opportunities, capital & structures. The right answers to the following few questions would help us to handle the globalized economy better:

· Do you have shared values across the globe embedded & understood by all?

· Do you have processes to identify, reward & grow talent.

· Do you have processes & policies in place with effective & robust control mechanism?

· Do you encourage diverse unconventional points of views to finally integrate with business objectives?

· How will you relate the Gen Y to your business objectives?

Saurabh Govil: The apparent hard issues like labor laws & compliance are much easier to manage but the challenging issues are the perceived softer issues like building local leadership, cultural issues and communication. It also becomes very important to keep on repeating the right things so that it becomes a part of the organizational fabric. He made a major emphasis on leveraging social network as the future of communication will not be e-mails but social networks.

Session IV: Management of paradoxes

Speakers: Hari Thalapalli, Chief People Officer, Mahindra Satyam & Piyush Mehta, Senior VP,Human resources, Genpact.

Chairperson: Elango R, Chief Human Resources officer, Mphasis an HP company

Elango R: The statement ‘contradiction fuels innovation’ suffices to articulate that even though managing the paradoxes might be tough but it would be well worth it. Managing paradoxes in HR would be about being an ‘active game changer’ and not by being a mere facilitator/part of the change process. It would require HR professionals to shift their focus from their HR books to Adam Smith’s ‘The wealth of nations’ and more importantly it will require HR to work in grey shades.

Hari Thalapalli: It’s fascinating how in life’s philosophy itself so many statements & anecdotes are contradictory yet seemingly idealistic. Hence, the same replicates in business & HR too. The right answers of today’s HR paradoxes would be different tomorrow. It’s important that in HR’s pursuit to manage its paradoxes, it should focus equally on its associates, investors and final customers. Hence, investment into research, capacity building has to sharply increase.

Piyush Mehta: The focus must be on making/building talent in an organic manner through Internal promotions, moving to tier 3,4 cities and digitalizing platforms. Another important inference was that the business orientation of the HR would be good for people as in long term what is good for business would certainly be good for people.

Session V: What is your USP as an employer?

Speakers: Aparna Ballakur, Vice President, HR, Yahoo! & Sreekanth Krishnan Arimanithaya, SV, Global HR operations, HR Business Partner, CA Technologies

Chairperson: Gaurav Ahluwalia ,Senior Vice President, HR, HSBC Electronic Data Processing India Pvt Ltd.

Gaurav Ahluwalia: USP of either a product or service or even an employer is based on how it brings value to its customer and brings visibility in the market. The case example of Maruti-800 brought out the message clearly. While speaking about USP from employer perspective, he said that pay is only a part of the offer but the real USP is not pay most of the times.

Sreekanth Krishnan Arimanithaya: Six elements of creating & evaluating value proposition are Utility value, Satisfaction level, Offer alignment, Employee engagement & Employee performance. The organizational brand components are total rewards (base pay, external equity, stock options etc), work life (business level, location etc), company (risk taking, diversity etc), Work environment (job fit, promotion, empowerment project responsibility etc). Hence the USP of the company needs to leverage these elements and brand components with the purpose of managing, governing and securing the talent. A special emphasis was made on fostering an entrepreneurial culture within the company.

Aparna Ballakur: For an employer USP in the current economy stands for Unique Staying Proposition. Creating the right USP revolves around answering the three questions: What brought you here? What keeps you here? What can take you away from here?

She also explained how the focus should be increasingly on ‘stay interviews’ rather than exit interviews. The USP in Yahoo is centred around opportunity (to change the way the world uses the internet), work (scope of impact:600 million users) & workplace(company cares for every individual & shows this in every process/policy).Also it was interesting to know that ‘fun’ is a core value of Yahoo’s culture. In a nutshell, an USP must appeal to the intellect and touch the heart.

Session VI: Conquer the Mt Everest-Motivational Talk by Jamling Tenzing

Conquering the Mt Everest in the realms of thought itself is very inspiring. If we spend a few moments hallucinating about the presence of Mt Everest then we can realize the how insignificant we are infront of the mighty Everest. Yet few people conquer it through their spirit-‘the human spirit’. The human spirit is common to all of us yet only few realize it. One such man is Jamling Tenzing, son of legendary climber Tenzing Norway.

Jamling Tenzing’s presentation was themed as ‘Touching my father’s soul’. He passionately spoke on why he had a single minded focus on climbing the Mt Everest and why it meant so much to him. His childhood hero was always his father and he wanted to climb the Mt Everest the way his father did. In 1996, he climbed the Mt Everest which was later documented in the IMAX film, Everest. This journey helped him to understand himself, his father & his community (Sherpa) better.

His quest to climb the Everest was full of challenges like staying away from the family in the hope of meeting them once again to loosing friends who died on the way to climb the Mt Everest.

Like in any other team, a mountain expedition also has team members with designated roles. The leader paves the strategy to climb the mountain whereas the Sherpa provides strong support in carrying the food, goods and other essentials. Jamling Tenzing acted as the member who bridged the relationship between the leaders and the ‘sherpas’ as he himself is a Sherpa who was educated in America. HR’s role in business is also similar; he acts as a bridge between the business leaders and the associates. He is expected to be a business as well as people champion who can translate the language of business into a language which is best understood by the people.

In business also, the HR team is often confronted with huge challenges yet they are met with the right direction, team support, planning, courage & passion.

Another important life lesson learned from his presentation was that “In mountaineering, climbing up is optional but getting down is mandatory”.

Similarly, in life or business also we make the choice of being the best but we must be ready to face failures courageously too. If we cannot recognize failure and know how to deal with it then we will never know how to react when failure again strikes us in life.

He also mentioned how climbers are increasingly realizing that it’s important to respect nature and keep the surroundings clean while venturing into mountain expeditions.

Hence, it’s not only the end which matters but also the means. HR is the conscious keeper of the organization and must always adhere to ethics in its pursuit to achieve business success.

Jamling also stressed that human beings must be passion driven and not ego driven in their pursuits. He cited examples of how many rich businessmen wanted to satisfy their ego to climb the Mt Everest by risking the lives of many sherpas.

It was delightful to know that Jamling had great plans of teaching mountaineering to Indian kids in order to infuse in them the idea of sportsmanship. He has been doing a lot of work for the Sherpa community and wants to continue the good work.

Even HR has a community to take care of that transcends the associates and their families.

He concluded his presentation with his father’s quote: “Be a leader, Be a guide…Be great and make others great”.

Day 2

Session VII: Social Network: Leveraging or lamenting

Speakers: Arvind Rajan, Vice President, International, Linkedin & Nandita Gurjar,SVP, Group Head HRD, Infosys Technologies Ltd.

Chairperson: Anand Pillai, Senior Vice President, Talent Transformation & Intrapreneurship Development, HCL Technologies.

Anand Pillai: Social Networking is becoming the new operating system for the new workforce which has the following characteristics:

· They want freedom.

· Customized job profile.

· They want transparency.

· They thrive on innovation.

· They love having fun.

· They want to collaborate.

It was interesting to know that HCL has a virtual ‘passion wall’ where associates are free to write about their passion and what it means to them. Adding to this practice, they also started the passion club where associates can mention their top 5 passion indicators and join the communities related to them. These communities would facilitate discussions related to their passion and keep them engaged.

Arvind Rajan: A few startling statistics on how majority of today’s workforce is either actively disengaged or not engaged. Adding to that most companies are having 1 HR associate for every 100 employees. Hence, communication between HR and the associates have sharply reduced. Social media in such a scenario helps to enable better communication. Most companies have focused on horizontal communication through social media but there should be focus on vertical communication too. A CEO’s blog is an example of effective communication that also ensures inclusiveness through the ‘comments’ feature in blogs. It also ‘personalizes’ the leadership especially when the company is large. Social media should be leveraged for recruiting (employee referrals,tweets), Reward(recognition) and retaining(through collaboration). Following are the few steps that can be taken in order to embrace social media (linkedin specifically):

· Encourage employee to be on linkedin & connect.

· Have a strategy for status updates.

· Give them guidance on how to collaborate.

· Add purpose & a fresh perspective on being networked.

Nandita Gurjar: The 3 myths surrounding social media are:

· Face to face relationships are far more valuable than virtual ones.

· The best way to control the use of social media is to block.

· There is no ROI in social media.

Many eye opening case examples of companies were given where improper use of social media backfired heavily. Hence it’s important to ensure the following are never discussed in social media:

· Client confidential.

· Policy documents.

· Misuse of code of conduct.

It was interesting to know about the ‘My voice’ initiative in Infosys where employees can voice their opinion on policies before its creation and can also comment during the probation period for which the policy is implemented before its final implementation.

Micro-blogging is also an area where companies need to progress towards.

Session VIII: Cracking the code on Business agility: lessons from high performing learning organizations

Speakers: Bob Danna, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, Bersin Associates & Daniel R Bielenberg, Director, Capability Development Strategy

Bob Danna: In high intensive learning organizations the following checklist must be kept in perspective:

· Rethink the learning purpose.

· Focus a deep specialization.

· Support learning agility

· Get realigned to the business

· Manage programs like portfolios.

The two key attributes in a learning culture are as follows:

· Knowledge sharing on a frequent, encouraging & supportive basis.

· Reflection- Post success & failure, opportunities for learning at all

levels must be leveraged.

Daniel R Bielenberg: The existing talent challenge today is dealt through deep specialization, innovation, changeability, industrialization, people development, case skills & common culture (all of them have a learning & development element in it). The process of building a high performing learning organization begins from building foundational industry knowledge to leveraging high performance business and finally generating sales with industry specific offering & framework.

The biggest challenge in learning and development is that most managers treat coaching as a side job and much sincerity is lost in the coaching process.

It was interesting to know how an Accenture employee used blogs in order to persuade employees for enrolling in a learning module. She was able to sign up 5000 employees by using a free tool. It is actions like these which make the real difference in both learning development & use of social media.

Session IX: The transformed job market

Speakers: Aadesh Goyal, Executive Vice President, Global Head, HR,TATA Communications Ltd.

R V Balasubramanium Iyer ,Vice President, Reliance Retail. Chairperson: William Paul, Executive Vice President, HR, Global Shared Service Centers, Scope International, Standard Charted Bank

William Paul: The speed & quantum of change is humungous today and the customers are also becoming increasingly demanding. This has led to huge talent shortage in many industries. Hence it’s important that we do the following:

· Invent your own raw talent pipeline.

· Finding the balance between raw talent & lateral

· Day 1 readiness

· Use of metrics

· Diversity mgmt

Aadesh Goyal: Following must be done in order to deal with the highly transformed job market which seems similar to the pre slowdown phase in 2007:

· Must focus more on behavioral competencies than technical

Competencies while hiring.

· Continue to hire at lowest level.

· Build & develop the talent for middle & top management.

· Hire from outside (new competencies & new geographies) for new

areas.

In addition it must also be recognized that the market for CXOs is hot and compensation offered is also very high.

R V Balasubramanium Iyer: He had a humorous take on the dilemma of being a recruiter in the retail industry where the desperation for recruiting goes to the extent of advertising in front of the stores saying: ‘Trespasser would be recruited’. He emphasized on the importance of partnership between industry, academia & individual.

One of the good examples of such partnership is between Manipal University and ICICI (http://www.ima.manipal.edu/).

Meeting Jamling Tenzing in Nasscom HR Summit 2010

2010-08-02T20:34:00.006+05:30

Conquering the Mt Everest in the realms of thought itself is very inspiring. If we spend a few moments hallucinating about the presence of Mt Everest then we can realize how insignificant we are infront of the mighty Everest. Yet few people conquer it through their spirit-‘the human spirit’. The human spirit is common to all of us yet only few realize it. One such man is Jamling Tenzing, son of legendary climber Tenzing Norway.

His quest to climb the Everest was full of challenges like staying away from the family in the hope of meeting them once again to loosing friends who died on the way to climb the Mt Everest.

In business also, the HR team is often confronted with huge challenges yet they are met with the right direction, team support, planning, courage & passion.

Another important life lesson learned from his presentation was that “In mountaineering, climbing up is optional but getting down is mandatory”.

He also mentioned how climbers are increasingly realizing that it’s important to respect nature and keep the surroundings clean while venturing into mountain expeditions.

Hence, it’s not only the end which matters but also the means. HR is the conscious keeper of the organization and must always adhere to ethics in its pursuit to achieve business success.

Even HR has a community to take care of that transcends the associates and their families.

He concluded his presentation with his father’s quote: “Be a leader, Be a guide…Be great and make others great”.

PS: He was kind enough to autograph on my name batch :-)

'Udaan'-It's about being man enough to keep the child inside you alive :-)

2010-07-25T19:34:00.005+05:30

Sometimes one has to patiently wait for long enough to experience a masterpiece which can stir your soul. Udaan is one such masterpiece.

It's a very sincere and brave movie in terms of the message it renders and also because it paves a new beginning[hopefully] for Indian Cinema. A movie that inspires to liberate oneself towards doing the right hings in life along with embracing the shades of Grey.

Rohan (Rajat Barmecha) gets expelled from his elite boarding school after getting caught red handed by his hostel warden for watching an Adult movie[which apparently the warden was also watching ;-)]. This marks a new journey that separates him from his close school buddies [& partners in crime] and introduces him to a life that further distances him from his insensitive father [Ronit Roy] in spite of the physical proximity of staying in the same home[or rather house!!!] .

Rohan wants to live his dream of being a professional writer but his father wants him to work in the factory for half a day and then persue studies in an engineering college.However his tough routine does not stop him from writing poems and stories.

Udaan captures various facets of Rohan's life like his dream of being a writer....an immensely bitter relationship with his father...memories of his late mother..his emotional anchor 'Chacha'...his friends who constantly help him to liberate and keep him sane with all possible insane means... But the cutest part of Udaan is Rohan's relationship with his kid step brother 'Arjun'...

The movie has some of the finest poems. It makes sense to watch the movie to experience the magic of Rohan's poems alone.

Sample this poem which captures the essence of Rohan's conflicted relationship with his father:

"Jo lehron se aage nazar dekh paati toh tum jaan lete main kya sochta hoon, Wo aawaz tumko bhi jo bhed jaati toh tum jaan lete main kya sochta hoon. Zid ka tumhare jo parda sarakta toh khidkiyon se aage bhi tum dekh paate, Aankhon se aadaton ki jo palken hatate toh tum jaan lete main kya sochta hoon. Meri tarah khud par hota zara bharosa toh kuchh door tum bhi saath-saath aate, Rang meri aankhon ka baant-te zara sa toh kuchh door tum bhi saath-saath aate, Nasha aasmaan ka jo choomta tumhe bhi, hasraten tumhari naya janm paatin, Khud doosre janam mein meri udaan chhoone kuchh door tum bhi saath-saath aate."

Watch the movie in order to add depth in your life...to gather courage to realize your dream in the midst of the imperfections that surrounds you...to appreciate the simplicity with which the complexities of Rohan's life is narrated... to believe in stories that are reel as well as real.... to support new age Indian Cinema....and finally strengthen the belief that real manhood is about keeping the child inside you alive constantly....

All the actors play their respective parts with absolute brilliance but Ronit Roy steals the show. You end up detesting the character played by him but you will admire his acting skills.

N T Arunkumar on life, universe & everything 2.0

2010-07-08T23:09:00.005+05:30

N T Arunkumar who has deeply influenced me in various HR forums and whose tweets I regularly follow is now passionately blogging [Majority of what I retweet are from his tweets].

http://ntak.wordpress.com/ is his web journal where in a short span [July 3rd onwards] he has written a wide array of posts on topics that are immensely close to his heart like CSR,travel, spirituality & very soon you can expect much more like leadership, technology,HR etc.

I know Arun Sir as a successful leader and one of the few genuinely good human beings who is selflessly concerned about development of young people like me. The blog gives me an opportunity to know Arun Sir even better.

I have found a teacher in him. Follow the blog regularly and get a slice of precious life lessons from him.

Following are a few links of my earlier posts on Arun Sir:

Link 1

Link 2

A small break from blogging

2010-07-03T23:50:00.002+05:30

I am sorry for not blogging regularly these days. I am spending considerable amount of time reading. Most of these books are non-HR books and focuses on life & spirituality . I am thoroughly enjoying this phase.

I am also watching the football world cup matches too[mostly on weekends]. A little sad that Argentina lost today. But 'Jai Ho' to the Germany team. Young,spunky,energetic, aggressive and immensely determined. The team also has great ethical mix. I have to cheer for this team from now on to celebrate their passion to perform and the open mindedness to embrace inclusiveness. Thats the best team for the HR professional inside me :-)

At work I was busy doing an HR project which has been extremely satisfying in terms of creativity and learning. I am indeed having a great time at work.

In a couple of days, I will be back with blog posts.

'HR generalist to specialist-Division of labour' by Ria Dua

2010-06-19T23:43:00.005+05:30

One of my dear friend, Ria Dua wrote an interesting post in her blog.

She writes "What I have observed is a recent shift in the trend of the profiles being offered to HR graduates .Initially freshers were easily given HR Generalists role. However, lately there has been a shift from Generalist roles to Specialist Roles."

She further adds "The Generalists were doing a good job but suddenly to get things done in a better way, a need for proper division of labor was felt. It was at this point that the specialists came into the picture."

On a purely humorous note, I must add that I once heard a speaker [cant remember the name...sorry] who said " companies are shifting from generalists to specialists because they have realized[Ria-lized] that 'Generalists' were prone to 'Generally' doing nothing!!!!!"

Quality Management System & HR

2010-06-14T21:11:00.005+05:30

Two days back during the HR Sangam meeting we discussed 'Quality Management System in HR'.
The meeting was facilitated by C Eashwer from Enhance Chennai . One question which might arise in the minds of many while reading this post is 'How HR and Quality management are related???'.

Quality management is a 'participative process' of 'empowering people' to continuously improve the quality of their work.

I would like to believe that it's HR more than any other function which has the responsibility to
'empower people' and help them to be 'participative'.

So that's where HR and QMS meets.

However, the meeting was about how QMS can be implemented in HR. So it's not only about HR playing a key role as a function in Quality Management but also recognizing QMS's role as a function in HR.

I was given a 20 point detailed action plan on establishing a QMS in HR Department. Let me try & outline the points in brief:

Form a Steering Committee of members from HR department to assist establishing & maintaining a Quality Management System.
Select and appointment a Quality Management Representative[QMR] for designing, developing, establishing and maintaining a QMS relevent to the Company's business objectives.
Arrange for a QMS launch evening, to publicize the Quality Management System.
Plan for regular Steering committee meeting with QMR for the strategic planning of QMS in HR department.
Arrange for a detailed orientation on QMS to all the steering committee members.
QMR to draw the collective wisdom from the steering committee members and design a Quality Policy for HR department.
As a next step QMR and the steering committee in consultantation with all the HR staff should design and draft Quality Objectives which are nothing but measurable, tangible, verifiable targets to achieve in the major divisions of HR like recruitment, training etc.
Now the steering committee should contemplate and come out with a list of 'Quality Activities' in sequence that is from the first HR activity till the last HR activity.
Next is the design and development of the Business Process Plan[BPP] of HR. This is nothing but a Flow Chart of A-Z activities of the department with connectivity from one to another.
From the BPP, context diagrams for each division of HR can be made.
Now the team should contemplate and group and identify the quality procedures from the BPP and context diagrams and come out with a list of Quality Procedures for the department.
Upon identifying the list of procedures, the team should start writing the procedures. Each process must have a procedure owner who is responsible for the effective implementation of that procedure.
Formation of Steering sub committees like internal communication committee, ,procedure walk throgh committee, documentation committee etc.
Now all procedures must be recorded into a manual called 'Quality manual'.
Other addition to QM is Quality Work Instructions for each procedure.
Have the internal quality audit.
Form the Management review committee for active involvement of management staff in supporting QMS in all respects.
Effective maintenance of QMS.

The bullet points above serve only as a very broad outline of action plan on establishing a QMS in HR Department.

'Redifining HR' by H N Shrinivas

2010-06-12T15:56:00.003+05:30

I was invited by one of my HR mentors from college days, Mr G D Sharma, President[HR],BGR Energy Systems Ltd for a session on 'Redefining HR' organized by Resource Focus Management Solutions Pvt Ltd.

The speaker for the evening Mr H N Shrinivas, Sr Vice President, HR and Business Excellence,The Indian Hotels Company Ltd spoke on the topic 'Redefining HR' with a special focus on 'post 26/11 initiatives by Taj Hotels.

It was the second time I heard him speak in a forum. This link will direct you to my detailed post which I wrote during a NHRD meeting last year where he addressed.

I felt the same vibe this time too. Tears rolled down my cheeks as he spoke about the sacrifices from his employees on 26/11. I was not the only one in that emotional state.

So much of effort is put into employee engagement worldwide. It is measured through various means but it can not be mere engagement practices which can enthuse several associates to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of customers.

As H N Shrinivas said in a very emotional state that it's not only the training & development or engagement practices that allows it's associates to feel so belonged to Taj Hotels. It's because of the values and philosophy present in the cultural DNA of the organization.

He focused on how the new generation of workforce like Gen Y & Millenial are at the risk of getting more associated with their professional communities through social networks than with their own organization.

Hence, he advised that HR professionals should make the unchangeable positive elements of the organization even more firm. This will ensure that the future generations can identify with the company's core values forever as it's the values which is going define the culture & identity of the company in the minds of future workforce. Stronger the values & the way they are lived through actions and not mere talks is the way forward to make future workforce associate with their company.

My emotions before the first day at work as an HR professional...

2010-06-06T21:43:00.010+05:30

Six years back when I came to Chennai, I was not sure of the course[BBA] I took in Madras Christian College. I always wanted to join the Indian Army but I could not join it because of a few personal reasons.

I found a lot of students eventually choosing to pursue a MBA degree. Hence I thought it would make sense to do BBA and that too when it was offered in Madras Christian College. I had a fabulous time in College.

During my second year I made up my mind that I had a personality fit in HR as we got a snapshot about various areas of management very early during the course.

To put it in mushy note, I had a small crush on HR. Time progressed and I learned more about HR through professors, friends, seniors, books and mgmt competitions. Then I felt that it's not a mere crush, it had to be love...love for HR...I am happy it happened....

After my BBA, I worked in a top Indian company as a process associate but could not get an HR role there. After approximately 9 months of great learning and observation as an employee I decided to study further in HR.

I was very lucky to get into Madras School of Social Work where apart from academics I learned a lot from the field works, summer internship and research project.

This gives me an opportunity to thank everyone associated with my life in MSSW :-)

Finally one of the world's fastest growing IT company came to campus and I got the opportunity to become an HR professional.

For me it's not only about being an 'HR professional' alone. It's beyond that. For 5 years I dreamt of being one. I keenly observed workplaces & people through which I wrote many posts in this blog. Many appreciated my blog and I also received criticisms. I remember once being invited in a top HR consultancy firm and being told by their director that I lacked basic HR conceptual skills.

I tried harder to increase my conceptual skill with sheer passion for HR. Hopefully I have improved and I hope the gentleman who rightfully advised me on my conceptual skills is reading this post today. I have huge respect for him and without his guidance this job would not have been possible.

Whatever little[sometimes significant & sometimes insignificant] I achieved through this journey of 5 years is what I value a lot.

Also I am keen to know if my writing changes in the blog as an HR practitioner because I have blogged till date without any work experience in HR.

I am very excited yet a little nervous. A lot I did till date was for tomorrow & beyond. It's tough to articulate how I am feeling today. I immensely enjoyed this wait only with a vision that it will get over one day and I will become an HR professional. And I am just few hours away from that moment.

Will I be able to sleep well today???

Yes!! because I have a certain sense of a 'settling feeling'. But also 'No' because this is another beginning which I wish never ends. I have a deep desire to deliver the best to my company, my team and most importantly my profession.

It reminds me of an Urdu Couplet:

"Sitaron Se Aagey Jahan Aur Bhi Hai,
Abhi Zindagii Mein Imtihaan Aur Bhi Hai"

Translation:
Beyond the Stars , There are yet Many Worlds,
Many more trials are there, Yet to be Faced in this Life.

At one point of my life I felt that being an HR professional itself would be like reaching the stars. But my real journey has just started. I am going to be introduced to my major learning now. I am looking forward to every bit of it and I will give my best in order to embrace it all.

Let me also take the opportunity to thank everyone who has encouraged & discouraged me throughout.

Let me share a few quotes from Abhijit Bhaduri's books Mediocre But Arrogant & Married But Available which I feel very relevant for myself:

As you step into the world of work, you are bringing to it the freshness of ideas and power to change things.
Whenever you feel unhappy about something around you, remember, you can improve it. So whether you change it or choose to walk away and just complain-you have made a choice.
You have had the education that will tell you what to do and how to do it. But it is only your heart that will tell you why you ought to.
Everyday we choose how much we will touch the lives of less fortunate.
Never underestimate your ability to make a difference.
Whether it is success or failure, remember that 'this too shall pass'.
Don't take your business card so seriously that it defines your identity and you feel helpless without it.
If you want success, think of yourself, if you want happiness, think of others.
Stop asking about the meaning of life and instead, think of yourself as the one being questioned by life. Your answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.

It's midnight now and I must get some rest before another phase of my life welcomes me. Hope to see some of the brightest dreams tonight so that I can keep myself awake to fulfill them.

PS: Thanks to my Parents, God,All professors and teachers, HR professionals [especially Abhijit Bhaduri, Gautam Ghosh, Rajesh Kamath,G D Sharma, Sudhir Warde], HR bloggers,friends, cousins,well wishers, my dear readers and many more :-)

That magic of 100%

2010-06-06T11:13:00.005+05:30

I came across an old video of Harsha Bhogle addressing the students of his alma mater, IIM- Ahmedabad. His speech on 'excellence' is immensely inspiring and I was glued in front of my computer monitor throughout.

Please watch this video which is of over 1 hour duration but certainly worth it.

In case you want to read a summary of the video then refer to the following links from a few impressive blogs:

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

The links above do an absolute justice of summarizing the video but I feel tempted to make a special mention of the part in the speech where he speaks about 'excellence being a series of 100 %'.

He says "If you give every moment 100% and then wait for the next moment and say “You know what! This is the moment I wanted to give 100% too” and then the next moment turns up and then you say ” Actually this was the moment I really wanted to give my 100% best” . And then you will find the little things in life that makes the difference between the good and great just happen."

Even though Harsha Bhogle works as a cricket commentator yet he chose to give his 100 % even while delivering the speech. Once we learn to give 100 % in one area of our life, it becomes easier to give 100 % into any other area if we choose to be passionate.

Happy to be a part of the Sandbox Network :-)

2010-06-05T17:55:00.004+05:30

I am delighted & humbled to announce that I am a member of the Sandbox Network now. It is a worldwide network of hand picked achievers below the age of 30 years.

I am certainly below 30 years but being considered as an achiever is pleasantly surprising. The best part of being in the sandbox network is that there are many inspiring young minds in the network. They are from various walks of life like entrepreneurs, researchers, innovators and even blogger ;-)

You can interact, learn, network and participate in interesting events. I am sure it will be fascinating for all.

I have already made some inspiring friends across the world.

Please visit the website http://www.sandbox-network.com/ to get more information regarding application & selection process.

Let's get connected at the Sandbox Network soon :-)

Leveraging HR analytics for High Impact...

2010-05-29T18:01:00.003+05:30

During this month's NHRD meeting, N T Arunkumar, Ex CEO & Director, D&B TransUnion Analytic & Decision Services, made a brilliant presentation on the topic 'Leveraging HR analytics for High Impact...'.

The focus was primarily on three key words- Analytic, HR & Impact.

Speaking about 'analytic', he focused on on how the success in using analytics lies more on asking the right questions rather than seeking the right answers. Analytics can produce the required answers but the questions asked should be intelligent & proper.

He also mentioned that HR metrics have failed in numerous occasions to provide actionable data. And hence I personally interpreted that analytics would serve that concern with predicting 'accurate' data that would give higher confidence & sharper intent to the HR for taking the right action.

A few challenges in establishing Enterprise HR analytics:

Quantifying the linkage of HR & Business.
Lack of technology [How many companies really have a sincere wish to invest on providing technology to HR????]
Obtaining raw data.
Identifying value added HR metrics.
Integrating HR & corporate measurement.
Subjectivity of HR metrics.
HR staff skill gap.
Access to metrics.
Accountability for metrics
Tying incentives to HR metrics.

Some of the key questions which must be asked while implementing Enterprise level HR analytics:

How to embed business insights into HR metrics?
What cultural & behavioral change is required in HR & business?
What are the few metrics that matter to business?
Do we understand business SWOT & does the metrics help analyze those?

He emphasized on the importance of particularly 'Employee Engagement Index' and various measures like Age staffing breakdown,Voluntary termination rate, Employee commitment index , Employee retention index, Employer brand strength, Internal hire rate,Manager quality index, Market opportunity index, Offer fit index etc.

He also mentioned that the readiness of HR & business to get aligned to analytics is based on dealing with certain paradoxes:

Democratization of IT within enterprise.
Too much data V/S too few being useful
Skills sufficiency V/S Skills deficiency.

He recommended us to read the book 'Competing on analytics' by Thomas H Davenport & Jeanne H Harris. He quoted from the book that 'Analytics is good but competing on analytics is better'.

He also focused on how analytics have evolved from forecasting to Predictive analysis and now 'Decision Optimization'. Hence, if HR has to truly become a 'Business Enabler' then it must embrace this evolution in analytics at the earliest.

He also emphasized on the need for ethics and values in the operation of analytics.

He gave examples of companies that leveraged analytics for better business performance like Marriott [Revenue Mgmt], Wal Mart [Supply Chain Mgmt], RBC [Cost & Customer profitability] etc.

However, the most fascinating example was that from the book Moneyball which is about Oakland Athletics that used analytics to win a major tournament. The analytics helped the team management to locate the right positions at which they were supposed to play.

Analytics has worked for complex business as well as competitive sport. It's one area that certainly needs to be leveraged. I guess the leadership team has to show the intent and the HR team must show the credibility.

Love Letters....

2010-05-27T00:49:00.003+05:30

I watched a play aptly titled 'Love letters' directed by Rahul Da Cunha starring Rajit Kapur & Shernaz Patel. The Pulitzer award winning play written by AR Gurney revolves around Melissa Gardner (Shernaz Patel) and Andrew Makepeac (Rajit Kapur) over 50 years when they communicate through letters except a few cherished moments when they met each other occasionally.

Their formative years and ever evolving maturity (& immaturity) is perfectly captured through the letter correspondences (which were beautifully recited & acted by them) .

The correspondence begins from a mere 'birthday party' thank you note to the last moment of Melissa's life.

The play reflects how Andrew & Melisa lived in a denial mode about their romantic feelings and got married to different people inspite of harboring their true feelings for each other only within themselves.

The plot might seem quite cleshay. But it's the brilliant performance and the lessons from the play which makes it remarkable.

Here are a few reflections of my personal thoughts from the play:

We often encounter these immensely special moments when we have to make seemingly indistinct decisions about our life. Yet quite foolishly our good humour supersedes our true intent and the pattern of our life completely changes. This pattern eventually extols 'regrets'.
We are always communicating with our people but how often do we really connect??? And even if we connect then does it stop there??? Relationships are nurtured through communication...connections... and beyond [Figure it out yourself]....
There are few people in our lives without whom there would be a vacum. Spend a lot of love and time for them. Do it either in a selfless or selfish manner. But do it. As long as you do the right thing it doesn't really matter whether it's selfless or selfish.

A discussion on the dynamics of 'Performance Management System'

2010-05-22T00:52:00.005+05:30

Recently during the SHRM India monthly meeting held in Chennai, we discussed certain issues pertaining to 'Performance Management System'. We were divided into approximately 5 groups consisting of 4 to 5 HR practitioners,academicians & students. We discussed within the groups and then synthesized some of the most important learning from the discussion.

After parallel brain storming sessions we made the following conclusion:

1. Some of the key expectations from a PMS today are Credibility, not merely differentiating performance but identifying top performers , infusing trust in all stakeholders through utmost transparency.

2. The major roadblocks in PMS are organizational politics, time, increased subjectivity to be evaluated, 'Forced' rating [bell curve debate], lack of ownership, lack of instant/proper feedback.

3. The initiatives to clear the road blocks would be ownership, constant/proper feedback, minimizing subjectivity to a certain extent, training to use the PMS in the right manner, proper execution of performance appraisal process.

A few other thoughts which the entire group at large felt passionately about were:

1. The possibility of co-creating tailor made PMS through inclusiveness of all associates in the organization.

2. The need to discuss the 'change issues' while shifting into a new PMS system.

3. The need to better understand and match the right form of PMS with the right organizational context.

The entire group present during the meeting intends to regularly deliberate on the PMS issues through e-mails in order to gain further objectivity till we again meet next month.

Rural visits during induction....

2010-05-17T20:45:00.005+05:30

There are times when we thank God for even the smallest blessings. And there are times when we are completely ignorant of the best things that happen to our life.

Remember that hot afternoon when you thanked God after drinking a chilled 'nimbu paani[Lemonade]'?
'Yes' most likely.

But do you remember thanking God while having one of your best meals in a luxury restaurant?
'Not really' I guess.

We are in a position to thank God and appreciate the 'nimbu paani' incident as we are put into a tough situation[extremely hot afternoon] & we get an instant gratification after drinking the 'nimbu paani' while there are many people around who are either too poor or too busy to enjoy the chilled nimbu paani.

Hence in order to appreciate even the little things in life we must recognize how it feels to have the lack of it.

The HR community focusses a great deal in orientation, training and also aims at 'value integration' during induction of new recruits.

I feel 'value integration' can not be easily executed as the HR community is always at a risk of getting too occupied with training and orientation.

Every well known company which I can think of has a certain sense of goodness in it's 'values'. In order to infuse that goodness in the new recruits , I feel 'rural visits' for a few days can serve the purpose.

I feel the following can be done during a 'rural visit':

Have keen observation on the life in the village.
Interact with the villagers.
Take up a project[even small] which can be continued on a sustained basis by a fully commuted CSR team along with the support of the new recruits.
Have an interactive session which can consist of the learning from the village life.

The rural visit would help in the following ways:

They would become more sensitive towards the needs of the less fortunate.
It will give them an opportunity to appreciate what all they have in their life including their job or profession. Hence, there will be an increase in the level of commitment and engagement in work.
It will make the future CSR projects more genuine.
It will inculcate a certain sense of goodness that could even match with the values of the company .

Quotes from Rabindranath Tagore and few HR lessons from them...

2010-05-09T17:34:00.003+05:30

Today we celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. I am missing the revelry in Kolkata & Delhi[C R Park].

I was born in Kolkata but I grew up in Delhi. The most formative years of my life belonged in Delhi and I could not really associate myself with the works of Rabindranath Tagore as a kid. My parents did make a lot of effort to get myself oriented towards Rabindra Sangeet but I could never appreciate it then.

But as I matured, I found a lot of depth and meaning in his works especially in the lyrics of his songs and the poems.

Let me share a few of his quotes which has people lessons infused in them:

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it."- A beautiful quote that extols the importance of emotions and why emotions must be accommodated even if logic rules the scenario.
" For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in it,, knowing it and making use of it, but realizing our own selves in it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in perfect union."- A classic quote that speaks volumes on 'inclusiveness' , 'active engagement' and 'goodness'.

"All men have poetry in their hearts, and it is necessary for them, as much as possible, to express their feelings. For this they must have a medium, moving and pliant, which can refreshingly become their own, age after age. All great languages undergo change. Those languages which resist the spirit of change are doomed and will never produce great harvests of thought and literature. When forms become fixed, the spirit either weakly accepts its imprisonment or rebels. All revolutions consists of the "within" fighting against invasion from "without"... All great human movements are related to some great idea."-A quote that can spur thoughts on change management and idea generation.
"Asks the Possible of the Impossible, "Where is your dwelling-place?" "In the dreams of the Impotent," comes the answer."- A quote on courage, proactiveness and initiative.
"Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come."- A quote that can inspire a turnaround, change or a complete business re-engineering.
"Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it."-A quote on capacity building.
"Facts are many, but the truth is one." A quote on authenticity and integrity.
"Gross utility kills beauty. We now have all over the world huge production of things, huge organizations, huge administrations of empire - all obstructing the path of life. Civilization is waiting for a great consummation, for an expression of its soul in beauty. This must be your contribution to the world." -Need I say more :-)
"He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open."-A quote on execution and continuous learning & development.
"I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung."- A quote on work-life integration
"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy." A quote on HR's true mission :-)
"If anger be the basis of our political activities, the excitement tends to become an end in itself, at the expense of the object to be achieved. side issues then assume an exaggerated importance, and all gravity of thought and action is lost; such excitement is not an exercise of strength, but a display of weakness." -A quote on anger management
"If life is journey be endless where is its goal? The answer is, it is everywhere. We are in a palace which has no end, but which we have reached. By exploring it and extending our relationship with it we are ever making it more and more our own. The infant is born in the same universe where lives the adult of ripe mind. But its position is not like a schoolboy who has yet to learn his alphabet, finding himself in a college class. The infant has it own joy of life because the world is not a mere road, but a home, of which it will have more and more as it grows up in wisdom. With our road that gain is at every step, for it is the road and the home in one; it leads us on yet gives us shelter."- A quote on having greater purpose in life and work.

All the quotes above are inspired from life so that they can inspire each and every elements of life in return. HR is only a small aspect yet an important one. A lot can be learned from the works of Rabindranath Tagore. I felt HR is one of them.

The quotes are obtained from this link .

Are you a future leader?

2010-05-09T01:10:00.004+05:30

I found this link where you can test your leadership quotient for future times. What I find most interesting are the dimensions on which our leadership quotient for future is being tested. They are as follows:

Maker Instinct
Clarity
Diemma flipping
Immersive learning ability
Bio Empathy
Constructive depolarizing
Quiet transparency
Smart Mob organizing
Commons creating

The dimensions do sound complex but the link above explains each & every dimensions very clearly. Go ahead and test yourself!!!

The MSSW-SIFE Story – Recreating lives...

2010-05-07T16:18:00.009+05:30

The association of MSSW with SIFE reached it's peak last year when my college was selected as the finalist of the National SIFE tournament. It was a proud moment for all of us in college and the core team of SIFE did a fabulous job. It was not merely about touching lives, it was beyond that. It was all about recreating lives. I once again thank and congratulate last year's SIFE team for their sincerity and selfless work.

But even this year the students of MSSW will have a lot to cheer about. The new SIFE team consisting of Prof Jayanthi Peter,HOD, Dept of MA-HRM,MSSW[Faculty Incharge]; Hadeeja S; Rakesh Kumar Patil; Madhumitha Sowndararajan;Prashanti. T; Arvind Srikantan; Adline Sophia;Sowmya Mathews;Harish.S;Tanvir Ahmed are working very hard towards multiple projects that could generate a lot of benefits and goodness in various target communities.

I pray and wish that the projects are a huge success. I would like to share a snapshot of this year's projects undertaken by the SIFE core team along with the support of everyone in MSSW.

Following is a write up mailed to me by my good friend and SIFE core team member 'Madhumita Soundarajan':

The Madras School of Social Work, as a pioneering institution in professionalizing social service, has undertaken several initiatives to promote the feeling of community development amongst students. One such quintessential initiative has been the SIFE.

SIFE stands for Students in Free Enterprise. As an NGO, headquartered in USA, it aims at creating self sustainability in a chosen community, by partnering with students from various educational institutions.

Thus, it is synonymous to the saying, “A meal today is for now; A skill today is forever".

MSSW is one such prestigious college to have been partnering with SIFE.

Every year, the MSSW-SIFE team undertakes a new project, targeting at a different community than before. It is interesting to note that students, as a part of this initiative, play the role of facilitators, thereby ensuring the non-dependency of the community on anybody else. This year, the new initiative undertaken has been named “Project Vidiyal”

This project targets the women community who are tsunami victims. The project comprises approximately of 40 women, across different locations in Chennai such as Thiruvanmiyur, Royapuram and Pazhaverkadu. These women belong to the age group 20 years to 40 years.

The community at Thiruvanmiyur (Identified by The TamilNadu Women’s Collective) has been trained on various skills such as candle making, embroidery and artificial flower making. They have also been trained on soft skills such as team building and entrepreneurial skills. The products done by them were also displayed for sale in one of the college festivals. It is to be noted here is that, these women have also been given certificates for undergoing the training program. This authenticity will help them get a loan in future.

The community at Royapuram and Pazhaverkadu are involved in the making of office stationery items (such as notepads, files, pen stands etc, as shown in the picture) made of eco friendly materials such as recycled paper. These women are paid Rs.15 per hour as labour charges for the work they do. The sale proceeds from the products are ploughed back into the business again.

The sife team has been helping the community in active selling by displaying the products in a lot of college fests. From the last week of February till date, the sales proceeds has reached Rs.38,000. The Sife team also helped the community get bulk orders from colleges and corporates.

As a future course of action, the MSSW-SIFE team is currently involved in active branding for the products and in the process, also preparing a product catalogue that could be used by the community representatives on their sales front, for marketing and publicity purposes.

Apart from Project Vidiyal, the team is also involved in the active monitoring of their last year’s sustainable venture, “Project Suyam”. This project focusing on the farming community, is now supporting around 50 families. The project, on one hand, targets a community in Tamabram, involving the cultivation of Vincea Rosea, a drug that is widely used for Cancer treatment. On the other hand, the venture also extends to the outskirts of the city in Melmaruvathur where various leguminous crops such as groundnuts are also being cultivated. These are regularly put through crop rotation to ensure the fertility of the soil. The team proudly conveys that this project has already become sustainable and is continuing to be run in association with Mr. P.S Nathan, Farm Director, Apoorva Farms, Kayapakkam, Kanchipuram Dist, TamilNadu

Exciting speakers for SHRM Annual Conference 2010

2010-05-04T21:50:00.003+05:30

I received the invite for 62nd SHRM Annual Conference to be held between 27-30 June, 2010 in San Diego, California . What seems most impressive to me is the list of prolific speakers which will include:

Al Gore - Former Vice President of the United States Nobel Laureate
Steve Forbes – President and Chief Executive Officer of Forbes and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine
Dave Ulrich – Professor of Business at the University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group
Marcus Buckingham – New York Times best-selling author and business visionary
Dr. Fons Trompenaars – World Authority on Managing Cultural Diversity

The invite also mentions that there would be 150 concurrent sessions during the conference [WOW!!!!!]. It also promises insights on topics like:

Talent Management
Strategic HR
Global Human Resource

The probability of me attending the conference is really thin as I would be joining my new work at that point of time. However, I really hope that the next SHRM Annual Conference takes place in India and I would surely attend it :-)

For further information on the Annual Conference please visit http://annual.shrm.org/my-focus-is-on/recertification-preparation#global .

You can also mail at shrmindia@shrm.org

HR business partnering....

2010-05-01T21:29:00.003+05:30

This week during the NHRD meeting, the theme was 'HR Business Partnering'. Even though this topic has been discussed in length in various forums and books, yet it seems very intricate. Has HR become a proper business partner yet??? Of course not in many companies.

Hence it makes sense to discuss this further in forums. Indeed we had a great time listening to Mr D Harish, Leadership Consultant & Executive coach and Tarun Kochhar, CEO, Carpediem .

A few thoughts by Mr D Harish:

In order to make a transition from HR expert to a HR business partner there has to be a shift from providing answers to asking the right questions, analyzing to synthesizing, controlling to collaborating, supply expertise to supply insights.
The HR business Partner's job is to Build Trust, Listen for Insights, Providing Personal Guidance, Aligning to the agenda.
The way forward for the partnership is through contextual business awareness, professional mutuality, passionate commitment and value consciousness.
A few competencies that would really help the HR business partners are functional knowledge, business acumen, consulting skills and coaching approach.

He also mentioned how the HR business partner must have 'selfless confidence' to have the courage to speak what is right for the company's long term goal.

Mr Tarun Kochhar gave insights towards two successful cases: Sathyam Cinemas and Isteel.
He explained how in these two companies the HR team plays a very inclusive role towards achieving the organizational vision. The cases were simple to understand and made a lot of impact on me because I could relate to them especially the Sathyam Cinemas case.

For example: It was observed that Sathyam Cinemas had a major amount of their audience among the 'teenager women' category but their security was a concern initially. However, the HR team recognized this and recruited many more security guards with the right prerequisites [they had strong appearance with pleasant personality]. Also a lot of thought was invested on finer details like their grooming and uniform colour[Bright so that the teenager women could easily spot them and feel secure]. The business leaders were also fully supportive of this because the HR could articulate the need for recruiting the security guards by aligning to the business vision of creating 'magical moments'.

People skills learnt from a 'Marketing Maven'...

2010-04-30T00:41:00.005+05:30

Tonight I had a great dinner with my dad's friend who is the Director [Marketing] of a well known Indian company. Not only was the Pasta very delectable, even the scintillating conversation was full of learning.

During the conversation I came to know that he had done exceedingly well in his prior marketing assignments. However, he attributed his success in marketing assignments to his people skills and deep understanding about the business.

Some of my key learning were:

Business ownership is the real key. The business ownership should be shared by each and every soul in the organization. Even a company car driver who is well aware & appreciative of the business [and it's vision] would influence the client to a great extent during the journey from the airport to the client's hotel. He would be aware of the fact that he is transporting a business client who is capable of adding a lot of value in the business [and he is not just a mere passenger].

It's important that business leaders recognize and accept that they cannot know everything about business. If the leader compels his domain experts to make seemingly intelligent nods to whatever he says then he would never really allow his domain experts to truly express their views and ideas.

For personal success at work one should first listen to others with a very keen intent, do his work passionately, be an exceptional team player and be careful enough to market his contribution to the right people in a nice & ethical way [Life at work is not like a cricket match in IPL where you are constantly appreciated or criticized for your results delivered as well as your sincere efforts].

Towards the end of the dinner I understood one more facet about myself. It's that a decent pasta and an incredible conversation can bring the biggest possible smile on my face.

Infosys employees vent anger on HR issues in Blogs

2010-04-18T00:58:00.005+05:30

Recently during a discussion on 'top 3 high priority concerns for HR', I said that managing the voice of employees in the web space is going to be a top priority concern. I must admit that my point was not well endorsed and finally it did not feature among the top three concerns.

However, I still continue to be a muscular proponent of what I had said with due respect to everyone who were present there.

This link from Rediff clearly indicates the point in my support. Today it's Infosys and tomorrow it might be a different company.

Hence, I feel it's important to realise that one of the new avatar of HR is going to be managing the image of it's company in the web world. And most of the time and energy is going to be invested upon moderating or managing the voice of it's own employees.

However, I feel that the real solution lies in the quality of HR value delivery. How long and to what extent can one moderate angst or displeasure? Angst will find alternate means too. But the honesty, clarity and sincerity with which HR delivers value to employees and business is going to be the real key in this regard.

Few updates...

2010-04-18T00:35:00.002+05:30

Let me share the Naukri Job Speak highlights mailed by Naukri.com:

Proffessional in ITES were high in demand in March'10 as index surpassed the July'08 level.
Hiring activity in Delhi, Pune and Kolkata moved up by 13%, 6.5% and 5.5% in Mar'08 over Feb'08.
The index for ITES, Auto, Insurance and Pharma sectors moved up in Mar'10 over Feb'10,indicating an improved hiring environment.
Although IT sector has seen an 8% dip in the index in Mar'10 over Feb'10, the three month moving average index moved up by 6.5 %.
On the Total Jobs(This includes refreshed jobs), the index for the first time surpassed the July 08 levels and stands at 1005.

Silence...Noise...Melody..[It's not about music..It's about HR..]

2010-04-09T22:19:00.004+05:30

Consider that time gap between your campus placement day and your actual date of joining. It's a time period we all go through with varied emotions like intense anticipation to even intense confusion.

I feel this time gap is a sweet spot for the HR which they need to utilize wisely or else it might even turn into an ugly spot. A lot can be done by the HR during this period in terms of communication.

In other words, they can create different sorts of music in the candidate's ears.

Following are some of them:

1. Silence: This happens when the HR team goes into a period of absolute silence after giving the offer letter. There is no communication regarding work location, date of joining etc. This can often be interpreted or misinterpreted [Depends] as a sheer arrogance or even sluggishness of the HR team by the candidate. One of my friend joined a reputed company after approx 8 months of long wait since her campus recruitment. Enough damage was done till then. Finally she quit the company within few months of joining. I guess her relationship with the company started with a bad taste. She did complain to me saying that her company did not show respect for time. If the HR team does not show respect for time then it's sad.HR teams often feel that true communication begins from the induction day onwards. I feel that opinion is wrong. The genuine communication should be right from the time the offer letter is handed over to the candidate. The communication needs to be active, authentic and sincere.

2. Noise: I am not aware of any company so far that indulges in over-communication which might irritate the candidate during this period. But it's quite possible if the HR team takes the communication job sincerely yet not so intelligently. Over communication which might end up making the candidate more confused can do a great deal of harm.

3. Melody: Melody is the ideal form of communication in this period when important details like work location, date of joining, induction dates, information regarding the news & happenings in the company, future scope of development etc can be communicated. But what's equally important in this process is not only the content that is communicated but also the timing. It's fun for the candidate to tell his Professors & friends about all these information and having discussion over them while he is still in college. It keeps him emotionally engaged towards the company. Even small actions like gifting T-shirts or stationaries during this time can do wonders. It would be so cool to wear the T-shirt of the company you would be joining and walk around the campus. That's the kind of impact the right kind of communication and actions can generate.

I am lucky that the company which recruited me is creating melody :-)

40% employees plan to switch jobs in next 6 months

2010-04-02T12:20:00.004+05:30

This link at Rediff is going to grab attention of any concerned employer or HR associate.

Further interesting inferences from the article are as follows:

Employees are already mentally prepared to move out of their organizations, industry and even plan to switch functional areas for better job prospects.
Salary is the main driver pushing a majority of the workforce to look for new job opportunities.
50 per cent of the workforce does not see significant salary hikes within their current organization.

Almost 60 per cent of the workforce, currently employed with manufacturing, automobiles, business process outsourcing (BPO) and call centres, is planning to change to jobs outside their industry.

Those employed with construction, information technology (IT) and software are looking for job shifts within their own industry.

The points mentioned above also signal the following:

There is a high probability that employees are getting increasingly disengaged with their work.
Mental[and actual] preparation for moving into a different job within 6 months is not going to allow them to be engaged with their current work for the next 6 months.
So this is not a crisis to be dealt with after 6 months. Rather, it should be dealt in a proactive manner.
If 'salary' is the issue. Then let's first recognize it with utmost authenticity and then modify the salary structure which might mean atleast increasing the variable or performance pay if not the fixed component.

A Leader and A Problem-Guest Article by Upasika Maithreya

2010-03-31T11:35:00.002+05:30

"All organizations do change when put under sufficient pressure. This pressure must be either external to the organization or the result of very strong leadership."

Bruce Henderson, CEO, Boston Consulting Group, Inc, Henderson on Corporate Strategy (Abit, 1979)

It is only ‘change’ that is constant in this world which is continually evolving. Every minute a new technology is born making an older one obsolete. Every minute a child is born adding to the list of customers that have to be served. Every minute resources are running short, making it more challenging to deliver results.

The only way organisations can cope with change is by having strong leadership, a functional structure and efficient communication, that will act as shock absorbers to the rapid changes that confront the organisation.

A good leader inspires the work force; the kind of leader who makes you want to return to your work-station every morning; the kind of leader who makes you feel that you have a professional responsibility to serve the organisation that you represent.

Jack Welch once said: “The core competency of GE is the development of its people. Great people make great things happen and involving all of them is really the answer. People at any level should feel that they can reach their dreams.”

The role of a leader is to develop his people emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. Some might feel that this is crossing the line of rational expectations. But one must remember that just like the car cannot operate without the clutch, accelerator and brake, the human being is ineffective without the right emotions, intellect & spiritual development.

He must be like the eagle which soars above its young, teaching them to soar to greater heights. He must be the kite-seller who flies his colorful kites in the sky, but keeps them firmly in his hold so that they do not break loose. He carefully guides the kites and keeps them away from any danger.

The leader has to first understand the individual who is like a multi-layered lotus. Every employee brings with him / her skills and talents. While these are important to the organisation these are only the external & visible aspects of the person. Deep within the individual lie many emotions, dreams, aspirations and potential. The leader must spend quality time with his people and understand them better.

A leader needs to partner with his employees & treat them with respect, dignity and value. Each individual has his role to play. The last batsman may lead the team to victory.

The best way to motivate employees is by example. Nothing motivates subordinates more than an honest, sincere and hard-working boss. There is a belief that the carrot motivates, while the stick lowers morale. The leader needs to be the first to accept the stick and the last to accept the carrot in his team.

The last part of the journey is to involve employees in decisions concerning them. A leader who discusses issues at a coffee table and invites solutions is likely to be more successful.

Man never enjoys all that comes easily to him. The fruits of labour are always savoured more when compared to rewards served on a platter. Success can only be rewarded with higher responsibility.

Lastly, the treasures buried in every man’s mind are lost forever if not shared with the world. The leader must always encourage knowledge & experience sharing.

With all these ideal ingredients in place the problem disappears, as… People Rewarded Only on Better performance are never Lazy and are Ever Motivated. Such a leader creates a proactive work force that plans in advance and accepts challenges with enthusiasm. Such a leader is a transformational leader.

CHAGANTI UPASIKA MAITHREYA

II M.A. HRM,

MSSW

In conversation with Nithya Shanti

2010-03-28T11:08:00.004+05:30

Nithya Shanti holds a Post Graduate degree in Human Resources from the prestigious XLRI and has worked in the field of Human Resources and Corporate Strategy. But what's really fascinating about him is that he is a former Buddhist Monk who underwent rigorous training living with meditation masters in remote forests across South East Asia for 6 years. At a certain stage in his practice he felt guided to shift his emphasis from secluded sadhana to engaged spirituality. With the blessings of his teachers he stepped out of the monk role so he could share the timeless principles he had learnt in a modern context. Please visit his website.

His essential teaching is 'Be loving...'

I was genuinely inquisitive to have a chat with him since the first time I heard about him. Yesterday, he replied to a few questions I had asked him online.

Saikat: What attracted you towards spirituality?
Nithya Shanti: I was attracted by the peace and joy I saw in the people who meditated regularly. They were so patient and wise and caring and great fun to be with. I also wanted to be like them. This is what attracted me to spirituality.

Saikat: What is your opinion on Spiritual Quotient'? Is it underrated at workplace?
Nithya Shanti: I have heard of Dannah Zohar's concept of SQ. But I do not know too much about it. So I will not comment on this.

Saikat:How were your learning from XLRI different from the learning you received as a Buddhist Monk?
Nithya Shanti: One was focused toward being a good manager. The other was toward being truly happy and at peace. One was focused on the intellect. The other on cultivating the body, mind and heart. One was outer education. One was inner knowing. One came from learned professors. The other came from wise spiritual masters. One embraced worldly values. The other transcended worldly values. The horizon on one was this life time. the horizon of the other was many life times. One was concerned with getting a good job. The other was concerned with doing a good job. There are so many differences...I could go on for a long time :)

Saikat: How easy/difficult was the transition from a MBA graduate to a Buddhist monk?
Nithya Shanti: It was not really difficult. I really wanted to be a monk. So it was a dream come true. I loved it all and embraced the challenges with enthusiasm. Probably the most difficult part was learning to walk barefeet to the village and back each morning to get our food. But my feet got used to that in a few weeks.

Saikat: What is your advice to budding HR professionals?
Nithya Shanti: Remember that HR stands for helping Human's Return to Source. It's not about manipulating people to attain organization objectives. Its about helping people discover their genius and find purpose. Remember that a 'job' is a chore you do so you can pay your bills. A 'career' is motivated by money, prestige and advancement. And a 'calling' is work done as an end in and of itself. Help people discover their calling.

Saikat: Tell us more about your vision?
Nithya Shanti: My vision is to spread happiness in spontaneously creative ways for the rest of my life.

Saikat: Your thoughts on the pursuit of happiness?
Nithya Shanti: Don't pursue happiness, don't gather happiness. That will never work. Stop seeking and start spreading. Start in your own small little ways. Choose to "Be happy!"

Interviewing him was a true pleasure as he readily agreed for the interview and responded to my questions within a few hours. He can be reached at Facebook, Linkedin and even Twitter :-)

Life lessons from an artist

2010-03-19T00:36:00.006+05:30

Hi buddies!!!

I am back!!! If you are also a blogger then you would appreciate the fact that we do reach a saturation point...or ateast we feel so...I did feel that way for the past few days...And that's why I had this brief hiatus..

And while I was complaining about this to my best friend...she reminded me of a video in TED website that I had shared with her few weeks back...

The video is titled as 'Five lives of an artist'. This video extols refreshingly unpretentious and honest vibes from the speaker Raghava KK. Now before you read the post any further please watch this brilliant video if you haven't till now.

Now that I presume you have watched the video, let me share a few observations that have inspired me to write this post:

Innocence is a delightful trait but it must often be coupled with courage and a strong belief to strike the perfect symphony in life. KK Ragahava received a punishment in school that detached him from his passion of cartooning for long as a kid but he got back to pursue the passion by using a simple logic of making his principal happy :-) . Passion for art along with basic sensitivity towards relationship building helped him to continue his passion.

Whenever you follow your heart, do it with a full stride- His decision of dropping out of school was very critical especially from an Indian context. Yet he lived up to his promise of being disciplined, curious, learn [being a learner], hardworking, self sustaining. I am sure that he has achieved this humongous amount of success and happiness in his profession because he passionately imbibed those values since the time he first promised his father.

Collaboration is necessary- One aspect about his speech I loved the most was the way in which he appreciated and valued each and every collaboration he made throughout his journey. I simply admired the way he valued the contribution of his mother :-), wife :-), father :-) and especially the children :-). When was the last time we learned a few lessons from a kid we know??? He indeed learned a lot from the kids. How to be more happy??... How to take ruthless criticism from kids in the right spirit??? How to be much more cooler;-) ??? Well!!! Lets keep our adult ego aside and learn a few life lessons from the kids around :-)

Ownership: The cartoon related to 9/11 incident left him without a job. It was probably an innocent effort from his side but it required a little more sensitivity from him. Sometimes we get driven by our passion to such an extent that we forget a few important elements of our life. Hence, ownership is a lesson which can be learned from the video.

This shall pass too: He went through a very dark phase in his life when his mother fell ill and his customers were not able to appreciate the honesty in his paintings. His friends left him. Yet, in this video he passionately talks about colours, his success, his family and so much more. So life can offer a few darker shades but if we are a great painter from within then we can surely add beautiful colours to our life.

Passion with compassion: I felt inspired in the way he created job opportunies for the billboard painters and learned the art of painting from them. That not only requires compassion but also humility.

If you believe you can then you can: One of his deepest desire was to see his paintings dance. He believed in the dream and he achieved it by painting his dancers :-)

Do that special act for the special person: I am sure what touched you the most in the video was the story of the small kid who died of cancer and how he touched her few last days with happiness...hope...and COLOURS...

After watching that video, I felt like becoming a painter. I am not sure if I will be able to be great with paper and colours but I strongly feel that if we truly want then we can infuse a but of art in our profession and daily life.

Being a painter is awesome but what's even better is believing and living like a painter. Thats something we all can do.

Keep adding colours to life :-)

Collaborative Leadership style for Gen Y

2010-03-08T01:50:00.006+05:30

Generation Y [Born 1977 -1989] can not be ignored. They are going to dominate[They are already doing so in many industries currently] the workplace in near future not only in terms of humongous numbers but also would be taking up key managerial and leadership roles.

Hence, it becomes very important to understand how they are different from Gen X.

A particular research done by Nike has interesting findings.

Since the characteristics of Gen Y are extremely different from Gen X, there is a need for fundamental shift from existing leadership style to a new age form of collaborative leadership style.

A typical collaborative leadership style would have the following characteristics:

They will respect the characteristics of Gen Y if not be appreciative of them
They have to be non hierarchical and embrace flat structures.
There will be a transition from communication to conversation where social media tools in the internet would become more important than ever. The leaders have to leverage that.
Proactively respond to the expectations of the Gen Y in terms of career development and rewards.
Make the Gen Y associates inclusive of decision making process across all levels. This would include decisions that would impact the external as well as internal customers.
Building informal relationships that would nurture even professional development of his associates would become his focus area.
The leader has to make a transition from implementing rules to implementing guidelines where the Gen Y associates will have the broad guidelines to refer to and at the same time have the autonomy to use their creativity.
The leader has to be more trustworthy than ever to earn the respect of Gen Y.
The leader has to often make the associates aware of how their efforts are helping the organization to transform.
The leader must have an appealing sense of humour.
He must foster goodness and righteousness in the organization as the Gen Y would have zero level tolerance towards injustice
The leader must be highly execution oriented.
Feedback must be given immediately and in a constructive manner at a professional level.
Constant follow ups by the leader would be highly uncalled for. Hence, the associate’s performance expectation must be communicated to him in a clear and well defined manner before the task or assignment is initiated by him.
The leader has to embrace technology and use it as a lever in engaging his associates.
The leader must have the humility to constantly learn from his associates. In other words he should not shy away from being the follower of his associates.

This change in leadership style has to happen rapidly. The pace at which such a transition in leadership style takes place would become very critical in deciding how well the Gen Y generation would be lead, managed and engaged.

Times Ascent HR Forum- The Change Manager

2010-03-06T23:40:00.005+05:30

The theme of the Times Ascent HR Forum held in SRM University campus, Chennai on 6.3.2010 was much beyond 'The Change Manager'.

Let me share a few learning from the event like I always do :-)

Mr Santhanam , Managing Director, Saint-Gobain India during his key note address spoke on the importance of nurturing the right company culture. He told us how HR competencies should be classified into 4 categories like Functional Technical competencies, Generic Behavioral competencies, Generic Technical competencies & Functional Behavioral competencies. I believe this kind of classification can make the HR professionals all the more objective about which competencies they should be evaluated upon and improved to become next generation HR professionals.

Swami Sukhabodhananda made a very captivating speech on how a person's past failures messes up with his present which creates mistrust for future. He spoke on the importance of having creative solutions to problems. Problems would emerge from every corner of our life. Each and every choices in our lives would have it's set of exclusive problems but the way we respond to such problems rather than reacting to them would really make the difference to our well being. He said that in order to perform at our best potential, we should be at the peak of our health, must be relaxed and happy :-) He focussed on holistic success of an individual based on personal, social, work, spiritual and family dimensions. He encouraged everyone to work out of happiness and joy rather than work for happiness and joy. One other interesting point he made was by saying that one should operate in a goodness driven manner and not ego driven manner. He concluded his speech by saying that one should add life to one's years and not years to one's life :-)

Mr Adil Malia, Group President, HR, Essar Group focussed on the importance of building organisational capability to respond to change. He said how it's important to never compromise on value integration during M&A process. However, complete cultural integration might not be possible and it's important in such a context to mutually appreciate each other's culture. He delivered a beautiful and inspiring Urdu poem "soch ko badlo..sitare badal jayenge...nazar ko badlo...nazare badal jayenge...kashtiya badalne ki zaroorat nahi...dishaon ko badlo...kinare badal jayenge..."

Mr Ramachandran, Sr Director, HR- Motorola India used a very interesting analogy for change through the way carrot, egg and coffe beans react differently to boiling water. He also spoke about how changer management is more about bringing an emotional change rather than rational change. Also he focussed on long term orientation towards change rather than short term.

Mr Ravishankar B , Sr VP - HR , HCL Technologies spoke on how to engage Generation Y through the right kind of communication in the change management process. For example a teacher would be able to be a good change manager when he is able to teach the Gen Y students in 140 words[Twitter context] a particular theory related to his subjects.

Mr E Balaji facilitated the discussion with many interesting questions and by setting the appropriate context.

Mr G D Sharma, President,HR,BGR Energy Systems facilitating the discussion on 'Performance Management' spoke on the importance of providing employees with clarity in their roles and the rewards attached to it. He coined the 4 Ms of Performance Management as: 1. Management of Performance Management Systems 2. Motivate 3. Mind Set 4. Measurements/Metrics. He even mentioned the 3 important principles that would make any company great would be: 1. Quality of leadership 2. Quality of excellence 3. Ethics and guiding principles.

Mr Manmohan Bhutani, VP, People & Operations, Fiserv India emphasized on the utmost need to communicate the organizational objectives or performance expectations in a top-down manner. I particularly loved the practice of keeping 'Performance Diary' in his company. The superior is expected to keep track of any exceptional performance or note worthy performance [can be both good or bad performance] in a performance diary which becomes very useful during performance evaluation eventually.

Ms Aparna Ballakur-VP-HR, Yahoo told us about how Yahoo recognizes and appreciates leadership at all levels. She said Performance management is all about talent management. She also spoke on the importance of mentoring in organizations and emphasized that mentors should mentor their mentees on a particular area of specialization.

Mr Surajit Maitra, GM-HR,CSC emphasized on linking employee's performance with the client directly. They also partner with their client to benefit from their suggestions and involvement in the performance management process. He also gave a great deal of importance to transparency in the Performance Management process.

Ms Nina Chatrath , Practice Head-Leadership & Talent Consulting, KornFerry India facilitated the discussion on 'HR.the strategic business partner' by setting the right context and by asking questions to the panel. I really liked her statement when she said that 'empathy' in today's HR context is not so much about the touchy feely soft aspect but rather it's about understanding the other person's view and context.

Mr K A Narayan, President-HR, Raymond Group spoke on the wide number of activities done in his company which included proper succession planning, having multiple assessment centers, usage of behavioral tools and how it helped the company in many ways.

Mr KS Bakshi, Head, HR, IndiGo Airlines said that it becomes very important for HR to play a part in the decision making process with the CEO. It was inspiring to know the various ways like games,town hall meetings etc through which his leadership team & HR team keeps in constant touch with the employees inspite of geographical constraints. He also said it's high time that HR starts walking the talk.

Mr Ragahavendra K, VP & Head-HR, Infosys BPO emphasized that HR or business should work based on a broad framework and keep on intelligently responding to situations. He also emphasized HR to focus on end customers and constantly ask a question that whether HR is enabling business to perform better.

Mr CVK Maithreya, Director, Professional Consultancy Services was the programme facilitator. He summarized each and every sessions by adding his own thought provoking perspectives.

It was indeed a great learning experience for me :-)

Zeitgeist 2010

2010-02-27T10:57:00.008+05:30

The Human Resource Study Circle[HRSC] in Madras School of Social Work organized an HR seminar called 'Zeitgeist 2010' on 23rd February.

The seminar was aimed at capturing the 'spirit of the times'... 'the better times' we are living in today...

Dr Fathima Vasanth, Principal, MSSW delivered a very inspiring speech on how we should embrace the opportunities of these times but not forget the lessons from the recession.

Mr N T Arunkumar, CEO & Director, Dun Bradstreet TransUnion ADC during his key note address spoke on the need to recognize the advent of social media and the impact it's creating today. It was interesting to have a deeper understanding about how social media is giving increasing power to the consumers.

He spoke about his childhood when he got inspired by his father[who worked in a factory] who once told him that ' it's what you do from 5 to 9 that matters more as a people's manager than what you do from 9 to 5'.

He cited examples of how the employees used to line up to meet his father for advice or solutions after office hours.

He also said that HR should no more be in the comfort zone of calling itself 'a mere facilitator'.

I also loved the leadership principles and core values followed in his company which are as follows:

Act with a sense of urgency.
Demonstrate a passion for winning
Raise the level of collaborative process

Core Values:

A- Applaud intelligence, knowledge and commitment
S-Simplicity in process, product, development and communication
C-Customer first, Firm next.
E-Excellence in everything we do, no tolerance for mediocrity
N- Nurture development of people and community
D-Delivering without excuse every time

However, what inspired me the most was when he said that it's more important to have the attitude of a winner than being a winner.

Mr Venkatesan Varadarajan, Vice President Center Head, MindTree Ltd spoke on how HR is getting aligned with business realities.

While speaking on the company's culture and employer brand, he said how it's a top priority for the HR team at mind tree to provide the employee with a balancing act on 6 important aspects like family, health, intellectual, social,career and wealth.

Mr Mohan Kumar, Executive Director-HR, Nagarjuna Oil Corporation Ltd spoke on the business and HR opportunities in times of recession.

He said that the major opportunities for HR in a recession are:

Re-engineering HR systems and processes.
Review organization structure.
Sharper performance management.
Development of in-house training.
Employee engagement initiative.
Communication.

This session proved to be a great learning.

MS Rangesh, Vice President-HR, Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd spoke on the great importance of value creation and speed generation by HR in these times. He said that the main duty of HR professionals is to touch the soul of it's employees [I guess in these times of HR being in the quest of becoming a strategic partner to business, we might be at the risk of forgetting this fundamental duty]

Mr K K Davis, Vice President-HR, Oracle Financial Services Ltd spoke on employee engagement in post recession times. He spoke on how his company has been successfully keeping it's employees engaged on the basis of Gallup Model.

He said that enlisting the front end supervisors as the active partners in employee engagement in the post recession is the key. He also focused on the importance of recognizing the contributors to emotional needs and intellectual needs of employees.

An employee engagement matrix in the company is based on the variables of the extent to which emotional needs and intellectual needs are satisfied in the employees.

Mr Vijay Tadepalli, Vice President-HR, Mahindra Satyam during his valedictory address emphasized on the 4 pillars of new economy- Employees, Investors, Customers and Society. He encouraged the students to have enthusiasm, positivity, clarity of thought and high level of EQ in order to become better HR leaders.

Join the HR Confluence movement now!!!!!

2010-02-24T23:34:00.001+05:30

Hi all,

A few of us early practitioners and students of human resources began connecting online a few months ago to discuss the future of the HR practice in India and where we as the early practitioners can contribute to that future.

Many candid discussions, blog posts and tweets later, this community has now become ‘HR Confluence’ – a group of like minded, progressive HR practitioners with one strong mission – to make a difference to the HR Community in India with revolutionary, original thought! Through an aggressive social networking initiative which we have already sparked off, we hope to challenge the existing myths and misconceptions about HR that exist today.

We see ourselves now on our way to becoming HR 3.0 – A generation of HR professionals with its pulse on the future!

Our initiative includes:

The HR confluence blog: http://hrconfluence.blogspot.com/

The HR confluence Facebook community: http://www.facebook.com/pages/HR-Confluence/272308934627?ref=ts

The HR confluence Twitter group: http://twitter.com/hrconfluence

We invite you to come be a part of HR Confluence and help us in our journey to HR 3.0! Please be a part of our groups, visit all of our pages listed above and leave us your comments and email. Your opinions will add value to our cause and generate more avenues for all of us to be a part of!

We look forward to having you on board!

Jai Ho HR Confluence!!!!

Why do they hate HR????

2010-02-23T20:53:00.006+05:30

[Warning:This one is a long post]

I came across a community in facebook called 'I hate HR because ' recently. Within a few weeks since it's inception, today it's 140 members strong. The discussions are often very heated up but I feel it's a must for the HR community to recognize the anguish of the members.

Let me point out a few reactions of it's members:

They sit there all day, looking pretty and throw their weight around. I mean what do they think they are up to? When there's a party to be planned, event to be organised, posters to be hung... they're there. But where are they when u are facing an issue with ur boss....or when u need clarification abt the appraisal/increment.......
or when u feel u r stuck in ur bloody dead-end application-support job????? At that time, they vanish faster than students in Phatak's class!!!!
First of I am not from HR Team at all but I do have a very strong interaction with the HR team while staffing. It depends mostly on the companies what HR processes they have implemented and how much their people are adhering to it . In some companies I have see HR assigned to particular departments , having bi-weekly call with the teams and understanding their concerns/grievances.

The major problem with the HR teams where we find them little lacking is they always are looking at figures to achieve irrespective of how that figure needs to be achieved. Most of the time my experiences have been very bad with the HR in terms of resource mapping. They always match the right people to wrong requirements. And most of the time we Delivery team end up correcting those.

Apart from these in some of companies I have seen HR being so rude with the employees that they do not understand a very important that Delivery teams are bread and butter for them. I guess the basic characteristic of an HR person should be that they should never loose their temper and gravity.

More later !!!!! need to go home now :)
Firstly, the winter project of HR will show how vella and jobless they are.. Is keeping discussions in FB a winter project.. OMG.. i cant blive it..

Secondly, there is nothing apart from pfaff in HR. not without reason, IIMs decided to go without HR.. HR can only give a rosy picture of a lily.

Thirdly, HR people change words like changing clothes.. todays' hr words will not b thr tomorrow. they take credit of something goes right but when something goes wrong, they blame others.

Lastly, HR people are very very overpaid when compared to other specs. they r wasted assets in any organization..

Can anyone say NO? even here, the first 3 posts here are anti HR.. this discussion is usleess acc to me.. there will b 90 posts against HR while 10 for them..
Alright!!! Abuse time!!

Seriously though, apart from all the rants here against HR, which I fully endorse, my biggest grouse is that how can anybody in HR claim to "evaluate people's performances" without having any experience or any clue what most people are doing? In other words, how the hell can freshers be part of HR in any company?

From what I've seen most senior people of HR in companies have shifted from other functions to HR after MANY years of service. This makes sense.

And i hate the HR language in many companies. Hyping up mundane stuff and the like. Put a lid on the excessive, unnecessary, beautifying, ornamental language and talk like normal people. Then we might listen to or read what's being said or written.
Alright, you got me there. We still won't listen to or read what you say or write. It's still gonna be pure pfaff.
I faced certain problems and misunderstandings with HR:
1)They never processed my leaves, payments etc on time. I mean the whole world wants us to complete targets, work in progress etc, but it wouldnt hurt them to do their work which is to aid the fellow employees
2)They always left at 5:30 pm, and this is not because we "the other workers" didnt do our work efficiently
3)They mostly get saturdays n sundays off!

M i wrong? pls correct me of so.
I dont understand what they really do.. OK they sit and make the compensation, do benchmarking.. But are so many ppl required for that?? is it necessary for ppl to do an MBA to makes us play floor games??

So the above is a pulse of only a few members. I wonder what would be the intensity if everyone in the community starts participating in the discussion.

I fully recognize what the members have said but I do not endorse them completely.

Here are a few of my views on the above mentioned issues:

One big reason why we are hated is because we deliver a lot of bad news. When it comes to providing a promotion letter, its your boss who wants to do the honours but when it comes to handing over the termination letter, the job is expected to be done by the HR team. This is just a simple example. There are more complex bad news which are delivered by the HR.
Yes!!! We are the ones who organize the parties for u all and you still hate us :-(. On a more sincere note, we are beyond organizing parties and fun activities. Try and recognize the intent behind organizing the activities. It's to make you guys feel special and happy. It's just that we gain a lot of visibility while we are putting the right ballons in the right place or getting the right cake for you guys. We do not get noticed when we are engaged in your performance appraisal or when we are recruiting the right guys for your team or organizing the training for you.
If we are vanishing from your sight when we are actually supposed to answer your queries then we are doing a terrible job. The job as such is not wrong. It's not being done properly. You need HR to answer those queries so let's not blame the function. Blame us because in this context we are doing the right job in the wrong manner. You can do a lot to change this. Communicate to your business leader that the HR guys are not doing the right job. In many cases the HR to employees ratio is absurd and unreasonable. If you feel so then communicate it to the right guys.
I am not a spokesperson for IIMs but if the information about HR not being included in the specialization is true then it's genuinely sad. I must not comment on this issue but feel tempted to say that it might be [I repeat I said 'it might' be] because students are looking for specializations which offer better pay packages. It's no secret that Banking and niche marketing jobs pay you well...Really well ;-) . But I am sure that HR as a subject must be given it's due importance in IIM. Also let's not consider IIMs only. XLRI is one of the best B school in asia and has produced a fabulous list of HR legends :-)
There is another concern from a particular point above which I would like to address regarding 'how can anybody in HR claim to "evaluate people's performances" without having any experience or any clue what most people are doing?'. It's you [self evaluation] and your boss [superior] who is involved in the performance evaluation [in most cases] and HR helps to set the system and process in place [Sounds easy but it's not] and facilitates the performance evaluation process [Again sounds easy but it's not that easy ;-)]. If incase the HR guy is the only person who is evaluating your performance then please quit the company [there is something seriously wrong in your company].
As far as HR jargons and ornamental language is concerned, I feel that jargons are there even in finance or marketing or operations. Don't hate us for the language we use [unless anyone uses unparliamentary language or abusive language]. At the risk of being repetitive, I am again saying that hate us if we do not do our job properly but do not hate us for our job.It's important to us and even more important for you.
Another accusation about HR being 'HR people are like frogs in the well of HR world' might be true in few companies. In any company which is of great repute and legacy, the HR function is a complete strategic partner who is creating genuine value for business. It's just that we have the risk of only getting noticed while we are throwing a success bash party for you.
My request to the members of the facebook community is that their thoughts about HR are extremely passionate. Passionate because of various reasons. May be they have been victim of bad HR decisions or unpleasant experience with HR guys. There are many more possibilities. But let's recognize that the possibilities for solutions are also unlimited. We would have not existed without you guys. So make some more effort in telling us how we should improve. Let's collaborate atleast here :-)

Is he interested in getting trained???

2010-02-22T10:47:00.004+05:30

I had an intense discussion on the recent trends in training and development last Sunday during the HR Sangam meeting at ISTD,Chennai.

A special thanks to Mr. Prem Kumar who is an accomplished corporate trainer and runs his own venture called Vibrant Consulting. He was the speaker and made a very impressive presentation on the topic.

During his presentation, I could understand how training and development has evolved over the years. Thankfully, the evolution has been for the better. However, the evolution has not been recognized by many corporates.

The most evident result of the evolution has been that corporates are considering training as an investment and not cost. But then how many corporates are doing so????

If the huge reduction in training budget of many companies during recession last year is considered then it can be lucidly understood that the evolution has not been recognized by too many companies.

But this post is not about that. It's about a simple observation which I made as Mr Prem made his presentation.

It is about the simple fact which we overlook many times. Whenever we are trained on any domain or subject or work that excites us, the training works marvelously . Similarly, if a passionate cricketer is given training on classical music. He is most likely not going to enjoy the training and neither will he learn any skills in classical music.

Hence, recruitment has a direct correlation with the success of training & development. Let's go back to our text book which says that the purpose of recruitment is to get the right person for THE RIGHT JOB in the right time. The 'right job' is the job for which the associate is passionate about and through which he can contribute in a sincere manner to the organization. Providing the training to the associate for his right job would be so much more interesting and fun.

It's not about making the job easier for the trainer. It's actually about doing the right kind of training for the right set of people so that both the trainer and the trainee can contribute to the company in the right manner.

I feel it's important for even the corporate to take some sincere lessons from the movie 'Taare zameen par'
. The logic is same for teaching as well as training as far as this particular context is concerned.

One interesting point made by Mr Prem Kumar was about giving a small assignment to the candidate during the interview process. If he shows considerable interest and passion towards doing that assignment then his interest & orientation towards the job can be considered suitable.

Training is a process that aims towards genuine learning which translates into sincere performance. We shall never be able to reap the real benefits of training if we do not impart it to the right set of people.

It's not like our school days when we have to score equally well in both history and chemistry. Let's realize that we have grown up considerably ;-) and it's fine [or rather right] to impart training to the right set of people with the interest they are passionate about. And it all starts with recruitment. It remains the first check point........ ;-)

Learning from 8th MMA Student's Convention

2010-02-13T21:48:00.015+05:30

I have always been fond of MMA Student Conventions. In 2005, I was the National Finalist in Paper Presentation and in 2008, I was the national finalist in Debate competition. However, I lost the finals in both occasions :-( . No other competition has humbled me the way MMA student convention has.

This year I could not participate because I was in Bangalore for Industrial visit when the preliminary round took place. But I did not miss the opportunity to learn some great lessons as a student delegate in 8th MMA All India Management Student's Convention.

Following are a few of the learning which influenced me a great deal:

Manish Sabharwal, Chairman & Co-founder, TeamLease Services made a very interesting point that the youth needs to proceed in the future with a softer heart, tougher mind and great ideas as we are blessed to have been educated in Urban India with loads of opportunities.
Dr T V Somanathan, IAS, Secretary to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu stressed on the need for being true to oneself. He sighted perfect examples for the same. Some of my favorite one's were 'it is perfectly fine to celebrate both Shiv Ratri as well as Valentines day', 'It's perfectly fine to apply Vibhuti on the forehead while attending a party'. He even told us to balance between our showing respect towards boss and being candid while suggesting ideas to the boss.
Padmaja Alagaganandan, India Business Leader-Human capital Mercer while speaking on the topic 'challenges in the global village' encouraged students to not get threatened by any culture. She spoke on the importance of respecting other cultures and having a willingness to learn & appreciate. She stressed on the fact that we should show greater commitment towards team work and execution.
Mr Binu Philip, Director-HR, Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt Ltd : The competencies for success for Gen Y are Business Acumen, Impact & Influence, Agility, Resilience, Change adaptability, Interpersonal awareness, System thinking, Understanding change dynamics. He said that during a career transition one should follow a three steps process of Match, Pace & Lead.
Ms Nayantara Kothari, IFMR Ventures, Rural Drinking Water Network Enterprises delivered a very passionate speech on how she made her own transition from a student to a professional. She explained how in the corporate world one is tested every moment and how their individual performance impacts the entire company.
Mr Murgavel Janakiraman, Founder & CEO, Consim Info Pvt Ltd spoke about the 4 Ps of entrepreneurship namely Purpose, Passion, Perseverance and Progress. He explained each of them with powerful examples.
Mr Sarath Babu, Founder & CEO, FoodKing Catering Services Pvt Ltd delivered an inspiring speech on how he faced various challenges in his life from early days of poverty to this present day where he is able to empower so many lives as an entrepreneur. He encouraged budding entrepreneurs to never give up and and be ego-less. He said it's perfectly fine to start small but one should grow constantly.
Mr Viren Rasquinha, COO, Olympic Gold Quest made a candid presentation on why India performs poorly in olympics. His views were frank and specific. It was great to know the kind of work Olympic Gold Quest is doing in order to improve Indian sports. Truly admirable!!!!
Mr Vishnu Mohan, CEO Asia Pacific and Global Brand Managing Director, Havas Media in his very convincing presentation on how social media is impacting the new age society. The presentation was full of interesting facts. One clear inference drawn from the presentation was that the future of generating, spreading and leveraging ideas is not based on one way communication but on conversation and context.
Mr Karti P Chidambaram, member, AICC encouraged the youth to be more aware of politics and participate in it more actively. He said in order to bring about real change in society, one has to become a part of politics.
Ms Anuradha Oza, Senior Associate, Human Capital, Mercer speaking on the topic 'quest for happiness' told us that in order to choose a career one has to first find out what they truly love doing, then find out what they are good at and finally how one can make a living from it. I particularly loved a statement she made towards the end when she said that all of us have the potential to paint our own future and we need not buy anyone else's painting.
Mr Abhijit Bhaduri, Chief Learning Officer, Wipro Ltd delivered a speech straight from his heart. He told us about his initial confusion in choosing a career to which I personally could relate . He told us how his book got rejected by publisher multiple times but he kept trying as his wife had once told him that 'you are not looking for multiple rejects. You are in search of a single 'Yes''. And indeed one publisher did say yes to him and I got my favorite author. It was inspiring to know how he manages his time inspite of being a passionate and high profile HR professional, author and also pursuing all his hobbies. He finally told us to never stop dreaming and never compromise on the little pleasures of life in meeting old friends or continuing the favorite hobbies.
Mr Vinoo Titus, ED, SmartKapital Venture Associates provided two models of happiness namely the Drowning Man model & Love making model. The Drowning Man model is about deriving momentary pleasure after coming out from a tough trouble like in case of a drowning man. Love Making model is about having happiness in the beginning, middle and even the end of the process. He said in order sustain happiness in work one should persue meaningful goals in life. In order to sustain happiness one should find pleasure in work or a pleasurable work.

The convention was indeed a good experience with loads of learning.

Which leadership style suits Gen Y the best???

2010-02-11T00:49:00.005+05:30

Gen Y or Millennials or Youngistan[in the Indian context] seems to be capturing the thoughts of various thought leaders like never before.

They are the 'maximum' in terms of the number and also in terms of the impact which they collectively create in Corporate India. Today they are more prominently creating impact in managerial or executive level. But soon they would be holding leadership positions. Hence, it's extremely important to understand them and the possible leadership style they would adopt for success.

I myself belong to that generation and would present the following observations about my generation as an insider[These are pure assumptions and intuitive in nature]:

We are impatient...
We prefer following our passion...
We aim for prosperity rather than security...
We look for recognition and fame...
We love doing transformational activities rather than transactional activities...
We do not readily approve of hierarchies...
We look for logic in most of our activities...
We love having some serious fun....

Considering the few points above, I believe that when Gen Y will gain prominence in leadership positions, it will have the following implications:

They themselves will be dealing with subordinates who will be having humongous desire for transformational activities.
They will be required to sincerely try and infuse transformational element in every transactional work of their subordinates.
They will have to clearly communicate to their team members on how each of their activities would play a transformational role in business.
The Gen Y leader must know that 'putting right people in right job' will gain greatest relevance than ever before. He has to correlate the team member and his passion.
The Gen Y leaders need to be 'FUNNY'.
They must learn how to set their team members or subordinates free and yet exercise a subtle but effective control over them.
He has to be the sounding board of his team members and must keenly listen to their ideas and feedback.

So is it going to be autocratic style or democratic style or free rein????

I do not have the answer. You got to ask someone more intelligent but this post might help ;-)

Employee Engagement- A few lessons....

2010-01-31T10:42:00.006+05:30

The topic 'employee engagement' always excites me. I have written about it in the past too. But I had some very keen observations about the topic in NHRDN Chennai chapter meeting last week.

The speakers were fantastic; Mr Gurmeet Singh, Marriott, Area Director of Human Resources – India, Maldives & Pakistan and Ms Githanjali Panikkar,Research Director , Corporate Executive Board's (CEB) Human Resources Practice along with her colleague [Really Sorry !!! I can't recall the gentleman's name].

Mr Gurmeet Singh focussed on how the Generation Y is increasingly becoming socially aware, having preference towards leadership and getting inclined towards social connectivity. Recognizing these aspects of the Gen Y which constitutes a major bulk of workforce in any industry is extremely important while implementing engagement activities.

I was already aware of the Marriott's engagement activities as I was an HR intern in Courtyard by Marriott, Chennai. It was a phenomenal experience in all aspects. One of the key observation which I had made during my internship was the direct [and delightful] correlation between guest experience and associate experience. For example: the front office team focuses on check in and similarly, the HR team takes a lot of care in giving the appointment letter to their new joinees. The new joinees are encouraged to take pics of their accommodation and the pics are e-mailed to their parents so that they are aware [and happy] about their kid's accommodation.

Similarly, the kitchen team is passionately involved in preparing great food for their guests and the HR team ensures that there is great food in the associate cafeteria. They serve their internal customers with the same intensity [or maybe more] than the external customers.

Also the fact that some of their HR practices are inspired from other companies and industries speak volumes about the way they embrace learning from other companies too.

A video was played on the fun and frolic culture in Marriott where the Genaral Manager danced with equal enthusiasm as others. The passion and energy was also evident in Mr Gurmeet Singh's presentation.

The team from Corporate Executive Board provided a very interesting perspective on employee engagement. Some of the major learning from the presentation based on a research done by CEB were as follows:

The percentage of companies planning to conduct an engagement survey in 2009 were 67% only.
The economic slowdown has led to an alarming drop in engagement among critical segments of employees such as leaders and high potential employees.
There are two types of commitment namely 'Rational Commitment' and 'Emotional Commitment' , the output of which are 'Discretionary effort'[employee willingness to go "above and beyond the call of duty] and 'Intent to stay'.
6 groups of employee engagement drivers are Senior Leaders, Organization Culture, Direct Managers[a lot of emphasis was given on this point during the presentation] , Corporate Integrity Code, Compensation and benefit plans, Training and development.
10.6.2 theory: With a 10 % increase in employee engagement there is a 6% increase in discretionary effort and 2 % increase in performance.
10.9 theory: With 10 % increase in commitment there is 9 % decrease in him leaving his company.
What individual companies do for their employees matter a lot more than demographics in case of employee engagement.

I also strongly recommend everyone to visit their website. Happy reading!!!!

Sensational Samson- An auto driver & marketing genius

2010-01-27T20:55:00.008+05:30

Aamir Khan is respected for his acting skills as well as marketing skills. The way he marketed his movies like 3 idiots and Ghajni is a topic of intense brain storming in top business schools.

Yet many might complain that bollywood examples are becoming too common.

Stop complaining!!!!

If you are bored of hearing about Aamir's marketing skills then you need to meet Samson. Mr Sensational Samson is an auto driver according to his website.

Being in Chennai my encounter with auto drivers have not been delightful but this virtual encounter with Mr Samson and his friends is extremely delightful.

In times when even companies feel apprehensive to launch a website, Mr Samson has embraced webspace for great business advantage.

Following are the few lessons which we can learn from Mr Sensational Samson

No matter what is your job, marketing it with passion is worth it.
Market intelligently: Samson is intelligent enough to introduce Chennai and it's attractions in the website which is bound to create greater interest in his customers as his passion for the city reflects here.
Know your customers well: Samson knows his target customers [foreigners] and their preferences really well . His great knowledge about the city helps him further.
Monetize your idea: He has a special provision for advertisements too. He has collaborated with a webmaster for the purpose.
Acknowledge your friends: Samson is sweet and sensitive enough to have a special page to introduce his friends.
Patience and perseverance: He has been driving auto since 1992. So along with passion, one also needs patience and perseverance.
The most special lesson one can learn from him is that everyone has the right and the capacity to make his job extra special.

Hats off to Mr Sensational Samson.

Bye guys!!! I gotta catch the auto. Wish me a great auto ride :-)

The train journey-A short story

2010-01-26T17:28:00.008+05:30

A local train journey was not new to him. It was an integral part of his growing up years in college. Relishing the extra sweet tea served in mud cups, savoring the local sweets and namkeen, singing in train were part of those journeys back then. However, the most memorable part were those short lived relationships which used to get build with strangers during the journey. The conversation, the laughter and the occasional remorse which used to foster through the journey was remarkable.

It was 20 years since he had stepped into a local train to meet his revered professor in college. He was keenly looking forward to meet his favorite professor with whom he had lost touch completely. A deep sense of guilt infused inside him.

In all these years he had earned all the good things life could have possibly offered him including a splendid car. But he chose the train to relive a few old moments.

The crowd seemed busy and occupied. Some occupied with reading the newspaper, some busy with the cell phone, some with their music gadgets and quite a few in their thoughts.

A lot had changed since then.

But the beggars were still at large. He found a rare innocence in them. They were still comfortable forsaking their ego and asking for a few pennies as they used to many years back.

He wondered " It's the desire to get more that evolves a person".

A lot had evolved since those early years. Most of it was undesirable according to him. However, what remained static did make him feel nostalgic but saddened him equally.

He was not complaining. He was simply awed by the obvious revelation.

He was missing the companionship of his friends as the crowd appeared indifferent.

Ticket collector had appeared by then and he realized that he did not buy the ticket. He was worried about the possible embarassment of shelling out a fine in the midst of a crowd. Wearing an expensive suit and yet not buying a train ticket would be very embarrassing.

Collector said " Dada ticket please".

He struggled to find an appropriate response. A perplexed look was evident on his face. The ticket collector repeated his words. Now in a more stern voice. Indeed a lot had not changed he thought.

The blind passenger next to him took out a ticket and offered it to the ticket collector.

The ticket collector left the compartment.

He was now inquisitive about the generosity showed by the blind person next to him. He told him "Dada thanks a lot". The blind man replied " Pleasure is entirely mine. My daughter could not accompany me in the last minute and I had a spare ticket for the entire route."

He further inquired " What do you do Sir?" The blind man replied " I am a professor in the city college".

The station had arrived and the professor left in a hurry from the train.

Toolkit for honing your 'NI-Networking Intelligence'

2010-01-21T00:47:00.002+05:30

I hope you all read my earlier post on 'Networking Intelligence'.

This post is an innocent attempt to focus on what's the tool kit required for high 'Networking Intelligence' .

Here it follows:

Be open minded.
Focus on sustaining relationships rather than building relationships.
Be genuinely generous in providing help to others.
Seek help from anyone you feel like and be grateful for their kindness.
Embrace all forms of technology for networking.
Be a keen observer of activities in your domain and beyond ;-)
Be a life long learner. It humbles you and helps you to stay connected.
Be genuinely interested in PIT-People,Ideas,Technology.
A good sense of humour helps.
Most importantly ask yourself why you want to network and how it will help you.

Hope this helps ;-)

An interesting categorization of employees inspired from Ramayana...

2010-01-18T00:19:00.003+05:30

According to an article in the recent Business Today's 18th Anniversary issue, Kishore Biyani, MD, Pantaloon Retail (India) elicits an interesting categorization of employees based on Ramayana inspired characters.

Here it follows:

Rama: Employees who follow the company rules.
Krishnas: They are the ones who do not follow all the rules, but work in the interest of the company.
Ravanas: They are those who have their own rules and follow them.
Duryodhanas: They have no rules and follow none.

So you fall under which category?????

Should business speak HR's language or HR should speak business's language????

2010-01-11T22:28:00.004+05:30

Language unites and it divides too. Some languages are known for it's commercial value...some for it's melody...some for it's lucidness...yet some for it's snobbishness....

Yet multiple languages are embraced by individuals for their respective purposes. Sometimes we get accustomed to a language in a subconscious manner because of the strong ethos around us.

Similarly, in business too, there are often varied languages existing which we are supposed to understand, analyze and synthesize.

I hope my readers must have figured out by now that I am not talking about the different national or regional languages spoken in a workplace. But this refers to the different domain languages through which all of us communicate [at times struggle to communicate].

Namely the HR language, finance language, marketing language, operations language and the list goes on......

But this post is about HR language versus the business language.

So the first effort should be to recognize the business language.

Does business language refer to HR language or sales language or operations language or some other language???????

I am sure all of you feel that the question itself is flawed. It is flawed because it divides the business unnecessarily.

The language of business is a confluence of all the languages in business that is communicated to create business value. It's a symphony.

We have to understand this fundamental aspect of business. So whether it's HR or marketing or operations, it must speak it's own voice with the purpose of collaborating. This collaboration will culminate into the language of business.

So need I say more as to who has to speak who's language??????

Networking Intelligence!!!!

2010-01-06T19:48:00.004+05:30

We have witnessed various forms of intelligence gaining wide acceptability. Who can ever forget the immense focus on emotional intelligence followed by spiritual intelligence in the past decade. This led to some genuine consideration of such types of intelligence being used for gauging personalities and even being used while hiring and appraisals.

However, in many instances it was merely romanticized and was not leveraged upto it's fullest capacity.

Anyways the classification did help by making us more open minded in our pursuits. Hence inviting better possibilities.

Considering the fact that networking has now evolved further because of linkedin, facebook, twitter etc; there is a need to recognize 'Networking Intelligence' in an exclusive manner.

In my own words I would define 'Networking Intelligence' as the form of intelligence that would aid the individual to get connected with people and get benefited in a symbiotic manner'.

This is not only keeping the sky rocketing popularity of social network sites or blogs in mind but even the old world networking that is as relevant today as ever.

How we network in present and in future will decide a lot about our possibilities and hence opportunities and even success. Let's keep in mind that success stems from opportunities and opportunities are created often by people.

Our networking intelligence will determine whether we will be at the right time meeting the right people to collaborate towards mutual success. One of those major networking grounds would be the web space.

More about 'Networking Intelligence' later.

Got quoted in Indian Express for my views on the Ruchika Case.

2010-01-04T10:45:00.002+05:30

I got quoted in the Indian Express for my views on Ruchika Case. The views are candid and I am sure many of you feel the same. Click this link for the e-paper version.

Performance Up-Raise-All :-)

2010-01-03T22:16:00.003+05:30

It's performance appraisal time for one of my friend, who is not only getting appraised by his superiors but is also in the process of appraising his juniors [First performance appraisal after getting promoted from entry level]

It's that point of the professional life which helps the person to become more objective about the Performance Appraisal process.

He either does his sincere bit to do justice to the process by exercising his work ethics & performance orientation or he might just get swayed along by the bureaucracy and politics already plagued in the process.

It's that point of time when a senior associate like my friend wants to raise his voice against an obnoxious bell curve system in the company which neither makes sense to a wise old man or a kindergarten kid but makes sense to quite a few. The purpose of a performance appraisal is to recognize the employee's present level of performance & help them to raise their performance level and not raise their level of frustration.

Of course!!! any performance appraisal would create demarcation. It is right to do so as it even happens in a kindergarten school too.

But it lacks logic when someone assumes the demarcation even before the performance appraisal takes place or actually even before the performance itself takes place.

Who would be the least performing 10% players from the T-20 World Cup Winning Indian Team in 2007???? Who would be the 10% least performing Army Jawans who won the Kargil War for us????

Whenever any team wins a great cause, it's the entire team performing. Each one playing their significant part with aplomb.

If your company creates demarcation before the performance itself then either there is something wrong with the company's purpose or it's people. The demarcation will not help.

It's that point of time when you either genuinely align your company's purpose with the associate's performance or hope that someday the company will rise from it's ashes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

An innocent yet useful analogy for HR folks...

2010-01-02T18:57:00.003+05:30

I love the relationship between analogies and HR. It makes the process of understanding HR concepts more interesting and relevant. However, many might feel a tinge of insouciance associated with them.

I belong to the former school of thought.

Consider this quote:

"Marriage is the chief cause for divorce"

The quote is funny and even though it might be seemingly impractical, it is the 'truth'. No one can refute the aptness of the quote.

Let's consider it from HR context now.

" Recruitment is the chief cause for attrition"

The effect is similar here too. It is funny and even though it might be seemingly impractical, it is the 'truth'.

Many might laugh it off. Well!!! let's laugh but also learn along the way.

Such a simple analogy can infuse a greater thought process and sincerity in the execution process of recruitment.

Happy New Year!!! Keep laughing!!!!!

Finance: What Every HR Professional Must Know

2009-12-31T14:30:00.005+05:30

Yesterday, I had a great session on the above mentioned topic during the NHRD meeting in Chennai. The speaker, V Ramesh, Sr Vice President & CFO, Carborundum Universal explained the relevance of many finance concepts that should be understood and leveraged by HR professionals. One such concept that has fascinated me a lot is 'Time value of money'. It's incredibly important for an HR professional to recognize and understand such a concept especially when the HR team is fixing a VRS scheme for it's associate. Well!!! VRS scheme is just one of the many instances when a concept like 'time value of money' becomes very important.

He also mentioned the need to develop HR metrics in 4 essential areas[taking the example of Genpact]:

1. Growth
2. Retention[attrition by tenure,level,location,business; early attrition %,cost per hire etc]
3.Employee Engagement[Survey Response Rate etc]
4. People Cost

I particularly loved the Q&A session the most. An expected question on why there is a kind of loggerhead between HR & Finance was raised. I was quite convinced with the answer when Mr Ramesh said that HR should build the case in a better and logical manner. A classic example is that of a few revered companies that pay higher salary to their employees when compared to other companies in the industry. Well!!! one of the reason for this possibility is that the HR team in such organizations helps the associates to create greater value for the business, which allows the finance team to pay better salary to all it's associates. This basically means that Finance and HR have to take co-ownership for fixing the pay package of it's associates with equal interest.

One of the example of HR helping the associates creating greater value for business is by setting up lazor sharp KRAs for the associates.

Another interesting question raised was on what are the parameters considered in a variable pay????

One of the important point to be kept in mind in such a context is that the variable pay should be fixed not on a relatively permanent basis but on the basis of what the business wants to achieve in that financial year.

Rancho's views on Human Resource Management...

2009-12-31T00:37:00.009+05:30

I watched the bollywood movie '3 idiots' today. A truly fantastic experience.I especially loved the character of Rancho played by Aamir Khan. I could relate with the character. Rancho is a witty engineering student who is truly passionate about machines and applies his theoretical knowledge in as many real life opportunities as possible. He doesn't chase high paid placement offers or an American dream. He wants to pursue excellence alone. He is passionate about people especially his friends and can go to any extent to help them in the most dire situations. He is also an impractical optimist who turns impractical possibilities into practical realities.

No wonder, I am influenced and inspired by the character. So I am attempting to post Rancho's views on managing people if he was a real character with strong and sincere opinion on HR issues.

Here it goes:

1. Finding out your employee's true passion in the business is worth it. Set him free and have faith in him.

2. Ensure that your employees do not turn cynical and always try to preserve their goodness.

3. Be there for your employees in their good times as well as bad times.

4. Be a constant learner and strive towards contributing towards the future of your domain.

5. Know what is right for people first and then for business. That's the only way to be the best business partner.

6. Help to fulfill your employee's dream by empowering them and they would empower your business.

7. Know your self priorities but try to be as selfless as possible. HR is a tough domain because of this reason but it is beautiful because of the same reason too.

8. Be candid about your opinion on people and business. But try not hurting others' sentiments in the process. Be sensitive.

9. Put theory knowledge in practice wherever possible.

10. Be an impractical optimist. At times, it is the most practical thing in business.

11. Whenever in self doubt or problem, say to yourself 'All izzzzzzzzzzz welllll' ... It might not solve your problem but it would give you the courage to find the solution...

Marina Beach: 5 years after Tsunami....

2009-12-26T11:29:00.013+05:30

It's five years since Tsunami struck in the Indian Coastline. It's also five years approximately since I came to Chennai. 26th December 2004 was a day of despair and immense pain. It was a day when nature showed it's ugly side.

We never searched for the answer as to why nature did so.

Maybe we were too consumed in the pain we got inflicted with.....
Maybe we were too busy with our prayers....

Today early morning I went for a jog in the Marina Beach. It appeared calm and pristine.

Did it appear the same way moments before Tsunami struck five years back?

Did one of the Tsunami victim feel the same way moments before Tsunami struck as I felt today morning?

Well!!! the pics above have been clicked by me this early morning.

HR lesson from Chetan Bhagat

2009-12-24T17:22:00.004+05:30

Firstly, Merry Christmas!!!!!!

I was reading this article about Chetan Bhagat which appeared in Forbes India website. While reading it, I found a simple yet very powerful HR lesson.

Consider the following para from the article:
'When it came to taking a summer project, he didn’t want to do “anything hardcore.” There was a placement at Cadburys that no one else wanted, and he leapt at it: “Two months in Lonavala! Chocolates!” His project, to fix a wrapping machine that was supposed to do 250 chocolate lollipops a minute, but was only doing 75. He puzzled over it, but didn’t crack it. One night, he bumped into the foreman, a veteran of the place. Rather than go eat alone in the executive canteen, he went along with him to the worker’s canteen. They talked for three hours, about the man’s life, his children, his struggles. The next day, the wrapping machine was miraculously performing at full capacity. The foreman told him that he’d worked there ten years, he knew the machine inside-out. Until then, “No one heard me. You did. I had to make your project successful.”

It emphasizes on the power of 'listening'. I am sure all the HR guys have been advised to be great listeners at one point of their learning curve. We all recognize it's importance and respect it. However, I feel the above mentioned incident with Chetan Bhagat can be a good reminder to us if we are at the risk of forgetting this basic quality of being a great listener.

I am aware of a few friends working for extremely reputed firms who had to quit their company because the HR did not have enough time to listen to them.

In such a scenario, either we should improve the listening skills of such HR associates or hire a few more HR associates in case the company feels they are already blessed with great listening skills.

Bottom line : No compromise when it comes to knowing the pulse of your associates!!!!

How a HR Manager would write a love letter.

2009-12-24T00:13:00.001+05:30

I received a forwarded mail from a friend on 'How a HR Manager would write a love letter.' Here it goes:

To,

Juliet

Grade 7.0 S.M

Sub: Offer of love!

Ref: Meeting in a seminar

Dearest Ms Juliet,

I am pleased to inform you that I have fallen in love with you since the 14th of October (Saturday). With reference to the meeting held between us on the 13th of Oct. at 1500 hrs, would like to present myself as a prospective lover.

Our love affair would be on probation for a period of three months and depending on compatibility, would be made permanent. Of course, upon completion of probation, there will be continuous on the job training and performance appraisal schemes leading up to promotion from lover to spouse.

The expenses incurred for coffee and entertainment would initially be shared equally between us. Later, based on your performance, I might take up a larger share of the expenses. However I am broadminded enough to be taken care of, on your expense account.

I request you to kindly respond within 3 days of receiving this letter, failing which, this offer would be cancelled without further notice and I shall be considering someone else.

I would be happy, if you could forward this letter to your collegue if you do not wish to take up this offer.

Wish you all the best!

Thanking you in anticipation,

Yours sincerely,
Mr.Romeo,
HR Manager
A BC Co. Pvt. Ltd

A fascinating interaction with an Indian Army Officer!!!

2009-12-21T21:50:00.010+05:30

I am not shy of interacting with strangers anywhere. This habit has often helped me to make new friends and have scintillating conversations with them.

I have added one more person in my friend list today. He is a Major in the Indian Army and was sitting next to me during a book reading event which we attended. He appeared to be a simple man completely engrossed in his book. We reached the venue pretty early. It made sense to start a conversation and we greeted each other. Then I came to know that he is an Indian Army officer, a Major.

I have a lot of respect for the Indian Army for many reasons. However, let me mention two of the multiple reasons. Firstly, I wanted to join the Indian Army but could not because of personal reasons [I love the phrase 'personal reasons'. It makes justifications so easy ;-) ]. Secondly, I have met many great HR professional who are ex Army officers.

My conversation with him ranged from how he got into the prestigious National Defence Academy, his training, the Kargil War, his Shaurya Chakra and even HR [how can I miss that :-)].

He told me how supportive his parents and siblings were while joining the armed forces. In a way I feel we civilians must thank every parents of the Indian Armed forces officers and jawans for being so supportive and encouraging to them.

He even shared a lot about the tough training which he went through in National Defense Academy. The secret behind getting used to the training is all about conditioning one's mind. When he joined NDA, he struggled to do a few push ups but after the training of about 6 months, he could easily do 150 push ups and even run more than 15 kms per day. I particularly liked a statement where he mentioned that the body listens to the mind and it is even more important to train the mind than the body.

The most fascinating part of the conversation was about his fight with the enemies during the Kargil War. He had even shot at a few enemies. I could not help in resisting myself from asking him how he felt when he shot at the enemy. I thought that it was an insensitive question from me and I wondered how he would react. He was calm and candid. He said that at the moment when he shot the enemy, he was only thinking about his duty. There were no causalities in his team. He was focused about his job and killing the enemy was his duty. However, later he came to know about the enemy's family [through the photograph I guess] and felt sad about the incident.

His bravery won him the Shaurya Chakra. I feel the Shaurya Chakra belongs to his family too who have been encouraging and supportive of him in joining the army.

He even shared a few HR lessons with me. He told me the huge relevance of motivation in the army. He shared many examples about leadership in crisis and team work.

It's interesting how the corporate world complains about economic turbulence and turmoil. On the other hand, the Indian Army gives birth to national heroes during turbulent times through bravery and outstanding professionalism that matches none in the world.

I feel the HR community has a lot to learn from the Indian Armed Forces.

Let me share a few quotes by Field Marshal Madappa Cariappa . I am sure the HR community will find these simple yet immensely powerful quotes very interesting:

"An officer is nothing without the soldiers."
"Army is there to serve the Government of the day, and we should make sure that it does not get mixed up with party politics. A soldier is above politics and should not believe in caste or creed,"
"an Indian and to the last breath would remain an Indian. To me there is only two Stans - Hindustan (India) and Foujistan (the Army)."

Another inspiring quote I would like to share is by Field Marshal Philip Chetwode which my new found friend shared with me:

‘The, honour and welfare of your country comes first, always and every time, the honour welfare and comfort of the men you command comes next .Your own ease, comfort and safety comes last, always and every time'

Whenever the Indian Army is at work, they live the above mentioned quotes and thats what makes them so special to all of us. They make a huge impact to our nation through their sacrifice, integrity, work ethics, discipline, bravery and much more.

If the HR community has to make a huge impact in the business then we should also have the same qualities with same intensity. Many might say that the dynamics in the Army are very different from the ones in business. Thats true but we can still learn a lot from them.

Can't we foster similar pride among our associates for their company???
Can't we enjoy better team spirit and camaraderie???
Can't we infuse better discipline and work ethics in our company???

A yes to the above three questions can make a huge difference to the business and in being a true HR professional.

And like always, a Salute to Indian Armed forces from the bottom of my heart.

Interesting inferences from SHRM India's Leadership Summit researches

2009-12-17T23:06:00.003+05:30

The State of HR in India Research by TNS

Emerging new perspectives about HR:

A solid pillar in the business model, no longer just a cost center.
Contributions impacting bottom line and business strategy.
Supporting direct brand-build for business success.
Direct impact on immediate CSR, PR programs.

Emerging new perspectives about HR:

Next is what?
Leveraging 360 Degree individual employee potential.
Tapping into diversity potential.
Change management to change-preparedness.
CSR to Sustainability.

Research on LIC of India: Decoding the DNA that manages the Trust of Millions [By Noel Machado]-

Some of LIC's counter intuitive HR practices:

It succeeds at scale by generalizing instead of specializing.
It does not acquire talent laterally; instead, it retains and grows people to be entrepreneurial.
It not only coaches it's people top-down but importantly, also coaching it's people bottom-up.
People freely share knowledge-especially junior officials with senior-when they could have been 'powerful' by hoarding it.

Research on Indian Railways: Managing People in the World's Largest Employer [By Vijay Pereira]

Indian Railways is a self sufficient and self reliant organization- often regarded as a 'country within a country' as they have their own schools,hospitals,housing and cooperative banks. They have their own 'Railway Budget' and maintain their own security force known as the 'Railway Protection Force [RPF].
Attractive employment proposition-Free passes and concessional tickets to travel on all routes for IR employees and their families, definitive career progression, work-life balance,job security etc.
Recruitment and selection is highly formalized and transparent, leaving less scope for corruption and malpractices.
Training and Development is available at all levels.
Pay and conditions: a complex structure- The structure of emoluments and conditions of service of railway employees are reviewed periodically by Government 'Pay Commissions'. Allowances are linked to the cost of living index [Dearness Allowance]. Other allowances include night duty allowance, running allowance,house rent allowance, hill allowance,bad climate allowance etc. Employees on deputation from different zones and divisions working in the PSU's were fixed in higher grades as an incentive.
Employment Relations have been managed successfully for decades: No major Industrial Conflict since the historic 1974 strike.

Research on Leadership Readiness: The Next Wave [By 9.9 Media]

CHROs are not far behind their c-level peers and are making their presence at the CEO's partner's table and bring expertise in the strategic areas viz; global expansion, mergers & acquisitions, quality initiative and change management activities.
CHRO's seem to be preparing themselves for the next leadership levels.
CHRO's scored above average on the eight must-have attributes for top leadership positions.
CHRO's are actively playing a part in various management and executive committees where decision making is driven largely by consensus but CHRO's have yet to find a place for themselves on the board.
Only 22 % of CXO's [CFOs,CIOs and CTO's] believe that their organizations are ready to have the CHRO as part of the top leadership positions.
22% of CHROs are willing to join the board, but only 9% believe they are ready.
CEO's value the contribution of their CHRO executives. They find CHRO's better than other C level peers on all parameters except 'insights into company's businesses'.
The concept of 'CHRO-plus' role is still emerging in India. CHRO-plus role refers to CHRO's emerging role.

Sky rocketing in the business- The Rocket Singh Way!!!!

2009-12-14T23:00:00.006+05:30

It's been ages since Corporate India learned a few lessons from bollywood movies. Lagaan was infact the last movie that drew the attention of B-School junta and the corporate for learning a few management gems.

I am just back from watching Rocket Singh- Salesman of the year starring Ranbir Kapoor as the main protagonist Harpreet Singh Bedi aka Rocket Singh. He is an academic disaster with 30 something % from his B- Com Graduation exam. While his friends want him to crack the CAT exam, he recognizes his academic limitations and decides to pursue a career in sales. Thanks to the Big Boss [AYS owner] who feels that he would contribute to the balance sheet even though he was not promising in his marks sheet.

He gets a job at a sales company called AYS which is a sharp contrast to his idealistic values and work ethics.
He finds himself in a space plagued with politics, bribes, unrealistic targets, a porn addict etc. However, when he is directly confronted with bribe, he sticks to his ideals and files a complaint against the client. This doesn't go well with his bosses and he is verbally abused and given a lower profile job with strict warning.

Along with this comes humiliation from his colleagues who keep throwing paper rockets at him.

Frustrated yet motivated, he starts an underground sales business called Rocket Sales Corp without the knowledge of anyone in the company. Slowly, he ropes in few other employees and gives them equal share of profits. He uses the existing premises of the office for his business but operates in a smart and discreet manner.

His business is based on customer orientation, great service, building realationship,trust,honesty,equal share of profits and mutual respect [lets include amazing wits and risk too ;-)]. Customers are in awe of the business and sales propel to sky rocketing level

However, AYS owner comes to know about it and buys his company for Ruppee one in a rather humiliating manner.

Well!! the acquisition doesn't help much either. The liabilities increase and sales fall even further.
Rocket Singh is offered a job as Vice President- sales and told to return.

Predictably, he refuses the offer and provides the AYS owner some business gyan. It's the gyan part which completely mesmerizes me. He advises the AYS owner about making a transition from numbers[money] to people. He explains how a business is all about people and not so much about numbers.

The gyan leaves the AYS owner[including me] speechless for a few moments. Good sense prevails and AYS owner asks for a one Ruppee coin[ in a humbling manner this time ;-)] and returns the share of Rocket Singh's company back to him.

It's a movie which all the HR guys must watch and feel proud of.

One of my favorite blogger and inspiration Gautam Ghosh has also written his interesting thoughts on the movie. Check this out.

LEADERSHIP NEXT: SHRM India’s Knowledge Summit.

2009-12-09T23:54:00.004+05:30

It's a great pleasure to inform all that I have been invited to LEADERSHIP NEXT: SHRM India’s Knowledge Summit as a Student Presenter on 11.12.2009 at Mumbai.

I would be presenting my perspective as a student on an interesting research about People Practices in Indian Railways- the world’s largest rail network and employer .

I believe it's a perfect platform to integrate one of my passion and one of my fascination.
The passion being HR and the fascination being 'Indian Railways'. My fascination about Indian Railways is deeply rooted to my early childhood days when my most sought after birthday gift used to be those battery driven mini toy trains. The fascination still remains the same but the reasons are a little different.

Today, I get fascinated about Indian Railways for the sheer fact that it manages 1.7 million employees and 1 million pensioners. It's HR practices has it's impact on such a huge number of people and their families. It has also not witnessed a single major Industrial Dispute for the past 35 years. The 'fringe benefits' & 'welfare benefits' provided to Indian Railways employees are the best. There are many more such facts that fascinates me as a budding HR.

The presentation is going to be about my innocent yet sincere perspective on the new age HR practices in the India Railways.

It is even more special as I would be blessed to share the session with Mr Vijay Pereira & Mr Dhananjay Bansod.

Mr Vijay Pereira is an expert of Indian Railways HR (and business) matters, an educator and Consultant. He has worked in Indian Railways for 7 years and hence has deep understanding of the system itself, rather than being an outside observer. He is based out of London (where he teaches at Portsmouth University. He is an alumni of IIM Ahmedabad. He is the researcher of the study.

Mr Dhananjay Bansod is the Chief People Officer for Deloitte India Ops and is above all an amazing HR professional. He’s had a range of experiences – Line, Consulting and HR and takes great joy in interacting with HR community.

HR as a soft power...

2009-12-07T21:27:00.005+05:30

My close friends are aware of the fact that I am an ardent fan of Shri Shashi Tharoor. He stands as a mascot of ideas that are refreshing and sincere. I was watching this video which delightfully stresses on 'Why nations should pursue 'soft' power. I must say he sounds very convincing as 'almost' always.

He highlights how countries use soft power on the basis of influencing and attracting other countries through foreign policies, political values, culture etc. He emphasizes on how Alliance Francaise has made other countries more aware of the French ethos and similarly Mtv has done the same for USA. There are many such examples.

Similarly, I believe that many companies through their upmarket and spunky HR interventions have successfully left an indelible mark on the mindset of many potential employees.

A classic yet obvious example is that of Google's 'fun' culture or the 'Learning & Development' culture of HUL. So fundamentally it's the culture of the organization that has the potency of creating a massive influence on many people.

So here the potential employees are not getting attracted towards these companies primarily for the reverence which consumers accord to the products and services of those companies. It's more because of the 'soft power' influence they have on the potential employees.

At times in life we all do some great stuff without being conscious about them fully. I believe the HR fraternity in many companies have done some stupendous work yet they are not really aware of the great benefits it has fostered for their companies. May be they got overshadowed by the phenomenal strides made by the business success.

It's promising to hear about HR's role as a business partner. I completely endorse it but at the same time HR should continue to pursue the 'soft power' role and the business should appreciate that more sincerely.

Some of the best business success stories are integrally 'people success' stories and I feel it has been possible because of HR's 'soft power' role over the years.

I strongly feel that HR's transformational role is intertwined with the 'Soft power' it will exercise in the future course of time.

A simple yet fascinating categorization of employees

2009-12-06T18:41:00.003+05:30

During a weekend dinner with a family friend yesterday, we had some very insightful conversation. The uncle is not an HR professional but has vast experience as an engineer and has strong opinion on varied subjects.

He was reminiscing about how much interest his leadership team took in him during his initial days in the plant. His face was suffused with joy as he continued speaking about the amount of autonomy they used to enjoy at the plant level. According to him the scenario has changed. Diffidence has crept in the minds of new age leaders towards their subordinates and even towards themselves.

Well!!! I must confess that I did not provide any point of view as I was too occupied listening to my uncle.

However this post is not about what I have written above. It's rather about a simple yet fascinating categorization of employees he shared with us.

It's called the A,B,C categorization. It's as follows:

A: Apna[hindi word for 'myself']- These employees are a classic example of self obsessed employees. They are not bothered about the company neither the peers,subordinates and superior. Or rather I would correct myself by saying that these employees might be concerned about the peers, subordinates and superiors only if they can serve or facilitate his self interest and purpose.

B: Boss- Well!!! I am sure we all have met this specie. They are the ones concerned more about their boss's interest, purpose and vision than the company's vision. The funny part is that their commitment towards the boss transcends the boundaries of their boss's professional life. He might even agree to dedicate his time and energy to fulfill the boss's dog's purpose.

C: Company- Even the Gallup Survey reveals that not many employees fall under this category. In other words they are the actively engaged employees. They are the ones who dedicate their professional life for the company and it's purpose.

MSSW shines at HR Vista 09

2009-12-06T10:32:00.003+05:30

Madras School of Social Work continued it's winning momentum during HR Vista 2009- A National Study Conference on 'HR Challenges-Post Recession' held at Women's Christian College on 4th December 2009.

MA-HRM Department won the first prize and the third prize[it was shared by 2 teams from MSSW jointly] in the paper presentation competition. The first prize winners made a presentation on HR Outsourcing and it's tremendous opportunities. A very well deserved win which comprised of an indepth study done by the team that included various companies and their perspective about HRO[both supply and demand perspective].

My team that comprised of yours truly :-), Lijo Jacob and Shruthi Thomas won the third prize in the paper presentation on the topic 'Managing transition from Transactional HR to Transformational HR'.

We divided our presentation in three parts where we first explained the concept of transformation in the HR context, followed by the road blocks in the transition and finally the road map of the transition.

The third prize was shared by another impressive team from MSSW. So out of the 4 prizes, 3 were won by MSSW.

In the best manager event also we took the limelight as three of our student including me :-) have reached the final round that takes place this week. Wish us good luck :-)

Thanks a lot :-)

2009-11-29T02:40:00.004+05:30

It's been more than 2 years of blogging. In the process I have learnt quite a bit and made new friends who continue to inspire me. But the biggest propeller to continue blogging is something else.

I must admit that it feels humbling and empowering when friends start blogging and acknowledge that I had a little influence on them.

Two of my close friends, Arvind Srikantan and Ria Dua have started blogging. They both are brilliant, passionate and keen observers.

Check out their blogs!!!! [Click on their names appearing at the top to know more about their posts].

Now thats called 'employee engagement'!!!!!!!

2009-11-29T00:17:00.002+05:30

A close friend of mine was narrating a fascinating incident which happened with him during an employee engagement survey he conducted in one of the most prominent hotel in India.

When he went to the Chief Chef to get his questionnaire filled, he found the Chef extremely occupied in his work. The Chef in a polite manner told him to sit and wait for a few minutes. He continued his work with lazor sharp focus. My friend witnessed the entire dish getting processed from it's raw state into a visually appealing appetizing dish. The smell of the alluring aroma filled the air, now teasing his nostrils. Little did he realize that it was beyond an hour since he was seated there.

Suddenly, good sense prevailed and he reminded the Chef to fill the questionnaire. The Chef offered him a few cookies saying that he must be hungry and left to wash his hand.

After he came back, he keenly went through the first few questions and told my friend to fill it himself.

My friend was puzzled.Well!!!! It was justified as he had wasted over an hour and now did not want to fill the questionnaire.

He was on the verge of getting riled up but then the Chef told him something that he still profoundly remembers even today.

The Chef said ' You have witnessed me working on this simple dish for over an hour. This is the amount of time, passion and energy I dedicate to a single customer. Now you have to decide my 'employee engagement' score and not me.'

Need I say more!!!!!!!!!!!!

26/11/2008- Memories have not faded....

2009-11-26T23:56:00.007+05:30

On 26/11/2008 I was comfortably sitting in my house in Chennai and was a mere silent spectator of the News TV shows which were providing live coverage of the massacre that swept Mumbai.

Hundreds of innocent people were held hostage by terrorists having horrific purpose in their minds, some of the prominent and iconic buildings in Mumbai were burning in fire and so was the soul of many Indians.

Even days and months after the incident my local train journeys to college, occasional dinners in luxury hotels and even violent scenes in movies used to remind me of what the hostages went through in the Taj hotel or Trident hotel or the railway station etc. I must admit the feeling was scary and sad.

It was a tragic incident which we would like to forget but we better not. We better not forget it for the sake of the brave NSG commandos, Mumbai police and many more people like the staffs in the hotels who redefined professionalism and patriotism.

Along with rage, remorse and hope this incident gave birth to Indian heroes for whom we feel extremely proud. No matter how much we thank them, it will still not be enough.

It also brought together political parties to brainstorm beyond party agendas and forget inter party rivalries for a little while in order to deeply think about National cause and security.

Many promises by political leaders were made and I hope that at least some of those strategies to tackle terrorism have been executed well enough.

We Indians have shown immense courage to bounce back and progress but in the midst of all these developments I realize that the best thing which has ever happened to me is the fact that I am born as an INDIAN.

However I feel a little silly and very ashamed that why did it take an incident like 26/11/2008 to occur in order to have this wonderful realization in me?

I dont have an answer. I can only say 'Jai Hind' from the bottom of my heart.

Jai Ho Sachin!!!!!!

2009-11-15T23:45:00.008+05:30

20 years of glorious cricket, prodigious feats, perseverance that matches only those of a few and a simplicity that is contagious. My understanding about Sachin is limited to this and I am equally sure that whatever little I understand about Sachin is worthy of being a huge reservoir of learning.

Let me share my learning from this great cricketer-

Humbleness: I recently read one of his quote 'Statistically, I have passed Don Bradman but I can't be compared with him.' This speaks volumes about this man. Did Don Bradman score most number of runs, most number of hundreds, did he play for 20 long years????? Well the answer is 'No'. But does Don Bradman deserve this much respect from Sachin???? The answer is 'Yes!! Certainly'. A lot of players won't give a monkey toss to such legends but Sachin is different. He is 'rightfully' different. He is as great as Sir Don Bradman if not more. [I hope Sreesanth is reading this post ;-)].
Dream with the right purposeful action: He has often been quoted saying that it was his dream to become an Indian Cricketer. One of his special moment still remains his debut match against Pakistan where even his opponents found him promising. Wearing the Indian cap was not the end. It was a beginning to a journey that still delights fans like me 20 glorious years later.
Team spirit: Sachin played some of his best knocks under the captaincy of cricketers who joined the team much later like Saurav [my favorite], Dravid, Dhoni etc. but he still played his game with great passion and tenacity. He rates his 98 runs scored against Pakistan during the World Cup that was very instrumental in India's win as one of his best knocks. His individual interest never superseded his team's success. Team always came first.
Focus: Consider this quote 'I hate losing and cricket being my first love, once I enter the ground it's a different zone altogether and that hunger for winning is always there.' I feel he lives this statement every time he comes on the field. I am sure he would not have lived this statement without lazor sharp focus.
Do your best and leave the rest to God: Now consider this statement ' I just keep it simple. I watch the ball and play it on merit. I want to give my six hours of serious cricket on the ground and then take whatever the result.' In any profession, it is important not to complicate oneself with too many thoughts. Success in flawless execution lies in simplicity in thoughts and great belief in translating those thoughts into action. Sachin personifies that.
Right amount of preparation is the key: I always felt that Sachin's confidence comes from his impeccable and sincere preparation. This quote sums it up again ' At least with me, the match starts much, much earlier than the actual match.'
Don't complain, rather work on the next opportunity: There are number of times Sachin has been declared out for no valid reasons [most of them being LBWs, a few run outs and that catch by Jonty Rhodes]. But he came back stronger in the next few matches. He did complain but through his bat.

I wholeheartedly salute Sachin for teaching us professionalism through the beautiful game of cricket. He made it look even more beautiful.

Jai Ho Sachin!!!!!!!!

Note: Quotes and the photo was obtained from www.rediff.com and http://www.sachintendulkar.in

Daily Performance Reviews [ Does that sound CRAZY???]

2009-11-14T02:46:00.005+05:30

During a workshop conducted by Mr David Wittenberg , CEO, The Innovation Workgroup, Delhi on 'Innovation in HR', he gave us a case study to solve. We were required to come out with innovative ways of performance appraisal in a given context.

I suggested 'Daily performance reviews'. It was well appreciated by David Sir and others in the audience.

Let me explain the ' Daily Performance appraisal' in a brief and simple manner:

Before the employees leave for the day, they must take a few minutes to record their day's performance in a HR dashboard.
Every day must begin with a brief review of the employee's performance as recorded in the HR dashboard the last day.
The team must be included in the discussion along with a manager/ member of leadership team.
Discuss in great detail the cumulative performance records from the HR dashboard quarterly in a private manner with the boss [manger /leadership team member]
Identify performance gaps and establish the road map.
Execute the needful sincerely.

I am sure a lot of you might argue that this might be too time consuming. Face it guys: YOU ARE COMPLETELY WRONG [I CAN BET!!!!!]

This will save time and energy like never before. Give it a sincere thought. And in case you implement this in your organization, do give me the credit and beyond [You decide what's beyond ;-)]

A long awaited post on 'Tanthra 2009'

2009-11-13T12:46:00.004+05:30

Well!!! I am back after my exams [exams are not over though as one is scheduled for 23rd November].

I was one of the student delegate in 'TANTHRA 2009' organised by D G Vaishnav College, Department of HRM. I have always learnt a great deal from eminent speakers. This was no exception either.

Let me share a snapshot of my learning from various speakers during 'Tanthra 2009':

1. Mr Anand Rangachary, Managing Director, South Asia & Middle east, Frost & Sullivan,

Mumbai:

It is extremely important for Business Leaders to have experience of working in emerging markets.
Technology is increasingly going to be a value lever for business.
HR should ensure that employees are retained for the sweet spot period [2-5 years].
HR's priority should be to foster the right culture of leadership,entrepreneurial spirit[within the company :-)] , innovation and ownership.

2. Mr G Ravindran, Managing Director, SHRM India, Mumbai:

HR professionals have to be path breakers who understand people, enable self discovery and shape talent for tomorrow's enterprises.

3. Mr Naveen Narayan, India Lead-Rewards, HR Tech, GS CIO, HR; Accenture:

HR professionals have to get into the role of 'credible activist'[might sound like a paradox but thats the way it should be]

4. Mr K Ganesh, VP-HR, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Chennai

Legal knowledge in HR practitioners is going to be of prime importance in the current scenario.
HR professionals should stop complaining about 'Visibility' because if you have the right ability and can translate it into value driven performance then visibility would be certain. [Visibility = Visible +Ability :-)]

5. Mr Joseph John, VP -HR, India & Middle East IT Businesses, Wipro Ltd, Bangalore.

The HR levers in today's business are: Managing cost, enhancing performance, Employee Engagement, Agility & capability development, HR service delivery excellence.
Focus areas for HR: Globalization & Change agent, Diversity management, Leadership development

6. Mr Ramkumar Rammoorthy, VP, Corporate Marketing & Research and Communication, CTS,

Chennai.

There is a shift from Labour arbitrage model to Intellectual model in todays workforce management.
Business needs to be driven by metrics. HR needs to embrace this.

7. Mr Selvam George, Chairman, 5 E Serpraise, Bangalore.

The 3 Ps of HRM: Passion, Path Making, Public Interest.

8. Mr Srikant Srinivasan, Corporate HR, Ashok Leyland, Chennai.

Priority areas for HR: Being process champions and change agents, build capability of working across cultures, how to deal with constant learning and unlearning.

9. Naresh Kumar Pinisetti, Director- People & Culture, Vestas Wind Technology India, Chennai.

Employee value proposition in Vestas: Respectable, Sustainable, Driven, Global, Learning.
A lot of focus needs to be given on employer branding, mentoring and global mobility, managing generation Y employees properly.

10. Mr Dharmarajan, Head HR- Buildings and Factories Operating Company, Larsen & Toubro, Chennai.

3 Ps of business: People, Planet, Profit.

11. Mr C Mohan Kumar, Executive Director- HR, Nagarjuna Oil Corporation Ltd, Chennai.

5 emerging tools in HR:

Predictive workforce monitoring and strategic talent decision making.
Flexible and anticipating talent sourcing.
Customized and personalized records and communications.
Distributed and distribution influenced leadership.
Unified and compassionate culture.

12. Workshop on 'Innovation in HR practices' by David Wittenberg, CEO, Innovation Workgroup, Delhi

A few prerequisites to innovation :

Assign people to innovate
The customers know best, not the experts
Test then build
Validated benefits prior to launch.

'Unemployability' & not 'unemployment'.....

2009-11-07T19:41:00.004+05:30

This article in Economics Times reveals that 75% Indian engineering students are unemployable. To me this news is both worrying as well as refreshing.

Worrying because there are engineering colleges mushrooming across the nation. I hope there is a purpose and direction to such endeavor. I am sure the 25% of the so called employable students would be good enough for corporate India's needs [taking into account it's youth population] but my concern lies in the fact that let the rest of the 75% wannabe engineers choose different career paths and not confuse their own future and the country's future . Or rather it's a strong message to Indian parents to look beyond engineering and giving the freedom to their kids to engineer their own career paths.

The article is refreshing because I have noticed that it focuses on 'unemployability' rather than 'unemployment' for a change....or rather 'genuine change'.......

PS: Have some informative posts pending because of exam time. Will blog regularly once exams are over [11th November if Chennai Monsoon takes a break]

The deadly sins of a HR strategist

2009-10-26T00:33:00.005+05:30

I had an awesome opportunity to listen to Steven Miranda, Chief HR & Content Integration Officer , SHRM on last Saturday during the SHRM-MTHR HR event in Chennai. Steven shared his thoughts on addressing HR issues through simple yet profound ways of lateral thinking. The analogies and examples he used were inspired from geometry and mathematics which made us think even more objectively.

He then made a thought provoking presentation on the 7 deadly sins of HR strategists. Lets me share a few key inferences from that delightful presentation:

1. Do not take a position of advocacy without assuming accountability: He quoted Arnold Schwarzeneggar ' No one ever got muscles watching me lift wait'. That approrite quote explains it all. Need I say more!!!!

2. Forming an opinion without doing your homework: Seems very simple but lets face it that it's neglected most of the time.

3. Understand the business with a greater amount of sincerity as I insinuated from the presentation that it helps a great deal in execution and in making a strategy work.

4. First know what you want to change before being a change agent- Let's put the issues in a better and sincere perspective before being the change agent.

5. Do not get over romanticized by strategies- Give facts it's due consideration too.

6. The real need can be that of some 'genuine conversation' and 'context' while you are busy communicating.[My favorite mantra of the day]

7. a. Do not believe HR is simple when HR is hard ;-)

b. Do not believe HR is hard when HR is simple ;-)

My first 'Fire Walking' experience...

2009-10-24T23:05:00.004+05:30

Today I had an ecstatic experience of walking on FIRE!!!! A BIG thanks to SHRM-MTHR HR event in Chennai where Priya Kumar gave one of the most inspiring speech i have ever come across till date.

Before I share the fire walking experience, let me share a quick lesson I learned from her talk:

Some of the best philosophies behind success are simple yet a little wierd but genuine.
Courage & self belief are the two ingredients in overcoming our fear.
Once a person overcomes his fear, he grows as a person in multi-dimensions ie emotional, spiritual, mental etc.

The fire walk experience started off with great amount of doubts [not really fear] and once I completed it successfully [did it twice :-)], it helped me to gain greater clarity. On further retrospection, my self belief became stronger [it has always been quite strong though :-)].

I am sure a fire walking experience can be transformational for people who have acute fear of fire.

A FIRE walk might also help a great deal in removing insecurities of getting FIREd from your company.

PS: I also bought a book titled 'I am another you' by Priya Kumar. Read a few random pages. Seems very impressive. I even got it autographed by Priya :-)

What makes Chennai MTHR Global-SHRM, India HR event so interesting and unique!!!!!

2009-10-20T13:35:00.001+05:30

What’s compelling about the Event:
1. Event with true variety: Not a series of Seminars but variety – Interview (Dr. Khandelwal), Workshop (Steve Miranda), Leadership Training (Priya Kumar)
2. Speakers with a difference: Speakers who are not celebrities but are huge Achievers – transformed Banking (Dr. Khandelwal), redefined Space science (Dr. Bhattacharya), proved HR can become COO/ CEO (Pranesh Anthapur)
3. Engrossing Methodology for Learning: Speakers who engage through stories, not Gyan; thus participants draw their own learning without prescription!
4. View of Reality: Speakers discuss challenges and failure as objectively
5. An event where Fun and Networking never stops: Inclusive Group – HR Leaders of top Groups such as Murugappa, CSC, Deloitte, Verizon, Cognizant; Managers and executives; as well as Academicians and students of various B Schools all mingle without prejudice

6. Promoted by two of the largest HR Groups: SHRM with 3L members globally and MTHRG with 10K members in India, both not-for-profit and progressive
7. Participants combine Learning with experience and confidence: Fire-walking will reinforce that individuals can be Trailblazers
8. Where Learning does not stop: Creation of Learning Forum post Event
9. Partnership between Students and Industry: Watch 20 students volunteer and run the Event – never happens at a non-college Gathering
10. Finally, the Event will be high on Content, very little PPT and Jargon or technical stuff.

Chennai MTHR Global-SHRM, India Full Day Learning Event

2009-10-19T23:25:00.006+05:30

I am quite excited to attend the Chennai MTHR Global – SHRM, India Full Day HR Learning Event on 24th October, 2009. Let me share further information about the event which was e-mailed to me today:

SHRM, India – World’s largest knowledge body for HR (www.shrmindia.org), and Mumbai-based MTHR Global (www.mthrglobal.com), a seven-year , in-action, rapidly growing new-age HR movement in India present:

"Trailblazers: Stories for HR"

Chennai, Saturday 24th October 2009, 10 am onwards

At The (Adyar) Park Sheraton, T.T.K. Road,

Chennai 600018

Featuring pioneers in Business, Science, Technology, HR, Personal Transformation; and their exciting journeys in organizations and beyond…

Learn valuable lessons in Leadership and Management through Inspiring stories

“ Trailblazers: Stories for HR” is a Program that HR and other Management professionals, influencers in organizations, academicians and students cannot afford to miss.

Your big opportunity to catch up with interesting and innovative learning that “Trailblazers” from diverse fields will share - in their engaging stories of passion, positivity, and ambition!

Within the new pressured environment of organizations, post-downturn, there is a need and opportunity for the Human Resource function to play a critical part in helping organisations innovate and transform their own roles. In order to play these new roles, however, HR has to enjoy a real and perceived value that’s appreciated by Business Leaders and employees alike. SHRMI and MTHRG are organizing this Knowledge Event that will help glean important lessons in Innovation, Leadership, Management and people practices for participants. Learn from these stories - how you think differently, partner with business leaders , develop value of employees, and pitfalls to avoid!

Hear International Gurus such as:

1. Dr. Anil Khandelwal, Chairman, Baroda Pioneer Asset Company, ex CMD, Bank of Baroda and a pioneer of the HRD revolution in PSU Banks

2. Pranesh Anthapur, Chief Operating Officer of Yahoo! India R&D, formerly VP for Yahoo!'s international HR and HR mergers and acquisitions group in Sunnyvale

3. Dr. Sudip Bhattacharya, Scientist, TIFR, NASA Space Science Achievement Awardee , 2007 and credited with a latest Astronomical breakthrough

4. Steve Miranda, SPHR, GPHR, Chief HR and Content Integration Officer at Society for Human Resource Management

In an evening session - Priya Kumar, Corporate Trainer, motivational speaker,facilitator and authority on Personal Breakthrough will take participants through an amazingly powerful way To Ignite Change in Your Life - The Ultimate Fire walking Experience. Often people are afraid of showing and harnessing their own power and instead sabotage their own potential. Learn how to turn this around so that you can radiate the fullness of who you are. Learn how to motivate yourself for success in all areas of your life.

The MTHR Global - SHRM India Roadshow Series regaled audiences earlier at: Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Pune - featuring the best Learning and Networking through power-packed sessions by global leaders in HR, Business, Corporate Transformation, Wellness, Consulting, etc.

Employer Branding

2009-10-13T13:00:00.003+05:30

I am doing a non research based project on 'Employer Branding' in my college. I must say it's very insightful and fun :-)

I have few inferences which I personally feel very strongly about. They are as follows:

Employer Branding should be leveraged as a Strategic Value Driver…
Focus more on the internal customers during the Employer Branding Process…
Relevance of Employer Branding will increase in post economic downturn situation…
Web 2.0 can be leveraged for Employer Branding purpose…
Creating a superior Employee Value Proposition is more important than marketing the company as a ‘Best Employer’…
Product/Service Branding should have a greater budget allocated than for Employer Branding…
Your former employees are the best ambassadors for your ‘Employer Branding’ process…
It makes sense to use TV commercials for ‘Employer Branding’ process…
The management philosophy and the internal culture influences the ‘Employer Branding’ process the most….
Employer Branding can be best used for Talent acquisition and retention…

Howzzzattt????????

Indian firms best in terms of employee satisfaction!

2009-10-05T21:15:00.002+05:30

This article in rediff is bound to make the Indian HR fraternity feel very proud. According to the article " India ranks highest with 76 per cent on a country-level PEI [the Performance Excellence Index (PEI)] index of 14 countries. The index tracks employees' views of product and service quality and the firm's focus on customer service, quality, training and employee involvement."

Also it is observed " India ranks the highest in the country-level EEI[Employee Engagement Index] index as well, with a percentage of 73 per cent and is followed by Brazil (65 per cent). While Japan has the lowest score in this index at 36 percent."

I hope that the Indian employees do not become too satisfied and lack zeal in looking out for challenging assignments!!!!

Employee Engagement- A myth or reality????

2009-09-28T02:04:00.004+05:30

I wonder if there is something known as 'active employee engagement'???

Well!!! the several surveys lead to the conclusion that it exists. Even Professor Google has numerous definitions for it.

But when I ask the meaning of 'active employee engagement' to a few senior professionals. They say that it's all about keeping the employees happy enough through recreational activities/fun activities'.

I do not endorse that at all. I will explain /justify that through an example. If an 'actively disengaged employee' gets to participate in your company's so called 'Disco Dandiya event'. Will it help the HR team to stop him from bad mouthing about the company or raise his work performance standards????

No!!!! most likely!!!!

He will get a good excuse to get away from his work and also have a social gathering which he can entertain through his bad mouthing about the company.

Let's apply common sense and change our approach towards employee engagement.

The purpose is to get the associates excited about their job and perform better through greater involvement and ownership.

Include the following in your employee engagement tool kit:

1. Superior Learning and Development.

2. Competitive Compensation.

3. Most importantly, foster a culture of 'goodness'. A place where the right virtues and values are recognized and appreciated genuinely.

4. Have some real 'fun' after getting the above three points right in place.

;-)