clair068

ET reports “Premier management institutes IIM-A, IIM-B and TERI School of Advanced Studies have joined hands with Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Maxwell University and Duke University, respectively to conduct short term courses for senior officials of the central government. The officials will be trained in the latest global rules of public management. The reputed management institutes, short - listed through global bidding, shall design and conduct the short-term courses in management for senior bureaucrats, who will be undergoing the compulsory mid-career course linked with their career advancement. I wonder if the courses will help our Babu’s perform better. For them more than aptitude it’s the attitude which makes all the difference. Some of the best minds are part of the same system which is branded as inefficient and corrupt. More than courses the govt. should also work on coming up with a matrix for managing performance and developing a measurable reward and promotion ...

The Market share and revenues of the firm are not the only factors which drive a firm valuation. How do you define Intangibles? Does it really matters in a firm’s valuation? David Creelman and Dave Ulrich answer this in a white paper on “ The New ROI of HR”. They believe the architecture of intangibles has four steps: 1. First is the fundamental issue of keeping promises and managing expectations. 2. Second is a clear strategy—a story about our future that shows how the organization will create value through growth. 3. Third is having the core technical competencies needed to deliver that strategy. These technical competencies might be marketing’s ability to manage its distribution channels or manufacturing’s ability to maintain Six Sigma quality—the specific technical competencies required depend on the strategy. 4. The fourth and final step is capabilities—those things that make a company stand out in the minds of customers. It might be a shared mind-set, such as Nordstrom's com...

So finally the talent shortage and lack of skilled HR professionals is having some impact on Industry. ET reports that “In a move to professionalise and give accreditation to human resource (HR) professionals, the National Human Resource Development network (NHRD) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the CII and the XLRI, Jamshedpur, for an accreditation process. This will be launched in a month’s time, P Dwarkanath, director, Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) and president, NHRD, said. I had posted earlier about the HR talent shortage which exits in the country today. Today, HR managers are in great demand, with an estimated 5,00,000 required across industries . But there exists a shortage to the tune of 40%,” Father NCasimir Raj, SJ, director of XLRI,. “This apart, the attrition rate is high as people are not sure what areas they can excel in. The training has been designed to check these trends,” he added. XLRI has been taking the lead in partnering with Industry and even State...

With the growing pace of globalization and companies operating out of multiple locations spread over globe, diversity of workforce has emerged as a big challenge. In a recent article disentangling what researchers have learned over the past 50 years, Margaret A. Neale finds that diversity across dimensions, such as functional expertise, education, or personality, can increase performance by enhancing creativity or group problem-solving. In contrast, more visible diversity, such as race, gender, or age, can have negative effects on a group—at least initially. However, says Neale, fault lines that emerge as a result of such demographic factors can be parlayed to a group’s advantage too. “In fact, the worst kind of group for an organization that wants to be innovative and creative is one in which everyone is alike and gets along too well,” she says. And the key to making nearly any kind of diversity work is managing it well. I think teams with members with diverse background have a defini...

Social Innovation has made one of the biggest impact since it’s dramatic comeback in 1970s through the works of French scholars Pierre Rosanvallon, Jacques Fournier, and Jacques Attali. Social Innovation is comprised of new strategies, concepts, or ideas that transform policy and practices especially as they relate to the development or extension of civil society. Social innovation concerns improved quality of life, and may relate to social welfare, working conditions, employment, or community development. It can take place within government, within companies, or within the nonprofit (also known as the third sector) sector. John Thackara gives these 10 laws for Social Innovation . Power Law 1: Don’t think “new product” - think social value. Power Law 2: Think social value before “tech”. Power Law 3: Enable human agency. Design people into situations, not out of them. Power Law 4: Use, not own. Possession is old paradigm. Power Law 5: Think P2P, not point-to-mass. Power Law 6: Don’t t...

Should HR as a function continue to have Non-Traditional HR person to lead the guide the HR role in organizations? Traditionally we have seen lot of folks from diverse background doing quite well as HR leads and often giving the HR role in the organization a new direction. As Philip say “I think one of the biggest drawbacks for HR functions is the fact that they are often filled with people who have no concept of how business operates. They might contain people who have received their MBAs...but when's the last time an organization has allowed an MBA-only person take the helm? MBAs must be accompanied with experience, and this is precisely where traditional HR heads are found lacking. They've rarely had to lead other operations within the organization...and as a result, don't truly understand the P&L responsibilities, hierarchies, turf wars, etc. that might be going on within an organization. Often it has been said that HR has not been able to pay a strategic role in bu...

What do you get when two great minds meet? Here’s a sample on why Seth Godin blogs. What my blog does for me is it keeps me from writing a book every month, or a long PowerPoint presentation. What the blog does is let me take an idea that's nascent, and share it, and see what happens to it, as opposed to having to invest months or years into fully polishing it. I'm the first to admit that half the ideas on the blog are nonsense. I just don't know which half. This is a neat way for the community to think about things a little differently. So it's a really good sort of steam valve for me. Seth Godin is interviewed by Tom peters in the cool interviews series.

Is your Talent management strategy focusing on all the relevant stakeholders? How do you ensure that managers, employees, HR and senior management are equally benefited from your Talent management strategy? Some of things which HR can work out while coming up with a talent management strategy is to identify the areas of common interest and conflicts. Based on this it can work promoting and communication the areas of common interest and work of ways to ensure a solution to possible or existing areas of conflict. Often we end up covering the areas of conflict or disagreement which is not a good strategy in a long run. One of the typical mistakes which happen at the time of recruiting is over –promise and compromise on relevant relieving documents to be submitted at time of joining. Some times the business needs are to pressing to lead to such situations but such steps leads to future conflict areas and dissatisfied employees.

Talent management strategy of an organization is the most critical strategy in sustaining and developing the competitive strategy of the firm. DDI and Economic Intelligence suggest that ● Given its importance, the strategy needs to be driven from the top. CEOs and COOs should oversee talent management strategy rather than delegating it to HR departments. HR, in turn, should be made responsible for supporting the strategy and executing it. ● Talent management should be explicitly linked with overall strategic planning and deliver the quantity and quality of leaders the company will need in the future to achieve its goals. ● Formal processes for identifying top talent, including performance evaluations, and strategic reviews of key talent should occur at least annually and incorporate written feedback to buttress scored categories. There are many other components required in a good programme, and a rigorous approach to obtaining reliable performance data is essential. ● Smart companies ...

Is Recruitment part of HR function? A small survey by ERE has this result Should recruiting be part of the HR department? Yes, it should be part of HR: 37% :94 votes No, a separate department :45% :114 votes Depends on the company :18% :46 votes None of the above : 1% :2 votes Total: 256 votes I personally feel that recruitment is a specialized business function and should not be linked with HR. At the same time all HR professionals must spend some time in the recruitment function since it brings lot of insight and understanding operations issues with recruiting. Recruitment lays the foundation of HR functions and for generalists as well as specialists HR folks the recruiter’s role is always a challenge. From Line managers and Boards members’ perspective Recruitment has greater visibility in terms of meeting organization manpower need and the business objective.

Today’s TOI reports that “Wipro Biomed, the life sciences division of Wipro Ltd, has won an order from the Delhi High Court restraining the company's long term partner Beckman Coulter from luring its employees, albeit temporarily. Beckman Coulter is understood to be preparing ground to enter India on its own. The ruling has put the spotlight back on the poaching phenomenon that is threatening to snowball into a major controversy affecting the Indian industry across sectors like life sciences, aviation and BPO. Talent Poaching or Talent acquisition? How do you define it ? Most of the developed nations have already witnessed this trend and have come up with confidentiality clauses to prevent people from joining competitors. Does poaching actually help organizations fill roles? Here's one viewpoint . The war for talent has intensified and organizations are using every rule in the book to retain the competitive advantage of skilled workforce. However do you feel that it’s fair to ...

As organizations grow in size and operates from multiple locations, one of the biggest challenges is to maintain flexibility and responsiveness in decision making and execution.Historically organizations that have been able to retain swiftness in decision making despite large scale operations always emerge as winner in the long run. The findings, from a new McKinsey Quarterly survey , suggest that managers across all main regions and industry sectors acknowledge the increasing significance of agility and speed. In the survey an organization's "agility" was defined as its ability to change tactics or direction quickly—that is, to anticipate, adapt to, and react decisively to events in the business environment. "Speed" was defined as a measure of how rapidly an organization executes an operational or strategic objective. Some of the major findings are: Almost nine in ten respondents say agility is either "extremely" or "very" important to bu...

David Dotlich from HR.Com on leadership development I was coaching a CEO just recently who was brilliant and really good at strategic thinking and planning but had a huge underdeveloped capacity around growing people and the whole area of leadership development. It was a huge risk, not only for him, but for his firm as well. And this is a most common issue that we see around partial leadership in large and small companies today, the over focus on head. We also see that there are some people who really are good at inspiring, and motivating, connecting with people through loyalty and commitment. We call these heart leaders and they really are good in the short term at inspiring people to perform, but sometimes over the long term can’t make the tough choices that are needed for success or they can't give tough feedback or make hard decisions around letting people go. And then finally we have seen some very intuitive and instinctive guts leaders we call them, who can make bold moves,...

TANSTAAFL "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" popularized by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress , which discusses the problems caused by not considering the eventual outcome of an unbalanced economy. However the new generation of twenty-something lives in what Chris Anderson terms "the Long Tail," a term he coined in his Wired magazine column and that is the title of his new book. The "Long Tail" describes the region of the item "popularity curve" comprising the vast population of least-popular items, whether it is song titles, books, or little-known brands. Has technology given the new generation a new gateway to access free, unlimited information? What happened to the Marshall’s good old Demand Supply Partial Equilibrium theory ? In Anderson's view, all of these drive demand down into the tail, which he terms "a culture unfiltered by economic scarcity." In th...

Last few years has seen the great debate raging over the critical role which HR is going to play in the days to come. Business environment has become less predictable and the competitive value of the firm is decided by its unique and skilled workforce. Organization strategy is not just driven by the technology they possess and the health of the balance sheet, the critical differentiator is the ability of the firm to scale up to the new growth trends. Growing market uncertainties has varied impact on the organizations future growth potential. Does this translate into an opportunity for the HR, to make its path breaking contribution in defining the Business Strategy of the firm? Let’s imagine another situation in which marker trends are predictable and technological trends are going to remain stable over a period of time. In this situation do you see HR being considered as critical partner in firm strategy execution? Chances are that HR will be delegated to do the regular predictable mai...

One of the best practices which have evolved over the years in corporate world is the business of social change. Organization act as major facilitators in brings about changes at various levels in the society by acting as a change agent. Fast Company article talks about the Social Capitalist winners who have developed some best practices that leaders in any sector can learn from. Thank your customers. Then thank them again.John Wood, CEO and Founder, Room to Read We make it a policy to almost "over-thank" our donors with as many creative gestures of appreciation we can imagine. In addition to establishing libraries and building schools, we publish native language books. Let your customers sell for youPaul Rice, CEO and Founder, TransFair Our model is to mobilize consumer demand for products that pay farmers a fair price so companies that distribute our certified products are rewarded for doing the right thing. That means that our customers are our most powerful advocates. S...