Did I tell you that I am a Twitter addict? For those who don’t know what in the world is twitter - here’s a small description from wikipedia -
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
In 2009 may all of us:
- Get to know what each of our employees aspires towards.
- Have regular conversations with each of our customers and clients (use the phone, blogs, twitter or take them out for lunch!)
- Be ready to make remarkable products and deliver exceptional service
Recently I was talking to a friend who heads Marketing for a Financial firm. She asked me “So how much time do you spend in telecons?”
I was surprised and said that I hardly did so. I use the phone primarily to text or to only set up appointments. The actual conversation is almost all of the time face to face.
The blogosphere has been a-buzz the last weekend on popularity and influence.
A Prof of mine actually used to take an elective in my MBA which was earlier called Power, Influence and Politics which was later renamed to the more politically correct Leadership, Influence and Power.
Earlier somewhere on this blog (in a post that mysteriously vanished!) I asked people as part of a 8 step process for career success, to become an ‘expert’.
However, the truth is expertise sits uneasily on my shoulders. I shudder when people describe me as any kind of expert. Even more than I shudder when someone (you know who you are!) describes me as a “Thought Leader”.
Whew! What a fast paced year it has been!
The year’s last Carnival of HR is already up!
Peggy Andrews at The Career Encouragement - where posts vary from the implications of the economic crisis (special mention to Jon Ingham’s post for us HR folks inHuman vs. Financial Capital?), to leadership issues ( special food for thought Wally Bock asks “what is leadership at it’s core?” in Leaders Eat Last) then there’s HR Bytes on Gartner Stresses on Employer Branding and Social Networking which focusses on my two favorite issues - Employment Branding and Social Networking, together!
Here’s a nice Christmas gift to HR (and others too!) professionals! You can get a free PDF ebook Capturing The People Advantage: Thought Leaders on Human Capital by authors at Booz & Company and Booz Allen Hamilton.
You can download it at http://www.strategy-business.com/HCreader
For those of you who might be interested in giving a consulting interview in the near future, here’s an interesting spoof on what really happens 
Gaurav posts the interesting example of an Investment Banker in NYC and how he found another job
Joshua Persky, the out-of-work banker who grabbed headlines this summer by standing on New York’s Park Avenue, handing out résumés to passers-by and wearing a sandwich board that said, “Experienced M.I.T. Grad for Hire,” has finally landed a job
Laurie first blogged about Blowing Up HR , and now Frank at the KnowHR blog has posted 10 tenets of the New HR.
I totally agree with both of them and here’s what I think HR should be doing to doing its job better.
1. Recognise that the administrative, boring, non-value added part of the job won’t go away. Get specialists, within the organization or from outside to do that. Or automate it.If you are a small business, maybe you can join other SMEs and find one large contractor to handle that piece. Yes, that would mean letting go of customised reports etc. But if it’s non value added, then why have it at all?
2. Get a business guy/girl to lead HR. Ideally someone who’s in line to be the CEO. Not just some loser whose career is headed for the dead end. Should have been a great people manager. She/He’ll add business perspective to HR. Focus on the activities that will add dollar (and rupee) value to the business. And you in HR, you should move to a business function. Try marketing and sales. Understand how difficult it is to bring in money into the organization. Or try operations. That’ll make you understand how difficult it is to produce and deliver whatever you produce or provide. You’ll be a better HR professional for that.
3. Get your head around to the core competitive value of your business. What makes it better than your competitors? And how is this core competitive value going to evolve in the near and long term? Then get your HR processes to support both these all the way. For example, if your company’s competitive value is creative product/services and will remain the competitive differentiator then as a HR organization you should know how to attract, retain, develop the most creative talent than your competitors. Also look at behaviors/processes that hinder creativity and kill them (the processes, not creativity!)
4. Get a strong team. You can’t make a difference to the business by putting a weak scaffolding. HR needs to have a strong structure and support the business fundamentals. That won’t happen by putting one junior HR generalist for 500 employees and giving an IT HR infrastructure. That’ll mean giving senior HR resources to support business units.
Are you ready to re-imagine HR?
If you are reading this blog on the web you might want to check out
1. Reading it on a web based RSS reader (like Google Reader . You can share interesting posts with your friends too, like I share mine here)
2. Read it on a desktop RSS aggregator like FeedDemon.
3. Some email programs like Yahoo! Mail, Outlook 2007, Thunderbird also enable you to get the RSS feed along with your mails.
According to the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey :
The survey data reveals that employers with the most active first-quarter hiring plans globally — despite generally weaker hiring patterns — are reported in Peru, India, Costa Rica, Canada, Romania, Colombia, South Africa, Australia, Poland, the United States and China.
A friend posted this on Linkedin:
What are the flaws in an Exit Process- voluntary and involuntary seperation. What should be in-corporated to ensure a smooth ‘exit’ and a pleasant seperation for the employee. You’ll could also share instances if you please.
What happens when a group of Dragon Slayers go to office?
The World of Warcraft meets The Office 
in the World of Workcraft! (hat-tip Jason Calacanis)
IT Entrepreneur Abhishek Rungta posts on his blog
And suddenly, the situation has taken a u-turn. Companies are laying off their “talent bank” for which they fought so ferociously. The guy who walks out of office today is not sure, if his job is here to stay when he reaches office the next day. The morale is at all time low. Employees are finding it difficult to trust an employer. The question is - “Will he sack me today?”
This is an environment of extremes and uncertainty. This is an environment of relationship without trust. And, this is going to worsen with every cycle on up-and-down.
So, Who is to be blame? And more importantly, how this cycle can be broken? OR, Can this be at all checked?
In my opinion,
This environment is a result of a number of social-commercial factors, like:
-
Employee side:
-
Desire for overnight riches and i-want-to-retire-young mindset
-
Career objective not properly defined. (Corollary: Objective=money)
-
Peer pressure. Comparison of lifestyle. Increase in jealousy.
-
Spending more than the earning!
-
Gaining experience without gaining competence (i.e. 12 years of experience looked like 1 year of real experience repeated 12 times over! - which eventually remains 1 year of experience)
-
-
Employer Side:
-
Inexperienced and poor management
-
Unavailability of proper HR professionals (Hint: NOT those people who think HR = headhunting)
-
Treating employees as commodities
-
Not sticking to the basics
-
Lack of strategic insight into one’s business
-
Currently, the problem is in a virtuous cycle, and it is difficult to break it, since it is not based on a tangible outcome. It is purely based on emotions! And, if this cycle is not broken soon, it will intensify and re-occur more frequently.
This is what I commented on his post:
The two big issues that need to be resolved are:
1. What is the business leaders’ expectations from HR? If it is just recruitment, then they will always equate HR with headhunting and only hire such HR people. In some ways NASSCOM and other industry body should raise awareness on how IT leaders can leverage HR for better value.
2. Often smaller niche firms have a junior HR exec/manager who cannot advise/coach senior business leaders on people processes and issues, and also cannot push back on business decisions that might impact people aspects. Such firms might need to engage a senior HR consultant to act as a de facto HR leader for direction and strategising.
Now you can join this blog as a member with either your Google, Yahoo or OpenID account !Click on Join this site.
- NHRD National conference-Beyond HR!!?
AK Menon is disappointed - You make more money
I agree with EHRL, I also think pay should not be confidential! That’ll put a lot of compensation consultants out of business!
The last three days have been a period of turmoil. I don’t consider myself an emotional person (my MBTI profile is INTP , in case you want to know) but watching the Mumbai attacks unfold has been gut wrenching and heart-breaking.
Good news folks!
The new name of this blog is “White Spaces”
White Space, in an organizational context, in my view, is the space outside the boxes in the organizational chart. The focus is on recognizing that we need not be ‘boxed’ in by our roles, but that we can be much more than that.
(C) 2008 Ulrich Kerler & Marcus Schiesser Report an issue | Feedback | Privacy Policy | TOS