HR and Social Media SEPTEMBER 29, 2010 in HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT How can you squander even one

more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable? Seth Godin, Seths Blog The convergence of technology, media and ideas has brought in the phenomena called Social Media. Sharing have never been as important as it is now. Endorsing a view of members connected by a group becomes an avalanche in no time. The focus is shifting from searching content to combing through a colleagues or co-workers choice brings, as it brings in lot more credibility. In a situation like this, Organization holds the biggest opportunity of making its mark. The customer stands a greater chance to be turned into a marketer and employee metamorphosed into a brand ambassador. The social networking and blogging allows sharing of ideas . These thoughts brings in the opportunity for a company to try out something what , truly resonates with the employees . Few months back we had a industry leader managing an internal initiatives through blogging .As reported by Business Standard and Rediff Business, [Infosys employees vet anger on HR Issues and blog , April 15] Infosys managed blogging under the leadership of Nandita Gujjar . The motive was to offer employees a platform to share their views on the initiatives taken within the company. It did require the HR Policy of the company to be redefined. They categorised views and refined them as there were hard comments by the employees which had personal attacks rather than sharing a concern. The responding became manageable for the leadership through the categorisation. This initiative emphasised the culture of listening to employees more intently with managing live responses, at a much larger domain.

HR Policies designed for social media needs to maintain certain areas which would enhance the freedom yet make the process manageable . Confidentiality including the proprietary information about the company and the customers needs to be sealed . Respecting others is a value which needs to be driven by this policy. The employee should refrain from posting personal comments on peer, reporting leaders or any individual. This further includes competitors. Employees should not use the platform to defame or disparage the competitors to the business. In case the employee shares an opinion about the company, it should be with a disclaimer of a personal view point which cannot be treated as a public statement by the company. Any business plans or ideas to be implemented should not be blogged. The employee further needs to protect themselves from making any comment to media through their posts .The outline for blogging needs to be drawn with the time and infrastructure limit . The employer needs to be clear about the employee blogging within the work hours. The measure for moderation used for blogging needs to be made clear to the employees. The deletion and monitoring must be self explanatory to keep the enthusiasm alive. The disciplinary actions taken for any non-adherence should be included. Finally this policy needs to be linked to other areas including Code Of Conduct , Media guidelines , IPR and etc . The social media have been redefining certain functions for HR . Social networking and recruiting have been popular. The recent addendum is Social background verification. The Social Intelligence Corp. launched Background Verification service which offers reference check on potential hires through social media. It includes a monitoring service to the companies wherein they can keep a tab on the employee behaviour in social media. This service enables an employer to access a systematic and compliance friendly report which would help them in decision making. Several other practices , if implemented would create a better impact for the company . YouTube offers an option of an individual channel. This can be utilised by the company by uploading relevant videos such as a leaders Town hall address or employees reflection about the company to establish its brand in the industry . Mahindra and Mahindra have been

leading from the front on this. The senior leaders tweets about various employee related activities .The reply to them are regularly gathered and religiously worked upon . The concept of offering a platform will work only when ideas are lead and freedom is respected. The platform will bring in employees and decision maker to brain storm on several issues within the organization. It will depend on how this gets managed. As shared by Seth Godin, in his blog, Social Networking that matters is helping people archive their goals. Doing it reliably and repeatability so that over time people have an interest in helping you achieve your goals.

Planning and HR SEPTEMBER 27, 2010 in HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Most of times, we have our professional life planned out to the last detail and we want it to work in the exact same manner. However tasks may not necessarily get undertaken as planned. Hence experts suggest that sometimes not having a plan to work o is good for boosting creativity ad attaining a composed state of mind.

Imagine a scenario where you have at the details of your work day planned out in your head from the first meting with client to the last with your spouse. But somehow, there occurs an unexpected disruption causing your timetable to go haywire. Dont you experience sense of disappointment? It is a normal human tendency to compartmentalize

everything before it happens. Obviously it is a good thing to have a plan but we should know when to draw the line. Excessive planning can make you a slave of your own time. As the saying goes everything when in excess is bad, so is excessive planning the simple reason why you tend to lose sight of your creativity. always working by a plan makes you very used to having a sub rule if sort for every action you take, which leads to loss of creative outlet and the individual tends to always go by the textbook as they say . In this excessive competitive world, we need to have an edge over the rest and in order to achieve that, it is important that we keep our creative outlets always open. However, when an individuals is sued to always having everything mapped out in his /her head they tend to go the set path and it becomes difficult for them to deviate. We need to keep surprising our brain with impulsiveness every now and then so that it is always ready to accept change.

It is obvious that a working professional cannot afford to not have a plan, in order for his /her responsibilities and duties to be met with aptness. How can a working professional deal with the situation then? Having certain ideas in your head and walking that line are perfectly fine, since we work in a very competitive scenario. But what is also necessary is to approach these plans with a different mindset once in a while.

A companys culture starts taking shape from the day it comes into existence. And HR plays a vital role in the creation of an environment where employees are driven by it.

HR is definitely a strategic partner today HR understands short and long term objectives of the organization and formulates policies that help in encouraging the workforce towards achieving those goals. HR cannot change the culture of an organization in isolation. Each and every team member plays its role in the evolution and development of a companys culture. Driving a high performance work culture is the responsibility of each employee as each employee contributes in some or the other way to the growth and development of the organization. The role of HR comes into picture while facilitating and mentoring the workforce in such a way that is high performance culture gets engrained in each employee.

To create a high performance work culture is not a one off assignment It is a dynamic exercise and ongoing efforts are required to change the culture and keep it evolving with the changing times. Typically, every five to six years, IBM looks at competencies it needs to cultivate in IBMers. This is obviously done keeping in mind certain business objectives. Last year due to obvious reasons (read: the global economic slowdown) it was felt that we needed to revisit competencies. It was as always a shared process.

Culture as is said, should be the DNA of an organization on which rest of the building blocks are placed. A high performance work culture helps in fostering talent development and it also ensures that everyone is getting fairly compensated. And HR here plays the key role of a facilitator. The HR agenda should be crafted to build organizational capability which helps to drive business performance at all levels.

{ 3 comments read them below or add one } 1 Dr. H.K.Lakshmanrao September 28, 2010 at 5:53 am Improving English among staff and executives must be among the priority areas of HR planning, From Survival to Success depends how well you can communicate in English- Reading, Listening, Writing. Public speaking, Reporting.For a write up on English learning & Soft skills developed for three day English speaking course for Corporate Organizations. HR managers may please ASK Dr. Rao before Sept 30; hklrao@gmail.com Dr. H.K.LakshmanRao Management & HR consultant, Chennai

Team building exercises SEPTEMBER 27, 2010 in HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT In order to retain their best talent and keep them motivated many organizations are initiating unique and innovation team building exercises. Team building exercises have the power to engage employees and make them feel empowered. Teaming Up

The practice: To create awareness of the HR people practices at Intelligroup the format of People Centricity Fiesta (PCF) was derived. The PCF a week long event focuses on all the people centric practices and educates the associates through the medium of games, fun and events under the caption read participate to win. The program comprises of email contest on-Floor engagement learning activities, videos and the grand finale which is the People Centricity fest (or as some people called it the HR meal). All in all, its an interesting way to learn and engage our associates. Another interesting practice is the Mick free Conference which is a unique team building game where the associates are given a product or theme and asked to have a mock press conference releasing. Benefits: Through such initiatives the feel good factor and higher levels of engagement are attended. This fosters a positive environment and helps elevating the company brand. Also, this results in tenure continuity which means if an associate feels belonged to the company they stay longer The tie that binds The Practice: Accomplish Collective Excellence (ACE) is a movement under which team members of it department identify a list of problems that are hampering their productivity and prioritize the problems to be solved, at Newgen software Scientific tools are used to perform root cause analysis of problems and metrics to measure the success of results. Another interesting practice at Newgen are the prayer meetings where all members of a department get together in the morning before beginning work and hum ko man ki shakti dena is sung by every team member singing this prayer together gives a sense of direction and ownership towards ones goals and responsibilities Benefits: Team building exercises have the power to engage employees and make them feel empowered. Often team members an get caught in the monotony of work. Team building activities enable participants to reinvent themselves and refresh the flow of energy within the team. Team dynamics may change due to the presence of achieving the targets and goals. Such

team building activities help embers to buy their differences and improve their dynamics. Bonding with the best The practice: One of TERIs unique team building initiatives is the he vision retreat which is an annual team bonding exercise with a purpose. All the research professionals participate in this event at TERIs resort at Gurgoan. Out of box thinking requires out of box setting the lush green forest like space is an excellent setting where for day employees are asked to wear the thinking has and form TERIs vision for the coming year. Small teams are created with a broad theme and they brainstorm eat together have fun and by the end of the day come up with some very innovative ideas. Benefits: TERIites look forward to these occasions as these foster a friendly environment and facilitate bonding at work, complementing TERIs flat organizational structure, which ensures a free flow of creativity; this is essential to scientific research work, which TERI undertakes. These organizations are going that extra mile to ensure their employees form a stronger bond with the organization and with each other. Such innovation team building exercises make the workforce more motivated and committed. Are you on such organization that foster team spirit at work? Employability SEPTEMBER 27, 2010 in HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Even while we are talking about the increasing number of job opportunities emerging across sectors, India Inc is reeling under the pressure of a severe shortage of quality talent in the job market. Every organization seeks highly skilled employees who could be on the job from day one. However, this search ends up futile for want of quality

talent and firms en up sending considerable time and money to impart job relevant training to their employees once they come on the company pay rolls. Which are the key skills that employees lack? Besides the functional skills, many lack soft skills like communication, customer service, and basic computer skills etc. Experts say that employees must strive hard to enhance their employability. Enhancing the technical and soft skills is the right way to become job relevant. A sharp analysis of the organizations environment will help one to diagnose the skills required to manage and contribute in that environment. Firms are also doing their bit to hone and upgrade the skill sets of their employees. To enhance the employability of the workforce an organizations leadership must incorporate the people agenda as a main component of its strategy. The people strategy must be communicated to each and eve employee and then must be implemented as designed. Many firms are also investing heavily on industry academia partnerships and in house training programs to improve the skill sets of employees. The alignment between the training programs with the competencies needs to be successful. The competencies set must be relevant not only today, but also in the future. What is needed to address this issue is cutting edge industry relevant job skills training with strong leverage of modern technology. The current economy is looking for more number of skilled people who could be on the job and execute it well. Ensuring that one has all the relevant skills to excel in a job is the way forward. Though there were similarities when comparing regions in terms of organizational culture and effectiveness, there were some differences when researchers compared individual countries. An organizational culture that stresses empowerment, for example, appears to be more important for performance in countries such as the United States and Brazil and less important in countries such as Japan because of the former two countries focus on the individual. Also, a focus on creating change within the organization appears to be a strong predictor of

organizational effectiveness in South Africa but a relatively weak predictor in Jamaica, but it currently is unclear as to why this is the case. Overall, the study confirms that having a strong, productive organizational culture is associated with increased sales growth, profitably, employee satisfaction, and overall organizational performance regardless of where the organization is physically located. Strong versus Weak Cultures: It has become increasingly popular to differentiate between strong and weak cultures. The argument here is that strong cultures have a greater impact on employee behavior and are more directly related to reduce turnover. In a strong culture, the organizations core values are both intensely held and widely shared. The more members who accept the core values and the greater their commitment to those values is, the stronger the culture is. Consistent with this definition, a strong culture will have a great influence on the behavior of its members because the high degree of sharedness and intensity creates an internal climate of high behavioral control. For example, Seattle-based Nordstrom has developed one of the strongest service cultures in the retailing industry. Nordstrom employees know in no uncertain terms what is expected of them and these expectations go a long way in shaping their behavior. One specific result of a strong culture should be lower employee turnover. A strong culture demonstrates high agreement among members about what the organization stands for. Such unanimity of purpose builds cohesiveness, loyalty, and organizational commitment. These qualities, in turn, lessen employees propensity to leave the organization. Culture versus Formalization: A strong organizational culture increases behavioral consistency. In this sense, we should recognize that a strong culture can act as a substitute for formalization.

World university rankings SEPTEMBER 27, 2010 in HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT The world university rankings have just been released by the three ranking agencies-Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Academic Ranking of World University (ARWU) compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the QS World University Rankings. In an unexpected comeback, University of Cambridge, UK, has topped the QS World University Ranking this year-despite major slashing of UK government funds for 2010-11. Harvard University, US, has topped both the ARWU and Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the fact, the US clearly dominates the world ranking scenario. While the QS rankings have six US universities in the top 10, Times Higher Education World University Rankings have US bagging all the top-five spot. In fact, US have bagged seven of the top 10 places and 27 of its universities figure in the top 50. In the ARWU Rankings the four top positions have been bagged by the American universities while 17 of the top 20 are American universities. As to the US performances experts feel that apart from offering a good salary to its academics that ensures a strong faculty the Us budget for tertiary education it almost twice than that of its almost twice than that of its competitors. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is making its presence felt. In fact, in both the QS and Times higher education world university Rankings Also, Taiwan has bagged a decent place across the three rankings Thailand , Israel, South Korea and Turkey are some of the other nations that features in any of the three rankings or in two of the three. However, India finds no place in the top 100 in any of the three rankings while IIT Bombay is ranked at 187 in the QS rankings India figures nowhere in the top 2001 the other two rankings. Ranking methodology

Though the methodology used by ranking agencies has always generated controversy global rankings do hold importance for the academic community across the world. While university league tables tend to over simplify the range of achievement at institutions it is a particularly pleasing to note that the excellence of the transformation research carried out at Cambridge is so well regarded by fellow academics worldwide. This year following criticism about paling too much emphasis on peer review in its earlier methodology, Times Higher Education world University Rankings has developed a new methodology with its new data partner. An important principle of the new times higher education world university Rankings is that all universities that we list have actively cooperated with the system and signed off their data. This system is designed to be a useful and rigorous tool for the global higher education community. However it is unfortunate that we did not manage to collect as much information from India this time as we would have liked which is a real shame for India. The world needs to get clear sense of its higher education provision, as expectations are so high and Indias potential is so great. QS utilizes a variety of sources Beyond the well documented surveys of academics and employers, we draw citations data from Scopus (a database maintained by Elsevier) which is the worlds largest abstract and citation database, we refer to a wide range of national statistics sources such as HESA (UK) , NCES (US) and JASSO (Japan). Where such bodies are unavailable or carry incomplete data we refer to university websites. In addition, we invite each university to submit data directly to us; all data are checked against previous submissions and against corroborating sources where available. ARWU considers every university that has any Nobel laureates Fields medalists highly cited researchers or papers published in nature or science.

In addition universities with significant mount of papers indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) are also included. In total more than 1,000 universities are actually ranked and the best 500 are published n the web. Ranking Relevance Reporter higher education, UK one option wile beginning a global search is scouring one of the annual world university rankings. Despite limitations she feels they give a good idea about a universitys standing. For Indian students, rankings are indeed important. Global rankings play a big role in the choice of a university. Apart from offering a perspective abut a universitys cores strengths and overall profile it helps one of figure out ones chances vis--vis best universities in the world

2 rkgaur September 28, 2010 at 2:32 pm Dr. Rao, I do want to learn this course,I have done my schooling from Hindi environment,and working as HR Professional and i m not able to speak in front of public in english, How u help me. Thnx.

3 shelfi.febriani September 28, 2010 at 7:03 pm may I know about books, tell about talent based human resource managemant or talent management?

thank you so much