On what good looks like : HR policies and processes

This post is an attempt to come back to a topic that we had explored here 7 years ago. The topic is the implications of the unstated assumptions that organizations and individuals have on 'what good looks like'. 

In the the previous post (See 'On what good looks like') we had explored this mainly from the point of view of selection decisions and 'person-organization fit'. In this post, let's look at it from the point of view of the different options for running the HR function, especially from the point of view of HR policies and processes.  

Now, if you were to ask me what is the significance of 7 years, I can only say that the number 7 is considered to be a 'perfect number' in many cultures and that some even associate mystical qualities to it!

When it comes to the underlying (unstated) definition of 'what good looks like' we had identified two themes that can be conceptualized as two ends of a continuum. They were 'absence of variation'  and 'presence of value' . Let's see what this means from the point of HR policies and processes.

In 'absence of variation' kind of organizations (where the definition of quality is similar to the 'Six Sigma' definition of quality), consistency of implementation of HR processes/policies is of paramount importance. This ensures ‘procedural justice’. This is also largely in line with HR models that emphasize process stability and maturity. This would mean very few or no exceptions! The essential message to the employees in this way of working is something like  "If you are eligible for something you don't have to ask for it (because you will get it without asking). If you are not eligible for something, then also you don't have to ask for it (because you won't get it even if you ask)."

In 'presence of value' kind if organizations(where the definition of quality is more like 'fitness for purpose'), the emphasis is on what makes most sense (adds most value) in a particular situation. This approach leads to a lot of flexibility in running HR (subject to some broad principles/HR philosophy and the laws of the land, of course). But it also can lead to a lot of exceptions. This, in turn, can lead to perceived inconsistency unless the HR and Business leaders have deeply understood the broad principles/HR philosophy and also have extensively communicated the same to the employees. 

Most of the companies find their equilibrium point somewhere in the continuum between the two polar opposites. The state of evolution of the company, the state of evolution of the HR function in the company, the industry in which the company operates, the culture of the company and the personal preferences of the leaders are often the factors that impact the choice of the equilibrium point. 

It can be argued that when the size a company becomes very large, it tends to gravitate towards the 'absence of variation' kind of underlying definition of quality (See 'Paradox of HR systems' for a related discussion). 

It can also be said that in those contexts where 'the owner and the manager are the same person' (e.g. in the case of partnership firms and proprietor-driven companies) there is often an affinity towards the 'fitness for purpose' kind of underlying definition of quality (See 'HRM in partnership firms' and 'Of owning and belonging' for more details)

Again, it can be argued that as the HR function in a company evolves, the underlying definition of 'what good looks like' often follows a U-curve kind of pattern - starting with 'fitness of purpose' kind of definition (as HR policies and processes are yet to take root). moving towards the 'absence of variation kind of definition' (when there are very detailed policies and procedures in place) and then coming back to 'presence of value'  kind of definition (when the policies and procedures are perceived to be too restrictive/bureaucratic). This is especially significant in companies that are operating in rapidly changing industries, and hence requiring more agility in terms of people management also. By the way, this 'U-curve' is a concept is found in many of the social sciences (See 'U-curve and Simplicity @  the other side of Complexity' for more details). A similar argument can be made in the case of some of the key enablers in HR, like behavioral competency frameworks, that assume that 'there is one right way of doing things' and hence comes very close to the 'absence of variation' kind of underlying definition (See 'Competency frameworks : An intermediate stage?' for more details).  

It is also possible to create some sort of a ‘synthesis’ of these two definitions of 'what good looks like' ('absence of variation' and 'presence of value') that act like the 'thesis' and the  'antithesis'. One pragmatic option could be to define the policies/procedures very clearly/in detail, and also define an exception process that is very tough!

Any comments/ideas? 

Truth and Beauty: Motivations and Elegance in HR

“I am an old man. I don’t have time for these kinds of HR interventions now”, said the senior consultant.

We had requested this gentleman to come to our office for an exploratory meeting – to identify possible HR initiatives to improve organizational effectiveness. He came for the meeting ‘unarmed’ - he did not bring any of the typical consultant weapons like brochures and presentations. He did not even have a laptop with him!

He listened to us for a long time while we were giving him a detailed account of the organization context & the challenges we were facing. Then he asked a few questions and we had a discussion on the same. Then he went to the whiteboard and in a simple diagram he captured his understanding of our situation and the levels at which interventions can be done and the basic details of those interventions. After that he asked us what we wanted to do and we gave our opinion. That was when he made the above statement.

The way he said it shook me. He was not just saying that he was busy. He meant that he no longer had the time to do these kinds of work (interventions at ‘not- so- deep’ levels) regardless of how much value the organization saw in them, how good he was in that kind of work, or even how much he will be paid. At that stage in his life, he wanted to work only on those projects that he found to be personally meaningful. Of course, this does not mean that other types of interventions do not add value. It was just that he did not want to get involved!

I recall this encounter quite often. Apart from making me think about the kind of work I really want to do, it also prompts me to think about the 'basic motivations' for HR professionals.

It does not make sense to do ‘HR for HR function’ (taking up initiatives to make the HR function look good) or to do ‘HR for HR professionals’ ("I want to do some HR interventions and I will somehow convince the business for it").  HR exists to support the business and hence HR has to be aligned to business. But the issue of business alignment of HR is a complex one (See 'Paradox of Business Orientation of HR'). After all, most of us want HR to mean something more than ‘making people do more work without paying them too much and without risking disruptions to the business operations’!!!

One way to think about ‘what motivates HR professionals’ is to take the approach that HR professionals are human beings first and hence what motivates them can be understood in terms of theories of human motivation – as they play out in the context of the roles in HR/careers of HR professionals.

For example, if we assume some sort of need fulfillment (say based on a hierarchy of needs like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs/'Existence-Relatedness-Growth' needs in Alderfer's ERG framework) is the basic driver for motivation, we can easily explain the behavior of the senior consultant featured at the beginning of this post by saying that as his lower order needs had been fulfilled and hence what motivated his behavior in that situation was the urge to find opportunities for fulfilling his higher order needs (growth/self-actualization needs). While this looks like a very neat explanation, it might be a rather simplistic one (see ‘The power of carrot and stick’). Similarly we can look at the motivations of HR professionals in terms of other frameworks like personality profiles/types (e.g. OPQ, MBTI etc.), Talents/Strengths, Career Anchors etc.

Another set of motivations can result from the alignment to (or belief in) a particular 'philosophy of HR' (See ‘Towards a philosophy of HR’). Of course, individual vision, mission and values of the HR professional can also be sources of very strong motivations. Since these can be very individual specific, we can get a wide range of dimensions here (see 'Daydreams of an OD Mechanic' for a personal example). Finding meaning in their work (see 'Do we need a new defining myth for HR?') is important for all professionals - including HR professionals! Actually, I would go one step beyond and suggest that considering the role of HR managers as 'architects of meaning' (See 'Architects of meaning : From CHRO to CMO'), this becomes even more relevant for HR professionals from a professional integrity (in the sense of achieving integration/alignment between one's thoughts/feelings, speech and action) point of view. Also, talking about food (including 'food for the soul' that can be called 'meaning') often makes one more aware of one's own hunger - unless this 'talking about food/meaning' is more of a 'displacement activity'!!!Again, as I have said earlier, 'hanging around in HR for too long' without a compelling reason, can be a risky business - especially for personal happiness!

HR professionals who have taken their behavior science education seriously (see ‘HR professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder’) might suffer from some of the ‘motivational complications’ that social scientists suffer. For example, many social scientists suffer some sort of ‘physics envy’ and this along with other things might create a compulsion for them to work on those initiatives that are research based. However, as I have said earlier (See 'Research and a three-year old' &  'Truths stretched too far' for the details), this might not be possible in HR the way it is feasible in physics. We can still derive a lot of value from these research findings (and behavior science principles/theories), if we look at them mainly as a source of ideas (and not as absolute objective truth)!

Going back to our discussion on business alignment of HR, it has to be noted that there exist significant differences across organizations when it comes to the ‘picture of success’ (See ‘On what good looks like’). Hence it makes sense for an individual (HR professional) to work for organizations where there will be a good degree of agreement between the definitions of the organization and that of the individual (on what is required/what good looks like).

This leads to an interesting situation. If the choice of the HR interventions can’t be made in an algorithmic manner (or based on conclusive evidence), then the choice will be governed by ‘some sort of judgment’ made by the HR professional. Often, the choice becomes a matter of aesthetics (and that is where beauty and elegance comes in). The beauty we are talking about is a special kind of beauty – that manifests in terms of fit (with the context) and coherence (internal consistency among the various dimensions of the intervention), parsimony of unproven assumptions (Occam's razor), parsimony of effort (understanding and using 'leverage points' - where the application of a small input can lead to a high output) and of course 'Simplicity on the other side of Complexity' (See 'U-curve and simplicity at the other side of complexity').

While the biological evolution has given us the natural ability to make high quality judgments about aspects in the natural environment, some sort of a professional evolution  of the HR professional (based on years of struggle with the paradoxes in the HR domain)is required to make the type of high quality judgments that we are talking about here (See ‘Wisdom-level consulting’). Yes, often ‘less is more’ and sometimes, the best HR intervention might be to do nothing for the time being (remember - 'first do no harm')! One of the useful 'side effects' of the 'struggle with the paradoxes in the HR domain' mentioned above is that the HR professional develops a better appreciation of  'what won't work' in a given situation and this can be a great help in dealing with the common temptation for HR managers 'to try too many things' !!!

So, my fellow HR professionals – What are the factors that motivate you?!! What role does elegance/beauty play in your HR related decision-making?!!!

Note: It can be argued that the title of the post itself is a case of physics envy as it is similar to the title of a book by S Chandrasekhar (the famous physicist). While I do admit that Physics was my first love, I am quite sure that I had grown out of it when I realized years ago that, at advanced levels, the exploration of physical reality becomes a highly mathematical exercise. Hence I would like to think of it more as a case of ‘inspired by Physics’ and not that of ‘Physics envy’!!!

Renewable resources for thought leadership in HR

About 3 years ago, I wrote a post in this blog on “Thought leadership in HR in India” – based on an informal survey that I had conducted at that time. While the post mentioned that there does not seem to be consensus on the names of thought leaders in HR in India, it ended with a rather positive inference (especially for the people who want be thought leaders) that “There are a wide range of definitions of thought leadership. It seems that there is room for many types of 'thought leadership' and for many types of thought leaders in HR! This gives many of us a chance to become some sort of 'thought leaders' (or at least to 'call ourselves thought leaders’!) in some HR related domain, in some industry, at some point in our careers”. That post also raised an important ‘philosophical’ question - “Can leadership (including thought leadership) exist without followers?”

The objective of this post is to outline how my thoughts on some of the aspects covered in the previous post have evolved during the last three years. I hope that my thinking on this topic will continue to evolve (and that I will be writing another post 3 years from now).

At this point, what interests me more is the ‘nature of thought leadership’ in HR as opposed to the names of thought leaders in HR. Obviously, these two are not unrelated. A particular interpretation of the nature of thought leadership in HR will result in a particular list of thought leaders and vice versa.

Let us start by taking a closer look at the ‘philosophical’ question that was mentioned above - “Can leadership (including thought leadership) exist without followers?” This will depend on the definition of leadership. My preference these days is to think about leadership as an emergent phenomenon that takes place in the context of a relationship (or in the context of a set of interactions – face to face and/or virtual – including indirect interactions). Going by this definition, leadership can’t exist without followers*. So the focus of this post is on thought leadership in HR that others (e.g. fellow HR professionals, Business Managers etc.) find useful.

From this perspective, thought leadership in HR has to deal with key challenges and opportunities related to people management. It also has to focus on those aspects where others (potential followers) feel the need for such thought leadership. Hence ‘core’ ‘messy’ areas in HR – where standard/algorithmic solutions are not feasible - are good candidates as domains for thought leadership. Often, this path can lead to the key ‘Paradoxes in HR’ that we have discussed often in this blog (see here, here, here, here and here for some examples).

Attempting ‘thought leadership’ in these areas related to Paradoxes in HR has interesting implications for the nature of thought leadership. As mentioned above, it won’t be feasible to prescribe effective standard/algorithmic solutions (that can apply to a wide range of contexts) in these areas. The kind of thought leadership that is likely to be useful here will be more in terms of providing a new perspective, deepening the richness & understanding of the paradox, providing an experience that provides company (‘provide a feeling of being understood’/ demonstrate compassion) hope and amusement to the people grappling with the paradox etc. It can also be inferred that this kind of thought leadership need not necessarily involve providing any sort of 'answers' - it can exist purely in the form of providing questions - questions that would help others to see the problem/paradox in a new way - which in turn could enhance their understanding and trigger solutions in their mind. Thus, the purpose of thought leadership in these cases will be to trigger solutions in the mind of people dealing with the paradoxes as opposed to prescribing solutions directly. Since these questions are about the essential nature of the issues involved, they might sound like riddles (or even like koans in Zen) that can be solved only by struggling with the same for an extended period of time to reach a level of understanding/awareness where the solution presents itself.

Obviously, this creates difficulties in terms of mass-production and marketing. But there is also an advantage here. The basic paradoxes in HR (and hence the pains/problems created by them) are unlikely to be ‘resolved’ (in terms of having a final and permanent solution). With effective thought and action (possibly aided by thought leadership!) they can be ‘managed’ (if we use the term 'manage' to mean ‘to cope with’) and even celebrated. But these paradoxes/problems/ needs won’t go away. Thus, these are the ‘renewable resources for thought leadership in HR’ – where solutions to problems will create new problems to solve -that will continue to provide opportunities for thought leadership – that will sustain an entire ecosystem of ‘HR Managers, Consultants and Thought Leaders’ - for a long time!**

Now over to you for your comments/thoughts/ideas!

* Note 1: Technically speaking, this does not preclude the possibility of ‘self-leadership’ as ‘interactions with self’ can also be interpreted as interactions. Moreover, the question “Will I follow my own advice if it came from someone else?” can serve as a useful reality check – to guard against some types of ‘delusion’ that can affect some of the thought leaders.

**Note 2: I feel that these paradoxes/problems won’t go away in the foreseeable future as these arise directly from the very nature of people management as it is practiced today. Hence, unless there is a fundamental change in the nature and philosophy of people management, they will continue to exist.

Paradox of 'business orientation of HR'

This post allows me to come back to one of the key themes for this blog – exploring the paradoxes in the Human Resources (HR) domain. Based on more than a decade of experience in HR, I can confidently say that HR is a field that is rich in paradoxes (Please see 'Paradox of HR systems' , 'Paradox of potential assessment', 'Career planning and the myth of Sisyphus', 'Paradox of hiring good people and letting them decide' and 'Crazy HR for crazy times' - for some examples).

A paradox occurs when there are multiple perspectives/opinions (doxa) that exist alongside (para)- each of which is true - but they appear to contradict/to be in conflict with one another. Going by that definition, ‘business orientation of HR’ qualifies as a paradox.

There is no conflict of opinion on whether HR should be business oriented. HR exists to support the business and hence it should be aligned to the business needs/goals/strategy. ‘HR for HR’ (‘I want to do some HR interventions and I will get the business to agree’) is definitely not a good idea. The paradox occurs when we look at how exactly should HR demonstrate this 'business orientation'.

There are multiple possibilities here - each with its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, HR can agree to whatever the business leaders say on people related issues ('after all, we get paid to support the business'). HR can take this approach to the next level by trying to ‘guess’ what the business leaders will be comfortable with and advocating that ('business leaders are our primary customers and we should be anticipating customer needs'). HR can also avoid surfacing issues (or suggesting solutions) that they think the business leaders will not be comfortable with ('business leaders are already stretched to the limits fighting for the survival of the company, how can we risk annoying them at this point').

This approach might help in reducing the number/intensity of possible arguments/conflicts between HR and business leaders on these issues and the associated investment of time and emotional energy, leading to faster decision making and smoother relationships. In this case, business leaders will ‘like’ HR and hence they will be more likely to cooperate in the roll out of basic HR processes and less likely to come down heavily on HR when HR makes a mistake. Hence conflicts are avoided - making life easier for both the parties involved. However, this can also lead to sub-optimal decisions (see 'Training the victim' for an example).

The other option is to develop and articulate an independent point of view – based on the HR philosophy of the organization (see ‘Towards a philosophy of HR’ for more details), HR functional expertise and an assessment of the context/situation.

This might turn out to be different from what the business leaders have in mind/are comfortable with and hence this can create conflicts and lengthy discussions/arguments and possibly delays in decision making. The business leaders might feel that ‘HR does not understand the problems that the business is facing’, ‘HR is becoming a pain in the neck’ or that ‘HR is being too idealistic’. This might lead to a situation where business leaders become very demanding – questioning the rationale behind each of the initiatives that HR comes up with. Thus this option can make life more difficult for both the parties involved. But if the conflict (of opinions between HR and business leaders) can be managed constructively, this option can lead to superior decisions and also to the development of mutual respect and trust. However, there is no guarantee that this can be achieved in all the situations.

So, which is the ‘better’ option?

It is possible that the business leaders were more open than what the HR professional had guessed. May be, they wanted HR to make an independent recommendation. Again, it is possible that the HR professional’s ‘independent assessment’ of the business needs/constraints was totally off the mark, making his/her point of view completely unrealistic. May be, the context is such that the conflict of opinion can’t be resolved successfully quickly enough for the matter at hand. Thus there are many possibilities here.

It can be said that if we take a long term perspective, if both the parties are competent and sincere and if the conflict can be managed constructively and quickly enough, the second option might give better results. But that is too many ‘ifs’ (3 in the last sentence!). It can also be argued that the two options mentioned above are just two extremes and that reality lies somewhere in between. For example, a particular HR leader might adopt option 1 in the case of some issues and option 2 in the case of other issues – depending on the context/nature of the issues. After all, ‘picking and choosing one’s battles’ is supposed to be a key requirement for survival in the corporate world!

An important factor here is the nature of the relationship between HR and business leaders. Often, HR does not pay sufficient attention to the relationship management aspect (positioning of the HR function appropriately, establishing the relationship, managing/shaping expectations, building capability and consistently meeting commitments/delivering value, enhancing the levels of mutual respect and trust etc.). See 'Nature abhors vacuum' for an example. This can be problematic as effectively managing the relationships with the business leaders can turn out to be the most significant enabler for demonstrating and sustaining 'business orientation'.

Of course, in this discussion about 'business orientation' we should not forget the other customers of HR- like the employees and first-line managers. There is an increasing tendency on the part of HR to give less emphasis to the ‘employee champion’ role because of the increasing importance given to the ‘strategic business partner role’ (see 'In praise of HR generalists' , 'Of specialists and business-alignment', and 'In the wonderland of HR Business Partners'). This can easily lead to situations where there is not enough focus on ‘employee engagement’ (other than the cosmetic efforts/peripheral initiatives – see 'Employee engagement and the story of the Sky maiden’ for details). As it is widely known, employee engagement is a good predictor/lead indicator of business results. Thus, if this 'business orientation' (and being the 'strategic business partner') is achieved at the expense of 'employee' engagement, the result might be 'strategic (long-term) harm' to the business.

It is also interesting to model this situation using the concepts of 'static' and 'dynamic' equilibrium (A chair has static equilibrium. A bicycle in motion has dynamic equilibrium. In a state of static equilibrium there is balance, but no change or movement - that exists in the case of dynamic equilibrium). A 'live and let live' kind of arrangement between HR and business leaders (that avoids conflict) is similar to 'static equilibrium'. But a scenario in which HR and business leaders openly & clearly state their independent opinions, followed by constructive debate/conflict leading to decisions that both the parties are comfortable with is similar to 'dynamic equilibrium'. This does not mean that the parties can't be passionate about their points of view/express 'strong' opinions. The requirement is just that they should not get too much attached to their opinions (see 'Passion for work and anasakti' for a related discussion).

I feel that, in general, dynamic equilibrium provides richer possibilities (sitting on a bicycle allows you to do things that you can't do sitting on a chair). But, establishing dynamic equilibrium might not be required or feasible in all the cases. It requires more time, effort and skill (as the equilibrium needs to be constantly reestablished) . It is also more risky (you are more likely to have a fall from a bicycle as compared to that from a chair - especially when you are learning to ride - which can be compared to the 'establishing the relationship' part/phase of the 'relationship management' that we had discussed earlier!).

Any comments/ideas?

In the wonderland of HR Business Partners – Part 1

The posts in this series constitute some sort of 'random' walks in the wonderland of HR Business Partners (HRBPs). Since our objective here is to explore the terrain (and not to reach anywhere in particular), we have the liberty of adopting the amazingly liberating philosophy of "if we take any path and walk long enough on it we are bound to get somewhere".

There are a wide range of HR roles that go by the HR Business Partner (HRBP) title. For the purpose of our discussion, let us focus on ‘pure’ HRBPs – HRBPs whose role is that of being a strategic business partner - to the business they are supporting. This would mean that they are supposed to have very little or no transactional/operational HR responsibilities. So these roles (HR roles that don't do usual HR work) are some sort of freaks of evolution- in the evolution of the HR function. Freaks occur in the course of biological evolution also. But they are unlikely to create much of a problem as they usually don't live long enough to reproduce. However since HRBPs can (and do) survive long enough in organizations to create (hire/develop) more HRBPs, it is worthwhile to take a closer look at them and their world.

I must say that I have handled HR Business Partner (HRBP) roles – in the not too distant past. Most of what I say in this series of posts are based on ‘hard experiences’ – mine and those of my fellow HR Business Partners – across organizations. While some of the observations in this post might seem funny, I have absolutely no intention to make fun of HRBPs. I know the challenges and complexities faced by HRBPs a bit too well to attempt something like that. Again, though I am in a specialist role now, I have a great amount of respect for HR generalists (see ‘In praise of HR generalists’), – including HRBPs.

In the wonderland of HR Business Partners – Part 1 : Seven guaranteed ways to make an HR Business Partner fail

A story...

Once upon a time, there was an HR Operations leader who was doing very well in his job - happily implementing HR processes & policies. Then the corporate HR leadership in his company came under the spell of Dave Ulrich’s ideas - or what they thought be Dave Ulrich’s ideas. They also saw other firms in their industry adopting such ideas. They did not want to be left behind. After all what is the fun of being in corporate HR - if you are not considered to be 'progressive' and 'state of the art'. So the inevitable happened - the company changed its HR operating model - worldwide.

Being ‘top talent’, our HR Ops leader was chosen to move into one of the newly created HR Business Partner roles - the roles that were supposed to take the HR function in the company to the next level of excellence and to add immense value to the business.

He understood that he should play a strategic HR role. He knew that he should partner with the business leadership. He knew that he was a high cost resource and hence he should produce good results-that too quickly. He wanted to do a good job – he was a top performer throughout his career.

So he worked very hard. In the spirit of collaboration and to ensure seamless service to the business, he did his best to proactively cooperate with other parts of HR and even with the finance & communications teams of the business he was supporting.

Many months passed. Our HR leader was feeling strangely uneasy. Initially, he could not figure out what was wrong. He was doing a lot of things - including participating in all the Leadership Team meetings of the business. He was in a role that was supposed to be the 'highest form of evolution' among HR roles. But he was not feeling happy. Sometimes he felt that he was like a 'mouse in a maze' - running here and there, feeling extremely busy, but getting nowhere. So he took a week's leave - to think things over. After he was away from the pressures of work for a few days, things started becoming clear in his mind.

He realized
…that playing a strategic role required skills he did not have & that these skills are not easy to develop - especially in a short period of time
…that what the business leaders expected from him was not really strategic
…that they wanted him to ‘manage the HR system’ – to ensure that what they want gets done
…that he was getting involved in issues that he was not supposed to – as per his role
…that he was fighting too much with other parts of HR - leading to too many escalations and that the global HR function was looking less like a 'team' and more like a 'house divided against itself'
…that Finance team was not taking him or his role seriously
…that he couldn't get reliable data to analyze business level patterns & trends on people issues
…that he wouldn't have enough results to show at the end of the year to justify his salary &
…that no one really understood what exactly his role was supposed to deliver

Being an intellectually honest person, he could not help wondering if he himself understood his role correctly & if his role really existed.

7 guaranteed ways to make an HRBP fail

1. Don’t define the scope and responsibilities of the HRBP role clearly

2. Don’t establish the performance measures for the HRBP role

3. Don’t secure the buy-in/agreement from the business leaders for the HR operating model, HRBP role, its deliverables and the choice of the role holder

4. Don’t make the other parts of HR (HR operations, specialist functions etc.) accountable to the HRBPs

5. Ensure that the HRBP does not have the data and analytical/reporting tools to derive the business-level patterns/trends on key people and business related parameters. This will create a situation where the HRBP can't work at the patterns/trends level (as they are supposed to do), prompting them to get involved in 'individual employee- level' issues (after all they have to something) - a great recipe for ensuring 'territory battles' with HR operations.

6. Move HR staff from other parts of HR into HRBP roles without verifying if they have the requisite competencies to be effective in the HRBP role. If you can't find any other role for a senior HR leader, move him/her into an HRBP role. Assume that the vacuum created by the removal of transactional/operational HR responsibilities will get automatically filled up by strategic activities (see 'Nature abhors vacuum' for more details)

7. Change the HRBPs frequently - before they have had the opportunity/time to understand the business or to build relationships and credibility with the business leaders

Now that we have heard the story of an HRBP and also derived some lessons from the story, let us explore what can be done to maximize the chances success in HRBP roles. Some of this can be derived from this post itself – by logical deduction. But some other aspects are not so obvious or easy. Anyway, we will look at some of them in the subsequent posts in this series.

Over to you for your comments/suggestions and experiences!

Crazy HR for crazy times!

It has been argued that insanity is a perfectly sane response to an insane environment. This also implies that ‘abnormal’ situations require ‘abnormal’ responses. While I have often talked about the connection between HR and madness (see ‘HR professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder' and ‘Career Planning and the Myth of Sisyphus’), here I am using the term ‘abnormal’ in the statistical sense of the term (i.e. not fitting into the normal distribution). So in this context, 'abnormal' just means ‘different from normal’.

The basic point in this post is that normal/usual HR responses (HR strategies/practices) are based on certain assumptions about the situation (context/environment) in which the organization (and hence HR) is operating in and when we are faced with situations where those assumptions are not valid, normal/traditional HR responses will not be effective. It also follows that when situations are radically different from usual/normal, we might need HR responses/practices that look very different from the normal/usual HR responses (i.e. responses that are ‘abnormal’) – and that is where we come to ‘crazy’ HR. Again, with the ‘abnormal’ situations becoming increasing common, effective HR responses/practices might also become increasingly ‘crazy’ – till we redefine (or even reverse the definition of!) what is ‘normal’ and what is ‘abnormal.

Now, let us look at a few typical practices/principles/assumptions in HR and explore the implications for the HR response when we are in contexts where those assumptions are not valid. Please note that these situations (and responses!) are not independent - there are common themes - and even contradictions - among them!

1. From long-term employment relationship to short-term employment relationship

This is a big one. Actually, 'continuity of employment relationship' can be treated as the basic assumption that underlies many of the assumptions in HR. If we look at many of the HR systems (like career planning, training and development, staffing etc.) there is often an assumption that the employees/prospective employees will stay with the organization for a long period of time. Now, if one is in a context (organization/industry) where the most of the employees spend much less than 2 years in a particular organization, these assumptions and hence HR strategies/ practices/ systems based on these assumptions, are obviously not valid/effective. So what makes more sense is to assume that the organization would be involved in 'managing' (planning/ developing) only a limited (often very limited) part of the career in the case of most of the employees and to design HR strategies/systems/processes accordingly.

Now, the idea here is not that the systems/processes should be designed to push most of the employees out in two years or less! The idea is just that the HR strategies/systems/processes should not ignore the ground reality - even if it is unpleasant.

In many contexts the reality is that most of the employees are likely to spend only a very limited time in the organization and that HR strategies/systems/ processes should deliver value to the employees (and enable the employees to create value for the organization) within that time while maximising the return on HR investment for the organization. Of course, if one has a reasonable chance to shape the situation (or to create a new reality that is more favorable), it makes sense to make an earnest attempt. May be the attempts to shape the reality (i.e. increasing the time that the employees spend in the organization) will be more successful-if they are focused mainly on some segments of the employees (we will discuss this further later in this post). But 'deluding oneself' or 'wishing away the reality' don't really help - and this brings us to our next point.

2. From trying to reducing attrition to redesigning HR systems to work well in a high attrition environment

The typical HR response in a high attrition situation is to try to reduce attrition. But after one has repeatedly tried this and has failed consistently, this response no longer makes much sense. A better option may be to re-design the HR policies/processes/systems so that they can work effectively in a high attrition environment.

As an example of re-designing an HR system/policy to suit a high attrition environment, let us look at the Training and Development system. In a high attrition environment, there is a high possibility that employees who have been trained (at a significant cost to the company) may leave the company to join a competitor. Now, there are multiple ways of responding to this. One option is to focus most of the training investment on top talent and on employees in critical roles (i.e. don’t try to follow the approach of providing training to everyone). Since they form only a small percentage of the total employee population, the organization (with even limited resources) will be in a better position to create a compelling value proposition for them. So the organization will have a much higher chance of ensuring good return on training investment. The training needs for the rest of the employee population should be met mainly through a shared training infrastructure that provides e-learning solutions for common learning needs. Of course, there are other approaches like skill-based pay, training bonds etc. that tries to ‘lock in’ the employee. But my preference is for the approach focusing on top talent and on critical roles.

3. From Job enrichment to Job deskilling

Designing/redesigning jobs to increase their motivational potential has been a key principle in HR. This is typically done by improving various dimensions of work like skill variety (the variety of activities required), task identity (the completion of a “whole” and identifiable piece of work), task significance (how substantial an impact the job has) and autonomy (the freedom, independence, and discretion that one has to do the job).

Now there can be situations where the opposite of this response (i.e. job deskilling) might be called for. Examples of this can be found in situations where is a critical need to

(a) Manage process risk - Creating detailed process maps that specify each step in micro-detail (e.g. level 5 or level 6 process maps) and insisting that the employees carry out each step as it is described can be good way to manage process risk/reducing chances of error (though it adversely impacts 'autonomy' and hence job enrichment mentioned above).

(b) Reduce cost - The same approach (detailed procedures - strictly enforced) can also reduce the skill-level required to do the job. This can obviously provide opportunity to reduce salary cost (as employees with lower skill profiles can be hired for the job) and training cost (as not much training is required).

(c) Operate in high attrition environment - Again the same approach (detailed procedures and lower skill profile) can make it easier to find and replace employees (as there is not much need to hunt for specialized skill profiles that can be difficult, time consuming and costly to find) and to minimize the adverse impact of employee turnover on work/deliverables (as the 'learning curve' of new employees can be very short because of the low skill requirement of the job).

But there can be many complications when we try to implement the above (job deskilling) idea. Let us look at a couple of the major ones.

The first one is that in some contexts the nature of the work makes the 'formulating detailed procedures and enforcing them strictly' approach difficult to implement - because there are certain parts of the job that require a high degree of skill/judgment/discretion. Here one can try to re-design the jobs so that the activities that require a high level of skill are grouped into a few jobs and most of the other jobs consist of activities that don’t require high degree of skill (where the above approach will work). Of course, this will work best if there is an opportunity to reengineer some of the processes so that there will be greater opportunities for re-designing jobs/grouping activities into jobs differently. Now, this has other advantages like further saving on salary cost (as we need fewer number of high cost specialist positions) and reducing attrition among the highly skilled jobs (as the specialist jobs get enriched in the process because the lower-skill parts of the job are taken away and as the organization can provide these specialists much better value proposition because they are small in number - making the additional investment required much smaller and manageable).

The second problem arises from the very nature of the job-deskilling approach - lower skill requirement for the job is likely to result in lower 'motivation potential' for those jobs (because of its adverse impact on the factors that drive job enrichment that we had discussed earlier). But this can also be avoided to a large extent. Here the trick is to change the profile of the candidates/jobholders. So if the job was being done (before the job re-design exercise) by a graduate engineer, the candidate for the deskilled job should not be a graduate engineer (who will find the job de-motivating) – it should be someone with only an engineering diploma/certificate. Now, what seems routine for a graduate engineer can still be quite challenging and motivating for a certificate holder. Of course, this approach also has cost advantages (as a certificate/diploma holder in engineering costs less as compared to a graduate engineer).

I am not saying that these are the only HR responses possible (or even the best responses) in the situations described above. My point is that certain situations require radically different HR responses – responses that seem so different from the usual/traditional HR responses that they appear to be crazy. But they are actually much more sane - as compared to the alternative of 'continuing to persist with the same (failed) normal/traditional HR response and expecting different results' - which incidentally was the way Einstein defined madness.

What do you think?

In praise of HR generalists

Let me begin by saying that I am a specialist - I am in a specialist role now (in Learning and OD) and I have spent most of my career so far in specialist roles in HR. But I have also handled HR generalist/HR business partner roles where I was the 'internal customer' for specialists roles in HR. Again, I have been fortunate to get opportunities to work in the HR domain in multiple contexts - HR consulting, Internal HR and HR Shared Services Centre. At this point, I am very happy to be back in a specialist role. But I have much higher appreciation/ respect for HR generalists now - as compared to what I used to have during the early years of my career.

Earlier (when I was looking at HR generalist roles as an outsider), I used to consider most of the HR generalist roles to be rather 'shallow' - in the sense that most of those roles (when it comes to the way they are actually executed) don't require any significant application of HR/behavioral science knowledge (please see HR Professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder). The main requirement for those roles seemed to be 'a bit of common sense coupled with knowledge of procedures/policies'.

Now that I have closely worked with some very effective HR generalists (and also seen generalist roles from an 'insider perspective'), I am convinced that what appears to be straight forward common sense decision making often involves fine judgement - the kind of judgement that requires knowledge and much more than knowledge - often requiring the kind of 'wisdom' that I spoke about in 'Wisdom-level consulting'. Since HR generalists need to interface with employees & managers, they need to ensure that what they do/the decisions they are communicating appear simple, clear and consistent. But these simple 'front-end/user interface' is often achieved by absorbing a lot of complexity at the 'back-end' of decision making - and you have to be an insider to see/appreciate this 'back-end' of decision making!

I have seen many senior HR generalists do the kind of great process facilitation/ process consulting work with business leadership teams that would make an Organization Development (OD) specialist proud. But usually these HR leaders don't call it OD and they don't talk too much about it - may be because they see it as a very natural part of their job and may be because they don't want to annoy the 'designated OD specialists' in the organization! I have also seen these leaders being able to synthesize the inputs from multiple specialists (staffing, compensation, resource management, workforce planning, employee relations, capability development etc.) and provide the the business leaders with an integrated HR response (diagnosis and solutions) to business challenges.

This ismuch more useful for the business leaders than receiving separate recommendations from various specialists. I feel that integrating multiple perspectives and answering the 'so what' question for the business is a much higher craft than coming up with isolated findings. Again, some of these HR leaders have a much higher understanding of the business as compared to that of the specialists and they are able to look at the organization from a 'total system perspective' - to identify and exploit 'leverage points' - those points/areas/factors in the system where a small change made can have a huge impact on the overall system/business.

Another reason for my increased respect for HR generalists is a gradual shift in my definition of 'what really makes a difference'. These days, I am more inclined to think that unless what an HR professional does makes a difference at the level of individuals, it is not making much of a difference. Of course, I agree that often a system level intervention is needed to impact a large number of individuals and that the definition of individuals is not limited to particular employees. But I have seen that technically perfect work (or 'high-end HR work') done at the system level does not always translate into making a difference at the individual level (to the individual stakeholders).

From a diagnosis and solution design point of view, it is required to go beyond the immediate appearance of people related problems/issues and look at the 'underlying form/patterns/principles'. But, we need to ensure that these solutions designed at the 'pattern/underlying form/principle/theory' level, need to be converted back to the level of individuals - solutions to the actual problems/issues that we had started our analysis with.

This is similar to the 'physical problem-mathematical model of the problem-mathematical solution-physical solution' process used in approaches like Six Sigma. Since specialists work mostly at the pattern/principles/system level (similar to the mathematical/'ethereal' part mentioned above), generalists are required to bring the solutions to the ground level - to make them 'real' - as solutions to the actual problems of particular individuals.

Specialists enjoy an advantage over the generalists - specialists usually support more than one client group, where as the generalists are often embedded in a particular client group. So it becomes relatively easy for a specialist to take a objective/neutral perspective as compared to a generalist. Thus balancing the interests of the particular client group that one is supporting with that of the larger organization becomes a more difficult task for the generalists.

There is another tricky balancing act that HR generalists (especially at senior levels) often have to do. Many of these generalists have a good amount of specialist functional expertise and there is one part in their personality that craves for technical perfection of the solutions. But their roles demand that the solutions should be pragmatic/workable/easy to communicate and implement - keeping in mind the organizational constraints. Also, because of their greater proximity to the particular businesses they are supporting, HR generalists are much more aware of the organizational constraints (especially the tacit ones) as compared to specialists.

This leads to an interesting situation when these generalists are the internal customers of specialists roles in HR. When the specialists push for technical perfection of a solution, the generalists often have to push back - to keep the solutions implementable. This would mean that in addition to arguing with the specialists, they also have to argue with themselves (i.e. the specialist part of their personality). Believe me, this is not a very enjoyable situation to be in! Of course, specialists also face these kind of issues as they grow in their careers. Please see 'Of specialists and business alignment'.

Overall, I feel that HR generalists roles are more 'messy' as compared to specialist roles. Often, HR generalists have to act as the 'face of the organization' when it comes to communicating unpleasant decisions (like disciplinary actions, layoffs, reduction in employee benefits etc.) to the employees. It becomes a challenge to maintain integrity (at the intrapersonal and at the interpersonal levels) when an HR generalist has to to stand in front of the same group employees -within the short span of time - first to announce employee engagement initiatives and then to announce a layoff.

As I have mentioned earlier (Please see 'At the receiving end of change management'), even in the case of major changes in the organization that have significant impact on the organization structure, jobs and on the employees, often the HR generalists are able to get involved only when it is too late. By that time 'emotional wounds' have already been created and what is left is more of communication and 'dressing of wounds'. This is definitely not the 'strategic change management' role that they were supposed to do. Now, I am not saying that these 'organizational scavenger' (or 'organizational earthworm') kind of roles played by HR generalists are not important. Actually they are very critical for maintaining the health and vitality of the organizations (just like earthworms increase the vitality of the soil/scavengers help to maintain the health of the ecosystem). My point is that these aspects of HR generalist roles are often very messy.

Again, since HR generalists often have to respond quickly there might not be enough time to come up with neat solutions. The specialists also have their own battles to fight in organizations and there is always the risk of 'injuries'(Since these are 'organization battles', these injuries are unlikely to be physical in nature - but they can really hurt. Please see 'Leaders and battle scars' for a related discussion.). The 'injuries' sustained in 'specialist battles' are more likely to be similar to 'cuts' , whereas those sustained in 'generalist battles' are more likely to resemble 'wounds'. It is important to note that here we are talking not just about the 'injuries' sustained by HR specialists/generalists. We are also talking about the 'injuries' to the other players in the organization and to the relationships - the relationships between HR professionals and business leaders/managers that are very important (especially for the HR generalists) to get their work done! In general, 'cuts' tend to heal faster (and neater/with less scarring !) than 'wounds' !

Another factor here is that the boundaries of generalist roles are often not well-defined and hence all kinds of tasks/problems (especially those no one wants to touch) can get dumped on the generalists. In some contexts this can also imply that HR generalists are 'on call' 24x7. Work can become a series of small activities with nothing substantial to show (or to add to the CV !) at the end of the year. Again, there is the greater need to walk the thin line between confidentiality and openness, empathy and objectivity, cooperation and capitulation, emotional intelligence and emotional manipulation etc. One can even end up feeling like a 'mouse in a maze' - running here and there, feeling extremely busy- but not reaching anywhere! Now, what amazes me is that I have seen many HR generalists being effective and producing very 'neat' work in such a 'messy' situation. So how can I stop myself from writing this post - 'in praise of HR generalists'?

Any comments/observations?

Towards a philosophy of HR

"HR is like gardening", said a senior HR professional when he was completely drunk. "We are not using any functional expertise in this recruitment assignment; our role in this project is similar to that of a pimp", said a Project Manager from a reputed HR consulting firm when he was in a reflective mood. "The HR leadership team is thinking about strategies to build the firm for the next 150 years", said a global HR leader in a 150-year-old MNC. Three senior HR professionals and three interesting perspectives - in three different contexts.

What is the basic 'philosophy' that underlies the domain of Human Resources? Does this (and should this) vary significantly across organizations? Is it a clearly defined and commonly accepted philosophy ? If not, can we derive some sort of 'emergent philosophy' from the way the craft of HR is practiced ? How has this philosophy been evolving? Is it worthwhile for organizations to invest time and effort in formulating and articulating an HR philosophy?

Now that I have been working in the HR domain for a decade, these are some of the questions that I have found myself thinking about quite a bit these days. Of course, I don't claim to have definite answers to these questions. What I do have are some 'thought fragments'. So the objective of this post is to seek comments from the readers so as to have a discussion on the topic.

Since this is a very broad topic, let us make a couple of simplifying assumptions for the propose of this discussion. Here we are taking about HR only in the context of business organizations. We are using the term 'philosophy' in a limited sense, to mean the basic assumptions, premises or tenets that underlies the field of HR.

There are many ways to approach this topic. One of them is to look at the applied behavior science foundations of HR. It can be said that the objective of applied behavior science is to understand human behavior in order to make predictions regarding probable behaviors in various situations so as to be able to influence those behaviors. This 'understand-predict-influence' sequence underlies all applied behavior science including Human Resource Management. From this it can be inferred that one basic assumption in the philosophy of HR is that it is possible to understand and predict human behavior so that it can be influenced to be in line with the organization objectives.

Another 'trick' that is often used is to look at the various terms used for HR and derive inferences from the choice of words. Here we comes across many terms, including Human Resource Management, Human Resource Development, Personnel Management, Human Capital Management, Talent Management etc. Then we could make 'inferences' like

(a) use of the term 'Management' indicates the intention to 'control' (more than what is meant by the term 'influence')
(b) use of the term 'Resources' implies that employees are a factor of production or even that they are essentially costs of production that needs to be minimised to the extent possible
(c) use of the term 'Capital' implies that employees are more like assets than costs and hence they are worth investing on or even that they add significantly to the value of the firm
(d) use of the term talent and avoidance of the term resource implies that employees are like investors who invest their talents in the organization and that they would continue to do only if they see attractive benefits like rapid appreciation in the value of their talent and good revenues in terms of salary.

While some of these 'inferences' do not necessarily follow from the terms, they do give us a flavor of the underlying assumptions.

Now if we look at many of the HR practices (that originated many years ago), we can figure out that they make some assumptions like 'continuity of the employment relationship', 'good amount of predictability regarding the business growth and hence career growth' etc. If we examine what actually happens in organizations these days (especially in highly dynamic industries), we are likely to find that these assumptions no longer hold good. Please see here for an illustration of this point in the context of career planning. Based on this we could argue that some of the basic underlying assumptions and hence the de facto philosophy of HR is evolving - often quite rapidly.

It is interesting to note that to some extent this 'evolution' also gets reflected in the changing names for the various sub-functions in HR. For example the function of 'Compensation' (which can be interpreted to mean that the organization is compensating the employees for some harm done to them) evolved into 'Rewards' and then into 'Total Rewards'. Another example could be the 'Training' function evolving into 'Learning' function. Training sounds like something that is done to the employees (or even forced upon the employees), almost similar to training animals. Learning happens inside the minds of the employees and hence can only be facilitated (and not forced upon the employees) by the 'Learning' function. Of course, the change in the name need not always imply a change in the underlying assumptions/philosophy. But it does show that it is fashionable/desirable (at least from a PR point of view) to have (or at least to create an illusion of) a more progressive philosophy of people management.

Now let us look at the basic issue of why should we be bothered about the 'philosophy of HR'. The 'philosophy of HR'/'basic assumptions in HR' in a particular organization context shapes the way the employees are managed in that organization.

Lack of a clearly articulated and understood 'philosophy of HR' can make the organization susceptible to 'taking up the latest fad in people management and discarding it soon after to take up the next one'. It can also result in highly inconsistent attitudes/practices in managing the employees (e.g. swinging wildly between high empowerment and high control, between large investment in employee development and no investment between 'intense focus on encouraging employees to form emotional bonds with the company and 'downsizing and then scaling up shortly after that' etc. This in turn can cause a lot of avoidable confusion.

More importantly, the 'way the employees are managed' will influence how the employees respond to that/how the employees behave in the organizations. What happens here is similar to the 'Pygmalion effect'. Thus 'wrong/bad' assumptions/philosophy, might result in creating 'wrong/bad' reality. For example, 'Theory X' kind of assumptions/philosophy (i.e. that the employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can) in people management will promote 'Theory X' kind of behavior among the employees. Hence, though the 'initial reality'/'employee behavior' might not be in line with 'Theory X kind of assumptions', after people management based on 'Theory X assumptions' have been practiced for some time, employees might start to behave in a fashion that validates 'Theory X'. This makes people management a very dangerous domain !

We also have to be mindful of the possible conflict between the stated HR philosophy in an organization and the 'actual' HR philosophy practiced in the organization. What really matters is the HR philosophy (basic assumptions about HR) that emerges/can be inferred from (or gets reflected in) in the decisions made by the organization. It will be a tragic-comic situation if an organization says that 'people are our greatest assets/people are our main source of competitive advantage' and at the same time practices 'downsizing' and/or 'cutting employee benefits & training' as the first response (instinctive response!) to any business downturn. There is no better way to create mistrust and cynicism in the organization ! The same holds good at the level of managers also. Managers (especially direct supervisors) represent/symbolize the 'organization' to the employees and the real 'HR philosophy' of the organization (as perceived by the employees) is the one that gets reflected in the behaviors of (or in decisions made by) the managers. So we can't overemphasise the need for congruence between the 'articulated HR philosophy' and the 'HR philosophy in practice' ! It is interesting to note that discussion mirrors the discussion on the need for congruence between the 'espoused values' and the 'enacted values' in an organization. Logically speaking, HR philosophy of an organization should be closely linked to (or even derived from) the core values of the organization. Thus, the issues at the level of core values are likely to get reflected at the level of HR philosophy also!

So, these are some of my preliminary thoughts. Now over to you for your comments.

Thought leadership in HR in India

I have been doing some sort of an informal survey. It involved getting in touch with some people (most of them with more than 10 years of experience in HR) and asking them the following question: "In your opinion, who are the thought leaders in HR in India?".

Most of them came up with a list of 3 or 4 names. One interesting thing that came out of this was that there were not too many overlaps between these lists. Apparently, the people surveyed had very different opinions on who are the thought leaders in HR in India. This prompted me to prob a bit deeper by asking them "why did you name these particular individuals?", and that in turn led to discussions on "what is your definition of thought leadership in HR".

From these discussions it emerged that there is a wide variation in the definition of 'thought leadership in HR' among the people surveyed. Many of the names in the lists have contributed in more than one role in HR. Broadly speaking, their primary roles included those of consultants, management professors, OD professionals, senior managers etc. The underlying definitions of thought leadership that influenced the choice of HR thought leaders (depending on the primary roles of the individuals named as thought leaders - to some extent) included one or more of the the following aspects

• Creating and/or popularising new HR practices/interventions
• Understanding/predicting trends (sensing trends before they become common knowledge)
• Possessing insight and vision beyond knowledge/subject matter expertise
• Conducting research and publishing books/articles on a regular basis
• Converting insights to a solutions and getting them accepted/ implemented
• Receiving extensive media coverage (i.e. their comments are widely sought by the media on key HR related issues)
• Possessing great process facilitation and change management skills
• Having an extensive knowledge about the HR related research, HR practices and their applicability in particular organization/industry contexts
• Coming up with new/innovative solutions to key issues/complex problems
• Enjoying a great amount of influence in the HR community
• Encouraging others to think about/implement new ideas/solutions

Another interesting aspect here is the primary purpose for which one tries to develop 'thought leadership'. One purpose could be to make a significant contribution to enhancing organization effectiveness and employee engagement by designing and popularising/implementing new and innovative solutions to the key people related issues in organizations. Another could be to bring in new dimensions to the field of HR, enhancing/shaping the field. Depending on the current primary role of the 'thought leader' there could be other possibilities. For example, in the case of a consultant, 'thought leadership' is very useful for obtaining new assignments and for supporting higher charge out rates/fees. For a senior HR manager within an organization, a reputation for thought leadership could provide greater opportunities to try out new things and to take up initiatives that involve large amount of change/resource investment. Of course, for some people thought leadership could just be a spontaneous act of generosity - giving one's ideas, time/effort and wisdom to help fellow professionals.

Now let us come back to the definition of thought leadership in HR. As we have seen, there are a wide range of definitions of thought leadership. It seems that there is room for many types of 'thought leadership' and for may types of thought leaders in HR' ! This also gives many of us a chance to become some type/sort of 'thought leaders' (or at least to 'call ourselves thought leaders' !) in some HR related domain, in some industry, at some point in our careers. This in turn raises interesting philosophical questions like 'Can leadership (including thought leadership) exist without followers?'.

Any comments/thoughts?

If you hang around in HR for too long...

This post is about a question that has been in my mind for the last few years. The issue is something like this: After your MBA in HR (especially if you have graduated from a reputed management institute) you can expect to be the Head of HR of a somewhat large firm in about 15-20 years, assuming a reasonably successful career. Of course, not everyone becomes (or even wants to become) a Head of HR. But in general, this kind of a time frame seems reasonable. Now, the question is 'what would you do after that'. Many people would look forward to working for at least 15 years more. So what are your 'career options' at that stage ? If we define career as 'pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement where one takes up positions of increasing responsibility/complexity/contribution', the challenge is to find such positions/work that would enable the senior HR professional to continue to grow and contribute.

It is interesting to look at this issue from the organization's perspective also. Do organizations have many HR jobs that would require a level of expertise which would take more than 20 years to develop (Quick question : In the last 2 years, how many HR jobs have you come across for which the person specification indicated more than 20 years of experience?)? May be, not too many positions exist within most organizations that require such a level of expertise/such a senior profile.

Now, let us come back to our senior HR professional. We have seen 'solutions' found by particular individuals. They include, inter alia, moving into larger firms, moving into regional/global roles, starting one's own firm, HR consulting, becoming an OD/Leadership Development specialist, teaching and branching into a totally different fields. Some people also become CEOs/Heads of other functions, though they constitute only a very small percentage of the population that we are talking about. Of course, there is always the possibility of 'retirement on the job' where one stagnates, disengages and still continues on the job. If we look at solutions 'within the organizations' (like moving into larger firms, moving into regional/global roles etc.), it would be interesting to examine if they really solve the problem (by providing positions of increasing responsibility/complexity/contribution) as compared to merely changing the context (by providing a different sort of mandate/experience).

Some combinations of the above solutions/options might lead to something very similar to 'portfolio living' that Charles Handy talks about. We also need to differentiate between the solution(s) found by a particular individual (or individuals) and the career options available to bulk of the population that we are talking about. So where does this leave our senior HR professional. In some cases this could lead to some sort of a 'career crisis'. It is interesting to note that this career crisis might also coincide with a larger midlife crisis which brings in additional dimensions.

Any thoughts/comments?

Notes:

1. The title of this post does not in any way imply that a long stint/career HR would necessarily mean 'hanging around in HR'. There are many possibilities for 'progressive achievement/ contribution' including those hinted at by the 'solutions' mentioned in the post. I have used the term 'hanging around' (though it has a negative connotation) for rhetorical purpose - to highlight the risk of stagnation and to stimulate discussion. It would be interesting to read this post along with the next post on 'Thought leadership in HR in India'. It can be readily inferred that the thought leaders does not hang around in the field as they redefine the boundaries and bring in new perspectives which would in turn mean that they rise above the constraints imposed by the current definition/understanding of the field.

2. It would be interesting to look at the senior HR positions in organizations and examine if the essential requirement for the position is that of a leader or that of a manager. To keep matters simple, let us go by the distinction that 'leaders focus on 'doing the right things' while managers focus on 'doing things right' (i.e. leaders focus mainly on effectiveness while managers focus mainly on efficiency).

If we look the senior HR jobs in MNCs in India (that are headquartered outside India), we might find that in many cases the 'right things' (the deliverable/tasks for the senior HR positions at a country level) gets decided at the global level and the key expectation from the HR position at the country level is to get those 'right things' done right/efficiently. The logic here is that an aggregate of local optima might not lead to a global optimum. So the key expectation from such senior HR positions is to carry out a predefined set of tasks efficiently and to keep customizations to a minimum. Thus the ideal profile would be someone who would 'completely merge into the system' and get things done without asking too many questions.

So the requirement is essentially that of a manager. If a 'leader profile' gets hired into the position, she/he might get frustrated and leave (or she/he might get forced to operate just like a manager). If the senior position is supposed to manage 'deep-specialists' (see an earlier post on 'deep-specialist' positions here) it could result in additional difficulties as 'deep-specialists' tend to respond more favorably to leading as opposed to managing. Mercifully not too many deep-specialist positions seem to exist in those contexts (see here).

3. See a related post here

HRM in partnership firms

If we analyze the role of the HR function in a partnership firm (here we are talking about large multinational partnership firms) some interesting dimensions emerge.

One of the key factors here is that a partner is an owner of the firm in addition to being a manager. Now, if I am an owner, I might feel that it is my privilege to run the firm (or the part of the firm that I am managing) 'my way'. It might also lead to a tendency to make 'sporadic interventions' in people related processes/ decisions. Thus some of the partners might view well defined HR processes as impediments to their 'freedom of operation'. This might pull the firm towards functioning like a 'family owned firm'.

However, most of the global partnership firms have well designed global HR processes. It is essential to have these processes to manage the scale of operations and to attract and retain good talent. Also one of the key attractions for working in a partnership is the opportunity to grow in the firm and become a partner/owner. Well designed HR processes are required to facilitate this and to give the employees the 'comfort feel' that this is possible .

So there are two opposing forces here, one pulling towards a highly 'personality driven' way of making people decisions and the other pulling towards a highly 'process driven' way of making people decisions. The HR function in a partnership firm experiences both these forces and it makes the role of the HR professionals quite tricky. Often only a 'dynamic balance' is possible and the equilibrium point keeps on shifting. Depending on the degree of credibility/respect that the HR professionals in the firm enjoys/develops (in the eyes of the partners) more positive outcomes becomes possible from this dynamic interplay of forces.

At the receiving end of 'change management'

If one looks at the job description of any 'strategic' HR position, it is highly likely that 'management of change' (or 'driving change initiatives') would feature very prominently. While I fully agree that organization-wide change management efforts are important in fast changing business environment, I am finding that my interest these days is more on the the psychological process of dealing with change (the 'transition') and on developing change resilience in individuals. Having been 'at the receiving end of organization level change management efforts' many times in my career, I am not sure as to what extent these are really effective. Often they degenerate into communication programs (at best) and con games (at worst). Unless the organization can create a credible value proposition ('what is in it for me') for the impacted people the chances are that the above degeneration would happen. It can also been argued that 'second order change' can not be managed (in the usual meaning of the term 'manage'). In this context, helping the employees to become more change resilient becomes more important.

I also feel that the impact of change on the 'psychological contract' between the employee and the employer is often not given adequate attention. The violation of the psychological contact could be one of the key reasons for 'change resistance' and negative outcomes like attrition, lack of motivation etc. Often employees feel that they are 'taken for granted' in the name of 'flexibility' and 'organization responsiveness'. Of course, organizations have sound business reasons for making these changes (realignment, restructuring etc.). My point is just that often the impacted employees (who have been 'realigned') feel that the psychological contract has been violated because of what they perceive as 'unilateral changes made by the organization'. (See a related link here)

Coming back to the 'HR job description' mentioned at the beginning of this post, there could be additional factors (apart from skill set related factors) that limit the ability of internal HR professionals to manage change. For example, often HR professionals get involved too late. By that time 'emotional wounds' have already been created and what is left is more of communication and 'dressing of wounds'. While this is useful, this is not change management. This is more of 'damage control'. Of course, in many situations the internal HR professionals themselves are experiencing the same adverse effects of change and hence this could further limit their ability to carry out their 'change management responsibilities'.

Note : Another related aspect (to organization-wide change efforts) is 'culture change initiatives'. There are many 'levels of culture' (like artifacts, norms, values, basic underlying assumptions etc.) at which an intervention can be made. Technically speaking, to be fully effective, culture change has to happen at the 'basic underlying assumptions' level (as per Schein's model). This would mean that 'culture change' has to happen in a bottom-up fashion (starting with the individual) as these assumptions reside in people's minds. However, the difficulty is that often a clinical intervention is required to surface and change these assumptions. This is usually too much to manage in the context of an organization-wide change effort. I think that the 'basic underlying assumptions' & 'world view' of a person are unlikely to change unless he/she is faced with a very significant event (often a traumatic event) in life. So it might not be realistic to make an intervention at this level in the context of an organization level change. Anyway, since one is likely to change many jobs during one's career, one can't afford to get influenced by organizations at such a deep level!!!

May be what can be attempted is to create a rational reason for behavior change. This does not necessarily mean 'carrot-and-stick' in the usual meaning of the term. The 'reason' could be aimed at any level in the hierarchy (e.g. Maslow's hierarchy) of human needs (including esteem and self-actualization) and not just at the lower level needs. This would also mean creating a context (including 'role models') where the desired new behavior has a higher possibility of emerging and thriving.

Specialist roles in internal HR : An endangered species?

Let me begin by clarifying what I meant by the term 'specialist roles in internal HR'. Here I am taking about those roles in internal HR that require deep specialist skills in one of the functional areas in HR (e.g. organization development, reward management, leadership development etc.). What I have noticed is that the number of these positions is reducing. There could be many factors influencing this. Many organizations feel that these kind of deep specialist skills are not required on a continuous basis as they come into play mainly in special initiatives (or even only in particular phases of special initiatives) that happen once in a while. Thus this could lead to underutilization these costly expert talent which does not make sense either for the organization or for the specialists involved. Instead of this the organization can hire a reputed vendor/consultant (who has great expertise in this area) as and when these skills/inputs are required. Of course someone will be required internally to identify/articulate the business need and to interface with the vendors. But this calls for a somewhat different skill set.

If we look at the HR departments in the in the Indian operations of MNCs (that are headquartered outside India), this reduction in HR specialist positions is more pronounced. This could be because of additional factors that come into play here. Most MNCs are driving standardization of HR service delivery with a view to achieve cost efficiencies. This would also mean that they don't want separate design work to happen in the different countries. Thus it make sense to do most of the design work (that require deep expertise) out of a central location. This location often turns out to be the location of the organization's headquarters as 'proximity to business leadership' is supposed to be an advantage to ensure business alignment of HR systems/initiatives.

Now, I am not saying that I fully agree with the above line of reasoning. Often significant amount of customization is required to make the global design effective in particular geographies. This calls for deep HR specialists who also have a good understanding of the local context. Similar factors (lower degree of understanding of the client context - especially those pertaining to the 'informal organization'/how things really work in the organization) also reduce the effectiveness of external vendors. My point is just that the reduction in the number of specialist HR positions in India is reducing.

Of course there are other trends that could be relevant here like the move to build specialist skills in HR generalists. For example I feel that OD 'function' is moving towards a more 'distributed structure'. This 'distributed structure' would involve developing OD capability in HR generalists and this structure/model is essential for ensuring that OD can make a significant contribution to the business. In order to make a significant impact on a complex (with a high degree of interlinkages) and rapidly evolving organization, multiple OD initiatives have to be carried out simultaneously. Also, the sensing of the business needs and the planning/ implementation of the OD interventions have to be done quickly. A distributed/ embedded OD structure is in a better position (as compared to a centralized OD structure) to meet these twin requirements of bandwidth and speed of response.

All this leads to interesting implications on the career options available to deep HR specialists in India. The obvious one of course is to move to consulting. Another obvious one is to move to large Indian companies (say in corporate HR). Another one (in the case of MNCs) could be to move to the organization's headquarters. This could get difficult in those contexts where headcount reductions are happening in that country (where the organization is headquartered) and hence HR staff in that country might have a greater chance of moving into the few HR specialist positions available. Yet another option is to move to a broader role (which is more like a generalist role) and leverage the 'specialist' skills (say consulting skills, change management skills etc.) to create a greater business impact. Any comments/ideas?