Truths stretched too far - Part II : Let them learn all by themselves

This is the second one in the series of blog posts that look at how some very valid research findings ('truths') tend to get misinterpreted/misused when they get 'stretched too far'. As mentioned in the first post in the series, the 'stretching' happens because of many reasons like extrapolation of the validity of the research findings to contexts other than that in which the research was conducted, using 'inferential leaps' between the actual research finding and assumption(s) underlying the HR practice in question, ignoring other factors (other than the factor covered in the research) that have an impact on the current context/ situation etc. There are also situations where these 'stretched truths' are used to rationalize/justify particular HR policies/ practices instead of using research to improve the HR policies/ practices. Sadly, this sounds similar to the saying about the 'drunkard's use of the lamp-post' , that is , 'for support and not for illumination'.

In this post let us look at the popular research finding "Less than 10% of the learning takes place through formal training". I think that this finding is very much true. Most of the learning happens through job experiences and through interactions/relationships. The problem happens when this finding is used as an excuse for 'cutting training budgets without establishing any concrete mechanism for facilitating the learning through job experiences and interactions'. Since 'job experiences and interactions' are outside the traditional domain/mandate of the training function, it is easy (and very convenient for HR) to jump to the conclusion that 'the entire responsibility for ensuring that this type of learning happens lies with the managers and the employees'.

Unfortunately, this type of learning (through job experiences and interactions) does not always happen automatically. Even when the learning does take place, it could be incomplete or too slow. There is a need to put in place a mechanism to structure, facilitate and track this type of learning. This is especially true in situations where there is rapid growth and the workforce consists of relatively inexperienced employees and first-line managers. In these 'high growth - high attrition - large span of control - inexperienced team profile', managers are under too much pressure and hence 'surviving' could take precedence over 'learning and facilitating learning'. Hence we come back to the need for institutionalizing practices that would facilitate and maximise learning through job experience and interactions.

For example, 'the way a job is structured' is a critical factor in deriving learning through on-the-job experience. This calls for an intervention at the job design level to ensure that the jobs have sufficient authority/responsibility and scope/variety. 'Job rotation' and 'special/stretch projects' also offer high learning potential. This would require that the organization puts in place policies/ practices that encourage job rotation and assigning people systematically to special/stretch projects. Similarly, to maximise the learning through interactions/relationships there is a need to institutionalize systems/practices for coaching, mentoring, 360 degree feedback etc. While the learning value of formal training programmes is limited, some times they can serve as a mechanism for creating awareness and to build very specific knowledge/s kills that could facilitate/ maximise learning through job experiences and interactions.

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.

Truths stretched too far - Part I : Blame it on the managers

These days HR practices are supposed to be 'research based'. As HR professionals, when we recommend/implement a particular practice/policy in the people domain, we want to substantiate it with 'solid research findings'. There could be many problems with this. The first is the validity of the research findings in contexts other than that in which the research was conducted. The second problem occurs when there is a 'chain of reasoning' (and sometimes even an 'inferential leap') involved between the actual research finding and assumption(s) underlying the HR practice in question. It is also possible that other factors (other than the dimension covered in the research) that have an impact on the outcome gets ignored (In the people domain, and in life in general, most important things are 'overdetermined' - i.e. they have more than one cause). Of course, there is also the ever present danger of confusing between 'correlation' and 'causation'. In this series of blog posts, we would look at some of those research findings ('truths') that tend to get misinterpreted when they get stretched too far.

In this post (which is the first one in this series) let us look at the very popular research finding "People leave managers and not organizations". I think that there a lot of truth in this finding. The immediate supervisor is a key influencing factor in employee engagement and retention. The problem happens when other factors that influence employee engagement and retention are ignored and the entire responsibility(or even blame) is put on the managers. Often there are other significant factors involved (e.g. the basic nature of the job, 'Rewards' strategy, work environment, lack of career advancement opportunities etc.) over which first level managers don't have much influence. So when the attrition level goes high, the tendency is to respond with 'training the managers on engaging and energising teams'.

This response also suits HR admirably. The factors like basic nature of the job, 'Rewards' strategy, work environment, career advancement opportunities etc. are more difficult influence as compared to 'sending the poor managers for training'. While this gives HR the satisfaction of having 'responded quickly to the business challenge of attrition', unfortunately this does not solve the problem adequately. It also leaves the managers (who are already facing the consequences of attrition in their teams) more confused and frustrated. Hence we come back to the point that 'system level issues' have to be addressed at the system level (and no amount of manager training can obviate this need).

Related Links: Next post in this series , related post

Strange case of 'wrong' HRIS reports

As far as I know, there are only a few things that HR leaders (at the corporate level) across companies agree on. One of them seems to be that the reports from Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) that they receive/generate are often misleading and/or wrong. Fortunately, in most cases, nothing really bad happens because of these 'wrong reports', as they are not used for making any serious decisions. They just get converted into charts and tables and land up in presentations. These presentations are used mainly to describe (or even rationalize!) the past and not to predict the future. So no real damage happens ! Of course, if one tries to use these data to support decision making (i.e. as the basis for Human Capital Analytics), then it can lead to wrong decisions. Since Human Capital Analytics seems to be one of the key opportunities to create significant organizational value in the people domain*, we need to look more carefully at the reasons that make these reports wrong/misleading - so that we can fix them in a sustainable manner.

When errors are discovered in HRIS reports, the most common tendency is to view it as a 'data entry mistake'. While errors do creep in at the data entry stage, often the main issue lies at the levels of 'data interpretation' & 'business rules'.

Often there is no common understanding of how different data elements/terms are interpreted. Let us look at a very simple example - a request to pull out a 'list of all the staff in IT'. While this seems simple, there are many possible interpretations here (especially in a global organization). For example, this could mean a list of

(a) all staff who are doing an IT kind of job' and/or
(b) all staff whose are being paid from the salary budget of the IT department and/or
(c) all staff who are in the reporting-tree of the Head of IT

Now, to get this simple report correct, it is not enough just to use the correct definition of the term 'IT team' while generating the report. The real challenge is to build that definition into a business rule that covers all staff staff movements in IT (e.g. hire, transfer etc.) and to ensure that the rule gets followed correctly across all the countries in which the firm operates. For example, if the definition of 'team' is along reporting lines [as given in (c) above], then whenever an IT person gets hired in the firm in any country, it has to be ensured that the new hire reports directly to someone in the reporting chain of the global head of finance. In a global firm, this simple business rule might not always be that easy to implement as there could be scenarios (e.g. in a country where the size of the firm is very small) where it might seem more appropriate to make the IT person report to a business person. Of course, there are other factors (e.g. 'double-hatting') that could complicate this further. It is possible to use complex definitions to take care of complex situations. However, this would also imply more complex business rules, making the communication/implementation of the business rules difficult.

Another dimension that is relevant here is the variation in HR practices across countries. For example, let us look at a case where there is a decision to make a staff member, who has been working with the firm on a 'contract basis', a member of the regular staff. In this case the practice in one country might be to do a 'terminate and rehire' while that in another country could be just to change the 'employee class' from 'contract' to 'regular'. Thus the staff would show up in a 'new hire report' if he/she is in the first country and it won't happen if he/she is in the second country. Now, if we generate a global report, we would get misleading data on the number of new hires. Another similar issue could be 'what is a promotion' (e.g. 'increase in job level' and/or 'change in pay grade' and 'increase in pay' etc.). If we look deep enough, a large number of such issues are likely to surface in any global firm.

Any attempts to 'clean up the data' on a one time basis would be useless as the data would again go out of shape very quickly (as the problems at the data interpretation/business rules level would keep on producing 'data errors'). It is also useless to try to 'reverse-engineer' a report generation criteria (by combining a large number of HRIS fields to form a complex condition) which if applied on the current data in HRIS, would produce a result similar to a target list (e.g. a list of staff names given by the Head of IT as the list of 'his staff'). Since the data/target population (e.g. IT staff) is dynamic, the 'reverse -engineered criteria' (that captures target population at this point) might not be able to capture the target population accurately at a future point of time. So even if there are hundreds of data fields in the HRIS, need for business rules still exist !!!.

Thus to generate meaningful HRIS reports

(1) there should be a set of Business Rules & Data Standards that are clearly understood and consistently applied across geographies and businesses (which would lead to 'patterns in data') AND
(2) the report generation criteria should be aligned to these Business Rules and Data Standards (so as to capture the relevant patterns in the data) AND
(3) it should be possible to express the report generation criteria in terms of HRIS fields AND
(4) the query tool should be able to pull out the data as per the criteria

In practice, the above 4 requirements/steps might not always happen in a neat sequential manner especially since the business context and the analysis requirements keep on evolving. Usually the above requirements would also mandate significant amount of selling (and even pushing!) on the part of HR to secure buy-in from the business leadership and it is easy to get carried way by the immense opportunity to provide great information/analytics to support decision making. We should always keep in mind that the purpose of HRIS/Human Capital Analytics is to enable the business to function more effectively and not the other way around !!!

*Note : The objective of Human Capital Analytics (HCA) is to provide information and analytic support to enable better people related decisions. HCA could include, inter alia analytical reports, trend analysis, dashboards, benchmarking, predictive models etc. Analytical reports analyze people related issues (e.g. attrition) from multiple dimensions (e.g. various combinations of dimensions like tenure, age, experience, gender, performance, potential, location, job family, level, salary band,time since last promotion etc.).

Depending on the context developing HCA in a particular organization could involve a wide range of tasks. These could include requirement analysis, finalizing specifications, setting up the IT/ analytics infrastructure, benchmarking, report generation,maintaining dashboards and even building predictive/multiple regression models (e.g. to predict attrition). Since people related decisions might require various types of data that might be held in different information systems (that might not 'talk' to one another) and since many many of these systems are optimized for transactions/data storage and not for data retrieval (as required for HCA), setting up of HCA usually involves developing some sort of a data warehouse/data mart.

It is interesting to note that since developing and operating HCA involves a wide range of tasks, this would also require a wide range of skill sets/roles - Business analysis, IT/HRIS, HR specialist/consulting, statistical analysis, report generation, presentation/decision support, change management, project management etc. Now, some of these tasks/roles can be outsourced to a vendor - and hence some of the skill sets could come from the vendor. If the organization decides to staff some of these roles with internal resources - for cost and context understanding reasons, this could create new challenges. These could include issues like -'would the organization be able to hire these people easily?' - even if the organization manage to do so would it be able to provide these resources career paths within the organization (as some of these are quite specialized jobs - that could be very different from the mainstream jobs in the organization).

Apart from these staffing related challenges, there could be other significant challenges involved in developing and operating HCA. These include a avilability of data (if the current HR systems/benchmarking process don't already capture all the data required for analytics, you might have to put systems/processes in place to collect the data -this would take time and resources - also it would limit your ability to do any trend analysis as previous data would be missing), Mindset change (even if you make information/analytical support available would the managers use it in the decision making process?) and ensuring investment and sustained focus (- setting up and maintaining data collection process, analytical & reporting/ data presentation infrastructure etc. could require a lot of money and resources - is the organization ready for that - it is one thing for the leaders to say that they need information - the question is whether they would pay for it and whether they would continue to do so !)

Goal setting and 'zero error'

I came across this interesting situation in a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company. The issue was with 'target setting' for a team that was doing transaction processing kind of work. These were reasonably important transactions and errors could have a significant adverse impact on customer satisfaction. However,this process involved a lot of manual intervention and error rates were quite high. The problem was 'what sort of accuracy targets' should be set for the team.

The head of the division was of the firm opinion that the target should always be 100% accuracy (or zero error). His reasoning was 'how can we plan for making an error'? (i.e. If we set the target as 99% accuracy, aren't we telling the agents that they can afford to make one mistake in every 100 transactions? Won't that make them complacent? How can we tell the customer that we are targeting anything less than perfection?). This also lead to initiatives like declaring an 'error-free' month. This involved giving a pep talk to the team and making them take a pledge that they won't make any mistakes for one month. The pep talk also included another very interesting line of reasoning: "Can't you do one transaction without error? If you can do that what prevents you from repeating the same 1000 times? This is all that is needed to make an 'error-free' month". So this 'error-free' month initiative was launched with a lot of hype. Sadly, the error rates increased during the 'error-free' month.

One key issue here was that while the above approach had a lot of 'intuitive' appeal, it went against the basic principles of goal setting. To be motivating, the goals/targets have to be challenging and achievable. As the process involved a large amount of human element/manual intervention, zero error was impossible. So a 'zero-error target' would only de-motivate the employees (as they are ‘guaranteed to fail’ sooner or later). So the solution was to set a target (demanding but achievable target) keeping in mind the current capability of the team, improve the process/team capability and raise the performance bar/targets accordingly(ensuring that the targets remain demanding but achievable). At rhetoric level, the key is to distinguish between a 'performance target for the current performance period' and an 'ideal that we aspire for'.

Another aspect here is the limitations imposed by ‘diminishing returns’ and ‘process entitlement’. Each process has a performance limit (entitlement) beyond which its performance can't be significantly improved without redesigning the process. Processes that have a lot of manual intervention tend to reach this limit much before the level of 100% accurate performance. So unless the process is 'redesigned' (e.g. automated) very high performance targets would be impossible. Also when the performance level approaches the current 'process entitlement' limit, 'return-to-effort' ratio for performance improvement efforts (without redesigning the process) tends to fall drastically. So performance improvement beyond a certain point might cost too much, may be even more than what the customer is willing to pay!


It is interesting to note that this argument holds good (at least at the system level and organizations are systems) even for the most sensitive cases like surgeries. Obviously no one wants to have (or even think about the possibility of ) a botched up surgery. But if the cost of moving from 99.5% success rate to 99.9% success rate would make the surgery unaffordable to almost everyone, it might not really be helpful. Of course, this doesn't in any way mean that the surgeon plans to fail in 0.5% of the surgeries. The surgeon puts in utmost effort to make every surgery successful. It just means that a hospital will still pay the surgeon his/her salary (and people will still come in for surgery) even if there is a small % of failures!

HR professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder

Encyclopedia Britannica defines multiple personality disorder as follows:

'Dissociative identity disorder, formerly called multiple personality disorder is a rare mental disorder in which two or more independent and distinct personality systems develop in the same individual. Each of these personalities may alternately inhabit the person's conscious awareness to the exclusion of the others. Usually the various personalities differ markedly from one another in outlook, temperament, and body language.'

I have noticed a similar phenomenon among HR professionals. The difference is mainly that it is fairly common (and not 'rare' as the above definition says). It is more commonly seen among those HR professionals who have taken their behavioral science education seriously. I talking about those folks who (even after working for many years in HR) still remember the behavioral science theories/principles that they have learned. Though a college degree per se might not have any direct impact on the level of knowledge of a person, it is often observed that having a MBA/MA in HR/behavioral science makes one more prone to this disorder. Of course, the most severely affected are those who have a pursued doctoral level studies and then (for some 'strange' reason) started working in internal HR.

The behavioral manifestation of this disorder is something like this:

During most of their time in office 'Personality 1' (let us call it P1, the dominant personality) is in operation. This involves carrying out their job related activities in a manner that does not reflect application of behavioral science theories/principles in any significant way.

Once in a while another personality (let us call it P2) surfaces. When this happens the HR professional gathers other HR professionals in the team, gets into a meeting room and talks about behavioral science principles/theories and their implications for HR practices. It can lead to discussions such as 'does our performance management system reflect principles of distributive justice' , 'do the models that are used in our leadership training programs have empirical validity' etc. This makes everyone feel nice and also enable them to feel that they are 'superior' to those who have 'wandered into HR without any behavioral science background'.

True to the nature of the disorder, P2 vanishes as soon as one gets back to day-to-day HR work and P1 takes over. Of course there are other avenues for P2 to surface including HR conferences, seminars etc. By the way, blogs might also provide an opportunity for P2 to surface !!!

There could be many more personalities (P3, P4,....,Pn) involved and some of them could even be placed in the continuum between P1 and P2. One such personality involves identification and implementation of 'best practices'.

Now let us go back to Britannica and look at the causes of this disorder. Britannica says

'Dissociative identity disorder is widely viewed as resulting from dissociative mental processes—i.e., the splitting off from conscious awareness and control of thoughts, feelings, memories, and other mental components in response to situations that are painful, disturbing, or somehow unacceptable to the person experiencing them. The failure to form a distinct personality can thus be seen as a way of coping with or escaping from inner conflict.'


I think that this more or less holds good in the case of HR professionals also. If we analyse the day-to-day activities performed by HR professionals in most of the companies, we would find that many of these activities do not require any great amount of behavioral science knowledge (at least in the way they are 'usually' carried out). This might be true even for senior positions. If we take out the hype, many of these activities might get reduced to 'getting forms filled-up'. Of course 'facilitation' is required, 'alignment' as to be maintained, the target population includes senior leaders, and the form filling is enabled by fancy IT systems (i.e. the 'form filling' happens online supported by an automated work flow and the system also enables monitoring, collation/aggregation and even built-in budgets). While this is useful work, this could create 'painful, disturbing, or unacceptable' situations (mentioned above) for the the HR professional who wants to 'make a big difference/contribution' by leveraging his/her behavioral science training. Again, similar to the 'painful early childhood experiences' that lead to the development of personality disorders, 'painful early career experiences' could contribute to the development of 'personality disorders in HR professionals'. Most obvious case is that of an HR MBA, who after taking up an HR job (often with unrealistic expectations) finds that his/her attempts to bring behavioral science knowledge into day-to-day work meets with inertia, indifference, resistance and even ridicule.

Similar to that in the case of multiple personality disorder, the treatment for 'HR personality disorder' should also involve integrating the disparate personalities back into a single and unified personality. Of course, this 'integration' itself is a complex topic (that require a much more elaborate discussion than what is possible here). Again, as in the case of treating multiple personality disorder, it is an important step to make the personalities aware of one another. That is exactly the purpose of this post!!!

Related Links : See related posts here, here, here and here

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.

Of shibumi, areté and personal excellence

I have been working on developing a 'Personal Excellence Model'. Though I have used the term 'model', this is more of a personal exploration of 'excellence’(i.e. what excellence means to me). It is based on what has worked for me (and those ideas have resonated most strongly with my being) so far in my life. So this 'model' (or at least the thought process that lead to it) is quite ‘personal’ in nature though the model per se could be applicable to others. Of course the model is an evolving entity and it would change as I gain more data points(experiences, ideas etc.). While I don't want (at this point) to get into the details of the model like the structure, key elements ('meaning', 'living' and 'uniqueness' ), sub-elements etc., the objective of this post is to explore some of the key concepts/ideas that have influenced my definition of excellence.


One such idea is the Greek concept of areté. Though this word is often translated as 'virtue', it actually means something closer to 'being the best you can be', or 'reaching your highest human potential'. Areté is frequently associated with bravery, but more often, with effectiveness. The man or woman of areté is a person of the highest effectiveness; they use all their faculties to achieve real results. Areté involves all of the abilities and potentialities available to humans. Thus, being my best self and realizing my human potential is a key part of my definition of excellence.

Another such concept is 'shibumi' that I had once mentioned on this blog. While there are many interpretations on what shibumi means(see a related link here), I am using it here mainly in the sense of 'great refinement underlying commonplace appearances'. The other interpretations of shibumi that appeal to me include 'simple, subtle and unobtrusive beauty', 'articulate brevity', 'understated beauty', 'tranquility that is not passive', 'being without the angst of becoming' , 'authority without domination, 'harmony in action', 'invisible excellence', 'effortless effectiveness', 'beautiful imperfection' and 'elegant simplicity'. Concepts like 'flow' and 'being in the zone' have some commonalities with 'shibumi' though they are not the same. From this discussion, the similarities between shibumi and 'simplicity at the other side of complexity'(which is the theme for this blog) are quite obvious. No wonder I like the concept of shibumi very much (another contributing factor here could be my INTJ MBTI profile) !

Apart from areté and shibumi another key underlying theme for my definition of excellence is the emphasis on 'presence of value' rather than on 'absence of defects'. Thus 'goodness and authenticity' are preferred over 'correctness'. One interesting aspect that is common across all the three underlying themes mentioned above is that they all imply internal benchmarks. May be that is the way it should be since here we are talking about a 'personal excellence' model as opposed to a 'standard success' model !!!

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?

Mass career customization : Is that feasible ?

Recently, I came across an interesting article in Knowledge at Wharton titled "Plateauing : Redefining Success at Work" that talks about how people are redefining their careers (deciding how they can keep contributing to the organization - but in their own terms/according to their own work preferences). It goes on to discuss how organizations are responding to this trend. In this context, the article mentions an initiative at Deloitte aimed at 'mass career customization'. While I have heard about this concept before, I am quite impressed by the way the program is designed - going by the broad level information given the article (multiple choices available to employees on multiple dimensions with the rewards, advancement implications defined for each possible combination of choices, negotiation/guidance on them etc.). The article says :

" At Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, senior advisor Anne Weisberg is involved with a pilot program called mass career customization, which allows employer and employee together to customize an individual's career "along a defined set of options." It's a realization, she says, that "the 'one size fits all' approach no longer works." In the pilot program, which started in June with a practice group of 400 people and will run for a year, "we have unbundled the career into four dimensions: role, pace, location and schedule, and work load." Under the role dimension, employees can specify, for example, whether they want an external role involving significant client interaction, an internal role without that client service aspect, or a role somewhere between the two. Under pace, the issue is how quickly an employee wants to move up. Under location and schedule, issues such as part-time hours, working at home and willingness to travel are included, while work load looks at variables like the number of projects an employee is wiling to undertake at any one time. "There are tradeoffs to these choices," Weisberg emphasizes. "A totally internal role has a different compensation structure and advancement route. But the tradeoffs are articulated and an employee can move from one set of options to another. It's a recognition that people need to fit their work into their life and their life into their work over the course of their career, which is 40 years. No one solution will work" for all that time."

I feel that it would definitely be a 'next generation HR practice' if such a system can be successfully implemented. However, I also feel that the implementation could get very complex and challenging. Since there are many combinations (i.e. career choices) possible (based on the possible choices on various dimensions) and since it is possible to switch between career choices, the system could get difficult to track and manage. A more fundamental issue could be whether the organization continues to be in a position to keep its part of the bargain (regarding the availability of the choices and its defined reward/advancement implications). This because the definition of the set of choices and their implications are based on a prediction of how the business will grow/develop/change. If there are unexpected changes in the business/industry (e.g. significant change in the demand for various services, new service lines coming up, change in industry practices, change in the service delivery model etc.), the organization might need to redefine the implications of some of the career choices.

If these kind of factors can be factored in to the implementation plan and if there is enough flexibility (and trust) to innovate and adjust, this kind of systems can be made to work and this could in turn contribute significantly to employee engagement and productivity.