What HR can learn from Finance?

I always used to wonder how Finance, which is also a support function, moved so ahead that every organization finds it compulsory to have a CFO with active involvement in the C-Suite while HR, another support function, is still struggling to get the same position in the C-Suite.

There are a lot of similarities within both the departments. Both are support functions. None of the these departments bring in any revenue into the firm. Both are management functions – one manages revenue while other manages employees. Efforts of both the departments can’t be put into monetary values. Even then one function is already in the decision making process while the other is more involved in implementation of such decisions.

One of the reason is obviously that with the growth of industries and services, allocation of finance became more and more important. This was very well utilized by the finance department and they made their way into the board room. Another reason which I have observed personally is the hiring done in finance. Finance department is very particular about the hiring of their resources. They hire people with some background in finance – education or experience. You might very rarely see resources working in finance department with no finance background. This ensures that the quality of their work is not compromised.

In my humble opinion, it is time for HR to take a leaf out of finance’s growth journey and utilize the same for the growth of HR department as a whole. We are in that place where organizations have started focusing a lot on their employees. With unavailability of deployable talent, organizations are moving towards acknowledging and accepting the fact that employees are indeed their most important asset. Additionally with implementation of AI, HR needs to be more proactive to ensure it has positive impact on the employees. AI also will allow HR to put more efforts towards resources and less towards repetitive tasks of records or data capturing etc. We can utilize this time as a turning point for us similar to how finance did a while back for themselves. We can make the employees center of it.

It can be argued that HR is already doing that but the changes we are experiencing now can set us up for greater success if we utilize this time well. For instance, demographics – there are 4 generations working in parallel in the global workforce and it goes without saying that all have a different style of working. AI – I would reiterate here that with AI and analytics changing the working of organizations, managing employees is a different ball game altogether. Data availability – we as a department always had immense data available to play around and with analytics and data science in picture, this data can bring out so much more value compared to what it is used for now. All these and other changes expected in future, if explored and utilized well by the HR department can pave our way further into a more promising future.

Lastly, one correction I strongly feel which is required in HR is – hiring in our own department. I have been very vocal about the same in one of my previous article as well. We as department should ensure that the hiring done for the department should be based on some criteria – education or experience or both. HR shouldn’t be the last resort for someone who is unemployed, it should be for someone who really deserves it, will add value to the function or is passionate towards the function. This will ensure that the work is taken seriously.

I am a strong believer that HR is managing the most important asset of the organization. Hence it is extremely important that we become part of the decision making. We have already come a long way but there are still miles to go.

Smriti Pathania

28th June 2020

Diversity and Inclusiveness

With countries coming together and international borders fading, somewhere in between we became so globalized that diversity within organizations became an integral part. Organizations take pride in their diverse workforce, not only from a gender perspective but also from an ethnicity perspective. It has become one of the selling points for organizations to attract the best talent.

Diversity:

A diverse team will always be a better performer compared to homogenous teams. A diverse team brings in different ideas, views, feedbacks, solutions etc. for all business situations, problems. There are different minds working towards same goal. Given the right channel to their thoughts/ energy, they can come up with brilliant solutions. Whereas a homogenous team will always have similar ideas making it difficult to bring in any creativity/ innovation in the business. But is that it? Do we stop at just ensuring that we have good records of having a diverse team in our organization or we focus on the second part which is equally important!

Inclusiveness:

Like always second half is equally tough. Just having a diverse headcount doesn’t make an organization successful. Getting the diverse population feel inclusive is the challenge. Unfortunately, unlike diversity, inclusiveness is not that easy to measure and can’t be related directly to the progress of an organization. Inclusiveness holds different meaning for different people. This makes it tough for the organization to quantify it or identify the right way of making employees feel inclusive. Inclusiveness is when employees come to work feeling like they belong here, that they are being heard, that their efforts are being valued and they can come to work the way they are.

Insider Outsider Dynamics:

There is a very interesting concept of ‘insider-outsider concept’ which captures the essence of inclusiveness. The insiders are the team members who feel like they belong to the team and they are very open when they share their concepts, ideas etc with the team. They mostly have something common and hence form an insider group. Outsiders are the members who don’t feel like part of that group and have to make special efforts to be part of the insiders. An example can be of a group in which 70% of the members are from same college and remaining 30% are from different colleges. Now these 70% will connect almost instantly and form an insider group while the remaining 30% will feel they don’t belong to this group hence will feel like an outsider. One of the most interesting part about this concept is that insiders will never feel that they are a separate group while outsiders will be well aware of being an outsider, they make efforts to get accepted as the insiders.Insiders are not to be blamed for this as all their actions are almost unintentional, like we discussed, they don’t realize they are part of a different insider group within the same team. Here is when inclusiveness kicks in.

Steps To Inclusiveness:

To ensure a high performing team, inclusiveness is one of the concept to be addressed. This is not something which will happen overnight or through few training session. To form an inclusive team, it takes efforts of the whole team, specially of the leaders. This has to be a top bottom approach. The leaders need to ensure there are no insider-outsider concept. It is the responsibility of the leaders to ensure that their team members are coming to office with a feeling that they are valued and not to struggle to be a part of the insider group. This takes change of perspectives while making important decisions to select a team or hiring new employees. Leaders need to make a conscious effort to ensure that inclusiveness becomes part of their team’s blood.

Having said that, it is very clear that it is easier said than done but hey, no one said high performing teams will be easy. It takes a lot of effort at an individual level specially from the leaders but once done, the benefits an inclusive team brings for the organization are limitless. When these team members grow with the firm and form their own teams, inclusiveness will not be an alien concept but part of their daily activities. Organizations who can unlock the potential of their teams by making them inclusive will not only be successful but also maintain high level of employee engagement within the organization.

Smriti Pathania

31st May 2019

Time to get back to basics?

With the ever changing business world when every department is preparing itself for the disruptions, where is the HR department standing? Every department is advancing in their respective skills and processes, HR needs to stop, step back and focus where it all started. The department came into existence to be the “people management” department then to be the “people’s department” and is now standing as “business partners”. They were supposed to enable people to achieve their goals by taking care of the engagement of people within the organization and manage experiences of the employees. On the way somehow the approval of business became so important that instead of progressing as “people partners”, we ended up as business partners.

It is high time and we need to go back to our basics. Normally whenever this idea is pitched, one is always asked, this is not bringing any money so why do we focus so much on the aspect of being a “people partner”? The answer is simple: have you ever witnessed a person saying that XYZ is my dream company because they have been consistently achieving their profits? No, it is because they are considerate towards their employees or they make sure they keep their employees engaged or provide the best possible work experience to their employees. Their high profits or growth is the result of their employee satisfaction. Who is creating this atmosphere? The human resource department which is still following the basics of human resource management, keeping employee first. The department makes sure to maintain the best possible environment for their workforce and manage their hiring, policies, rules etc which enables such atmosphere.

Additionally, a happy and satisfied employee will not only stay for a longer period in the organization, she will stay loyal and work harder. In short, giving priority to your employees can have only one affect on business: positive, whether for the company or their jobs or their colleagues. This is not a short cut or a short term plan, it will take time to get the right structure or the right policy in place but the results are definitely positive and forever to stay the same if not progress any further.

No matter how much we get into analytics or AI or robotics, one thing which is going to stay is your workforce. The better they are treated, the more they stay with you. So while everyone else is focusing on the artificial machine intel, let’s keep doing our jobs to give priority to the people of the organization. Rest all will keep falling in place.

It is time to get back to basics ??

Smriti Pathania

18th September 2018

Bottoms Up Approach

It’s not just technologies that are going through a rapid change but also the demographics of our workforce. Right now, there are three different generations working around the globe – Baby boomers, Generation X and the latest Millennials. To adapt to the the latest technology we see all the courses, certifications, trainings etc happening within all organizations but what are we doing about the changes in our workforce?

Millennials are the future of this workforce but are they equipped enough to handle the organizations once they are at the leadership positions? We are talking about Millennials who like avocados on toast, who are constantly networking, who are learning about the new technologies at a much faster rate compared to any of their predecessors.

As per the recent surveys, by 2025 Millennials will be 3/4th of the global workforce. At present they are more than 15% of global workforce. Are they prepared to be responsible for the future of their organizations? Organizations dedicate a lot of their efforts to online trainings, classroom trainings and all other possible ways ignoring the fact that real training of employees is happening on-the job. Who are they getting trained by? The baby boomers or generation X. The gap between the trainers and the trainee is huge in terms of point of views, thinking, work styles, lifestyles that it creates a confusing work environment.

A survey done by EY in 2014-15 states that one of the main reasons employees were quitting is because their boss doesn’t allow them to work flexibly or their work environments doesn’t encourage team work. At an organization level, there are many policies dedicated towards the working Millennials but what about the daily work style and their team leads. The future f the workforce is getting trained by the past of the workforce. Will it really help in building our future leaders? There are high chances that we will have the replica of the baby boomers and generation X.

To be fair baby boomers and gen X have amazing leaders who have progressed with generations. They learn, unlearn and relearn making it easier for the workforce around to work with them. The point of discussion here are the leaders who are stuck with old style of working of micro managing, not allowing creativity or avoid delegating. The leadership which refuses to make ways for new ideas to come in and flourish. Millennials have far greater expectations of working internationally compared to their older counterparts. This has given rise to a completely new diverse workforce. In fact, in the last decade the number of mobile employees have increased by 25% and is likely to accelerate by 50% by 2020. We are looking at a completely diverse workforce. With two completely contradicting mind sets at work, the levels of frustration have increased. Work life balance has become extremely difficult. All this pushes talented employees to leave and move to different organizations. It not only is increasing attrition rates in an organization but also is a huge wastage of a company’s resources as they have to replenish the workforce again. This cycle never stops.

The blame is not on the previous generations but the way changes are happening around and they are unable to catch up. It is time the trainings start following the bottoms up approach. Let the Millennials be the trainer. Make the senior generations aware of them, their thinking, their lifestyles etc. Let Millennials have interactive sessions with them to raise awareness on their obsession with social media, traveling, YOLO, and everything possible. Give them a platform to learn. HR teams should take the onus to arrange these sessions. In the end they are all working for one organization and it’s progress. Yes, they might have the same age group in their family circle but the interactions in a family and within an offficial environment is different. It will be more beneficial if they are introduced to the worlds of each other outside their family circles.

This will bring best of both worlds together. We might see a baby boomer falling for Snapchat and Millennials talking about stability and savings. The point of whole exercise is not to put the pressure on Millennials to agree or replicate their predecessors. It is to make each other understand views better and work more freely. The better the understanding between them, better the working environment.

If the organizations are not exploring the ways they can tap the energy of their young population and let them be trained by their predecessors, they are just looking at the replicas of their employees who are on their way to their retirements. If they are not getting trained the right way while at the bottom of the pyramid, they won’t be the right fit for the top of the pyramid.

Smriti Pathania

Diversity in HR – Is it really helping?

In my short span of being an HR, I have been lucky to work with some outstanding organizations including a few Fortune 500 companies (not bragging). One thing I have noticed in HR is the diversity we have which is not enriching the function. I have noticed members from different walks of education, experience, industry etc. in the function. It’s not that I am against any of that but it is the reason behind it which I think is not fair. The diversity is not because it is required, it is because HR is not taken that seriously. I mean let’s face it, as a function we have a long way to cover to get the same importance as a marketing team or sales team. On top of that, having team members who are not equipped with the right knowledge is not contributing much.

To back my point, let’s see few responsibilities of the HR department. Responsibilities include recruitments, employee engagements, compensation & benefits, appraisals, performance management to mention a few. These sound like pretty important responsibilities which demands specific knowledge, experience, skills etc.

Now let’s look at the diversity we allow, are we really doing justice to our own department ? I am sure there will be a percentage of employees who with time will be an asset when they grow but the rest might not be. This percentage of employees when they grow in their roles, will they really be able to take the right decisions? The consequences can be more dire if we do this mistake at senior levels. A team lead without relevant background will not only be demotivating for the team but will be damaging for the decision making process.

Having said that it’s not that we should limit our hiring but I would suggest a more through process of hiring. If the person comes without specific knowledge or skills, we should focus on the right mindset. This makes the hiring focus more on qualitative aspects but so are our job responsibilities, so why not. Rather than having one on one conversations, let’s make it more of case studies. Gauge their decision making skills, their mind set, their thinking etc. Are these qualities inclined towards what our function stands for or are we hiring a mentality which is so business oriented that it will dilute the essence of the HR function? This gives the function a diversity which is not hampering the growth of the function but helping it grow.

These are small steps which help us take our function further ahead. Like every passionate HR I would want my function to be as respected as any other function and not just be considered a back up option of one’s career.

Smriti Pathania

The Journey Begins

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Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton