Since late 80's,the field of HRD has now become a full fledged discipline with lot of scope for
practitioners, academics, as well as young professionals to explore and learn.
The field is also going through a set of paradoxical situations as we enter the new millennium. What are they? More and more CEOs emphasize the importance of human resources as a strategic tool for developing business; Banking Industry now seeks specific HR Plan for sanctioning major projects; the Social sector has now awakened to the need for developing its people in order to manage the people‟s organization effectively and efficiently. Most of these changes were predicted many years back, but very few organisations geared to face them. Today all these elements and many more are known to all, but still very few are really working towards developing a learning organizational culture? Why? My constant search for an answer leads me to a paradoxical reality that our Culture is not yet "developed" to accept these changes. The world is changing. No particular management style could be prescribed as „the‟ solution for managing business. It has become highly contextual and environmental - we have to constantly evolve new mechanisms which will help us make strategic decisions with a competitive edge. The case of what is happening in Japan is an eye opener.The recent reports indicate that things are moving differently in Japan. Japanese management style which was famous for long-term job, security etc. is now cutting jobs and reducing people. In order to cushion the impact, they re-hire the employees on an yearly contract system, move production abroad, use more temporary employees; converts regular employees into suppliers; and uses voluntary retirement schemes. Increasing attention is being paid to short-term factors at the expense of long-term accountability which in-turn may de-stabilize harmony, stability, continuity and consensus for which Japanese Management was famous for 6. Let us look at what is happening across the world in some of the critical areas such as Reward System, Training, Customer Orientation, and Team Building and how HRD professionals have to re-orient to the changing times.
REWARD SYSTEM:
An effective reward system, according to General Electric, depends on
i) Not linking pay to power,
ii) Making compensation comprehensible ,
iii) Spreading the news,
iv) Paying in time, v) Making rewards reversible,
vi) Awarding non-financial incentives,
vii) Matching the reward system to the culture
One auto-supply company in US was mystified when some of its best factory workers began to take jobs at a rival firm which offered inferior pay packages. The competitor paid higher hourly wages, but lower fringe benefits. The auto supply company found that their compensation package is not clear to many employees. The auto-supply firm solved the problem by creating a clearly written booklet, complete with cartoon drawings, which explained all the perks.
The world is changing. The author tries to give a global perspective on a few key systems of HRD. He attempts to link this with a few cases of these practices in Indian context and also reflect on how the HRD professionals have to re-look at the profession and themselves.
A company which hands out a $1000 spot bonus, but tells only the recipient, will motivate only the recipient. Moreover,secrecy breeds rumors. Surveys invariably show that people understate how well they are paid in relation to their peers. However not all workers like being singled out publicly for praise. Some Japanese workers, for example, consider it an affront to the harmony of the group.
Some companies need authorization from so many management levels that, by the time an extra lump sum appears in the employee‟s wage packet, he or she has forgotten how it was earned. General Electric invites to assess and reward their peers on the spot. GE Medical Systems lets an employee nominate any colleague for a $25 gift certificate, in appreciation of exemplary work. GE has given out 10,000 such awards over the year 1996. When it comes to rewarding employees, the key is not how much more you have to give, but how well you give what you have got.
TRAINING
The training systems and programs are under going a sea change within the country as well as in the other countries. Companies are cutting costs. Training like everything else, is on the hit list. But a firm‟s ability to learn faster than its competitors may be its only sustainable competitive advantage. Company restructuring and the speed of change mean that workers must broaden their skill base and be more thoroughly trained throughout their working lives. The only way to do so is to shift from the traditional training systems to strategic training systems.. Box 1 indicates the major differences between Strategic training systems (STS) and Traditional Training Systems (TTS).
US business will spend more than $30 bullion on training this year. But will organisations get
value for money? The only way is to change the criteria against which training effectiveness is measured to reflect the changing demands made on the training function.
i) Training Programs:
In a group exercise conducted as a part of the Individual and Organizational Assessment Centre Programme at Bangalore in November,‟96, by Academy of HRD the group developed many models for effective evaluation systems of a Training Programme. The participants consisted of managers and senior managers from Whirlpool, Ashima, L & T, JTM Mobile, Escorts, Greaves, Tata Consultancy, SAS, Billimoria etc. and free lance consultants.
Learning from the exercise were:
The transfer of learning must take place for organizational enrichment and corporate performance, and this must be linked to the vision of the organization.
Evaluation of training could be done by generating data on a number of training days, cost /benefit analysis,number of internal faculty, percentage of drop outs etc.
Training planning must look at pre-training status, present status and needs, and future needs.
Utilization of feedback
Trainers competence and credibility should be taken into consideration.
Training must follow SMART principle while evaluating the impact of it: Specific, Measurable, Attainable objectives which are Relevant and Time bound.
The criteria for evaluation may consist of system awareness, system skills, system discipline, system equity, system feedback, and system benchmark and re-design.
The changing scenario across the world now talk about the following criteria for developing
training programs:
Highly people centered
Helps to bring all people in the organization as a whole system.
Involving Key Stock-holders - People from organisations, Market, Investors, Policy makers (if possible), CEO‟s view.
Highly interactive and activity oriented.
Built on the principle of responsibility and open communication.
Breaking communication / bureaucratic hurdles.
Andersen Consulting invests $280 million a year in training for more than 38,000 people worldwide. Each partner‟s share of the bill is $280,000 a year. To keep the partners contributing, the company ensures that training is consistent with client‟s needs, and remains in tune with business realities.
Car-maker Saturn gives each of its 9,200 workers 90 hours a year of training. This amounts to percent of their work time. Saturn attempts to find what difference training makes, even when the company cannot tie training to the bottom line. The company carries out a survey of workers before and after training.
Federal Express goes so far as to test the job knowledge of all 40,000 of its US couriers and
customer service agents by having them plug into an interactive PC -based program which asks questions specific to their individual assignments. The results play a key part in their job
evaluations.
Employees at US memory-chip maker Intel are similarly expected to apply their training on the job to produce results. The company‟s $250 million training investment accounts for 5.7 percent of the payroll. Most of Intel‟s training is done by employee volunteers. Senior managers are encouraged to put in a minimum of four days a year as classroom instructors. Teaching is a component of executive bonuses.
At Johnson & Johnson, line managers tell the Training department what they want training to
accomplish and the training department explains what training can be expected to contribute
towards these objectives. The training department makes clear that training plays a role, but that other factors are also involved.
ii) Training Systems:
The existing methods, tools and approaches for assessing training systems are not fault free. Apart from this dissatisfaction with the existing assessment methods, the need for developing new and innovative methods for auditing training systems is felt more strongly now than ever before. There is a need to align the training system and the organizational system. The training system-internal/external trainers, training center, training policy, manual etc. and the organizational system-vision, mission, strategic plans, people, technology etc.
Motorola University which began on a $2 million shoestring and a staff of three now spends more than $120 million a year. Yet Motorola shies away from precise bottom line evaluation of its training expenditure. It simply declares that training has yielded $30 for every dollar invested, and saved more than $3 billion in costs since 1967.
The company cites greater motivation, higher quality, changed attitudes and more open and
honest communication as „evidence‟ that training is working, but admits that 'proof' of its effect on company profits is harder to find.
Motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson also offers evidence rather than proof of good value from
training expenditure. Says Richard Teerlink, president and chief executive: “We know training
works when we do things quicker and better. This is not rocket science.” The company gets products to market faster by training design and manufacturing teams in a technique called failure mode and effect analysis. The company answers three questions: what could go wrong, what is the probability that it will go wrong, and what would happen to the product if it did go wrong? The analysis allows the company‟s teams to make design changes which avert these failures.
iii) Training Institute:
Although not every organization has the financial resources to fund an aggressive and well-
thought-out training agenda, some lessons can be learned from the content of the Quaker
University program:
Define the result you want to achieve before you define your curriculum
Ensure that stakeholders-the internal customers-are involved in selecting or developing course curricula.
If possible pilot-test the courses with the internal customer and be prepared to make further refinements to ensure that your deliverable will be achieved.
Design your courses to be facilitated rather than instructed.
Draw from the industry‟s best practices and from the areas of process improvement, change management, project management, bench-marking and team facilitation.
The close involvement of stakeholders throughout the company in developing of courses at
Quaker University holds well for the success of the initiative.
If traditional bottom line accountability eludes training, the reason may be that the nature of
training, like that of work ,has changed. In addition to its original purpose of building skills,
training now also helps to build teams,change cultures and communicate company values.
Training also has a role in the selection of people . The kind of information which has to be
learned can dictate the kind of person being hired.
US insurance company Allstate is linking education more closely to human resource decisions about compensation and succession. Training at Banc One Corporation - a large bank holding company based in Columbus, Ohio - focus on selection and succession as well as skills. The company judges the points to consider to prepare for the future, then finds and trains the people who will acquire the skills most efficiently. Some of the major Indian companies have started doing the same by selecting future managers who are star performers and providing them necessary inputs through rigorous management programmes developed and executed by top management institutions in the country.
As training changes to meet the needs of today's environment, evaluation of training is also
changing. If bottom line proof of training effectiveness is hard to get, look for the evidence of
training‟s overall impact on the company.
It is difficult to argue against the need for effective training in today‟s reengineered, downsized, globalized, technologically advanced economy, where useful knowledge has the half -life of a chocolate bar in a nursery. Is it too simplistic to say that if training feels like the right thing to do, it probably is the right thing to do?
HRD AND CUSTOMER ORIENTATION:
The mobile phone industry is so fast moving that British company Mercury One-2-One has to
issue a daily-update on changed procedures to customer service employees. A dictionary of
managerial personal success factors was identified. These included innovation, customer focus working in partnership and coaching. All 20 were grouped under five clusters: Understanding what needs to be done; Building a winning team; managing self; Working with others; and Focusing on results.
The combination of critical competencies for different kinds of management roles was identified. These profiles were agreed with line managers. The system will allow One-2-One to recruit people against the critical abilities needed for the job, rather than what is so often a more subjective method. Structured interviewing and testing of job applicants will be possible. It is commonly accepted that the typical interview is only around 15 per cent reliable, whereas structured interviewing and testing are more likely to be up to 63 per cent and 54 percent reliable predictors of success respectively.
The Academy of HRD‟s Individual Organization Assessment Centre approach would be useful for many organisations in the country to have their own Assessment Centres. Academy has already trained around 120 professionals in this unique approach.
TEAM BUILDING:
An information technology company invested heavily in creating teams, but found no improvement in either productivity or quality. The firm‟s tradition of command and control was undermining the teams, they lacked resources and accountability, and people continued to be rewarded on individual rather than team performance.
Failures can be traced to insufficient or inappropriate external support structures. What goes on outside the team is as important as what goes on inside.
1 Appropriate team leadership, membership, evolution and dynamics: Issues to consider are: Are the key disciplines represented?, Can one individual represent more than one discipline?, Do members understand how their performance will be measured? Is there a workable mix of skills and experience? Are members available for the time needed to do the job well? Are external customer/supplier partners represented?
2 Appropriate team type: A true team is characterized by a high degree of independence over a relatively long period of time, as the members work together toward a single, collective goal.
3 Strong team sponsorship: While fewer managers may be needed in a team environment, the significant change is in the nature of their work, not the volume. Managers must shift from being decision makers and work planners to being coaches who encourage and ensure effective planning and distributed decision making.
4 Managers should ensure that the support systems are aligned, establish appropriate performance management techniques, training programs, roles and responsibilities, and understand the stages that underlie constructive teamwork.
5 Organizational linkages and support systems: The linkages between teams and existing organizational units need to be articulated clearly with well-defined roles and responsibilities.
A job only begins with the decision to use teams. To realize the full potential, management must establish the systems, and vision that will help people to work together to respond quickly, flexibly and creatively to customer needs.
No organization should assume that the implementation of teamwork will be a quick and painless process. The planning stages are, perhaps, the most important. Decisions made at
this time will be hard to reverse. It may seem temptingly logical to decide to forego initial planning and training. If teams are to be self-managing, they should be so from the word go. Some may succeed, but many more will break up under stress. Adequate external organisation support is essential to give teams the technical and management skills they need if self-management is to be a success.
WHAT TO DO? RE-ENGINEER HUMAN RESOURCES.
Most companies in some way see human resources specialists as yesterday‟s news or last
year‟s fashion.2 According to Jac Fitzend, Founder and President of the Saratoga Institute, using a checklist, the human resource departments can make sure that they are doing the right things, and ensure that the right things are done in the right way through a few guidelines.
Human resource departments must start by re-engineering their own staff. Each department is likely to contain:
Superstars -Bright, creative and effective people who see the overall picture and grasp the possibilities which spring from integrating human resource specialists.
Treasures: Smart, intuitive, practical people who know how to get things done. However, they do not have the spark of genius of the superstars. Treasures make up about 10 per cent of human resource specialists.
Dependable who can be depended on to keep the wheels turning, no matter what the weather or how sick they feel. They constitute about 40 percent of the profession.
Wannabes have their heart in the right place and are trying to become more dependable, but often do not give the job their full attention-perhaps because of problems at home. About 20 percent of human resources specialists are wannabes. The “wannabes” can be worked with. It may take a lot of effort and patience to understand them, but they can be helped.
Zombies may be nice and even have a better-than -average IQ but often do not know why they are employed or what they are supposed to be doing. They make up around 25 percent of human resource specialists and usually drag down the rest of the department. The “Zombies” have no place in the re-engineered human resource department. They should be helped to find another job, to which they are better suited.
Some of these types have to be provided training in: Business methods, analytical skills, and
problem solving.
It has now become a necessity for HR specialist to be a value generation partner in Business,
and Society. Many consultants believe that human resource department of the next century will be composed of a few highly skilled, business-oriented consultants. Hiring will be done by agencies; training will be provided by outsiders, under contract; and employee records will be handled by a service bureau. There will be no need for 90 percent of the activities in today‟s human resource department.
To avoid this, human resource specialists must concentrate on the 10 percent of their activity
that adds value. They must change from being administrators and implementer to value-generating partners.
However all this information will not help us to do the real action. Most of us may still state that in foreign countries the culture is different, the environment is conducive etc. For people who still hang on such view points, let us look at the two largest organisations in the world and see what is happening there.
Boeing, world‟s largest Aircraft manufacturer, has 1,08,000 work force which is militant and
tightly unionized. Many new reforms started by its new CEO, Philip Condit, are still to find favour with Boeing‟s work force and many of them are still cynical. However the new CEO who was chosen out of his higher Inter-personal skills and ability to motivate people has started his job of befriending this work force by: providing a new meaning to relationships: He meets the employees at their place, discuss-es with them about difficulties and see that necessary actions are being taken. Recently, he went unescorted to the striking employees, to find out their demands and discussed with them.making workers from machinists to partners in work. Developing strict selection process: A four hour aptitude test; layers of assessment methods to select the person with the right attitude and mental make up for Boeing. providing more emphasis on communications and developing new channels of communications.
Another case is of McDonalds, world‟s largest retailer in Fast-food industry,has one million work force in 91 countries. The value of Human resources at McDonalds is very high. The HR systems available at McDonalds are:
Best practices from around the world and work with local staff and blend these practices by understanding the country.
Better pay package.
Customer focus (while selecting the job), the right attitude is seen as more important than technical ability. In the final phase, the specific skills and general knowledge will be taken into consideration.
Importance of detailed planning is a critical element in McDonald‟s business success.
CONCLUSION
Effective human resource management can no longer be concerned with simply executing a
standard set of policies and procedures. Rather, it requires questioning and understanding the relationships between choices in managing people, the strategies and goals of the organisation and the possibilities presented by the external environment.
Today‟s competitive environment features a rapid technological change. The HR is becoming increasingly global. The work force, comprises of not just men and women with different sorts of career objectives, but potential workers from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The questions to be looked at are: What do we want our system of HRD to produce and reinforce - what skills, what behaviours? What strategic capabilities do we believe our choices of managing people will create? Do these capabilities have enough value in today‟s marketplace to make them worth the investment? What are the alternatives?
Do we have a plan for getting there from here? Where immediate cost pressures may seem
acute, will steps taken to address these problems (such as slashing payroll) destroy the organisation‟s chance to survive in the long run? Or are they necessary if the company is to
move into the future on a sound footing? If the answer is that drastic measures are necessary, is there a clear HRD plan in place to create competitive advantage once costs are reduced? This question-raising path may be risky for individual managers to engage in but it is a prerequisite for organisations if they are to manage human resources effectively. The process may also be frustrating, for many answers will not be explicit; costs and benefits of particular approaches can not be known with certainty.
The future of HRD does not lie in progressive initiatives unconnected to business goals or
organisational and environmental realities. Neither does it lie in the production of standardised sets of best practices. Rather, it lies in ensuring that the choices made in managing people are made sensibly and synergistic.
HRD professionals of the country should start thinking of Strategic HRD with a development and futuristic perspective. It is better to be proactive, rather than letting the day of struggle and survival decide the destiny of the professional and the profession and thereby the discipline.
REFERENCES:
1. Blickstein, Steve, “Does Training pay off?”, Across the Board, June 1996, pp. 16-20.
2. Fitzend, Jac, “On the edge of oblivion”, HR Magazine.,Vol.41 No.5, pp.85-88. (HRM International Digest, November-December,‟96).
3. Kerr, Steven, “Risky business: the new pay game”, Fortune, 22 - July 1996.
4. Lubove, Seth.,„Destroying the old hierarchies‟, Forbes, 3 June,‟96 pp.62-71.
5. Parket-Gore, Shirley, “Perception is really using 360-degree appraisal against behavioural
competencies to effect organizational change and improve management performance,” Career Development in International,Vol. No.3,1996,pp.24-27.
6. Schmidt, Richard, “Japanese management, recession style”,which was originally published in Business Horizons, Vol.39 No. 2,pp. 70-75.
7. Sethumadhavan, P., “Strategic Evaluation and Assessment of Training in Evaluating HRD
(Ed.),Pareek Udai (1997),Jaipur HRD Research Foundation, Jaipur.
8. Solomon C.M.,„Big Mac‟s McGlobal HR Secrets,” Pesonnel Journal, Vol.75 No.:4, pp.46-54.
9. "Teamwork and the high performance company", HRM international Digest, November-
December,‟96.
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