HR Zone update

 

    I've just started a regular series of updates from the HR blogosphere on HR Zone.  Take a look at the first update here.  (I state in the update that... but actually, I hope it may encourage more HR practitioners to become regular readers, listeners and participants in social media as well).

 

Technorati Tags: HR Zone,Blogosphere,Bulletin

 

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My interview on the Cranky Middle Manager

 

    I've been interviewed on Wayne Turmel's podcast, the Cranky Middle Manager, talking about HCM, the difference to HRM, and trying to persuade Wayne that despite its clunkiness, the term HCM is worth using (I didn't succeed!).

Sorry for the sound quality on this.  I had some problems with my phone line in the earlier Talking HR shows and am frustrated that they seem to have returned here.  But as always, Wayne does a good interview, so turn up the volume and see what you think (if you're still having problems listening, I'm going to write a post distilling the main points I discussed with Wayne, ie the main differences between HCM and HRM, so come back for this again soon).

 

Wayne's show notes:

0:00 No matter how you say it, welcome to the show. Today we finally tackle one of my least favorite terms, Human Capital with a very smart guy who uses it a lot, Jon Ingham. This episode is dedicated to Khosrow 1 of Persia... all the traits a manager should have….delegation, communication and the restraint to only kill the family members that really have it coming. Oh, and a shameless plug for our upcoming webinar course on How To Create and Manage a Remote Team.

4:03 The quote of the week is from my boy Michel de Montaigne . Poverty of mind…. open up your mental wallets and let us pour the smarts in, gang.

4:50 Jon doesn’t get out much if this is exciting for him but we’ll take it. Elephant in the room time: the term Human Capital makes me crazy. Why shouldn’t we hate it? Even Jon doesn’t use it in front of civilians. Basically, Human Capital is the OUTPUT people create from their work.

11:11 What’s the difference between organizations that look at human capital vs organizations that just use them as resources? HR tends to rely on best practices, HCM starts to lead organizations to more innovative solutions.

15:05 What does this all mean to us as managers? People management becomes even more critical- oh thanks a lot.

18:06 I go on a bit of a rant about how the manager’s job is getting tougher and no one seems to have it figured out. Is it easier to think differently in other countries where there isn’t an established way of doing things or is everyone flailing about equally?

25:41 Jon has his own international podcast on BlogTalk radio. Listen to Talking HR here

 

Technorati Tags: Cranky Middle Manager,Wayne Turmel,Jon Ingham,#182

 

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Talking HR Show #012 (Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For 2009 and book review Of 'Succession')

 

Listen to the show

 

Show notes:

1:14 mins	Publication of the Sunday Times Best Small Companies to Work For 2009.
4:50	Jon: Adding new features to the show and new book reviews (through relationships with McGraw Hill).
7:40	Krishna: This book review: Marshall Goldsmith's Succession - Are you Ready? (Harvard Business Press Memo to the CEO series).
9:30	Krishna's busy month and new book: 42 Rules of Marketing in a Recession.
12:00	Jon's recent trip to Dubai and dramatic change in mood across Middle East; plus upcoming trip to US for Human Capital Institute summit.
16:10	Jon: highlights of the Sunday Times Best Small Companies in the UK (separate from Great Plans to Work Institute lists).
19:40	Krishna / Jon: numbers of organisations, amount of work involved in, and benefits of applying.
24:30	Jon: Comparing increased satisfaction and engagement scores to declining levels of trust (show #011).
29:00	Krishna: The top 10 small companies.
34:40	Jon: Role of HR practices in developing best companies.
36:30	Krishna: The opportunity to participate in this even during a recession.
38:30	Jon: Lame link to Succession book.
40:00	Krishna / Jon: value of the book.
46:30	Jon: Krishna: review of Succession book.
53:40	Krishna: Need for CEO's / others to have courage and listen to key stakeholders.
57:20	Krishna: Summary and end.

 

Check out the resources we referred to on the show:

• Best Companies on Twitter
• Krishna's videos on getting started with Twitter / social networks
• Krishna De: 42 Rules of Marketing in a Recession
• Human Capital Institute
• UK Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For
• Best Places to Work Institute:
• US (Fortune)
• Ireland (Irish Independent)
• UK (FT - to be published in May 2009)
• Marshall Goldsmith: Succession - Are you Ready?
• Marshall Goldsmith website
• Marshall Goldsmith blog

 

Get involved with the show:

• Subscribe to the show (RSS)
• Subscribe (itunes) - visit the Blogtalkradio site

 

 

• Join us for future shows (check Blogtalkradio for schedule): +1 347 202 0722        
• Email us at talkinghrpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com
• Contact my co-presenter: Krishna De
• Follow us on Twitter: joningham, krishnade

 

 

Technorati Tags: Talking HR,podcast,show notes,Best Companies 2009,Marshall Goldsmith,Succession - Are You Ready?

 

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Face to face, tweet to tweet

 

     I’ve been reading quite a lot about social media over the last few weeks, and as a result, I’ve been considering my own investment in and use of this technology.

I’m still spending a lot of time blogging – writing, reading, and commenting. The reading part at least has been made significantly easier now I’ve got an iphone, and have downloaded Google’s Reader onto it. This means I can catch up on the latest feed updates in any spare five minutes, and love the ability to quickly scroll through all the latest posts from the fee hundred feeds I’ve subscribed to.

I’m putting more time into podcasting, although I still feel very much an amateur at this. But working with Krishna on TalkingHR is great, and I’m slowly beginning to feel more confident with this, and able to start planning new developments as well.

And I’m also starting to get hooked with Twitter. I think what made the difference here was abandoning the desire to only follow those people I know (not many of whom use Twitter). I’m now following most of the HR people I’ve been able to find (using lists provided by HR Zone and Steve Boese to add to those I was already following). But I’m also following the great and good of the social media world, and following their conversations has highlighted many interesting points, links and resources.

All together, I grow increasingly convinced that social media provides a great basis to both increase knowledge / the rate of learning, and to develop relationships.

So, I’ve been thinking about a recent post from Matthew Taylor on his RSA blog, contrasting the use of social media to the power of face-to-face communication:

"The big question is whether on-line collaboration will always be much weaker and shallower than off-line or whether it is simply that we haven’t yet developed the tools to compensate for the absence of the kind of face to face dynamics seen yesterday in Washington."

 

I don’t think it is shallower. I probably actually know a lot more people through social media than I do through having met them in person (meaning that I have some sort of relationship with them, and that I could call them up, email them, or DM them on twitter, and they’d have some sort of understanding of who I am – as opposed to someone I met at a conference a year ago who has probably forgotten the fact that we even met). And some of these connections have grown quite deep – I feel I could trust the person, even though we’ve never actually met.

The tools are here, and you're missing out if you're not using them.

 

Technorati Tags: Social media,blog,podcast,Twitter,HR,relationships

 

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Batelco’s management of different generations

 

More on the Etisalat Mddle East HR conference:

 

 

Ahmed Al Khalifa from Bahrain’s Batelco gave a good presentation describing some of the main differences between generations.

I thought this part of the presentation was a bit generic – you’d have heard the same (I have) from speakers in many different areas of the world, and it would have been good to have been given some insight on Batelco’s thoughts about generational differences within Bahrain or the Middle East.

However, I was more impressed as the presentation progressed and Al Khalifa moved onto Batelco’s attempts to try to appeal to the different generations in different ways.

A major part of this is about mindset – ensuring managers and employees understand that different ways of behaving between generations aren’t about lack of commitment or poor work ethics but are down to differing styles – this relates particularly to team working.

Secondly, HR needs to attempt to satisy all generations working together in the same workplace, and to reap the benefits of each group’s unique skills and experience.

 

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: Batelco,Bahrain,Ahmed Al Khalifa,generations,differences,human resources,development,Etisalat Academy,Middle East

 

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A recession in Arabia

 

   I've been back in Dubai doing some work, having more meetings and presenting at an HR conference.

It's my first trip back since November, and the mood has changed dramatically - both in my clients and contacts I met in the UAE, and in participants at the conference who came from across the whole of the Middle East.  It's certainly been a complete reversal since my first, hugely optimistic post on the UAE last April.

HR people working in the UAE are now very somber, and especially so in Dubai itself.  Local banks haven't been affected in the same way as those in the west, but businesses are still impacted by the fall-off in global trade.  And people are concerned that Dubai resembles a giant pyramid scheme in which people have invested in new developments, sold out and re-invested in bigger opportunities - a model that only works while there remain new bigger developments to invest in.  Across the region, people are particularly concerned because of their governments' lack of transparency - they don't really know how bad things are.  However, in Dubai, there's widespread speculation that Abu Dhabi's latest investment of another $10bn of its oil wealth isn't going to cover the state's debts.

So UAE firms are taking the same actions the rest of us are, and are facing the same dilemmas too. At the conference, Ahmed Al Khalifa, Group GM Human Resources & Development at Batelco in Bahrain spoke about the need for HR to give the right advice to executives – to be surgical rather than think across the board when planning layoffs – and to look for areas of inefficiency.  And the CEO of Mobily in Saudi Arabia emphasised the need for leaders to role model the right behaviours, those which customers require (linked to Ulrich's leadership brand).

But I still believe the cloudy view has a silver lining.  Businesses in the UAE have been growing so quickly that their HR teams have had little time to do anything other than recruit.  There's now some slack and spare time in the system and wise HR Directors will use this opportunity to increase the professionalism of their teams, and to prepare for the future (or as Annie McKee said at the conference, to create an architecture for leadership once we come out of these turbulent times).  There's also a greater opportunity to attract talent from the west, who may not have been attracted to travel to the region before, but due to layoffs here, may now have enough incentive.

At the very least, the recession's made it a lot easier to get a taxi.

 

Technorati Tags: Middle East,UAE HR,Dubai,recession,HR,Ahmed Al Khalifa,Batelco

 

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The Layoff

 

   There's a great case study with commentaries from four experts in this month's Harvard Business Review.  It's called 'The Layoff' and as the name suggests, looks at one organisation about to embark on a redundancy programme.

Linked to my last few posts, one key theme in the expert, and amateur comments is the need to avoid layoffs altogether if at all possible.  For example, Rob Sutton comments that:

"Unfortunately, too many executives blindly assume that layoffs are the best way to cut costs. With the exception of a lower-level vice president, none of the managers in this case seriously challenges the notion that 10% of the employees must go. The top executives don’t discuss alternatives such as pay cuts, reduced benefits, unpaid vacations or days off, or incentives for voluntary departure.

Nor do they consider how long it will take for the savings from the head-count reduction to kick in. A Bain & Company study of layoffs at S&P 500 firms during the 2001 downturn showed that it took them six to 18 months to realize savings from job cuts. And, when calculating savings, most executives fail to account for the cost of recruiting, hiring, and training new people who will be needed when good times return—let alone consider the damage to morale and productivity.  Those costs are often much higher than people imagine, which helps explain why the study also found that firms that made layoffs their last resort and cut the fewest employees performed better than their competitors did."

 

I agree with Sutton's perspective, and also with those commenters who argue that a combined approach is needed - reinforcing performance management in order to remove lower performers a bit more effectively, looking at slack in the system, putting less strategic projects on hold etc.

However, one thing I think has been missing from the debate is the need to review what the business is doing, where it's going, and the resources it needs to arrive at its destination.  We always (OK, normally) have a sensible objective in mind when we recruit.  Similarly, we need to have a clear rationale in front of us when we lay off.  We need to understand how much business has or will reduce, and therefore how many people we need to implement a certain business process.  Reductions in force should be driven by the number of people we need to achieve our objectives, not simply by a desire to save costs.

 

Technorati Tags: Harvard Business Review,Bronwyn Fryer,The Layoff,Bob Sutton,redundancies

 

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Avoiding redundancy

 

   Most of my recent posts have focused on preparing organisations for the future, once the current recession starts to turn, or at least to stabilise.  But clearly, all organisations have difficult times to navigate until then.

But this still doesn't mean that they need to react in a knee-jerk manner making savage cuts which will make life more difficult later on.

There is clear evidence that redundancies cost much more than business leaders sometimes think (for example, see the CIPD's equation to calculate the cost of redundancy) and various models for organisations to use in considering alternatives (for example, see Peter Capelli's advice to use real option theory).

And there are plenty of organisations that are are being much more progressive in their short-term response to the recession.  In fact, the reaction of my current clients and other organisations I'm in regular contact with, suggests that they're treating this recession in a very different way to how they've responded to previous difficult times.  There are a number of possible reasons for this, some of which are to do with the increasing proportion of work which is knowledge based, and therefore relies on collaboration, innovation, customer service etc - all activities which are hit harder but sudden reductions in resources.

So organisations are looking at a range of other options, and the CIPD's February 2009 labour market outlook reports that:

• 50% of organisations have implemented a recruitment freeze
• 40% of organisations have terminated temporary / agency contracts
• 19% have introduced more flexible working
• 17% have cut bonuses
• 15% have introduced short-time working, and
• 7% have cut wages.

 

One organisation that's been written about quite extensively is KPMG.  Their programme, called Flexible Futures, is designed to respond to the collaborative, knowledge based environment I referred to earlier (Head of People for Europe, Rachel Campbell notes, "One of the main drivers is to make sure that should things deteriorate we can keep our team together.  We've invested an awful lot of money in recruiting and developing a talented team, and we want a more positive, responsible solution than redundancy should we be faced with a deterioration."

Under the programme, KPMG's 11,000 partners and staff have been asked to volunteer to change their terms and conditions of employment for 18 months, enabling the firm to require those who have agreed to the change to work a four-day week or take between four and 12 weeks’ sabbatical at 30% pay, with the maximum annual salary loss capped at 20%.

It's not a strategy that would work for all organisations.  30% of pay still tends to be quite a bit at KPMG but might not suffice in many others.  And as Management Today points out, "Absenting yourself from the office for a long period (or even one day a week) might keep you out of the firing line - but it also might make your employer realise how easily they can manage without you. KPMG staff will no doubt be worried that they might not have a job to come back to when they get back from their holidays..."

The key factor that makes it work is trust (the central factor in my change for the future model).  As Campbell notes, "Flexible Futures will stand or fall by the level of trust we have created. Only if our people trust our leaders to exercise the options sensitively, taking into account individual situations wherever possible, will they sign up. It is a great test of the culture we have built."

 

Technorati Tags: Redundancy,alternative options,KPMG,Rachel Campbell,trust

 

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Scenarios for HR's future in the global reset

 

I've been posting on how organisations may change, and how HR may need to respond, to what the world leaders gathering in Davos earlier this month referred to as a 'fundamental reboot', or 'global reset', a turning point in the way that the world, and its' businesses, work.   I've also explained how scenarios can be constructed for potential futures by identifying two main dimensions of change, and looking at how these dimensions interact.

For the global reset, I think the two main dimensions that concern HR are: 1.   whether or not business will bounce back, eg whether stock markets will return to their former levels in 2010, or not until 2020, 2030..., and 2.   whether HR is seen as a critical part of a business' strategy in responding to whatever economic conditions they find themselves in.

These two dimensions can be drawn up into the following matrix:

 

 

The four quadrants, which I've named after forms of transportation, and have linked to levels in the value triangle, are reviewed further below:

 

Milk float round (flat lining business environment, no change in the role of people management)

• Milk floats have a motor (the people in an organisation) - but don't expect anyone to get excited about it!  The focus here is on value for money - increasing the efficiency of the workforce, and of HR, for example by outsourcing.  HR will keep a mainly administrative role.

 

Yachts at sea (business has bounced back, but people management isn't seen as key to the recovery)

• Yachts also have motors, but they travel fastest, or at least most excitingly, when they're powered by other forces.  The role of people management and HR is adding value - supporting the business to do what the business needs to do.  Key people management processes will be leadership development, succession planning, talent management, organisation development etc.

 

Deep sea submarines (business is still flat lining, but organisations realise that if they're going to compete, they can only do so through their people)

• I like a submarine as a metaphor for this scenario because I can picture the careful use of sonar to identify new opportunities, but also the risky nature of this means of transport.  And it's nuclear powered of course - so maintaining the motor (people) is critical to its use.  The focus of HR is about creating value - finding new ways of doing things based upon the capability and engagement of people in the business.  Key activities will include innovative approaches to reduce costs, perhaps tapping human capital that lies outside of the organisation, the use of performance management, variable compensation etc.

 

Formula One track (business has bounced back - but needs to be done in a different way - people are king)

• Brrm, brrm.  The Formula One track scenario is about unleashing potential in people, liberating them to perform and to take advantage of opportunities for innovation and growth.  Organisations are human capital-centric and like the deep sea submarine scenario, HR is about creating value - but here it's about using innovative approaches to provide new opportunities rather than to save costs.  This may include, for example, segmenting the workforce and personalising support to key individuals.  Key activities include developing and implementing employee value propositions; engaging and retaining talent.

 

The formula one track is the environment I've been writing about in my last series of posts, but I'll leave it to you to judge whether it's likely to come around, and of course different countries, sectors and organisations may find themselves in different places on the chart.  But one thing is clear - the opportunity for HR looks very different in each one.

 

 

Photo credits: Oxyman, RLing, Kamalsall.

 

Technorati Tags: HR scenarios,scenario planning,recession,HR strategy,people management strategy

 

 

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HR scenario planning

 

In my last post, I wrote that I'd be looking at whether a 'global reset' is likely to take place, and if so, what form it's likely to take.  However, I still don't feel I have a strong handle on how likely this is - I still see a lot of signs that business leaders and HR practitioners are considering how thing may need to be quite different in the future, but also an approximately equal number of signs suggesting that people are returning to their previous positions (albeit in a rather less buoyant state).  So rather than predicting a single likely future with little understanding of how likely this is, I will provide a few different scenarios.

First however, I'd like to describe the use of scenario planning in business, and HR.  This is a technique originally used by Shell and which helped them predict the first oil price shocks of the 1970s (unfortunately, I don't know anyone who used it successfully to predict the current recession!).  I use a methodology described by a former manager at Andersen Consulting, Rob Baldock, in his book Destination Z, which requires the identification of two major axis for the ‘logics’, representing the most influential and the most uncertain factors facing an organisation.

A relevant business example of this is McKinsey's illustration of hard, harder and hardest times from their recent article, Leading through Uncertainty:

 

 

 

And some recent HR examples include PwC's Managing Tomorrow's People: The Future of Work to 2020:

 

 

and SHRM's scenarios for the future of HRM in 2015:

 

 

 

I'll continue in my next post looking at scenarios for HR in the current environment.

 

Technorati Tags: HR scenarios,scenario planning,SHRM scenarios

 

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