cont

ents

27

9

35

21

53Cover Storyinspire

inform10 Chapter News

18 Learning Centre

illuminate36 Column by Prof. Arup Varma

37 HR for the Millennial Workforce: Needed a New Protocol

41 Creating Future Skills: Through SMT

45 Organisation Learning and the Role of Leaders

22 Culture vs Strategy in the battle for Existence

54 Numbers

57 Amazed

incubate

imagine

February 2012

In this round of research we have identified six domains of competencies that HR professionals must demonstrate to be personally effective and to impact business performance.

Team

Editor

K. Srinivas Rao editor@nationalhrd.org

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Editorial Team (Minds in Motion)

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NHRDN 76th Board Meeting in Lucknow

National President’s MessageDear Members,Wish you all a very happy new year !As we enter into the New Year, I look back with satisfaction at the pace of activities that were kept up in the year 2011. The year 2011 involved laying down the blue print for the future and move towards realization of these plans through enhanced activities and scope of NHRDN. All this was possible with the active co-operation of the Chapters and all our members who are the operational arms for the furtherance of HRD movement in the country.I would like to convey my sincere appreciation to the Chapters for organizing events in their particular cities on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of NHRDN. I am extremely pleased to see the wonderful involvement of Chapters in these special events. I truly value the commitment of all the Chapter teams and the members of NHRDN, as a network. The year 2012 brings with it the opportunity to improve the quality of experience with NHRDN, and strengthen the HRD movement in developing and maintaining the standards of professional excellence in HRD through ‘SHARED LEADERSHIP’ based on GEN Framework.In the current year we will be focusing on critical aspects of our growth plan such as creating Global and Domestic Alliances, Membership Expansion, Membership Value Add, Involvement of Gen-Y and several other new initiatives.As the first step towards strengthening our Global Alliances with AHRI – Australian Human Resource Institute, we are organizing a delegation from India to Australia (Melbourne) to attend the – 14th World Human Resource Congress – HRIZON 2012 in September 2012. The first such delegation had attended the AHRI National Conference in 2009.For more details about HRIZON 2012 you can log on to - http://www.hrizon.com.au/. We will be connecting with all our members in the next couple of months to seek nominations for the same.Lately I have observed that our members are not adequately connected with the National Secretariat, in terms of their views, suggestions and ideas. I would like to take this opportunity to request you to please take out some time and share your views, feedback and new ideas with the National Secretariat.I am extremely excited about the future prospects and expect continued support from all of you.Warm Regards,

S.Y. Siddiqui National President, NHRDN and Managing Executive Officer Admin (HR, Finance, IT & COSL), Maruti Suzuki India Ltd

EditorialMy Dear Fellow Travelers,

Skeptics have often dreaded 2012 and Hollywood has personified it. 2012 dawned upon us and has already swept a good number of days into history, so as HR professionals we are back to our business, and we have no choice but to start worrying for the upcoming appraisals and increment season.

2012 holds a good rollercoaster journey for the HR professionals; on one hand we still have the economy which is slower than expected while on the other, employee aspirations which are higher than ever. We still have the conflict where some believe that the world is flat and others, who are trying to get back jobs to their country. We still have the managers who are reluctant to change their outlook for the new age digital Gen Y employees and so on.

2012 will be a defining year for HR as a profession wherein it has no choice but to move to the Next Orbit and become a true-blue business partner. In this direction we have the honor of having the cover story which draws attention to: ‘Competencies for HR Professionals…. Working Outside-In’ - the research paper by none other than the HR guru Prof. Dave Ulrich along with Jon Younger, Wayne Brockbank and Mike Ulrich. I wouldn’t share my thoughts much here as that would reveal the essence. I will urge you to go through the same and enjoy the emerging perspectives.

I am happy to note that the Inform Section is seeing an increased eye-ball space and chapters are vying with each other to feature their events. The team of the Newsletter is making every effort in this direction and would like to see more chapters use this forum to feature their good work.

On the lines of chicken-first-or-egg-first row is an article, ‘Culture vs. Strategy in the battle for Existence’; featured in the Incubate section. Browse it to gain insights and find answers to whether it is Culture over Strategy, Strategy over Culture or one in support of the other that would create the win-win situation. The Illuminate section has a few attractions of its own… HR for the Millennial Workforce, Creating Future Skills through SMT (Self-Managed Teams) and Organisational Learning & the Role of Leaders.

My favorite for this issue besides the cover story is Self Managed Teams. In a diverse country like ours where consensus building and working in a cohesive manner is a must for the greater good of the organization, this concept can make a difference.

The team of the Newsletter wishes each one of our readers a great year ahead. We are eager to hear from you, so do share your thoughts, feedback and ideas at feedback@nationalhrd.org or editor@nationalhrd.org. Happy reading…

K. Srinivas Rao Editor Chief Strategist & Partner – The Strategist

2012 will be a defining year for HR as a profession

wherein it has no choice but to move to the Next

Orbit and become a true-blue business partner

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Chapter News

BarodaLearning and Development initiativesThe session started with Rajesh Palkar welcoming the audience as well as the Facilitator Bharat N Darjee, General Manager – Trainings at Netafim Irrigation India P. Ltd. It was an absolute jargon/PPT free interactive session held on December 3, 2011 at Faculty of Social, MSU of Baroda that blended with the speaker’s understanding for the benefit of students pursuing their post graduation as well as for the working professional. This included:

Why should you know your business?

Know Your Company. K Y C

After briefing about the world leadership position that Netafim Ltd. enjoys, in the field of micro drip irrigation, Darjee emphasized that to gain respect and become a successful professional, it was important to know your business & processes. KYC has multiple benefits.

• Onegetsa fairunderstandingofthecompany’s products & processes;

• This improved understanding helpsthem to see linkages of their function more clearly;

• It helps build rapport betweenAssociates in cross functions;

• It helps build/improve mutual trustand respect leading to collaborative culture in the organisation; and,

• Quicker resolutions of complaintsand minimizes distrust/fear.

The session ended with a vote of thanks by Shri Sunil Pagar, an Executive Committee Member of NHRD – Baroda Chapter.

BhubaneswarNHRDN, Bhubaneswar Chapter partnered with People Matters & AON Hewitt to showcase an HR Conclave on ‘Art & Science of Developing Leaders’ at Mayfair Hotel, Bhubaneswar on December 12, 2011. The event was presented by BIMTECH (Birla Institute of Management Technology). The aim of the conclave was to discuss the Art & Science of building a leadership pipeline. The focus was to share original research from AON Hewitt and insights from the experiences of leading Indian CEOs & HR Heads on leadership development.

– Leadership Consulting, AON Hewitt, (presenter); P.T. Joseph, Director, Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar; B.L. Bagra, Chairman and Managing Director, NALCO; Mr. Ryan Lowe, West India, Business & Sales Lead, AON Hewitt (Moderator); Mr. Rajeev Bhadauria, Director-Group HR, Jindal Steel and Mr. V.C. Agrawal, President-HR, RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group.

The panel agreed that there is a clear correlation between investing in leadership, and consistently identifying and grooming potential talent. Great leaders attract good people, and their legacy is the people they have developed. The panelists dwelt on the need to create the path for building leaderships to sustain growth and shared their suggested steps: firstly, by identifying and articulating the purpose of the organization; secondly, by defining how the organization will achieve that purpose; and thirdly, by assessing the capability of its talent to achieve that purpose.

Working with great leaders and nurturing the power of observation is a potent way for leadership development. This has not been explored sufficiently in India, and remains an area of opportunity for companies that aspire to build great leaders. The panel concluded that leadership is not about CEOs alone, but also about building leaders at all levels and functions, and enabling people to be ready to perform in their ‘leadership moments’. Leadership is hierarchy neutral, as there are leaders much below the CEO level who have great leadership potential. The idea is to identify and groom such individuals for the future through a sustained and structured process.

The event was graced by panelists like Ms. Radhika Gopalakrishnan, Director

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ChennaiMonthly MeetingNHRD Chennai Chapter’s December Monthly meeting was held on December 20, 2011. Mr. Mohan Kumar C, Chennai Chapter President welcomed the gathering and introduced Mr.

HR as a Crisis Time Leader: To the question: when faced with an issue/crisis, who is your ‘go-to person‘? Multiple answers kept pouring like the person with whom we feel comfortable, a person who listens, someone who has more information, someone who can give a solution.

of people are willing to be led. The question now is how to make them move? At first as a leader one should look to give answers by themselves seeking those answers. Look to work through, take charge and provide the necessary solution and answers.

Secondly, it is important not to panic. For a person who is panicked himself / herself cannot provide stability / assurance to others.

Thirdly, data says 54% of worries in corporate world are about things that will not happen. Around 27% of worries are about the past. Hence, it is required as a leader one talks the issues of people that are either generic or personal in nature with them. Once spoken, clarity provided, assurance given then focus on business in hand.Shiv Shankar to talk on the topic

‘Leadership in Turbulent Times’. He said “generally people name qualities like strong communication, innovation, vision, ability to take risk et al to be the necessary ingredients of a leader. But the most important thing is followership. It is always possible that there will be followership due to money power, muscle power or political power. For a leader, it should be a voluntary followership.” Highlights of the session are as follows:

Leadership in Turbulent TimesLeadership – Analogue vs. Digital Perspective: When we think of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Sachin Tendulkar, Narayanamoorthy what we do is take a digital view of leadership. We discuss about incidents/events/circumstances and what these personalities did or do during those times. Can any one of us become a Mahatma Gandhi, Sachin or Narayanamoorthy? The answer is ‘Yes,’ if we see leadership as discrete events in all walks of life – both personal and professional.

Time to Build Leadership: If we want to create a leadership to take us through turbulent times, it has to be done during the times when things are normal.

Then came the second question – more pointed this time; how many of you believe employees think about approaching HR when they face a crisis? And, if many of you think they don’t, why aren’t they? Apart from having the required knowledge a HR professional should develop the qualities of looking beyond the present, be level headed and have faith.

How to Create Faith in Others: For every professional now the question is how to create faith in their people? One scenario, always paint a realistic picture. Other scenario is listening to people. But consistent communication to people, rather than divergent communication from different leaders is a must to win the faith of the people.

What Convinces People to be Led Voluntarily: Research shows that 80%

Delhi and NCR“HR-2020: Through three lenses” On December 6, 2011, the Delhi & NCR Chapter organized its monthly Special Event and the Silver Jubilee Celebration of NHRDN. The Special Event was titled ‘HR-2020: Through three lenses’.

The event started with the opening speech by the National President of the NHRDN, Mr S.Y. Siddiqui. He congratulated the NHRDN family on the successful journey of 25 years and reiterated NHRDN commitment

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towards its mission and vision on good professional growth and learning through networking. He laid a few guiding stones for the NHRDN journey through 2020, the theme of the panel discussion. He pointed out the importance of institutional identity, shared leadership, speed in decision making and the role of young HR professional in successful growth of HR in India Inc.

The opening speech was followed by reading out the letter from Dr. T.V. Rao, founding member of NHRDN and a video presentation as a tribute to the unparalleled contribution of Late Dr. Udai Pareek in the growth of HRD in India in general and NHRDN in particular.

The main event panel discussion ‘HR-2020: through three lenses’ was chaired by Mr. P. Dwarakanath, Director - Group Human Capital, Max India. The panel included: Mr. Subhash Jagota, Director, Global Business Solutions; Mr. Sunil Ranjhan, VP-General Affairs (HR, IR & Admin), Honda Siel Cars India; and, Ms. Sakshi Khosla, Sr. Manager, Max India.

perspective and pointed out how HR has evolved from the old days of industrial relations agent to a talent management role. He asserted that the scope of HR has widened from handling disputes to nurturing talent and engagement in organizations, and this trend is going to continue the HR journey across 2020. Mr. Ranjhan introduced the changing focal points of HR decision making in organizations. He introduced and discussed the emerging concepts of portable loyalty; instant gratification and breadth of experience over length of tenure in the discussion. Ms. Khosla pointed out the changes in work locations, talent management, technology changes and growth of contractual labour as the coordinates of future HR growth.

This special event was a perfect start of the year long celebrations at NHRDN. The discussion brought in various dimensions of changing patterns in the scope and effectiveness of HR in coming years.

The panel chair lamented that HR in 2020 was, to him, seen through the lenses of the three different generations of HR professionals’ viz. Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y. He said that the success of HRD in 2020 will only be ensured through the collaboration of the ideas and energy from these three generations together. This brought in the importance of talent & competence building in future growth of HRD in India.

Mr. Jagota brought his experience of four decades as an HR professional into

HosurThe NHRD Hosur Chapter Annual Meet was organized at Hotel Dhanunjayas, Hosur on December 17, 2011 and started at 6.00 pm with networking.

The event began with a prayer song followed by welcome address by the chapter president Mr. V. Nagarajan, Ret’d. GM, M/s. TTK Prestige Ltd. Next on the agenda was the recitation of HR Code of Conduct by Mr. Manivannan – AGM, M/s. Avtec Ltd. The remainder of the evening proceeded as follows:

• TheAnnualReport for the calendaryear 2011 was presented by Joint Secretary Mr. K. Satish Kumar, Sr.

Officer – M/s. Easun Reyrolle Ltd.;

• Adhiyamaan College ManagementStudies students performed theme parade, dancing, singing & mimicry in the entertainment session and other members displayed their talents;

• Employees of corporations whoperform voluntary services as ‘Traffic Wardens’ in Hosur were honoured for their voluntary service to Hosur Town.

• A Spot Quiz was organised for themembers by Mr. John Robert, HR Manager of ATC Ltd.

• Mr. Israel Inbaraj, Mr. Manivannan,Mr. Senthil and Volunteers were recognized for their outstanding performance for NHRD during the year 2011.

The evening ended with a vote of thanks by the Chapter Hon. Secretary, Mr Israel Inbaraj, Group HR Manager - M/s. Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd, followed by cocktail & dinner with new year compliments.

HyderabadEventsTalent Management Conclave: Talent Management Conference is a flagship event of NHRD Hyderabad organized in collaboration with Indian Business School under the leadership of Mr. Ravikanth Reddy. Jon Younger, Conference Chair from RBL moderated the discussions, while Bill CLO of Deloitte, Prateek Kumar from Wipro, Ishan Manaktala from Netik, and Prof Dishan Kamdar from ISB made impeccable presentations. The conference hall was full of CXOs and CEOs all day long.

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Auditorium on November 11, 2011. NHRD founder president Dr. T.V. Rao and Dr. Ramnarayan, Prof. of ISB (authors) shared the underlying concepts of OD and contents of the book. The programme was witnessed by senior HR professionals, academic leaders, researchers and students. Mr. Ravikanth Reddy, NHRD Hyderabad President, released the book.

Unique Programme with Global Thought Leader - Ed Cohen: Prof. Ed Cohen, a global thought leader made a presentation on Building Global Leadership pipeline perspectives from Global Thought Leader on September 21, 2011 at EThames Hyderabad. He provided insights about building leadership pipeline and shared practices of high performing organization across the globe.

“Innovate or Die – Strategies in Rapidly Changing Global Markets”: On November 12, 2011 at Taj Deccan Hyderabad a Roundtable discussion on “Innovate or Die: Strategies in Rapidly Changing Global Markets” was led by Professor Srinivas K. Reddy, Associate Dean & Director, Centre for Marketing Excellence, Singapore Management University and Mr. Manoj Vargese of Google.

Meet the Mentor with Amit Scar, GM&MD, Microsoft Services Global Delivery: On September 16, 2011 interacted with the participants under the theme of “Building High Performance Teams (HPTs)

Meet the Mentor with Mr C. Mahalingam, EVP & Chief People Symphony Services: On November 21, 2011 Mr. Mahalingam President of Bangalore NHRD chapter interacted with the participants on emerging dimensions of human resource management. With his witty and humorous style he stated that ENGAGEMENT is not ENTERTAINMENT and stressed the need for HR to make worthwhile contributions to the business strategy.

and Its Role Today in India” in an interactive programme organized at COD, Hyderabad, wherein he made a presentation highlighting the genesis of EMRI and provided insights about the contribution made by corporate for its effective functioning. He advised the young professionals to be sensitive to the societal needs and sought their contribution.

Meet the Mentor with Mr. KV Rao December 30, 2011: Mr. KV Rao a senior IAS officer (retd) and CEO of NCC Infraholdings shared his experiences on “His Life and Times with People in Public & Private Sector” in an interactive session organized at COD, Hyderabad.

Meet the Mentor Programmes with Prof. Balaji Utla November 30, 2011: Prof. Balaji Utla, CEO HMRI and President - Corporate Sustainability Piramal Health Care Ltd shared his perspectives on “Corporate Citizenship

Book Release: Hyderabad Chapter organized a unique Book Release and Interactive Session on “Organization Development - Accelerating Learning and Transformation” at Bhaskara

NHRDN Silver Jubilee Event on December 6, 2011: NHRDN’s Silver Jubilee Event was conducted with an enthusiastic participation by more than 150 participants. Mr. Ravikanth Reddy, President of Hyderabad Chapter made an impeccable presentation highlighting the origin, growth and present status of NHRD Hyderabad Chapter and thanked all the past Presidents, Secretaries, Treasurers and office bearers for their continued support for the development of Hyderabad Chapter.

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Mr. Abhishek Kumar Manager Communication, Jaipur Rugs Company Pvt. Ltd. said that in order to deal with disasters Jaipur Rugs have eco-friendly products and systems. He said Jaipur Rugs emphasis is on preparedness for disaster while Mr Kumar stressed on the communication model for disaster management.

Dr. Mala Airun Medical Superintendent, Narayana Hryudayalya Hospital said that disasters affect the hospitals; therefore all hospitals must have good evacuation plans. She presented a recent case of fire in Kolkatta, saying that the problem was lack of preparedness, training and laid back attitude. The main problem was that hospital staff was not properly trained.

Dr. Veena Arora Corporate Trainer talked about macro view at the country level and micro view at the individual level. Three ways to deal with disasters are mitigation, preparedness and advocacy in the form of political, social and environmental. In Jaipur there are also many buildings that are vulnerable to disaster. Sensitizing the stakeholders, SOPs to be laid down, and mock grills are needed. At the individual level we can help out and spread the correct information after attending training programs. Four level of disaster management strategies at individual level are physical fitness, mental preparedness, social and emotional aspect (empathy), and spiritual.

JaipurNational HRD Network & IILM Academy of Higher Learning, Jaipur, in joint collaboration with Sevayatra, organized the International Dialogue on Disaster Management on January 7, 2012. Sevayatra provides an end-to-end social responsibility solution for various organizations, corporates and universities & colleges. The basic objective of this dialogue was to identify the challenges and gaps encountered by Indian industries in the implementation of the disaster management systems, and to get the students’ perspective on India disaster management.

On this occasion Dr. Ashok Bapna President, NHRD & Adviser, IILM-AHL, Jaipur tried to sensitize the students on the purpose of the dialogue. It is to bring in to everyone’s notice that the numbers of disaster management has increased in the past century. Across the globe, disasters have increased. He further added that natural disasters are partly caused by human beings – basically it is the imbalances between demand and supply in the system which results in natural catastrophe, and profit has become the real reasons behind disasters.

Mr. Gaurav Ahluwalia of HSBC, Mr. Ramakrishna Momidi of Deloitte and Uma Rao of Mars International made thought provoking presentations on the topic “Evolution and Future of HR”. The highlight of the programme was the panel discussion on the subject and the panellists responded and answered the wide variety of queries raised by the participants.

HR InteractHR Interact has been a regular feature of NHRD Hyderabad Chapter. Senior HR professionals and seasoned academicians have interacted with the participants on the following topics:

•Dr. A.R. Aryasri, JNTU, Director,School of Management Studies, “Team Effectiveness” (December 01, 2011.)

• K. Panduranga Rao, IVRCL,“Employees Stress - Role of CXO’s and HR” (December 08, 2011)

• Mr. Pradeep, CEO Of NeeharikaEntertainments “Balancing Personal & Professional Life – Role of HR” (December 15, 2011.)

• Mr. KVS Srinagesh, Head TalentAcquisition of NCC Ltd “Techniques of Talent Acquisition for Cost Optimization”

• Dr. B Karunakar, Director, NarseeMonjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) “Corporate Champions” (December 29, 2011)

All the above initiatives were well received and attended.

Interesting questions were raised, both by the IILM students & also by visiting students from University of North Texas, USA. Ms. Ruchi Khemka (Vice President SevaYatra Edutrips India Pvt. Ltd)

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key terms like Spiritual Leadership and Spiritual Climate.

Mr. Indranil Banerjee of West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd. presented a bouquet and Dr. Chandrima Banerjee of Srei Sahaj e Village Limited presented a memento and a token of appreciation to Prof. Chattopadhyay.

The ‘Vote of Thanks’ was delivered by Mr. Rajib Kumar followed by a sumptuous High Tea.

KolkataKolkata Chapter had the privilege to have Prof. Debaprasad Chattopadhyay, Professor & HOD-HR Globsyn Business School as the speaker for the evening knowledge session. Prof. Chattopadhyay, a senior member of NHRDN, ISTD, ISABS & NIPM, is currently pursuing his doctoral research on, “Impact of Spiritual aspect of leadership on spiritual climate of the teams and its plausible linkages with corporate governance”. In fact his work has already been accepted for presentation by IIM, Bangalore at an International Conference on Spirituality in Management at their campus early next year.

Prof. Chattopadhyay started off by presenting a perspective on the statement of problem of modern organizations witnessing a high rate of attrition, where people join companies with lots of expectations and ambitions.

leadership, explore the connect between spiritual leadership and spiritual climate, and discover essential factors and conditions for promoting a theory of spiritual leadership within the context of the workplace.

The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between four sub-variables (meaning/calling, membership, inner life/spiritual awareness and concern for larger social and natural environment) at the leader level and three work-related variables (harmony with self at work, harmony in work environment, and transcendence) to assess the climate of the unit or workgroup at the team level by applying the concept of Ashish Pandey-Rajen K Gupta - A P Arora’s spiritual climate inventory (2009) to manufacturing and service organizations across diverse industries and to examine the concept quantitatively from Pandey-Gupta-Arora Spirituality Scale (The 2009 Pfeiffer Annual Consulting) so as to find promising management principles for business organizations.

The secondary purpose of the study is to provide organizations with new management principles regarding Spiritual Leadership and Spiritual Climate variables in managing their employees. This might be used to prevent high attrition-rates and impaired quality of work life and in the process, increase job satisfaction.

Prof. Chattopadhyay also enlightened attendees by sharing his valued thoughts on Significance of his study, on its Conceptual Framework. He also briefed the august gathering on definitions of

LucknowTo celebrate the completion of 25 years of successful existence of NHRD Movement in the country, a programme of Panel discussion was organised by the Lucknow Chapter on the topic “Emotional Quotient + Intelligence Quotient = Enhanced Performance” on December 16, 2011 at Hotel Clarks’ Awadh at Lucknow. The programme started with a 10 minute short film on Dr. Udai Pareek, founder member of NHRD Network.

Mr. V.P. Sahi in his welcome address, informed the audience that the Lucknow Chapter has been awarded with the EMERGING CHAPTER of the NHRD Network. He further informed that it is a matter of pride for the Chapter that for the first time since its inception, it has been given the task of hosting a Board Meeting on January 21, 2012 at Lucknow. The responsibility of the central office to conduct northern regional conference in the month of February 2012 in Lucknow would be really an opportunity and require the cooperation of all the Networkers of Lucknow chapter.

shared her concerns, while Dr. Sudha Arlikatti Associate Prof., University of North Texas informed the gathering that the only department in the USA which is imparting this kind of a special course is in this University.

Dr. Shika Kaushik Dean, IILM welcomed the participants while Ajeta Bhatia Associate Dean, IILM proposed vote of thanks. Ms. Tanupreet Lamba, PGDM-I student compered the programme.

The purpose of his study, he said, is to analyze known academic articles as to how they characterize spiritual

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on Thursday December 22, 2011 from 6.30 to 8.30 pm at Welingkar Institute. Panellists were: Mr Satish Pradhan, Chief, Group Human Resources, Tata Sons Limited; Dr. Rajen Mehrotra, Former Chief People Officer, ACC Limited & Senior Specialist to UN - ILO – India Office in New Delhi; Mr. Sharad Gangal, Executive Vice President -HR, IR, ADMIN & Member of Executive Council, Thermax Limited; Dr. Vivek Monteiro, Secretary, Maharashtra State Committee of Centre of Indian Trade Unions. It was attended by 80 delegates.

Mr. Ujjwal Kapoor, Mr. Pravesh Saxena, and Mr. Arun Mathur were also actively engaged in the programme. The programme was attended by around 50 persons including HR executives and heads of several organisations and B-Schools.

MumbaiDecember 3, 2011National HRD Network in association with NHRDN Mumbai Chapter organized one day workshop on “Talent Acquisition & Management of Tomorrow’s Workforce- The GEN Y” on Saturday, December 3, 2011 at Welingkar Institute. The facilitator was Dr. Sujaya Banerjee - Chief Learning Officer, Essar Group, and the event was attended by 20 delegates.

Silver Jubilee Year Celebrations On reaching the milestone of 25 years service to the country, NHRDN Mumbai Chapter organized the “Silver Jubilee Year Celebrations” on Monday, December 26, 2011 from 6.30 to 8.30 pm at WESchool: Welingkar Institute. On this occasion, the Chapter honoured and felicitated all Former National Presidents (Mumbai Based) & Western Regional Presidents & Presidents of Mumbai Chapter.

The following are former National Presidents (Mumbai based):

• Mr. V.S. Mahesh, ProgrammeDirector (Service Management), University of Buckingham

• Dr. Santrupt Misra, CEO - CarbonBlack Business, Director Group HR & IT Aditya Birla Management Corporation Pvt. Ltd.

• Dr. Arvind Agrawal, President -Corporate Development & Group HR, RPG Group

December 22, 2011Panel Discussion on “Emerging ER/IR Scenario & Need For Strategic Responses in Challenging Environment”

Secretary of the Chapter Mr. Himanshu Kumar gave a brief introduction of all the Panel Members and then the task of moderating the discussion was handed over to Dr. Suresh Singh, Director HR & Training, PSIT/PSAT.

The panel comprising of Mr. A.K. Singh, Chief General Manager, State Bank of India; Prof. Yasmeen Rizvi, IIM Lucknow; Mr. Nishant Sinha, Vice President, Aegis Lucknow; and Mr. Kapil Sharma, Circle Head & Addl. Vice President, Vyom Networks, Lucknow started discussion with their individual views on the importance of Emotional Quotient in enhancing the performance of individuals. The enthusiastic and the learned audience also raised questions, which were brilliantly handled by the panellists.

The discussion concluded by giving impetus that to be successful executive or an employee or otherwise a good person in any field the role of EQ is very significant. Various researches have proved that 80 percent of the success depends on the use of EQ, yet a desired level of IQ is also a must for the same. This is because EQ components are very useful in assisting employees with decision making in areas like teamwork, inclusion, productivity and communication.

Finally, a vote of thanks to all members and Guests was proposed by Prof. Sunil Kumar, Vice-Chairman of the Chapter for their presence and active participation in the programme and PSIT/PSAT (Member institute of the Chapter) for sponsoring the programme. The programme was anchored by Ms. Aparna Mishra. Mr. Mohit Kumar, Jt. Secretary,

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NagpurOn December 6, 2011 Nagpur Chapter celebrated NHRDN Silver Jubilee Celebration along with Mr. Aquil Busarai, the former President, NHRDN. Prof. Shyam Shukla President Nagpur Chapter shared the journey of NHRDN and also the contribution of Late Dr. Udai Pareek for HRD movement in the country. Mrs. Vinda Warhadpande, readout the NHRDN code of conduct at the beginning. At this occasion, Mr. Aquil Busarai presented leadership

award to Mr. Manoj Sharma, the former Chapter President & Sr. Vice President Adani Infra Ltd, for his outstanding contribution for the NHRDN Nagpur Chapter. Mr. Aquil Busarai also congratulated the Chapter President and Chapter Members for the recent commendation for their versatile activities.

A large number of family members, children and members were present at this occasion. Dr. C.V. Chalapatirao, Director Grade Scientist NEERI,

The following are former Regional Presidents (Western Region):

• Mr.MarcelRParker,Chairman,IkyaHuman Capital Solutions Private Limited

• Mr. Satish Pradhan,Chief, Group –HR, Tata Sons Limited

The following are former Presidents – Mumbai Chapter:

• Mr. Ginil Shirodkar, Former VicePresident HR, Procter & Gamble

• Prof.ChandraMohanSrivastava

• Prof.LeslieRebello,Director,L.R.Associates Pvt. Ltd.

• Dr. P. V. Bhide, Group President –HR, J. K. Organization

• Mr.GeorgeKunnath,Consultant

• Mr.S.S.Muzumdar,FormerDirector– HR, Siemens Limited

• Mr. Vineet Kaul, Chief PeopleOfficer, Hindalco Industries Limited

• Mr.RajeevDubey,President(GroupHR & After-Market) & Member of the Group Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra Limited

The Silver Jubilee Year Celebrations were attended by 130 delegates.

appreciated the involvement children and families for the chapter activities. Dr. Vijay Anand Phate and Mr. Manoj Sharma conducted a session for families. Mr. Mahendra Kakde, CEO Clide Academy conducted the games for the children.

Mr. Sachin Khedikar, Treasurer Nagpur Chapter proposed a formal vote of thanks. The NHRDN Silver Jubilee celebration at Nagpur ended with much fun and frolic.

RanchiThe National HRD Network, Ranchi Chapter organised an Evening Talk on Leadership and Corporate Growth on January 3, 2012 at SAIL Management Training Institute, Ranchi. Committed to transformational leadership and change management through continued education, research and experience sharing, the talk was organised by the Chapter to felicitate Mr G K Pillai who made a dramatic turn-around of HEC Ltd during his tenure as CMD. In his welcome address, Mr. Manas R Panda, ED (HRD), MTI and President, NHRD Network, Ranchi Chapter highlighted the new-wave leadership of Mr G K Pillai in bringing about the sense of purpose and urgency in HEC Ltd. Mr Pillai presented a power-packed vision of leadership driven through the people-centric programmes bringing organisation-wide changes .

The meeting witnessed an unprecedented gathering of distinguished guests from Industry and Academics. Mr. KK Mehrotra, Director (Engg.), MECON and Mr. S Varadarajan, Executive Director, RDCIS, SAIL shared their valuable insight and experience with Mr Pillai.

Shri B Chowdhury, Hony. Secretary, NHRD Network, Ranchi Chapter introduced the Programme in the beginning. Vote of Thanks was given by Dr. Hari Haran, GM (HRD), MTI and Vice-President, NHRD Network, Ranchi Chapter. The NHRD Network function was attended by members of NHRD Network and professionals from SAIL, MECON, HEC, CIL, IICM and other leading organisations and institutes of Ranchi.

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Seminar on The New Age Talent Acquisition: Energized and Engineered by Digital Media Friday, December 09, 2011, Taj President, Mumbai

Awareness being the name of the game, operating in a space where information is readily available to all and sundry, how are talent acquisition professionals

bracing themselves to face up to the challenges thrown at them by the ‘digital media’ mania? Furthermore, ensuring the right mix of ‘cost of hire’, ‘time to hire’ and ‘quality of hire’ is the dilemma for every talent acquisition professional. Is it merely the hiring of a pair of hands or getting the right mind on board? In a world where people have choices, how are organizations represented in the digital world?

To provide insights to some of these questions, National HRD Network’s Learning Centre and NHRDN Mumbai Chapter together with LinkedIn organized a program on The New Age Talent Acquisition - Energized and

Learning Centre

Engineered by Digital Media, on Friday, December 09, 2011 at Hotel Taj President, Mumbai.

An eminent array of speakers engaged the audience on the following points:

•HowisTalentAcquisitionevolving?

• RoleofSocialMediaintalentacquisition

• Doesemployerbrandtakenewmeaninginthecontextof digital media?

•Howcanthatbrandbecommunicatedandmarketedinthe digital age?

The panelists included Mr. Hari Krishnan, Country Manager – LinkedIn India (Keynote Speaker & Session

People are looking to work not just with anybody, but with the ‘right’ set of people; hence the reference check done by employees

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Moderator), Mr. Adil Malia, Group President Human Resources – Essar Group, Mr. Prabir Jha, Senior Vice President Human Resources, Tata Motors, Mr. Ravishankar B., Senior VP Human Resources, HCL Technologies and Mr. Rajesh Padmanabhan, Head Human Resources, Capgemini India.

A pertinent point highlighted by Mr. Hari Krishnan was that at the very core of social networks, be it Facebook or LinkedIn, is ‘people’, not ‘technology’. It is the recognition and /or pride that an individual seeks/feels when he / she appears on public domain. At the backend, the social networks can get a lot of insights into trends of human behavior, preferences, likes, dislikes, groups, ideologies, etc, which in turn could assist talent acquisition teams while targeting their search or drawing up strategies.

Some of the emerging trends among today’s talent are:

• Personalbrandreputationi.e.lettingthe world know they exist and hence the link up to social networks

• People are looking to work not justwith anybody, but with the ‘right’ set of people; hence the reference check done by employees. Eg. before appearing for an interview, scanning the social networks to get a run down on the person who would be conducting the interview.

• The ‘social credibility’ of theorganization that a person seeks to associate with.

• Peopleshowingapreferencetogobywhat they see and feel rather than just heard.

The panel debated and discussed on the readiness of organizations and talent acquisition professionals to understand and manage these trends proactively. What are the future trends in store with regards to social media and talent acquisition? At what level of preparedness is the organization currently in terms of attracting fresh talent by leveraging social media networks?

In closing, the deliberations left the audience with some nuggets to dwell on:

• Are the organization’s internal

processes and systems living up to the market realities with regards to talent acquisition and leveraging social media?

•Theimportanceandneedfordrawingup the value proposition of the organization.

•How to create bridges within thevarious social media options?

The partners for the event were LinkedIn (Principal Sponsor), FORE School of Management (Academic Partner), People Matters (Magazine Partner) and The Strategist (Learning Partner). ■

22

Culture vs Strategy in the battle for Existence

The concept of ‘corporate culture’ and its companion notion of shared values are important in the field

of strategic management. Researchers recognize that organizations develop different cultures, that these cultures have different performance implications and that they can be changed. Strong cultures that fit the needs and challenges of the situation are ‘in’, whereas weak or poorly matched cultures are ‘out’.

AT&T, the telecommunications giant, is a good example. For many years the company operated as a regulated monopoly and created what many observers felt was the best phone system in the world. All this was achieved in a highly structured corporate culture where ‘universal service at reasonable cost’ was the predominant value.

Things are different today. The culture is

changing, albeit slowly, as the company tries to instill in itself the sense of innovation and competition that is necessary to prosper in a deregulated environment2. To analyse the above evidence and arguments, it is necessary to understand the concept and nature of strategy and culture.

Concept of Strategy Strategy is the overall plan of a firm deploying its resources to establish a favourable position and compete successfully against its rivals. Strategy describes a framework for charting a course of action. It is basically intended to help the firm achieve competitive advantage. Strategy has the following features:

• It’saWinningMantra;

• Abroadguidancesource;

• Awisepredictiontool;• A quality drop from management

think tank;• A dynamic and flexible program of

action;• Aninherentcreativeprocess.

Concept of Organisational CultureWhat is the culture of an organisation – or the corporate culture? The simple statement saying, “the way we do things round here” is a good starting point. A more wordy definition is ‘the moral, social, behavioural norms of an organisation based on the beliefs, attitudes and priorities of its members.’ This does provide for a better understanding of where cultures start to emerge.

Many scholars, strategists and academicians opine that culture is relatively more important than strategy. There are few research works that indicate why culture matters more than organisational strategy

Dr. B. Amaranath and S. Krishna Murthy Naidu

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Culture is a kind of social glue that binds people together through shared symbols, language, stories and practices. To be successful, the firm’s culture must be appropriate to and supportive of the firm. The culture must invariably have certain values that can help the firm adapt to environmental change. Mere formation of goals and plans do not transform conservative organizations instantaneously unless there are significant changes in the thinking of members and organisational practices. Leaders play a great role in maintaining or changing the culture and setting a new road map for the firm3. Many scholars, strategists and academicians opine that culture is relatively more important than strategy. There are few research works that indicate why culture matters more than organisational strategy.

In a survey of international executives, Bain and Company found nine out of 10 executives agreed “culture is as important as strategy for business success.” This finding was equally true across all global geographic regions and business sizes4.

Because most leaders view culture as something soft and intangible, it’s often overlooked when they take a new job. However, a January 2006 Wall Street Journal article concluded that the biggest roadblocks for new leaders include:

• Not understanding or caring aboutthe current culture;

• Assuming the current leadershipculture can support the new direction/strategy; and,

• Notarticulatinghis/herinspirationalculture for the team.

Culture is important because it limits or enables strategy. It provides consistency, order and structure, and sets internal ways of life and patterns for internal relationships. It determines conditions for internal effectiveness and drives effective performance. The most important thing that leaders can do is create and manage culture. It has

everything to do with organizational implementation, and is the foundation of an organization’s identity. The wrong culture can hold your strategy hostage5.

In the present article we strongly believe that changing corporate culture to fit to the corporate strategy is more effective than changing a strategy to fit to the corporate culture. Strategy must be supported by the culture of the organization. Otherwise, culture will sabotage the strategy. Success of a corporate strategy depends on the degree of fit between corporate culture and strategy. Hence creating strategy supportive culture is the need of the hour. Now the question arises. How can one establish a strategy-supportive culture?

How to Create a Strategy Supportive CultureCreating a strategy supportive culture is a tough job of leaders. They put in a great deal of time and resources in changing culture that suits strategy. Senior executives must personally lead the efforts to create a strategy supportive culture.

Corporate culture is a natural process that evolves over a period of time and is determined by factors such as: values & beliefs of the founder; nature of business; general management team; past stories; and, heroes, customs & rituals etc. In fact, every member of the organization is a stakeholder of the Corporate Culture. Whether the present culture has been created by accident or design, it is what you have and is the platform from which the business will continue to operate. Before you can set out on the new strategic plan you need to know whether the culture and strategy are aligned. If they are, you have a chance of success. If not, what could be the problems? The chances are high that an organization may not reach the intended destination. A close fit between culture and strategy will increase the organization’s chances of success. Where the culture encourages the right behaviours and actions to support the strategy, the people will have clear guidelines and KPI’s about what is good performance. If the culture has clear values, beliefs and behaviours which link to the vision, objectives and strategy – people will feel (and be) aligned and deliver more.

Where your culture does not fit with the strategy implementation, and required behaviours, you send mixed signals. People are in conflict. Should they be loyal to the culture and company traditions and resist actions and behaviours promoting better strategy execution? Or should they support the strategy by engaging in behaviours that run counter to the culture? When a company’s culture is not right with what is needed for strategic success, the

Corporate culture is a natural process that

evolves over a period of time and is determined

by factors such as values & beliefs of the founder;

nature of business, general management

team, past stories, heroes, customs & rituals etc

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1

2

3

4culture has to be changed as rapidly as can be managed! 6

Managing Organisational ChangeThe following steps include in the process of managing organisational change:

Analysing the Existing Culture: At the first stage of managing culture change, it is necessary to understand existing culture and the dominant culture dimensions. Though all organizations have cultures, some appear to be stronger, more deeply rooted than others. At the early stages, a strong culture is characterized as a coherent set of beliefs, values, assumptions, and practices embraced by most members of the organization. The emphasis is on two things – the degree of consistency of beliefs, values, assumptions, and practice across organisational members; and the pervasiveness (number) of consistent beliefs, values, assumptions, and practices. Many early scholars of organisational culture tended to assume that a strong, pervasive culture was beneficial to all organizations because it promotes motivation, commitment, identity, satisfaction, and sameness, which, in turn, facilitated internal integration and coordination. Still others noted potential dysfunctions of a strong culture, to the point of suggesting that a strong culture may not always be desirable. In the present context a strong culture is a solid set

back to an organization as it is a barrier to adaptation and change7.

Experiencing the Desired Culture: At this stage careful analysis of strategy and necessary conditions for effective implementation of strategy is required. Every strategy has necessary conditions for its effective execution. Identifying the gap between existing and desired culture is most important at this stage. Top level managers must visualize the desired culture and its effect on the intended strategy and on other systems of the organization. This may, sometimes, upset the other systems in the organization. Therefore make sure that the organisation is getting desired culture not at the cost of other strategies or systems which are working well.

Modifying the Existing Culture: Actual change process starts at this stage. A fundamental principle must be remembered here; many researchers state that changing an organisational culture is extremely difficult but culture can be changed. Harrison (1993 p.21) highlights that though it is possible to change organisational culture, changing the fundamental cultural orientation of an organization has the following drawbacks. For instance:

• Itisdifficulttoachieverequiringdeepchanges in values and management style and in organization systems and structure;

• It takes a long time to change theculture;

• It creates turmoil and stress withinthe organization;

• Theeffortresultsintheorganizationsuffering a decrement in performance at first, which often causes the leadership to abandon the efforts before it bears fruit.8

Sustaining the Desired Culture: Once the desired culture is created sustaining it is also a challenging task for managers. Managers must keep the organisational culture alive. This can be done by ensuring that its culture is transmitted to the members of the organization. Changed Culture must be seen at operational level in the organization. Members must completely believe in and value the desired culture. Ongoing evaluation and renewal of desired culture is important to sustain the culture.

Necessary Conditions for Organisational Change According to Martins and Martins organisational culture change can only take place when most or all of the following conditions exist:

• A Dramatic Crisis: This is the shock that undermines the status quo and calls into question the relevance of the current culture.

• Turnover in Leadership: New top leadership which can provide an alternative set of key values may be perceived as more capable of responding to the crisis.

• Young and Small Organization: The younger the organization, the less entrenched its culture will be and it is easier for management to communicate its new values when the organization is small.

• Weak Culture: The more widely held a culture is and the more members agree with its values, the more difficult it will be to change. Thus weak cultures are more conducive to change than strong ones9.

Every strategy has necessary conditions for its effective execution.

Identifying the gap between existing and

desired culture is most important at this stage

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The Leaders’ Role In the process of changing organisational culture, leaders at various levels play an important role in keeping the internal organization responsive. They must:

• Stimulatedependablesupplyoffreshideas

• Support people who are willingto champion new ideas, better services, new products, & innovative technologies, and who are eager for a chance to turn innovations into new divisions, businesses, & industries

• Promote continuous adaptation tochanging conditions10

Shaping the Corporate Culture to fit the Strategy The above is the general procedure of bringing about change in organisational culture. It is necessary to perform specific activities to maximize the probability of achieving desired culture. Specific tasks are:

• Establishsharedvalues;

• Setethicalstandards;

• Create a strategy-supportive workenvironment;

• Build a spirit of high performanceinto the culture.

Establish Shared Values: Shared values are considered to be the foundation of ethics, community and culture. When people’s values are met or matched, they feel a sense of satisfaction, harmony, or rapport. When their values are not met or matched, people often feel dissatisfied, incongruent, or violated. Values and beliefs support the identity and mission of an individual or organization. A particular identity or role, for instance, will be associated with several core values and beliefs. These, in turn, are supported by a range of skills and capabilities, which are required to manifest particular values and beliefs as actions in a particular environment or context11.

References

1. E H Sshein, “The role of founder in crafting Organisational Culture” organisational dynamics, summer 1983

2. VSP Rao and V Hari Krishna, Strategic Management, Excel Books, page.465.

3. VSP Rao and V Hari Krishna, Strategic Management, Excel Books, page.464

4. http://globoforce.blogspot.com/2008/09/importance-of-culture-vs-strategy.html

5. Dr. Schneider’s article. Why Good Management Ideas Fail: the neglected power of Organisational culture on the internet at: http://www.refresher.com/!neglected.html

6. http://www.allbusiness.com/management/strategic-planning/8901866-1.html

7. Perrow, Charles. 1979 (copyright 1972). Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay. Second Edition. Glencoe, IL: Scott, Foresman.

8. Harrison, R (1993) Diagnosing organisational culture: Trainer’s Manual . Amsterdam:: Pfeiffer & Company.

9. Martins and Martins (2003) Organisational Culture. In S.P.Robbins:; A Odendaal & G. Roodt (Eds), Organisational Behaviour: Global and Southern African Perspective (p.385) Cape Town; Pearson Education South Africa.

10. http://www.culturestrategyfit.com/ documents/Culture%20Roadmap%20Assessment.pdf

11. http://www.nlpu.com/Values.html

Set Ethical Standards: We would do nothing ourselves and would scoff at others who try to do something. This is the bane that has brought about our downfall. Why should I do that work? The attitude will pull the man back and he stagnates in the place where he is. Even the least work done for others awakens the power within. The culture of the workplace should be in such a way that, the people working should work incessantly. Members of the organization learn the acceptable behaviour through the ethical standards set by the leaders. Setting up the ethical standards in an organization may direct the members to work according to the policies framed.

Create a Strategy-Supportive Work Environment: A productive work environment is essential to the sustained business success of any company. Wrong work environment may upset the momentum of a carefully designed strategy. In general, the work environment must reward performance, coordination, ethical behaviour, trust, respect and justice.

Building a Spirit of High Performance into the Culture: There are two types of teams. Teams with spirit and teams without spirit. Teams with spirit are winners. Teams without spirit are losers. That’s just the way it is. Take a look at your favourite sports teams. Take a look at the teams in your organization that outperform others. You will see that the reality is that those with spirit become high performing teams that make great things happen.

ConclusionToday’s business environment is highly turbulent but the corporate culture is relatively stable. Most of the competitive strategies spring from external environmental forces, as a solution to a problem; these strategies must be accommodated by the culture of the organization in order to maintain consistency between external environment and internal environment. Hence changing the culture of an

organization to fit to the strategy is more appropriate than changing strategy to fit to the culture. Changing organisational culture is difficult but possible. Before changing the culture it is very important to set the conditions they are conducive for culture change. Finally in the battlefield for existence, culture must be flexible enough to alter to fit the strategy. Strategies formulated through objective methods may fail if a firm discounts the cultural forces. ■

Dr. B. Amaranath, Associate Professor Department of Management Studies, S.V. University; Email: dr.amaranathsvu@gmail.com

S. Krishna Murthy Naidu, Asst., Professor, Department of Management Studies, Sri Vasavi Engineering College; Email: murthy.maruti@gmail.com

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inspireHRD

Competencies for HR Professionals Working Outside-In

By Dave Ulrich, Jon Younger, Wayne Brockbank and Mike Ulrich

Any good HR professional wants to be better. This begins with a desire to improve, followed by a clear understanding what it requires to improve. Since 1987, we have chronicled what it means to be an effective HR professional. With

this current 2012 data set, we have completed 6 waves of data collection that trace the evolution of the HR profession (see insert 1 for methodology and insert 2 for the history of this research).

This research is important for the HR profession because it defines what it means to be an effective HR professional. Being an effective HR professional is not just knowing the body of knowledge that defines the profession, but being able to apply that knowledge to business challenges. As the sheer number of global HR professionals climb close to 1 million, it becomes increasingly important for this relatively new profession to define what it means to be effective. HR effectiveness matters more than ever because leaders of business and not-for-profit leaders have increasingly recognized the importance of individual abilities (talent), organization capabilities (culture), and leadership as key to the success of their organizations. HR professionals should become insightful advisors and architects on these issues. In an increasingly world of change, there has never been a greater need to identify what HR professionals must be, know, do, and deliver to contribute more fully to their organizations

In this round of research we have identified six domains of competencies that HR professionals must demonstrate to be personally effective and to impact business performance. These competencies respond to a number of themes facing global business today:

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• Outside/In: HR must turn outside business trends and stakeholder expectations into internal actions;

• Business/People: HR should focus on both business results and human capital improvement;

• Individual/Organizational: HR should target both individual ability and organization capabilities;

• Event/Sustainability: HR is not about an isolated activity (a training, communication, staffing, or compensation program) but sustainable and integrated solutions;

• Past/Future: HR should respect its heritage, but shape a future;

• Administrative/Strategic: HR must attend to both day to day administrative processes and long term strategic practices.

Our research found that by upgrading their competencies in six domains, HR professionals can respond to these business themes and create sustainable value (see Figure 1). These six HR competence domains come from assessment by HR professionals and their line associates (over 20,000 global respondents) to 139 specific competency stated survey items.

Strategic Positioner High performing HR professionals think and act from the outside/in. They are deeply knowledgeable of and able to translate external business trends into internal decisions and actions. They understand the general business conditions (e.g., social, technological, economic, political, environmental, and demographic trends) that affect their industry and geography. They target and serve key customers of their organization by identifying customer segments, knowing customer expectations, and aligning organization actions to meet customer needs. They also co-create their organizations’ strategic responses to business conditions and customer

expectations by helping frame and make strategic and organization choices.

Credible Activist Effective HR professionals are credible activists because they build their personal trust through business acumen.

Credibility comes with HR professionals doing what they promise, build personal relationships of trust, and can be relied on. Being a trust advisor helps HR professionals have positive personal relationships. It means to communicate clear and consistent messages with integrity. As an activist, HR professionals

Figure 1: HR competencies for the future

Total respondents Business units Associate raters HR Participants

20,013 635 17,385 2,628

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4

5

6

3

have a point of view, not only about HR activities, but about business demands. As activists, HR professionals learn how to influence others in a positive way through clear, consistent, and high impact communications. Some have called this HR with an attitude. HR professionals who are credible but not activists are admired, but do not have much impact. Those who are activists but not credible may have good ideas, but not much attention will be given to them. To be credible activists, HR professionals need to be self-aware and committed to building their profession.

Capability Builder An effective HR professional creates an effective and strong organization by helping to define and build its organization capabilities. Organization is not a structure or process; it is a distinct set of capabilities. Capability represents what the organization is good at and known for. HR professionals should be able to audit and invest in the creation of organisational capabilities. These capabilities outlast the behavior or performance of any individual manager or system. Capabilities have been referred to as a company’s culture, process, or identity. HR professionals should facilitate capability audits to determine the identity of the organisations. Such capabilities include customer service, speed, quality, efficiency, innovation, and collaboration. One such emerging capability of successful organisations is to create an organisation where employees find meaning and purpose at work. HR professionals can help line managers create meaning so that the capability of the organisation reflects the deeper values of the employees.

Change Champion As change champions, HR professionals make sure that isolated and independent organization actions are integrated and sustained through disciplined change processes. HR professionals make an organization’s internal capacity for

change match or lead the external pace of change. As change champions, HR Professionals help make change happen at institutional (changing patterns), initiative (making things happen), and individual (enabling personal change) levels. To make change happen at these three levels, HR professionals play two critical roles in the change process. First, they initiate change which means that they build a case for why change matters, overcome resistance to change, engage key stakeholders in the process of change, and articulate the decisions to start change. Second, they sustain change by institutionalizing change through organisational resources, organization structure, communication, and continual learning. As change champions, HR professionals partner to create organizations that are agile, flexible, responsive, and able to make transformation happen in ways that create sustainable value.

Human Resource Innovator and Integrator. Effective HR professionals know the historical research on HR so that they can innovative and integrate HR practices into unified solutions to solve future business problems. They must know latest insights on key HR practice areas related to human capital (talent sourcing, talent development), performance accountability (appraisal, rewards), organization design (teamwork, organization development), and communication. They must also be able to turn these unique HR practice areas into integrated solutions, generally around an organization’s leadership brand.These innovative and integrated HR practices then result in high impact on business results by ensuring that HR practices maintain their focus over the long run and do not become seduced by HR “flavor the month” or by another firm’s “best practices”.

Technology Proponent In recent years, technology has changed the way in which HR people think and do their administrative and strategic work.

HR professionals who understand technology

will create improved organisational identity outside the company

and improve social relationships inside the

company

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Mean score on this competence domain (1 to 5)

Impact on Perception of

HR effectiveness (Beta weights

scaled to 100%)

Impact on Business

performance (Beta weights

scaled to 100%)

Strategic Positioner 3.89 17% 15%

Credible Activist 4.23 22% 14%

Capability Builder 3.97 16% 18%

Change Champion 3.93 16% 16%

Human Resource Innovator and Integrator

3.90 17% 19%

Technology Proponent 3.74 12% 18%

Multiple R2 42.5%

8.4%

Table 1: Impact of HR Competences on Perception of HR Effectiveness and Business Performance

At a basic level, HR professionals need to use technology to more efficiently deliver HR administrative systems like benefits, payroll processing, healthcare costs, and other administrative services. In addition, HR professionals need to use technology to help people stay connected with each other. This means that technology plays an increasingly important role in improving communications, do administrative work more efficiently, and connecting inside employees to outside customers. An emerging technology trend is using technology as a relationship building tool through social media. Leveraging social media enables the business to position itself for future growth. HR professionals who understand technology will create improved organisational identity outside the company and improve social relationships inside the company. As technology exponents HR professionals have to access, advocate, analyze and align technology for information, efficiency, and relationships.

Because these six domains of HR competence respond to the external trends we identified, they have an impact on both the perception of the effectiveness of the HR professional and the business performance where the HR professional works (see Table 1).

These data shows that to be seen as personally effective, HR professionals need to be credible activists who build relationships of trust and have a strong business and HR point of view. They also have to have a mix of competencies in positioning the firm to its external environment (strategic positioner), doing organization capability and culture audits (capability builder), making change happen (change champion), aligning and innovating HR practices (HR integrator), and understanding and using technology (technology proponent). These competencies explain 42.5 percent of the effectiveness of an HR professional.

HR competencies research methodologyTo define competencies for HR professionals, we have relied on focus groups, theory and research, and experience to identify what HR professionals should know and do. In 2012, this work resulted in 139 specific behavioral competencies. To determine if HR professionals possessed these competencies, we used a 360 methodology where HR professionals filled out a self-report survey and then invited both HR and non HR professionals to assess their ability to deliver these competencies. In addition, the survey had two outcome variables: personal effectiveness (compared to other HR professionals you have known, how does this participant compare) and business performance on an index of seven dimensions of business success.

Our 2012 data set on competencies for HR professionals is a unique partnership with the leading HR professional associations in Australia (AHRI), Latin America (IAE), China (jobs51), India (NHRD), Middle East (ASHRM), Northern Europe (HR Norge), and South Africa (IPM).

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We found that this same pattern of HR competencies holds across regions in the world, across levels of HR careers, in different HR roles, and in all size organizations.

These HR competencies also explain 8.4 percent of a businesses’ success. But it is interesting that the competencies that predict personal effectiveness are slightly different than those that predict business success, with insights on technology, HR integration, and capability building having more impact on business results. Again, the key issue is for HR professionals and department to work together and to mutually reinforce their efforts so that they collectively reach the tipping point of high performance.

These findings begin to capture what HR professionals need to know and do to be effective. They are further refined in Table 2 which shows the specific factors within each of these six domains and how they affect both perceived effectiveness of HR professionals and business success.

Based on these data, some implications for HR professionals include:

Learn to do HR from the outside-in which means understanding the social, technological, economic, political, environmental, and demographic trends facing your industry and knowing specific expectations of customers, investors, regulators, and communities, and then building internal HR responses that align with these external requirements.

Build a relationship of trust with your business leaders by knowing enough about business contexts and key stakeholders to fully engage in business discussions, by offering innovative and integrated HR solutions to business problems, and by being able to audit and improve talent, culture, and leadership. Earn trust by delivering what you promise.

Understand the key organizational capabilities required for your organization to achieve its strategic

Sub Factor for the Six HR competency domains

Mean (1 to 5)

Individual Effectiveness

100%

Business Success

100%

Strategic Positioner

Interpreting global business context 3.83 4.4 4.2

Decoding customer expectations 3.83 4.4 5.2

Co-crafting a strategic agenda 3.96 6.3 4.6

Credible Activist

Earning trust through results 4.36 6.9 4.0

Influencing and relating to others 4.24 7.0 4.1

Improving through self-awareness 4.08 6.5 4.7

Shaping the HR profession 4.13 4.4 2.9

Capability Builder

Capitalizing organizational capability 4.03 5.4 5.3

Aligning strategy, culture, practices, and behavior

3.94 5.3 6.1

Creating a meaningful work environment

3.94 4.1 5.2

Change Champion

Initiating Change 3.94 5.4 4.8

Sustaining Change 3.91 4.7 5.7

HR Innovator & Integrator

Optimizing human capital through workforce planning and analytics

3.95 5.5 5.6

Developing Talent 3.83 4.0 5.3

Shaping organization and communication practices

3.94 5.8 5.6

Driving performance 3.87 4.7 5.2

Building leadership brand 3.87 4.9 5.4

Technology Proponent

Improving utility of HR operations 3.72 2.9 5.0

Connecting people through technology

3.77 4.6 6.3

Leveraging social media tools 3.68 2.7 4.7

Overall R2 .431 .108

Table 2: Sub Factors for HR Competence on Individual Effectiveness and Business Success

1

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Total respondents

Business units Associate raters

HR Participants

4,556 441 3,805 751

Total respondents

Business units Associate raters

HR Participants

10,291 1200 8,884 1,407

Historical Overview of HR Competencies

Total respondents

Business units Associate raters

HR Participants

3,229 678 2,565 664

Total respondents

Business units Associate raters

HR Participants

7,082 692 5,890 1,192

Total respondents

Business units Associate raters

HR Participants

10,063 413 8,414 1,671

HR competencies also explain 8.4 percent of a businesses’ success. But it is interesting that the competencies that predict personal

effectiveness are slightly different that those that predict business success, with

insights on technology, HR integration, and capability building having more impact on

business results

1987

1992

1997

2002

200

7

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goals and meet the expectations of customers, investors, and communities. Learn to do an organization audit that focuses on defining and assessing the key capabilities your company requires for success and their implications for staffing, training, compensation, communication and other HR practices.

Make change happen at individual, initiative, and institutional level. Help individuals learn and sustain new behaviors. Enable organization change by applying a disciplined change process to each organisational initiative. Encourage institutional change by monitoring and adapting the culture to fit external conditions. Be able to make isolated events into integrated and sustainable solutions.

Innovate and integrate your HR practices. Innovation means looking forward into the future with new and creative ways to design and deliver HR practices. Integrate these practices around talent, leadership, and culture within your organization so as to offer sustainable solutions to business problems. Evolve your organization’s HR investments to solve future problems.

Master technology to both deliver the administrative work of HR and to connect people inside and outside to each other. Make social media a reality by using technology to share information and connect people both inside and outside your organization.

We also found that an effective HR department has more impact on a business’ performance (31%) than the skills of individual HR professionals (8%). HR professionals need to work together as a unified team to fully create business value. The specific requirements of an effective HR department and their impact on business success are shown in Table 3.

ConclusionWe are optimistic about the present and the future of the HR profession. And we have empirical reasons for our optimism.

We now have specific insights on what HR professionals need to know and do to become better and more effective deliver value to employees, organizations, customers, investors, and communities. And, we know what the HR department should excel at, to help business’ be successful. ■

To what extent are the following true of your HR Department?

Mean (1 to 5)

Relative Weighting

on Business Success

(100 points)

Interacts effectively with the Board of Directors 3.67 7.7%

Has clear roles and responsibilities for each of the groups within HR (e.g., service centers, centers of expertise, embedded HR)

3.65 7.6%

Matches the structure of the HR department with how the business is organized

3.64 7.8%

Ensures that HR initiatives enable the business to achieve strategic priorities

3.62 9.7%

Develops an HR strategy that clearly links HR practices to business strategy

3.61 9.2%

Ensures that the different groups within HR work effectively with each other to provide integrated HR solutions

3.50 8.2%

Effectively manages external vendors of outsourced HR activities

3.49 8.3%

Invests in training and development of HR professionals

3.46 7.3%

Ensures that HR is a cultural role model for the rest of the organization

3.42 8.4%

Holds line managers accountable for HR 3.38 8.2%

Connects HR activities to external stakeholder expectations (e.g., customers, investors)

3.25 8.9%

Tracks and measures the impact of HR 3.22 8.8%

Table 3: The Impact of Characteristics of an HR Department and Business success

Multiple Regression R2 .317

Copyright (© RBL 2012)Reference: HR Magazine, UK January 2012 issue

Dave Ulrich is a professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and a partner at RBL Group, a consulting firm aiming to help organisations and leaders deliver value.

Jon Younger is a partner of RBL Group and leads the strategic HR practice area.

Wayne Brockbank is partner emeritus at RBL Group. He has been a clinical professor of business at Ross School of Business and a consultant and executive educator at RBL.

Mike Ulrich is a research associate at RBL Group, focused on research methods and statistical analysis.

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Sustainability – What To Do, and Who Should Be Doing It?

Column by Prof. Arup Varma

For this issue, we have decided to address an issue that has been in the news off late, and that

have been addressed in various forums – sustainability. While the topic of sustainability has gained worldwide currency over the last few years, there seems to a fair amount of healthy scepticism among the general public about the sustainability of the interest in sustainability

So, what exactly is sustainability, and what can corporations do to contribute towards it? First, the notion of sustainability derives from the very basic concept of continued human existence on this earth of ours. As we all know, we rely on a number of finite resources for our sustenance – from water and oil, to land and food. Not surprisingly, the list goes on and on. Ironically, the resources that help sustain the human race are not infinite – and unless we learn to manage our needs and wants, and balance them against the needs of others, we are heading towards an untenable situation – one that is bound to lead to conflict.

To some, it might seem that sustainability is an issue that should be dealt with by governments around the world, given that they are responsible for managing natural resources. However, while true to some extent, this view is rather simplistic. Given the intricate interplay between governments and big business, the issue is intimately more complex, since most of our natural resources, but especially the four mentioned above, are often controlled, desired, manipulated, or wasted by corporations in one way or another.

The good news is that corporations increasingly seem to recognize that they do not exist in a vacuum, where the so-called bottom-line can justifiably be their only concern. The problem is that, just as with most other fads, corporations seem to view CSR as another tool to help fatten their bottom-line. Hence, we see a lot of lip-service paid to CSR, but very little concrete evidence of corporate actions geared towards sustainability.

Here’s the deal – the HR department has a major role to play in creating an environment that understands, identifies, promotes, and rewards the right behaviours. I enlist below five critical steps through which the HR department can have an impact on the drive for sustainability. First, help create the appropriate culture in the organization. This will require convincing top management of the need to promote the right behaviours and, more often than not, it will require top management to change their own behaviours, so they may lead by example. Next, hire the right people. Hiring the right people

isn’t just about their knowledge, skills, and job-fit anymore. If the organization is committed to sustainability, everyone coming into the organization needs to share that value and be committed to it. Third, it is essential that jobs are designed (and performance measured) in accordance with ethical guidelines and sustainability parameters, keeping in mind the long-term perspective. As we have seen repeatedly over the past few years, too many corporations have fallen victim to the scourge of short-term, unethical practices. Fourth, train people to do the right things – not everyone is capable of figuring it out for themselves, nor should organizations leave it up to individuals to figure it out. Finally, reward the desirable behaviours, and punish those that fail to adhere to the sustainability guidelines, after making good-faith efforts to guide them towards the right behaviours.

As Adine Mees and Jamie Bonham of the Canadian Business for Social Responsibility have argued, CSR–HR=PR. If employees are not engaged, corporate social responsibility becomes an exercise in public relations. The credibility of an organization will become damaged when it becomes evident the company is not ‘walking the talk’. ■

Arup Varma is Professor of Human Resource Management at Loyola University, Chicago. He has published numerous research articles in leading academic and practitioner journals and co-edited two books ‘Performance Management Systems: A Global Perspective’ and ‘Doing Business in India’. He has presented his research at Management and Psychology conferences around the world. He can be reached at avarma@luc.edu or arupvarma@gmail.com.

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2

1

HR for the Millennial Workforce: Needed a New Protocol

By C. Mahalingam

IntroductionCorporate cubicles are fast filling with the millennial workforce. Therefore, understanding their aspirations & inclinations, desires & dreams, mindset & motivations and finally their expectations from those that manage them becomes critical for success. While each generation (Baby boomers, Gen X or Millennial) has certain specific set of distinctly observable characteristics, it is important to recognize that there are significant differences even between those that constitute each of these generations. When it comes to managing and motivating the millennial workforce, slated to constitute bulk of the workforce for the next few decades, we are at crossroads since we have not yet fully understood their psyche. HR policies and processes drafted for the earlier generations will not motivate the millennial, and may even backfire with negative consequences. This article suggests an approach, for the HR professionals, to meet this imminent challenge.

Understanding the Millennial WorkforceA lot has been researched and published about the emerging workforce of the millennium. What we know is that in a couple

of years, millennial will constitute more than half of the global workforce. Joyce E A Russell, Director of the Executive Coaching & Leadership Development program at Robert H Smith School of Business (University of Maryland) has the following to say: “currently, the millennials account for about 25 percent of workforce and are expected to make up almost half by 2014.” (1) The picture that follows this section (Source: Google images) will help understand the marked differences:

Firstly, there are significant differences between the millennial workforce and earlier generation. The millennial employees belong to the ‘facebook’ generation whereas the earlier one belonged to the ‘phonebook’ generation. Social networking is a way of life for Gen-Y. Gen-Y believes in blending personal life with work life as opposed to popular belief that they like to maintain a distinction between personal and professional life. What they hate, however, is shoe-horning their lives into 9 to 5 work routine. They also do not like a job simply because the pay cheque is good.

Secondly, their expectations are not as out-sized or outrageous as many tend to assume. They are very technology savvy, are curious to learn and have a desire to perform well and therefore

The millennial employees belong to the ‘facebook’ generation whereas the earlier one belonged to the ‘phonebook’ generation. Social networking is a way of life for Gen-Y

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34

expect the rewards to follow. They are not keen to grab anything they do not believe is theirs or they deserve.

They value jobs that offer unambiguous opportunities for self-development rather than some vague development potential.

Just because they believe they know a lot and are knowledgeable, it does not mean they do not! They actually do, given their exposure and love for experimentation.

Implications for Managers and HR LeadersManaging the vastly different millennial workforce has many implications for the people managers and HR managers alike. First and foremost, they need to unlearn their past frames of reference. Second, the way work has been organized, managed and delivered will have to be revisited. The Gen-Y prefers more hands on managing and mentoring. They may be a lot more comfortable in working from your garden (if your company has one!) or from the coffee shop at the office premises, when their managers may be looking for them in the ‘cubicle-hell’ as they like to call it. In their May 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review article, “Mentoring Millennials”, authors Jeannie Meister and Karie

Willyerd (2) have listed the following key differences which are of consequence for those leading and managing them:

• What they expect from their boss: Well, the millennials expect that their bosses (a) help them navigate their career path; (b) provide straight feedback; (c) mentor and coach; (d) sponsor formal development programs; and, (e) are comfortable with flexible schedules;

• What they expect from their organisations: They expect their organizations to (a) develop their skills for the future; (b) have strong values; (c) offer customizable options in benefits/reward package; (d) allow them to blend work with rest of their lives; and (e) offer clear career path.

• What they expect to learn: They want to learn (a) technical skills in the area of their expertise; (b) self-management & personal productivity; (c) leadership; (d) industry or functional knowledge; and (e) creativity and innovation strategies.

The message from the authors cited above is simple: keep them engaged and they will over achieve for you! Well it is easier said than done. The managers and HR leaders need to recognize that traditional ways of inspiring and engaging the people will not deliver optimum results when it comes to doing so for the millennial workforce. In another study published in HBR (July-Aug 2009), some interesting insights emerged. This study involving 3782 employed college graduates was done by Booz Allen Hamilton, Ernst & Young, Times Warner and UBS in June 2008 revealed the following key findings(3).

• Theyareveryambitious.84percentprofess to be very ambitious and are willing to go the extra mile for their Company’s success.

• Interestingly, 45 percent of themhope to be working for their current employer for their entire career, although this sounds contrary to the popular notion that they are more susceptible to the wanderlust.

• Over 78 percent of them arecomfortable working with people from different ethnicities and cultures. They enjoy diversity!

The managers and HR leaders need to recognize

that traditional ways of inspiring and engaging

the people will not deliver optimum results when it comes to doing so for the

millennial workforce

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6

1

2

3

4

5

• They are keen to help heal theplanet. About 86 percent say that it is important that their work makes a positive impact on the world; and

• Theirnetworkquotientisquitehigh!Around 48 percent say that having a network of friends at work is very important!

New HR Protocol for the New Age WorkforceBased on our understanding of the millennial workforce, I propose to envisage in the next a few pages a protocol for managing the workforce of the millennium. I would like to call this as the Millennial Protocol! People policies and programs are best designed keeping in view the listed protocols so that they appeal to the workforce and help in inspiring and engaging them for contributing their very best! After all, in the knowledge era in which we live, the competitive advantage lies in harnessing the intellect, creativity and imagination of the workforce; not doing so would surely result in organisational decay.

First protocol revolves around “empowerment.” HR practices of the past empowered the HR managers (Wave 1.0) and later the line managers (Wave 2.0). The next practices in HR (Wave 3.0) will transfer the power over to the workforce/millennials. Consider giving each employee a learning budget rather than concentrating it with the Learning function and then complaining that employees do not attend any training! This is difficult particularly for the HR leaders as they are not used to sharing “power.”

Second protocol deals with “partnership.” The millennial workforce is not happy if they only well-informed of the policies. They wish to be involved in designing the same. Imagine designing a policy on use of social networking at work and doing so without the participation of the workforce. It is not likely to see the light of the day!

Third protocol focuses on “flexibility.” When designing policies for the millennials, it is important to recognize that ‘one shoe does not fit all.’ A common reward program, for example, will not deliver the desired impact. Therefore, it is imperative to adopt a ‘boutique approach’ to designing and delivering the rewards and recognition for the millennial workforce.

Fourth protocol deals with an all too important principle of policy design: “Transparency.” For example, while administering the compensation program, the millennial workforce would like to understand a lot more than what is being delivered to include who the comparators are, why they were chosen and not others, what are their competitive positioning and the like.

Fifth protocol is around the “escalation” as a routine process. The millennial workforce has no hesitation to raise their voice and question the lack of response or closure to their problems. They ask

C. Mahalingam is Executive Vice President & Chief People Officer with Symphony Service Corporation. He can be reached at mahalingam.c@symphonysv.com

References

1. Joyce E A Russell, “Career Coach: The care and nurturing of millennials” – Washington Post, August 2nd, 2010

2. Jeanne C Meister & Karie Willyerd, “Mentoring Millennials”, Harvard Business Review – May 2010

3. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Laura Sherbin & Karen Sumberg, “How Gen Y & Boomers will reshape your Agenda”, Harvard Business Review- July/August 2009

for appropriate avenues for escalation especially when they perceive something at work as unfair. And when an escalation path is not defined and communicated, they are comfortable reaching out to their CEO or Chairman of the Board for venting out their dissatisfaction.

Finally, the sixth and last protocol involves “contribution.” They want that the deal at work is driven by their contribution, not hierarchy. Age, in their view, is important only if you are wine or cheese!

ConclusionThe millennials have a great blend of talent, enthusiasm and energy. They don’t let these traits to come to you unconditionally. Their sense of justice, fairness and reward must be understood and appreciated. People policies of yesteryears were based on certain assumptions and what we knew about what engaged the baby boomers and Gen-X. These policies will not serve the purpose of engaging the Gen-Y. HR leaders will have to junk their old policies and start designing policies keeping in mind the 6 design principles or protocols described above. There lies the key to inspiring, retaining and engaging the millennials! ■

People policies and programs are best

designed keeping in view the listed protocols so that they appeal to the workforce and help in

inspiring and engaging them for contributing

their very best

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41

Creating Future Skills: Through SMT

Challenges for growth in the next decade are going to be the availability of right skills at the

grass roots, in addition to inadequate infrastructure, large fiscal deficits, incomplete economic reforms etc. According to Planning Commission, India has to almost double its ports, roads, power, airports and telecom in the next five years to sustain growth. Number of universities should go up from 350 today to 1,500 by 2016. Intake into universities must rise from 7 to15 percent and differentiated talent development should be the focus.

India’s high population density, extreme climate and economic dependence on its natural resource base make environmental sustainability critical

in maintaining its development path. According to Prof. C.K. Prahlad’s projection, India will need to skill 500 million candidates by 2022 and produce 200 million graduates. The largest working-age (19-58 years) population in next twenty years, which the country will have, needs to be skilled in job-oriented vocational areas & should be given the right education. Else instead of being useful for India in sustaining its economic growth, they may turn into a liability. In view of the above scenario the need of the hour is: • IntegrationofSkilldevelopmentand

Formal education system• Development of specific &

differentiated talent

And, the solution to address these needs might lie in a model referred to as SMT. Self Managed Team (SMT) is a team of interdependent members having shared authority and responsibility to plan, implement, execute and review the work or objectives set. They bring dynamism, high energy and self-motivation to the work place. The inherent zeal to do something in life makes them go extra mile to create high impact on business. As they get groomed in problem solving & decision making also, they need less or no supervision, which makes the organization devoid of supervision, making it flatter and more efficient. Self-Governance, Community Living, Learn-Teach-Learn, Skill Based Progression System are key features of the concept.

By Kumar Priyaranjan

Self Managed Team (SMT) is a team of interdependent members having shared authority and responsibility to plan, implement, execute and review the work or objectives set

42

The Collective Responsibility for Future IndiaIt’s collective responsibility of academic institutions and industry leaders to have holistic approach to creating future skills for strengthening the grass-root and build career plans for them in line with economic growth. Substantial work in this direction can be done through Self Managed Team (SMT) Systems, Learn and Earn Scheme, Industry Specific Vocational programs.

Self Managed Team system is a systematic way to engage needy youths in gainful employment and brighter career prospects. Some organizations like Dr. Reddy’s, Pepsi, TVS Sundaram, and Raychem RPG, have adopted the unique concept and have gained significantly in people productivity & quality of products. It has become a business model.

These youngsters co-create a positive learning environment. They are high energy, dynamic, flexible members who take complete ownership of the work assignments. This led to higher productivity, fewer quality complaints and substantial process improvements. Organization structure became leaner as the supervision layer is redundant. And this also led to lower cost of employment. High learning ability has led the team to reach or go beyond industry benchmarks faster.

Distinct features like self-governance system, learning from one-another, optimizing time of team members, getting into root cause analysis for every problem in the team, skill based progression, and excellence scorecard are the pillars on which this system is based on, and it brings distinct values to the organization. These members take complete ownership of the work and move around wherever needed, which is really unique.

SMT- Rendering Durable Efficiencies Self managed teams bring cost efficiencies and longevity as people don’t normally leave due to community connect and other strong connects amongst people and with the organization. It’s quite evident from the RPG case elaborated below that it brings high productivity, makes organization efficient and creates employment opportunities for the needy people in the society. It has been

differentiated skills rather than going to the skill starved job market; thereby, it also contributes to building future skill requirements of the nation. They decided to embark on the journey of Self Managed Team (SMT) concept of manning for the new manufacturing units.

This was first initiated in Raychem RPG’s unit in Nalagarh, Himachal Pradesh for Transformer & Energy

Background of parents the Candidates hired by Raychem RPG in Himachal Pradesh

43 Farmers

Small Pvt Jobs

Govt JobsShop Keepers

Pensioners

Artisans / Aanganwadi

19

17

12

5 4

successful in RPG Group companies and other companies mentioned above. It’s a very useful system to achieve extra ordinary results through ordinary people.

Self Managed Team at RPGRPG gave a very serious thought on charting out new paths to create

Meter manufacturing. Ten+two pass out young boys and girls in the age group of 18-21 were hired from municipal schools in rural areas of Himachal Pradesh and from needy families. Otherwise these families would not have been in a position to send their wards for any further higher education and they would have been engaged in small petty jobs or would have got into daily wages work.

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In the first phase consisted of 200 boys and girls from needy families from rural areas from all over the state of Himachal Pradesh. Ten districts of Himachal Pradesh out of 12 districts in the state are represented in Raychem RPG, Nalagarh, HP. Thirty-two (32) percent are female and 68 percent are male. Ninety-three (93) percent of them studied in Govt/Municipal Schools.

The practice continues in Raychem RPG in Halol, Gujarat after Himachal Pradesh. Other RPG Group companies also embraced the concept i.e. car radial plant of Ceat and Cable manufacturing unit of KEC all located in Gujarat. Large number of candidates are currently engaged through this system in RPG group companies.

All self managed team members were put through structured programs in technical areas like Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Drawings coupled with behavioural programs, spiritual orientation towards life, yoga & meditation, spoken & written English, computer literacy, and corporate etiquettes in collaboration with Engineering colleges & universities like Institute of Engineering and Technology, Baddi; Nirma University, Ahmedabad; Xavier’s Institute of Technical Education, Baroda, The Art of Living Foundation and Centre for Excellence in Organization (CEO).

They have also been given thorough training on problem solving tools like Pareto analysis; fish bone analysis, 7QC tools, why-why analysis; work planning, operational execution and decision-making, which prepare them, work with less or no supervision.

Through this structured approach the team members are empowered to take decisions within the defined boundary and under the mentorship of seniors. Skill based progression, Learn–Teach–Learn, Human Values Action system, Open Communication Continuum, are some of the great features implemented.

Value Added Processes played a key role

in mapping role & responsibility to chart out the right framework of delegation. This led to creating higher engagement level of seniors more meaningfully as the self-managed team members take up more of the operational activities. The empowerment roadmap defined in line with the business expectations facilitates these people to get groomed for higher responsibilities in the future.

Senior’s role changes from traditional control orientation to mentoring, coaching and have share accountability with the team members. Leaders play the role of:

• Coach,mentorandguide;

• Problems solver as and whenrequired;

• Facilitator to create strong bondingamong team members.

This has given a group of young, energetic, highly charged set of people on the shop floor who take complete responsibility of manufacturing processes. They work very closely with suppliers, vendors and even go to vendor’s place for qualification of products and facilities. These youngsters facilitate customer visits and they only handle all technical queries raised.

In terms of productivity over seventy five percent of the group has surpassed industry benchmarks created by so called experienced seniors. Twenty five percent people were at benchmark level and the remaining five to ten percent were also fast catching up. The productivity benchmarks were set for year 1, 2 and 3 respectively by business heads. But in ten months time these youngsters crossed the mark and showing the consistent performance.

Value Added Processes played a key role in mapping role & responsibility to chart out the right framework of delegation. This led to creating higher engagement level of seniors more meaningfully as the self-managed team

members take up more of the operational activities

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In Process Quality Performance (Benchmark set 23000 PPM)

RPG Group has the strong belief that such practices are symbiotic in nature as it can help alleviate problem of unemployment and it would help increase productivity; building career of needy youths, reduce unnecessary rush in colleges for such education which would not help them build their career.

Plans were drawn in the beginning to work on their higher future employability. Emphasis has been on continuing education wherein these people from remote villages will become Engineers in next few years as the members from Nalagarh unit are enrolled in B.Tech program with Chitkara University, Himachal Pradesh. Syllabus was co-created by internal technical experts and university professors keeping in mind the overall industry.

It’s also a process of creating pride in the society and families where these candidates belong. Hence, at the time

of on-boarding all parents or guardians were invited to give them complete information of the industry segment, company, people, policies, role of their wards in the company, their career progression so that when the parents or guardians go back to society, they carry the right information and they are fully aware of the company affairs. This completes the feedback loop and develops engagement with society at deeper level.

In Chakan, Maharastra unit Learn & Earn system has been implemented wherein people from rural areas have been hired and enrolled into Diploma of Engineering programs with Technical institute and as part of the course

curriculum they get engaged at work. There are number of such opportunities to establish partnerships with society, educational institutions and even the government to create career oriented skill development and growth plan which would help build future needs of trained pool of talent to sustain growth.

This is how grooming youngsters from rural background can create the fortune at bottom of the pyramid in real sense for future of the nation. ■

Kumar Priyaranjan, Senior Vice President & Head – HR, Raychem RPG (P) Ltd., Mumbai; kumarp@raychemrpg.com

SA and Insulators Overall performance

In terms of productivity over seventy five percent of the group has surpassed industry benchmarks created by so called experienced seniors

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Organisational Learning and the Role of Leaders

By Madhusmita Kar

Among the various factors that can contribute towards giving an organization a competitive edge the most important one is to have employees who

take voluntary responsibility and accountability for their own actions and make efforts towards improving their performance. Here lies the role of organisational leaders in creating a culture of learning and development, which can contribute towards enhancing the performance levels of both the organization and the employees. The essence of learning lies not in forcing employees to learn, but to create an environment at workplace where continuous learning can be fostered.

In his case study on learning organization and how an organization can make learning an integral part of its culture, Peter. A.C. Smith has cited the example of CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce)1. CIBC articulated a new vision in the 1990s, of becoming a customer based company; driven by the customers, close to the customers and developing an ever strengthening relationship with the customers.

At this point of time, a concept that captured CIBC’s vision was ‘individuals going the extra mile’. All the efforts towards change were driven by the belief that, when such discretionary effort became so ingrained that it was commonplace, it would be easier to move towards the goal. To assist in realizing this vision the bank adopted a new approach to its business based on the well-known “inverted pyramid”. This in turn demanded new mechanisms for operationalising the strategy. The LO (Learning Organization) concept appeared to offer the most promise as a blueprint for the kind of organisational journey CIBC was determined to undertake. A simple learning strategy was developed consisting of a three-element performance model, i.e. focus, will and capacity2. The goal was to give employees the support, direction and skills needed to provide customers with the best possible service. This required a change in the traditional roles of employees, managers and HR functions to fit into the new approach. Employees were asked to take responsibility for their performance and to make continuous efforts

A learning organisation is one that adopts the process by becoming adaptive, flexible and encouraging learning at all levels. Such an organisation develops as a result of the pressures facing modern organisations and enables them to remain high performers in the competitive business environment

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towards improving their performance. The manager’s role was redefined to make it less controlling, which can help employees evolve into their new roles. The role of HR was to develop the necessary tools, which can facilitate creating a learning culture. The broader goal was not to force employees to learn, but to create a kind of work culture where learning can take place effectively. CIBC successfully travelled from its traditional hierarchical environment to the “inverted pyramid” in only 3.5 years and maintained its momentum through the decade. This was possible because the basic environment was properly designed and created and once the learning approach had matured, the emphasis was more specifically placed on learning3.

Learning Organisation - FacetsA learning organisation is one that adopts the process by becoming adaptive, flexible and encouraging learning at all levels. Such an organisation develops as a result of the pressures facing modern organisations and enables them to remain high performers in the competitive business environment4. In order to develop this adaptive capability, it is also essential to create an

environment where in every employee finds an opportunity to learn and re-learn. This is one of the essential factors for the growth and development of an organization. Learning organisations are proactive not only in detecting and

correcting errors but also in identifying when and why they are not able to do it. The ability of an organisation to be innovative also depends on how effective the organisation is at learning the practices that give it a competitive edge. Similarly learning organisations can better know the limits of innovation5.

Learning becomes more result-oriented when double loop learning is institutionalized by an organisation as a part of its every process. Single-loop and double-loop6 learning constitute two important aspects of learning both by organizations as well as by individuals. In single-loop learning, individuals, groups, or organizations modify their actions according to the difference between expected and obtained outcomes. In this case there is only a change in the actions that led to deviations without focusing on the root cause.

In double-loop learning, the entities (individuals, groups or organizations) question the values, assumptions and policies that led to the actions in the first place; if they are able to view and modify those, then second-order or double-loop learning has taken place. Double loop learning is the learning about single-loop learning7.

Peter Senge8, who popularized the concept of Organisational Learning, defines Learning Organisations as:” Organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together”. Some scholars have also attempted to link up individual and organisational learning9. In their model, individual beliefs lead to individual actions, which in turn may lead to an organisational action, thus resulting in improved performance. Learning occurs as better beliefs produce better actions. As such the role of every individual employee assumes importance in a learning organization10.

The ability of an organisation to be

innovative also depends on how effective the

organisation is at learning the practices that give it a

competitive edge

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The five main features of a learning organization are as follow: systems thinking; personal mastery; mental models; shared vision; and team learning. The dimension that distinguishes learning organizations from more traditional organizations is the mastery of certain basic disciplines or ‘component technologies’12 . The basic disciplines are the following:

Systems Thinking: Very often there lies an underlying problem with the approach towards managing organizations i.e. the failure to view the complex inter-relationship between the parts of the system. The result is that, most of the solutions to the problems are short-term, often leading to long-term costs. In order to be adaptive, there is a need to develop a long-term orientation, which is basic to the systems perspective. The common tendency for people is to find out short-term solutions to problems. However, when viewed in systems terms short-term improvements often involve very significant long-term costs. For example, cutting back on research and design can bring very quick cost savings, but can severely damage the long-term viability of an organization. Thus, an organization may cut its advertising budgets, see the benefits in terms of cost savings, and in turn further trim spending in this area. In the short run there may be little impact on people’s demands for the goods and services, but in the long run, the decline in visibility may have severe penalties. System thinking involves five aspects – cause- event -effects – feedback – leverage13.

Personal Mastery: It is not the organization, but the people in the organization who learn. Personal mastery is the competency and motivation of each and every employee to go beyond the job related skills and continually explore new horizons of knowledge. Every employee must be willing to move towards self-development to realize his/her fullest potential. Personal mastery gives employees a sense of purpose, a greater meaning in their work, and they develop an internal locus of control with

a strong belief in their ability to control the processes/events around them.

Mental Models: Mental models are the individual assumptions about the world. This discipline is concerned with the way people perceive and interpret the world around them, their assumptions which are often reflected in their behaviours and approach towards situations. For organisational learning to occur in a meaningful way, people in the organization must develop a broader view of the world, and be willing to understand situations from the perspectives of others as well. The discipline of mental models starts with turning the mirror inward; learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world, to bring them to the surface and hold them rigorously to scrutiny15. It also includes the ability to carry on ‘learningful’ conversations that balance inquiry and advocacy, where people expose their own thinking effectively and make that thinking open to the influence of others16.

Shared Vision: When the vision of the future is not common to all who are parts

of the system, every part of the system starts moving in a different direction. Therefore developing a collective vision assumes importance, which gives people the motivation and encouragement to create the future they perceive. All the people in the organisation must share a collective vision of the future.

Team Learning: Team learning is the very foundation of a learning organisation. When people work in teams, they develop a collective commitment to the goals. There is therefore a need for collective dialogue and decision-making throughout the organization. The discipline of team learning starts with ‘dialogue’, the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine thinking together17.

Leaders as the Architects of a Learning CultureAll these disciplines, which characterize a learning organization, require dynamic leadership at all levels. To develop a culture that is flexible, open and responsive to change, leaders need to encourage learning at three levels; individual, groups and the organization/system level. Creating an environment that fosters both individual and collective learning requires a careful incorporation of those conditions, which can provide the necessary support and motivation to people. Management thinkers have proposed certain conditions useful as guides to the kinds of organisational structures and processes that may function as enablers of productive learning18. For example:

• Flat decentralized organisationstructures.

• Informationsystemsthatprovidefastpublic feedback on the performance of the organisation as a whole and of its various components.

• Mechanisms for surfacing andcriticizing implicit organisational theories and action, cultivating systematic programmes of

Creating an environment that fosters both individual

and collective learning requires a careful

incorporation of those conditions, which can provide the necessary

support and motivation to people

48

experimental inquiry.

• Measures of organisationalperformance.

• Systems of incentives aimed atpromoting a culture of learning.

• Ideologies associatedwithmeasuressuch as total quality, continuous learning, excellence, openness and boundary crossing.

These conditions, in turn, require free and open interaction between individuals and groups relating to various problem areas at workplace, a relationship of trust and mutual respect and a sense of belongingness. A leader must make efforts to adequately monitor and assess the effectiveness of the system and the various processes within it; he/she must be able to identify the loopholes and must facilitate double-loop learning by questioning and transforming the very assumptions that result in ineffectiveness and errors.

A leader should have the intrinsic motivation to foster this kind of a culture throughout the organisation. Among the most important learning assumptions19

are:

• Peoplewanttocontributeandcanbetrusted to do so.

• One should advocate one’s own notknowing, becoming a learner and trying to get others to do likewise thereby diffusing the responsibility for learning and

• The process of learning mustultimately be made a part of the culture.

Developing a culture of learning, requires that leaders should recognize the importance of the motive, means, and opportunity for learning: (i) the motive being the “why?” - the purpose and reason for learning; (ii) the means being the “how and what?”- the models, methods, and competencies required; and (iii) the opportunity being the “where and when?”- the spaces for learning.20

The structure of a learning organization should eliminate those factors, which may be perceived, as potential obstacles to learning and the structure must be aligned with the strategy developed to promote a learning culture21. Leaders have an important role to play in creating the strategies, structures and practices that facilitate effective exchange of ideas and knowledge. The following sections deal with the competencies of learning leaders.

Competencies of Learning Leaders In conjunction with structural changes, such as the reward systems, organisational learning capacity is enhanced by certain skills and behaviours of the leaders, which are reflected in five dimensions.22

Openness: Leaders should have an open attitude towards managing diversities. Recognizing diversities at workplace requires commitment to cultural/functional diversity in selection, development and promotion, encouraging cross-functional teamwork, conflict servicing or conflict resolving skills, and ensuring the ready availability of all information to all members.

Systematic Thinking: Being able to see the whole and not in parts,

which requires, sharing an accurate organisational history that promotes a sense of temporal continuity, recognizing the importance of relationships that go beyond the traditional authority based relationships, removing the artificial distinction between line and staff, explicit attention to the inter-relationships across the organisation and between the organization and the external forces.

Creativity: This is a skill set concerned with personal flexibility and willingness to take risks. This requires, accepting failures as a feedback, which can result in further creativity, developing long-term policies, mobility across divisions and functions, growth oriented personal development and a supportive “plan” culture.

Personal Efficacy: This is a strong belief in one’s own ability to influence the situation, which is reflected in establishing a clear vision, recognizing people who do make a difference, linking learning to action and proactive problem-solving.

Empathy: Empathy refers to the ability to understand others and this is reflected in a strong sense of ethics in dealing with employees, customers and clients, active corporate citizenship, recognition and encouragement of employees’ contributions outside the workplace and the personal willingness to take responsibility of relationships23.

Leaders have an important role to play in creating the strategies,

structures and practices that facilitate effective exchange of ideas and

knowledge

49

Summing up the Role of Leaders There are three important roles of a leader in a learning organization; leader as a designer, leader as a steward and leader as a teacher.24 The most important role of the leader lies in being a teacher and a mentor to the employees. The goals and the expected behaviours must be clear to every employee so that there is no deviation at any level. Leaders must teach people throughout the organisation to do likewise and see that the employees are able to conceptualize the insights so that they become public knowledge, ‘open to challenge and further improvement’. Leader as teacher is not about “teaching” people how to achieve their vision. It is about fostering learning for everyone. Such leaders help people throughout the organization develop systemic understandings. The foremost responsibility of leaders is to define reality and help the employees see and comprehend the reality25. The following points sum up the role of leaders in organisational learning.

Strong Personal Commitment: Leaders should have strong personal belief in the value of continuous learning and create examples for employees through their own actions. A leader must take the responsibility and the accountability for cultivating the practice of learning at all levels. This comes with the behaviour of the leader; since it is one of the means through which employees learn the culture.

Creating a Shared Vision: Leaders can facilitate effective group performance only when they are able to create a shared vision where employees consider the organisational goals as more important than their individual goals. This can facilitate teamwork, collective responsibility and group cohesiveness26. Shared vision and teamwork assume importance for creating a learning organization.

Effective Information Sharing: Leaders in a learning organization

must facilitate effective information sharing between the members of the organization27. When people have access to information, they develop a feeling of being valued and involved. Organization’s members cannot behave responsibly unless they are given access to the knowledge that is gained from others in the organisational system. In learning organizations, granting members access to the information within the system is necessary for the successful adaptation of all of the members of the organisation28.

Communicating the Purpose: Leaders in a learning organisation must have the ability to effectively communicate

the purpose to all employees. Communicating the purpose ensures that employees at all levels know what is to be done and what should be their contributions. Further it also provides for a two-way exchange of feedback between the leader and the employees29.

Creating Knowledge Links: For learning to be effective and successful throughout the organisation, it is essential that there should be knowledge links developed between organisation members and the organisation as a whole. A person’s true effectiveness in an organization should therefore be measured based on his or her relationships with other organisation members rather than on his or her individual accomplishments30.

Thinking Long term: There is a need for shifting the focus from the parts to the whole. Leaders must develop a broader and long-term perspective of situations. This will not only help them to find out long-term solutions to problems, but can also facilitate double-loop learning throughout the organisation31.

Driving Engagement: Leaders must try to drive employee engagement, which is at the core of effective performance. A desire to learn and grow comes from within when the employees feel as being

50

an integral part of the organisation and consider their work as important to their self-worth. Without this level of commitment, learning cannot occur. Therefore, leaders must create an environment, which drives engagement and enhances employee satisfaction.

Facilitating Problem-solving: Leaders should not always come forward to solve the task related problems, rather, they should encourage employees to find the solutions. Employees must learn to work as self-managed teams by developing their own work procedures and solving the problems faced by them. Dependency on the leader should be low and leaders should intervene only when the employees fail.

Developing Employees: There is a difference between managing people and developing people. Managing people is oriented towards achieving the stated goals, developing employees ensures that they are able to set their own performance goals. Employees must be given the responsibility for controlling their work and leaders must see that they are developing towards greater creativity. Stimulating intellectual growth must be made a part of the culture.

Recognizing Outstanding Contributions: Recognizing employees who give their best not only builds positive attitude, but it can also influence others to enhance their performance levels. Leaders must be able to identify the differences between employees as regards their willingness to contribute. Taking a generalized approach may result in losing focus on the effective performers.

Encouraging Employee Suggestions: Employee suggestions can be a source of knowledge creation for the organization. There should be an open communication system at workplace where every employee feels free to contribute his/her own ideas and suggestions.

Communicating Optimism: Leaders must communicate a feeling of optimism, which spreads throughout the organisation. Inspirational communication is one of the important aspects of leadership effectiveness. When the leaders communicate that ‘we can achieve the results’, employees are able to develop a stronger commitment to the goals. Call it the physics of leadership: positives attract, negatives repel. In order for leaders to inspire employees they have to be guided by a belief that there is a positive future out there. It’s imperative that leaders paint that attractive picture and generate the human energy necessary to enact it32.

Making Learning a Continuous Process: Continuous learning should be stated as one of the core values. When employees know that learning is an essential part of the organization, the capacity to learn can spontaneously develop in the process of conforming to the value.

Believing in the Potential of People: Learning leaders should be guided by the Theory Y assumptions about people. They must believe in the potential of people to learn, when provided with the resources and the necessary psychological support. Moreover, they should also have a belief that the culture can be managed to facilitate learning.

Conclusion Motivation and competencies of leaders are essential for creating an effective culture where the value of learning is deeply embedded. The leader’s role is important for designing, developing and sustaining a learning culture. The organization’s culture should be one of knowledge sharing and innovation. Continuous learning, when incorporated as an integral part of the system, can bring outstanding results for the employees, leaders and the organization. This necessarily involves the process of learning together and individual motivation to be a part of it. Individual motivation comes with the commitment and actions of the leaders. Organizations can effectively learn if there is a group of learning leaders throughout the organization who believe in the value of continuous learning and are able to influence the perceptions of the employees. Just as an architect makes plans, designs the structure and guides his team in giving the structure a proper shape, the leader, in the same way, can build up the organization into an adaptive and learning system by removing the structural barriers, creating a culture responsive to learning

Managing people is oriented towards

achieving the stated goals, developing employees ensures that they are able to set their own performance goals.

Employees must be given the responsibility for

controlling their work and leaders must see that they

are developing towards greater creativity

51

References

1. Smith, Peter.A (1999) The Learning Organization ten Years On: A Case Study, The Learning Organization Vol-6, No- 5 Pp 217-223 MCB University Press.

2. Smith, Peter .A (1999) The Learning Organization ten Years On: A Case Study, The Learning Organization Vol-6, No- 5 Pp 217-223 MCB University Press.

3. Smith, Peter .A (1999) The Learning Organization ten Years On: A Case Study, The Learning Organization Vol-6, No- 5 Pp 217-223 MCB University Press.

4. O’Keffee, T. (2002). Organizational Learning: A New Perspective. Journal of European Industrial Training. 26 (2), pp. 130-141. http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_organization/ http://www.google.co.in/.

5. Argyris, C. (1999). On Organization Learning (Second Edition). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

6. Argyris, Chris & Schön, Donald A. (1978). Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, Reading, Mass: Addison Wesley.

7. Argyris, Chris & Schön, Donald A. (1978). Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, Reading, Mass: Addison Wesley.

8. Senge, Peter. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Doubleday.

9. March, J.G. and Olsen, J.P. (1975). The Uncertainty of the Past: Organizational Ambiguous Learning, European Journal of Political Research, vol.3, pp. 147-171. http://.www.faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/o/ http://www.google.co.in/.

10. Argyris, C. (1999). On Organization Learning (Second Edition). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

22. Senge, Peter. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Doubleday.

24. Senge, Peter. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Doubleday.

25. Senge, Peter. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Doubleday.

26. Baldomir, Joel. (2009). Leading in the Learning Organization. Leadership Advance Online, Issue XVII, School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship: Regent University. http:// www.regent.edu/acad/global/publication.

27. Baldomir, Joel. (2009). Leading in the Learning Organization. Leadership Advance Online, Issue XVII, School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship: Regent University. http:// www.regent.edu/acad/global/publication.

28. Baldomir, Joel. (2009). Leading in the Learning Organization. Leadership Advance Online, Issue XVII, School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship: Regent University. http:// www.regent.edu/acad/global/publication.

29. Baldomir, Joel. (2009). Leading in the Learning Organization. Leadership Advance Online, Issue XVII, School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship: Regent University. http:// www.regent.edu/acad/global/publication

30. Baldomir, Joel. (2009). Leading in the Learning Organization. Leadership Advance Online, Issue XVII, School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship: Regent University. http:// www.regent.edu/acad/global/publication

31. Baldomir, Joel. (2009). Leading in the Learning Organization. Leadership Advance Online, Issue XVII, School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship: Regent University. http:// www.regent.edu/acad/global/publication

32. Kouzes, Jim (2008). “Erase the Haze”: Inspire a Shared Vision, November 18, 2008 http://leadershipchallenge.typepad.com/leadership_challenge/inspire_a_shared_vision/.

11. Senge, Peter. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Doubleday.

12. Senge, Peter. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Doubleday.

13. Senge, Peter. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Doubleday.

14. Three Sigma, Inc. (2002) .A Systems Thinking Primer. www.threesigma.com/print_primer.htm

15. Senge, Peter. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Doubleday.

16. Senge, Peter. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Doubleday.

17. Senge, Peter. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Doubleday.

18. Argyris, C. (1999). On Organization Learning (Second Edition). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

19. Argyris, C. (1999). On Organization Learning (Second Edition). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

20. Serrat, Olivier (1999) Building Learning Organization, Asian Development Bank.

21. Serrat, Olivier (1999) Building Learning Organization, Asian Development Bank.

22. Schwandt, Davis .R and Marquardt, Michael .J. (2000). Organizational Learning: From World Class Theories to Global Best Practices, Boca Raton, FL: St Lucie Press.

23. Schwandt, Davis .R and Marquardt, Michael .J. (2000). Organizational Learning: From World Class Theories to Global Best Practices, Boca Raton, FL: St Lucie Press.

Madhusmita Kar, Senior Lecturer, Department of Humanities, Purushottam Institute of Engineering & Technology

and shaping the attitudes of employees. When the employees learn and develop, the organization as a whole can learn and adapt in more effective ways. Above all other factors, it is the people who give the organization it’s true meaning and identity; and leaders should be the mentors to facilitate the development of people. ■

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A glimpse of the year gone by: HR Trends 2011

Employee Benefits Cost of employee benefits doubled2% - 3% (2008-09) to 6% - 7% (2011-12)

Annual premium per employee in Rs:

4,800 (2006)

9300 (2011)

2008-2009 2011-2012

60%

64%

40%

33%6%

Decline in Medical coverage offered by employers to employees’ parents

Increase in Co-payment on claims i.e. employee & insurer sharing medical expense

Source: Hindustan Times

Source: Hindustan Times

Source: Mercer 2011 Survey Reports

Skills Shortage

Employers in India are not satisfied with skill sets of fresh engineering grads

Worst hit sectors:• IT • Infrastructure & Power

Top 5 cities: Cost of Living for Expats (2011)

I II III IV V

Luanda Tokyo N’Djamena Moscow Geneva

(Angola) (Japan) (Chad) (Russia) (Switzerland)

55

26% 54%

Top 5 Cities:Quality of Living (2011)

Flexi-Working

1 Vienna (Austria)

2 Zurich (Switzerland)

3 Auckland (New Zealand)

4 Munich (Germany)

5 Dusseldorf (Germany)

Source: Mercer 2011 Survey Reports Source: Press Trust of India

Source: Mercer 2011 What’s working report

Finland 92%

Sweden 86%

Australia 85%

Best and Worst countries for flexible

work arrangement options

Armenia 35%

Greece 26%

Japan 18%

Employees less Happy with their jobs today:

“Mercer research shows that employees in India are less committed to their employers and less satisfied with many aspects of the work experience compared with six years ago As a result, half of the Indian workers are seriously considering leaving their organization at the present time. Of equal concern is apathy; one-fifth of employees who didn’t commit to staying or leaving are the least satisfied and engaged of all.”

Year

2004Year

2011

1 in 4 employees wanting to quit

their organization

1 in 2 employees wanting to quit

their organization

56

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ACROSS1. Also called premium pay, work premium refers

to that extra compensation made for work, which is considered unpleasant, hazardous, or inconvenient.

4. It is a formal confirmation by the union membership of a contract that has been signed on their behalf by union representatives.

5. Formal halt to an organization’s discretionary hiring and promoting. Such an action is inherently temporary

7. He is an individual who is engaged in on-the job training under the direction of a journeyman or an individual who is specifically hired to replace someone who is planning to retire.

9. The leave of absence, usually with pay, granted to employees who cannot attend work because of illness.

10. Also roping, slang term for convincing workers to spy on fellow union members, usually by means of bribery or blackmail.

14. It refers to an extension of services to a terminated employee in order to minimize the impact of termination, reduce the time necessary to secure a new position, improve the person’s job search skills and ultimately bring about the best possible match be

15. fees to be paid periodically by union members in order to remain in good standing with their union

16. Any of the variety of formal training program for new employees or student that allows them to learn on-the job by working closely with professionals in their field.

17. It is salary additions based on length of service. Contracts or pay plans frequently state specific time periods to qualify for such upward wage adjustments.

DOWN1. also called output curve, it is a graphic presentation of an organization

or individuals’ productivity over a specified period of time.2. published outlines for action or suggested courses of conduct that

many federal agencies issue for the guidance of their clients.3. Also called Lifetree-type scale, one of the most widely used scales in

social research6. general term used to describe any of a variety of supplemental

benefits8. The diagram indicates the interactions between members of a group.

Typically, it has circles representing people and arrows extending from those circles pointing out the other people (circles) that are liked, disliked, etc.

12. Many individuals hold positions on boards, commissions, councils, etc., because of an office that they temporarily occupy.

13. It means to deduct a part of an employee’s wages as a penalty for tardiness, absenteeism, breakage, etc

Solution