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NHRD Network JournalJanuary 2016 Volume 9 Issue 1

A Quarterly Publication by National HRD Network

Lean and Smart HR: Transforming Work

Dave Ulrich

Dr. Santrupt Misra

K Ramkumar

Rajesh Ranjan

Shelly Singh and Prakash Rao

Rajeshwar Tripathi

Judhajit das

Sukhjit S Pasricha

Saurabh Govil

Ajay Kukreja

Elliot Clark

Ester Martinez

Nishchae Suri

Harish Devarajan

Dr. N S Rajan and Asha Krishnan

Pankaj Bansal (Guest Editor)

NHRD Network Journal

Lean and Smart HR: Transforming WorkVolume 9 Issue 1 January 2016

NHRD Network Board MembersNational President: Mr K Ramkumar, Executive Director, ICICI Bank Ltd and President

ICICI FoundationImmediate Past President: Mr Rajeev Dubey, Group President (HR & Corporate Services) &

CEO (After-Market Sector) at Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.Regional Presidents:East: Mr Suresh Tripathi, Vice President Human Resource

Management, Tata SteelNorth: Mr Pankaj Bansal, CO- Founder and CEO, PeopleStrongSouth: Ms Hema Ravichandar, Strategic HR AdvisorWest: Dr Ritu Anand, Dy Global Head HR, Tata Consultancy Services LtdNational Secretary: Mr SV Nathan, Sr Director and Chief Talent Offi cer, Deloitte Haskins and SellsNational Treasurer: Mr Nishchae Suri, Head People & Change & Partner - Management Consulting, KPMGDirector General: Mr Kamal SinghExecutive Director: Mr Dhananjay SinghEmail: [email protected] Team: Pankaj Bansal Co-Founder and Chief Executive Offi cer, PeopleStrong (Guest Editor for this issue) Dr. Pallab Bandyopadhyay, Managing Editor &

Leadership Architect & Career Coach, HR PLUSEmail: [email protected]

Dr. Arvind N Agrawal, Managing Partner, Lead AssociatesPublisher, Printer, Owner: Mr Kamal Singh, Director General, NHRDNand Place of Publication On behalf of National HRD Network

National HRD Network Secretariat, C 81 C, DLF Super Mart, DLF City, Phase IV, Gurgaon 122 002. Tel +91 124 404 1560Email: [email protected]

Printed at: Nagaraj & Co. Pvt. Ltd.156, Developed Plots Industrial Estate,Perungudi, Chennai 600096. Tel : 044 - 66149291

NHRD Network Journal is complimentary for NHRDN Life Members. Please contact, Mr Pranay Ranjan at [email protected] to become a life member of National HRD Network and receive your complimentary copy. For any complaint of non-receipt of Journal, for existing life members please follow-up by sending an email to [email protected] / [email protected]

The views expressed by the authors are of their own and not necessarily of the editors nor of the publisher nor of authors’ organisations

Copyright of the NHRD Journal, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed or reproduced without copyright holders’ express permission in writing.

Dear Readers,

RIP HR. That will be the tombstone on the HR profession if we donÊt

get our act together soon‰ ⁄⁄⁄⁄ aptly quoted by Diane Wiesenthal

while writing on need for lean HR. Our world is changing and so are our work

places and also the need to transform HR processes to make it fast, smart and

user friendly. With the advent of technology , need for outsourcing non-core HR

work processes and the ever rising pressure to optimise cost along with delivery

of quality output are forcing HR organisations across the globe to re-look at their

HR processes. What started as shared services in many world-wide corporations

a decade back are reality for many Indian Organisations today. This is the precise

reason that we decided to dedicate the fi rst issue of 2016 on “Lean and Smart

HR: Transforming Work”.

We thought what can be more relevant than this topic when we are witnessing

the information and digital revolution impacting our life at every second? We as

HR professionals are encountering millennial employees who want information

fast and quick. The generation which are so glued with their handsets in collecting

and disseminating information at every moment are not ready to accept any data

which is not correct, user-friendly and not provided to them in time. Look at the

other aspect. It is no more work-life balance issues, it is all about work-slicing where

work hours are no more fi xed and work-places are virtual. The challenges for HR

professionals in this kind of environment are enormous in managing every people

related transactions seamlessly for the satisfaction of their users round the clock.

Next comes the changing aspiration of today’s employees. The employees expect HR

professionals to be their champion by advocating their needs, concerns and opinions

about all people related policies to the top management. Yet at the same time top

management team want HR to implement people related policies and processes by

collaborating with business leaders to run the organisations effectively. They also

want HR being custodian of people related data in organisations to be extremely

vigilant to make sure the data privacy and confi dentiality are not compromised.

Tomorrows HR professionals need to build a capability to pull off this delicate

balancing act by winning trust from both these sides. This diffi cult process can be

achieved, if and only if they can capture data for every people related transaction

to measure cost, effi cacy and user-friendliness and use them meaningfully to steer

through this confl ict by being fair and assertive.

HR professionals are the conscience of the organisation, as well as the keepers of

confi dential information. As HR professionals need to serve the decision making

needs of top management team by providing adequate data support, they also need

to monitor their actions toward employees to be sure that policies and regulations

are properly followed. HR professionals need to be able to push back when they

aren’t in order to keep organisation not deviating from its core values. Not an easy

responsibility keeping in mind that they need to handle confi dential information

appropriately, and never divulge it to any unauthorised person. The only way

they will be able to manage this by transforming their people related work process

through application of state of the art technology.

The next issue which will be very relevant for HR professionals in the future will be

multitasking. Just imagine on a typical day, how many requests an HR professional

will have to deal with? While you are counselling an employee about his/her career

issue, another employee will come up with a leave question. While you are struggling

with that the recruiting partner wants you to attend a recruiting strategy meeting

with all stakeholders for a hard-to-fi ll critical position lying vacant for some time.

And that’s to say nothing of employee branding, social media, employee engagement,

retention, and a whole host of other things that you have promised to your business

managers, every one critical to some internal client. In future HR will have to stand

up to changing business priorities of its internal clients and various stake-holders.

Every business manager needs you to move and act fast. The saddest reality is that

if business manager A who needs someone hired doesn’t much care if you’re already

helping business manager B who needs someone fi red. As an HR professional you

need to be able to handle it all, all at once. Do you think HR professionals in the

future will be able to respond if they are not smart, lean and not aided by appropriate

technology and HR processes?

So what do we mean when we say Lean HR? To me, Lean HR is about the existing

culture of an HR organisation and a way of doing business by HR professionals

in that organisation. It’s an approach to improving HR processes within an

organisation by maximising value while reducing waste. It simply means building

capability of HR organisation to deliver more with their existing resources. Lean

HR also encourages HR professionals to challenge preconceptions about the way

they deliver their services to their clients. And it is in this sense we believe lean HR

should ultimately be able to transform work.

So if you as an HR professional who always thought Lean are for the factory fl oor,

and certainly not for delivering HR services, we want you to re-think? In this issue

our contributors have shared their thoughts, refl ections, practical insights and more

importantly real life organisational experiences where they have transformed HR

processes, HR service delivery function and eliminated HR activities that do not

directly deliver value to its customers.

Possibly one of the least focused areas for HR skill development has been application

of technology. Who else other than the HR Guru Dave Ulrich could summarise

this when he said „domain in which HR tends to be the weakest is in

understanding and applying technology to build HR‰.

A time has come to prove that wrong and I am sure future HR professionals would

do so. We are happy to bring this issue to support this effort.

I would like to thank Pankaj Bansal, our guest editor and his dedicated team to

build this issue from scratch. This team worked tirelessly from building the concept,

to carefully choose practitioners who have been working in this domain for many

years, requesting them to share their experiences, and fi nally following up regularly

with them to get their contributions in time to make sure that we really produce a

collector’s issue in the domain of Lean HR. I on behalf of our editorial team convey

our deep appreciation to Pankaj, his team members and more importantly all our

contributors for their efforts to bring this issue for our esteemed readers across the

country.

Before I end this editorial, I would like to inform you about an important change

that we are bringing in the New Year. We have decided to publish this magazine

only in electronic form. All the future issues will be available in Ready to Print

form for o ur life members and will be mailed to them. This decision has been taken

by our board in line with the “Go Green” philosophy adopted by NHRDN.

Jill buck, founder of go green initiative at USA once said „ItÊs not enough to

prepare our children for the future⁄we must prepare the future for our

children.‰ I am sure our esteemed readers will appreciate this change and be

supportive to us. You will receive another mail from our national secretariat on

this aspect.

I am sure you will thoroughly enjoy reading this issue. Don’t forget to send your

feedback to [email protected] after reading this issue. As communicated

earlier Sonali Roychowdhury will guest edit the next issue (April, 2016) on another

exciting theme “Building Diversity in Leadership”.

Wish you all a great 2016 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dr. Pallab Bandyopadhyay

Managing Editor

(on behalf of the Editorial Team)

CONTENTSS.No. Title of Article Author Page No.

Segment 1 – Setting the Context

1. Perspectives and the Context: Dave Ulrich 1Lean and Smart HR

2. Lean and Smart HR – According to you, Dr. Santrupt Misra 3how has it helped in the transforming work?

3. Making Sense of Lean K Ramkumar 7

Segment 2 – Design and Migration

4. Design and Transition Phase – Rajesh Ranjan 9When Rubber Meets the Road

5. The Evolution of Transition Management Shelly Singh and 13and Its Rising Complexity Prakash Rao

Segment 3 – Implementation Track

6. Lean & Smart HR – Raising the bar of Rajeshwar Tripathi 19HR Experience

7. Implementation: Lean and Smart HR – Judhajit Das 25HR Transformation Track

8. 6E People – Ontime, Hasslefree Sukhjit S Pasricha 30HR experience!

9. The Recruitment Transformation story Saurabh Govil 34of Wipro – A fresh start

10. Transforming Recruitment through Ajay Kukreja 37Lean & Smart HR – The Honeywell Story

Segment 4 – External Ecosystem

11. External Ecosystem: Lean & Smart HR Elliot Clark 40

12. The HR Ecosystem Ester Martinez 45

13. Powering the Approach to Nishchae Suri 49HR Transformation

Segment 5 – What’s next?

14. HR Transformation – What’s next? Harish Devarajan 54

15. Lean & Smart HR – Future of work Dr. N S Rajan and 58through Lean & Smart HR Asha Krishnan

S.No. Title of Article Author Page No.

EDITORIAL REFLECTIONS

PANKAJ BANSAL

Co-Founder and Chief

Executive Offi cer, PeopleStrong

(Guest Editor for this issue)

The dynamics of work methodologies have been going through

a rampant phase of change and with each passing day, the

essence of the approach towards work is evolving. The transition

is quite signifi cant in India,which is booming with opportunities

and is emerging as the “HR Capitol of the world: strongest

hub for workforce and workforce related solutions”. For a

long time, we have been accustomed to the 9 to 5 systems at offi ce

and desk oriented jobs but now the scenario has changed. A diverse

range of jobs has come up right from a retail outlet to real estate,

from pizza delivery to logistics. At the virtual front, we have the

e-com industry which is playing a pivotal role in redefi ning the

work environment. The point to note is that we have a young

workforce and their working method is changing. People are

adopting and accepting newest kinds of jobs in the market. This

is happening globally.

So, from a situation where people tried to adjust their skills to

whatever job is available, they now believe in their passion and

follow it. This does not mean the conventional work profi les are

fading, but people are opening up to follow their instincts and

convictions.

The Startup culture is the best example of that. There are about 58 M establishments in India currently, hence a huge diaspora of small companies (mostly unorganised sector though). As per a recent report by NASSCOM, about 3100 startups (3rd largest base in the world) exist (after the US and Israel). This number is further expected to grow at the rate of 800+ startups every year to reach to ~11500 startups by 2020. And as these ‘newbie-corporates’ venture into uncharted territories who knows what work will look like?

Our workforce demographics are equally interesting! We as a country would have ~800 M strong workforce by 2021. As a

large part of our 800 M working population would belong the smartphone generation (though less than one sixth in organised sector), which believes in “Service Now” wherever they are, work would no longer remain the same. Digital Technology will be the name of the game and it will change the entire paradigm and become a true game changer.

- Cloud 2.0 where users will even defi ne the enterprise ERP!

- APPifi cation of everything and anything

- Robotics and Machine learning are already invading the work systems in a big way.

Observing these interesting trends of how technology has been ‘Transforming Work’, NHRDN asked me to be the Guest Editor for this esteemed Journal and the editorial team and myself thought of dedicating the fi rst edition of 2016 towards “Lean and Smart HR and how it is transforming work”. And the result is this amazing collection of thoughts, articles and case studies which reaffi rmed our belief. We have tried to capture the best of information, knowledge from experts and thought leaders in HR from global as well as Indian context. Lean and Smart HR is the way to go and we are also trying to show how organisations who have just started adopting can experience the benefi ts out of it. We have offered views from leaders, consultants, thought process specialists, practitioners, who have been part of this adventurous journey.

The journal is divided into 5 major segments.

Segment 1: Context Setting and Business case: This segment focusses on setting the context of Lean and Smart HR. It captures the views of thought leaders who share what does lean and smart HR mean, how does it impact the world of work and human resources. To cover this aspect we had three renowned forward thinkers of HR industry who shared their views on the topic.

Dave Ulrich, a globally renowned thought leader who needs no introduction in the space of HR transformation, shared his

views on changing paradigms of HR transformation, in an interview with my colleague Ankur Sehgal.

This section also has views of Dr. Santrupt Misra, CEO, Carbon Black Business and Director, Group H.R. Aditya Birla Group who has shared his own experiences of “Transforming work – lean and Smart HR way, in a diverse, dynamic and complex conglomerate which has been a leader in transforming its workplace practices time and gain” in a conversation with two of my colleagues Gauri Vatsyayan and Kamakshi. He also advised on the fl ow of the journal.

Final ly, our own National President of NHRDN Mr. K Ramkumar, Executive Director, ICICI bank, explained making sense out of LEAN in his unique writing style that I am sure would be liked by all.

Segment 2: Design and Migration – With the context set and a defi ned business case, the fi rst step in the process of HR Transformation is Design and Migration. For the success of any transformation effort a robust design is a must and so is the process of migrating to the new transformed processes. In this segment of the journal, we have tried to capture two different views on this process of design and migration.

We have covered practitioner’s views and experiences as shared by Shelly Singh, Cofounder and Chief Business Offi cer, PeopleStrong and Prakash Rao, Founding Member and Vice President MPHRO who have shared the wealth of their experience of implementing over 125+ Platform based HR transformations across industry sectors in the past decade.

We also have Rajesh Ranjan, from Everest Group, the largest research fi rm in terms of HR outsourcing and technology space, sharing his views-which can be thought of as independent views and observations as an analyst and consultant on global and Indian context in this segment.

I am sure that after reading two different aspects of their views on this subject of design and migration a lot of questions in

the mind of an HR practitioner venturing into this journey would get cleared.

Segment 3. Implementation – Recruitment and HR Track: Capturing the real action in the journey of Transformation this segment is one of my personal favourites. I am hopeful that the readers would be as amazed and excited as I was when they read the exciting stories and experiences of Recruitment and HR transformation, shared by Chief HR Offi cers of leading organisations from diverse Industries in India.

On one hand, we have Rajeshwar Tripathi, Chief People Offi cer, Mahindra & Mahindra throw light on how they created an amazing lean and smart HR case study in the automotive industry and on other hand, we have Judhajit Das, Chief People offi cer, ICICI Prudential who has shared his experiences on Lean and Smart HR implementation in the Insurance Industry in distributed operations. This section also captures the unique HR transformation story of IndiGo Airlines shared by Sukhjit Pasricha, Vice President – HR and Admin, IndiGo where he shares how this story shaped up in the diverse segment of aviation.

We were also fortunate to include two very interesting, diverse Recruitment transformation stories from India in the collection - One from Saurabh Govil, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Human Resources at Wipro Ltd, who shares about how one of the largest Software and IT giants of the country implemented this model. Thanks to my colleague Anand V in supporting the edit of this section. The other article came from Ajay Kukreja Country HR Director, Honeywell India, who has shared how Lean and Smart HR methods helped in solving the business needs in the engineering domain.

We hope that these case studies and implementation journeys make interesting reference points for practitioners, and help them when they undergo their own journey.

Segment 4: External Ecosystem – The most important aspect in the journey of Lean and Smart HR is the players/partners/providers who create an external ecosystem enabling and supporting the organisations in their journeys. In this segment we wanted to capture the glimpses of this interesting ecosystem, from the eyes of Global thought leaders and Infl uencers who have been observing the dynamics of this landscape for some years now.

Our quest took us to Elliot Clark, CEO and Chairman, SharedXpertise, the publishers of leading media and events in the space of HR Outsourcing globally, Ester Martinez, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of People Matters, India’s leading magazine in the space of HR and Nishchae Suri, Partner and Country Head ‘People and Change’, KPMG. With all of them greatly contributing to this section, we have been able to provide an unbiased, comprehensive view of the external ecosystem both from India and Global context. Hope the readers will appreciate the unique aspects of the HRO world that are shared by these thought leaders.

Segment 5 : Future of Work – What’s next – Albert Einstein once said ““I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.” His words sound more relevant than ever in today’s ever changing world. Every single day work is changing and hence we asked few thought leaders to look into the future, gaze into the crystal and visualise the way forward with smart and lean HR and how work will transform in the coming years.

In this section, we have Harish Devarajan, Founder, People Unlimited (former Unilever) and renowned thought leader in HR transformation space to do a little crystal gazing into the future of lean and smart HR.

Who else could have done justice with the culmination of the journal other than Dr. N S Rajan and Chief Human Resources and Member Executive board Tata Sons. He and his colleague Asha Krishnan have shared their perspective on how they see the entire shakeup of the future.

In this edition of Lean and Smart HR – Transforming work, we have tried to capture unique stories which can provide a diverse yet holistic view on lean and smart HR. There are many stories that we could not cover in this edition due to the time crunch, but we will surely cover them in the upcoming editions. With the detailed experiences shared by the HR leaders, we hope that this journal works as a Blackbook for people who are just starting to implement and adopt this model. They will be getting some a fair share of guidance on how things are to be done.

Before I put my pen down, I would like to thank all the authors for spending time and sharing their valuable experience and spearheading the lean and smart HR movement in the right direction. I also thank my team members ‘Ayan Das and Dakshdeep Singh’ for facilitating authors and supporting the editorial team in capturing the right essence. I will fail my duty if I don’t thank Kamakshi Pant who single handedly managed the aggregation of what you see in front of you and editorial team who worked tirelessly to get the articles, review it and give it the fi nal shape.

It is indeed an exciting time for all of us, both as Indians as well as the members of the HR fraternity in India as India takes its rightful place as the ‘HR Capitol of the World’. Let’s gear up for the big leap as we start this year!

Happy New Year and Happy Reading!

January | 2016 NHRD Network Journal 1

PERSPECTIVES AND THE CONTEXT: LEAN AND SMART HR

DAVE ULRICH

About the Author

Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Collegiate Professor of Business Administration at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group a consulting fi rm focused on helping organisations and leaders deliver value. He studies how organisations build capabilities of leadership, speed, learning, accountability, and talent through leveraging human resources. He has helped generate award winning data bases that assess alignment between strategies, organisation capabilities, HR

practices, HR competencies, and customer and investor results.

Q.1. Lean and Smart HR – How has it changed work in the past few years?

Like all other work processes, HR work has had to deliver more value

or it would not be accepted. This value comes not just by carrying out the fixed HR activities which make employees more productive, but by doing more that make organisations gain more confi dence from their customers and investors. Customer confidence results in more revenue from targeted customers; investor confi dence results in higher market value. In the latest book The Leadership Capital Index: Realising the Market Value of Leadership, I show that leadership dramatically helps increase a fi rm’s market value.

HR practices should be assessed by the extent to which their deliver value to employees and line managers inside a company and to customers, investors, and communities outside.

Q2. Three-legged stool model has been the most referred model for HR Shared

Services. With nextgen workforce coming into picture and technology on driving seat, are there any new dimensions that are getting added?

The HR organisation should match the business organisation. If a business organisation is centralised with a single product or focus, the HR organisation should be organised by the HR function (staffi ng, training, compensation). If an organisation is in multiple businesses, the HR organisation should be the shared services model. The key to the success of the shared services model is NOT the roles HR professionals play, but the relationships that encourage people to work well together.

Q.3. What is the biggest push for an organisation to adopt Lean and Smart HR? Is it business or demographic and geographic factors?

HR has to create value for customers, investors, and communities outside the company. Lean HR means that HR processes are not driven by bureaucratic

2 January | 2016 NHRD Network Journal

activities, but by the measure of how quickly and easily they can create value for external stakeholders. Smart HR is not about HR, but about how HR delivers value to others.

Q4. Any observations you might have on the Indian market vis-à-vis the global market in terms of Lean and Smart HR Practices?

I am privileged to work with brilliant colleagues, l ike Professor Wayne Brockbank, who are experts in Indian management and HR work. He continually reminds me that Indian HR work has lead the world in the ability to access and manage information to compete in the knowledge economy.

Q5. How will the adoption of Lean and Smart HR in India transform work in future?

Smart HR, focused on creating value for external stakeholders, and lean HR moving away from bureaucracy to action will help any company do a better job in building the right talent, leadership, and culture to win in the marketplace. By talent, I mean that employees will come to work with the competencies to do their work today and tomorrow and the full engagement to do their best. By leadership, I mean that

leaders at all levels of the organisation will set strategy, deliver results, manage talent, and be personally profi cient. By culture I mean that the organisational identity inside will represent the promises made to customers outside. Smart and Lean HR delivers talent, leadership, and culture to win.

Q6. How will HR Shared Services transform and redesign self in the digital age to engage and lead- employees, HR and business?

Shared Services is a governance process that will become increasingly customised through innovations in technology. Each employee can form a personal relationship and commitment to the organisation and the technology backbone enables that employee to get from the fi rm those things that matter most to him or her. Shared services also reside in centers of expertise where HR professionals have deep insights into talent, leadership, and cultural challenges.These insights anticipate what can be done in the future to win in the marketplace. HR will be less about HR and more about helping the business win.

[As shared with Ankur Sehgal (PeopleStrong)]


LEAN AND SMART HR – ACCORDING TO YOU, HOW HAS IT HELPED IN THE TRANSFORMING WORK?

Dr. SANTRUPT MISRA

About the Author

Dr. Santrupt Misra is CEO, Carbon Black Business and Director, Group Human Resources of the Aditya Birla Group. He is a Director on the Aditya Birla Management Corporation Private Limited Board, the apex decision making body of the US $41 billion Aditya Birla Group. He is also on the Boards of Aditya Birla Science & Technology Company Limited; Alexandria Carbon Black Company Limited; Thai Carbon Black Public Company Limited; Indigold Carbon Mauritius Limited and SKI Carbon India.

He is on the Advisory Board of the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC) U.S.A. and was appointed as Member of the SHRM Certifi cation Commission in 2014 for a period of three years and is on the Board of the Xavier’s Institute of Management Bhubaneswar, India.

Dr. Misra has over 28 years of professional experience in global business, research and organisational development. Under his leadership as the Director HR, the Group has developed a strong employer brand and has acquired laurels as the ‘Best Employer of India’ and a ‘Great Place for Leaders to Work’ in 2007.

In 2011 the Aditya Birla Group was ranked 4th globally and 1st in Asia Pacifi c in the ‘Top Companies for Leaders 2011’, a study conducted by Aon Hewitt, Fortune magazine and the RBL Group. When he took over as CEO of the Group's Carbon Black business, it was the fourth largest in the world. In less than two years, he grew the business to be the largest in the world through a strategic acquisition.

Among the many awards/fellowships bestowed on Dr. Misra over the past decade, a few prominent ones are mentioned below:

• Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources (NAHR), USA.

• The HRD Excellence Award from the National HRD Network (NHRDN).

• The All India Management Association (AIMA) admitted Dr. Misra as an AIMA Fellow.

• The National Institute of Personnel Management conferred on him the ‘NIPM Ratna Award’.

• ‘Ravi J Mathai National Fellow Award’ by the Association of Indian Management Schools.

• ‘Global Leader of the Year’ at the CEO India Awards 2014.


First of all, Lean & Smart HR are relative terms, there is nothing called absolutely

Lean or Smart because what is Lean and Smart in one context could be very obese and slow moving in the other context or could be very anorexic and starving in the third context. So therefore, Lean and Smart is very contextual and that context consists of various things.

One is the size of the business. Second is the dynamics of the sector as to how fast moving the sector is, or is it slow moving? Is it kind of tepid, rather constant without any churn or turbulence? Is it steady paced or is it fast paced? Third is the life-stage of the organisation – are you ramping up, are you start-up, are you mature in your life cycle? The fourth stage - is the kind of customers you are supposed to serve which consists of predominantly your employees and their demographics. If I am an older employee, been serving long, perhaps my expectations are shaped by my life experiences. Anything better I get , makes me happier than having an absolute expectation of a different kind, whereas younger employees who are used to smart and fast response system; their expectation will be different. So, the customers profi le also determines whether your system is lean, and whether your structure or process is smart.

One of the things every CHRO or HR leader needs to think about is the context he operates in and ask if it will be Lean and Smart in that context or not. Therefore, it is a complex set of factors that should influence your thinking around that

subject rather the one or two things. Just huge investment in technology doesn’t make it Lean and Smart, just outsourcing in every situation doesn’t make it Lean and Smart or just doing a shared services in-house doesn’t make it Lean and Smart. You need to develop a clarity of thinking as to what should be Lean and Smart in this context which could be all of the above, combination of these or none of the above. For example, if I have a very remote location in the majority of my operation, the Lean and Smart in that context will probably be having my own people internally doing things as well. So there may not be an opportunity for outsourcing there. There may not be an opportunity for technology – ‘Last mile connectivity’ there. For example, underground mines.

We cannot have a fi xed view of Lean and Smart defi ned in terms of only modern technology, outsourcing or shared services and these are very signifi cant roles to play in one context but these may have limited application in another context. So it is a challenge for every HR leader to understand what is Lean and Smart HR today and what is it likely to be in the next 3-5 years’ time depending on where my organisation is going. The reason why best practices often fail, is because we blindly copy other people’s best practices of Lean and Smart and try to supplant it to another environment whose needs are very different. The concept of ‘horses for courses’ is most applicable in this situation.

Typically, If you look at a conglomerate like Aditya Birla Group, what is Lean and

Dr. Misra holds a Masters in Politics from Utkal University, India and a Masters in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India; a PhD in Public Administration from the Utkal University, India and a PhD in Industrial Relations from the Aston Business School, UK. He is an Eisenhower Fellow and Aston Business School Fellow, an AIMA Fellow and a Commonwealth Scholar.


Smart in the telecom industry will not be same for mining or textile industry. What cost a fi nancial services, telecom and technology fi rm can absorb today, the mining and textile fi rm cannot. Hence, being lean and smart in the same way will not be possible for everyone. For example, I may use an international ERP for large parts of the organisation at a certain level and above, but I may use a local HR ERP for the basic needs of people who are front line store employees in a retail business. I do not need to use an international high cost system to meet their expectations. I might want both these systems to talk to each other and I may require a common database to draw insights, for which I can use a middleware or any other system, but it is a different thought altogether. The choices that one makes, thus have to be driven by the ability of the organisation in terms of cost and also management bandwidth to be able to absorb what is called Lean and Smart.

Everything Lean and Smart does not necessarily mean it consumes fewer resources, sometimes Lean and Smart could consume more resources than what does not appear to be Lean and Smart. So the concept of Lean and Smart itself is a defi nition. Is it to be defi ned in input term? Is it to be defi ned in terms of output term as we service the client? So, Lean and Smart has to be an optimal combination of both – one that consumes less resource, and at the same time perhaps produces a greater impact in terms of client servicing.

Quite often I fi nd that we get confused with Lean and Smart and assume that the Smart part is in relation to the consumer, and Lean is in relation to the inputs that we use. So, the Lean and Smart here becomes a clever word, where Lean refers to the resources consumed and Smart refers to the output produced in terms of client experience. But unless lean and smart can balance both the input consumption and

the output created, it will not be Lean and Smart in true sense.

Prof. Ramcharan shared in his HBR article that HR should be focusing more on partnering with business for strategic interventions rather than focusing on transactions.Your views ?

It’s the truth but again, it has to be contextualised. HR should be there to partner the business and not focus on routine transaction, but someone has to focus on routine transactions. Also, what is routine and what is strategic again depends on the stage an organisation is at. If I am a startup, the routine itself is strategic because I will have to set up the basic processes. Whereas if I am a fully evolved organisation, the basic processes might be routine as I have other areas to focus into. There cannot be an absolute distinction between what is routine and what is strategic. Routine is part of strategic. So what is routine and what is strategic is an ever-changing issue depending on the sector, the life stage of the organisation and the business’ ambition. And how you defi ne that routine determines in the long term, how you are able to deliver value from your function to the organisation.

One of the challenges for HR, CHRO and the team is to redefi ne what is routine and what is strategic, rather than having a fi xed view that this is routine and this is strategic.

Can HR be Smart without being Lean?

Of course HR can be Smart without being Lean. Because if you consume more resources and deliver the same impact you are Smart but you are no longer Lean. You can be Smart and not be Lean, and you can be Lean and not Smart at the same time. So all combinations are possible. But every time you want to continue to correlate, the input part with the output part, you have


to ask yourself “Am I delivering the best value by combining the two?” And this is the key question that can help you fi gure out what are you doing, how well are you doing and will give you an insight into what could be the next strategic frontier around which you focus yourself.

Right now there is a wave of Cloud-based applications, Mobile Apps which are increasingly getting adopted. Do you think they will surpass the way ERPs have been dominating the HR space?

Yes, it will. The Cloud’s biggest advantage is its fl exibility. You can always have pilots without being saddled with long term cost in a Cloud model. And once in the pilot, you can fi ne-tune things and roll it out on a large scale. In the pilot you don’t have to make signifi cant investment for yourself like licenses and other things. When your organisation scale down or scales up, the Cloud-based solution can scale down and scale up. If you make your internal investment, it’s harder to do that. But of course, if the Cloud as an option is not available, many of us have to make internal investment.

But now that Cloud is becoming more accessible and has proven itself as a concept, organisations like us that have historically invested in ERPs have a choice to make. In fact we have migrated some of our systems to the Cloud-based solutions. So I think Cloud has this unique opportunity for fl exibility, prototyping and piloting which makes Smart, accessible to any size of organisation and at any stage of its life. In the earlier model, you needed a critical mass for implementation, otherwise it did not justify the cost. Now, you do not need the mass because you can get everything from the third party partner who has the licences and the structure; all you have to

provide is last mile connectivity and data. So I think Cloud has signifi cant potential. Of course, like anything there are issues. Informational securities as an issue is always talked about. Data privacy loss could be an issue. But I believe we can get into that level of maturity as we learn to use more and more of Cloud solutions.

What does the future hold for Lean, Smart and HR?

I believe that emerging technologies like: Mobile, handheld devices and voice recognition will all have to be part of the new Lean and Smart. A lot of personalisation of the output for the end consumer would also happen. For e.g. as a user I would want to look at the same output differently and I would be able to customise my screen the way I want.

The challenge however will be that technology will move very fast and users (employees) will be much ahead of organisation’s decision makers in its adoption. That will create a dissonance because I as an individual, if I am a tech enthusiast, will learn a lot more about the technology and feel frustrated about my organisation not moving at the same pace. Whereas due to lack of interest in technology, the decision makers may not be that prudent to make the decision. This digital divide in decision making will be one frontier of challenge that we’ll have to overcome. i.e. How do the decision makers, who control the resources become so technology savvy that the timelines between emergence of new technology and its adoption are shortened and do not lead to frustration among the end users. That’s the key question that goes in for the future.

(As Shared over call with Gauri Vatsyayan.)


MAKING SENSE OF LEANK RAMKUMAR

About the Author

K Ramkumar is National President, NHRDN and Executive Director, ICICI Bank and President, ICICI Foundation.

Mr. K. Ramkumar is an Executive Director on the Board of ICICI Bank and the President of ICICI Foundation.

Mr. Ramkumar has completed his Post Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management from Madras School of Social Work in 1984. He has joined the Board of Directors with effect from

February 1, 2009.

Prior to joining ICICI Bank in 2001, Mr. Ramkumar has served companies such as Hindustan Aeronautics, Brookebond Lipton India Limited (now Hindustan Unilever Limited) and ICI India Ltd. His work in these companies has mainly been in the areas of Human Resources Management and Manufacturing.

Leadership Development, Succession Management, building a supply chain for the Bank’s human resources requirements, leveraging technology to innovate, and driving operational excellence for world class service quality, are his passion.

Institute for Finance, Banking & Insurance and ICICI Manipal Academy for Banking & Insurance were conceived and nurtured by him. The partnership Initiatives with SEBI – National Institute for securities management and with NIIT - the NIIT University, were also nurtured by him. He led the CSR project of ICICI Foundation on skilling youth and promoting livelihood. This is done under the ICICI Academy for Skills, which has 9 centers offering 7 skills to 7500 youth per year.

He writes extensively on a range of topics on his blog www.theotherview.in. He invites you all to be active contributing member of this blog.

During the last 12 years I have been involved with inculcating the lean

principles at ICICI. I am a fi tness freak, but not someone who obsesses with my looks and calories burnt. To me exercising is aimed at muscle tone, strength and stamina. My fi tness metaphor is a functional metaphor and not an aesthetic one. I guess where any institution drives lean principles for functionality and not the fad then adoption of lean is for the correct reasons. Lean as with the human body, should focus on removing fat and

shoring up muscles. Lean should not lead to muscle waste.

In my decade long experience I have understood lean as:

Being clear about what needs to be achieved and not being process obsessed

Understanding what information fl ow and work structure is the most optimal

A resource leverage game and not a work fl ow trimming obsession


Empowerment and delegation of authority closer to where the action is

Constantly challenging the status quo and backing improvisation and innovation

Often the proponents of lean get lost in the debate on process and metrics and lose the wood for the trees. My argument is not that process and metrics are unimportant. It is more about not putting the cart before the horse.

Let me illustrate this with 2 examples. When the recruitment numbers at ICICI was multiplying year after year in terms of multiples, the more we tried optimising the process we came a cropper. However, when we sat down and challenged our model and were prepared to take the risk and disrupt it, we breezed through the challenge effortlessly. The same thing was true with our approach to learning and development. It was the fundamental recasting of the model which delivered the results.

In both the cases we did not adopt the lazy outsourcing model. Lazy outsourcing is like sweeping the garbage from your doorstep to the neighbours, without addressing the key issues of garbage generation, recycling and effi cient disposal. Core functions of an organisation cannot be made lean by shifting the work elsewhere or agonising over process and installing a galore of dashboards and metrics. It

requires the ability to reimagine work itself and willingness to fundamentally disrupt the 5 levers which I have listed above. Once again, do not stretch my argument as outsourcing work is wrong. Well thought out outsourcing is more of backward integration and not garbage disposal.

Lean should be evaluated by taking into account the end to end workfl ow and resource commitment and not only the part which is carried out inside. It should be the sum total of what happens inside your organisation and that which happens in the extended organisation outside.

Like fi tness is more than exercising lean is more than a process; like fi tness is more than calories burnt lean is more than sterile metrics; like fi tness is about healthy muscles lean is about the effectiveness and effi cient resource commitment and fi nally like fi tness is not about neat looks lean is not about the fl owcharts and the many colourful displays.

Let me close with a piece of information. In the year 2002 ICICI managed its 4500 people strong business with 115 member team; today we are 75,000 people strong and we manage it with 205 in-company resources and about 100 other resources of our extended partners. Lean should disrupt linearity and incrementalism. Lean is more than shopping for cost arbitrage it is all about value creation and creating competitive advantage.


DESIGN AND TRANSITION PHASE – WHEN RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD

RAJESH RANJAN

About the Author

Rajesh Ranjan, Partner, leads Everest Group’s Business Process Services (BPS) syndicated and custom research-led advisory practice for the global market. He advises senior stakeholders on their global services initiatives providing deep insights into sourcing trends, value capture opportunities, service provider landscape, and best practices. He helps service providers and investors in their growth agenda. Rajesh has authored industry leading reports on various BPS markets including next generation

themes such as Business-Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS), Digital (Analytics, Mobility, C loud), and automation. He is frequently quoted in leading general media and global services-specifi c publications as well as invited to speak at industry forums.

Prior to joining Everest Group, Rajesh was a consultant at Wipro Technologies, performing process consulting and business analysis for Fortune 500 clients. He started his career as a software engineer at Infosys Technologies. He holds an MBA from the XLRI, Jamshedpur, India, and a Bachelor of Technology from ISM, Dhanbad, India.

Well begun is half done!” said Aristotle. The words of this great

philosopher and scientist seems to have survived 23 centuries and still holds true; especially for any transformation story. This especially applies to transformative HR shared services initiatives where a well thought-out design and effective implementation/transition is crucial to achieve the intended outcome. Design and transition is the crucial phase that follows after business case fi nalisation and precedes the steady state phase. During this phase, assumptions of business case faces the test of reality. It is when rubber meets the road and the model used for defi ning the business case gets tested.

Typically the objective of a HR shared services transformation exercise is “To

create a future model that is effi cient, agile, effective, and business aligned – in short a Lean and Smart Future”. To meet this objective, enterprises can take either an in-house approach or adopt a third-party outsourcing model. Notwithstanding some difference in the roles, responsibilities, and governance in these two models, the design and transition phase plays a crucial role to realise the shared services objectives. Let’s look at some of the key elements of the design process and subsequent transition phase.

There are fi ve key design areas one needs to focus on – process, technology, location, people, and business continuity. While designing these, one needs to keep in mind that they are inter-related and dependent on each other as well.

“


Process Design: One of the important decision points during the process design is to identify the nature of support required by employees, managers (typically called “line managers”), and the retained HR organisation – three key user groups of HR shared services. It would mean clearly identifying what activities should be included for each HR function under the HR shared services scope. These could be:

a. Self-service enabled: Through HR portals (performed by employees/managers/retained HR with no involvement from HR shared services)

b. Assisted service: Through HR help desk (originated by employees/managers and addressed by HR shared services)

c. Back-office performed: Through technology and/or manual (entirely managed by HR shared services)

2. Technology Design: Technology plays a very important role in achieving HR shared services objectives. It underpins the HR processes and several of its design principles. In recent times, digital advancements (cloud, mobility, social, and analytics) are creating signifi cant opportunities. Everest Group’s research shows that cloud adoption is growing at 70-80% within HR technology space. A cloud/Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based model allows access to latest features and functionalities on a pay-as-you-go model. This is quite attractive to many enterprises that lack capital to make signifi cant upfront investment in the traditional on-premise model. Mobility is offering opportunities to further drive self-service. This is especially true for enterprises that have a signifi cant number of workforce that are on the move. Social tools are creating signifi cant opportunities in HR

areas such as recruitment, especially as it relates to passive candidate engagement and hiring. Harnessing analytics and big data is probably the biggest opportunity that HR organisation has to get the proverbial “seat on the table”. In addition to all these, there are advancements in areas such as Service Delivery Automation (SDA) that further drives effi ciency, productivity, and accuracy in back-office administrative processes. The quality of service delivery today is directly proportional to the extent of technology being used by the HR team to manage the employees and their life events.

3. Location Design: This aspect of design identifi es the appropriate location(s) for shared services. It is again an important component and needs to be decided depending on various factors such as – cost of operations, access to talent, nature of process to be supported, organisational comfort, geo-political risk etc. Leading global enterprises have effectively utilised global sourcing model (offshore and nearshore locations) to maximise the labor arbitrage opportunities. In Indian context, while labor arbitrage may not be that big a factor, there is still an opportunity to consider the trade-offs of setting up shared services in tier-1 vs. tier-2 vs. tier-3 cities.

4. People Design : Th is inc ludes aspects such as defining the roles & responsibilities of retained HR organisation post HR transformation. Some of the key considerations while thinking through this aspect includes:

The retained organisation must perform roles that support the business goals and objectives; outputs must be tied to business performance


Identify the skills required to perform such a role and re-skill people through adequate training

Ensure that shadow organisations (people performing similar work as done in shared services) are not created in the future state as it effectively derails the business case

5. Business Continuity Design: This essentially requires to put in place business continuity and disaster recovery plans to avoid business disruptions in case of any geo-political upheavals. The recent Chennai fl ood is a good example of how important this aspect is.

As mentioned earlier, irrespective of the sourcing model (in-house vs. outsourced), all the above aspects need to be carefully thought through. Having said that, there are some additional considerations while working in an outsourced model. The outsourced model offers opportunity to tap into expertise and capabilities of a third-party that would have implemented several similar setups. However, to leverage that, enterprises need to provide adequate degree of freedom to the outsourcing partner while defi ning the boundary conditions of the design. This way client organisations can benefit from the latest innovative methods that the outsourcing partner provider is privy to. Having said that, it does not mean that the control moves out of the grasp of client organisation. Some level of ring fencing should be created in terms of unique constraints that the solution must adhere to while focusing on the intended outcomes. For example, when it comes to location design, if the outsourcing partner has developed a mature delivery location that helps meet business objectives (e.g. cost effi ciency) while adhering to constraints (e.g., data security/compliance), enterprises should

look to utilise that instead of dictating a specifi c location.

The maturity of the market also plays a role in enterprise approach when it comes to providing adequate leeway to their outsourced partner. Enterprises in more mature markets such as US and UK increasingly rely on outsourced partner expertise to tap on the best practices. Emerging markets, such as India, exhibit a dichotomy. There are few organisations that present an approach that is consistent with mature markets (sometimes ahead of that as well). However, a majority of them don’t. Having said that, this is also changing as we see growing adoption of the outsourced model. Our research shows that the HRO market in emerging economies of APAC (primarily India, China and Indonesia) is growing at a CAGR of 23-25% over the past three years with a penetration of around 5%.

Post the completion of the design process, the transitions or migration phase starts up. In this phase, the processes and systems designs are implemented. There is multilevel testing that is done and if any alignment in process design is needed, it is also done at this stage. For some of the phases, a parallel run is also done to ensure proper functioning and results. As you move from design to transitions process, seamless move is very important so that any information loss does not happen. To make it possible, it is very important that few of the team members of the design team become part of the migration team. This is important in both cases whether you have opted for outsourced models or an in-house model. In case of in-house model, the complete ownership stays with the organisation, however, in the case of outsourced model, it is a joint responsibility. Though in outsourced models the ownership of delivering results and achieving outcomes stays with the solution provider, it is very


important for the client organisation to deploy the best of their resources in the process too. Among various other things, to choose the right set of people it is important to look at their experience of processes and strong project management skills.

At this stage, it is also important to take care of the below mentioned key points:

1. Do not reinvent: In terms of various transitions activities, there are several formats that are available as per industry best practices. One can simply adopt these available prototypes like charter document, plan template, or status reporting template. It would save time, effort and help in standardisation.

2. Balance compliance with fl exibility: This is particularly true for the outsourcing model. There would be pressure from clients to meet the set design plan, but the actual implementat ion might demand fl exibility. In this case, it helps a lot to have a formal mechanism to take

decisions. In the same way, a well-defi ned governance structure helps.

3. E n s u r i n g G o v e r n a n c e : S e n i o r management involvement is a must whether it is an in-house or outsourced implementation. Their buy-in helps in implementing change management which is a major aspect of the transformation journey.

With all these points incorporated, the design and transition process is almost at the verge of being handed over to the next level wherein the operations team takes over. Though these suggestions are applicable to any and every HR transformation story, there are some unique challenges that might surface as the transitions process is on its way. Though a good plan is always a must have, improvisation often saves the day. The design and transitions journey is about making a robust plan and yet being fl exible to change for creating better systems and processes. All said and done, it is an exciting journey! Congratulations to those who have completed it, and bon voyage to those who are planning to!


DESIGN THE NEXT-GEN PEOPLE SERVICES DELIVERY PLATFORM

SHELLY SINGH and PRAKASH RAO

About the Authors

Shelly Singh is the Co-Founder and Chief Business Offi cer at PeopleStrong. One of the rare women HR Entrepreneurs in India who decided to take a plunge early on, she has been a key driver in building this scalable and reputed company. As Co-Founder, Shelly has been instrumental in making PeopleStrong one of the strong brands in HR Outsourcing in India and Asia Pacifi c, and has helped raise venture funding in the HR space. She has inspirationally led the team in thought, spirit and conviction in

building some of the ‘fi rsts’ for PeopleStrong customers. At PeopleStrong, she has been instrumental in formulating and actualising strategic business plans, designing and implementing competitive, innovative and integrated HR solutions for reputed clients. A seasoned HR professional with rich experience in setting up HR processes, policies, as well as rolling out end-to-end implementation plans, she has worked with companies like Sony, Flextronics Software, Hewitt and high-end technology start-ups.

Shelly is the fi rst woman board member on PeopleStrong’s Board since its inception, along with being on the Board of Wheebox, a next-gen online assessment company. She was also the National Treasurer and Board Member for the National HRD Network and the fi rst woman executive team member in the NHRDN’s leadership team.

Shelly is a renowned thought leader in the space of HR Shared Services and HR Technology. She was recently acknowledged by HRO Today, APAC forum as “Thought Leader of the year 2014” for contribution in this fi eld. She was also awarded the Young HR Professional Award by India’s National HRD Network in 2012 in recognition of her drive for creation, entrepreneurship and her rich experience in the HR Industry. She is a well-known and avid speaker at various national and international forums on wider HR management subjects including HR shared services, recruitment, and HR technology.

Shelly has a Masters Degree in HR & International Business from NMIMS and a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Punjab University.

Prakash Rao is the Founding Member and Vice President, Multi-Process HR Outsourcing at PeopleStrong. He is part of Executive Team of PeopleStrong and is responsible for the Multi-Process HR Outsourcing Business. An expert in fi eld of HR Transformation, Prakash has led Technology led Transformation in the Human Resources function for various


organisations. He has led successful implementation of HR Shared Services; Recruitment shared services for clients across Industries.

Prakash has rich experience of over 16 years in HR and manages some of the top customers at PeopleStrong. He drives a team of 200+ HR professionals across the country to deliver the best customer experience and meet the promise of “Creating Happy Organisations”.

Prior to joining PeopleStrong, Prakash has worked with Mphasis, an HP Co, where he managed staffi ng for their BPO division.

Prakash is an avid speaker at various national forums on wider HR management subjects including HR shared services, recruitment, and HR technology. He frequently writes on HR shared services, recruitment and HR technology related topics.

Prakash can be contacted at [email protected]

As we move into the era of a more connected and integrated world, we

have not only to be closer to the customer, we have to be almost fl awless and effortless in providing people services.

Over last two decades, HR shared services have come to an age, we live in a world where the employee engagement rules were being redefi ned which made the HR transformation - a mandatory. And as any organisation takes this journey - two prerequisites that are absolutely essential to kick start are

Is the people services function delivering a well-integrated continuous experience!

Is the HR function truly structured to provide for the fi rst ask?

As we think and delve deeper into these two questions, ‘What’ part of the HR transformation will begin to emerge.

And then comes the fundamental question of how we do it, and the obvious answer is HR needs to have a center of excellence for People Services – one could name it HR shared Services, Employee experience center and whatever you may wish to – the basic premise is how and what of people

services to connect, engage and enable them! People Service Delivery Platforms is also interchangeable here as HR Shared Services.

As applicable to anything a building, an automobile – the fundamental construct determines if the building is going to be able to withstand the brevities of nature.

Design and transitions is one of the two most important aspects of making a People Services delivery platform a success, the other one being Governance.

The design and transitions framework has seen signifi cant changes in last decade. From being a lift and shift, it has to come to a stage of designing with minimal disruption and maximum integration. Transitions teams, focused on the core HR processes are further supported by a team of domain experts which enhances transition solutions and service delivery.

With this evolution of transitions and rising complexities, there are two critical items which virtually defi ne the success or failure of the migration process in establishing Lean & Smart HR. They are Process Re-engineering & Change Management. In the following sections, we will deep-dive into both these areas.


• Basic transactions with minimal employee interface

• No technology change involved• Primarily a ‘lift & shift’ approach• No standardised Transitions

approach• No Change Management process

involved

Year 2000

• Standardisation driven through Knowledge transfer

• Functional requirements of Technology tied to HR policies & procedures

• Customised solutions with ‘Best practices’ embedded

• Special focus on Process Re_engineering and Change Management

Year 2015

Addition ofHR Technology

Evolution of Design & Migration in People Service Delivery Platforms

A. Importance of Process re-engineering during Transitions (Design):

1. Mitigate the downside of non-fl exibility of ERP systems & have Technology at the core. Most of the today’s ERP systems are not fl exible at all. In fact, it is reported that an average SAP implementation requires 10,000 confi guration related decisions in order to assemble an end-to-end process fl ow. If you’re HR processes are not well defined and documented prior to implementation, these configuration decisions will be made in a vacuum by software techies. SaaS and cloud systems are extremely flexible to accommodate complex & customised HR processes for organisations. Any process re-engineering should have Technology at its core with 3 main objectives of a) End user experience, b) Ease of implementation of HR processes & c) Ability of the tool to Engage with the millennial workforce who are used to Social media platforms.

2. Set Process bench mark & inculcate Best practices. Best practices in functions like HR work really well. Any Business process re-engineering exercise requires tools like Lean Sigma while most of the HR processes can be benchmarked against current competitors & industry leaders. There are plenty of forums on

Social media where HR professionals can connect and gather data on the best practices in their respective sectors.

3 . F a s t e r re a l i s a t i o n o f p ro c e s s improvements and business benefits. When we help clients identify process improvements, we often find that a new age HR Technology platform may help automate and further enable process changes, many improvements can be rolled out simultaneously for better change management. Today’s workforce is not only more adaptive to change, but also very agile to accept changes in a frequent interval. Our HR processes must be designed or re-engineered to ensure faster realisation of business benefi ts.

B. Effective Change Management:

Implementing HRSS in any organisation requires a Change management process that needs to suit the culture of the current workforce of the organisation. While manufacturing industries prefer to have Road shows, Mailers & written documents to implement change, new age companies in E-commerce are comfortable effecting change through webcasts & newsflashes on their intranet portal. Whatever methodology that gets used needs to create a compelling vision for the future, build a change coalition, mobilise


commitment & demonstrate that status quo is not an option.

Organisations must align their change management plan with the transition plan to strengthen the partnership between shared services and business operations in the long run. It is also important to understand the organisation's history, culture, and infrastructure to better prepare for the impact of change. Transition program managers should align the executives of both shared services and business operations with a broader vision and objectives. Furthermore, they should look out for resistance to the program and address it proactively.

W i t h e x p e r i e n c e o f m u l t i p l e implementations across industry sectors we have had some key learnings. These learnings have helped us ensure migrations are successful:

Shared Leadership: All the stakeholders need to co-own the process of defi ning Project vision, Goal/objective and success criteria’s. This ensures that the destination of the Shared Services journey is clear to all the teams. Key to this is also the participation of Business Leaders as this change would require sponsorship from Top leadership. This also brings

in the alignment of efforts to one common objective. Partnership based relationship amongst stakeholders helps drive maximum results from HR Transformation engagements.

Core Team: Creation of cross-functional Project core team for implementation is key for a successful migration. We need to create clear roles and responsibilities for all teams & its members so that change becomes effective. HR processes need participation from other departments to deliver some core procedures and this cross-functional team works as the change agent within the function for this to work well. Trend now is also to link the KRA of Go-Live to the Core team to bring in not only ownership but also accountability. A team of Project Champions and Change agents is much needed for the successful migration of any HR Shared Services project. They will be key to drive change in their respective area of operations. These change agents will be involved in milestone-based implementation, ensuring the success of the projects.

Governance: We can’t emphasise enough on the impor tance o f Governance in ensuring a successful

Unfreeze Mobilise Realise Reinforce Sustain

Set the directionCreate the

desire & will to change

ContentMake early

changes & build confidence

Secure widespread

shift in behaviour

Underpin with changes in structure &

people processes

Strive for continuous

performance improvement

• As-Is process• Gap

Recommen-dations

• To-Be Process• Buy in from all

Stakeholders

• Communication • Road shows,

Workshops, Mailers

• Branding

• Training Sessions

• Identify Process Champions

• New ‘WOW’

• Periodic Reviews

• Newsletters• Change Drive

through Process Champions

Action Items


migration. Most of the successful Shared services implementations will have a clear defined Governance structure with calendared reviews. There would be a clear three layer structure for reviews with specific focus on transactional, tactical and strategic aspects. While the On ground operations team focus on transactional and tactical points on a frequent basis, the steering committee should meet on an agreed timeline to drive the Project vision. The model represented below ensures co-accountability of success and failure.

Communicat ion : A thought fu l communication plan needs to keep in mind the organisation’s culture, legacy, and working style. Business should be involved at the right stage during the implementation. Communication throughout the process is vital to keep everyone informed and highly motivated. The extent to which the change is effectively communicated has a direct bearing on it success or failure. Inevitably, change involves delivering some diffi cult messages and these need to be communicated in an empathetic and supportive way.

C. Integrate planning and identify risks in advance

Organisations need to delve deeper into the requirements of migration, to identify risks and dependencies such as SME availability, travel and logistics timelines, business seasonality, holidays, regulations, and geopolitics. Transitions phase typically involves multiple stakeholders and various streams such as process and quality, technology infrastructure, enabling tools, and facilities and resource management – each with individual project plans.

D. Sequence the phases of the transition program for on-time transitions

Organisations must consider various aspects to arrive at the right sequence for the proposed transition. These aspects could be expected benefits, process heterogeneity, organisational change, regulatory compliance requirements, governance complexity, and organisational risk. Below are the parameters to be considered for effective sequencing of the transitions phase:

Volume: Organisations can prioritise transition of processes by locations and carry forward the lessons learned in one location to the others.


Technology Adoption: If there are different systems implemented in different locations, processes, or business units, it will be prudent to analyse the IT landscape to decide whether to harmonise it fi rst and then embark on the transitions journey or vice versa.

Business spread: In some cases, it is beneficial to create a shared service for each tower (process, function, business unit). For instance, for a process spanning multiple functions, the organisation must always start by defi ning a target operating model that delineates the to-be process. Then, they should onboard key stakeholders in those functions onto the desired process.

Standardisation: harmonised standard processes can be transitioned earlier to help realise faster benefi ts.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to the migration phase of Lean & Smart HR implementation. So choose the method and the tools that best suit your organisation needs. But remember that managing the transition to a shared services model is a complex and demanding task that, unless handled right, can have an adverse impact on business operations. Having the right Transition professionals can bring in dedicated expertise, scalable project management capabilities, and industry best practices to ensure smooth and seamles s transition.


LEAN & SMART HR – RAISING THE BAR OFHR EXPERIENCE

RAJESHWAR TRIPATHI

About the Author

Rajeshwar Tripathi is the Chief People Offi cer for the Automotive & Farm Equipment Sectors of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. His responsibilities involve overseeing the Human Resource function for the Domestic and International Operations.

After the formation of Automotive and Farm Equipment Sectors (AFS), he has spearheaded the integration and synergising of HR processes of the two sectors with a focus on leveraging best practices of both. He has also led interventions for Mahindra

Group like “Project Harmony” for the Mahindra Group, which is one of the largest integration projects in SAP HR and “Mahindra Rise Recruitment Project” involving re-engineering of the recruitment process to align it to the Rise philosophy. Driven by the purpose of enhancing the last mile delivery of HR, Rajeshwar has envisaged and led the Conceptualisation & Execution of one of the largest HR Shared Services in manufacturing sector in the country. Rajeshwar was also awarded the CXO Award by the World Auto Forum, under the HR CXO category, in the recently announced 2015 World Auto Forum Awards which involves exhaustive research and multiple jury rounds.

Prior to being with Mahindra, Rajeshwar was with Eicher Motors Ltd. where he was the HR Head for the Commercial Vehicle Business. His earlier stints included organisations such as Jindal SAW Pipes, Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and Cement Corporation of India (CCI). He is a Science Graduate and has a Post Graduation in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations from XISS, Ranchi.

An HR function that provides the best experience to the employees every

time is the dream of every HR leader. But as the employee strength and geographic spread of your workforce increases various complexities get introduced in the system and delivering a standard experience in itself becomes challenging. Our story was no different. As one of the leading organisation’s in the Automobile and Tractor Industry, when we started riding the growth tide, a clear business expectation was to have a scalable HR organisation established that can support this journey. The idea was that even as we grow and

diversify in various other businesses, the employee experience remains the same and we are able to deliver a standardised “Signature Mahindra Experience” to each and every employee across the country and subsequently, globally. This is where we thought of starting an HR Transformation exercise.

When we started laying down the HR Transformation strategy, shared services was defi nitely one of the cornerstones on which we wanted to build our future HR. However, our being an extremely complex set-up due to diversity of nature


of businesses and geographical expanse, the decision was not an easy one. As Mahindra - Auto Farm Sector was looking forward to expansion through multiple new initiatives, the question that we as the Human Capital management team had to repeatedly face was that if we were ready for this scale up and change while keeping employee experience and process effi ciency at the center.

The need:

So far the HR team had played a near perfect role of being a great support to the Business and the employees. However it was now to see if the team was ready for the future expectations of the business and the new generation employees who were demanding a far more service oriented environment apart from just the personal touch. While talent management was extremely critical for us, the hygiene aspiration of the organisation from HR was expected to be a given thing. Some important questions that I had to ask myself and my HR Heads were as follows:

Looking at the future, is HR really doing what it’s supposed to do?

Is the current way of partnering with business enough or we needed to do more?

Is my HR team truly productive or it’s stuck in excel sheets and managing employee queries rather than enabling business and employees for the future demands?

Is the team agile and fl exible enough to cater to the new businesses that are going to be added and can it give the same Mahindra signature experience to the growing employee needs?

How are we leveraging technology in this new age? The geographical & business expansion was compelling us to move from a nice to have technology environment to a must have robust tech enabled ecosystem. How far were we from that?

The HR team that was supporting business had to be enabled. The real value addition of this team was in getting a detailed knowledge of the business, quickly identify gaps in the operation of the internal client and fix them in a collaborative way. Their job was not to solve the line

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managers’ day to day queries on HR policies and processes but to coach them to develop the team members. They were supposed to know the top performers in their respective businesses, able to obtain the formal and informal feedback and contribute signifi cantly in the performance discussions and decisions.

The New Structure:

While focusing on the Business side of HR, the other critical part of my teams’ deliverable of day to day transaction management had to be looked into. Let’s face the fact that employees experience HR more through their day to day interactions with the HR team than through HR strategy. No HR transformation journey could be said to be complete unless the employees of the organisation feel and talk about the change. Both these needs, fi rst that of a sound business partnering role and second a service oriented yet scalable HR delivery environment made a strong business case for us to move in favour of the Shared Services.

The decision of outsourcing the shared services came post deliberation on fi ve key very important questions.

• How much Time will it take to move to this new model?

• What will be the Cost if we wanted to build a state of the art shared services center from scratch?

• How much Flexibility will we have in terms of scaling up and down in line with the business need and industry trend? How does it impact my existing HR team size?

• Since this was a new concept, how can we leverage Previous Experience in set-up and delivery?

• What would be the success parameter and how do we Drive and Measure performance?

The Design Strategy

There was no looking back once the decision of outsourcing the shared services was taken. The business leaders played an exceptional role in driving it from the top. A lot of effort was put to get them on board with the vision and show them the value that this new concept was going to bring. We involved them at every stage of decision-making right from the conceptualising the shared services strategy, to confi rming the partner and fi nally designing and signing-off of the final processes. Everyone took it as a welcome change and an opportunity to do something that the Indian Automobile Industry had never done before. While we were excited to embark on this new journey of HR Transformation, we had to be careful as it was a path less travelled. The design and implementation plan was prepared within the boundary of three critical strictures.

• Our core organisation culture and our industry type will be taken into account during the designing of any process including defi ning the service levels, TAT etc. We didn’t want to bring unexpected disruption in the existing way of working. The idea was to graduate to a more mature state and not ‘nose dive’ and then ‘pull up’ while wanting to replicate the best practices of other companies or industry.

• The internal HR team had to have an equal accountability as the service provider and clear visibility into the processes. A strong Governance had to be set up at a Sponsor, Tactical and Transactional levels for all the processes at both the sides.

• Identify to what extent the processes and way of working will be standardised? How much will be automated and what all will be manual involving a personnel’s presence. Have a clear


roadmap for automation. Call out all the processes that require exception management.

The role of an experienced service partner becomes extremely critical in this case. Their ability to align to the organisation vision and deliver keeping all the complexities in mind is the key to a long and benefi cial relationship.

Some mandates to success:

It’s been almost three years of Shared Services implementation and some of the key learning in this journey has been:

• Process and Policy Standardisation should be the fi rst stepping stone in the overall design, development and delivery under this new concept. It’s a great opportunity to record and plot the variances and then take critical decisions towards building a more homogenous biome. The lesser the variances, the better the chances of an error free, exceptionless and highly effi cient way of working.

• Link the processes as strongly as possible. Defi ne every stage of a process visibly and call out the handoff areas so that transition from one process to another is a seamless process leaving scope of no surprise for the end user and the recipient.

• There has to be an accountability matrix for all the processes and at every step. Since shared services work on clear input and output model based on service levels and reverse service levels, there is always a possibility of passing the buck during any failure scenario. Also, the internal HR team can’t just do away by pushing all accountability to the shared services team or the service partner. They too need to take responsibility of failures and success.

• Automation must be the backbone on this entire set-up. All processes and way of working must be executed in an automated environment. Automation brings in accuracy and effi ciency with lesser dependency on manual processing which is both time consuming and error prone. Grab every opportunity of automation and drive hard to push the team to adopt technology. Teams will be reluctant to this change, hence, this issue needs to be dealt strongly as most of it is a culture change rather than operational skill. While automation to 100% might not be possible during inception, but detailed road-map can help achieve the automation target. Have a well informed and ceremonial launch plan on the achievement of every automation milestone so that the message of importance is passed across the organisation.

• As this change surely will bring in a comparison between old times and new times, engagement with key stakeholders, particularly the line and support group - IT, Admin etc, becomes very critical. All stakeholders must be given an opportunity to share their views on the journey so far and be allowed to give inputs to make the processes more robust and effective. While the points of discussion and frequency can vary over the period of time as shared services stabilises, this engagement needs to be a continuous process. Not only discussing on improvements but also constantly updating them on the success story gives them confi dence that we are in the right direction.

• As it’s said that change is the only constant, whatever delivery matrix holds well today might not be effective tomorrow. Many confuse change management with process re-engineering. It’s only one part of the


many facets of change management. Hence, change management should not be a one-time effort but a systematic continuous process in line with the changing structures, needs, and market scenarios.

Measuring Success:

The basic performance of shared services can be measured through Service Level and Reverse Service Level status. The service levels should be based on the outcomes of the overall processes including employee/stakeholder experience and shouldn’t just measure the successful completion of a task. This should be continuously revisited and improved as the shared services delivery framework matures and progresses towards automation and employee self-service.

Occasions to capture employee experience shouldn’t be missed. Like the joining survey upon induction completion, or the satisfaction survey post every employee transfer gives us insights into whether the employee expectation was met and understanding of any improvement scope. All of this needs to be linked with shared services performance matrix and reviewed from time to time.

Also, most importantly, shared services are set up for cost effectiveness and cost gains in the long run. So don’t forget to visit the initial business case and compare the overall project cost with the cost assumptions taken at start of the project

time. If not in the initial stage but after a certain period of time the then project cost against the budgeted cost needs to be analysed and course correction to be done if required.

Our Success Story:

We have been able to successfully migrate HR transactions, across all locations under the shared services team in a span of one year not only for HR Operations but also for processes like performance management, Reward & Recognition and Training. We have also been able to consolidate all HR data and reporting under the shared services team. With centralisation and standardisation, the size of the team managing joining has reduced to half, while improving the performance. The team consistentlyscores more than 90% in the joining experience measure. Some of the new businesses that we added got HR support from day one as it was just about extending the existing set of services that was already on offer for the other business. Implementation was quick, effective with no exceptions.

What lies ahead?

Impact of large scale shared services can be realised only by the third year, while the fi rst and second year are more about implementation of standard practices and stabilisation of the new structure and delivery model.


While the impact is realised only in the long term, it’s imperative that the team sets short term goals and strives to achieve them in order to meet the bigger ones. These could be a quarter to six-month targets that both the parties could take.

From a shared services perspective, our current focus is to leverage on the huge wealth of data that shared services has gathered during this period. Major time and effort is being spent in converting this data into meaningful information for some insightful analytics around talent

management, going forward. We are gradually moving towards employee self-service and exploring paperless processing opportunities. On the other hand, there is some major work happening in building the capability and competency of the HR business partners.

The success of Shared Services is a moving target, however, we feel that for us it’s the right step taken at the right time. As we are getting into bigger workplace and business complexities, this is defi nitely a step in the right direction.


IMPLEMENTATION: LEAN AND SMART HR – HR TRANSFORMATION TRACK

JUDHAJIT DAS

About the Author

Judhajit heads Human Resources, Administration, Technology Infrastructure and Corporate Social Responsibility at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance. He has been with ICICI Prudential Life since November, 2000 and assumed responsibility as Head of Human Resources in August, 2005. Judhajit started his career with the RPG Group, a diversifi ed conglomerate in 1995 and subsequently worked with GE Capital (SBI Cards) between 99-00.

Judhajit graduated in Economics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata and is an alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur. He was past Chair of the CII Western Region HR & Training Committee during the period 2011-13. Currently he is President of National HRD Network (NHRDN) Mumbai chapter.

He enjoys following current affairs.

Transformation: At the heart of Lean and Smart

Whilst the purpose of a commercial enterprise is to make economic

surplus, it is often argued that profit maximisation cannot be the only motive of business. Indeed, the long term sustainability of a commercial enterprise depends on how well it serves the needs of all its stakeholders - customers, shareholders and employees. In a capitalistic society, the invisible hand of the market or the competition for market share, capital and talent along with balanced regulation acts as the mechanism for just, fair and equitable distribution of the economic value added. The balanced distribution of the value created gives commercial enterprises the societal sanction to exist and thrive. Any imbalance causes social disequilibrium and the skew needs to be promptly adjusted for ensuring the long term sustainability of the enterprise.

Whilst perfect competition may be a myth, and segments of society may never be satisfi ed with their share of economic value, competition does ensure that things are never static and that the forces of creation and destruction are perpetually transforming the ecosystem in which we work and live. The Darwinian proposition of “survival of the fi ttest” is hence a reality that businesses are forced to confront at every step. Transformation is thus a natural state of being for the present and future viability of any business. Indeed, transformation is embedded in the concept of Lean and Smart. Similar to the old business adage of efficiency and effectiveness, Lean and Smart are like conjoint twins that businesses need to pursue simultaneously to transform and stay relevant in the context of changing realities. Hence, transformation is clearly at the heart of Lean and Smart.


Activity Trap: The Antithesis of Lean and Smart

What detracts corporations from being Lean and Smart? Sometimes its hubris and sometimes its inertia. Hubris, as success breeds contempt and inertia, as change is difficult and threatening. This gets manifested in the form of the ‘activity trap’ - the Achilles heel of any business. It begs the question whether the activities or the work being done are aligned to achieving the enterprise goals. Any work aligned to achieve enterprise goals is, of course, value adding. However, people are often seen to be busy doing activities that may have outlived their relevance and are thereby, value diminishing. Redundant activities consume time, energy, resources and show up as additional headcount and costs. Not to speak of the distraction caused and the more insidious impact on productive time and effort in the form of useless paperwork, bureaucratic time-consuming processes, purposeless meetings etc. Activities may be compared to an octopus with grasping tentacles that chokes, paralyses and makes one believe that one is adding value by being busy while in reality, it is the perfect anti-thesis of Lean and Smart.

Creating relevance through activity and being busy often acts as a smokescreen for value addition. Also, it’s not always easy to differentiate between activities that add value and those that diminish value without painstaking granular analysis of the work being performed. Like common sense is not so common, simplifying complexity is not simple to fi nd either. Lean and Smart means declaring a war on complexity and simplifying wherever possible. In practical terms, it means evaluating policies, processes and practices with a critical lens for their utility, re-configuring or eliminating whatever is redundant and automating wherever possible. Technology helps us achieve scalability, repeatability and

unparalleled effi ciency. In fact, the maxim “Physical processes are inimical to growth, scale and effi ciency,” is often quoted by Sandeep Bakshi, MD and CEO of ICICI Prudential Life to reinforce the importance of leveraging technology for providing superior customer experience in the most effi cient manner.

Sustainable Transformation: Winning the Hearts and Minds of People

A lot of how change gets effected also depends on the leader’s beliefs about people. This belief may be as those who are generally willing to learn and grow or as people who need to be coerced and pressured to deliver on the lines of the classic Theory X and Theory Y paradigm. When leaders mandate change without thinking through the sensitivities of the people involved and carry the belief that the best way to neutralise resistance is by the use of coercive force, change and transformation, it becomes disproportionately disruptive. While a big bang transformation may be the last resort in an emergency, in reality, transformation is usually effected through a slow, painstaking, evolutionary process which needs to be monitored and calibrated so that the disruption caused is controlled, the change sticks and gets embedded in the way things are done.

At the heart of transformation lies changing mindset, belief systems and practices in tune with the changing times. The fear of the unknown and the silo effect of too many departments and functions working at cross purposes is all too common a phenomena we see at workplaces. The reluctance to challenge status quo and the bias for social conformity also makes change and transformation diffi cult. A culture of openness and transparency helps to build an environment of trust that makes change less threatening. As long as people


understand the need for change and feel secure, they will be willing to embrace change. Psychological insecurity that comes from the fear of job loss or status in an organisational context acts as a major impediment to effecting change and transformation. Creating a culture where movement across departments, functions and locations are routine also helps build fl exibility, learning agility and the humility to unlearn and relearn. Job rotations or fungibility across roles thus help individuals develop the ability to take an enterprise perspective and rise above maximising their functional imperative that often works to the detriment of enterprise performance.

Winning the hearts and minds of people by tapping into their aspirations for a better future in a gradual, calibrated manner rather than amplifying their insecurities or adopting coercive actions is more likely to lead to sustainable transformation. Indeed, sustainable transformation is about winning the hearts and minds of the people involved.

A Case Study of Lean and Smart HR Transformation

The life insurance business witnessed unparalleled growth in India between the period 2002-2008 by increasing reach and geographic penetration. The number of points of presence and headcount of the private sector companies increased exponentially during this period. To fuel business growth and expansion, Talent Acquisition and Sales Training verticals were strengthened to support the ramp up and on-boarding of new hires. The accent was on ready-made talent and the on-boarding process involved intensive classroom induction followed by periodic training interventions and joint fi eld work for a period of 90 days. The Sales Training team carried the responsibility of making new hires productive and carried a revenue

target to be achieved by the new hires in their fi rst 90 days.

Post the fi nancial crisis of 2009 and the subsequent regulatory changes within the life insurance industry, the business focus shifted from growth and scale to risk-calibrated growth and profi tability. Consequently, there was a sharp reduction in hiring indents and heightened focus on improving efficiency, quality and productivity. The approach to talent acquisition and new hire onboarding also needed to change with the changed business environment. As a fi rst step, the Talent Acquisition and the Sales Training verticals were integrated with the HR and Business functions in their respective geographies based on available opportunities. The HR delivery role was expanded to include Talent acquisition, and the Frontline Sales Manager role was expanded to include new hire on-boarding and training. While this resulted in optimisation of overall headcount, it also resulted in the elimination and re-confi guring of hiring and on-boarding practices.

As a fi rst step, the mechanism for pay-out to recruitment consultants was challenged as the economics of pay-out did not support a win-win commercial arrangement as the recruitment consultant did not carry any skin in the game for quality of hires. Various models were designed to persuade recruitment consultants to link their pay-out with tenure and productivity of new hires and thereby operate on a partnership model. Since this proposition did not find takers, the constraint of sourcing candidates without recruitment consultants was placed on the team. This led to rethinking of the sourcing strategy and new recruitment models evolved such as the cadre-based Graduate Campus Program and the Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) model for lateral hires. For talent acquisition to be lean and smart,


recruitment processes also needed to be simplifi ed and digitised. An applicant tracking system and a career portal was developed where candidates entered relevant data and uploaded relevant documents directly, thus eliminating the need for any paperwork and couriers. Candidates were also able to directly apply through the career page. Digitisation had a positive impact on quality of employee data as errors from data entry operations got eliminated. Improvements in data quality also set the stage for improved analysis of data to generate insights on productivity and quality of hires based on their demographic profi le. Currently, the direct sourcing model from campus and RPO accounts for the majority of total hiring with a signifi cant reduction in talent acquisition costs. The campus model also reinforced the company’s commitment to building talent and not buying talent apart from facilitating alignment to values, culture and optimal management of employee wage costs and productivity.

The new hire on-boarding process was also streamlined with digitisation of the customer on-boarding process. A cutting edge mobility platform – NEO was launched that allowed sales fulfi lment anytime, anywhere. With scan, upload, electronic verification and electronic payment features, the application dramatically altered the document heavy, time consuming branch centric model of customer on-boarding to a virtual offi ce model for frontline sales staff. Similarly, the on-boarding process was digitised and learning applications were embedded in tablets thereby facilitating employee self-service and learning anywhere, anytime.

Learning and growth had always been a key employee value proposition, and the integration of the Sales Training team with the Business teams at the local unit level led to murmurs about the organisation’s commitment to employee development.

The classroom heavy, trainer-centric training model was challenged to embrace self-directed learning facilitated through technology such as e-learning modules, learning videos, online repositories, access to professional certifi cations etc. thereby shifting the discourse of employee development away from classroom training programs as the only way to learn, to self-directed learning using technology and skill building on the job through deliberate practice. The accent was placed on the need to take personal responsibility for learning and skill building. The ownership now rested fully with the immediate manager for providing performance support to make new hires productive. Similarly, growth and career progression was redefi ned as horizontal growth across roles and functions, and enrichment of the job resulting from the shift to risk calibrated quality growth and profi tability.

Re-confi guration and digitisation of talent acquisition and new hire on-boarding practices not only allowed for the process to become seamless, it also fundamentally altered the role of HR and the immediate manager to assume full ownership for quality of hiring, as well as new hire on-boarding and development for achieving business success. Smart use of technology thus facilitated a hi-tech and hi-touch approach to talent acquisition and new hire on-boarding with concomitant improvements in employee connect, well-being, quality, effi ciency and productivity.

In Conclusion

Lean and Smart is about anticipating, embracing and responding to the changing environment, emerging trends and competitive landscape for staying ahead of the curve. Changing existing beliefs and practices takes time as it involves unlearning, learning and then acquiring mastery over time through deliberate


practice. Technology is an enabler for achieving scale, consistency, reliability and effi ciency, and needs to be embraced with vigour in the quest for Lean and Smart. Whilst digital is now a way of life, it is also reasonably clear that the nexus of forces of Social, Mobile, Cloud and Analytics along with the Internet of Things will lead to emergence of newer business models that will be hugely disruptive in the not so distant future. However, the key lies in fundamentally rethinking and simplifying business processes, practices and policies in the context of developments

in the environment with the goal of driving risk calibrated business growth and profi tability. Constraints may act as spur to innovation as it forces us to think differently, but the war on inertia and hubris is a war that has to be fought and won in the heart and minds of the people. Lean and Smart management of the Human Resources value chain is fundamental for driving productivity of human capital which in turn makes financial capital productive. The imperative for Lean and Smart HR will be put to rest once this linkage is fully grasped.


6E PEOPLE – ONTIME, HASSLEFREE HR EXPERIENCE!

SUKHJIT S PASRICHA

About the Author

Sukhjit S. Pasricha is the Vice President-HR & Admin at IndiGo. He joined IndiGo in April 2013 and is responsible for the Human Resource function at IndiGo.

In the past, Sukhjit has worked with PepsiCo, Spice Communications, Apollo International and Vardhman Group. Prior to joining IndiGo he was working as Senior Vice-President HR with Bharti Airtel and was responsible for the HR function across multiple countries besides leading the HR Transformation and Change Management

in Africa.

He is an MBA in HR with a rich experience of 18 years in creating and driving progressive people agenda at various stages of an organisation.

If we look at any of the success stories of leading organisations round the

globe – People have been the most important in these stories. The IndiGo story is no different! Our people are our true strength and the “I in IndiGo” - the true contributors behind an organisation which made its mark despite all the challenges in the marketplace.

This is why there has always been a special focus on delivering an exceptional experience to our colleagues as we expect them to deliver to our customers. Be it the start-up phase or the times when we started growing/scaling up, delivering an exceptional employee experience remained our core philosophy and as an organisation, we have been ready to adopt any kind of changes or transformation to make it possible. Especially as we envisioned our growth phase about 2-3 years ago, we knew that the startup like HR structure and Way of Working would no longer stand. We

understood that we needed a new structure that could withstand the growth without impacting quality of HR experience for even a single day. We needed to provide smart HR solutions and with this thought in mind, we started on this exciting journey of progressive HR at IndiGo airlines.

Right from Day 1 we were sure that we would not like to undergo this transformation in-house. There were many reasons for this.

1. Managing transactions efficiently is not everyone’s cup of tea. It has to be handled by experts, who understand the intricacies well and have the ability to manage them.

2. We were planning to scale up rapidly – doubling the manpower every three years. So we hardly had the time to develop the in-house capability and at the same time deliver efficient transactions. And even if we had time,


HR delivery requires very different type of skillset than that of HR Business partners. Managing two different kinds of people in the team did not seem like a smart thing to do. With a partner on board, we could focus on continue having a lean team of Corporate HR professionals while the team of experts in Transaction and process management remains with the partner.

3. Finally, as an HR leader there are many other issues that require your attention. If 40-50% of the time is spent in monitoring the hygiene processes and transactions there is not much you can contribute to the business.

With all the above thoughts in mind we started the HRO journey by searching for a perfect partner. We looked for a partner with

1. An expert ise in designing, re-engineering and managing processes

2. Capability to manage transactions effectively and effi ciently

3. Capability to provide us the much needed flexibility to scale without worrying about transactions

4. Capability to ensure that a superlative experience is delivered to the employees.

HR experience of delivery to employees might be a function of mundane transactions, but it is the base of everything and anything in Human Resources. The credibility of the HR function lies in how well the basics-transactions can be managed every single time. Your best of HR practices & succession planning can go out for a toss if the basic transactions are not managed in the best possible way.

Our quest for partner started keeping all these things in mind. We evaluated global solutions providers, and also the leading providers with a focus on India as a geography. We evaluated them on their expertise and experience of designing & managing processes effi ciently, client feedback and success stories. Though the geographic focus of the partner was not a parameter we considered, we observed that the focus of global providers was more towards consulting, rather than taking up the existing processes AS-IS, turning them around and delivering better results. Since we were looking for a partner who could support us end to end, right from setup of processes to implementation and on ground management of transactions- we decided to look further. Finally we found a partner in PeopleStrong who met all of our parameters and we offi cially started on the journey of HR transformation.

T h e r e l a t i o n s h i p s t a r t e d w i t h implementation structure, l ist of operational activities and the bigger goal of creating employee delight. The idea was to achieve business alignment, create a decision support system based on business intelligence, leverage technology (automate most of the transactions), deliver exceptional employee experience and have a strong governance mechanism for measuring the results. Also unlike various other Lean & Smart HR stories, we decided not to ahead with all HR processes at the fi rst go. Along with the partner, the processes to be re-engineered and outsourced were divided into phases and taken up one by one. We started with a focus on JML (Joiners, Movers, Leavers) and Payroll. Below is a snapshot of how the different processes were divided:


This helped us in attempting the transitions and implementation of new processes in a planned manner, without having any drop in the experience of the end users that is our employees. Today about 65% of the processes (7 out of 11 mother processes) have been covered under the project and the process is still on, to identify the processes which have become transactional and outsource them to the partner.

Coming to the “How” or implementation of each phase, below were the broad steps followed:

As-Is stage : This involved the partner taking up the existing processes in their existing form and getting acquainted with the good, bad and ugly parts.

Defi ning a To-Be Stage: In this stage, the ideal state of the processes was defi ned with a set plan to achieve the same.

Transitioning to the new processes: Here newly designed processes were put into implementation. This included not only implementing the new setup but running a full-fledged change management program in order to bring the users and custodians onboard

Process Adoption – It is this phase when the changed processes get adopted as the new reality

Technology enablement – once effi cient processes have been adopted, technology is used to automate the transactions which do not require human intervention.

Strong Governance Mechanism – One of the important aspects that played a key role in the success of our Transformation journey is Strong Governance. The review and monitoring were made (and still are) way of routine.

Though the process was complex in its own way – like any transformation process is we have been able to see a visible difference

in terms of performance results, employee experience as well as business alignment. Below is a snapshot of what all changes we have experienced in this journey that has completed almost 24 months now!

• Employee database is updated within 24 hours of any information generated.

• Employee code creation which used to take more than a week post candidate’s joining date now happens on the joining day.

• 100% confirmations are happening on or before the due date while this number was less than 50% when we started.

• 95% Helpdesk queries are resolved within 24 hours while this number was earlier much less.

• 90% of Full and final closures are happening within the stipulated time; this number again was lesser earlier.

• 80% of letters generated are online resulting in saving many sheets of paper every month.

This is over and above the impact on employee experience and the time and cost savings that have happened because of the above changes. Lean & Smart HR, thus has had a signifi cant contribution in providing the signature “Courteous and Hassle-free” IndiGo experience to our employees.

This journey brought with it a set of learnings, and here is summary of the all we have learned in the past 2 years for the reference of all those who are creating the HR transformation story of their own:

1. It’s a Partnership, treat it like that: As I mentioned before, outsourcing does not mean that the ownership has moved out of your plate. The transformation project is a crucial project, where you have to get it right the fi rst time. Hence, as the Head of HR and the senior most


transitions manager your involvement should be that deep. In our journey, for the fi rst year, the senior leadership from both partners and our side met every week to track the journey. Decision making became faster as a result of this and the impact is in front of it. As the two teams worked very closely, it was much easier to provide our employees a seamless experience. The purpose was to never let them feel that the transactions are being managed by an outsider. To ensure this, we called our Team 6E (IndiGo)-People (PeopleStrong). Thus bringing a sense of ownership both from the internal HR team and the partner resulting in a seamless employee experience.

2. Change Management – All said and done HR Transformation is a change management exercise. Though the employees need not know that HR transactions are being outsourced, they need to be trained on the new processes. There is a lot of change that comes in the HR team’s way of work as well. Skepticism might creep in which is detrimental for the success of the initiatives. At this point, it works to be open with the team. The joint vision needs to be shared with them along with how this change will impact their lives, and a plan needs to be chalked out to help them with this transition. Open transparent communication channels also go a long way in the success of the initiative.

3. Strong Governance: Well designed processes, error-free implementation are important during the Transformation process, but what’s critical is constant measurement and monitoring of success parameters. Though we believe that “Over-analysis is paralysis”, a certain level is very important to measure

initiative success These parameters should be clearly defi ned right at the beginning and as per the context of the phase of transformation. For example in our initial days of the journey, the success of the initiative was measured in terms of how seamlessly the teams were working together. As we moved to the implementations phase we set across SLAs. The idea was not only to set these parameters – it was to set them, measure them regularly and improve them by changing things. It was important to ensure that the service levels were not down even for a single day; otherwise, the whole purpose of the exercise would get defeated.

4. Technology is the key : We truly believe that technology is the most crucial thing to have in HR service delivery. And not just any technology, we are talking about systems that are easy to use. From Banks to Flight tickets the world is moving towards self-service, if you are not there you are already delayed. Though the when and how part of this implementation might depend on the transition plan it should defi nitely happen. Our experience has been that get your processes right fi rst and then go for technology.

The last two years have been great and as an organisation we have gone through a fulfi lling journey, but it is not over yet. From here on for the next few years, the target is to embrace technology and make our systems all the more effi cient. Technology self-service, Mobile systems and 24×7 any time anywhere access would be the key focus. In terms of the processes, the idea is to keep the improvement ongoing. As new processes become hygiene they will get passed on to the HRO partner and our focus will shift on even newer ones.


THE RECRUITMENT TRANSFORMATION STORY OF WIPRO – A FRESH START

SAURABH GOVIL

About the Author

Saurabh Govil is the Senior Vice President & Global Head of Human Resources at Wipro Ltd and is also a member of the Management Team. In this role he leads all Human Resources functions for Wipro and reports directly to the CEO and is responsible for Talent Acquisition, Talent Engagement, and Learning & Development initiatives across Wipro Ltd. In this capacity he has contributed signifi cantly to improve processes and introduced many new initiatives.

Saurabh was instrumental in Wipro’s transformational journey and shaped people, processes and organisation structure in the past 3 years to help Wipro prepare for the next spurt of growth.

Saurabh joined Wipro in May, 2009 and has been a HR practitioner for over two decades, having worked in organisations such as ITC and GE.

Saurabh started his career at ITC Ltd and spent 12 years there covering a variety of roles. He went on to become the HR Head for the Tobacco Division, with responsibility for all its Manufacturing facilities. In 2001, he left ITC to join GE and spent almost 8 years in various roles with them.

Saurabh is an alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur where he completed his masters in Human Resources. He is on the advisory board of SHRM India. Saurabh has been a regular speaker at NASSCOM’s HR summit. He also contributes to NHRDN’s journal as an author.

It is a wonderful facet of our industry that we are able to come up with

path breaking ideas and innovations for business. We have always strived for being at the forefront of HR innovation and spearheading HR practices. The idea has been to create an HR organisation that has been at the fore-front of adopting path-breaking ideas. The latest direction in our HR ideology stemmed from the necessity that the global industry had attributed to us. And just as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Our recruitment practices have been the backbone of our business growth over the past couple of decades. We have

been amongst the few organisations in India to adopt Recruitment technology in its early days. For quite some time, our technology system at Wipro had been the backbone of our recruitment practices. We realised early on how quintessential technology was to our recruitment philosophy. It was as an offshoot of our early recognition of this point, that we’d committed ourselves to thinking and rethinking the role that technology played in our processes.

As the technology that we had created for ourselves started to mature, so did the processes surrounding it start to adapt. Before we even knew it, the entire


Recruitment ecosystem had become a living, breathing component of our brand. Considering the relatively high numbers that we hire every year, the adaptation of processes with the technology had been extremely suitable for us. In the course of time, it had given us many unique characteristics. In spite of the brilliant innovative tracks our process expertise had given us, the market was headed on a parallel track right alongside. While we were still performing competitively with our peer groups in process excellence and technical competence, the sheer size of our actions had become a drive in itself. We were, for lack of a better term, a juggernaut.

Time had come to innovate. But this innovation could not be an add-on to the ongoing practices that we undertook as part of our recruitment effort; it had to be fresh and it had to be lean. And so, we put our thinking caps on. After much research, study, and analysis, it was apparent that our practices needed to be realigned to the dynamic nature of the market. While we were still consistent, this consistency needed to be reinvigorated. It was at this juncture that we relooked at the hiring methodology. All our studies suggested that a heavy recruitment structure would perhaps not best for us going forward. To drive such a paradigm shift, we needed an experienced and nuanced partner.

Instead of taking an outward-in approach, eliminating what was unnecessary, it was best to work inward out, keeping only what was necessary. Not only did that involve elimination of the unnecessary tasks, but also the reinforcement of actions required for necessary tasks. It was through this engagement that we found that per hire we were performing 100 + transactions within 13 categories. With further analysis, we found that of these approximately 30%+ were the non-value add items yet consumed a good deal of time. These were steps which could easily be tackled with a more fl uid and robust application of technology.

The exercise brought in sharp relief to our pain points. The man hours we were spending in the entire sequence of events was although functional, from an ongoing perspective, it was ineffi cient. The results of the exercise stipulated that we could reduce our man hours by up to 20%+ and yet give better outcomes by the inclusion of hitherto unapplied functions. Still, in the domestic market, the thought of outsourcing a function which organisations hold so close to the chest was still very nascent. But regardless of which way you look at it, the numbers spoke for themselves.

It was hence, a conscientious decision advised by our partner to weigh anchor and set sail. Now, this was still uncharted territory as far as the domestic market was concerned. But the promises it holds, especially in the long term, gave not only room to reshape and grow, but to truly evolve. Do note, getting into such an engagement is not primarily a numbers' game; it is fi rst and foremost a game of alignment. The ability of a new model to align itself to a changing business fl eet is paramount for an external engagement to function effectively. Our partner assisted us with the relook at the individual sequences of events.

The shift was right back to the basics. Any effective recruitment strategy needs to be nimble. It has to have the ability to sustain itself and the business through the peaks and troughs of demand; and so, by enabling a partner who has the ability to rapidly change core team dynamics, expanding the approach when needed and eliminating excess when required heralds great business benefi ts. This along with industry backed technology ability gave the scope for a lean method of operating. It was in the beginning of the year that our engagement with PeopleStrong took shape. The team had a rich experience in transforming recruitment across industry sectors and understood our problems and business case really well. We had also seen the capability that their technology product ‘Alt Recruit’


projected. It had the comprehensiveness of recruitment processes with an innate ease of use, coupled with analytical strength, which we were looking for. While our system was good for day to day activities, a system which helped us with projections and analyses while giving no problems in everyday transactions was that much more of a value add.

As we started this journey on a dual carriage of processes and technology transformation of Recruitment, a new problem reared in our midst. While the implementation of the technology is in no manner an easy task and takes more time given the size and complexity of our actions, it was perhaps not best to delay the re-engineering of the processes to coincide with technology. And rightly so, it was also not wise for us to start off with processes and leave technology as the second layer implementation. So, we began with the implementation of both simultaneously and setup them up to coincide at a later date when both had some stability. The collaborative team that we had set up amongst us was responsible for both. It is when discussing these fi ner points that we tend to realise how complex systems and people oriented processes are. And to have had the immediate ability to change and re-engineer what has been a matter of practice was a learning in itself.

The project team recommended several instances of process change which as part of a new technology intervention would have been inevitable, and they had also done the due diligence to make sure nothing of importance was left out. I remember them saying, “the trick was to make everyone feel like nothing had changed while changing the whole thing”.

With the implementation, the greatest hurdle was perhaps just that, making sure nothing changed while everything did. Here we were with a new engine for an old chassis. As anyone who has ever done a technology transition will tell you, to realise that not everything is perfect on day

one is perhaps the greatest realisation one can ever come to. But the biggest test of a system and of the team behind it is to be able to work through that problem with as less a complexity as possible.

We had changed the way technology was performing for us. From being the backbone of our functioning, it was now, along with the processes, a continuous partner. With the engagement for our partners, we were able to scale and ramp up effectively. Our sourcing channels have now expanded and our search is faster yet quality is maintained. As we move from here on, we look forward to the impact of real-time analytics as it enables our decision making much more data driven. Another important aspect that we touched upon in this process of Recruitment transformation was Candidate Experience. The knowledge intensive industry that we are part of highly depends on talent. With a talent war going on, it is important that anyone who comes experiences Wipro, even as a prospective candidate leaves with a good experience, irrespective of him/her getting a job. With this in mind, a candidate impression center has been introduced to manage any kind of candidate interaction. The idea with this Candidate Impression Center up and running is to hear and respond to the candidates and remove the black hole experience that they often experience while undergoing a recruitment process. As it starts in next few days, we look forward to providing another interesting experience to our talent pool.

It’s now been almost 6 months into the engagement, and the implementation process is more or less complete. The true test of systems will begin now as we start measuring the results and identify new innovative ways of getting better as we grow. The evolution and dynamism is there for our entire team to see and hope this is the beginning of another path-breaking story in the history of Wipro!


TRANSFORMING RECRUITMENT THROUGH LEAN & SMART HR – THE HONEYWELL STORY

AJAY KUKREJA

About the Author

Ajay Kukreja was appointed Country Human Resources Director for Honeywell India in August 2012.

In this role, Kukreja is responsible for managing and deploying the HR country generalist resources to meet the needs of the businesses across India. In addition, he focuses on driving standardisation of policies and processes and providing in-country expertise to HR and business leaders across the country.

Kukreja joined Honeywell in 2008 and, from 2010 onwards, he served as the India HR Leader for Performance Materials and Technologies. Prior to joining Honeywell, he held a variety of HR leadership and executive positions at both Indian and American multinational companies across industry segments.

Kukreja earned his Bachelor of Science from Barkatullah University, Bhopal, and a Masters in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations from Jiwaji University, Gwalior.

He lives in Gurgaon with his wife and daughter, enjoys going on long drives with his family, and reads and cooks to unwind. He is also learning to play golf in his spare time.

It was the last quarter of 2010, green shoots of revival were visible in most

economies except Europe, and growth had begun to return to most markets. The mood was of cautious optimism, although pundits were still examining whether it will be a V or a W-shaped recovery; will we have a double-dip recession, or was the worst fi nally over.

Our challenge was to provide for growth while maintaining flexibility in the organisation. The idea was not to add too many overheads, should the naysayers have a fi eld day. The big question on everyone’s mind was how to maintain fl exibility in the organisation and still support growth. This was the time when most businesses at Honeywell were

beginning to staff organisations to tap new markets within the country and gain share of demand in existing markets.

The businesses were doing their bit to explore alternate ways of going to market, yet critical staff had to be hired, and in big numbers in a fairly short period of time for key engineering projects to support global demand. This is when we fi rst began to explore fl exible organisation structure in the staffi ng function because we needed all the people who could help us staff the organisation. But the big question was, what would we do with such a large team once the initial hiring burst was over. Several ideas were on the table, including turnkey assignments, temporary staffi ng, complete outsourcing of recruitment


process, etc. However, since we had not dealt with such a signifi cant downturn before, we had very limited organisational knowledge of what should be done in such circumstances. Hence, a decision was taken to fi rst scale up the existing organisation using contracted resources with a view that resources closely associated with business will develop superior understanding, and enable better and faster hiring. This approach too came with its own set of challenges in terms of quality of resources, stickiness to the organisation, statutory compliances and so on. Yes, it took longer to fi nd recruiters, sometimes as long as three to four months and was even harder to retain them, at times for no more than six months. On average, we were searching for recruiters longer than we were searching for sales people and keeping them for a shorter duration. It is no secret that anyone hired on contract was keen to fi nd permanent employment and no sooner they found one, they would leave Honeywell, at times for much smaller organizations and at similar salary rates.

Need was to fi nd a model that

was scalable and sustainable

and a partner who would be

able to handle complexity

of a diverse industrial

conglomerate

To keep pace with the growing needs of the organisation, the need of the hour was to fi nd a model that was not just sustainable but also scalable. While recruiters-on-contract or contract recruiters were seen as scalable, it was not seen as sustainable for a variety of reasons. Eventually a decision was taken to move away from this model to a more sustainable model in 2013. Since Honeywell India on an average, makes

2,500 to 3,000 offers in a year, it presented a signifi cant challenge on how to create a contemporary staffi ng organisation, one that will allow fl exibility, convert fi xed cost into variable, and still be sustainable and scalable for meeting the growth requirements of the organisation.

Starting 2013, and for the better part of 2014, we learnt the ropes of managing staffi ng through a mix of outsourcing solutions and having a team of in-house recruiters that would cater to critical positions that required specialist skills. We were proverbially riding two boats and anyone who has at some point in time attempted that, realised the consequences of doing so. All our vital parameters were showing that engine was overheating and productivity was falling leading to unhappiness all around. It was in 2014, that we fi nally took the plunge to engage an organisation as our recruitment partner for all business groups across different levels of the organisation.

Key to success :

Establish critical to quality (CTQ) parameters

Leverage technology Prepare the organisation for

change

Once a decision was taken, the big task was to fi nd a vendor that will be able to handle scale and the complexity of hiring for an industrial conglomerate. After all, we had learnt the hard way that most search fi rms did not have an understanding of more than two sectors from the entire spectrum that we hire for. Most of our businesses at this point in time had a unique set of search partners with hardly anything common between them, save for functions like Marketing, HR and Finance.


It is important to avoid confl ict

of interest with existing vendor

base and that the RPO partner

speak your language

The second challenge was to fi nd an agency that will not have a confl ict of interest with other search fi rms associated with us providing critical talent for the niche skills we routinely hire for.

As if these were not challenges enough, we were keen to fi nd an organisation that spoke our language in terms of metrics we gauge, besides cycle time and source mix. We wanted our partner to talk data on quality of hire, candidate satisfaction, hiring manager satisfaction to begin with.

The selection process was critical part of the journey that involved creating a task force comprising business, HR and Finance Leaders of all businesses as well as detailed evaluation of all prospective partners and their unique value propositions. It is always a challenge to bring different people to a common ground and involve time consuming negotiations around critical to quality factors for all businesses.

Following the selection and identifi cation of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) partner came the most diffi cult part of the journey – the transition. Here one must bear in mind, the internal selection process has by now positioned RPO as the panacea for all staffi ng related ills, and expectations are at an all-time high. It was therefore important to level set the expectations with businesses that transition. It will be a crucial phase in the journey before we

can stabilise the performance of the new partner.

Organisations often under estimate the role of technology in the process of staffi ng. If at any point in time, more than 1,000 managers are hiring resources, technology becomes a big enabler. With Honeywell being a technology organisation, this was the easy part as we had deployed manager self service (MSS) tools early enough and supplemented that with the staffi ng tool. Usage of technology not only makes the whole process more streamlined, it provides the ability to measure process outcomes.

A word of caution for all those who want to embark on this journey – no matter how well you plan the transition, surprises are bound to happen and one should expect the unexpected. It is important not just to train all new resources but also all internal stakeholders as new relationships are forged and new people begin to understand your organisation and its requirements. It is crucial that clear operating rhythms are established from day one and key metrics are tracked.

With combination of technology and managed services, we are beginning to run the talent supply chain more effectively, have an organisation that is contemporary and scalable, and the journey towards excellence continues.

As we bring the process to maturity, we are excited about the next phase of this partnership where we will be able to signifi cantly scale up our leverage of technology, weave predictive analytics into our hiring process to make it smarter, and to fi nd better talent for the organisation at a faster speed and at a fraction of the current cost.


EXTERNAL ECOSYSTEM: LEAN & SMART HR

ELLIOT CLARK

About the Author

Elliot Clark is the Chairman and CEO of SharedXpertise Media, LLC which he founded in 2006. Elliot oversees company management and the publication of HRO Today, HRO Today Global Edition and Corporate Responsibility Magazine the related global HRO Today conference series and the Commit!Forum, the largest corporate responsibility conference in the world. Elliot writes a column for each magazine issue with commentary on newsworthy events and speaks at events internationally on

related topics. Elliot also works closely with development of research standards for the customer satisfaction research ratings for the leading human resource services providers and the Corporate Responsibility Magazine’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens Ranking.

Elliot has had a long and distinguished career in the human resources services and technology industry. Prior to SharedXpertise, he was the Chief Operating Offi cer of Kenexa Corporation (Nasdaq KNXA), a leading provider of HR software and services. Elliot worked at Kenexa from 1991 until 2006 and was instrumental in growing the company from 12 to 1200 employees. He oversaw corporate operations and directly managed the recruitment process outsourcing division. He led the Kenexa team to be named the top provider in RPO by multiple industry analysts and publications. As a key member of the executive team, he was deeply involved in 15 acquisitions, 3 private equity fi nancings and an IPO. He served on the Board of Directors of Kenexa from 1997 until 2006.

Elliot also had a distinguished career in the Executive Search industry, completing numerous senior executive assignments in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, and was active in the leadership of the largest pharmaceutical affi nity association in the world, the Drug Information Association, serving on the Steering Committee of North America from 1994 to 1997.

Elliot is a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania earning a B.S. Economics where he majored in Human Resources. He also served on the National Board of Directors of the Wharton Alumni Association from 1997 to 1998. Elliot is currently the Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Directors of the Ehlers Danlos Foundation,a member of the Board of Trustees of Michener Art Museum, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and a Senior Fellow at Center for Human Resource Studies at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.


Part I: Only the Lonely

Why You Need An Ecosystem

I recently fl ew from my home city in the United States of Philadelphia to

London. I was dropped at the airport by an UberBLACK driver, and upon arriving in London, I was picked up by an UberBLACK driver. A simple app has revolutionised the previously arduous task of booking car services. It has also begun to make owning a car (which I do) a unnecessarily expensive luxury in a large city. In a sense, I am outsourcing my driving, car ownership and car maintenance to a series of independent contractors from whom I can order the services I need. This practice made me think about HR.

As publisher of HRO Today Magazine and HRO Today Global, we reach 140,000 readers worldwide. Almost all of our readers are managing global HR organisations. Global human resources organisations are complex. They belong to one of the most regulated areas of business and are coupled with the one that is, arguably, most sensitive to cultural differences across national and provincial borders.

To manage this complexity, you need partners.

There are several reasons for this, but I will only touch on the most obvious: you can’t afford to not have partners. The cost and complexity of maintaining a global or even national HR organisation requires considerable investment in technology, training and infrastructure. It is both expensive and inefficient to manage individually when so many providers can spread the cost of this investment across a “one-to-many” model. No managing director or fi nance director will ever agree to the level or investment necessary to go it alone.

Many object that critical areas such as recruiting, engagement or employee service require internal functions. I remember years ago having a head of talent acquisition tell me that talent was too mission-critical to be trusted to an outside provider. Yet, this same woman probably uses Uber to get around New York City. Is talent more critical than her life? And, more to the point, is outsourcing really about giving up control? You still tell the driver where to drive. This age-old objection is a sign of naiveté. If you design the governance and reporting properly, there is never an issue of control; the client always has it.

The reality of managing an engagement is to understand your own strategy for critical strategic areas like talent management, understand how to communicate and then make sure that your provider understands as well. The provider community is really good at taking these abstract concepts and adapting them into executable actions, but you still need good governance and a meeting and reporting rhythm to ensure that the strategy, plan of action and outcomes all match the original vision.

If it seems like a lot of work for the internal team, it is, but not as much as the actual execution. In a research study called Counting Success (http://www.hrotoday.com/news/evidence-based-hr/counting-success-how-metrics-and-measurement-correlate-with-business-success/), which was conducted in 2013 by the HRO Today Institute, we studied over 300 companies and found that a small percentage could tie HR metrics and programs into business outcomes such as employee productivity, output, retail sales and customer satisfaction. We discovered that publicly traded companies that could tie HR to business outcomes were outperforming their competitors 58 percent of the time, but the margin of performance difference was over 200 percent. The front page of the


Financial Times Business section hailed this study as seminal proof of the impact of good HR programming.

In 2014, we went back and studied the best practices of these outperforming companies to fi gure out how they were doing so much better than other HR departments, particularly in the area of recruiting. All of the subject companies had two things in common:

They invested in h igh-qual i ty technology platforms

They transferred transactional work to external outsourced service providers (RPO fi rms to be specifi c)

The executives in the study credited their success to partnerships with external fi rms, saying that it gave them time to be “strategic.” To read the full study, visit the HRO Today website (http://www.hrotoday.com/market-intelligence/research/best-practices-for-tying-hr-metrics-to-business-outcomes/).

The fi nal and most important point I will make on the necessity of the external ecosystem is that its availability is on a variable-cost model. Back to my friends at Uber or Nannies on Call or any of these other services: they all turn a fi xed cost (a car, an au pair, etc.) into a cost that you only pay when you use the service. That is a very powerful aspect of the external ecosystem. Though much more complex than a car service or a babysitter in reality, it is offered on-demand. For example, if you use an RPO fi rm, you will contract with them to work on a specifi c project, or sometimes over a period of years. They will, however, increase or decrease the number of resources available based on your hiring volumes, which change based on business cycles and budgets.

This is true of many aspects of the HR department’s responsibilities. They ebb and fl ow, but an internal team, no

matter how tightly managed it may be, is harder to fl ex up and down, and in certain regulatory environments, may be impossible to change at all. This eradication of waste through overburden (error-driven) and the unevenness of work (resource-driven) is the heart of the “Lean Six Sigma Manufacturing System,” which is now applied to many aspects of the business community. I would argue that any modern HR department seeking to optimise performance will recognise Lean Principles. And, if you do, the unevenness-of-work principle virtually compels companies to have an external ecosystem of service and technology providers.

If you outsource, you are not alone. In one of our reader surveys, we discovered that 59.3 percent of multinational companies with more than 1,000 employees used some form of outsourcing and 100 percent used external technology in some form.

Part II Getting By With a Little Help from My Friends

Components of an External Ecosystem

Ok, now you are lean and mean and ready to evaluate what your retained organisation (internal strategic and governance of HR) should look like and what you should manage externally.

The best way to think of this is to parse HR into its typical towers and then think about the word “pain.” The areas that are most variable, most transactional and that have the most geographically dispersed delivery issues are the ones that need the expertise and the technological support of external partners. In a recent survey, we asked our CHRO-level, HRO Today Forum attendees what the most troubling areas were for them in business. Global payroll and recruiting came up again and again in every geographic sector (North America, EMEA and APAC), and other issues differed based on location.


Let’s look at these areas by tower, beginning with compensation and benefi ts. Benefits management is, of course, a local, regulatory issue and will differ in different parts of the world. The technology infrastructure for managing this is well-developed, and major systems like SAP and Oracle do a good job accounting for it. Still, having good service providers is key. Payroll, on the other hand, is easy to account for but a nightmare to deliver because providers haven’t really developed a “single-instance” solution and rely on series of partners around the globe. Even the venerable ADP has only about 45 to 50 companies in its global pay platform, and other countries have a patchwork of providers. The verdict is that sorry, there no good solution for this, but we should test the vendors hard and make them run simulation payrolls during the selection process. If they cannot run a clean payroll when you are a prospect, imagine life as a long-term customer. Nonetheless, there are good partners for managing benefi ts. Payroll is your choice, so select a provider network or build your own depending upon the country or countries in which you operate. Just force the reporting into a standard format so you can consolidate the data across your enterprise and into your system.

Talent management generates a more interesting discussion. Here, there are a host of solution sets, and most companies are opting for a managed service rather than a group of independent agencies, which are more expensive. A high-quality RPO fi rm is easy to identify on the basis of capability and cost, but cultural fi t and ability to communicate are what will really distinguish the successful partnership from the unabashed failure. RPO fi rms can accomplish a great deal and actually improve over time, so avoid the short term contracts and you will achieve a better outcome. For everything below

the executive level, RPO has become the operating model of choice for 17.5 percent of global companies. They use the provider for specifi c job families, sections or levels of hiring. RPO is also very good for process-related areas such as interview scheduling, onboarding, provisioning and employment-brand consulting. More and more RPO providers are also consulting on broad areas of workforce strategy and have a wealth of experience across multiple industries to share.

Given the challenges of talent acquisition, other vendor categories are also critical to success, including assessment and pre-employment screening. Mobility is also important to hiring and retention, so a partnership with a top-quality global relocation service provider is therefore crucial. Another critical area related to talent management is the appointment of employee survey providers. Anyone can create their own survey, but these firms provide essential benchmarking and consulting in addition to managing the actual survey process. There are also very reputable learning and leadership development providers, but many of them are driven by the technology of their learning management systems than any specifi c or unique service offering.

Many companies recognise the need for their own internal operations team or “HR program management offi ce” to manage all of these partnerships and vendors. Some companies decide to outsource large sections of HR, and “multi-process HRO” is alive and well. It has simply evolved to be smaller, more compact and easier to use. Instead of 15 processes or “all” of HR as we saw in the early deals, multi-process HRO now translates to four or fi ve transactional processes, and contract lengths of fi ve to seven years have replaced the mega deals of the early part of the last decade. The decision to use a “multi-process” provider should not be taken lightly, however,


it is not true that “multi-process HRO has failed.” Renewal rates are above the 75-percent level, and most companies are happy with the service that they receive. To use a multi-process approach, or even an internal HR center or excellence model, takes a great deal of deliberation, measurement and governance. This leads us to the last element in this overview: technology.

HR technology has become an impenetrable jungle of choices.

There are so many new “point” solutions; there seems to be a new one every day and they all sound weirdly similar. HRO Today recommends you fi rst choose a top-quality, cloud-based platform technology for HRIS. Oracle Fusion, SAP Employee Central and Workday are the industry leaders, but there are other good products on the market as well. Also, since recruiting is paramount, choose a top fl ight ATS. All of the HRIS systems offer functionality, but it is better to go with Lumesse, Oracle‘s “Taleo,” SAP’s “SuccessFactors,” IBM’s “Brass Ring” or ICIMS, to name a few good examples. It is critical to use top-tier platform technology because your service providers (RPO, etc.) will be most knowledgeable about the

system. In addition, these platform systems have the greatest likelihood of being easily connectable to the other individual applications you may select. Your service providers, of course, will have personal favourites and be a great resource for advice as well. You external ecosystem of all providers will connect to you and your metrics on their performance and the data on your employees will be housed in these systems, which is why platform technology is critical to success.

Part III Better Together

Conclusion

HR is complicated in its delivery, and my overview of why and points on how to build an external ecosystem may sound complicated. In turn, you may think that doing things internally is simpler but often it is not. The external ecosystem is the most cost-effi cient, time-effi cient and modern way to run global HR.

(For information on ratings for providers in many of the categories mentioned above, visit www.hrotoday.com and search on 2015 Bakers Dozen Customer surveys for ratings of top providers).


THE HR ECOSYSTEMESTER MARTINEZ

About the Author

Ester Martinez is the CEO and Editor-in-Chief at People Matters – India’s leading knowledge and media platform in the Human Resource space.

In 2009, upon noticing a serious lack of India-centric data on talent management, leadership and HR that holds critical insights for heads of HR and CEOs, Ester founded People Matters in the country’s capital, New Delhi. Since its inception, People Matters has come a long way and has now become a brand synonymous

with knowledge in HR.

Ester holds a Postgraduate degree in Human Resources Management from EADA (Spain) and a Master’s Degree in Management from Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. With more than 14 years of experience in human resources, Ester has a wealth of knowledge in all areas of Talent and Human Resources Management. Until 2008, she worked as a professional manager with a host of Blue Chip companies such as Hewlett Packard and Tata Consultancy Services, both in India and the UK. Ester is an active member of various HR and Business forums in India and internationally.

The HR industry is evolving rapidly to adapt to the needs of the client

organisation – cloud, automation and ability to drive business impact will be the drivers of growth for this industry.

Introduction:

In the last one year alone, India has moved up by sixteen places to rank at 55th on the global competitiveness index. The rise on the index is credited to improved macroeconomic environment. The areas where India has done better include investor protection, gross national savings, domestic market size and GDP. This economic outlook in the country has been led by the government’s major initiatives like Skill India, Make in India and Digital India. While the full potential of these initiatives are yet to be fully realised they have already had an impact on business growth and hiring patterns. The demand in recruitment,

training and employment are on the rise and businesses are increasing their budgets.

In the last two years, the biggest global trend in the business world is that of technological disruptors. By driving global transformation that is both innovative and scalable, they are disrupting traditional markets led by big established business leaders, whether it is Banking (SocietyOne), Telecom (Skype and WeChat), Hotels (Airbnb), E-Commerce (Alibaba), Transportation (Uber), Media (Facebook), Software (Apple and Google) or Human Resources (Zenefi ts, Workday, Logi-Serve). Many among these companies provide a platform for players to come together. A few connected innovative trends that are driving transformation within the HR industry include the increased use of the cloud as a platform of service linking social media and mobile. The second is the increasing emphasis on automation as cost pressures continue to raise and


technology can today automate and reduce the need for human intervention. The third element is a preference for globally standardised processes as opposed to country-specific or company-specific models. These elements are playing a signifi cant role in how organisations are defi ning their operations and, in turn, their human resource requirements.

The Technological Turn in HR

Technology is the differentiator when it comes to transformation. In a study recently conducted this year on the state of the HR Industry, People Matters spoke to a wide range of industry leaders from across verticals and horizontals of HR. It was also complimented by an exhaustive study across 137 buyers, making the bi-annual report the only and most comprehensive research on the HR industry in India. A key insight that was gleaned from the study was that the number one challenge that HR buyers have highlighted is that the “prices of products and services are too high” as per our HR Industry Study 2015. In my experience, when customers say a product is too expensive, they are not talking just about the price. This is more of a ‘value’ problem, and the HR decision makers are loud and clear on the need for service providers in this industry to focus on the ‘value’ their products and services bring to the business.

There are many changes taking place in the HR business ecosystem. On one hand are the changing requirements of the buyer, pressures of operational effi ciencies, to scale consistently, to fi nd right partners for non-core activities so that the business can focus on what creates a competitive edge. On the other hand is the changing dynamics of the HR business — the advancement in technology, the opportunities in Cloud and automation. Clearly, the segments that are getting disrupted faster are HR Outsourcing, Recruitment and HR

technology. However, the change is also impacting L&D and Consulting as there is a need to capture external changes and include them to really add signifi cant value to the clients.

The process of value articulation requires a combination of “outside-in” perspective but also an “inside-out” – combining both the external factors that are affecting the industry (Cloud, automation and technology as we see it in the HR Industry), along with a soul searching exercise that will provide the organisation the direction on how one frames its offering and how one sells its products. Going back to the basics of marketing: to focus on the benefi ts that the product and service bring to your client’s business, its measurability, or its ROI.

In marketing, “motivation” to buy is often said to be equal to the perceived benefi ts minus the perceived costs. It is about benefi ts, not features. It is about solving problems and not about modules. It is about how you are articulating why your solution is better than the competition’s in a signifi cant way. Features, modules, innovative approaches are necessary, but these are not suffi cient conditions for HR services and products to be successful. A clear value proposition will help the HR industry not only attract more customers and business growth but also attract more high caliber talent to seek careers in this space. The future of work will have the following aspects:

Increasing share of Cloud – With companies focusing on the interface between dr iving technological innovation, managing costs pressures and fi nding business models that allow for a possibility to scale, leaders from different industries list the cloud as a disruptor. “A major change seen today is the increased shift of Outsourcing service providers towards cloud-based technology… In the present scenario,


while 25 percent of HR Outsourcing is cloud-based, 75 percent is not. However in another 10 years, this could change to a 50-50,” says Morgan Yeates, Research Director, Global HR Business Process Outsourcing, Gartner. Morgan further adds that the Cloud is the future of all areas of business processes, not only HR. Secondly, in all major business processes like procurement, fi nance and HR, there is accelerated automation or hyper acceleration. There is an increase in demand for globalised solutions or globally standardised processes. Companies are now transitioning more and more towards standardised products/services. So what they are looking for is not ‘one size fits all’ solution, but 80 percent fi ts all and 20 percent confi gurable. And this demand is mostly met by Cloud since it allows for standardisation and customisation.

Today the HR buyer has strong focus on effi ciency-driven strategic interface, and service providers are focused on catering to this demand. Intersecting mobile, social and digital platforms is Cloud, which is at the forefront even as organisations are migrating to a ‘Cloud-fi rst’ environment. “Indian companies have been quick to look at the Cloud, which has been a source of major tech disruption in the past few years in the country,” says John Hansen, Vice President, HCM Product Management, JAPAC, Oracle. So with the intersection of mobile, social and digital through Cloud, there lies a huge potential for integration of HR products/services in the platform.

Increased emphasis on automation: While in the past, the use of technology was focused on simplifying overall processes, today organisations are looking at automation to spend less and improve efficiency. According to a recent research by the Hackett

Group, leading HR organisations now spend 37 percent less while delivering improved effectiveness and greater agility. Key areas where HR automation has been adopted include total rewards administration, payroll administration, staffi ng services and training administration.

With service providers focusing on delinking sales growth from head count, there is increased revenue growth that companies are using to scale up operations. Automation in HR, however, is still in its early stages. Naveen Narayanan, Global Director of the Arrows Group points out that in the recruitment space, technologies that use artifi cial intelligence are redefi ning the role of the recruiter.

Focus on value proposition: The emphasis on innovation and the focus on Cloud is pushing service providers to standout in the marketplace. “In order for a market place to evolve, there is a need for service providers to provide niche HR services and specialise in them,” says Madhu Raghunath, Head – Human Resources and Organisational Capability, TVS & Sons. A total of 83. 82 percent of the buyers in India who were surveyed, listed the inability to measure effectiveness among the top five concerns. While there is an increasing preference for globally standardised processes and products, there is a certain degree of customisation that needs to be accounted for.

While young startups are innovating with their products and services, they are also exploring avenues to experiment with their pricing model. “The problem we have had with external service providers is a mismatch in economic interests. Although today’s service providers deliver a good process experience, they are not incentivised


to look at the ways in which they can improve the process from a cost perspective,” says Judhajit Das, Chief Human Resources at ICICI Prudential. A total of 76.47 percent of buyers in India surveyed, list the price of products and services among the top fi ve challenges faced by them.

The case for lean marketplace

While the HR Industry has hardly witnessed any mergers or acquisitions in the market in the past, the changed competitive landscape has resulted in increased consolidation in the market. While there have been a few major acquisitions recently, including SumTotal Systems and Skillsoft, Hay Group and Korn Ferry, Randstad and RiseSmart, there is an increased scope for consolidation in the future. What’s driving this trend is the demand from the HR buyer. As HR buyers today are looking at one-stop solutions, the scope for consolidated services has risen. “The signifi cant shift has been in the HR’s focus; it has moved from a pure trade module to consolidated HRO platforms. HR buyers these days are looking at consolidated services which meet four or fi ve HR processes,” emphasises Rishi Rana, General Manager – APAC, SumTotal Systems. Further, while companies are looking for one-stop service partner, they are also looking for partners who can provide niche and innovative solutions. On the other hand, not all young emerging companies that provide niche solutions have the ability to scale. “Consolidation within the industry will continue to happen due to the rise in numbers of niche fi rms entering the market today,” says Moorthy Uppaluri, Managing Director and Chief Executive Offi cer, Randstad India.

Despite the increased number of players in the market, large companies still hold competitive advantage with their ability to provide end-to-end services since

companies today want to partner with as less vendors as possible. “Organisations usually look to partner with a vendor that can provide a wide range of services instead of working with many vendors for different services,” says Satya Sinha, CEO, Mancer, Consulting Ltd. Thus, the growing demand for a one-stop solution has kept big industry players ahead of the curve today. In India, the number of startups in the HR marketplace has seen a steady rise, startups niche services/solutions.

Conclusion:

The HR industry in the last few years has seen tremendous growth, especially in the non-western markets. There are new services which are doing very well but have not proven to be market disruptors; for instance, Zenefi ts in the USA, CDP in China, CloudPay in the UK, etc. If one were to talk about disruptors, WorkDay, which has been in the market for about fi ve years, comes closest to being a disruptor. According to Morgan, “This is because they provide cloud-based solutions. Cloud has not been explored to the fullest even now, and the future of all business processes is going to be the Cloud. Another thing that’s going to affect the future of the industry is the coming together of BPAAS with Software as a Service (SaaS).” The future of business is going to be where the BPAAS and SaaS converge which will lead to a hybrid approach i.e. availability of all services in one integrated platform.

Overall, the HR industry is seeing an increased emphasis on driving business value in the face of technological disruption. While cloud and automation are transforming processes and systems in the industry, they are also bringing in new players. This change in the landscape is defi ning the 'what' and 'how' of progressive HR practices.

(A shorter version of this article fi rst appeared in People Matters: www.peoplematters.in)


POWERING THE APPROACH TO HR TRANSFORMATION

NISHCHAE SURI

About the Author

Nishchae Suri is the Partner and Head of People and Change Advisory at KPMG. Nishchae has over 18 years of rich experience in the areas of HR transformation, leadership development, talent management and strategic rewards for large global and Indian multinationals across more than 25 countries.

Nishchae – a gold medallist in MBA from SIBM started his career with Hewitt Associates where he became the youngest ever global principal at the age of 30. After spending 12 years in a variety

of leadership roles, he began his journey as an entrepreneur where he served as a founder member and President of an innovative business school – School of Inspired Leadership. Prior to his current role at KPMG, Nishchae was the Managing Director of Mercer.

Nishchae is an eminent member of the CII Leadership and HR Council as well as a part of the advisory board of the Chief Learning Organisation. He is a board member at NHRDN in his capacity as National Treasurer, President of NHRDN’s Delhi & NCR Chapter and also Chairman of the NHRDN Young Minds Council. A teacher at heart Nishchae serves as a faculty member of ‘World at Work’ and an expert panellist for SHRM. A thought leader in the HR fraternity, Nishchae is an invited speaker to numerous industry bodies and associations.

Human Resource (HR) transformation and effectiveness occupy a central

position in the life of an organisation, particularly today, when as a function HR is no longer mirrored as a transactional cost centre. Today, it has evolved to become a true contributor to business and a partner in growth.

The Evolution of HR

HR functions have always been a response to the zeitgeist. They have undergone continuous and quantum transformations, in response to specifi c world events through the years to shape the success of businesses globally.

Historically, personnel management can be traced back to the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent development of labour unions looking into the health, safety and training of factory workers.

Fast forward to the present day, the way we think about HR has undergone a massive change. Struggling economies around the world have had a profound impact on the way businesses conduct themselves, with a renewed emphasis on cost cutting and innovation, or simply put, the ability to do more with less. The HR vertical of today is therefore required to talk in the language of its aligned business, ensuring


organisation develops an HR strategy that bolsters its business strategy.

The construct – human resource transformation mostly connotes the massive restructuring HR functions began undergoing in the 1990s. This was the time that really marked HR as strategic contributors rather than administrators (The Economist 2009)1. As HR becomes strategically important for organisations, the expectation that it will measure its contribution and effectiveness is essential. Efforts towards this with a focus on – cost efficiency, competitive advantage and integration have become a key requirement.

The World has Changed and will Keep Changing

To see things in perspective, it is important to understand the macro trends at play, which subsequently infl uence the way HR fi ne-tunes itself. How has the world of work changed? Now, we have fi ve generations co-existing simultaneously with millennials who have a different set of expectations comprising a large proportion. We currently face a dilemma; whilst multi-national organisations are looking to develop standard global practices to echo a uniform identity, they are also looking to contextualise to cultures. Furthermore, the Internet of Things (IoT) phenomenon is likely to dictate that the future is nothing but digital. The next generation HR technology state includes self-service, allowing both transactions as well as advanced decision-making, potentially enabling 24/7 facilities. An effective HR technology model also includes intuitive web interfaces, whilst offering website-like experiences, and therefore, helping ensure participation. Most importantly, evidence-based insights are expected to become ever more important to make sense of constant change and data infl ux.

The need for HR transformation arises out of the magnitude and severity of different types of changes in the external environment. Seven distinctive types of transformations have become more frequent and prominent. The economic environment post the global financial crisis has given rise to numerous regulatory changes especially in Banking and Financial Services. Products are continuously being refi ned and organisations re-designed to be compliant with the new rules; and at the same time meet the ever growing needs of customers. Merger integrations and divestitures have become even more common, given the competitive landscape. There are also numerous instances of shared services and outsourcing transitions that have resulted in new accountabilities and governance structures.

Many organisations are initiating a digital revolution and marketing change, embracing social media and mobile applications for branding; and analytics and cloud to increase effi ciencies. There are also many initiatives around operational or process-enabled change that are leading to ambiguity in operating principles and day-to-day work. More importantly, technological change has become all pervasive, putting forth a challenge for organisations that need to unlearn legacy systems and introduce changes around Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementation.

HR Transformation: What does lean look like?

HR transformation has been a widely discussed and deliberated topic. However, many organisations have not been able to clearly articulate what approach to follow. In fact, transformation is often undertaken in a piecemeal manner, with organisations not fully understanding the systems approach that is required


to make a meaningful difference. There should be a balanced operating model that blends standardisation and customisation, incorporating bespoke practices around people, processes and technology. This operating model must be centred on business, risk and controls; and is to be fully integrated across the HR spectrum.

There are six levers of HR transformation that, when applied in synergy, can help ensure competitive advantage through people:

1. HR strategy: This relates to how well an organisation assembles the people capabilities required by its corporate strategy. HR has a critical role to play in helping the leadership team combine the right resources (skilled people and focussed assets) with the right activities (processes and technology). This lever includes business alignment of people strategy, integrated development of HR strategy, adoption of organisation-wide challenges and strategic HR budgeting.

2. HR service delivery model: The key is to choose the right model to match the strategy and ‘manage the white space’. Problems arise when interfaces, touch points and boundaries between the component parts of the service delivery model are not clearly defi ned to support strategy execution and employer brand. In some organisations, there has been a desire to build parts of the service delivery model solely according to the best practices. However, a collection of leading practice parts does not lead to a coherent value-driven model. The quality that is missing in the service delivery model is that of powerful connections. Powerful connections occur within a service delivery model when processes, information, people, technology and strategy are architected as a coherent system to drive business performance.

3. HR programmes, policies and processes: The scope and sophistication of these three continue to advance as businesses seek more effective ways to attract, grow and engage great people. Beyond technical specialty in the design of these programs, HR needs to pay particular attention to the alignment, integration and optimisation of critical supports. Perhaps most importantly, HR needs to partner with business leaders to embed the right practices and behaviours to help ensure effectiveness. This lever should also look at consistency of policies and programmes, monitoring mechanisms of established policies and legal compliance.

4. HR skills: It is pertinent for HR profess ionals to enhance their understanding of business, enable ongoing and true collaboration, develop greater functional competence, create internal change capability and adopt new ways of working. Since HR acts as the conscience keeper of the transformation process, this lever assumes great importance to ensure sustained change.

5. HR performance measurement: HR must demonstrate, in real terms, the value creation, growth and market leadership value that they can bring to the business. A four level HR Performance Measurement Framework can assess as to where the HR is creating impact through the value chain. These are activity (e.g. turnover), effi ciency (e.g. cost of training), effectiveness (e.g. training learning transfer) and added value measurement (e.g. investment in pivotal roles).

6. HR technology: Technology is one of the key enablers of HR strategy and overall talent management. The technology stack that constitutes Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) can be


one of the most powerful mediums of innovation. The following section details this further.

HR Technology: A Key Lever in the Transformation Journey

While undertaking HR transformation, organisations are faced with a number of dilemmas. Cloud or not? What should be outsourced? What apps can be used to enhance employee experience? How can technology be used to manage talent? Who is the best vendor for the organisation? Local or global? The list of questions is endless. The good news is that whatever be the need, there is an approach in order to evolve an effective HR. The challenge, or in fact the opportunity, is choosing the correct approach. The fi rst step in making the correct choice is being fully aware and informed about what is available and, subsequently, matching the advantages and disadvantages as per the organisation’s demands.

The current technology landscape demands that organisations should make choices around:

1. Reinventing talent management through SMAC

The HR landscape has developed to reflect changed realities such as the new relationship between workforce and employers, the expectation of an experiential HR platform available on mobile, and a social approach to collaboration. There is a realisation that technology can, in fact, be a catalyst for innovation, as we have seen in the synergy between new age performance management and the real-time feedback opportunities that technology provides. Wearable technologies are also forecasted to make an entry into the HR space, allowing the discipline to be truly on the move at all times.

The market is rich with applications that offer innovative ways to strategise people management. For instance, without having a single golden source of information on the global workforce, organisations are able to craft meaningful and segmented talent strategies. HR is also looking to develop tools around mentoring, social listening and regular pulse surveys.

There are multiple benefi ts of implementing technology in the suite of HR functions, including recruiting, selection learning, performance management, compensation and benefits. For example, an e-HR approach to learning and development reduces training costs, facilitates tracking, increases employee fl exibility and control over learning. E- performance management uses technology to automate the collection of performance data, monitor employee work and support the development and delivery of performance appraisals. In recent times, this has become the hallmark for success in performance management – as we see many organisations move away from the bell curve and focus on regular conversations.

HR analytics has gained more momentum to take centre stage. Armed with data, HR is looking to take the guesswork out of making key talent decisions, as one wades through voluminous digital trails. HR continues to refi ne their solutions around human capital analytics to predict skills, performance, training, collaboration, risk/reward, compensation, success and even morale.

2. Cloud/Software as a Service (SaaS) or licensed software

In the backdrop of changes to the way we work, introducing enterprise technologies has become a non-negotiable aspect of organisational architecture. It is the medium by which global organisations stay connected and increasingly diverse


talent is managed. In fact, it can also be said that an organisation’s HR delivery model can also be seen as a refl ection of its maturity, diversity and philosophy.

In the recent past, there has been a signifi cant demand for SaaS subscription-based technology. Based on a Sierra-Cedar survey (Sierra Cedar, 2015)2, cloud subscriptions have reached a half way mark, with 50 percent of purchased Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS) now reported to be utilising SaaS solutions, largely owing to leading practice functionality, implementation ease, hassle-free upgrades, and elimination of a dependence on IT. The Sierra-Cedar HR Systems Survey3 revealed that organisations with SaaS require one-third of the staff of those with an on-premise HRMS. Regardless, there are many organisations who have no plans to move to SaaS, as concerns still remain, including customer support, integration complications, customisation inability and data security.

Guiding principles for transformation

There are some common denominators that must underline all transformation

decisions. Perhaps one of the most important of these is to have a ‘business fi rst’ paradigm. This simply means that the desired approach must map to the business challenge defi ned. By adopting a business-integrator view, rather than a systems- integrator one, organisations can see through trends and help ensure a suitable fi t. Additionally, a key component of the ‘business fi rst’ paradigm is execution ability; it follows the essential principles of simplicity. As a checklist, the business lens must consider people, service delivery model, functional process, data and reporting, and governance/controls. Further, it is useful for organisations to also consider value opportunities such as marketplace advantage, productivity and quality. A fit for the purpose solution could then unite strategy with the available market-driven options.

The information contained herein is of a general nature and is not intended to address the specifi c circumstances of any particular individual or entity. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of KPMG in India.

Referenes :1 The Economist. 2009. Human resources transformation. http://www.economist.com/node/13724525 (accessed 11 November

2015).2 Sierra Cedar. 2015. HR Systems Survey. http://www.sierra-cedar.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/12/2014/11/Sierra-

Cedar_2014-2015_HRSystemsSurveyWhitePaper.pdf (accessed 11 November 2015)3 Ibid.


HR TRANSFORMATION – WHAT’S NEXT?HARISH DEVARAJAN

About the AuthorHarish has more than 30 years of experience in the corporate and consulting sectors. He started his professional career with TVS Sundram Fasteners Ltd. in 1985, and then in 1989 joined Hindustan Lever Ltd., India’s leading multi-national company. Harish has worked in different roles across functions. He has been involved in the management, review and launch of various HR processes, policies and systems. As part of the management development efforts in Hindustan Unilever Ltd. he has been personally involved in training, mentoring and coaching Senior

managers on leadership skills, team building and performance development. He was the Head – Employee Relations in HUL (2001-2004) responsible for all HR matters concerning 38,000 non-management employees across India spanning 60 units in manufacturing, sales and plantations. His last assignment in Hindustan Unilever Ltd. was as Vice President – HR (2004 -2007) responsible for the entire HR function across South Asia (India, Pakistan, Srilanka, Bangladesh and Nepal). He was also a member of the HUL Management Committee between 2004 and 2007.He has rich experience in Change management at a global business context having worked in Unilever UK as a Global project manager – Enterprise Culture(1999-2001) and having worked as the Vice President – HR Services, (2007-2008) when he managed a major transformation agenda in 40 countries across 3 continents (Asia, Australia, Africa).He is now a free-lance Leadership Consultant and Executive Coach. In 2008, he started his own consulting practice company “People Unlimited” providing support in the areas of Organisation Performance and Leadership Effectiveness. He is also an Associate Coach with Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL), a world renowned leadership development organisation. He is the co-founder and Executive Director in totus HR School a company focussed on capability building for HR Professionals. He is a Senior Fellow, Human Capital of The Conference Board. His current focus is to help Senior Executives, Entrepreneurs and High Potential Leaders through Coaching to become better in their leadership and managerial roles. He is accredited by the International Coach Federation, USA as a Professional Certifi ed Coach (PCC), also by the Center for Credentialing & Education as a Board Certifi ed Coach (BCC) and is also a certifi ed practitioner of MBTI, FIRO-B, WPB5, Confl ict Dynamics Profi ler, Hogan Inventories and a host of other CCL diagnostic instruments. He continues to be a sought after speaker at various management forums and business schools. He has written and published articles on HR topics in professional journals / newspapers. He has presented his views and experiences in a number of management conferences under the auspices of All India Management Association, Confederation of Indian Industries, HRD Network and others. Harish is a past President of the National HRD Network, Bangalore Chapter and he was the convener of the NHRD Network’s 15th National Conference held in Bangalore in November, 2011. Harish was honoured with the “Exemplary Leader Award” as part of the Employer Branding Awards, India 2007 (recognising excellence in Human Resources).


The world of HR has transformed, and signifi cantly so, over the last ten

years. One of the key elements of this transformation has been the creation of Shared Services especially in the areas of transactional services. The model of shared services and its coverage is like an a-la-carte menu in a restaurant.

In India, companies of every size and shape have opted for HR Shared Services. Some have created their own in-house centres while others have outsourced it to professional outfi ts that has made this growing need a good business opportunity. The intent of this article is to do some crystal ball gazing to predict the future of this space as I see it.

The reasons for organisations to venture into this space have been cost, scale and effectiveness. These will continue to remain as the core for this space. The emerging focus is, however, user convenience for the users of the services. This has not been a priority so far, but it will certainly be an additional and more visible driver going forward. Leveraging of technology, User Interface options and Policy Evolution will all play a key role to make this happen.

The operating models of Shared Services have so far mostly been in-house vs. outsourced. I see the emergence of a hybrid model as the popular choice in the Indian context. Organisations will seek to leverage both outsourced resources (as the predominant source), as well as a lean team of in-house resources (with a SPOC) for each of the different processes that are taken under the HR shared services umbrella.

The SPOC along with a small team of resources will provide instant and appropriate support to the different parts of the business. While yielding to all customisation demands is detrimental to the concept of shared services, the current

approach of denying any customisation also produces a negative impact.

If there is periodical review of the customised services delivered by the SPOC team, it will yield useful insight into how one may enhance/update the outsourced support to remain meaningful to the customers. This will also prevent the mushrooming of undercover resources to serve this real and crucial need.

The new generation of users who are accustomed to mobile technology for most of their daily needs will soon demand access to work place information also on the mobile. This will lead to a faster migration of service access on the mobile, consequently leading to policy reviews and modifi cations to suit the new context. This is already beginning to happen in pockets e.g. the leave approval system in many companies has been changed to instant approval based on leave balance (replacing superior triggered approval system).

I can clearly sense the next horizon for shared services to be the progression from transaction services to expertise services. The logic for shared services has and will continue to be the value derived from service provider consolidation. In the case of transactions, it was more obvious. Organisations as part of their HR transformation, have also created COEs within their in-house structures to advise and support in the different expertise domains. There is greater synergistic value to be derived from accessing the expertise services from a larger storehouse of expertise capability. This is the reason why organisations even today reach out to consulting groups and companies. The next logical step for shared service providers is to build their own COEs in different domain areas and start offering it to client organisations who seek it. This will take provision of outsourced HR support to the next level.


The famous refrain that I hear across many organisations is “The organisation does not know what it already knows". With the emergence of HR Shared Services, this will be heightened. Much of the action will be invisible to the HR functionaries within the organisation.

This will be a critical lacuna that will need to be addressed, and the HR has to be acquainted about this lurking danger. The answer lies in seeking to sift and synthesise the knowledge from the transactional factory for easy and relevant appreciation by the in-house HR folks. This is also what is casually referred to as HR Analytics. I say 'casually' because it is bandied around often without understanding where, from or how it will be done.

HR Analytics is a capability that has to be built within the framework of the HR Shared Services organisation and like everything else in the HRSS system, it has to be co-created along with the HR partners and HR domain experts.

The biggest challenge for HR Shared Service providers is battling with the attrition in their ranks and the consequent effect on quality of service delivered/experienced at the client organisation. The whole business model revolves around the outsourcing of non-value added work, and now, this new entity (Shared Service provider) has to employ and utilise people for doing this routine task, day after day. Undoubtedly, along with this business opportunity comes the challenge of living with high attrition. If you try to retain your people for a longer duration to do the same job, the employee cost will be too much for the value being added. It is better to keep the attrition at an optimum level (40%).

The answer to the quality concerns is knowledge management and not retention beyond a level. The system has to be robust enough to train and educate new employees to deliver at the same quality

standards of the experienced employees within a short cycle time. This calls for rapid skill scale-up which in turn may call for innovative resource planning that includes creating adequate pipeline of replacement.

I constantly hear about the erosion of valuable early career exposure for new HR professionals to the transactional aspects of the function which are getting outsourced, and are therefore not accessible to them. I believe that HR curriculum in business schools would soon start ensuring that those who are seeking a career in HR, are given adequate exposure and a clear understanding of the Basics of HR Transactions (just like students of Finance get an exposure to basic Accounting systems and concepts).

In addition to this, organisations who recruit HR professionals would be keen to have them spend time with the HR Shared Service providers to understand the basic transactions that are carried out, critical steps in the process and the valuable insights that can be gleaned from the data that is available. This understanding and appreciation amongst HR team members, will help provide sustained support to the Shared Services centre for it to be able to carry out its role without the torture of unrealistic demands from the client system.

The role of retained HR in organisations will over time, be largely around partnerships (HR Partners) - partnership with line managers and partnership with employees. The partnership with line managers will be to guide and coach them to lead their team members effectively and deliver results aligned to the emerging business needs. The partnership with employees will be to guide and counsel them to perform effectively in their roles and achieve professional growth in line with their potential.


Depending on the nature of the business and the ground realities, the organisation will require different skill sets in its HR team members. If it is in the manufacturing industry with sites in remote greenfi eld locations, it may need people who can handle local community interface apart from providing partnership with line managers and employees.

The local manufacturing sites will soon have HR Information Kiosks to facilitate employee interface with the back-end information collection and dissemination cells. This will be for those information needs that require more than a mobile device. Any documents that an employee may require could be printed out instantaneously at the kiosk. To help educate and transition employees into this new way of working, volunteers could be made available (just like we have in airports and movie theatres for boarding pass/ticket collection).

The pace of transition to the new world will depend on the current state of things, as well as the mindset of the people to accept the new world order. However, in a sales force environment the use of mobile technology will be accepted more easily since many of their interfaces are already on that platform.

In my view, much of what is considered HR work today will soon be part and parcel of the line manager’s responsibility. If one were to suggest it to them, I am sure they will be aghast, and even be revolted. But in time, that is what will happen and they will indeed feel happy that they have greater infl uence (and of course along with it, more responsibility).

Many of our HR managers are also unwilling to see and accept the emerging new paradigm; they are wedded to their current roles and responsibilities as a

function and unwilling to let go. The misuse and overuse of the Bell Curve has led to its outright rejection by many organisations! I believe that it is an early warning signal that today’s employees wish for greater empowerment and are gearing up to challenge the status quo. HR is in the forefront, facing this paradigm shift and getting ready for the new world.

Clearly the skills required for the new world HR professional will be some of the existing ones like Inter-personal relationship, Counselling, Organising etc. Some improved versions of skills are Communication, Infl uencing, Partnering, Change etc. and some absolutely new skills would be Coaching, Leveraging Mobile Technology, Deriving insights through Analytics etc.

The organisations of tomorrow will seek to be leaner. They would want to collaborate with other organisations which are specialised in different aspects of work. They will defi nitely want to get more from less, and this will apply to the HR functionaries as well. They will support the concept of a line manager who is an all-rounder and who will take onus for HR with respect to his people. The business leader of tomorrow will be more willing to embrace Shared Services and Technology as given concepts, and will eagerly look for the new age HR professional who will be focused adding value to business through its people.

The new age HR will be different from what we have traditionally practised. Much of the existing needs can be and will be addressed through Shared Service Centres, Technology-driven platforms, new policies and practices, enlightened line managers and empowered employees. The transformed work and work place will be best served by a lean and smart HR!


LEAN & SMART HR – FUTURE OF WORK THROUGH LEAN & SMART HR

Dr. N S RAJAN and ASHA KRISHNAN

About the Authors

Dr.N.S.Rajan is Member, Group Executive Council and Group Chief Human Resources Offi cer of Tata Sons. Prior to joining the Tata Group, he was the Global Leader for the People & Organisation practice at Ernst and Young. Dr.Rajan is a director on the board of The Indian Hotels Company Limited. He is also a member of the board of governors of XLRI which conferred on him the “Distinguished Alumnus Award”. He is the former national president of NHRDN. He has also been recognised as HR

Professional of the Year (2008) by NHRDN. He has recently authored a book titled ‘Quote me if you can’ that is a captivating compilation of his thoughts. Dr.Rajan is a graduate in economics from Loyola College, Chennai, and a post graduate in business management from XLRI, Jamshedpur. He has completed his doctoral studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Asha Krishnan is a General Manager - Group Human Resources at Tata Sons. In Tata Sons, she is responsible for driving Board Effectiveness and HR special projects and initiatives. Prior to joining Tata Sons close to 3 years back, she was a Manager of the People & Organisation practice at Ernst and Young. She has consulting experience spanning more than 7 years in a number of functional areas of HR across diverse industries like Oil & Gas, Energy, Infrastructure, Logistics, Banking, Insurance, Asset Management, Event Management, Textile and Print Media. She is a graduate in computer engineering from Mumbai University and a post graduate in Personnel Management & Industrial Relations (PM&IR) from XLRI, Jamshedpur.

A day in the (not so distant) future

6.30 am. The smart watch buzzes with your favourite number that is a fusion

of sufi sangeet and hard rock. As you wake up and head to the bathroom, your cognitive assistant Jill appears on the bathroom mirror that is synced like all other devices and furniture in your home and workplace to one another. She alerts you on the meetings for the day. Your fi rst hologram call, she says, is in the next 15

minutes with a client in Tokyo. You really don’t want to change into formal clothes as yet and would much rather be in your pyjamas. So you programme your avatar to present for you in the call. After the call, Jill alerts you on the other meetings scheduled for the day – your fortnightly performance review discussion with your manager in San Francisco, an experience sharing meeting with your peer in London as part of his training and a project progress meeting with your junior in Delhi. As you


remark on the day not being so bad after all, Jill reminds you of the time sharing project with the 3D modelling team. So much for portfolio careers! It will require you to travel to the offi ce that is 2 hours away. As you grumble about the time involved in commuting, Jill reminds you that you can instead travel to the nearest hub that is just 15 minutes from home. Oh, the advantages of technology! As you prepare breakfast, your refrigerator alerts you on the low stock of milk and vegetables and waits for your confi rmation before placing the order with your registered grocer. You get into the car and programme it to reach the hub while you complete the ten-minute training module on process excellence and respond to your mails on the phone using voice activated command. When you reach the hub, thebiometric recognition system at the door immediately recognises you and you get an alert on your smart glasses directing you to an empty workstation. You plug in your access card upon reaching the workstation and the virtual 3D model that is being built by you as part of your time-sharing project appears. You can also (virtually) see the other team members working on the model. As you greet them, you receive delivery of a confi dential docket of blueprints for the 3D model by an offi ce drone. You sign confi rming the delivery of the docket on the handheld connected to the drone with the date – 2nd July 2020. A day in the (not so distant) future.

The Future is (almost) here

Welcome to, what is prophesised widely by various eminent futurists as, the future of work. A global world that is so connected that working 24/7 is the norm and people are constantly connected and online. A world that is, at the same time, highly fragmented and isolated physically. But is it really the future? Abraham Lincoln had once remarked that “The best thing about

the future is that it comes only one day at a time.” However, the spiralling pace of change in today’s world no longer affords us the luxury of taking the future one day at a time. The Future is (almost) here.

HR is on the cusp of change

Multiple forces are shaping the manner in which work will get done in the future. There are changes that are taking place at a global and at a societal level, at the level of individual needs and preferences as well as in the area of technology, work tools and work spaces. Some key emerging trends are as follows

Increased interconnectedness at the global level.

Rapid urbanisation that has thrown open challenges on the work-life balance front.

Ubiquitous digitisation resulting in conventional business paradigms being questioned.

Multi-generational workforce with differing needs and preferences. The workforce demographics is changing. While at one end of the spectrum there are the millennials or the Gen-Yers who are a signifi cantly more mobile generation, the rising life expectancy has also resulted in many more people working beyond the conventional retirement age. What we, therefore, will see is the rise of a multi-generational workforce. This trend will bring along with it the challenge of accommodating aged and experienced employees as well as young and free-spirited millennials. The magnitude of this task will be accentuated by the fact that organisations are becoming fl atter. The traditional organisation charts are being put to test by the technological advances and the expectations for collaboration and openness set by millennials.


Purpose-driven organisations will increasingly find greater acceptance with the new generation of employees who probably attach a higher value to concepts like sustainability and conscious capitalism.

All these have changed the world of work and as the future unfolds, people management will perhaps present itself as one of the greatest business challenges. It will also conceivably throw open multitude of opportunities for the HR function. Undeniably, HR is on the cusp of change. The impact of the above trends on the human resources function could possibly impact all facets of its functioning right from the structure of the function, the design of processes as well as the usage of technology and tools that enable the function.

Lean and Smart HR

There is a lot that has been written on the evolution of the HR function in the coming decade. Some literature has gone to the extent of stating that the function will no longer exist with talent management being embedded within business itself. While we are no soothsayers, we strongly believe that the function will continue to exist. That being said, the HR function would need to grapple with emerging issues such as:

the boundary between work and home life disappearing,

increasing deployment of stringent performance measurement metrics and techniques,

the rising importance of social capital as the driver of business success.

The focus on performance and the use of real-time data and analytics will require a ‘smart’ HR function that perforce has to employ sophisticated human capital metrics to evaluate corporate activity. The HR function itself, will possibly

have greater accountability for delivering specifi c corporate objectives. This will result in a greater need for HR to quantify itself in respect of how it delivers against the bottom line. At the same time, technological progress, increased digitisation and focus on process and cost effectiveness to remain competitive will continue to drive towards a ‘lean’ HR function where transactional activities are either digitised or outsourced. The resultant model of lean and smart HR would increasingly resemble Charles Handy’s Shamrock organisation that is by his own defi nition, a ‘core of essential executives and workers supported by outside contractors and part-time help’. The emphasis on an integrated data view and analysis would maybe also drive towards a more collaborative HR department, not constrained by traditional functional boundaries.

„The best way to predict the future is to create it‰

In terms of HR processes, we can see a number of aspects already evolving. Increased connectivity and the emergence of the gig economy has resulted in multiple talent pools that would require to be tapped effectively using various enterprise social networking platforms. The varied talent pools would also require different types of work arrangements (viz. fl exi-working, remote working, etc.) to be actively considered and adopted to enable the organisation to leverage the power of remote workers and the freelance/ sharing economy. HR will also need to provide for alternate patterns of work for older employees like portfolio careers, part-time working etc. The other interesting trend is the openness with which people especially millennials are sharing their personal details and preferences on virtual platforms. With professional and personal boundaries blurring, this trend brings in its wake, the opportunity for HR to provide highly customised people


practices to its workforce much like the marketing function segments and provides attractive offers to customers. The drive towards continuous anywhere, anytime learning delivered seamlessly through computers/mobile devices in bit-sized modules will continue to impact learning and development interventions. The need for immediate feedback would transform the performance management process with yearly performance conversations replaced by instant and continuous feedback. People engagement itself, will be redefi ned as conventional offi ce boundaries perish. The famous management guru Peter Drucker had once remarked that “The best way to predict the future is to create it”. With a number of changes in the HR processes being underway and already in place in organisations across the world, the future is in fact already created and existing at this moment.

„The human spirit must prevail over technology‰. And presumably as an

extension over all other material trappings too.

Much has been written about the impact of technology and digitisation on the way in which work will get done in the future. Big data and analytics are already buzz words in corporate corridors. Collaboration is increasingly seen as the mantra for success with collaboration platforms serving as a digital workplace that unites people, conversations and content across the organisation. Leveraging technology and promoting co-creation and social participation using such collaboration platforms would be one of the key drivers for success and engagement of employees in organisations in the future. There is certainly also a rise in the number of futuristic offi ce spaces to support collaborative culture. Organisations are increasingly building co-working spaces and hubs that allow for freelancers and remote workers to share furniture, a roof, Wifi etc. The position

of a Chief Experience Officer whose responsibility is to craft interesting and enriching experiences for individuals at the workplace is very much a reality. But all these would need to viewed as mere enablers for the HR function. As Albert Einstein profoundly observed, “The human spirit must prevail over technology.” And presumably as an extension over all other material trappings too.

Be proactive and take the lead to be the change

The world is indeed experiencing transformation on various fronts and with that the nature of work and workforce is being dramatically redefi ned. We are faced with a host of uncertainties. Despite the unpredictability, I see some constants that have endured since time immemorial. One such aspect is the human need for empathy and recognition. As the workforce becomes increasingly disconnected on the corporeal level, and real-time data and analytics continuously seek to objectify performance, the need and hence the opportunity to make a palpable difference through effective people management assumes an importance of a higher order. I must however caution that the nature of the beast makes it also very diffi cult especially since the workforce will no longer be confi ned to a physical workspace. Fostering cultural elements and having employees being able to relate to the values and purpose behind the organisation, while working out of remote locations connected for all one knows only by technology, is a real dichotomy that we will need to handle. As custodians of human capital, the HR community is entrusted with the responsibility to partner with business to manage talent responsibly. While there is a strong case for embedding talent management as a core responsibility of business, we believe we must as a function more than ever before really own


the people management agenda within the organisation. There is a signifi cant opportunity ahead of us to truly drive strategy and employ tools and information to become one of the most powerful and infl uential parts of the operations of the business. However, we need to be proactive and take the lead to be the change before we are rendered irrelevant through either outsourcing or absorption of people management responsibility into other functions.

„On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves - or lose the ventures before us‰

In conclusion, as we refl ect on the future that beholds we are struck by the need to capitalise on the opportunities that lie ahead of us while retaining the core essence of the function that is, being aligned on one hand to business and on the other hand to employee needs and aspirations. As the famous playwright William Shakespeare so eloquently cautioned in his epic tragedy on Julius Caesar “There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the fl ood, leads on to fortune. On such a full sea are we now afl oat, and we must take the current when it serves - or lose the ventures before us.”


Some book suggestions for your HR Transformation Journey

1. HUMAN RESOURCE CHAMPIONS Author : DAVE ULRICH and WAYNE BROCKBANKReleased in 1997, this book truly brought in a wave of transformation in the space of HR. The three legged HR Business partner model, that is still the most referred framework by organisations starting their journey of HR Transformation, this book rightly fi nds place in the library of most HR Transformation leaders.

2. HR FROM THE OUTSIDE IN: SIX COMPETENCIES FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMAN RESOURCES

Author : DAVE ULRICH AND JON YOUNGERThis is another interesting book by Dave Ulrich and his colleague Jon Younger, which captures the fi ve waves that HR has seen. Namely : HR Administration – Emphasis on the administrative and transactional work by HR, HR Practices – Innovation in specialized areas of HR (i.e., compensation, recruitment, training), HR Strategy – Integration of HR and business practices, HR Outside-In – HR moves beyond strategy to align its work with business context and stakeholders. This book also shares the six competencies that HR Professionals need to thrive in today’s business world. These competencies include: Strategic Positioner, Credible Activist, Capability Builder, Change Champion, HR Innovator and Integrator, Technology Proponent. This book also captures wealth of information in the form of case studies, and making it an interesting and insightful read for any HR Professional.

3. HOW TO GET BEST VALUE FROM HR: THE SHARED SERVICES OPTION

Author : PETER A. REILLY and TONY WILLIAMSContemplating a dip into the world of HR Transformation & shared services this book can be a good way to start. The book explains what, how and Why of HR shared services adoption by different organizations and sets out the relationship between shared services and the other HR activities, and between HR and line management. The process of introducing shared services, from identifying customer needs through designing the structure to implementation and monitoring. It also outlines the likely pitfalls and, importantly, offers possible solutions. A good insight into the world of HR Transformation.

BOOK REVIEWS


4. LEAN HR Author : DWANE LAYThis book includes a simple overview of Lean philosophy and its evolution. It is an assortment of easy to use tools to identify and analyze improvement projects, and a structured approach to reducing waste in practice. In this book, practitioners are be guided through an overview of the basics of Lean, how to use the most common tools, and how to then leverage them to bring an element of process excellence to their HR department. It also captures how with a few simple templates, some common sense, and a willingness to question the current state, great strides can be made in reducing costs and improving effectiveness in HR departments of any size!

5. HR ANAL YTICS: THE WHAT, WHY AND HOW Author : TRACEY SMITHDesigned for the users migrating out of reporting into HR analytics and for students looking to understand how their analytical talents fi t into Human Resources, this book explains the 4 levels of value on the HR Analytics roadmap and provides practical advice on selecting metrics, designing dashboards and setting up an analytics problem. A chapter is dedicated to simple examples to demonstrate how to use a business view to plan analytics projects. It also examines the advantages and disadvantages of trying to build these capabilities in-house and will provide a realistic view of the challenges you will face as an analyst or leader. The most interesting thing is concept of building a linkage map to connect HR to the business

that is beautifully captured in the book.

6. HR TRANSFORMATION: BUILDING HUMAN RESOURCES FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

Author : DAVE ULRICH, JUSTIN ALLEN, WAYNE BROCKBANK, JON YOUNGER, MARK NYMAN

Released in 2009, this book by Dave Ulrich and his colleagues is truly a handbook for HR Transformation. It captures details like what HR transformation is and what it requires; what it isn’t; what works, what doesn’t, and why; how to plan it; how to mobilize the resources needed (especially people); how to launch it; how to measure progress throughout the transformation initiatives; and how to apply the lessons learned to sustain a constant refi nement of what HR is and does.

NHRD fi rmly believes in and respects IPR and we appeal to the contributors and readers to strictly honour the same.

For any further clarifi cations, please contact :

The Managing EditorDr. Pallab Bandyopadhyay, Leadership Architect and Career Coach, HR PLUS

Sri Nrusimhadri, Flat No 303, Third Floor, No 12, 2nd Main, 7th Block, Jayanagar, [email protected]

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

The National HRD Network publishes a semi-academic quarterly journal where in each issue is dedicated to a theme.

The Journal publishes primarily three categories of articles :

• Conceptual and research based.

• Contributions from thought leaders including a limited number of reprints with due permission.

• Organisational experiences in HR interventions / mechanisms.

About this issue :

The theme of the current Issue is “Lean and Smart HR: Transforming Work”.

Editorial Board Members :

Dr. Pallab Bandyopadhyay, Managing Editor, is a Leadership Architect, Career Coach, Change and Transition Specialist with thirty years of successful professional experience in managing entire gamut of Human Resources Management with proven expertise in managing multicultural globally distributed knowledge professionals. He has rich experience in companies like Citrix, Dell Perot, Cambridge Solutions, Sasken and ALIT. He is a doctoral fellow in HRD from XLRI, a product of NTL, USA and provides HR consulting with many large Indian and MNCs and start-ups in the area of Leadership coaching, Organisation development, Long-term capability building, Strategic change and Organisation alignment.

Dr. Arvind N Agrawal serves as the President and Chief Executive of Corporate Development & Human Resources and Member of Management Board of RPG Enterprises. Dr. Agrawal has worked at RPG Enterprises since 1999 and his current responsibilities in RPG comprise of HR and TQM. He held senior positions in Escorts and Modi Xerox. He was the past National President of National HRD Network. Dr. Agrawal is an IIM, Ahmedabad and an IIT, Kharagpur alumni, and also holds a Ph.D. from IIT, Mumbai.

www.nationalhrd.org

Nati onal HRD NetworkThe Nati onal HRD Network, established in 1985, is an associati on of professionals committ ed to promoti ng the HRD movement in India and enhancing the capability of human resource professionals, enabling them to make an impactf ul contributi on in enhancing competi ti veness and creati ng value for society. Towards this end, the Nati onal HRD Network is committ ed to the development of human resources through educati on, training, research and experience sharing. The Network is managed by HR professionals in an honorary capacity, stemming from their interest in contributi ng to the HR profession.

The underlying philosophy of NHRDN is that every human being has the potential for remarkable achievement. HRD is a process by which employees in organisati ons are enabled to:

• acquire capabilities to perform various tasks associated with their present and future roles;

• develop their inner potential for self and organisati onal growth;

• develop an organisati onal culture where networking relationships, teamwork and collaboration among diff erent units is strong, contributi ng to organisati onal growth and individual well-being.

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