What do Ba Ling Hou have in common with the Millennials

Reading the “Managing the Millennials” by Espinoza, Ukljea, and Rusch (2010, published by John Wiley & Sons) is like finally verbalize everything what presented a challenge when striving to understand, interpret, and manage behaviors of Chinese employees. In particular, those called the Generation 1980’s (Ba Ling Hou), born and raised after Deng Zhao Ping reforms, whose third socialization has been taking place in Multinationals or KMUs in China of European or American origin. I don’t know any book on intercultural communication explaining behaviors of young employees in China more accurately then “Managing the Millenials”. Though, this book refers to Americans only without aspiring to have any cross-border relevance.

No value-added HR without the CEO’s buy-in

With HR practitioners struggling to create value and focusing excessively on internal department efficiency, HR fails to realize respect as a profession. Hence, some people say, “There is no HR in China”. Yet, when you look at the job boards with openings for HR roles, you find out that to be in charge of the HR department, candidates need to bring 10 to 15 + year of HR experience.

So what’s the deal? Why are people with “relevant and continuous” experience unable to change the rules and move HR to a value contributing unit? Why does HR exhibit signs of insanity as memorably defined by Einstein; "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"? But more importantly, who can stop this insanity?

The answer to the last question is the CEO. How?

By aligning job requirements and selection criteria for senior HR leaders to strategic deliverables.
CEOs need to look for different type of talent. No matter how many years of experience Candidates bring, it is imprudent to assume that a person skilled in administrative efficiency, employee advocacy, and legal compliance will naturally add-value through problem solving, strategic thinking, and analytics. If CEOs expect HR to be strategic, then they should not look at the number of years of experience as an indicator of performance. Instead, it is about time that CEOs begin testing Candidates on their knowledge, thinking style, enthusiasm and attitudes, creativity, how they go about solving problems on-the-spot.

By continuously supporting HR initiatives.
CEOs must show greater buy-in for all HR programs. No matter how much effort HR professionals exert, without the CEO’s support, none of them can really take off. HR programs can not live separately from the C-suite, as it happens more and more with an increasing number of dotted and sometimes direct reporting lines between country and regional and global HR leads. The CEO is the only one that can really fix people issues; the rest of the things like sales, marketing, operations, finance, etc., other pros can do for them.